Books by Richard Manning

Music is a cultural universal among all humans for all times. It is embedded in our DNA, essential to our surivival. Academics have considered this idea to devise explanations that Richard Manning, a lifelong journalist, finds hollow, incomplete, or just plain wrong. He approaches the question from a different angle, using his own guitar and banko as instruments of discovery. In the process, he finds himself dancing in celebration of musci rough and rowdy. American roots muscic is not a product of an elite leisure class, as some academics contend, but of explosive creativity among slaves, hillbillies, fieldhands, drunks, slackers, and hucksters. Yet these poor, working-class people, built the foundations of jazz, gospel, blues, bluegrass, rock 'n' roll, and country music, an unparalleled burst of invention. This is the counterfactual to the academics' story. Manning takes us down a long, strange path, following music to deeper understandings of racism, slavery, inequality, meditation,

Provides a survey of agricultural research projects underway in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, India, China, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. This book starts from the premise that the 'Green Revolution' which averted mass starvation a generation ago is not a long-term solution to global food needs and has created its own very serious problems.

The most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command. This book presents an account of the American plains. It also describes a vision for ecological restoration that would establish a prairie preserve larger than Yellowstone National Park, flush with wild bison, elk, and wolves.