Through an anthropological analysis, this book uncovers life stories and testimonies that relate the processes of separation as a result of the constructed political borders of nation states newly founded on the inherited territories of the Ottoman Empire. As it recounts ruptured social, cultural, political, religious, and economic structures and autochthonous bonds, this work not only critically analyzes the making of the Turkish-Syrian border through an exploration of statist discourse, state practices and the state’s diverse apparatuses, but further analyzes the “unmaking” border practices of local subjects in the light of local Kurdish people’s counter perceptions, discourses, family histories, narratives, and daily practices—each of which can be interpreted as a practice of local defiance, resilience, and adaptation in everyday life.

In the post-apocalyptic remnants of Chicago, the warlord who holds Wicker City holds the power. After years spent surviving in the wastelands, a young woman returns to the city to find answers about her past . Instead she discovers a violently shifting landscape of betrayal and a power-hungry man who, if given control, might be unstoppable. Wicker City is no place for a lone wolf. Will she choose a side in the city’s constant power struggle? Or will she forge her own path? Blending the ruthless political maneuvering of Gangs of New York with the survival horror of The Last of US, Wicker City paints a picture of mankind not united, but fractured by a monstrous threat.

The New York Times-bestselling final book by the beloved, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Tony Horwitz. With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times. For the Connecticut Yankee, pen name "Yeoman," the South was alien, often hostile territory. Yet Olmsted traveled for 14 months, by horseback, steamboat, and stagecoach, seeking dialogue and common ground. His vivid dispatches about the lives and beliefs of Southerners were revelatory for readers of his day, and Yeoman's remarkable trek also reshaped the American landscape, as Olmsted sought to reform his own society by creating democratic spaces for the uplift of all. The result: Central Park and Olmsted's career as America's first and foremost landscape architect. Tony Horwitz rediscovers Yeoman Olmsted amidst the discord and polarization of our own time. Is America still one country? In search of answers, and his own adventures, Horwitz follows Olmsted's tracks and often his mode of transport (including muleback): through Appalachia, down the Mississippi River, into bayou Louisiana, and across Texas to the contested Mexican borderland. Venturing far off beaten paths, Horwitz uncovers bracing vestiges and strange new mutations of the Cotton Kingdom. Horwitz's intrepid and often hilarious journey through an outsized American landscape is a masterpiece in the tradition of Great Plains, Bad Land, and the author's own classic, Confederates in the Attic.