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Completely updated and revised for this new edition, our unique electronic book on two CD-ROMs has an amazing collection of the finest federal documents and resources about Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, providing encyclopedic coverage of all aspects of the country. This disc set provides a truly fantastic reference source, with over one hundred thousand pages reproduced in Adobe Acrobat format! There is complete coverage of newsworthy material about Sri Lanka, including trade and doing business with Sri Lanka and tsunami relief effort.

This incredible and comprehensive series on the countries of the world contains material from the State Department, Department of Defense, White House, and cabinet agencies including Agriculture, Energy, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

There is complete information about geography, people, government, the economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues.

In addition to the nation-specific material, as a bonus we have included reports about every country on the globe, with 271 nations, dependent areas, and other entities identified by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA World Factbook is considered an invaluable "world encyclopedia" reference book.

This incredible two CD-ROM set is packed with over 129,000 pages reproduced using Adobe Acrobat PDF software - allowing direct viewing on Windows and Macintosh systems. The Acrobat cataloging technology adds enormous value and uncommon functionality to this impressive collection of government documents and material.

Our news and educational discs are privately compiled collections of official public domain U.S. government files and documents - they are not produced by the federal government. They are designed to provide a convenient user-friendly reference work, utilizing the benefits of the Adobe Acrobat format to uniformly present thousands of pages that can be rapidly reviewed, searched by finding specific words, or printed without untold hours of tedious research and downloading. Vast archives of important public domain government information that might otherwise remain inaccessible are available for instant review no matter where you are. This book-on-a-disc format makes a great reference work and educational tool. There is no other reference that is as fast, convenient, comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and portable - everything you need to know, from the federal sources you trust. ... Read more

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Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate. 108th Congress, 2nd Session, Feb. 25, 2004.6"x 9" - 44 pages ... Read more

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Could actions have been taken prior to September 11 th to prevent the formation of a strong and resilient al Qaeda ? Might alternative development policies have prevented the World Trade Center attacks and forestalled the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? Paradise Poisoned draws crucial lessons from Sri Lanka's civil wars to demonstrate that violent conflict and terrorism are both predictable and preventable .

John Richardson's study - carried out over nearly twenty years - employs rigorous political and economic analysis and a multi-disciplinary engagement of the systemic linkages between development, governance, and civil conflict. The author - a noted development professor and practitioner, applied systems theorist, and South Asian scholar - traces ten development failures that spawned conflict and terrorism in Sri Lanka, and he proposes a comprehensive prevention strategy summarised in ten key imperatives.

Thus, while contextually rich in its examination of Sri Lankan political history, the policy relevance of Paradise Poisoned extends also to cases like Kosovo, Kashmir, Palestine, Sudan, Afghanistan and now, in particular, Iraq.

Of special utility are 3 policy leverage points discussed at length by Richardson: meeting the needs and expectations of young men, increasing police effectiveness, and prioritizing business community involvement.

Political leaders often say they 'had no choice' when implementing policies such as the US invasion of Iraq or earlier Sri Lankan government interventions, yet this is rarely true. Multiple choices are usually available, and the longer the time horizon, the greater the range of choices. Paradise Poisoned demonstrates that deadly conflict and terrorism are both predictable and preventable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Challenging Conventional Wisdom
John Richardson's *Paradise Poisoned* is an important, timely, and groundbreaking book.The product of more than 18 years of work, it is a carefully researched account of Sri Lanka's fall from a beautiful island paradise and international development "success story", to a headline-grabbing example of a nation torn apart by terrorism and deadly civil conflict.

Drawing both on an innovative methodology and his long-standing work in the fields of international development and conflict, Professor Richardson demonstrates how Sri Lanka's tragic story clearly exposes a world-wide issue that has long been hiding in plain sight--that international development programs, conflict, and terrorism are intimately linked, and often in very negative ways. This is obviously a highly important and policy-relevant finding that is rarely discussed or analyzed in a rigorous manner--the only other book I can recall is Peter Uvin's work on Rwanda (Aiding Violence, 1998).Other important authors, like Mary Anderson(Do No Harm, 1999) offer valuable advice to practitioners on how to reduce conflict in the field, but Richardson and Uvin's more structural analyses expose how contemporary international development policies, put in place by well-meaning leaders and the international community, can be a factor that leads to deadly conflict in the first place.

The book has many lessons, but for me the most important is this profound critique of contemporary development wisdom, and Richardson's carefully documented case study makes it impossible to ignore his findings, or write them off as a simplistic superficial analysis based on preconceived conclusions.Quite the contrary, Richardson's approach is highly sophisticated, and his innovative systems methodology enables him to clarify how deadly conflict arises not from a single cause, but from a complex interaction of a number of critical factors that, acting together, help to explain the fall of Sri Lanka from apparent success to disastrous failure.

The practical policy lessons to be drawn are many, and reach well beyond the Sri Lanka case.Perhaps the most important lesson is that development policies need to be examined with an additional lens that clarifies the ways in which well-intended programs can exacerbate this complex set of factors that undo the development goals and lead to violent and persistent conflict and terrorism.Professor Richardson's useful book goes a long way in this direction by pointing out some of the most critical reference points for this new perspective.It is essential reading, both as a cautionary tale, and as an important source for anyone concerned with discovering specific ways to improve international development policy and reduce global violence.

Steven Arnold, University of Washington (formerly Director, International Development Program, American University)

What Went Wrong in Sri Lanka?
John Richardson's *Paradise Poisoned* is far and away the most comprehensive study of civil violence in Sri Lanka ever undertaken.In its narrative sweep, mastery of detail, conceptual acuity and analytic range, it will never be surpassed.Indeed, no other study of civil violence anywhere rivals Richardson's in these several respects.

For those of us who have seen Sri Lanka from the inside, Richardson's large claim is beyond challenge:the country's descent into violence had no single overriding cause.Richardson assembled vast amounts of data (helpfully displayed in innumerable graphs and tables) on every conceivable contributing cause.His background in the analysis of dynamic systems gave him the best imaginable tools for mapping tangled developments over many decades.His conclusions are always compelling, strikingly so when he catalogs the beneficiaries of violent conflict.

One by one, the ten imperatives Richardson puts forward for preventing civil violence in developing societies may seem like common sense.His exhaustive, fully integrated study of the Sri Lankan experience massively substantiates every one of them.Taken together and taken seriously, they are represent our best chance for a better, safer world.

Nicholas Onuf
Professor Emeritus
Florida International University ... Read more

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Sri Lanka has been torn apart by a vicious civil war. The majority Sinhala and minority Tamils have killed each other with increasing ferocity. What will bring about an end to this destructive conflict, and how will the island nation heal its physical and psychic wounds following a peace? How will a sustainable peace be arranged? Can mediation help? This book of essays by Sri Lankan and Western authors examines the causes of war and the possibilities for peace. The contributors include Chandra R. de Silva, Saman Kelegama, David Little, David Scott, Donald R. Snodgrass and Jayadeva Uyangoda. ... Read more

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In the past decade, Sri Lanka has been engulfed by political tragedy as successive governments have failed to settle the grievances of the Tamil minority in a way acceptable to the majority Sinhala population. The new Premadasa presidency faces huge economic and political problems with large sections of the island under the control of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) and militant separatist Tamil groups operating in the north and south.
This book is not a conventional political history of Sri Lanka. Instead, it attempts to shed fresh light on the historical roots of the ethnic crisis and uses a combination of historical and anthropologial evidence to challenge the widely-held belief that the conflict in Sri Lanka is simply the continuation of centuries of animosity between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The authors show how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period with the war between Tamils and the Sinhala-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place-name etymologies, and the political use of the national past. The book is also one of the first attempts to focus on local perceptions of the crisis and draws on a broad range of sources, from village fieldwork to newspaper controversies. Its interest extends beyond contemporary politics to history, anthropology and development studies. ... Read more

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Since the late 1970s civil war has left Sri Lanka in an almost permanent state of crisis; conventional histories of the country by liberal and Marxist scholars in the last two decades have thus tended to focus on the state’s failure to accommodate the needs and demands of the minorities. The entire history of the twentieth century has been tied to this one key issue. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age offers a fresh perspective based on new research. Above all, the author has written a history of the peoples of Sri Lanka rather than a history of the nation-state. ... Read more