title: Charles George Gordon

text: In 1885, Gordon achieved the martyrdom he had been seeking at Khartoum as the British press portrayed him as a saintly Christian hero and martyr who had died nobly resisting the Islamic onslaught of the Mahdi. As late as 1901 on the anniversary of Gordon's death, "The Times" wrote in a leader (editorial) that Gordon was "that solitary figure holding aloft the flag of England in the face of the dark hordes of Islam". Gordon's death caused a huge wave of national grief all over Britain with 13 March 1885 being set aside as a day of mourning for the "fallen hero of Khartoum". In a sermon, the Bishop of Chichester stated: "Nations who envied our greatness rejoiced now at our weakness and our inability to protect our trusted servant. Scorn and reproach were cast upon us, and would we plead that it was undeserved? No; the conscience of the nation felt that a strain rested upon it".


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Baring—who deeply disliked Gordon—wrote that because of the "national hysteria" caused by Gordon's death, saying anything critical about him at present would be equal to questioning Christianity. Stones were thrown at the windows at 10 Downing Street as Gladstone was denounced as the "Murderer of Gordon", the Judas figure who betrayed the Christ-like figure of Gordon. The wave of mourning was not just confined to Britain. In New York, Paris and Berlin, pictures of Gordon appeared in shop windows with black lining as all over the West the fallen general was seen as a Christ-like man who sacrificed himself resisting the advance of Islam.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Despite the popular demand to "avenge Gordon", the Conservative government that came into office after the 1885 election did nothing of the sort. The Sudan was judged to be not worth the huge financial costs it would have taken to conquer it, the same conclusion that the Liberals had reached. After Khartoum, the Mahdi established his Islamic state which restored slavery and imposed a very harsh rule that according to one estimate caused the deaths of 8 million people between 1885 and 1898. In 1887, the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition under Henry Morton Stanley set out to rescue Dr. Emin Pasha, still holding out in Equatoria against the "Ansar". Many have seen the attempt to save Emin Pasha, a German doctor-biologist-botanist who had converted from Judaism first to Lutheranism and then (possibly) to Islam, and who had not been particularly famous in Europe until then, as a consolation prize for Gordon.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Egypt had been in the French sphere of influence until 1882 when the British had established control over Egypt. In March 1896 a French force under the command of Jean-Baptiste Marchand left Dakar with the intention of marching across the Sahara with the aim of destroying the "Mahdiyah" state. The French hoped that conquering the Sudan would allow them to lever the British out of Egypt, and thus restore Egypt to the French sphere of influence.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: To block the French, a British force under Herbert Kitchener was sent to conquer the "Mahdiyah" state and defeated the "Ansar" at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. It was thus their rivalry with the French, not a desire to "avenge Gordon", that led the British government to annex the "Mahdiyah" state in 1898. However the British public and Kitchener himself saw the expedition as one to "avenge Gordon". As the Mahdi was long dead, Kitchener had to content himself with blowing up the Mahdi's tomb as revenge for Gordon's death. The body of the Mahdi was disinterred and beheaded. This symbolic decapitation echoed General Gordon's death at the hands of the Mahdist forces in 1885. The headless body of the Mahdi was thrown into the Nile. Lord Kitchener kept the Mahdī's skull and it was rumoured that he intended to use it as a drinking cup or ink well.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: After the Battle of Omdurman, Kitchener opened a letter from the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and for the first time learned the real purpose of the expedition had been to keep the French out of the Sudan and that "avenging Gordon" was merely a pretext.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: News of Gordon's death caused an outpouring of public grief across Britain. A memorial service, conducted by the Bishop of Newcastle, was held at St. Paul's Cathedral on 14 March. The Lord Mayor of London opened a public subscription to raise funds for a permanent memorial to Gordon; this eventually materialised as the Gordon Boys Home, now Gordon's School, in West End, Woking.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Statues were erected in Trafalgar Square, London, in Chatham, Gravesend, Melbourne (Australia), and Khartoum. Southampton, where Gordon had stayed with his sister, Augusta, in Rockstone Place before his departure to the Sudan, erected a memorial in Porter's Mead, now Queen's Park, near the town's docks. On 16 October 1885, the structure was unveiled; it comprises a stone base on which there are four polished red Aberdeen granite columns, about twenty feet high. The columns are surmounted by carved capitals supporting a cross. The pedestal bears the arms of the Gordon clan and of the borough of Southampton, and also Gordon's name in Chinese. Around the base is an inscription referring to Gordon as a soldier, philanthropist and administrator and mentions those parts of the world in which he served, closing with a quotation from his last letter to his sisters: "I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty." The memorial is a Grade II listed building.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Gordon's memory, as well as his work in supervising the town's riverside fortifications, is commemorated in Gravesend; the embankment of the Riverside Leisure Area is known as the Gordon Promenade, while Khartoum Place lies just to the south. Located in the town centre of his birthplace of Woolwich is General Gordon Square, formerly known as General Gordon Place until a major urban landscaped area was developed and the road name changed. In addition, one of the first Woolwich Free Ferry vessels was named "Gordon" in his memory.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: In 1886 the "Western Hospital for Fistula, Piles and other Diseases of the Rectum", at 278 Vauxhall Bridge Road and backing onto Vincent Square London, was renamed in honour of Gordon. It underwent a series of name changes until 1941 when it moved to its current location in Bloomburg Street, Westminster, as the Gordon Hospital. Shut for the closing years of World War II, it reopened in 1947 under the same name, but serving as a psychiatric unit operated by the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: In 1888 a statue of General Gordon by Hamo Thornycroft was erected in Trafalgar Square, London, exactly halfway between the two fountains. It was removed in 1943. In a House of Commons speech on 5 May 1948, then opposition leader Winston Churchill spoke out in favour of the statue's return to its original location: "Is the right honorable Gentleman [the Minister of Works] aware that General Gordon was not only a military commander, who gave his life for his country, but, in addition, was considered very widely throughout this country as a model of a Christian hero, and that very many cherished ideals are associated with his name? Would not the right honorable Gentleman consider whether this statue [...] might not receive special consideration [...]? General Gordon was a figure outside and above the ranks of military and naval commanders." However, in 1953 the statue minus a large slice of its pedestal was reinstalled on the Victoria Embankment, in front of the newly built Ministry of Defence main buildings.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: An identical statue by Thornycroft—but with the pedestal intact—is located in a small park called Gordon Reserve, near Parliament House in Melbourne, Australia.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: The Corps of Royal Engineers, Gordon's own Corps, commissioned a statue of Gordon on a camel. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and then erected in Brompton Barracks, Chatham, the home of the Royal School of Military Engineering, where it still stands. Much later a second casting was made. In 1902 it was placed at the junction of St Martin's Lane and Charing Cross Road in London. In 1904 it was moved to Khartoum, where it stood at the intersection of Gordon Avenue and Victoria Avenue, 200 metres south of the new palace that had been built in 1899. It was removed in 1958, shortly after the Sudan became independent. This is the figure which, since April 1959, stands at the Gordon's School in Woking.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Gordon's Tomb (in fact a cenotaph), which was carved by Frederick William Pomeroy, lies in St Paul's Cathedral, London.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: The Church Missionary Society (CMS) work in Sudan was undertaken under the name of the Gordon Memorial Mission. This was a very evangelical branch of CMS and was able to start work in Sudan in 1900 as soon as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium took control after the fall of Khartoum in 1899. In 1885 at a meeting in London, £3,000 were allocated to a Gordon Memorial Mission in Sudan.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: In the Presidential Palace in Khartoum (built in 1899), in the west wing on the ground floor, there was, at least until 1936, a stone slab against the wall on the left side of the main corridor when coming from the main entrance with the text: "Charles George Gordon died—26 Jan 1885", on the spot where Gordon was killed, at the foot of the stairs in the old Governor-General's Palace (built around 1850).


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Charlton Heston played Gordon in the 1966 epic film "Khartoum", which deals with the siege of Khartoum. Laurence Olivier played Muhammad Ahmad. The British historian Alex von Tunzelmann criticised the film for portraying Gordon and the Mahdi regularly meeting and as "frères ennemis", though she added that it is true that Gordon and the Mahdi did exchange letters.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: For the six months after the British public learned of Gordon's death, newspapers and journals published hundreds of articles celebrating Gordon as a "saint". The American historian Cynthia Behrman wrote the articles all commented upon "Gordon's religious faith, his skill with native peoples, his fearlessness in the face of danger (a recurrent motif is Gordon's habit of leading his troops into battle armed with no more than a rattan cane), his honor, his resourcefulness, his graciousness to subordinates, his impatience with cant and hypocrisy, his hatred of glory and honors, his dislike of lionization and social rewards, and on and on. One begins to wonder whether the man had any faults at all". "The reading public wanted heroes, it wanted to read about one lone Englishmen sacrificing himself for glory, honour, God, and the Empire."


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Such was the popularity of Gordon that the first critical book by a British author was not published until 1908, when Baring—by this time raised to the peerage as Viscount Cromer—published his autobiography, which was notable as the first British book to portray Gordon in an unflattering manner, though Lord Cromer also tried to be fair and emphasised what he felt were Gordon's positive, as well as his negative, traits. About the charge that if only Gladstone had listened to Gordon the disaster would have been avoided, Cromer wrote that in the course of one month, he received five telegrams from Gordon offering his advice, each one of which completely contradicted the previous telegram, leading Cromer to charge that Gordon was too mercurial a figure to hold command.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: As a young man, Winston Churchill shared in the national consensus that Gordon was one of Britain's greatest heroes. During a meeting in 1898 in Cairo where Churchill interviewed Baring to gather material for his 1899 book "The River War", Baring challenged Churchill about his belief that Gordon was a hero. After his conversation with Baring, Churchill wrote: "Of course there is no doubt that Gordon as a political figure was absolutely hopeless. He was so erratic, capricious, utterly unreliable, his mood changed so often, his temper was abominable, he was frequently drunk, and yet with all that he had a tremendous sense of honour and great abilities".


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Many biographies have been written of Gordon, most of them highly hagiographic, such as the one by William Butler. The British sinologist Demetrius Charles Boulger published a biography of Gordon in 1896 which depicted him as a staunch patriot and a Christian of immense virtue who displayed superhuman courage in the face of danger. By contrast, Gordon is one of the four subjects discussed critically in "Eminent Victorians" by Lytton Strachey, one of the first texts about Gordon that portrays some of his characteristics which Strachey regards as weaknesses. Notably, Strachey emphasises the claims of Charles Chaillé-Long that Gordon was an alcoholic, an accusation dismissed by later writers like Alan Moorehead and Charles Chenevix Trench.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Strachey, a member of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals, depicted Gordon as a ludicrous figure, a bad-tempered, deranged egomaniac with a nasty habit of knocking out Arabs whenever he was unhappy, and who led himself into disaster. Even more devastatingly, Strachey depicted Gordon as a monumental hypocrite, noting the contrast between Gordon's lofty Christian ideas of love, compassion, charity, grace and hope vs. a career full of hate, war, carnage, death and destruction. Strachey ended his essay on Gordon on a cynical note: "At any rate, it all ended very happily—in a glorious slaughter of twenty thousand Arabs, a vast addition to the British Empire and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring".


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Long after his death and despite the popularity of Strachey's essay in "Eminent Victorians", the appeal of the Gordon legend lived on. As late as 1933, the French historian Pierre Crabitès wrote in his book ("Gordon, the Sudan and Slavery") that as a Frenchman the Gordon legend had meant nothing to him when he began researching his book, but after examining all of the historical evidence, he could not help but admire Gordon who "died as he lived, a Christian, a gentleman and a soldier".


title: Charles George Gordon

text: In the 20th century, many British military leaders came to have a critical view of Gordon with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery writing that Gordon was "unfit for independent command, mentally unbalanced, a fanatic, self-imposed martyr", adding that he should never have been sent to the Sudan and the Gladstone–Gordon relationship was a case study in dysfunctional civil–military relations. In 1953, the British novelist Charles Beatty published a Gordon biography "His Country was the World: A Study of Gordon of Khartoum", which focused on Gordon's religious faith, but for the first time noted what a tormented figure Gordon was: a man of deeply felt Christian convictions, full of guilt and self-loathing over his own sinfulness and inability to live up to his own impossibly high standards over what a Christian should be and desperately longing to do something to expiate his sinfulness. Like Strachey, Beatty found Gordon a ridiculous figure, but unlike Strachey who had nothing but contempt for Gordon, Beatty's approach was a compassionate one, arguing that Gordon's many acts of charity and self-sacrifice were attempts to love others since he was unable to love himself.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Another attempt to debunk Gordon was Anthony Nutting's "Gordon, Martyr & Misfit" (1966). Nutting's book was noteworthy as the first book to argue that Gordon had a death wish. Nutting noted that Gordon had often recklessly exposed himself to Russian fire while fighting in the Crimea and stated he hoped to die in battle against the Russians before leaving for the Crimea. On the basis of such statements and actions, Nutting argued that Gordon's suicidal courage of going into battle armed only with his rattan cane, which so impressed the Victorian public, reflected darker desires. Nutting made the controversial claim that the basis of Gordon's death wish was that he was gay, noting that Gordon never married, is not known to have had a relationship with any women, and often wished that he been born a eunuch, which strongly suggested that Gordon wished to have no sexual desires at all.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Nutting contended that the conflict between Gordon's devoutly held Christian ideals and his sexuality made Gordon deeply ashamed of himself and he attempted to expiate his wretched, sinful nature by seeking a glorious death in battle. Behrman wrote that the first part of Nutting's thesis, that Gordon had a death wish is generally accepted by historians, but the second part, that Gordon was homosexual, is still the subject of much debate. In his "Mission to KhartumThe Apotheosis of General Gordon" (1969) John Marlowe portrays Gordon as "a colourful eccentric—a soldier of fortune, a skilled guerrilla leader, a religious crank, a minor philanthropist, a gadfly buzzing about on the outskirts of public life", who would have been no more than a footnote in today's history books, had it not been for "his mission to Khartoum and the manner of his death", which were elevated by the media "into a kind of contemporary Passion Play".


title: Charles George Gordon

text: More balanced biographies are "Charley GordonAn Eminent Victorian Reassessed" (1978) by Charles Chenevix Trench and "Gordonthe Man Behind the Legend" (1993) by John Pollock. Mark Urban argued that Gordon's final stand was "significant" because it was "a perversion of the democratic process" as he "managed to subvert government policy", making the beginning of a new era where decision-makers had to consider the power of media. In "KhartoumThe Ultimate Imperial Adventure" (2005), Michael Asher puts Gordon's works in the Sudan in a broad context. Asher concludes: "He did not save the country from invasion or disaster, but among the British heroes of all ages, there is perhaps no other who stands out so prominently as an individualist, a man ready to die for his principles. Here was one man among men who did not do what he was told, but what he believed to be right. In a world moving inexorably towards conformity, it would be well to remember Gordon of Khartoum."


title: Charles George Gordon

text: Gordon also left a legacy in China and Sudan as well, two nations where he spent large parts of his career. His legacy in China has been influenced by subsequent political developments, as the Qing dynasty was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution and replaced by a republic; this eventually led to the Warlord Era and the Chinese Civil War which saw the communists defeat the nationalists and establish control over China. Due to many aspects of the Taiping ideology resembling Chinese communism, the Taipings are treated sympathetically by Chinese historians who portray them as prototypical communists, with Hong Xiuquan foreshadowing Mao. As such, Gordon's role in suppressing the rebellion has caused his reputation to suffer in China, in addition to his role as a general in service of the Manchu-dominated Qing government, which systematically oppressed the Han Chinese majority.


title: Charles George Gordon

text: No monuments to Gordon exist in China today, though the British journalist Rob Stallard noted that the modest Gordon would have no doubt wanted it that way. In a 2008 article, Stallard argued that Chinese historiography has largely neglected Gordon, which Stallard felt was undeserved. In the article, Stallard pointed to the egalitarianistic attitudes displayed by Gordon towards the Chinese, and argued that if Chinese historians paid closer attention to the activities of Gordon in China, it would improve Anglo-Chinese relations. In Sudan, Sudanese historians have traditionally focused on the Mahdi and his rebellion, with Gordon only being relevant as the enemy general during the Siege of Khartoum, and his abolitionist work largely ignored.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran Desert () is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Arizona and California). It is the hottest desert in both Mexico and the United States. It has an area of .


title: Sonoran Desert

text: In phytogeography, the Sonoran Desert is within the Sonoran Floristic province of the Madrean Region of southwestern North America, part of the Holarctic realm of the northern Western Hemisphere. The desert contains a variety of unique endemic plants and animals, notably, the saguaro ("Carnegiea gigantea") and organ pipe cactus ("Stenocereus thurberi").


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran Desert is clearly distinct from nearby deserts (e.g., the Great Basin, Mojave, and Chihuahuan deserts) because it provides subtropical warmth in winter and two seasons of rainfall (in contrast, for example, to the Mojave's dry summers and cold winters). This creates an extreme contrast between aridity and moisture.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran desert wraps around the northern end of the Gulf of California, from Baja California Sur (El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve in central and Pacific west coast, Central Gulf Coast subregion on east to southern tip), north through much of Baja California, excluding the central northwest mountains and Pacific west coast, through southeastern California and southwestern and southern Arizona to western and central parts of Sonora.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: It is bounded on the west by the Peninsular Ranges, which separate it from the California chaparral and woodlands (northwest) and Baja California Desert (Vizcaino subregion, central and southeast) ecoregions of the Pacific slope. The Gulf of California xeric scrub ecoregion lies south of the Sonoran desert on the Gulf of California slope of the Baja California Peninsula.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: To the north in California and northwest Arizona, the Sonoran Desert transitions to the colder-winter, higher-elevation Mojave, Great Basin, and Colorado Plateau deserts.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The coniferous Arizona Mountains forests are to the northeast. The Chihuahuan Desert and Sierra Madre Occidental pine–oak forests are at higher elevations to the east. To the south the Sonoran–Sinaloan transition subtropical dry forest is the transition zone from the Sonoran Desert to the tropical dry forests of the Mexican state of Sinaloa.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The desert's sub-regions include the Colorado Desert of southeastern California; and the Yuma Desert east of the north-to-south section of the Colorado River in southwest Arizona. In the 1957 publication "Vegetation of the Sonoran Desert", Forrest Shreve divided the Sonoran Desert into seven regions according to characteristic vegetation: Lower Colorado Valley, Arizona Upland, Plains of Sonora, Foothills of Sonora, Central Gulf Coast, Vizcaíno Region, and Magdalena Region. Many ecologists consider Shreve's Vizcaíno and Magdalena regions, which lie on the western side of the Baja California Peninsula, to be a separate ecoregion, the Baja California Desert.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: Within the southern Sonoran Desert in Mexico is found the Gran Desierto de Altar, with the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve, extending of desert and mountainous regions. The biosphere reserve includes the only active erg dune region in North America. The nearest city to the biosphere reserve is Puerto Peñasco ('Rocky Point') in the state of Sonora, Mexico.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran desert has an arid subtropical climate. In the lower-elevation portions of the desert, temperatures are warm year-round, and rainfall is infrequent and irregular, often less than 90 mm (approx. 3.5”) annually. The Arizona uplands are also warm year-round, but they receive 100–300 mm (approx. 4-12”) of average annual rainfall, which falls in a more regular bi-seasonal pattern.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: Many plants not only survive, but thrive in the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert. Many have evolved to have specialized adaptations to the desert climate. The Sonoran Desert's bi-seasonal rainfall pattern results in more plant species than any other desert in the world. The Sonoran Desert includes plant genera and species from the agave family, palm family, cactus family, legume family, and numerous others.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran is the only place in the world where the famous saguaro cactus ("Carnegiea gigantea") grows in the wild. Cholla ("Cylindropuntia" spp.), beavertail ("Opuntia basilaris"), hedgehog ("Echinocereus" spp.), fishhook ("Ferocactus wislizeni"), prickly pear ("Opuntia" spp.), nightblooming cereus ("Peniocereus" spp.), and organ pipe ("Stenocereus thurberi") are other taxa of cacti found here. Cactus provides food and homes to many desert mammals and birds, with showy flowers in reds, pinks, yellows, and whites, blooming most commonly from late March through June, depending on the species and seasonal temperatures.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: Creosote bush ("Larrea tridentata") and bur sage ("Ambrosia dumosa") dominate valley floors. Indigo bush ("Psorothamnus fremontii") and Mormon tea are other shrubs that may be found. Wildflowers of the Sonoran Desert include desert sand verbena ("Abronia villosa"), desert sunflower ("Geraea canescens"), and evening primroses.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: Ascending from the valley up bajadas, various subtrees such as velvet mesquite ("Prosopis velutina"), palo verde ("Parkinsonia florida"), desert ironwood ("Olneya tesota"), desert willow ("Chilopsis linearis" ssp. "arcuata"), and crucifixion thorn ("Canotia holacantha") are common, as well as multi-stemmed ocotillo ("Fouquieria splendens"). Shrubs found at higher elevations include whitethorn acacia ("Acacia constricta"), fairy duster, and jojoba. In the desert subdivisions found on Baja California, cardon cactus, elephant tree, and boojum tree occur.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The California fan palm ("Washingtonia filifera") is found in the Colorado Desert section of the Sonoran Desert, the only native palm in California, among many other introduced Arecaceae genera and species. It is found at spring-fed oases, such as in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran Desert is home to a wide variety of animals, birds and other creatures. such as the Gila monster, bobcat, mule deer, antelope jackrabbit, burrowing owl, greater roadrunner, western diamondback rattlesnake, and elf owl. There are three hundred fifty bird species, 20 amphibian species, over 100 reptile species, 30 native fish species, over 1000 native bee species, and more than 2,000 native plant species found in the desert area. The Sonoran Desert area southeast of Tucson and near the Mexican border is vital habitat for the only population of jaguars living within the United States. The Colorado River Delta was once an ecological hotspot within the Sonoran desert due to the Colorado river in this otherwise dry area, but the delta has been greatly reduced in extent due to the damming and use of the river upstream. Species that have higher heat tolerance are able to thrive in the conditions of the Sonoran Desert. One such insect species that has evolved a means to thrive in this environment is Drosophila "mettleri", a Sonoran Desert fly. This fly contains a specialized P450 detoxification system that enables it to nest in the cool region of exudate moistened soil. Thus, the fly is one of few that can tolerate the high desert temperatures and successfully reproduce.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Sonoran Desert is home to the cultures of over 17 contemporary Native American tribes, with settlements at and , as well as populations in Mexico.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The largest city in the Sonoran Desert is Phoenix, Arizona, with a 2017 metropolitan population of about 4.7 million. Located on the Salt River in central Arizona, it is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. In 2007 in the Phoenix area, desert was losing ground to urban sprawl at a rate of approximately per hour.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The next largest cities are Tucson, in southern Arizona, with a metro area population of just over 1 million, and Mexicali, Baja California, with a similarly sized metropolitan population of around 1,000,000. The metropolitan area of Hermosillo, Sonora, has a population close to 900,000. Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, in the southern part of the desert, has a population of 375,800.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: The Coachella Valley, located in the Colorado Desert section of the Sonoran Desert, has a population of 365,000. Several famous Southern California desert resort cities such as Palm Springs and Palm Desert are located here.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: During the winter months, from November to April, the daytime temperatures in the Coachella Valley range from 70 °F (21 °C) to 90 °F (32 °C) and corresponding nighttime lows range from 46 °F (8 °C) to 68 °F (20 °C) making it a popular winter resort destination. Due to its warm year-round climate citrus and subtropical fruits such as mangoes, figs, and dates are grown in the Coachella Valley and adjacent Imperial Valley. The Imperial Valley has a total population of over 180,000 and has a similar climate to that of the Coachella Valley. Other cities include Borrego Springs, Indio, Coachella, Calexico, El Centro, Imperial, and Blythe.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: Straddling the US-Mexican border with low levels of human-installed security, the Sonoran desert is a route for unauthorized entry across the border. The harsh conditions mean that the 3-to-5-day march, usually moving at night to minimize exposure to the heat, sometimes results in death.


title: Sonoran Desert

text: There are many National Parks and Monuments; federal and state nature reserves and wildlife refuges; state, county, and city parks; and government or nonprofit group operated natural history museums, science research institutes, and botanical gardens and desert landscape gardens.


title: Glossary of video game terms

text: This list includes terms used in video games and the video game industry, as well as slang used by players.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The discography of the rock band the Grateful Dead includes more than 200 albums, the majority of them recorded live in concert. The band has also released more than two dozen singles and a number of videos.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The Grateful Dead formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 amid the counterculture of the 1960s. They had many musical influences, and their music evolved to a great degree over time. They made extensive use of improvisation, and are considered one of the originators of jam band music. The founding members were Jerry Garcia on guitar and vocals, Bob Weir on guitar and vocals, Phil Lesh on bass and vocals, Bill Kreutzmann on drums, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan on organ, harmonica, percussion, and vocals. Pigpen died in 1973, but the other four remained with the band for its entire 30-year history. Second drummer Mickey Hart was also in the band for most of that time. Others who were band members at different times were keyboardists Tom Constanten, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick, and Bruce Hornsby, and vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: While they were together, from 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead released thirteen studio albums and nine contemporary live albums. The nine live albums were recently recorded and mostly contained previously unreleased original material. They filled the role of traditional studio albums, and were an integral part of the contemporaneous evolution of the band. (The Dead's second album, "Anthem of the Sun", was an experimental amalgam of studio and live material.)


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: In 1991, the band started releasing retrospective live albums, a practice that has continued to the present time. There are several series of these albums. The "traditional" live releases were created by remixing multitrack recordings of concerts. A second series of live albums, from 1993 to 2005, was "Dick's Picks", concert recordings selected for their musical excellence but made using stereo recordings that did not allow the different musical parts to be remixed. Another series of albums was released in 2005 and 2006 in the form of digital downloads. This was followed by a series from 2007 to 2011 called "Road Trips", and then, starting in 2012, by "Dave's Picks".


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The Grateful Dead's video albums include some albums that were released as both audio CDs and concert DVDs, either separately or together, and some that were released only on video, as well as two theatrical films. The band has also released several compilation albums and box sets.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: Unconventionally, the Grateful Dead made the release of live albums a common occurrence throughout their career. Because many were recently recorded and included previously unreleased original material, they often filled the role of traditional studio albums. An integral part of the contemporaneous evolution of the band, such live albums are included in this section.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: In the 1990s and 2000s, the Grateful Dead released numerous live concert recordings from their archives in three concurrent series. The "From the Vault" series are remixes of multi-track recordings made at the time of the concerts. The "View from the Vault" series are also multi-track remixes, but are released simultaneously as albums on CD and as concert performance videos on DVD. (The first three volumes were also released on VHS videotape.) Both of these series are included in the ""Retrospective" live albums" list above.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The third series of concert releases is Dick's Picks, which are based on two-track concert recordings. Unlike multi-track recordings, two-track recordings cannot be remixed, only remastered. Therefore, the sound quality of the Dick's Picks series, while generally very good, is not quite as high as that of the other official releases of live recordings, as explained in the various "caveat emptor" notices on the CD boxes.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The Dick's Picks series, which started in 1993, was named after Grateful Dead tape vault archivist Dick Latvala. Latvala selected shows with the band's approval and oversaw the production of the albums. After Latvala's death in 1999, David Lemieux became the Dead's tape archivist and took over responsibility for producing subsequent Dick's Picks releases, as well as his own Dave's Picks series. Latvala and Lemieux worked with recording engineer Jeffrey Norman, who was in charge of mastering the CDs. The last Dick's Pick's compilation was released in 2005.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: Volume 15 and later were released in HDCD format. This provides enhanced sound quality when played on CD players with HDCD capability, and is fully compatible with regular CD players.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: In the summer of 2005 the Dead began offering download versions of both their existing live releases, and a new Internet-only series, "The Grateful Dead Download Series", that was available through their own online store (which offered the albums in both 256 kbit/s mp3 files and FLAC files – a preferred audio standard for those who archive Dead and other fan-made live recordings on the Internet) and the iTunes Music Store (which offered them in their 256 kbit/s AAC format). Not surprisingly, these Internet-only albums have met with the same success as their CD-based brethren. The "Download Series" is no longer available for purchase on the Grateful Dead's website. However, they are still available for purchase from the iTunes Music Store as well as from Nugs.net, which offer them in FLAC, Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) and mp3 formats. Amazon also has them available in mp3 format.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The "Road Trips" series of albums is the successor to "Dick's Picks". The series started after the Grateful Dead signed a ten-year contract with Rhino Records to release the band's archival material. The "Road Trips" releases are created using two-track concert recordings, but unlike "Dick's Picks" they each contain material from multiple concerts of a tour. The production of the CDs is supervised by vault archivist David Lemieux, with mastering by sound engineer Jeffrey Norman. Like the later "Dick's Picks", the "Road Trips" albums are released in HDCD format.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: The "Dave's Picks" albums followed the "Road Trips" series. They are named after Grateful Dead tape archivist David Lemieux.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: These albums are not bootlegs. They were released legally, but without the band's consent or cooperation.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: This section does not include the following videos which were also released as audio CDs and are listed in "Retrospective live albums" above:


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: In 2017, the Grateful Dead began offering the 27 singles released throughout the band's history on 7-inch colored vinyl, for sale exclusively on their website, dead.net. Each 7-inch vinyl features remastered audio, and packaging designed by artists for each single and B-side.


title: Grateful Dead discography

text: Following is a list of Grateful Dead live albums in recording date order. The dates listed are the principal recording dates and do not include bonus tracks or bonus discs.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause, also known as the climacteric, is the time in women's lives when menstrual periods stop permanently, and they are no longer able to bear children. Menopause usually occurs between the age of 47 and 54. Medical professionals often define menopause as having occurred when a woman has not had any menstrual bleeding for a year. It may also be defined by a decrease in hormone production by the ovaries. In those who have had surgery to remove their uterus but still have functioning ovaries, menopause is not considered to have yet occurred. Following the removal of the uterus, symptoms typically occur earlier.


title: Menopause

text: In the years before menopause, a woman's periods typically become irregular, which means that periods may be longer or shorter in duration or be lighter or heavier in the amount of flow. During this time, women often experience hot flashes; these typically last from 30 seconds to ten minutes and may be associated with shivering, sweating, and reddening of the skin. Hot flashes can last from four to five years. Other symptoms may include vaginal dryness, trouble sleeping, and mood changes. The severity of symptoms varies between women.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause before the age of 45 years is considered to be "early menopause" and when ovarian failure/surgical removal of the ovaries occurs before the age of 40 years this is termed "premature ovarian insufficiency".


title: Menopause

text: In addition to symptoms (hot flushes/flashes, night sweats, mood changes, arthralgia and vaginal dryness), the physical consequences of menopause include bone loss, increased central abdominal fat, and adverse changes in a woman's cholesterol profile and vascular function. These changes predispose postmenopausal women to increased risks of osteoporosis and bone fracture, and of cardio-metabolic disease (diabetes and cardiovascular disease).


title: Menopause

text: Menopause is usually a natural change. It can occur earlier in those who smoke tobacco. Other causes include surgery that removes both ovaries or some types of chemotherapy. At the physiological level, menopause happens because of a decrease in the ovaries' production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. While typically not needed, a diagnosis of menopause can be confirmed by measuring hormone levels in the blood or urine. Menopause is the opposite of menarche, the time when a girl's periods start.


title: Menopause

text: The primary indications for treatment of menopause are symptoms and prevention of bone loss. Mild symptoms may be improved with treatment. With respect to hot flashes, avoiding smoking, caffeine, and alcohol is often recommended; sleeping naked in a cool room and using a fan may help. The most effective treatment for menopausal symptoms is menopausal hormone therapy (MHT). Non hormonal therapies for hot flashes include clonidine, gabapentin, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These will not improve symptoms such as joint pain or vaginal dryness which affect over 55% of women. Exercise may help with sleeping problems. Many of the concerns about the use of MHT raised by older studies are no longer considered barriers to MHT in healthy women. High-quality evidence for the effectiveness of alternative medicine has not been found. There is tentative evidence for the use of phytoestrogens for symptomatic treatment.


title: Menopause

text: During early menopause transition, the menstrual cycles remain regular but the interval between cycles begins to lengthen. Hormone levels begin to fluctuate. Ovulation may not occur with each cycle.


title: Menopause

text: The term "menopause" refers to a point in time that follows one year after the last menstruation. During the menopausal transition and after menopause, women can experience a wide range of symptoms. However, for women who enter the menopause transition without having regular menstrual cycles (due to prior surgery, other medical conditions or ongoing hormonal contraception) the menopause cannot be identified by bleeding patterns and is defined as the permanent loss of ovarian function.


title: Menopause

text: During the transition to menopause, menstrual patterns can show shorter cycling (by 2–7 days); longer cycles remain possible. There may be irregular bleeding (lighter, heavier, spotting). Dysfunctional uterine bleeding is often experienced by women approaching menopause due to the hormonal changes that accompany the menopause transition. Spotting or bleeding may simply be related to vaginal atrophy, a benign sore (polyp or lesion), or may be a functional endometrial response. The European Menopause and Andropause Society has released guidelines for assessment of the endometrium, which is usually the main source of spotting or bleeding.


title: Menopause

text: In post-menopausal women, however, any unscheduled vaginal bleeding is of concern and requires an appropriate investigation to rule out the possibility of malignant diseases.


title: Menopause

text: Other physical symptoms of menopause include lack of energy, joint soreness, stiffness, back pain, breast enlargement, breast pain,


title: Menopause

text: heart palpitations, headache, dizziness, dry, itchy skin, thinning, tingling skin, rosacea, weight gain, urinary incontinence,


title: Menopause

text: Psychological symptoms include anxiety, poor memory, inability to concentrate, depressive mood, irritability, mood swings, and less interest in sexual activity.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause-related cognitive impairment can be confused with the mild cognitive impairment that precedes dementia. Tentative evidence has found that forgetfulness affects about half of menopausal women and is probably caused by the effects of declining estrogen levels on the brain, or perhaps by reduced blood flow to the brain during hot flashes.


title: Menopause

text: Exposure to endogenous estrogen during reproductive years provides women with protection against cardiovascular disease, which is lost around 10 years after the onset of menopause. The menopausal transition is associated with an increase in fat mass (predominantly in visceral fat), an increase in insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and endothelial dysfunction. Women with vasomotor symptoms during menopause seem to have an especially unfavorable cardiometabolic profile, as well as women with premature onset of menopause (before 45 years of age). These risks can be reduced by managing risk factors, such as tobacco smoking, hypertension, increased blood lipids and body weight.


title: Menopause

text: The annual rates of bone mineral density loss are highest starting one year before the final menstrual period and continuing through the two years after it. Thus, post menopausal women are at increased risk of osteopenia, osteoporosis and fractures.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause can be induced or occur naturally. Induced menopause occurs as a result of medical treatment such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, oophorectomy, or complications of tubal ligation, hysterectomy, unilateral or bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy or leuprorelin usage.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause typically occurs between 47 and 54 years of age. According to various data, more than 85% of women have their last period between the ages of 47–54 (median 49–50). 2% of women under the age of 40, 5% between the ages of 40–45 and the same number between the ages of 55–58 have their last bleeding. The average age of the last period in the United States is 51 years, in Russia is 50 years, in Greece is 49 years, in Turkey is 47 years, in Egypt is 47 years and in India is 46 years. The menopausal transition or perimenopause leading up to menopause usually lasts 3–4 years (sometimes as long as 5–14 years).


title: Menopause

text: In rare cases, a woman's ovaries stop working at a very early age, ranging anywhere from the age of puberty to age 40. This is known as premature ovarian failure and affects 1 to 2% of women by age 40.


title: Menopause

text: Undiagnosed and untreated coeliac disease is a risk factor for early menopause. Coeliac disease can present with several non-gastrointestinal symptoms, in the absence of gastrointestinal symptoms, and most cases escape timely recognition and go undiagnosed, leading to a risk of long-term complications. A strict gluten-free diet reduces the risk. Women with early diagnosis and treatment of coeliac disease present a normal duration of fertile life span.


title: Menopause

text: Women who have undergone hysterectomy with ovary conservation go through menopause on average 1.5 years earlier than the expected age. Another factor that can promote an earlier onset of menopause (usually 1 to 3 years early) is smoking cigarettes.


title: Menopause

text: Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is when the ovaries stop functioning before the age of 40 years. It is diagnosed or confirmed by high blood levels of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) on at least three occasions at least four weeks apart.


title: Menopause

text: Premature ovarian insufficiency may be auto immune and therefore co occur with other autoimmune disorders such as thyroid disease, [adrenal insufficiency], and diabetes mellitus. Other causes include chemotherapy, being a carrier of the fragile X syndrome gene, and radiotherapy. However, in about 50–80% of cases of premature ovarian insufficiency, the cause is unknown, i.e., it is generally idiopathic.


title: Menopause

text: An early menopause can be related to cigarette smoking, higher body mass index, racial and ethnic factors, illnesses, and the removal of the uterus.


title: Menopause

text: Rates of premature menopause have been found to be significantly higher in fraternal and identical twins; approximately 5% of twins reach menopause before the age of 40. The reasons for this are not completely understood. Transplants of ovarian tissue between identical twins have been successful in restoring fertility.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause can be surgically induced by bilateral oophorectomy (removal of ovaries), which is often, but not always, done in conjunction with removal of the Fallopian tubes (salpingo-oophorectomy) and uterus (hysterectomy). Cessation of menses as a result of removal of the ovaries is called "surgical menopause". Surgical treatments, such as the removal of ovaries, might cause periods to stop altogether. The sudden and complete drop in hormone levels may produce extreme withdrawal symptoms such as hot flashes, etc. The symptoms of early menopause may be more severe.


title: Menopause

text: Removal of the uterus "without" removal of the ovaries does "not" directly cause menopause, although pelvic surgery of this type can often precipitate a somewhat earlier menopause, perhaps because of a compromised blood supply to the ovaries. The time between surgery and possible early menopause is due to the fact that ovaries are still producing hormones.


title: Menopause

text: The menopausal transition, and postmenopause itself, is a natural change, not usually a disease state or a disorder. The main cause of this transition is the natural depletion and aging of the finite amount of oocytes (ovarian reserve). This process is sometimes accelerated by other conditions and is known to occur earlier after a wide range of gynecologic procedures such as hysterectomy (with and without ovariectomy), endometrial ablation and uterine artery embolisation. The depletion of the ovarian reserve causes an increase in circulating follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) levels because there are fewer oocytes and follicles responding to these hormones and producing estrogen.


title: Menopause

text: The stages of the menopause transition have been classified according to a woman's reported bleeding pattern, supported by changes in the pituitary follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) levels.


title: Menopause

text: In younger women, during a normal menstrual cycle the ovaries produce estradiol, testosterone and progesterone in a cyclical pattern under the control of FSH and luteinizing hormone (LH), which are both produced by the pituitary gland. During perimenopause (approaching menopause), estradiol levels and patterns of production remain relatively unchanged or may increase compared to young women, but the cycles become frequently shorter or irregular. The often observed increase in estrogen is presumed to be in response to elevated FSH levels that, in turn, is hypothesized to be caused by decreased feedback by inhibin. Similarly, decreased inhibin feedback after hysterectomy is hypothesized to contribute to increased ovarian stimulation and earlier menopause.


title: Menopause

text: The menopausal transition is characterized by marked, and often dramatic, variations in FSH and estradiol levels. Because of this, measurements of these hormones are "not" considered to be reliable guides to a woman's exact menopausal status.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause occurs because of the sharp decrease of estradiol and progesterone production by the ovaries. After menopause, estrogen continues to be produced mostly by aromatase in fat tissues and is produced in small amounts in many other tissues such as ovaries, bone, blood vessels, and the brain where it acts locally. The substantial fall in circulating estradiol levels at menopause impacts many tissues, from brain to skin.


title: Menopause

text: In contrast to the sudden fall in estradiol during menopause, the levels of total and free testosterone, as well as dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) and androstenedione appear to decline more or less steadily with age. An effect of natural menopause on circulating androgen levels has not been observed. Thus specific tissue effects of natural menopause cannot be attributed to loss of androgenic hormone production.


title: Menopause

text: Hot flashes and other vasomotor and body symptoms accompanying the menopausal transition are associated with estrogen insufficiency and changes that occur in the brain, primarily the hypothalamus and involve complex interplay between the neurotransmitters kisspeptin, neurokinin B, and dynorphin, which are found in ‘KNDy’ neurons in the infundibular nucleus.


title: Menopause

text: Long-term effects of menopause may include osteoporosis, vaginal atrophy as well as changed metabolic profile resulting in increased cardiac and metabolic disease (diabetes) risks.


title: Menopause

text: Decreased inhibin feedback after hysterectomy is hypothesized to contribute to increased ovarian stimulation and earlier menopause. Hastened ovarian aging has been observed after endometrial ablation. While it is difficult to prove that these surgeries are causative, it has been hypothesized that the endometrium may be producing endocrine factors contributing to the endocrine feedback and regulation of the ovarian stimulation. Elimination of these factors contributes to faster depletion of the ovarian reserve. Reduced blood supply to the ovaries that may occur as a consequence of hysterectomy and uterine artery embolisation has been hypothesized to contribute to this effect.


title: Menopause

text: Impaired DNA repair mechanisms may contribute to earlier depletion of the ovarian reserve during aging. As women age, double-strand breaks accumulate in the DNA of their primordial follicles. Primordial follicles are immature primary oocytes surrounded by a single layer of granulosa cells. An enzyme system is present in oocytes that ordinarily accurately repairs DNA double-strand breaks. This repair system is called "homologous recombinational repair", and it is especially effective during meiosis. Meiosis is the general process by which germ cells are formed in all sexual eukaryotes; it appears to be an adaptation for efficiently removing damages in germ line DNA.


title: Menopause

text: Human primary oocytes are present at an intermediate stage of meiosis, termed prophase I (see Oogenesis). Expression of four key DNA repair genes that are necessary for homologous recombinational repair during meiosis (BRCA1, MRE11, Rad51, and ATM) decline with age in oocytes. This age-related decline in ability to repair DNA double-strand damages can account for the accumulation of these damages, that then likely contributes to the depletion of the ovarian reserve.


title: Menopause

text: Ways of assessing the impact on women of some of these menopause effects, include the Greene climacteric scale questionnaire, the Cervantes scale and the Menopause rating scale.


title: Menopause

text: Premenopause is a term used to mean the years leading up to the last period, when the levels of reproductive hormones are becoming more variable and lower, and the effects of hormone withdrawal are present. Premenopause starts some time before the monthly cycles become noticeably irregular in timing.


title: Menopause

text: The term "perimenopause", which literally means "around the menopause", refers to the menopause transition years before the date of the final episode of flow. According to the North American Menopause Society, this transition can last for four to eight years. The Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research describes it as a six- to ten-year phase ending 12 months after the last menstrual period.


title: Menopause

text: During perimenopause, estrogen levels average about 20–30% higher than during premenopause, often with wide fluctuations. These fluctuations cause many of the physical changes during perimenopause as well as menopause, especially during the last 1–2 years of perimenopause (before menopause). Some of these changes are hot flashes, night sweats, difficulty sleeping, mood swings, vaginal dryness or atrophy, incontinence, osteoporosis, and heart disease. Perimenopause is also associated with a higher likelihood of depression (affecting from 45 percent to 68 percent of perimenopausal women), which is twice as likely to affect those with a history of depression.


title: Menopause

text: During this period, fertility diminishes but is not considered to reach zero until the official date of menopause. The official date is determined retroactively, once 12 months have passed after the last appearance of menstrual blood.


title: Menopause

text: The menopause transition typically begins between 40 and 50 years of age (average 47.5). The duration of perimenopause may be for up to eight years. Women will often, but not always, start these transitions (perimenopause and menopause) about the same time as their mother did.


title: Menopause

text: In some women, menopause may bring about a sense of loss related to the end of fertility. In addition, this change often occurs when other stressors may be present in a woman's life:


title: Menopause

text: Some research appears to show that melatonin supplementation in perimenopausal women can improve thyroid function and gonadotropin levels, as well as restoring fertility and menstruation and preventing depression associated with menopause.


title: Menopause

text: The term "postmenopausal" describes women who have not experienced any menstrual flow for a minimum of 12 months, assuming that they have a uterus and are not pregnant or lactating. In women without a uterus, menopause or postmenopause can be identified by a blood test showing a very high FSH level. Thus postmenopause is the time in a woman's life that takes place after her last period or, more accurately, after the point when her ovaries become inactive.


title: Menopause

text: The reason for this delay in declaring postmenopause is that periods are usually erratic at this time of life. Therefore, a reasonably long stretch of time is necessary to be sure that the cycling has ceased. At this point a woman is considered infertile; however, the possibility of becoming pregnant has usually been very low (but not quite zero) for a number of years before this point is reached.


title: Menopause

text: A woman's reproductive hormone levels continue to drop and fluctuate for some time into post-menopause, so hormone withdrawal effects such as hot flashes may take several years to disappear.


title: Menopause

text: Perimenopause is a natural stage of life. It is not a disease or a disorder. Therefore, it does not automatically require any kind of medical treatment. However, in those cases where the physical, mental, and emotional effects of perimenopause are strong enough that they significantly disrupt the life of the woman experiencing them, palliative medical therapy may sometimes be appropriate.


title: Menopause

text: In the context of the menopause, menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) is the use of estrogen in women without a uterus and estrogen plus progestogen in women who have an intact uterus.


title: Menopause

text: MHT may be reasonable for the treatment of menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes. It is the most effective treatment option, especially when delivered as a skin patch. Its use, however, appears to increase the risk of strokes and blood clots. When used for menopausal symptoms the global recommendation is MHT should be prescribed for a long as there are defined treatment effects and goals for the individual woman.


title: Menopause

text: MHT is also effective for preventing bone loss and osteoporotic fracture, but it is generally recommended only for women at significant risk for whom other therapies are unsuitable.


title: Menopause

text: MHT may be unsuitable for some women, including those at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, increased risk of thromboembolic disease (such as those with obesity or a history of venous thrombosis) or increased risk of some types of cancer. There is some concern that this treatment increases the risk of breast cancer. Women at increased risk of cardiometabolic disease and VTE may be able to use transdermal estradiol which does not appear to increase risks in low to moderate doses.


title: Menopause

text: Adding testosterone to hormone therapy has a positive effect on sexual function in postmenopausal women, although it may be accompanied by hair growth, acne if used in excess. Transdermal testosterone therapy in appropriate dosing is generally safe


title: Menopause

text: SERMs are a category of drugs, either synthetically produced or derived from a botanical source, that act selectively as agonists or antagonists on the estrogen receptors throughout the body. The most commonly prescribed SERMs are raloxifene and tamoxifen. Raloxifene exhibits oestrogen agonist activity on bone and lipids, and antagonist activity on breast and the endometrium. Tamoxifen is in widespread use for treatment of hormone sensitive breast cancer. Raloxifene prevents vertebral fractures in postmenopausal, osteoporotic women and reduces the risk of invasive breast cancer.


title: Menopause

text: Some of the SSRIs and SNRIs appear to provide some relief from vasomotor symptoms. Low dose paroxetine is the only non-hormonal medication that was FDA-approved to treat moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause as of 2016. They may, however, be associated with appetite and sleeping problems, constipation and nausea.


title: Menopause

text: Gabapentin or clonidine may help but do not work as well as hormone therapy. Gabapentin can decrease the amount of hot flashes. Side effects associated with its use include drowsiness and headaches. Clonidine is used to improve vasomotor symptoms and may be associated with constipation, dizziness, nausea and sleeping problems.


title: Menopause

text: One review found mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy decreases the amount women are affected by hot flashes. Another review found not enough evidence to make a conclusion. A 2018 study found that 85% of study participants reported reduced hot flashes and night sweats when using a climate control system in their beds.


title: Menopause

text: Exercise has been thought to reduce postmenopausal symptoms through the increase of endorphin levels, which decrease as estrogen production decreases. Additionally, high BMI is a risk factor for vasomotor symptoms in particular. However, there is insufficient evidence to support the benefits of weight loss for symptom management. There are mixed perspectives on the benefits of physical exercise. While one review found that there was a lack of quality evidence supporting a benefit of exercise, another review recommended regular healthy exercise to reduce comorbidities, improve mood and anxiety symptoms, enhance cognition, and decrease the risk of fractures. Yoga may help with postmenopausal symptoms similar to other exercise. There is insufficient evidence to suggest that relaxation techniques reduce menopausal symptoms.


title: Menopause

text: There is no evidence of consistent benefit of alternative therapies for menopausal symptoms despite their popularity.


title: Menopause

text: The effect of soy isoflavones on menopausal symptoms is promising for reduction of hot flashes and vaginal dryness. Evidence does not support a benefit from phytoestrogens such as coumestrol, femarelle, or the non-phytoestrogen black cohosh. As of 2011 there is no support for herbal or dietary supplements in the prevention or treatment of the mental changes that occur around menopause.


title: Menopause

text: Hypnosis may reduce the severity of hot flashes. In addition, relaxation training with at-home relaxation audiotapes such as deep breathing, paced respiration, and guided imagery may have positive effects on relaxing muscles and reducing stress.


title: Menopause

text: There is no evidence to support the efficacy of acupuncture as a management for menopausal symptoms. A 2016 Cochrane review found not enough evidence to show a difference between Chinese herbal medicine and placebo for the vasomotor symptoms.


title: Menopause

text: The cultural context within which a woman lives can have a significant impact on the way she experiences the menopausal transition. Menopause has been described as a subjective experience, with social and cultural factors playing a prominent role in the way menopause is experienced and perceived.


title: Menopause

text: The word menopause was invented by French doctors at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some of them noted that peasant women had no complaints about the end of menses, while urban middle-class women had many troubling symptoms. Doctors at this time considered the symptoms to be the result of urban lifestyles of sedentary behaviour, alcohol consumption, too much time indoors, and over-eating, with a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables.


title: Menopause

text: Within the United States, social location affects the way women perceive menopause and its related biological effects. Research indicates that whether a woman views menopause as a medical issue or an expected life change is correlated with her socio-economic status. The paradigm within which a woman considers menopause influences the way she views it: Women who understand menopause as a medical condition rate it significantly more negatively than those who view it as a life transition or a symbol of aging.


title: Menopause

text: Ethnicity and geography play roles in the experience of menopause. American women of different ethnicities report significantly different types of menopausal effects. One major study found Caucasian women most likely to report what are sometimes described as psychosomatic symptoms, while African-American women were more likely to report vasomotor symptoms.


title: Menopause

text: It seems that Japanese women experience menopause effects, or "konenki", in a different way from American women. Japanese women report lower rates of hot flashes and night sweats; this can be attributed to a variety of factors, both biological and social. Historically, konenki was associated with wealthy middle-class housewives in Japan, i.e., it was a "luxury disease" that women from traditional, inter-generational rural households did not report. Menopause in Japan was viewed as a symptom of the inevitable process of aging, rather than a "revolutionary transition", or a "deficiency disease" in need of management.


title: Menopause

text: In Japanese culture, reporting of vasomotor symptoms has been on the increase, with research conducted in 2005 finding that of 140 Japanese participants, hot flashes were prevalent in 22.1%. This was almost double that of 20 years prior. Whilst the exact cause for this is unknown, possible contributing factors include significant dietary changes, increased medicalisation of middle-aged women and increased media attention on the subject. However, reporting of vasomotor symptoms is still significantly lower than North America.


title: Menopause

text: Additionally, while most women in the United States apparently have a negative view of menopause as a time of deterioration or decline, some studies seem to indicate that women from some Asian cultures have an understanding of menopause that focuses on a sense of liberation and celebrates the freedom from the risk of pregnancy.


title: Menopause

text: Diverging from these conclusions, one study appeared to show that many American women "experience this time as one of liberation and self-actualization".


title: Menopause

text: Menopause literally means the "end of monthly cycles" (the end of monthly periods or menstruation), from the Greek word "pausis" ("pause") and "mēn" ("month"). This is a medical coinage; the Greek word for menses is actually different. In Ancient Greek, the menses were described in the plural, "ta emmēnia", ("the monthlies"), and its modern descendant has been clipped to "ta emmēna". The Modern Greek medical term is "emmenopausis" in Katharevousa or "emmenopausi" in Demotic Greek.


title: Menopause

text: The word "menopause" was coined specifically for human females, where the end of fertility is traditionally indicated by the permanent stopping of monthly menstruations. However, menopause exists in some other animals, many of which do not have monthly menstruation; in this case, the term means a natural end to fertility that occurs before the end of the natural lifespan.


title: Menopause

text: In recent years celebrities have spoken out about their experiences of the menopause, which has led to it becoming less of a taboo as it has boosted awareness of the debilitating symptoms.


title: Menopause

text: This has led to TV shows running features on the menopause to help women experiencing symptoms. In the UK Lorraine Kelly has been an advocate for getting women to speak about their experiences including sharing her own. This has led to an increase in women seeking treatment such as HRT


title: Menopause

text: Few animals have a menopause: humans are joined by just four other species in which females live substantially longer than their ability to reproduce. The others are all cetaceans: beluga whales, narwhals, orcas and short-finned pilot whales. Various theories have been suggested that attempt to suggest evolutionary benefits to the human species stemming from the cessation of women's reproductive capability before the end of their natural lifespan. Explanations can be categorized as adaptive and non-adaptive:


title: Menopause

text: The high cost of female investment in offspring may lead to physiological deteriorations that amplify susceptibility to becoming infertile. This hypothesis suggests the reproductive lifespan in humans has been optimized, but it has proven more difficult in females and thus their reproductive span is shorter. If this hypothesis were true, however, age at menopause should be negatively correlated with the amount of energy expended to maintain the reproductive organs, and the available data does not support this.


title: Menopause

text: A recent increase in female longevity due to improvements in the standard of living and social care has also been suggested. It is difficult for selection, however, to favor aid to offspring from parents and grandparents. Irrespective of living standards, adaptive responses are limited by physiological mechanisms. In other words, senescence is programmed and regulated by specific genes.


title: Menopause

text: While it is fairly common for extant hunter-gatherers to live past age 50 provided that they survive childhood, fossil evidence shows that mortality in adults has decreased over the last 30,000 to 50,000 years and that it was extremely unusual for early "Homo sapiens" to live to age 50. This discovery has led some biologists to argue that there was no selection for or against menopause at the time at which the ancestor of all modern humans lived in Africa, suggesting that menopause is instead a random evolutionary effect of a selection shadow regarding aging in early "Homo sapiens". It is also argued that since the population fraction of post-menopausal women in early "Homo sapiens" was so low, menopause had no evolutionary effect on mate selection or social behaviors related to mate selection.


title: Menopause

text: This hypothesis suggests that younger mothers and offspring under their care will fare better in a difficult and predatory environment because a younger mother will be stronger and more agile in providing protection and sustenance for herself and a nursing baby. The various biological factors associated with menopause had the effect of male members of the species investing their effort with the most viable of potential female mates.


title: Menopause

text: A problem with this hypothesis is that, if true, we would expect to see menopause exhibited among many species in the animal kingdom, and another problem is that in the case of extended child development, even a female who was relatively young, still agile, and attractive when producing a child would lose future support from her male partner due to him seeking out fertile mates when she reaches menopause, while the child is still not independent. This would be counterproductive to the supposed adaptation of getting male support, as it would significantly decrease the survival for children produced over much of the female's fertile and agile life, unless children were raised in ways that did not rely on support from a male partner, which would eliminate the supposed evolutionary benefit anyway.


title: Menopause

text: The young female preference hypothesis proposes that changes in male preferences for younger mates allowed late-age acting fertility mutations to accumulate in females without any evolutionary penalty, giving rise to menopause. A computer model was constructed to test this hypothesis, and showed that it was feasible. However, in order for deleterious mutations that affect fertility past roughly age fifty to accumulate, human maximum lifespan had to first be extended to about its present value. As of 2016 it was unclear if there has been sufficient time since that happened for such an evolutionary process to occur.


title: Menopause

text: The male-biased philopatry theory proposes that if human social groups were originally based around men leaving their birth communities more frequently than women, then this leads to increased relatedness to the group in relation to female age, making inclusive fitness benefits older females receive from helping the group greater than what they would receive from continued reproduction, which in turn eventually led to the evolution of menopause. In a pattern of male-biased dispersal and local mating, the relatedness of the individuals in the group decreases with female age, leading to a decrease in kin selection with female age. This occurs because a female will stay with her father in her birth community throughout life, initially being closely related to the males and females. Females are born and stay in the group, so relatedness to the females stays about the same. However, throughout time, the older male relatives will die and any sons she gives birth to will disperse, so that local relatedness to males, and therefore the whole group, declines. The situation is reversed in species where males are philopatric and either females disperse, or mating is non-local. Under these conditions, a female's reproductive life begins away from her father and paternal relatives because she was either born into a new group from non-local mating or because she dispersed. In the case of female-biased dispersal, the female is initially equally unrelated with every individual in the group, and with non-local mating, the female is closely related to the females of the group, but not the males since her paternal relatives are in another group. As she gives birth, her sons will stay with her, increasing her relatedness to males in the group over time and thus her relatedness with the overall group. The common feature that connects these two otherwise different behaviors is male-biased philopatry, which leads to an increase in kin selection with female age.


title: Menopause

text: While not conclusive, evidence does exist to support the idea that female-biased dispersal existed in pre-modern humans. The closest living relatives to humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and both mountain gorillas and western lowland gorillas, are female-biased dispersers. Analysis of sex specific genetic material, the non-recombining portions of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, show evidence of a prevalence of female-biased dispersal as well; however, these results could also be affected by the effective breeding numbers of males and females in local populations. Evidence of female-biased dispersion in hunter-gatherers is not definitive, with some studies supporting the idea, and others suggesting there is no strong bias towards either sex. In orcas, both sexes mate non-locally with members of a different pod but return to the pod after copulation. Demographic data shows that a female's mean relatedness to the group does increase over time due to increasing relatedness to males. While less well-studied, there is evidence that short-finned pilot whales, another menopausal species, also display this behavior. However, mating behavior that increases local relatedness with female age is prevalent in non-menopausal species, making it unlikely that it is the only factor that determines if menopause will evolve in a species.


title: Menopause

text: The mother hypothesis suggests that menopause was selected for humans because of the extended development period of human offspring and high costs of reproduction so that mothers gain an advantage in reproductive fitness by redirecting their effort from new offspring with a low survival chance to existing children with a higher survival chance.


title: Menopause

text: The Grandmother hypothesis suggests that menopause was selected for humans because it promotes the survival of grandchildren. According to this hypothesis, post-reproductive women feed and care for children, adult nursing daughters, and grandchildren whose mothers have weaned them. Human babies require large and steady supplies of glucose to feed the growing brain. In infants in the first year of life, the brain consumes 60% of all calories, so both babies and their mothers require a dependable food supply. Some evidence suggests that hunters contribute less than half the total food budget of most hunter-gatherer societies, and often much less than half, so that foraging grandmothers can contribute substantially to the survival of grandchildren at times when mothers and fathers are unable to gather enough food for all of their children. In general, selection operates most powerfully during times of famine or other privation. So although grandmothers might not be necessary during good times, many grandchildren cannot survive without them during times of famine.


title: Menopause

text: Post-reproductive female orcas tend to lead their pods, especially during years of food scarcity. Furthermore, the increased mortality risk of an orca due to losing a grandmother is stronger in years of food scarcity


title: Menopause

text: Analysis of historical data found that the length of a female's post-reproductive lifespan was reflected in the reproductive success of her offspring and the survival of her grandchildren. Another study found comparative effects but only in the maternal grandmother—paternal grandmothers had a detrimental effect on infant mortality (probably due to paternity uncertainty). Differing assistance strategies for maternal and paternal grandmothers have also been demonstrated. Maternal grandmothers concentrate on offspring survival, whereas paternal grandmothers increase birth rates.


title: Menopause

text: Some believe variations on the mother, or grandmother effect fail to explain longevity with continued spermatogenesis in males (oldest verified paternity is 94 years, 35 years beyond the oldest documented birth attributed to females). Notably, the survival time past menopause is roughly the same as the maturation time for a human child. That a mother's presence could aid in the survival of a developing child, while an unidentified father's absence might not have affected survival, could explain the paternal fertility near the end of the father's lifespan. A man with no certainty of which children are his may merely attempt to father additional children, with support of existing children present but small. Note the existence of partible paternity supporting this. Some argue that the mother and grandmother hypotheses fail to explain the detrimental effects of losing ovarian follicular activity, such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer's disease and coronary artery disease.


title: Menopause

text: The theories discussed above assume that evolution directly selected for menopause. Another theory states that menopause is the byproduct of the evolutionary selection for follicular atresia, a factor that causes menopause. Menopause results from having too few ovarian follicles to produce enough estrogen to maintain the ovarian-pituitary-hypothalamic loop, which results in the cessation of menses and the beginning of menopause. Human females are born with approximately a million oocytes, and approximately 400 oocytes are lost to ovulation throughout life.


title: Menopause

text: In social vertebrates, the sharing of resources among the group places limits on how many offspring can be produced and supported by members of the group. This creates a situation in which each female must compete with others of the group to ensure they are the one that reproduces. The reproductive conflict hypothesis proposes that this female reproductive conflict favors the cessation of female reproductive potential in older age to avoid reproductive conflict, increasing the older female's fitness through inclusive benefits. Female-biased dispersal or non-local mating leads to an increase in relatedness to the social group with female age. In the human case of female-biased dispersal, when a young female enters a new group, she is not related to any individual and she reproduces to produce an offspring with a relatedness of 0.5. An older female could also choose to reproduce, producing an offspring with a relatedness of 0.5, or she could refrain from reproducing and allow another pair to reproduce. Because her relatedness to males in the group is high, there is a fair probability that the offspring will be her grandchild with a relatedness of 0.25. The younger female experiences no cost to her inclusive fitness from using the resources necessary to successfully rear offspring since she is not related to members of the group, but there is a cost for the older female. As a result, the younger female has the advantage in reproductive competition. Although a female orca born into a social group is related to some members of the group, the whale case of non-local mating leads to similar outcomes because the younger female relatedness to the group as a whole is less than the relatedness of the older female. This behavior makes more likely the cessation of reproduction late in life to avoid reproductive conflict with younger females.


title: Menopause

text: Research using both human and orca demographic data has been published that supports the role of reproductive conflict in the evolution of menopause. Analysis of demographic data from pre-industrial Finnish populations found significant reductions in offspring survivorship when mothers-in-laws and daughters-in-laws had overlapping births, supporting the idea that avoiding reproductive conflict is beneficial to offspring survivorship. Humans, more so than other primates, rely on food sharing for survival, so the large survivorship reduction values could be caused by a straining of community resources. Avoiding such straining is a possible explanation for why the reproductive overlap seen in humans is much lower than other primates. Food sharing is also prevalent among another menopausal species, orcas. Reproductive conflict has also been observed in orcas, with increased calf mortality seen when reproductive overlap between a younger and older generational female occurred.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause in the animal kingdom appears to be uncommon, but the presence of this phenomenon in different species has not been thoroughly researched. Life histories show a varying degree of senescence; rapid senescing organisms (e.g., Pacific salmon and annual plants) do not have a post-reproductive life-stage. Gradual senescence is exhibited by all placental mammalian life histories.


title: Menopause

text: Menopause has been observed in several species of nonhuman primates, including rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees. Some research suggests that wild chimpanzees do not experience menopause, as their fertility declines are associated with declines in overall health. Menopause also has been reported in a variety of other vertebrate species including elephants, short-finned pilot whales, orcas, narwhals, beluga whales, and the guppy. However, with the exception of the short-finned pilot whale, killer whale, narwhals, and beluga whales, such examples tend to be from captive individuals, and thus they are not necessarily representative of what happens in natural populations in the wild.


title: Menopause

text: Dogs do not experience menopause; the canine estrus cycle simply becomes irregular and infrequent. Although older female dogs are not considered good candidates for breeding, offspring have been produced by older animals. Similar observations have been made in cats.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: "Let It Be" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 6 March 1970 as a single, and (in an alternative mix) as the title track of their album "Let It Be". It was written and sung by Paul McCartney, and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The single version of the song, produced by George Martin, features a softer guitar solo and the orchestral section mixed low, compared with the album version, produced by Phil Spector, featuring a more aggressive guitar solo and the orchestral sections mixed higher.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: At the time, it had the highest debut on the "Billboard" Hot 100, beginning its chart run at number 6 and eventually reaching the top. It was the Beatles' final single before McCartney announced his departure from the band. Both the "Let It Be" album and the US single "The Long and Winding Road" were released after McCartney's announced departure from and the subsequent break-up of the group.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: McCartney said he had the idea of "Let It Be" after he had a dream about his mother during the tense period surrounding the sessions for "The Beatles" ("the White Album") in 1968. Mary Patricia McCartney died of cancer in 1956, when he was fourteen. In rehearsing the song with the Beatles in January 1969, in place of the "Mother Mary" lyric, McCartney occasionally sang "Brother Malcolm", a reference to the Beatles' assistant Mal Evans. McCartney later said: "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'." In a later interview he said about the dream that his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be." When asked if the phrase "Mother Mary" in the song referred to Mary, mother of Jesus, McCartney has typically replied that listeners can interpret the song however they like.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: McCartney first began to play around with "Let It Be" in the recording studio in between takes of "Piggies" on 19 September 1968. Some months later, the song would be rehearsed at Twickenham Film Studios on 3 January 1969, where the group had, the previous day, begun what would become the "Let It Be" film. During this stage of the film they were only recording on the mono decks used for syncing to the film cameras, and were not making multi-track recordings for release. A single take was recorded, with just McCartney on piano and vocals. The first attempt with the other Beatles was made on 8 January. Work continued on the song throughout the month. Multi-track recordings commenced on 23 January at Apple Studios.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: The master take was recorded on 31 January 1969, as part of the "Apple studio performance" for the project. McCartney played a Blüthner piano, Lennon played six-string electric bass (replaced by McCartney's own bass part on the final version at the behest of George Martin), George Harrison and Ringo Starr assumed their conventional roles, on guitar and drums respectively, and Billy Preston contributed on Hammond organ. This was one of two suitable performances of "Let It Be" recorded that day. The first version, designated take 27-A, would serve as the basis for all officially released versions of the song. The other version, take 27-B, was included in the film "Let It Be" as part of the Apple studio performance along with "Two of Us" and "The Long and Winding Road".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Before 2021, the film performance of "Let It Be" was never officially released as an audio recording. The lyrics in the two versions differ a little in the last verse. The studio version has "mother Mary comes to me... there will be an answer", whereas the film version has "mother Mary comes to me... there will be no sorrow". In addition, McCartney's vocal performance is noticeably different in both versions: in the film version, it sounds rough in certain moments since he is not using anti-pop on his mic; there are also a couple of falsetto vocals performed by him (extending the vocal 'e' on the word 'be'), for instance in the 'let it be' line that precedes the second chorus. Finally, the instrumental progression featured in the middle of the song after the second chorus (that descends from F to C), which is played twice on all released studio versions, is played (or at least is shown being played) only once in the film. A new mix of the take used in the film was included as "Take 28" on the 2021 Super Deluxe edition of the album "Let It Be".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: On 30 April 1969, Harrison overdubbed a new guitar solo on the best take from 31 January. He overdubbed another solo on 4 January 1970. The first overdub solo was used for the original single release, and the second overdub solo was used for the original album release. Some fans mistakenly believe that there were two versions of the basic trackbased mostly on the different guitar solos, but also on other differences in overdubs and mixes.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: The single used the same cover photographs as the "Let It Be" album, and was originally released on 6 March 1970, backed by "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", with a production credit for George Martin. This version includes orchestration and backing vocals overdubbed on 4 January 1970, under the supervision of Martin and McCartney, with backing vocals that included the only known contribution by Linda McCartney to a Beatles song. It was during this same session that Harrison recorded the second overdubbed guitar solo. The intention at one point was to have the two overdub solos playing together. This idea was dropped for the final mix of the single, and only the 30 April solo was used, although the 4 January overdub can be heard faintly during the final verse. Martin mixed the orchestration very low in this version.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: The single mix made its album debut on the Beatles' "1967–1970" compilation album. Original pressings erroneously show the running time of 4:01 (from the "Let It Be" album), and not the single version's running time of 3:52. This version was also included on "20 Greatest Hits," "Past Masters Volume 2" and "1".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: The "Let It Be" EP (1972 Melodiya) was the Beatles' first release in the Soviet Union. The 3-track 7-inch vinyl EP, M62-36715/6, also included "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: On 26 March 1970, Phil Spector remixed the song for the "Let It Be" album. This version features Harrison's second guitar solo overdub, fewer backing vocals, a delay effect on Starr's hi-hat, and more prominent orchestration. The final chorus has three "let it be..." lines, as the "there will be an answer" line is repeated twice (instead of once as on the single) before the "whisper words of wisdom" line to close the song. On the album, as the preceding track "Dig It" ends, Lennon is heard saying in a falsetto voice, mimicking Gracie Fields: "That was 'Can You Dig It' by Georgie Wood, and now we'd like to do 'Hark, the Angels Come'."


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: An early recording of the song appears on the 1996 compilation "Anthology 3". This version, take 1, was recorded on 25 January 1969. It is a much simpler version, as McCartney had not written the final verse yet ("And when the night is cloudy ... I wake up to the sound of music ..."). Instead, the first verse is repeated. The track, as released on "Anthology 3" also features studio talk between Lennon and McCartney prior to a 31 January 1969 take:


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Also, at the end of the song on the "Anthology 3" version, Lennon can be heard saying, following another 31 January take, "I think that was rather grand. I'd take one home with me. OK let's track it. (Gasps) You bounder, you cheat!" (This is a reference to the no-overdub policy that the Beatles had adopted for the "Get Back" project – "tracking" refers to double tracking the vocals on a recording.) The running time of the "Anthology" version is 4:05.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Still another version of the song appeared on the "Let It Be... Naked" album in 2003. The majority of this remix is take 27-A from 31 January 1969, with parts of take 27-B (as used in the film "Let It Be"), including the subdued guitar solo, spliced in.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: This version contains a different piano track than the one on the studio and single versions. This piano track was taken in part from take 28 which was subsequently released and can be heard on the Super Deluxe re-release of the Let It Be album in 2019. In the intro, McCartney plays an extra A bass note during the A minor chord (very similar to the way he plays the intro in the film version); he also plays a standard A minor chord in the piano at the first beat of measure two in the last verse (on the lyric "mother", also like in the film version), while the other versions have a different piano harmonisation which can be easily interpreted as an unfixed mistake. The backing vocals in the chorus of this version are similar to those in the single version, but are significantly reduced in volume while still retaining a reverb-heavy, choral effect. Ringo Starr disliked Phil Spector's version where Starr's drumming was augmented by Spector's "tape-delay-effect" to his hi-hats during the song's second verse and added shakers, so "Let It Be... Naked" features his original "stripped-down-approach" drumming. Also departed were the tom-tom overdub rolls, heard after the guitar solo during the third verse. Starr also commented that after the release of "Naked", he would now have to listen to McCartney saying, "I told you so", when talking about Spector's production. The song's running time on "Let It Be... Naked" is 3:52.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Glyn Johns mixed the song on 28 May 1969 as he finished the mixing for the "Get Back" album. This version was not released at the time. He used the same mix on 5 January 1970, which was an attempt to compile an acceptable version of the LP, this version best exemplifies Glyn's drum recording techniques. Again, this version of the LP was never officially released. The 1969 Glyn Johns version of the LP was included in the 2021 "Super Deluxe" release of "Let It Be".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: In his review of the single, for the "NME", Derek Johnson admired McCartney's performance and the lyrics' "pseudo-religious" qualities. Although he considered that the melody paled beside some of the band's previous singles, Johnson added: "As ever with The Beatles, this is a record to stop you dead in your tracks and compel you to listen attentively." John Gabree of "High Fidelity" magazine found the lyrics "dangerous politically", but viewed the song as possibly "the best thing musically that McCartney has done". In his album review for "Melody Maker", Richard Williams said that McCartney's compositions "seem to be getting looser and less concise" and added that, although the album version of "Let It Be" featured a "much harder guitar solo" than the single, the song "still doesn't have enough substance to become a McCartney standard".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: AllMusic critic Richie Unterberger describes "Let It Be" as one of "the Beatles' most popular and finest ballads". In Ian MacDonald's view, the song "achieved a popularity well out of proportion to its artistic weight" and it was "'Hey Jude', without the musical and emotional release". Former "Creem" critic Richard Riegel included it on his 1996 list of the ten most overrated Beatles tracks, saying that, like Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water", the song "cater[ed] to the lowest-common-denominator emotional stasis of its listeners. 'Let It Be' left the Beatles "no" artistic choice but dissolution."


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Lennon also commented disparagingly on "Let It Be". In his 1980 "Playboy" interview, he disavowed any involvement with composing the song, saying: "That's Paul. What can you say? Nothing to do with the Beatles. It could've been Wings. I don't know what he's thinking when he writes 'Let It Be'."


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Of The Century". "Mojo" magazine ranked "Let It Be" at number 50 in its 2006 list of "The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs".


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: In a similar list compiled in 2010, "Rolling Stone" placed it at number 8. The magazine also ranked the track at number 20 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. "Let It Be" holds the top spot on "The Fans' Top 10" poll included in "The 100 Best Beatles Songs: An Informed Fan's Guide" by Stephen J. Spignesi and Michael Lewis. The song is ranked third on the 100 Best Beatles Songs list, behind "A Day in the Life" and "Strawberry Fields Forever", and continues to bring about numerous pop culture references.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: According to John Winn's "That Magic Feeling", Mark Lewisohn's "The Complete Beatles Chronicle" and Steve Sullivan's "Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 1":


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: Although the song is performed regularly during McCartney's performances, there are a few notable performances.


title: Let It Be (Beatles song)

text: In 1987, the song was recorded by charity supergroup Ferry Aid (which included McCartney). It reached number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks and reached the top ten in many other European countries. McCartney's verse used the original take from the Beatles' "Let It Be" sessions. Ferry Aid covered "Let It Be" as a charity single to raise money for victims of the Zeebrugge Disaster. The featured artists included McCartney, Boy George, Mark Knopfler and Kate Bush, as well as an ensemble chorus made up of media personalities and other musicians. Although McCartney's contribution was taken from the Beatles' recording, he filmed a segment of himself miming to the track for inclusion in the music video. The single topped the UK Singles Chart for three weeks and was certified gold for shipping over 500,000 copies. It was also a number 1 hit in Norway and Switzerland.