With a single shot from a pistol small enough to conceal in his hand, John Wilkes Booth catapulted into history on the night of April 14, 1865. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln stunned ...a nation that was just emerging from the chaos and calamity of the Civil War, and the president's untimely death altered the trajectory of postwar history. But to those who knew Booth, the event was even more shocking-for no one could have imagined that this fantastically gifted actor and well-liked man could commit such an atrocity. In Fortune's Fool, Terry Alford provides the first comprehensive look at the life of an enigmatic figure whose life has been overshadowed by his final, infamous act. Tracing Booth's story from his uncertain childhood in Maryland, characterized by a difficult relationship with his famous actor father, to his successful acting career on stages across the country, Alford offers a nuanced picture of Booth as a public figure, performer, and deeply troubled man. Despite the fame and success that attended Booth's career--he was billed at one point as "the youngest star in the world"--he found himself consumed by the Confederate cause and the desire to help the South win its independence. Alford reveals the tormented path that led Booth to conclude, as the Confederacy collapsed in April 1865, that the only way to revive the South and punish the North for the war would be to murder Lincoln--whatever the cost to himself or others. The textured and compelling narrative gives new depth to the familiar events at Ford's Theatre and the aftermath that followed, culminating in Booth's capture and death at the hands of Union soldiers 150 years ago. Based on original research into government archives, historical libraries, and family records, Fortune's Fool offers the definitive portrait of John Wilkes Booth.
The deindustrialization process of Romania, applied methodically and persistently after the 90s, seems not to be part of the natural path towards industry 4.0, but rather to be a systematic process ...of planned destruction and erasure of the post-December industry, on a new Valev Plan system conceived in the secret laboratories of the artisans of the new world configuration. The insistence with which there was a systematic and planned demolition of most of the large industrial capacities and platforms betrays obscure interests that can no longer be placed under the umbrella of classifying them as obsolete or non-performing, but rather as inconvenient for foreign markets and foreign capitals. To better understand the mechanisms that acted in order to reset Romania and return it to the status of a semi-agrarian colony, exporting raw materials, natural resources and cheap labor, materialized by the destruction of the heavy, petrochemical, food and car manufacturing industry, we will need to analyze in depth the essence of the manifestation framework of the processes that support globalism as an ideology and globalization as a supra-state and neo-colonialist policy of the great international power centers.
Although Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes emerged since the 1980′s to manage forest ecosystems, their application to mangrove forests is still recent, and evidence of their effectiveness is ...still questioned towards the complex legal status of mangroves. This study explored the context of policy and institution regarding the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) implemented in the mangroves of the Southwestern Madagascar. We used Policy content analysis to examine the interactions between the Madagascar sectoral policies and the PES design frameworks developed under the Reduction of Emission from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In addition, semi-structured interviews with national and local stakeholders were conducted to identify i) institutional interplay between PES and mangroves and ii) challenges faced with the implementation of PES in the mangroves. We found that environmental, fisheries and land use planning policies that concern mangrove management are coherent with the frameworks and supportive of PES implementation. Lack of clear legal frameworks and coordination between the sectoral ministries, weakness of government organisations due to political instability, and limited local governance capacity are the major challenges for the implementation of PES schemes in mangroves. These led to lower motivation to collaborate in mangrove conservation efforts among the members of local communities. We emphasized that the existence of the mangrove PES initiative like in the Baie des Assassins could be a catalyst for Madagascar to develop clear policy, legislation, and institutions to support effective implementation of the PES schemes in mangroves.
