In his young life, Robert A. Douglas has already sold drugs on the street, preached the gospels in church, faced homelessness and hunger, and buried five members of his family, including his mother. Fertile Concrete is an account of how he has sailed on such "dark waters"-the meaning of his family name-and of his search for a safe port in which to anchor. The book is conceived and written as an autobiography, but it also functions as social commentary. While Douglas's saga is intensely personal, the challenges he has faced are all-to-common in the inner city: losing his parents to drug addiction, losing his brother to street violence, losing his integrity in self-destructive behaviors. His choices-good and bad, right and wrong-are choices that affect us all, no matter where in America we live. Happily, Douglas has survived, and this book is a survivor's tale. But it is also a tale of redemption, of a young man's quest to know himself and to make himself whole, despite the damages done in his past. Any reader will find it inspiring. It will even help some to heal their own wounds.

Fertile Concrete: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Douglas, Robert A.

Memoirs

Jireh Publishing

That Line of Darkness VOL 1 (2nd)

Literature & Fiction

British & Irish

EnCompass Editions

In That Line of Darkness: The Shadow of Dracula and the Great War, Robert A. Douglas explores the tradition of Gothic novels, most notably Bram Stoker's Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, peering through the lens of these extraordinary works to see more clearly the class, race and gender tensions in late nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing upon Gothic conventions-the demonization of the other, the use of doubling and the uncanny, psychic vampirism and the compulsion for blood "purity" or national "purification"-Douglas draws connections between Dracula and Jack the Ripper, between Robert Baden-Powell and Oscar Wilde, and between Dracula and an electrifying piece of investigative journalism about underage girls lured into prostitution. That Line of Darkness is divided into four parts. The first three focus on the fin-de-siècle, culminating in Part Four, an illumination of the Great War and its aftermath through the prism of these Gothic conventions. Our understanding of war fantasies, national propaganda, the ghastly conditions in the trenches, the often barbaric treatment of emotionally damaged soldiers and the power of spiritualism is enriched as Douglas examines each through Gothic filters. That Line of Darkness has been praised as making a valuable contribution to historical insight into the furious emotions that were generated by peacetime controversies and the threads that connected them to the Great War.

That Line of Darkness Vol 1 (2nd)

"Everything that sustains us – grown, mined, or drilled – begins its journey to us on a low-volume road (Long)." Defined as roads with traffic volumes of no more than 400 vehicles per day, they have enormous impacts on economies, communication, and social interaction. Low-volume roads comprise, at one end of the spectrum, farm-to-market roads, roads in developing countries, northern roads, roads on aboriginal lands and parklands; and at the other end of the spectrum, heavy haul roads for mining, oil and gas, oil sands extraction, and forestry.  Low-Volume Road Engineering: Design, Construction, and Maintenance gives an international perspective to the engineering design of low-volume roads and their construction and maintenance. It is a single reference drawing from the dispersed literature. It lays out the basic principles of each topic, from road location and geometric design, pavement design, slope stability and erosion control, through construction to maintenance, then refers the reader to more comprehensive treatment elsewhere. Wherever possible, comparisons are made between the standard specifications and practices existing in the US, Canada, the UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  Topics covered include the following:   Road classification, location, and geometric design Pavement concepts, materials, and thickness design Drainage, erosion and sediment control, and watercrossings Slope stability Geosynthetics Road construction, maintenance, and maintenance management  Low-Volume Road Engineering: Design, Construction, and Maintenance is a valuable reference for engineers, planners, designers and project managers in consulting firms, contracting firms and NGOs. It also is an essential reference in support of university courses on transportation engineering and planning, and on mining, oil and gas, and forestry infrastructure.

Low-Volume Road Engineering

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

CRC-Press

"Everything that sustains us – grown, mined, or drilled – begins its journey to us on a low-volume road (Long)." Defined as roads with traffic volumes of no more than 400 vehicles per day, they have enormous impacts on economies, communication, and social interaction. Low-volume roads comprise, at one end of the spectrum, farm-to-market roads, roads in developing countries, northern roads, roads on aboriginal lands and parklands; and at the other end of the spectrum, heavy haul roads for mining, oil and gas, oil sands extraction, and forestry. Low-Volume Road Engineering: Design, Construction, and Maintenance gives an international perspective to the engineering design of low-volume roads and their construction and maintenance. It is a single reference drawing from the dispersed literature. It lays out the basic principles of each topic, from road location and geometric design, pavement design, slope stability and erosion control, through construction to maintenance, then refers the reader to more comprehensive treatment elsewhere. Wherever possible, comparisons are made between the standard specifications and practices existing in the US, Canada, the UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Topics covered include the following: <ul>
<li>Road classification, location, and geometric design</li> <li>Pavement concepts, materials, and thickness design</li> <li>Drainage, erosion and sediment control, and watercrossings</li> <li>Slope stability</li> <li>Geosynthetics</li> <li>Road construction, maintenance, and maintenance management</li>
</ul>
 Low-Volume Road Engineering: Design, Construction, and Maintenance is a valuable reference for engineers, planners, designers and project managers in consulting firms, contracting firms and NGOs. It also is an essential reference in support of university courses on transportation engineering and planning, and on mining, oil and gas, and forestry infrastructure.

Low-Volume Road Engineering: Design, Construction, and Maintenance

That Line of Darkness Vol II: The Gothic from Lenin to Bin Laden

In That Line of Darkness Vol. II: The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden, Robert A. Douglas continues his exploration of the history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as seen through a Gothic lens. As he did in the first volume, Douglas deploys Gothic conventions - the uncanny, psychic vampirism, the demonization of the other, the double, the compulsion for racial purity and the power of the primitive past to threaten the modernist present - to illuminate the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, Nazi Germany during the 1930s and modern America from the early Cold War to the war on terrorism. The first volume - The Shadow of Dracula and the Great War - was grounded in literature. This second volume is grounded in historical fact, though Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness is a seminal text for Douglas' examination of America. In The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden, the tropes are no longer those of vampires or the atavistic primitive embedded in the spirit of a respectable Victorian gentleman, but are drawn from the world of police states and even from open societies engaged in propaganda that has been frequently vampiric in substance, constructed to dehumanize the "other". The Gothic survives here, as Douglas shows, in the horror of interrogation chambers, mass executions and the "undead" of the camps - and the more recent and inhumane treatment of civilians.

That Line of Darkness VOL II: The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden

In That Line of Darkness Vol. II: The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden, Robert A. Douglas continues his exploration of the history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as seen through a Gothic lens. As he did in the first volume, Douglas deploys Gothic conventions - the uncanny, psychic vampirism, the demonization of the other, the double, the compulsion for racial purity and the power of the primitive past to threaten the modernist present - to illuminate the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, Nazi Germany during the 1930s and modern America from the early Cold War to the war on terrorism. The first volume - The Shadow of Dracula and the Great War - was grounded in literature. This second volume is grounded in historical fact, though Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness is a seminal text for Douglas' examination of America. In The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden, the tropes are no longer those of vampires or the atavistic primitive embedded in the spirit of a respectable Victorian gentleman, but are drawn from the world of police states and even from open societies engaged in propaganda that has been frequently vampiric in substance, constructed to dehumanize the "other". The Gothic survives here, as Douglas shows, in the horror of interrogation chambers, mass executions and the "undead" of the camps - and the more recent and inhumane treatment of civilians.

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