Trump is Expanding the US Empire

Migrant Caravan refugees respond to Trump’s wall speech

The consequences of withdrawing US troops from Syria

Italy’s mount Etna emitting volcanic ash

Key takeaways from climate assessment that detailed extreme dangers of climate change

CBS News

Published on Nov 24, 2018

The Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment was released on Friday, revealing that climate change is already affecting every region of the U.S. Andrew Light, co-author of the report and a distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, joins CBSN to discuss.

Jim Anderson: Feedbacks that Set the Time Scale for Irreversible Change

Climate StatePublished on Jan 13, 2019

Climate Science Breakfast with James Anderson (2016). EPS/SEAS Climate Science Breakfast: “Coupled Feedbacks in the Climate Structure That Set the Time Scale for Irreversible Change: Arctic Isotopes to Stratospheric Radicals” with James Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Harvard University.
Harvard on Climate Change https://www.harvard.edu/tackling-clim…
Release https://vimeo.com/126306925

Noam Chomsky: Members of Migrant Caravan Are Fleeing from Misery & Horrors Created by the U.S.

Democracy Now!

Published on Nov 22, 2018

https://democracynow.org – Days after a federal judge in California temporarily halted Trump’s asylum ban, we revisit our conversation with world-renowned professor, linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky about U.S. foreign policy in Central America. He joins us in Tucson, Arizona, where he teaches at the University of Arizona. Chomsky is also institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for 50 years. We ask him about the Central American caravan and national security adviser John Bolton declaring Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua to be part of a “troika of tyranny” and a “triangle of terror” earlier this month.

A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820: John K. Thornton

A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820 explores the idea that strong linkages exist in the histories of Africa, Europe, and North and South America. John K. Thornton provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Atlantic Basin before 1830 by describing political, social, and cultural interactions between the continents’ inhabitants. He traces the backgrounds of the populations on these three continental landmasses brought into contact by European navigation. Thornton then examines the political and social implications of the encounters, tracing the origins of a variety of Atlantic societies and showing how new ways of eating, drinking, speaking, and worshipping developed in the newly created Atlantic World. This book uses close readings of original sources to produce new interpretations of its subject.

About the author (2012)

John K. Thornton is Professor of History and African American Studies at Boston University. He is the author of Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500800 (1999) and Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400800 (Cambridge, 1992, 1998) and the co-author of Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585660 (Cambridge, 2007) with Linda M. Heywood.

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The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey: Randy J. Sparks

In 1767, two “princes” of a ruling family in the port of Old Calabar, on the slave coast of Africa, were ambushed and captured by English slavers. The princes, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John, were themselves slave traders who were betrayed by African competitors–and so began their own extraordinary odyssey of enslavement. Their story, written in their own hand, survives as a rare firsthand account of the Atlantic slave experience.

Randy Sparks made the remarkable discovery of the princes’ correspondence and has managed to reconstruct their adventures from it. They were transported from the coast of Africa to Dominica, where they were sold to a French physician. By employing their considerable language and interpersonal skills, they cleverly negotiated several escapes that took them from the Caribbean to Virginia, and to England, but always ended in their being enslaved again. Finally, in England, they sued for, and remarkably won, their freedom. Eventually, they found their way back to Old Calabar and, evidence suggests, resumed their business of slave trading.

The Two Princes of Calabar offers a rare glimpse into the eighteenth-century Atlantic World and slave trade from an African perspective. It brings us into the trading communities along the coast of Africa and follows the regular movement of goods, people, and ideas across and around the Atlantic. It is an extraordinary tale of slaves’ relentless quest for freedom and their important role in the creation of the modern Atlantic World.

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Seven Myths of Africa in World History (Myths of History: A Hackett Series): David Northrup, Alfred J. Andrea, Andrew Holt

“Northrup’s highly accessible book breaks through the most common barriers that readers encounter in studying African history. Each chapter takes on a common myth about Africa and explains both the sources of the myth and the research that debunks it. These provocative chapters will promote lively discussions among readers while deepening their understanding of African and world history. The book is strengthened by its incorporation of actors and issues representing the African diaspora and African Americans in particular.”
—Rebecca Shumway, College of Charleston

E-Book access.