Growing & Gardening

Irish Hedgerows €12.50
Networks For Nature
David Hickie (Ed)
Ask any visitor to Ireland which feature most symbolises the Irish countryside. The response usually involves a description of patchwork fields of various shapes and sizes blanketing the landscape, with a criss-cross network of hedgerows separating those fields

Ireland's green spaces have come under enormous pressure in recent years. In particular, the quiet but steady removal of hedges and the decline in quality of the remaining hedgerow resource is a cause of great concern for many.

Hedgerows serve many practical functions, acting as living fences and barriers, screens and windbreaks. They are also a major source of biodiversity and function as vital ecological corridors: a living network to link habitats that have become fragmented as a result of modern development. A spatial network of healthy hedgerows offers a vital lifeline to many species.

Hedgerows can also act as a temporal network, opening our minds to the past. They link us to those long-gone generations who planed, maintained and all too often had to abandon their hedges and fields. This temporal link also extends into the future. When future generations view the Irish landscape, how will our current actions be judged?

The book is a collaborative venture by Networks for Nature, a forum for all those whose work or livelihood involves or affects hedgerows.

96pp 2004 260x210

Health & Healing

Dioxin War, The €19.50
Truth and Lies About a Perfect Poison
Robert Allen
The collective consciousness associates dioxin with places forgotten - Seveso, Times Beach, Vietnam ... Only those who know the story of dioxin associate it with chlorophenol-producing factories, incinerators, smelters, combustion processes and aromatic treatments that release toxic pollution into the air and consequently into the food chain.

In America the chemical corporates Dow and Monsanto played a huge role in the story of dioxin because their products contained the most toxic dioxin - 2,4,7,8-tetradibenzodioxin. These products - herbicides, wood treatments, solvents and liquids - characterized 20th century life in the home, office and workplace. Unknown to the workers who earned their living as chemical process operators, to labourers and farmers and gardeners who routinely used chlorine-based chemicals, to soldiers who sprayed Agent Orange and to their Vietnamese victims, and to the communities who lived downwind of toxic stacks, a by-product of the chlorine-chemical industry was a toxin so strong it caused a range of diverse illnesses including cancer and diseases of the development, immune and reproductive systems.

They did not know about dioxin because the story of this pervasive human-made chemical has been shrouded by lies, deceit, dishonesty, corruption, collusion and apathy. It is not a story that resides in the public domain. It is a story about somewhere else involving unknown people. It is a complex story that has never been adequately told - a story about corporates and regulators and spin-doctors. It would easy to construct scaffolding made from conspiracy theories to explain why dioxin is an unknown story but that would add to all the lies that have been told about dioxin.

The Dioxin War is an attempt to explain the story of dioxin, to explain different aspects of it, to explain why it remains a mystery and why very little is being done to phase out chlorine-chemistry - the genesis of the processes that produce dioxin and the products that contain dioxin.

About The Author

Born in Belfast in 1956, Robert Allen managed to survive the worst years of the violence. He realised all he had to do was keep as far away as possible from tartan gangs, pubs, restaurants, hotels, taxis, soldiers, police, vigilante pickets, bullets and bombs. It wasn't all that easy and in 1976 he gave up trying and fled. He now works as a sub-editor for The Sunday Times in London, is a co-founder and contributing editor of the web magazine, Bluegreenearth; a media activist with An Talamh Glas (Green Earth); and a director with Seanchai Media, an information resource, publisher and agency for authors specialising in radical eco-social and social paradigms.

His latest book, The Dioxin War, features the history of the secrecy and lies surrounding dioxin, the toxic contaminant of Agent Orange. He wonders why he wrote it because he has long known that people prefer positive stories. Which is why his forthcoming book Ireland Unbound, with Ianna Dowling, is about positive people doing empowering things in their communities and in their lives.

208pp 2004 215x135

Green Living
Politics & Economics

No Global €19.95
The People of Ireland Versus the Multinationals
Robert Allen New Edition
No Global is the updated second edition of Guests of the Nation, which was published to great acclaim in 1990. As Mary Robinson prepared for her presidency, Robert Allen's book highlighted the stories of people all over the country who were fighting to reclaim their lives and their communities from developments they considered toxic or hazardous or plain wrong.

This new edition leaves out the stories about the Betelgeuse/Gulf Oil terminal disaster in Bantry, the history of opposition to mining and to toxic waste. The focus of this edition is on the community opposition to toxic industry and features:

• the story of the community struggle to prevent a toxic waste incinerator being built in Ringaskiddy in County Cork

• the story of the mystery illnesses in and around Askeaton in County Limerick

• the story of one family's fight for justice in Ballydine in County Tipperary

• the story of how a community in County Cork sent the mighty Dow Chemicals back to the US

• the story of a Donegal community with a score to settle against a toxic neighbour

• the stories of successive Cork harbour communities fighting against the menace of toxic factories

These are the stories of opposition to globalisation before anyone knew what globalisation was. No Global questions the roles of local authorites, semi-state bodies and government departments who fought to turn Ireland into a toxic isle.

Now, with the giants of the chemical world established on Irish soil, this book is a reminder that some people were opposed to this kind of modern development. And in this book their voices are heard - some for the first time.

288pp 2004 215x135

Health & Healing

Bright Clouds €10.00
Smiling in the face of adversity and coping with multiple sclerosis
Pat Dwyer
Systematic account from highly positive thinker Dwyer who describes MS from which he is a sufferer, among six thousand other Irish people.

He explains diagnosis, possible causes, symptoms, prognosis, types, treatment, alternative medicine and supplements, supports, organisations, assistance and entitlements. He also discusses his own life, thoughts and attitudes with a chapter on poetry giving some of his own and some by Pablo Neruda whom he translates with a sample poem.

Useful websites listed.

From the Author

In Ireland there appears to be a general dearth of literature written by disabled people, especially with diseases like Multiple Sclerosis. This is an account of my personal experience with multiple sclerosis, covering a comprehensive explanation of the disease itself. It is a book written from the experience and perspective of a sufferer who has faced this disease as realistically as I can. I have endeavoured to write it with a sense of humour without trivialising the disease. It is a cold look at the disease but is not defeatist or depressive. This book is a story about an MS sufferer trying to cope with a baffling disease and written by the same and all my efforts to get treatment in far away places like Cuba because there was nothing available here in Ireland.

I have attempted to explain in as understandable a way as possible, the various possible causes of the disease, the vast number of problems/symptoms that can develop in your body when you have it, and what to consider in deciding how to combat, treat and live with multiple sclerosis in some small way both mentally and physically. I have spent 13 months researching and writing this book, which has been therapeutic in a way!

About the Author

Pat Dwyer born in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. Living in Portlaoise since 1988 and spent 2 years in Ballyfin College, completing his Leaving Certificate there in 1979. At this stage of his life he considers himself an honorary Laois man! Opened Bealtaine Festival (The Bealtaine Laois Festival of Literature celebrates writing, storytelling, music and live performance in County Laois) with Tom Nestor in May 2002 launching his first book of poetry-From Thurles to Cuba with Love at the same event. Married to Joan, they have three children. Writes poetry in both English and Spanish. Prizewinner in the Spanish Section of the Dun Laoighaire/Rathdown International Poetry Competition 1998. Other publications include a poem in From Here to the Horizon, Laois Anthology 1999. The poem Un Cuba Libre was originally written in Spanish and later anglicised. This book Bright Clouds is his first venture into non-fiction and was written because he is personally affected by Multiple Sclerosis.

224pp 2004 210x146