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Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Author James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not - and cannot - be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge.

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.

James Scott taught us what's wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, Two Cheers for Anarchism is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of an anarchist way of seeing - one that provides a unique and powerful perspective on everything from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions.

Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered. It is the annual flood pulse—the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain—that gives a river its vitality, but it is human engineering that kills it, suppressing the flood pulse with dams, irrigation, siltation, dikes, and levees.

Fire is rarely out of the headlines, from large natural wildfires raging across the Australian or Californian countrysides to the burning of buildings such as the disasters of Grenfell tower and Notre Dame. Fire on these scales can represent a serious risk to human life and property. But the advent of fire made and controlled by humans also represented a crucial point in our evolution, allowing us to cook our food, forge our weapons, and warm our homes.

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us Amory Blaine, who, from boyhood through his early 20s, is on a quest for his identity, his philosophy, and his sense of place in a world never quite his own, a world in which he moves with barely concealed ego-fueled disgust and contempt. Fitzgerald's breakthrough novel, written in 1920 when the author was 23, manages to be both a thinly veiled autobiography and a sincere attempt by Fitzgerald to get into the head of the young, privileged personages of his time.

Lucius Anoraq is getting paid to follow the mysterious and lovely canary, Sheila De Havilland. And wherever the canary goes, trouble seems to follow. Anoraq’s happy to do as he’s told, all in the name of chivalry. But one dead body later, and what started out as a lazy afternoon’s snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity, and murder.

Lucius Anoraq befriends a Labrador who is a down-on-his-luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Robert Herriot has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. Now Herriot is on the lam, and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Anoraq.

After waking up from a coma - as a result of two slugs in a shootout - Private Detective Kaiser Wrench becomes embroiled in a deadly search for billions of dollars of missing mob money.

Some of his enemies think Kaiser Wrench has softened with age, but he leaps into action when he finds his secretary severely beaten and a mutilated tiger in his desk chair. Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to The Carnage Male, and experience the compelling world of detective fiction.

Playing protector to a runaway puppy-faced poodle, Kaiser Wrench trades barbs and lead with crooked politicos, snarling hoods, and a sex-hungry female.

The doe was desperate, terrified, and out of her mind. Now she’s dead. Acting as an avenging angel, Private Detective Kaiser Wrench heads into an underground urban nightmare.

He was a nice cheetah. Now he's dead. Kaiser Wrench suspects murder, while the cops are calling it a suicide. Without a license or a gun, Wrench is pushing his way through a swirl of sex-and-game clubs, high priced models, and not just a little blackmail. Someone is working hard to frame Wrench and he’s working hard to find out why. Everywhere he turns, he keeps coming up against a beautiful tigress named Viola. She holds the key to the crime wave that could unlock the mystery behind the nice cheetah’s murder...