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How animal conservation became a defense against cultural erasureChina today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism—in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement—has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism.In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power.

A look at the folklore surrounding the legendary Pennsylvanian witch, and the facts behind them.In the ancient hills and misty hollows of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, generations of locals have passed down stories of a woman with mysterious magical powers. People came from near and far to seek healing and protection through her strange rituals. Some even believed she could fly. Named Moll Derry and nicknamed the Witch of the Monongahela, her legend has been documented by writers and folklorists for more than two hundred years. She is intertwined in many regional tales, such as the Lost Children of the Alleghenies and Polly Williams and the White Rocks. Author Thomas White separates fact from fiction in the many versions of Moll Derry and recounts Western Pennsylvania's folk magic history along the way.

Challenges to religious liberty are increasingly common today as historical Christianity comes into conflict with a new, secular orthodoxy. In this thoroughly revised second edition of First Freedom, leading evangelical scholars present the biblical and historical foundations for religious freedom in America, and address pressing topics such as: • Religious freedom and the exclusivity of the gospel • The Christian doctrine of religious liberty • Religious liberty and the public square • Religious freedom and the sexual revolution • Baptist contributions to religious freedom, and much more. The contributors equip churches, pastors, and Christian citizens to uphold this “first freedom” given by God and defended by Christians throughout our nation's history.

The twisty roads—and twisted tales—of the Appalachian Mountains make for distracted driving in western Pennsylvania. Ghostly travelers are said to wander the lonely roads of western Pennsylvania. A creeping fog rises from Blue Mist Road, and stories of car crashes, lynchings and even strange beasts haunt this isolated stretch outside Pittsburgh. Is it the angry spirit of a jealous husband or a gypsy king who stalks Erie County's Axe Murder Hollow? Shades of Death Road in Washington County may be host to phantom coal miners killed during a deadly labor dispute. With firsthand accounts and historical research, authors Thomas White and Tony Lavorgne travel the backcountry roads and byways of western Pennsylvania to discover their ghost tales and mysterious legends. Includes photos! “The authors include a history of each road along with the supernatural legends and other unexplained activity. Surprisingly, they are able to provide possible explanations for most of the alleged hauntings, but admit that they cannot account for every one, which allows the roads in question to keep their allure and spooky possibilities.” —PopCultureGuy

Local legends and paranormal mysteries of Pennsylvania—photos included. Strange creatures and tales of the supernatural thrive in Pennsylvania, from ghostly children who linger by their graves to werewolves that ambush nighttime travelers. Passed down over generations, Keystone State legends and lore provide both thrilling stories and dire warnings. Phantom trains chug down the now removed rails of the P&LE Railroad line on the Great Allegheny Passage. A wild ape boy is said to roam the Chester swamps, while the weeping Squonk wanders the hemlock-shrouded hills of central Pennsylvania, lamenting his hideousness. On dark nights, the ghosts of Betty Knox and her Union soldier beau still search for each other at Dunbar Creek. Join Thomas White and company as they go in search of the truth behind the legends of supernatural Pennsylvania.

Violent bank heists, bold train robberies and hardened gangs all tear across the history of the wild west--western Pennsylvania, that is.The region played reluctant host to the likes of the infamous Biddle Boys, who escaped Allegheny County Jail by romancing the warden's wife, and the Cooley Gang, which held Fayette County in its violent grip at the close of the nineteenth century. Then there was Pennsylvania's own Bonnie and Clyde--Irene and Glenn--whose murderous misadventures earned the'trigger blonde'and her beau the electric chair in 1931. From the perilous train tracks of Erie to the gritty streets of Pittsburgh, authors Thomas White and Michael Hassett trace the dark history of the crooks, murderers and outlaws who both terrorized and fascinated the citizenry of western Pennsylvania.

The assessment of greenhouse gases emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on the international political and scientific agendas. Growing international concern and cooperation regarding the climate change problem have increased the need for policy-oriented solutions to the issue of uncertainty in, and related to, inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed here reflect attempts to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective — a perspective that seeks to strengthen the usefulness of national inventories under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches demonstrate the benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analyses. The authors of the contributed papers show that considering uncertainty helps avoid situations that can, for example, create a false sense of certainty or lead to invalid views of subsystems. This may eventually prevent related errors from showing up in analyses. However, considering uncertainty does not come for free. Proper treatment of uncertainty is costly and demanding because it forces us to make the step from “simple to complex” and only then to discuss potential simplifications. Finally, comprehensive treatment of uncertainty does not offer policymakers quick and easy solutions.

A twelve-foot bull shark in the Delaware, the 1856 tornado that tore through Kensington and the four-elephant battle royal that rolled into Fair Hill Junction are among the bizarre tales that are too often overlooked in the history of Penn's Holy Experiment. Authors Thomas and Edward White have intrepidly stormed the stacks to unearth this offbeat collection of strange stories and weird lore with accounts of body snatchers, witch trials and a snake-wielding lunatic. From the outlawing of tambourine beating to the posse that caught a'ghost'and everything in between, the Brothers White take a wickedly gleeful romp through the freak happenings, dastardly deeds and unbelievable characters that lurk in the lost chronicles of the City of Brotherly Love.

Such was the wisdom of the Pittsburgh Daily Gazette and Advertiser in 1866 when describing a railway boss's threat to decapitate a former employee. Pittsburgh has many such stories of strange but mostly true events.Local author Thomas White delves into these lost tales, from Lewis and Clark's inauspicious start involving an intoxicated boat builder to the death ray of inventor Nikola Tesla. A 1907 lion attack at Luna Park, death by spontaneous combustion, Jack the Ripper's rumored visit to the city and an umpire who was rescued from an angry crowd by Pirates players are all part of the forgotten history of the Steel City.

A folklorist chronicles the history and lore of witchcraft in the Keystone State from William Penn's 17th century witch trial to 20th century occultism. As English and German settlers migrated to Pennsylvania, they brought their beliefs in magic with them from the Old World—sometimes with dangerous consequences. In 1802, for example, an Allegheny County judge helped an accused witch escape an angry mob. But Susan Mummey was not so fortunate. In 1934, she was killed in her home by a young Schuylkill County man who was convinced that she had cursed him. In other regions of the state, views on folk magic were more complex. While hex doctors were feared in the Pennsylvania German tradition, powwowers were and are revered for their abilities to heal, lift curses and find lost objects. In this revealing study, author Thomas White traces the undercurrent of witchcraft and occultism through centuries of Pennsylvania history.

The author of Witches of Pennsylvania and “Pittsburgh's Historian of the Supernatural” takes on the region's folklore, ghost stories, and urban legends (Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership). The ghostly woman of Summit Cut Bridge, a black hound that guards the Gates of Hell and the whispering dead entombed beneath the Black Cross—these are the spirits of southwestern Pennsylvania. Join local author Thomas White as he recounts such chilling stories as that of Revolutionary War witch Moll Derry and the phantom bride of White Rocks and the hair-raising tale of the angry specter of a steel millworker burned alive in a ladle of molten iron. Ascend the secret stairs of the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh and wander the dim stretch of Shades of Death Road in Washington County to encounter the otherworldly denizens of the Keystone State. Includes photos!

What do you really know about the Keystone State?William Penn, the Revolutionary figures of Philadelphia, and the strength of Pittsburgh's steel all loom large in Pennsylvania's history, but author Thomas White brings together a collection of tales that have been cast in the shadows of these giant icons. From the 1869 storm that pelted Chester County with snails to the bloody end of the Cooley gang, White selects events with an eye for the humorous and strange. Mostly true accounts of cannibalistic feats, goat-rescuing lawmen, heroic goldfish, the funeral of a gypsy queen, and a Pittsburgh canine whose obituary was featured in the New York Times all leap from the lost pages of history.

Thomas White spins a beguiling yarn with tales that reach from the misty hollows of the Alleghenies to the lost islands of Pittsburgh.Oppaymolleah's Curse. General Braddock's buried gold. The original man of steel, Joe Magarac. Such legends have found a home among the rich folklore of Western Pennsylvania. White invites readers to learn the truth behind the urban legend of the Green Man, speculate on the conspiracy surrounding the lost B-25 bomber of Monongahela and shiver over the ghostly lore of Western Pennsylvania.

Plagued by a series of frightening murders in San Francisco, Homicide Inspector Clemson Yao enlists the help of Angie Strachan, a realtor who tried—and failed—to become the city's first female homicide inspector. Facing off against a ghoulish serial killer who whimsically refers to his grotesque murders as'messies,'Clem and Angie slowly unravel the murderer's clues, but their quarry is always one step ahead of them, and even an FBI profiler can't help them pin down the twisted mind behind the crimes. Gripped by a macabre obsession for a decade, the killer has evolved into a grandmaster of slow, anguished death, roaming the globe to catalog the most despicable methods of execution and keeping his research in dozens of leather-bound notebooks. It's a desperate race against time, for his next victims are already picked out, and it seems that no one can stop him.