Peter Walker

Peter Walker--reporter at the Guardian and curator of its popular bike blog--shows how the future of humanity depends on the bicycle. Car culture has ensnared much of the world--and it's no wonder. Convenience and comfort (as well as some clever lobbying) have made the car the transportation method of choice for generations. But as the world evolves, the high cost of the automobile is made clearer--with its dramatic effects on pollution, the way it cuts people off from their communities, and the alarming rate at which people are injured and killed in crashes. Walker argues that the simplest way to tackle many of these problems at once is with one of humankind's most perfect inventions--the bicycle. In How Cycling Can Save the World, Walker takes readers on a tour of cities like Copenhagen and Utrecht, where everyday cycling has taken root, demonstrating cycling's proven effect on reducing smog and obesity, and improving quality of life and mental health. Interviews with public figures--such as Janette Sadik-Khan, who led the charge to create more pedestrian- and cyclist- friendly infrastructure in New York City--provide case studies on how it can be done, and prove that you can make a big change with just a few cycling lanes and a paradigm shift. Meticulously researched and incredibly inspiring, How Cycling Can Save the World delivers on its lofty promise and leads readers to the realization that cycling could not only save the world, but have a lasting and positive impact on their own lives.

How Cycling Can Save the World

We are bombarded with images of fitness and sport, everything from the sculpted torsos of reality TV shows to stories about cycle races and ultra-marathons. But at the same time, four in ten British adults, and 80% of children, are so sedentary they don’t meet even the minimum recommended levels for movement. What’s going on? The answer is simple: activity became exercise. What for centuries was universal and everyday has become the fetishised pursuit of a minority, whether the superhuman feats of elite athletes, or a chore slotted into busy schedules. Yes, most people know physical activity is good for us. And yet 1.5 billion people around the world are so inactive they are at greater risk of everything from heart disease to diabetes, cancer, arthritis and depression, even dementia. Sedentary living now kills more people than obesity, despite receiving much less attention, and is causing a pandemic of chronic ill health many experts predict could soon bankrupt the NHS. Scientists call activity 'The Miracle Pill' - if you could turn incidental daily movement into a drug, it would be the most valuable pill in the world. How did we get here? Daily, constant exertion was an integral part of humanity for millennia, but in just a few decades movement was virtually designed out of people’s lives through transformed workplaces, the dominance of the car, and a built environment which encourages people to be static. In a world now also infiltrated by ubiquitous screens, app-summoned taxis and shopping delivered to your door, it can be shocking to realise exactly how sedentary many of us are. A recent study found almost half of middle-aged English people don’t walk continuously for ten minutes or more in an average month. At current trends, scientists forecast, the average US adult will expend little more energy in an average week than someone who spent all their time in bed. This book is a chronicle of this very modern and largely unexplored catastrophe, and the story of the people trying to turn it around. But it also offers readers an empowering individual template for change – as well as, for some, a wake-up call that their lifestyle might not be quite as healthy as they believe.

The Miracle Pill

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A gripping narrative that sweeps the reader along as it seeks to uncover a mystery from the pages of New Zealand's troubled racial past. While doing some preliminary research for a travel book, Peter Walker came across a photograph taken in the mid-nineteenth century that haunted him. A Maori boy, at age five or six, is dressed up as a proper English gentleman, one hand hidden in the pocket of his trousers, the other placed squarely on what looks like a bible. How did such a young member of the native population of New Zealand wind up in such a place, why did he look so unhappy, and what happened next? With picture in hand and numerous questions in mind, Peter set off on his quest to solve the riddle of Ngatau Omahuru (or little 'William Fox'). It was soon revealed that this little boy, about whom perhaps ten lines had ever been published in history books, was kidnapped during a battle and later adopted by the Prime Minister himself to be trained as lawyer. As Walker uncovers more and more information-following the boy's footsteps out of the forest and into the high society drawing rooms of Wellington and London-it becomes clear that little William Fox played a crucial role in New Zealand's violent interracial history. As Walker travels in pursuit of the facts he finds himself on a personal journey as well, revisiting the scenes of his own childhood and quite unexpectedly coming across information that connects him personally to the historical material he finds, making The Fox Boy both travel writing and narrative history at their finest.

The Story of an Abducted Child

The Fox Boy

Reginald Pole, diplomat, friend of scholars, cardinals and artists, and cousin to Henry VIII, is first seen stealing into the Medici Chapel at dead of night to catch a forbidden glimpse of Michelangelo's masterpiece of funerary sculpture. But as the King's representative in Italy, and an admired scholar himself, it falls to him to make the case for Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon. And it falls to the hapless Michael Throckmorton to become Thomas Cromwell's courier to Pole in Rome. In Peter Walker's imaginative novel, in which two worlds, increasingly opposed, are beautifully evoked, we see these famous events that saw England become a Protestant nation through the eyes of the luckless courier. The dubious privilege of being courier to Cromwell and the King, makes Michael Throckmorton's life a tragicomedy of endless journeys back and forth between England and Italy. And even though in time he becomes the loyal friend of the disgraced Pole, who can never risk returning to England while Henry lives, this is no compensation for the childhood love who appears to have been lost along the way.

The Courier's Tale

Jonathan Cole

"In this book, theologians and scholars of religion grapple with the political, philosophical, and ethical implications of a climate crisis provoked by one species, our own, serving its needs at the increasingly intolerable cost of all life on the planet"--

Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene

Theology on a Defiant Earth

Like the Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, The Courier's Tale is set in the treacherous worlds of the English court of Henry VIII, where Thomas Cromwell holds sway, and Machiavellian Italy.

Mourning the loss of their friend—Morgan, a Maori dedicated to his political convictions—in 1967 New Zealand, friends Race, Candy, Chadwick and FitzGerald find him becoming both the mystery and touchstone of their lives as their friendships are tested and pulled apart and reconfigured anew against the backdrops of wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Some Here Among Us

In this highly engaging book, Peter Walker uses his expertise in Biblical studies and his extensive experience of leading tours around the Mediterranean to bring the world of Saint Paul vividly to life. Following Luke's account in the Book of Acts and using evidence from Paul s own letters, he reconstructs the apostle s wide-ranging travels and describes the many places Paul visited as we encounter them today. In doing so he helps us to appreciate the issues that Paul confronted and to understand the motivation that drove him on. Enriched with boxed features outlining key timelines and topics, and supplemented with maps and street plans, this book is an ideal introduction to Paul and his travels for scholars at all levels of study.

In the Steps of Saint Paul

Being massaged makes babies relax and cope better with stress, improves their muscular coordination and flexibility and helps them straighten tightly flexed hands and legs. And who better to teach parents how to acquire these essential skills than Peter Walker, the world's best-known baby massage teacher. In this fully revised edition of his bestselling guide, he demonstrates vital new sequences essential for very young babies, which can be done while a baby is clothed.

Proven techniques to calm your baby and assist development

Baby Massage

The Ascent of Britain

Tim Bulkeley

Tim Meadowcroft

Philip A. F. Church

Today the "land of promise" is a spark in the tinder dry atmosphere of Middle Eastern affairs. Events there continue to wield influence among peoples and in places well beyond the region itself. This raises for Christians the acute theological problem of how to relate to the "land of promise" today and in light of the land of the Bible. Our hope is that this volume of essays will contribute to a more informed and theologically coherent response to the "Land of Promise." It is offered here in the name of peace for all peoples in that place and among those who continue to look to her as a place of promise.

Christian Approaches to the Land of the Bible

The Gospel and the Land of Promise

Daniel G. Maxwell

Providing a critical introduction to the notion of humanitarianism in global politics, tracing the concept from its origins to the twenty-first century, this book examines how the so called international community works in response to humanitarian crises and the systems that bind and divide them. By tracing the history on international humanitarian action from its early roots through the birth of the Red Cross to the beginning of the UN, Peter Walker and Daniel G. Maxwell examine the challenges humanitarian agencies face, from working alongside armies and terrorists to witnessing genocide. They argue that humanitarianism has a vital future, but only if those practicing it choose to make it so. Topics covered include: the rise in humanitarian action as a political tool the growing call for accountability of agencies the switch of NGOs from bit players to major trans-national actors the conflict between political action and humanitarian action when it comes to addressing causes as well as symptoms of crisis. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in international human rights law, disaster management and international relations.

Shaping the Humanitarian World

It is 1967, and as America's allies hesitate over whether to send more troops to Vietnam and the strains of 'All You Need is Love' echo from Abbey Road, students take to the streets of Wellington, New Zealand, to protest the war. Among them are Race, Candy, Chadwick and FitzGerald and their elusive, electrifying friend Morgan Tawhai. They are young and hopeful and the world is all before them. Forty years later, in Washington DC, Race's son Toby is navigating his own path across a landscape still trembling with the reverberations of 9/11. Uncertain whether love is really all he needs, Toby, along with his girlfriend JoJo, watches the centuries-old fragments of a comet fall across the sky while America secretly begins planning to invade Iraq. As Race and his companions move through the first decade of the new millennium, their friendships tested and pulled apart and reconfigured anew, they come to discover that Morgan – who burned as brightly as any comet, who could quote Shakespeare and Sterne, The Iliad and Bob Dylan, and who will forever remain the twenty-year-old they once knew – is both the mystery and the touchstone of their lives. From the shores of New Zealand to the political heart of Washington and to the hills above Beirut, Some Here Among Us is a stunning meditation on youth and promise and loss. It is a novel for our times.

A collection of Songs, Poems and Writings of the reclusive 60's Folk Singer, Jazz Interpreter, and "Song Stylist" Karen Dalton. Includes the songs that made up her "repertoire" and embodied the music that influenced not only Karen, but other iconic figure of the 60's. A root source for, and best of friends with, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Bob Dylan, as well as many other lesser known musicians. Karen left her mark on the "folk music movement" and is today celebrated as "The White Billie Holiday." Her re-discovery has prompted world wide interest. Despite her reclusive nature, Karen left a rich legacy of information in her personal collection of songs and writings, reproduced here for the first time. This is her collection songs and poems as well as excerpts from her diaries which shed light on and insights into the life and times of this obscure but precious music legend.

Songs, Poems, and Writings

Karen Dalton

James Hunter

Jane Fung

Timothy DeBoer

Gary Flood

Christina Lau

Ellen McKay

Gili Mendel

Valentina Popescu

Joe Winchester

Colin Yu

Valentina Birsan

Yen Lu

Vol. 6: A Guided Tour

An Introduction to IBM Rational Application Developer

Millions of people across the world have heard of Jesus Christ, but how many are truly acquainted with the key locations he frequented? In the second edition of this established text, Peter Walker shares the fruits of his lifetime's research and expert knowledge to present a rich and engaging guide to the historical aspects of Jesus' world.Following the chronology of Jesus' life and ministry and drawing especially on the Gospel of Luke, we move from Bethlehem to Nazareth to the desert, and then follow him on his final journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. In each chapter particular attention is given to what Jesus did in that location, placing his ministry within its original historical and geographical context, and raising questions of archaeology, authenticity and the recorded evidence of later pilgrims and historians. This new edition takes into account the archaeological discoveries of the last 15 years to provide an up-to-date guide to the Holy Land of today. Using maps, timelines and boxed features that highlight and analyse key topics, In the Steps of Jesus is a rich and absorbing text that presents scholars at all levels of study with a unique insight into Jesus' world.

Second Edition

In the Steps of Jesus

This Book answers key questions that surround Jesus' death and argues that the events of that fateful weekend in Jerusalem changed the world forever. Layer upon layer of detail draws the reader into the frightening hours leading up to Jesus' death. The volume traces the movements of all involved in his tragic execution and follows the story to the empty tomb, examining the improbability that anyone could be raised from death. Walker discusses at length the location of Jesus' burial, drawing on the evidence of the Gospels, archaeology, and church history, and focuses on the two likely sites: the Garden Tomb and the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Walker also explores the impact of Jesus' resurrection on Christians then and now, noting how the message of the Garden Tomb has been a source of inspiration to millions of people from all over the World: "He Is Not Here, For He Is Risen."

Peter Walker

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