Bound to the Hearth by the Shortest Tether is a story of original research in China and Brazil as well as the circumstances that made that work possible. Applied anthropology, rural economics, agroforestry, natural and social history, and world travel are combined to create an engaging account of the effort to better the circumstances of the developing world's rural poor. The first part of the book focuses on rural China and the indigenous knowledge of the processes at work within the world's oldest system of timber management and how that knowledge is being displaced by inferior scientific...

Art historian Edward Ellis has spent years searching for an obscure artist named Ethan Tanner, and more importantly, his rarely seen paintings. Given the scant information in his possession, he can barely make the argument that Ethan Tanner had actually existed. The majority of his colleagues think the Tanner paintings are a myth, a false but tantalizing rumor of an unknown artist and his undiscovered masterpieces. The few scraps of information Edward has managed to collect over the years suggest that not only are the paintings real, they are, by all accounts, astonishing. Edward, determined...