Paul Wood

The bestselling author of How to Escape from Prison, prisoner-turned-psychologist Paul Wood on developing the mental strength and fitness to take on all of life's challenges Getting and staying mentally fit, just like getting and maintaining a high level of physical fitness, involves hard work, effort, and consistency. Our level of mental fitness determines how effectively we can flourish through adversity, realise our potential, and be happier with our lives - regardless of what the universe has in store.We all know about mental stress (or we think we do). We've definitely all experienced it, and none of us like it. Yet this is not a threat to be avoided. Mental stress is perfectly analogous to physical stress: it is the mind's way of telling us that what we are attempting to perform is challenging our resource. This is a catalyst for growth, and a sign we are pursuing our potential. When we experience stress, we have a choice: we can heed that signal and give up - after all, we're meant to stay in our psychic comfort zone all the time, right? Or we can recognise the discomfort we are feeling is simply nature's way of enabling us to rise to the occasion.In Mental Fitness you will learn how to:Increase your mental fitness, just as you would increase your physical fitnessGet closer to your potential by working proactively to maintain your mental fitnessExperience the right level of stress (this is what makes us get fitter)Cope effectively for longer before you get fatigued or exhausted (it doesn't mean you don't feel the struggle)Pay attention to the indicators of fatigue to avoid burnout and unnecessary misery

The first London walking guide to reveal the amazing variety of the capital's trees, on a dozen walks around all parts of Greater London, of varying distances from a morning's stroll to a whole day, along streets and through parks and squares, by the author of the perennially popular London's Street Trees.

Edited by Paul Wood, author of London is a Forest and London's Street Trees, this is the first in Blue Crow Media's new series about urban flora and wildlife. The map reveals highlights from London's uniquely diverse urban forest, featuring rare species, magnificent English oaks, an ancient 2,000-year old yew and the finest flowering cherries. Following our established format, the publication includes a map of London with featured trees plotted, and photography, details and texts on the reverse. The map is protected by a slip cover.

Can a city be a forest? At first glance, this does not chime with our childhood idea of the ‘wild wood’ – a dark entanglement of trees, where humans fear to tread. But a forest does not need to be dense and impenetrable, and it’s not unheard of for people to live in them either.In London, 8.6 million people are crammed into just 600 square miles alongside 8.3 million trees, and millions upon millions of other plants, insects and animals. According to one UN definition, this makes the city a forest. The Forestry Commission agree, describing London as the world’s largest urban forest. And it’s a very special, urban forest at that.Following a number of trails through the rich diversity of London, this book looks closely at the urban forest, our relationships with it and attitudes towards it and will uncover the fascinating stories and secrets it holds.Through these paths that meander through the urban forest, author Paul Wood explores its geography, its past and future, and looks at the remarkable variety of life supported in this unique metropolitan ecosystem. From the edgelands to the beating heart of the clamorous 21st century megacity, a wealth of arboreal details, history, legend and anecdotes will be revealed along the way. You’ll discover some of the species found here, and the people who have helped to shape this remarkable environment over many centuries.Complementing the trails, Wood looks in more detail at the fascinating stories of some of the iconic, and some of the more hidden species that define the urban forest. These include familiar tree species like the London Plane, Oaks, Cherries and Hornbeam, alongside the rare Wild Service Tree and the surprising Tree of Heaven. Other inhabitants of the forest such as parakeets, urban foxes and, of course, humans are also featured.

Four Wheels Five Corners: Facts of Life in Upcountry MauiPaul WoodSecond editionwith new artwork, maps, and textMaui's "Upcountry" region has no precise boundaries and very little connection to the cute ideas you read in tourism publications. But anyone interested in Maui, or in the contemporary Hawaiian Islands, or in the abundant comedy of barely civilized human nature, will find surprises and delight in these playful short tales and observations.During the1990s, award-winning writer Paul Wood undertook a series of newspaper pieces trying to get at the true experience of his home terrain. He quickly realized that "Upcountry" is partly a state of mind, so he was forced to include tall tales and truthful distortions. As an inspiration for the design of his pieces, he chose the flimsy hairpin roads that noodle through the gulch country of windward Haleakala-bad roads in beautiful places. The new driver (driving a truck, one hopes) tends to panic ("where is this all going?") and in the end arrives safely to wonder what just happened. Hence the series title, which refers to one of the dankest and most bewildering intersections in Hawai'i.Throughout it all, Wood repeatedly calls for a sense of community-a community of strangers, refugees, cowboys, mechanics, shopkeepers, realtors, scratch farmers, massage therapists, entrepreneurs, people who have real jobs, dreamers and floaters and rough-hands. All they have in common is the shared landscape, along with a vision of the native Hawaiian culture that precedes them.Wood produced the book first in the mid '90s, a print-run of 1,000 copies, all but three of which were sold within the first two months. Here is a new edition. During the intervening years, the island and its culture have changed dramatically. New footnotes were needed, and those become a running joke-"the good old days." But which "good old days?" Reality becomes history as soon as you live it. The tropics are volatile. Upcountry is going down. Grab a copy on the way.

Western Art and the Wider World explores the evolving relationship between the Western canon of art, as it has developed since the Renaissance, and the art and culture of the Islamic world, the Far East, Australasia, Africa and the Americas. Explores the origins, influences, and evolving relationship between the Western canon of art as it has developed since the Renaissance and the art and culture of the Islamic world, the Far East, Australasia, Africa and the AmericasMakes the case for ‘world art’ long before the fashion of globalizationCharts connections between areas of study in art that long were considered in isolation, such as the Renaissance encounter with the Ottoman Empire, the influence of Japanese art on the 19th-century French avant-garde and of African art on early modernism, as well as debates about the relation of ‘contemporary art’ to the past.Written by a well-known art historian and co-editor of the landmark Art in Theory volumes

A sensational-and true-prison escape story in the tradition of Papillon and Midnight Express. Edward Padilla, an American, is the only living person ever to escape from the world's foulest prison-Lurigancho Prison in Peru. Here is the true story of his four-year ordeal and his miraculous flight to freedom. A founding member of the now notorious "hippie" church called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Ed is one of the few surviving core members of that group, the only one to come forward with brutal honesty in the telling of this story."A wonderfully gritty story of transcendence of the physical and the spiritual. Serve time with Ed and discover hell and heaven. Unique and extraordinary."Jeremy Tarcherpublisher, Tarcher Books and Seven Years in Tibet"A harrowing account of one of the most infamous hell-holes on earth, and a thrilling tale of betrayed ideals, adventure, escape and redemption."Nicholas Schouauthor of Kill the Messenger, Orange Sunshine, and The Weed Runners (forthcoming)"An astonishing true story that has every twist and turn you could imagine. Eddie's is a story that plunges to the bleakest depths and soars to the greatest heights. Guns, drugs, girls, South American hell-holes-it has it all...."Nick Greendirector of the National Geographic documentary "The Hippie Mafia""Edward Padilla's gritty street prose takes the reader into a desperate Heart of Darkness from which not many could ever emerge. But this gripping narrative turns emergence into a transcendent awakening and genuine rebirth. This is the real stuff, no modifiers required."John Kent Harrisonscreenwriter/director"Eddie Padilla embodies so much of the promise and peril of post-War Southern California that it makes your head spin: a multiracial child of the New West; schooled by surfers, street fighters, and smugglers; turned on as a '60s seeker; turned out as a '70s nihilist. In Lurigancho Prison, Peru, a Dante-esque catalog of horrors, Padilla paid for California's broken dreams as much as his own. His brave escape and ongoing recovery offer a dagger of redemption and hope in the fight against 21st century cynicism and apathy."Joe Donnellyco-editor/founder Slake: Los Angeles, author of "The Pirate of Penance"

As thousands have been tortured, jailed, maimed or killed by the Syrian regime, The Fear of Breathing is not only a new play based entirely on verbatim reports from inside Syria itself, but is also a hard-hitting evocation of a life or death fight for freedom, experienced from the inside. To uncover these personal stories from the uprising, award-winning journalists Paul Wood and Ruth Sherlock, together with theatre director Zoe Lafferty, travelled into Syria covertly, circumventing the ban on journalists and restrictions on movement for all non-Syrians. They spoke to protesters as well as citizens who love President Bashar al-Assad and are terrified of a future without him.Featuring verbatim scenes, interviews, stories and film footage, The Fear of Breathing is a powerful and profoundly disturbing portrait of a revolution struggling to survive.

Art in Theory 1815-1900 provides the most wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents ever assembled on nineteenth-century theories of art.