Helmuth Theodor Bossert

Asia tackles the tough issues, the complex problems, and the political controversies surrounding the environment of this vast landmass. This volume encompasses everything from economics, land use, energy and transportation, to air pollution, rivers and lakes, oceans, and species and habitat protection.In Malaysia, unchecked discharges of industrial waste and human sewage led the government to label 42 of its rivers officially "dead." According to some estimates, Southeast Asia alone accounts for more than half of the world's total transport of sediment to the oceans. In the Philippines, the Chico River dam project, which would have subjected 100,000 tribespeople to relocation, was canceled when the World Bank withdrew funding after fierce resistance from the indigenous people. This fascinating book offers a comprehensive look at how the most populated continent on earth contends with its complicated environment.

"In this volume the main consideration has been devoted to the pre-classic, occidental, Islamic, Asiatic, and ancient American cultures during the period of their highest development, as well as to those of native peoples, and European folk art. But in finally compiling the work, the changing tendencies of our times had to be taken into account in presentation and reproduction. Former works on the subject were usually limited to copies of patterns, so that the connections between object and form, out of which the decorations originated, were hardly, or not at all, recognizable. This volume attempts to retain the unity of ornament material and form. For this reason the ornamentations are reproduced as fas as possible in such a manner as not to seperate them from their background, but are shown in unison with the object on which they are found. At any rate the plates depict comprehensive sections showing all the characteristics of the material and shape which, in nearly all cases, permit of a conception of the whole." -- Introduction.