Kirjahaku

America has more than 250,000 rivers, coursing over more than 3 million miles, connecting the disparate regions of the United States. On a map they can look like the veins, arteries, and capillaries of a continent-wide circulatory system, and in a way they are. Over the course of this nation's history rivers have served as integral trade routes, borders, passageways, sewers, and sinks. Over the years, based on our shifting needs and values, we have harnessed their power with waterwheels and dams, straightened them for ships, drained them with irrigation canals, set them on fire, and even attempted to restore them.In this fresh and powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle tells the epic story of America and its rivers, from the U.S. Constitution's roots in interstate river navigation, the origins of the Army Corps of Engineers, the discovery of gold in 1848, and the construction of the Hoover Dam and the TVA during the New Deal, to the failure of the levees in Hurricane Katrina and the water wars in the west. Along the way, he explores how rivers have often been the source of arguments at the heart of the American experiment--over federalism, sovereignty and property rights, taxation, regulation, conservation, and development.Through his encounters with experts all over the country--a Mississippi River tugboat captain, an Erie Canal lock operator, a dendrochronologist who can predict the future based on the story trees tell about the past, a western rancher fighting for water rights--Doyle reveals the central role rivers have played in American history--and how vital they are to its future.

In a powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle tells the epic story of America and its rivers, from the U.S. Constitution's roots in interstate river navigation, to the failure of the levees in Hurricane Katrina and the water wars in the west. Through his own travels and his encounters with experts all over the country--a Mississippi River tugboat captain, an Erie Canal lock operator, a project manager buying water rights for farms along the Colorado River--Doyle reveals the central role rivers have played in American history and how vital they are to its future.

Three missing children, a burnt out lawyer on the edge, a multi-billion dollar mining deal and an entire government about to be brought to its knees. This is the gravamen of Sugarshed Road, a mystery/thriller in the style of a John Grisham type novel where the lawyer is the main protagonist and the conspiracy just grows and grows to an explosive climax with a twist you'll never see coming Steve Creal is in the middle of his legal career but is feeling burnt out and beginning to rely heavily on alcohol to get him through week by week. He's tired of defending the rights of society's worst and stupidest criminals and feels like every day is the same, until one day he arrives home and checks his emails. The Chief Magistrate has emailed Steve requesting that he assist and effectively take the lead of an investigation into the disappearance of three young teenage children in the regional community of 'Macktown'. The police have no leads and the case has gone 'cold', but the community is in deep shock and, because all the children are indigenous, racial tensions are very high. Steve accepts the request and travels to Macktown to assist the investigation. What follows is a tour de force through modern day regional Australia at the height of the Mining boom. Race relations (both Indigenous and migrant), Economic impacts on communities, Native Title and corporate and political corruption are all intertwined as Steve Creal is also forced to face his own internal demons and identity. As Steve makes steady progress towards unravelling the fate of the children and the surrounding conspiracy, more people will die, hearts will be broken, a government will crumble and the entire nation will mourn one of it saddest days.

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, has been an arts journalist for almost 35 years and in that time has interviewed many of the most talented and successful Irish writers at different stages of their careers. This selection of his journalism offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the Irish literary world as it has evolved in the past four decades. It provides booklovers with a privileged insight into the creative processes of many of their favourite writers, while serving as an appetiser for some of the greatest works of modern Irish fiction and nonfiction, both prizewinning titles and some overlooked gems which deserve to be rediscovered. Writers interviewed include: Sally Rooney, Claire Keegan, Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, Claire Kilroy, Donal Ryan, Alice Taylor, Paul Murray.

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, his own, part of both the Linen Triangle - heartland of the North's defining industry - and the Murder Triangle - the Badlands devastated by paramilitary violence. He lifts the veil of silence drawn over the horrors of the past, recording in heartrending detail the terrible toll the conflict took - more than twenty violent deaths in a few square miles - and the long tail of trauma it has left behind. Neighbours and classmates who lost loved ones in the conflict, survivors maimed in bomb attacks and victims of sectarianism, both Catholic and Protestant, entrust Doyle with their stories. Writing with a literary sensibility, he skillfully shows how the once dominant local linen industry serves as a metaphor for communal division but also for the solidarity that transcended the sectarian divide. To those who might ask why you would want to reopen old wounds, the answer might be that some wounds have never been allowed to heal.