Portland Public Library

No friends but the mountains, dispatches from the world's violent highlands, Judith Matloff

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-238) and index

contains biographical information

maps

index present

non fiction

No friends but the mountains

bibliography

952369545

Judith Matloff

dispatches from the world's violent highlands

"A veteran war correspondent journeys to remote mountain communities across the globe--from Albania and Chechnya to Nepal and Colombia--to investigate why so many conflicts occur at great heights. Mountainous regions are home to only ten percent of the world's population yet host a strikingly disproportionate share of the world's conflicts. Mountains provide a natural refuge for those who want to elude authority, and their remoteness has allowed archaic practices to persist well into our globalized era. As Judith Matloff shows, the result is a combustible mix we in the lowlands cannot afford to ignore. Traveling to conflict zones across the world, she introduces us to Albanian teenagers involved in ancient blood feuds; Mexican peasants hunting down violent poppy growers; and Jihadists who have resisted the Russian military for decades. At every stop, Matloff reminds us that the drugs, terrorism, and instability cascading down the mountainside affect us all. A work of political travel writing in the vein of Ryszard Kapuscinski and Robert Kaplan, No Friends but the Mountains is an indelible portrait of the conflicts that have unexpectedly shaped our world"--, Provided by publisher

Introduction: A Towering Problem : Everywhere: 200 to 20,000 feet -- One for One : The Dinaric Alps: 9000 feet -- Our Land is Our Land : Sierra Madre: 4000 to 8500 feet -- Holding the High Ground of Nothing : The Andes: 8500-18,864 feet -- The Dammed : Himalayas: 3000 to 29,000 feet -- Mountain Thistles : The Caucasus: 5559 to 18,000 feet -- On the Existential Border : Kashmir: 5200 to 16,000 feet -- The Gods of the Valleys Are Not the Gods of the Hills : Part One: The Green Mountains and the Hindu Kush: 4393 to 10,000 feet; Part Two: The Arctic: Lyngen Alps: 6014 feet -- Canton-ment : The Pyrenees (3500 to 11,168 feet) and the Swiss Alps (4,239 to 15,203 feet)