Encyclopedia Instruments

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses is probably destined to be one of the leastread best-sellers of all time. Its main claim to fame is the violent exception that Muslims of the yahoo variety have taken to seventy of its 547 pages. In a thinly disguised parody of the life of the Prophet Mohammed, Mr. Rushdie implies what many critics have long suspected: that the Prophet's message was a little too worldly, and too subject to opportunistic policy adjustments, to have been divinely inspired. The mere suggestion has enraged some of the faithful, and led to book-burnings in England, bloody attacks on U.S. information centers overseas, and the Ayatollah Khomeini's generous offer of $1 million to whatever godly gunsel manages to rub out Mr. Rushdie

In a world without wood, we might not be here at all. Without wood, we wouldn't have had the fire, heat, and shelter that allowed us to expand into the colder regions of the planet. If civilization somehow did develop, our daily lives still would be vastly different: there would be no violins, baseball bats, chopsticks, or wine corks. The book you are now holding wouldn't exist.

At the same time, many of us are removed from the world where wood is shaped and celebrated every day. That world is inhabited by a unique assortment of eccentric craftsmen and passionate enthusiasts who have created some of the world's most beloved musical instruments, feared weapons, dazzling architecture, sacred relics, and bizarre forms of transportation. In A Splintered History of Wood, Spike Carlsen has uncovered the most outlandish characters and examples, from world-champion chainsaw carvers to blind woodworkers, the Miraculous Staircase to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many more, in a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift.

Standard-setting represents one of the main constitutional functions of UNESCO and an important tool for realizing the goals for which the Organization was created. In addition to conventions and recommendations, the declarations adopted by the General Conference promulgate principles and norms intended to inspire the action of Member States in specific fields of activity.

This dictionary will be a useful resource for the reader in accessing the literature relating to environmental economics. Definitions are written so as to be comprehensible to the undergraduate or layman, whilst including the technical detail necessary to elucidate the key concepts.