Search results for ""Terrain""

The increased ability of clandestine groups to operate with little regard for borders or geography is often taken to be one of the dark consequences of a brave new globalized world. Yet even for terrorists and smugglers, the world is not flat; states exert formidable control over the technologies of globalization, and difficult terrain poses many of the same problems today as it has throughout human history. In No Man's Land, Justin V. Hastings examines the complex relationship that illicit groups have with modern technology—and how and when geography still matters. Based on often difficult fieldwork in Southeast Asia, Hastings traces the logistics networks, command and control structures, and training programs of three distinct clandestine organizations: the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, the insurgent Free Aceh Movement, and organized criminals in the form of smugglers and maritime pirates. Hastings also compares the experiences of these groups to others outside Southeast Asia, including al-Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and the Somali pirates. Through reportage, memoirs, government archives, interrogation documents, and interviews with people on both sides of the law, he finds that despite their differences, these organizations are constrained and shaped by territory and technology in similar ways. In remote or hostile environments, where access to the infrastructure of globalization is limited, clandestine groups must set up their own costly alternatives. Even when successful, Hastings concludes, criminal, insurgent and terrorist organizations are not nearly as mobile as pessimistic views of the sinister side of globalization might suggest.

Read more less

Asian Americans and the Media provides a concise, thoughtful, critical and cultural studies analysis of U.S. media representations of Asian Americans. The book also explores ways Asian Americans have resisted, responded to, and conceptualized the terrain of challenge and resistance to those representations, often through their own media productions. In this engaging and accessible book, Ono and Pham summarize key scholarship on Asian American media, as well as lay theoretical groundwork to help students, scholars and other interested readers understand historical and contemporary media representations of Asian Americans in traditional media, including print, film, music, radio, and television, as well as in newer media, primarily internet-situated. Since Asian Americans had little control over their representation in early U.S. media, historically dominant white society largely constructed Asian American media representations. In this context, the book draws attention to recurring patterns in media representation, as well as responses by Asian America. Today, Asian Americans are creating complex, sophisticated, and imaginative self-portraits within U.S. media, often equipped with powerful information and education about Asian Americans. Throughout, the book suggests media representations are best understood within historical, cultural, political, and social contexts, and envisions an even more active role in media for Asian Americans in the future. Asian Americans and the Media will be an ideal text for all students taking courses on Asian American Studies, Minorities and the Media and Race and Ethic Studies.

Read more less

The story of a neural impulse and what it reveals about how our brains workWe see the last cookie in the box and think, can I take that? We reach a hand out. In the 2.1 seconds that this impulse travels through our brain, billions of neurons communicate with one another, sending blips of voltage through our sensory and motor regions. Neuroscientists call these blips “spikes.” Spikes enable us to do everything: talk, eat, run, see, plan, and decide. In The Spike, Mark Humphries takes readers on the epic journey of a spike through a single, brief reaction. In vivid language, Humphries tells the story of what happens in our brain, what we know about spikes, and what we still have left to understand about them.Drawing on decades of research in neuroscience, Humphries explores how spikes are born, how they are transmitted, and how they lead us to action. He dives into previously unanswered mysteries: Why are most neurons silent? What causes neurons to fire spikes spontaneously, without input from other neurons or the outside world? Why do most spikes fail to reach any destination? Humphries presents a new vision of the brain, one where fundamental computations are carried out by spontaneous spikes that predict what will happen in the world, helping us to perceive, decide, and react quickly enough for our survival.Traversing neuroscience’s expansive terrain, The Spike follows a single electrical response to illuminate how our extraordinary brains work.

Read more less

When she started working with the aged more than forty years ago, Ann Burack-Weiss began storing the knowledge and skills she thought would help when she got old herself. It was not until she hit her mid-seventies that she realized she had packed sneakers to climb Mount Everest, not anticipating the crevices and chasms that constitute the rocky terrain of old age. The professional gerontological and social work literature offered little help, so she turned to the late-life works of beloved women authors who had bravely climbed the mountain and sent back news from the summit. Maya Angelou, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, M. F. K. Fisher, Doris Lessing, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton, and Florida Scott-Maxwell were among the many guides she turned to for inspiration. In The Lioness in Winter, Burack-Weiss blends an analysis of key writings from these and other famed women authors with her own wisdom to create an essential companion for older women and those who care for them. She fearlessly examines issues such as living with loss, finding comfort and joy in unexpected places, and facing disability and death. This book is filled with powerful passages from women who turned their experiences of aging into art, and Burack-Weiss ties their words to her own struggles and epiphanies, framing their collective observations with key insights from social work practice.

Read more less

You have a great idea, now what? That first mile--where an innovation moves from an idea on paper to the market--is often plagued by failure. In fact, less than one percent of ideas launched by big companies end up having real impact. The ideas aren't the problem. It's the process. The First Mile focuses on the critical moment when an innovator moves from planning to reality. It is a perilous place where hidden traps snare entrepreneurs and roadblocks slow innovators inside large companies. In this practical and enlightening manual, strategic adviser Scott Anthony equips innovators with new tools, questions, and examples to speed through this crucial early stage of innovation. You'll learn: * How to evaluate your idea's strengths and weaknesses using the "DEFT" process--Document, Evaluate, Focus, and Test * Fourteen recipes from an "experiment cookbook" to gain confidence in your idea or business * Why "spinouts," "wrong turns," and other challenges commonly trip up innovation--and the practical strategies you can use to avoid them * Why innovators need to seek chaos in an age of constant change--and other essential leadership skills Drawing on his decade of experience as an innovation adviser and investor, Anthony describes hard-won lessons from disruptive start-ups and global giants alike. The First Mile will give you the knowledge and confidence to travel this perilous--but ultimately promising--terrain. The first mile can be a scary place, but you don't have to traverse it alone. This book can help.

Read more less

Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumours have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden deep in the Honduran interior. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and warn the legendary city is cursed: to enter it is a death sentence. They call it the Lost City of the Monkey God. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artefacts and an electrifying story of having found the City – but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a single-engine plane carrying a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but a lost civilization. To confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, plagues of insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. They emerged from the jungle with proof of the legend... and the curse. They had contracted a horrifying, incurable and sometimes lethal disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with history, adventure and dramatic twists of fortune, The Lost City of the Monkey God is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

Read more less

Until very recently, historians have looked at the past with the tools of the nineteenth century. But globalization has fundamentally altered our ways of knowing, and it is no longer possible to study nations in isolation or to understand world history as emanating from the West. This book reveals why the discipline of global history has emerged as the most dynamic and innovative field in history--one that takes the connectedness of the world as its point of departure, and that poses a fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know it. What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How do we write a global history that is not Eurocentric yet does not fall into the trap of creating new centrisms? How can historians compare different societies and establish compatibility across space? What are the politics of global history? This in-depth and accessible book also explores the limits of the new paradigm and even its dangers, the question of whom global history should be written for, and much more. Written by a leading expert in the field, What Is Global History? shows how, by understanding the world's past as an integrated whole, historians can remap the terrain of their discipline for our globalized present.

Read more less

Featuring more than 140 spectacular photographs of this magnificent animal. The story of the contemporary caribou (also known as reindeer) begins during the last ice-age, over two million years ago. This origin is appropriate; the caribou are rugged survivors, forged by icy terrain and windswept snow, enduring some of the coldest and harshest environments on the planet. Illustrated with exquisite photographs of famed wilderness photographer and writer Mark Raycroft, Caribou: Wind Walkers of the Northern Wilderness celebrates this fascinating and breathtaking animal. Calling tundra and boreal forests their home, there are over 2.5 million caribou worldwide with fifteen subspecies, the largest of which is the boreal woodland caribou, found in Alaska and the north of Canada. Revered, hunted and domesticated by cultures across the globe for thousands of years, caribou migrate further than any other land mammal in search of food, with some having been documented travelling 700 kilometres. With its towering antlers, weather-resistant coat of fur and ability to forage lichen and fungi buried deep beneath the ice and snow, the caribou are an awe-inspiring symbol of perseverance. Chapters include: In the Company of Caribou; A Brief History of the Species; Caribou Ecology; Migration and Range; The Role of Antlers; The Rut; Conservation and the Future; Photographing Caribou. Caribou: Wind Walkers of the Northern Wilderness is perfect for lovers of nature photography and those who wish to get personally acquainted with one of this world’s most hardy and fascinating creatures.

Read more less

Told in woozy, narrative prose poems, the award-winning chronicle of a group of friends stumbling their way into 21st-century adulthood 'Genius . . . Keatsian in density and bloom' Brenda Shaughnessy 'Poppick represents a slice of his generation . . . he lets himself delight in verbal unpredictability, when figures of speech jump out, or sparkle and shine' The New York Times Book Review These poems tell the story of a generation in crisis: at odds with its own ideals, precariously (or just un-) employed, and absolutely terrified of seeing itself in the planet's future. Is our contemporary moment pure tragedy, or a dark joke? Can it be both? Ranging between elegiac lyrics and autobiographical accounts of a group of poets moving from Iowa to Brooklyn in the years before and after the 2016 election, Fear of Description reinvigorates the prose poem, exploring the slippery terrain between grief and friendship, artifice and technology, writing and ritual, hauntings and obsessions - searching for joy in art but instead finding it in pitch darkness. As the narrative cuts back and forth in time and circles around itself, the stories which begin to emerge in this remarkable book - of precarious employment, dead dogs speaking through Ouija boards and youthful brilliance cut short - explore at once the struggle to find one's place in the world, and the fear of being trapped once there. 'Through Poppick's memories we relive that brief window of youth when friendship is the magic audience that grounds us' Jennifer Moxley

Read more less

The inspiring story of a little-known hero's pivotal role in the American Revolutionary War During the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling sixty tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some three hundred miles south and east over frozen, often-treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army. This is one of the great stories of the American Revolution, still little known by comparison with the more famous battles of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill. Told with a novelist's feel for narrative, character, and vivid description, The Noble Train brings to life the events and people at a time when the ragtag American rebels were in a desperate situation. Washington's army was withering away from desertion and expiring enlistments. Typhoid fever, typhus, and dysentery were taking a terrible toll. There was little hope of dislodging British General Howe and his 20,000 British troops in Boston--until Henry Knox arrived with his supply convoy of heavy armaments. Firing down on the city from the surrounding Dorchester Heights, these weapons created a decisive turning point. An act of near desperation fueled by courage, daring, and sheer tenacity led to a tremendous victory for the cause of independence. This exciting tale of daunting odds and undaunted determination highlights a pivotal episode that changed history.

Read more less

Discover the history of one of the most exciting eras in the history of the United States and some of its most fascinating characters . . . the mountain men! They were the first white men to penetrate the continent, and they soon lost their identity, becoming something completely new and different. The popular legends of the mountain men were generated from a surprisingly short period in American history. From the first forays up the Missouri River in the early 1800s to the final Rendezvous at Horse Creek in 1840, fewer than forty years had passed. The legends were based on tales of incredible survival against the odds. Harsh winter conditions, dangerous terrain, and the constant threat of Indian encounters all challenged the mountain men. Some stories, like that of John Colter, who is thought to be the fist white man to have explored what is now Yellowstone National Park, were derided as being far-fetched. In order to survive, the mountain man had to be a superb marksman, a skilled horseman, and a trapper, and one who knew about nature and the seasons. As they sought ever more distant trapping grounds, the mountain men carved out a path that made the crossing of the American continent a reality rather than a dream. The demand for beaver fur has long since died out, but the tracks of the mountain men are still there to be seen. Through this detailed and comprehensively illustrated book, The Lives of Mountain Men brings us their stories!

Read more less

Is democracy possible only when it is safe for elites? Latin American history seems to suggest so. Right-wing forces have repeatedly deposed elected governments that challenged the rich and accepted democracy only after the defanging of the Left and widespread market reform. Latin America’s recent “left turn” raised the question anew: how would the Right react if democracy threatened elite interests?This book examines the complex relationship of the Left, the Right, and democracy through the lens of local politics in Venezuela and Bolivia. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, Gabriel Hetland compares attempts at participatory reform in cities governed by the Left and Right in each country. He finds that such measures were more successful in Venezuela than Bolivia regardless of which type of party held office, though existing research suggests that deepening democracy is much more likely under a left party. Hetland accounts for these findings by arguing that Venezuela’s ruling party achieved hegemony—presenting its ideas as the ideas of all—while Bolivia’s ruling party did not. The Venezuelan Right was compelled to act on the Left’s political terrain; this pushed it to implement participatory reform in an unexpectedly robust way. In Bolivia, demobilization of popular movements led to an inhospitable environment for local democratic deepening under any party.Democracy on the Ground shows that, just as right-wing hegemony can reshape the Left, leftist hegemony can reshape the Right. Offering new perspectives on participation, populism, and Latin American politics, this book challenges widespread ideas about the constraints on democracy.

Read more less

An updated edition of this measured, practical, and timely guide to LGBT rights and issues for educators and school officials With ongoing battles over transgender rights, bullying cases in the news almost daily, and marriage equality only recently the law of the land, the information in The Right to Be Out could not be more timely or welcome. In an updated second edition that explores the altered legal terrain of LGBT rights for students and educators, Stuart Biegel offers expert guidance on the most challenging concerns in this fraught context. Taking up the pertinent questions likely to arise regarding curriculum and pedagogy in the classroom, school sports, and transgender issues, Biegel reviews the dramatic legal developments of the past decades, identifies the principles at work, and analyzes the policy considerations that result from these changes. Central to his work is an understanding of the social, political, and personal tensions regarding the nature and extent of the right to be out, which includes both the First Amendment right to express an identity and the Fourteenth Amendment right to be treated equally. Acknowledging that LGBT issues affect people of every sexual orientation and gender identity, Biegel provides a road map of viable strategies for school officials and educators. The Right to Be Out, informed by the latest research-based findings, advances the proposition that a safe and supportive educational environment, built upon shared values and geared toward a greater appreciation of our pluralistic society, can lead to a better world for everyone.

Read more less

After World War II, the concept of borders became unsettled, especially after the rise of subaltern and multicultural studies in the 1980s. Art at the U.S.-Mexico border came to a turning point at the beginning of that decade with the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Beginning with a political history of the border, with an emphasis on the Chicano movement and its art production, Ila Sheren explores the forces behind the shift in thinking about the border in the late twentieth century.Particularly in the world of visual art, borders have come to represent a space of performance rather than a geographical boundary, a cultural terrain meant to be negotiated rather than a physical line. From 1980 forward, Sheren argues, the border became portable through performance and conceptual work. This dematerialization of the physical border after the 1980s worked in two opposite directions—the movement of border thinking to the rest of the world, as well as the importation of ideas to the border itself. Beginning with site-specific conceptual artwork of the 1980s, particularly the performances of the Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo, Sheren shows how these works reconfigured the border as an active site. Sheren moves on to examine artists such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, and Marcos Ramirez “ERRE.” Although Sheren places emphasis on the Chicano movement and its art production, this groundbreaking book suggests possibilities for the expansion of the concept of portability to contemporary art projects beyond the region.

Read more less

Peter Sloterdijk’s reputation as one of the most original thinkers of our time has grown steadily since the early 1980s. This volume of over thirty conversations and interviews spanning two decades illuminates the multiple interconnections of his life and work. In these wide-ranging dialogues Sloterdijk gives his views on a variety of topics, from doping to doxa, design to dogma, media to mobility and the financial crisis to football. Here we encounter Sloterdijk from every angle: as he expounds his ideas on the philosophical tradition and the latest strands of contemporary thought, as he analyses the problems of our age and as he provides a new and startling perspective on everyday events. Through exaggeration, Sloterdijk draws our attention to crucial issues and controversies and makes us aware of their implications for society and the individual. Always eager to share his knowledge and erudition, he reveals himself equally at home in ancient Babylon, in the channels of the mass media and on the ethical and moral terrain of religion, education or genetic engineering. Appealing both to the seasoned reader of Sloterdijk and to the curious newcomer, these dialogues offer fresh insight into the intellectual and political events of recent decades. They also give us glimpses of Sloterdijk’s own life story, from his early passionate love of reading and writing to his journeys in East and West, his commitment to Europe and his acceptance and enjoyment of the role of a public intellectual and philosopher in the twenty-first century.

Read more less

Stuart Hall is the leading figure in cultural studies today – no one else has had the same influence in the shaping of the field. This book is the first full-length study of Hall's work. It examines every aspect of his work and constitutes a major critical introduction and appraisal of Hall's contribution. The book guides the reader through Hall's formative experience in Jamaica and Oxford. It examines the increasing politicization of his thought and his identification with emancipatory, socialist politics. In Birmingham, during his Directorship of the seminal Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Hall created a genuinely collaborative approach to the study of culture. In a series of dazzling publications in the 1970s, the Birmingham Centre changed the way in which social scientists think about culture. The book provides a complete guide to the debates and contribution of the Birmingham School. It explores Hall's relation with Marx, Gramsci, Althusser and a variety of traditions in continental sociology and philosophy. In the 1980s Hall occupied the vanguard of criticism against Thatcherism and Reaganism. His passionate, principled attack on the New Right and his critique of authoritarian populism reached a readership well beyond the confines of the academy. His later work has moved on to the terrain of hybridity, identity, Occidentalism, race relations. multiculturalism and the politics of difference. All of these areas are methodically explored in the book, making it the most complete study of Hall's work and significance. It will be required reading by students and lecturers in cultural studies, media studies and sociology.

Read more less

Theodore Dreiser staked his reputation on fearless expression in his fiction, but he never was more outspoken than when writing about American politics, which he did prolifically. Although he is remembered primarily as a novelist, the majority of his twenty-seven books were nonfiction treatises. To Dreiser, everything was political. His sense for the hype and hypocrisies of politics took shape in reasoned but emphatic ruminations in his fiction and nonfiction on the hopes and disappointments of democracy, the temptations of nationalism and communism, the threat and trumpets of war, and the role of writers in resisting and advancing political ideas. Spanning a period of American history from the Progressive Era to the advent of the Cold War, this generous volume collects Dreiser's most important political writings from his journalism, broadsides, speeches, private papers, and long out-of-print nonfiction books. Touching on the Great Depression, the New Deal, and both World Wars as well as Soviet Russia and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, these writings exemplify Dreiser's candor and his penchant for championing the defenseless and railing against corruption. Positing Dreiser as an essential public intellectual who addressed the most important issues of the first half of the twentieth century, these writings also navigate historical terrain with prescient observations on topics such as religion, civil rights, national responsibility, individual ethics, global relations, and censorship that remain particularly relevant to a contemporary audience. Editor Jude Davies provides historical commentaries that frame these selections in the context of his other writings, particularly his novels.

Read more less

'I am writing this for you Saleem. I am writing about us, about how I loved you, and how I killed you.' As Avi Goldberg, the son of a Jewish pioneer, sits at a desk in a dark cell in a military prison in the Negev desert, he fills the long nights writing about his friend Saleem, an Israeli Arab he befriended on a beach one scorching July day, and the story of Saleem's family, whose loss of their Ancestral home in 1948 cast a long shadow over their lives. Avi and Saleem understand about the past: they believe it can be buried, reduced to nothing. But then September 2000 comes and war breaks out - endless, unforgiving and filled with loss. And in the midst of the Intifada, which rips their peoples apart, they both learn that war devours everything, that even seemingly insignificant, utterly mundane, things get lost in war and that, sometimes, if you do not speak of these things, they are lost to you forever. Set amongst the white chalk Galilee Mountains and the hostile desert terrain of the Negev Desert, the inbetween people is a story of longing that deals with hatred, forgiveness, and the search for redemption. The haunting poetic tone is not unlike that of Ben Okri's 'The Famished Road', whilst the themes examined are similar to those dealt with by Pat Barker in 'The Ghost Road'. The simplicity of the tone is unflinching throughout, and depicts the eternal search for a home and a sense of place.

Read more less

Discover 40 five-star hiking trails in and around Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol, including popular routes and hidden gems. From high mountains to the east and south to the historic walks in Tennessee, the Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia are a hiker’s nirvana. This region offers hundreds of miles of trails to explore in and around Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol, as well as the surrounding areas of Abingdon, Elizabethton, Greeneville, and Rogersville. Drawing from a wealth of trails on vast public lands and encompassing the Cherokee, Jefferson, and Pisgah national forests, the mosaic of hikes reflects the wide variety of terrain. State parks preserve beautiful places to visit, and urban parks provide quick, easy nature escapes. The Appalachian Trail, the most heralded and hiked footpath in our country, curves within range of the Tri-Cities for nearly 70 miles. Explore 40 of the region’s best, five-star trails with this easy-to-carry and easy-to-use guidebook. In the updated edition, acclaimed author and hiking expert Johnny Molloy shares everything you need to know about the area’s spectacular outings, from convenient suburban greenways to wilderness treks at an elevation of 6,000 feet. Inside you’ll find: Descriptions of 40 five-star hiking trails for all levels and interests GPS-based trail maps, elevation profiles, and detailed directions to trailheads Insight into the history, flora, and fauna of the routes Ratings for scenery, difficulty, trail condition, solitude, and accessibility for children Lace up, grab your pack, and hit the trail!

Read more less

In just 24 lessons of one hour or less, Sams Teach Yourself Unity Game Development in 24 Hours will help you master the Unity 2018 game engine at the heart of Ori and the Blind Forest, Firewatch, Monument Valley, and many other sizzling-hot games! This book’s straightforward, step-by-step approach teaches you everything from the absolute basics through sophisticated game physics, animation, and mobile device deploymenttechniques. Every lesson builds on what you’ve already learned, giving you a rock-solid foundation for real-world success. Step-by-step instructions carefully walk you through the most common Unity game development tasks.Practical, hands-on examples show you how to apply what you learn.Quizzes and exercises help you test your knowledge and stretch your skills.Notes and Tips point out shortcuts and solutions Learn how to… Get up and running fast with the Unity 2018 game engine and editor Work efficiently with Unity’s graphical asset pipeline Make the most of lights and cameras Sculpt stunning worlds with Unity’s terrain and environmental tools Script tasks ranging from capturing input to building complex behaviors Quickly create repeatable, reusable game objects with prefabs Implement easy, intuitive game user interfaces Control players through built-in and custom character controllers Build realistic physical and trigger collisions Leverage the full power of Unity’s Animation and new Timeline systems Integrate complex audio into your games Use mobile device accelerometers and multi-touch displays Build engaging 2D games with Unity’s 2D tools and Tilemap Apply the “finishing touches” and deploy your games

Read more less

Narrated by Charlie Mackesy. Brought to you by Penguin. With music by Max Richter and Isobel Waller-Bridge.Discover the universal tale of four unlikely friends that has captured the hearts of readers of all ages, now available in audio.Adapted into a BAFTA and Academy Award-winning animated short film.Experience the world of a curious boy, a greedy mole, a wary fox and a wise horse who find themselves together in sometimes difficult terrain, sharing their greatest fears and biggest discoveries about vulnerability, kindness, hope, friendship and love.Charlie's words and illustrations have brought comfort to many and have been shared online by readers around the world, as well as on t-shirts for Comic Relief, on magazine covers, on street lampposts in lockdown, in school classrooms, local cafés, and hospital ward walls. They've even been used as screensavers for NHS hospital computers in difficult times.The shared adventures and important conversations between the four friends are full of life lessons that have connected with readers of all ages.Enjoy the journey of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse brought to life in audio by its author and illustrator Charlie Mackesy, with a beautiful music score and the real wildlife sounds of rural England.© Charlie Mackesy 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2020Charlie Mackesy's mesmerizing debut combines the simplicity of "The Giving Tree", magic of "The Velveteen Rabbit" and the curiosity of "Paddington" - Elisabeth Egan, New York TimesThis is one of my favourite books - Dr Rangan ChatterjeeGorgeous - Chris Evans

Read more less

Master the tricks and techniques of business analytics consulting, specifically applicable to small-to-medium businesses (SMEs). Written to help you hone your business analytics skills, this book applies data science techniques to help solve problems and improve upon many aspects of a business' operations. SMEs are looking for ways to use data science and analytics, and this need is becoming increasingly pressing with the ongoing digital revolution. The topics covered in the books will help to provide the knowledge leverage needed for implementing data science in small business. The demand of small business for data analytics are in conjunction with the growing number of freelance data science consulting opportunities; hence this book will provide insight on how to navigate this new terrain.This book uses a do-it-yourself approach to analytics and introduces tools that are easily available online and are non-programming based. Data science will allow SMEs to understand their customer loyalty, market segmentation, sales and revenue increase etc. more clearly. Data Science and Analytics for SMEs is particularly focused on small businesses and explores the analytics and data that can help them succeed further in their business. What You'll Learn Create and measure the success of their analytics project Start your business analytics consulting career Use solutions taught in the book in practical uses cases and problems Who This Book Is ForBusiness analytics enthusiasts who are not particularly programming inclined, small business owners and data science consultants, data science and business students, and SME (small-to-medium enterprise) analysts

Read more less

For more than 2,000 years, Sun Tzu's The Art of War has provided leaders with essential advice on battlefield tactics, managing troops and terrain, and employing cunning and deception. An elemental part of Chinese culture, it has also become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival and success, whether in battle, in business or in relationships. Now, in this crisp, accessible new translation, John Minford brings this seminal work to life for today's readers. A lively, learned introduction, chronologies and suggested further reading are among the valuable apparatus included in this authoritative volume. Even those readers familiar with The Art of War will experience it anew, finding it more fascinating - and more chilling - than ever.Little is known about Sun Tzu (544-496 B.C.) and his life during the Warring States period after the decline of the Zhou dysnasty, but his classic, The Art of War, has been one of the central works of Chinese literature for 2500 years.John Minford studied Chinese at Oxford and at the Australian National University and has taught in China, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. He edited (with Geremie Barme) Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience and (with Joseph S. M. Lau) Chinese Classical Literature: An Anthology of Translations. He has translated numerous works from the Chinese, including the last two volumes of the Penguin Classics edition of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone and the martial-arts fiction of the contemporary Hong Kong novelist Louis Cha.

Read more less

'Impeccably researched' - London Cyclist'The climbing fan's bible' - The Washing Machine Post 'A deep dive into and a celebration of mountain climbing' - Cyclist MagazineWhen, during the Pyrenean stages of the 1998 Tour de France, a journalist asked Marco Pantani why he rode so fast in the mountains, the elfin Italian, unmistakeable in the bandanna and hooped ear-rings that played up to his "Pirate" nickname, replied: "To shorten my agony."Drawing on the fervour for these men of the mountains, Climbers looks at what sets these athletes apart within the world of bike racing, about why we love and cherish them, how they make cycling beautiful, and how they see themselves and the feats they achieve.Working chronologically, Peter Cossins explores the evolution of mountain-climbing. He offers a comprehensive view of the sport, combining contemporary reports with fresh one-to-one interviews with high-profile riders from the last 50 years, such as Cyrille Guimard, Hennie Kuiper and Andy Schleck. And, unlike many other cycling books, Climbers also includes the stories of female racers across the world, from Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Annemiek van Vleuten to Fabiana Luperini and Amanda Spratt.Climbers analyses the personalities of these racers, highlighting the individuality of climbing as an exercise and the fundamental fact that it's a solitary challenge undertaken in relentlessly unforgiving terrain that requires unremitting effort.Captivating and iconic, Climbers is the ultimate cycling book to understand what it takes both physically and mentally to take on the sport's hardest stages.

Read more less

Comme le «printemps arabe», bouleversement de sociétés qui a créé un visage inédit du monde arabe, des pratiques théologiques émergent dans nos milieux, tant sur le terrain qu'à l'université. La théologie vivrait-elle, elle aussi, un «printemps» qui se généralise en même temps qu'il se concrétise par des pratiques novatrices? Cet ouvrage permet d'examiner comment faire théologie à partir de postures moins traditionnelles (en termes d'enseignement universitaire, de cours magistraux, de discours professoral, etc.). Il déploie le ou les sens que portent ces pratiques issues du contexte actuel de la déchristianisation. Le «printemps» qui bouleverse et anime la théologie actuelle nous oblige à tourner notre regard non sur le passé afin de le restaurer de quelque manière ni sur l'avenir pour déployer d'autres projections théoriciennes, mais sur le présent avec tout ce qui s'y trouve et s'y donne comme exigences. D'où les questions principales que soulèvent tour à tour les auteurs qui ont contribué à cet ouvrage: - Quelles sont ces pratiques théologiques nouvelles qui émergent dans nos milieux universitaires, dans l'Église et ailleurs? - En quoi s'agit-il de signes de «printemps théologique»? - Comment se fait l'acte théologique en fonction des conditions concrètes qui sont les nôtres aujourd'hui? De concert avec la théologie, sont revisités le monde de l'université, plus largement encore celui de l'espace public, mais aussi les perspectives de l'apprentissage-enseignement de la théologie et de ses destinaires, qui plus est dans un contexte interreligieux et interculturel.

Read more less

In Forces of Influence, Fred Ende and Meghan Everette contend that schoolwide success starts with relationships—not only between students and adults, but also among all adults up and down the education hierarchy. It's by leveraging these relationships that educators can influence outcomes and effect real change.But how can educators make sure they exert their influence astutely and sensitively, navigating education's priorities and pressures while keeping their work focused on the mission? This thought-provoking book helps readers navigate this tricky terrain, introducing four ""forces,"" or levels, of influence and explaining how educators can use them to support one another's practice and push for positive outcomes for all learners. The authors: Explore each of the four forces—the pull, the push, the shove, and the nudge—and explain why they work and what research shows about their effectiveness. Introduce the Forces of Influence Leadership Matrix (FILM), a framework that identifies how the four forces connect and helps readers determine when to use which force, with whom, and how. Provide advice on how to course-correct by switching and layering the forces for positive results—and how to recover from setbacks. Offer copious tools to support this work, including role-plays, self-assessments, templates, and questions to spur reflection and action taking. Everything educators do requires them to build, sustain, and leverage relationships. With this guide, they no longer have to wing it.

Read more less

The Restless Northwest provides a brief, easy-to-follow overview of the geologic processes that shaped the Northwest.One of the attractions of the Northwest is its varied terrain, from the volcanic Cascade Range to the flood-scoured scablands of eastern Washington and the eroded peaks of the northern Rockies. These vast differences are the result of a collision of the old and the new. The western edge of Idaho was once the edge of ancient North America; as eons passed, a jumble of islands, minicontinents, and sediment piled up against the old continental edge, gradually extending it west to the present coastline.Figuring out how and when these various land forms came together to create the Northwest took much geological detective work. Unlike many geology books that focus on rocks, The Restless Northwest emphasizes the human drama of geology. The narrative is sprinkled with firsthand accounts of people involved in the exciting geological discoveries made in recent years.Hill Williams uses an informal conversational style to explain complex processes to a general readership. He enlivens the story of long-ago geologic events with fascinating asides on everything from enormous undersea tube worms to the Willamette meteorite, the largest ever found in the United States. Interested readers will discover much about Pacific Northwest geology without getting bogged down in an overabundance of details and scientific terms. Winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award.

Read more less

The essential lifesaver for students who want to master probability For students learning probability, its numerous applications, techniques, and methods can seem intimidating and overwhelming. That's where The Probability Lifesaver steps in. Designed to serve as a complete stand-alone introduction to the subject or as a supplement for a course, this accessible and user-friendly study guide helps students comfortably navigate probability's terrain and achieve positive results. The Probability Lifesaver is based on a successful course that Steven Miller has taught at Brown University, Mount Holyoke College, and Williams College. With a relaxed and informal style, Miller presents the math with thorough reviews of prerequisite materials, worked-out problems of varying difficulty, and proofs. He explores a topic first to build intuition, and only after that does he dive into technical details. Coverage of topics is comprehensive, and materials are repeated for reinforcement--both in the guide and on the book's website. An appendix goes over proof techniques, and video lectures of the course are available online. Students using this book should have some familiarity with algebra and precalculus. The Probability Lifesaver not only enables students to survive probability but also to achieve mastery of the subject for use in future courses. * A helpful introduction to probability or a perfect supplement for a course* Numerous worked-out examples* Lectures based on the chapters are available free online* Intuition of problems emphasized first, then technical proofs given* Appendixes review proof techniques* Relaxed, conversational approach

Read more less

Law and economics has arguably become one of the most influential theories in contemporary legal theory and adjudication. The essays in this volume, authored by both legal scholars and economists, constitute lively and critical engagements between law and economics and new institutional economics from the perspectives of legal and evolutionary theory. The result is a fresh look at core concepts in law and economics - such as 'institutions', 'institutional change' and 'market failure' - that offer new perspectives on the relationship between economic and legal governance. The increasingly transnational dimension of regulatory governance presents lawyers, economists and social scientists with an unprecedented number of complex analytical and conceptual questions. The contributions to this volume engage with legal theory, new institutional economics, economic sociology and evolutionary economics in an interdisciplinary assessment of the capacities and limits of the state, markets and institutions. Drawing as well upon legal sociology and the philosophy of law, the authors expand and transform the known terrain of 'law and economics' by applying evolutionary theory to both law and economics from a domestic and transnational perspective. Legal scholars, evolutionary and regulatory theorists, economists, economic sociologists, economic historians and political scientists will find this cutting-edge volume both challenging and engaging.Contributors: M. Amstutz, A. Aviram, B.L. Benson, G.-P. Calliess, F. Carvalho, P.A. David, S. Deakin, B. Du Laing, M. Eckardt, T. Eggertsson, J. Freiling, W. Kerber, R.H. McAdams, J. Mokyr, E.A. Posner, M. Renner, E. Schanze, J.M. Smits, M. Zamboni, P. Zumbansen

Read more less

Law and economics has arguably become one of the most influential theories in contemporary legal theory and adjudication. The essays in this volume, authored by both legal scholars and economists, constitute lively and critical engagements between law and economics and new institutional economics from the perspectives of legal and evolutionary theory. The result is a fresh look at core concepts in law and economics - such as 'institutions', 'institutional change' and 'market failure' - that offer new perspectives on the relationship between economic and legal governance. The increasingly transnational dimension of regulatory governance presents lawyers, economists and social scientists with an unprecedented number of complex analytical and conceptual questions. The contributions to this volume engage with legal theory, new institutional economics, economic sociology and evolutionary economics in an interdisciplinary assessment of the capacities and limits of the state, markets and institutions. Drawing as well upon legal sociology and the philosophy of law, the authors expand and transform the known terrain of 'law and economics' by applying evolutionary theory to both law and economics from a domestic and transnational perspective. Legal scholars, evolutionary and regulatory theorists, economists, economic sociologists, economic historians and political scientists will find this cutting-edge volume both challenging and engaging.Contributors: M. Amstutz, A. Aviram, B.L. Benson, G.-P. Calliess, F. Carvalho, P.A. David, S. Deakin, B. Du Laing, M. Eckardt, T. Eggertsson, J. Freiling, W. Kerber, R.H. McAdams, J. Mokyr, E.A. Posner, M. Renner, E. Schanze, J.M. Smits, M. Zamboni, P. Zumbansen

Read more less

This timely Research Handbook offers new ways in which to navigate the diverse terrain of community development research. Contributions from leading experts unpack the foundations and history of community development research and look to its future, exploring innovative frameworks for conceptualizing community development. Chapters consider the trajectories and impact of global community development research, offering critical insight into the methods and frameworks that are currently being used in the field. Covering varied topics, from housing and food availability, to revitalization and faith-based regeneration, this Research Handbook provides a broad and in-depth exploration of the state of the field today. Comprehensive and unequivocally progressive, this is key reading for social and public policy researchers in need of an understanding of the current trends in community development research as well as practitioners and policymakers working on urban, rural and regional development. Contributors include: N. Al Sader, K. Anacker, C.J.L. Balsas, L.J. Beaulieu, G. Bonilla-Santiago, E.A. Dobis, B.M. Elias, K. Flowers, S. Frimpong, J. Fursova, I. Garcia, F. Handy, B. Hofstedt, J.B. Hollander, J.G. Huff Jr., M.R. Islam, S. Khademi, R. Kleinhans, R.C. Knopf, P. Kraeger, I. Kumar, R. Lewis, D. Mason, J. McGrath, A. Meshkini, M. Norouzi, M. Page, C.B. Peterson, J. Reece, K.A. Rouf, M. Roseland, A.R. Russell, R.M. Silverman, M. Spiliotopoulou, C. Sutton-Brown-Fox, C.A. Talmage, H.L. Taylor, Jr., T.D. Thomas, G.H. Tonon, L. Townsend, D.P. Varady, C. Wallace, L. Yin

Read more less

A field guide to a nonfascist life at the end of the world as we know itA Guerrilla Guide to Refusal is an unexpected approach to philosophy from a guerrilla-logic point of view. Harnessing critical theory to creatively reimagine counterinsurgency, guerrilla warfare, and interventions beyond the political mainstream, it takes us on a journey through anarchist infowar, queer outlaws, and black insurgency—through a subterranean network of communiques, military documents, contemporary art, political slogans, adversarial blogs, and captive media. In doing so, it provides powerful new insight into contemporary political movements that pose no demands, refuse labels, and offer no solutions.Written to both inspire and provoke, A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal urges us to think through the refusal to participate in politics as usual. Author Andrew Culp demonstrates how evasion can combatively deny the existing order its power. Focusing on punk cinema, anarchist pamphlets, feminist art projects, hacker manifestos, and guerrilla manuals, he foregrounds invisibility as a novel force of disruption. He draws on concepts of criminality, fugitivity, and anonymity to bring a more nuanced understanding of how power makes things—and people—visible.The book’s unique format is that of a theoretical manual, comprising freestanding segments instead of blueprints. Poised to reach beyond the academy into activist circles, this potent theory-in-action intervention forces us to reconsider the terrain upon which our struggles against patriarchy, anti-Blackness, capitalism, and the state operate.

Read more less

Over the five decades of her writing career Willa Cather responded to, and entered into dialogue with, shifts in the terrain of American life. These cultural encounters informed her work as much as the historical past in which much of her writing is based. Cather was a multifaceted cultural critic, immersing herself in the arts, broadly defined: theater and opera, art, narrative, craft production. Willa Cather and the Arts shows that Cather repeatedly engaged with multiple forms of art, and that even when writing about the past she was often addressing contemporary questions. The essays in this volume are informed by new modes of contextualization, including the increasingly popular view of Cather as a pivotal or transitional figure working between and across very different cultural periods and by the recent publication of Cather’s correspondence. The collection begins by exploring the ways Cather encountered and represented high and low cultures, including Cather’s use of “racialized vernacular” in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. The next set of essays demonstrates how historical research, often focusing on local features in Cather’s fiction, contributes to our understanding of American culture, from musicological sources to the cultural development of Pittsburgh. The final trio of essays highlights current Cather scholarship, including a food studies approach to O Pioneers! and an examination of Cather’s use of ancient philosophy in The Professor’s House. Together the essays reassess Cather’s lifelong encounter with, and interpretation and reimagining of, the arts.

Read more less

A comprehensive, practical introduction to one of the most important new trends in manufacturing, globally The delivery of a service component as an added value when providing products, servitization is all the rage in the manufacturing sector around the world. Yet, despite the clear competitive advantage of servitization, most manufacturers remain reluctant to venture into, what for them, is a strange new world. Written by a team of internationally respected servitization experts and innovators, this book provides you with a detailed road map for successfully navigating the servitization terrain. Unlike most authors on the subject who merely sing the praises of servitization, Baines and Lightfoot provide you with a framework for accessing the feasibility of adopting a services-led competitive strategy in your company, along with strategies for designing and implementing the kinds of service offerings customers increasingly are coming to expect. Grounded in real-world practice and supported by a wealth of up-to-the minute research, this book helps ease the way for manufacturers considering adopting a servitization model Shows how to exploit your company's manufacturing competencies to build a strong servitization element without becoming "just another services company" Provides numerous illustrations and examples of services-led competitive strategies, with an emphasis on the advanced services most widely associated with servitization worldwide Packed with fascinating and instructive case studies from leading manufacturing firms across industry sectors, including Caterpillar, Rolls-Royce, Alstom, MAN, Xerox and others

Read more less

The secular world may have thought it was done with theology, but theology was not done with it. Recent decades have seen a resurgence of religion on the social and political scene, which have driven thinkers across many disciplines to grapple with the Christian theological inheritance of the modern world. Adam Kotsko provides a unique guide to this fraught terrain. The title essay establishes a fresh and unexpected redefinition of theology and its complex and often polemical relationship with its sister discipline of philosophy. Subsequent essays build on this framework from three different perspectives. In the first part, Kotsko demonstrates the continued vibrancy of Christian theology as a creative and constructive pursuit outside the walls of the church, showing that theological concepts can underwrite a powerful critique of the modern world. The second approaches Christian theology from the perspective of a range of contemporary philosophers, showing how philosophical thought is drawn to theology even despite itself. The concluding section is devoted to the unexpected theological roots of the modern world-system, making a case that the interplay of state and economy and the structure of modern racial oppression both build on theological patterns of thought. Kotsko’s book ultimately shows that theology is not a scholarly game or an edifying spiritual discipline, but a world-shaping force of great power. Lives are at stake when we do theology—and if we don’t do it, someone else will.

Read more less

The first collection to address the collective transformation happening in response to the rise of social media With the rise of web 2.0 and social media platforms taking over vast tracts of territory on the internet, the media landscape has shifted drastically in the past 20 years, transforming previously stable relationships between media creators and consumers. The Social Media Reader is the first collection to address the collective transformation with pieces on social media, peer production, copyright politics, and other aspects of contemporary internet culture from all the major thinkers in the field. Culling a broad range and incorporating different styles of scholarship from foundational pieces and published articles to unpublished pieces, journalistic accounts, personal narratives from blogs, and whitepapers, The Social Media Reader promises to be an essential text, with contributions from Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Anderson, Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, and Fred von Loehmann, to name a few. It covers a wide-ranging topical terrain, much like the internet itself, with particular emphasis on collaboration and sharing, the politics of social media and social networking, Free Culture and copyright politics, and labor and ownership. Theorizing new models of collaboration, identity, commerce, copyright, ownership, and labor, these essays outline possibilities for cultural democracy that arise when the formerly passive audience becomes active cultural creators, while warning of the dystopian potential of new forms of surveillance and control.

Read more less

The increased ability of clandestine groups to operate with little regard for borders or geography is often taken to be one of the dark consequences of a brave new globalized world. Yet even for terrorists and smugglers, the world is not flat; states exert formidable control over the technologies of globalization, and difficult terrain poses many of the same problems today as it has throughout human history. In No Man's Land, Justin V. Hastings examines the complex relationship that illicit groups have with modern technology—and how and when geography still matters. Based on often difficult fieldwork in Southeast Asia, Hastings traces the logistics networks, command and control structures, and training programs of three distinct clandestine organizations: the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, the insurgent Free Aceh Movement, and organized criminals in the form of smugglers and maritime pirates. Hastings also compares the experiences of these groups to others outside Southeast Asia, including al-Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and the Somali pirates. Through reportage, memoirs, government archives, interrogation documents, and interviews with people on both sides of the law, he finds that despite their differences, these organizations are constrained and shaped by territory and technology in similar ways. In remote or hostile environments, where access to the infrastructure of globalization is limited, clandestine groups must set up their own costly alternatives. Even when successful, Hastings concludes, criminal, insurgent and terrorist organizations are not nearly as mobile as pessimistic views of the sinister side of globalization might suggest.

Read more less

An in-depth history of how finance remade everyday life in Thatcher's Britain.Are We Rich Yet? tells the story of the financialization of British society. During the 1980s and 1990s, financial markets became part of daily life for many Britons as the practice of investing moved away from the offices of the City of London, onto Britain’s high streets, and into people’s homes. The Conservative Party claimed this shift as evidence that capital ownership was in the process of being democratized. In practice, investing became more institutionalized than ever in late-twentieth-century Britain: inclusion frequently meant tying one’s fortunes to the credit, insurance, pension, and mortgage industries to maintain independence from state-run support systems. In tracing the rise of a consumer-oriented mass investment culture, historian Amy Edwards explains how the "financial" became such a central part of British society, not only economically and politically, but socially and culturally, too. She shifts our focus away from the corridors of Whitehall and towards a cast of characters that included brokers, bankers and traders, newspaper editors, goods manufacturers, marketing departments, production companies, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women. Between them, they shaped the terrain upon which political and economic reform occurred. Grappling with the interactions between structural transformation and the rhythms of everyday life, Are We Rich Yet? thus understands the rise of neoliberalism as something other than the inevitable outcome of a carefully orchestrated right-wing political revolution.

Read more less

Gustav Landauer--literary critic, mystical philosopher, and left-wing activists--was Germany's major anarchist thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this full-scale intellectual biography, Lunn depicts the evolution of Landauer's social thought, a rich terrain within which to examine afresh some intellectual crosscurrents of the Wilhelmian era. Landauer's work in the various circles and movements of his social milieu after 1900, including anarchist, youth movement, expressionist, and Zionist groups, reveal a convergence of volkisch and communitarian ideas with libertarian forms of socialist democracy. The study of this kind of "romantic socialism," in revolt against both industrial modernity and authoritarian government, highlights the inadequacy of viewing volkisch themes exclusively in terms of Nazi "roots." What emerges from this study is the appeal of antiauthoritarian and communitarian ideas for middle-class Left intellectuals dissatisfied with the official Social Democratic Party. In the light of the tragic failures of democratic and socialist forces to gain middle-class support during the Weimar Republic, and of the Nazis' antidemocratic uses of Gemeinschaft, this earlier search for a communitarian democracy gains in importance. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Read more less

The internet has transformed the idea of home for Indians and Indian Americans. In Virtual Homelands: Indian Immigrants and Online Cultures in the United States, Madhavi Mallapragada analyzes home pages and other online communities organized by diasporic and immigrant Indians from the late 1990s through the social media period. Engaging the shifting aspects of belonging, immigrant politics, and cultural citizenship by linking the home page, household, and homeland as key sites, Mallapragada illuminates the contours of belonging and reveals how Indian American struggles over it trace back to the web's active mediation in representing, negotiating, and reimagining "home." As Mallapragada shows, ideologies around family and citizenship shift to fit the transnational contexts of the online world and immigration. At the same time, the tactical use of the home page to make gender, racial, and class struggles visible and create new modes for belonging implicates the web within complex political and cultural terrain. On e-commerce, community, and activist sites, the recasting of home and homeland online points to intrusion by public agents such as the state, the law, and immigration systems in the domestic, the private, and the familial. Mallapragada reveals that the home page may mobilize to reproduce conservative narratives of Indian immigrants' familial and citizenship cultures, but the reach of a website extends beyond the textual and discursive to encompass the institutions shaping it, as the web unmakes and remakes ideas of "India" and "America."

Read more less

The Indian subdistrict of Shahabad, located in the dwindling forests of the southeastern tip of Rajasthan, is an area of extreme poverty. Beset by droughts and food shortages in recent years, it is the home of the Sahariyas, former bonded laborers, officially classified as Rajasthan's only "primitive tribe." From afar, we might consider this the bleakest of the bleak, but in Poverty and the Quest for Life, Bhrigupati Singh asks us to reconsider just what quality of life means. He shows how the Sahariyas conceive of aspiration, advancement, and vitality in both material and spiritual terms, and how such bridging can engender new possibilities of life. Singh organizes his study around two themes: power and ethics, through which he explores a complex terrain of material and spiritual forces. Authority remains contested, whether in divine or human forms; the state is both despised and desired; high and low castes negotiate new ways of living together, in conflict but also cooperation; new gods move across rival social groups; animals and plants leave their tracks on human subjectivity and religiosity; and the potential for vitality persists even as natural resources steadily disappear. Studying this milieu, Singh offers new ways of thinking beyond the religion-secularism and nature-culture dichotomies, juxtaposing questions about quality of life with political theologies of sovereignty, neighborliness, and ethics, in the process painting a rich portrait of perseverance and fragility in contemporary rural India.

Read more less

Armajani unites art and architecture, Persian calligraphy and abstract expressionism, American vernacular architecture and Russian constructivism In Tehran, children walking home from school would scrape their pencils against the walls, tracing their paths through the city and chanting "follow this line." Siah Armajani (born 1939) recounts that this simple gesture speaks to the desire to mark one's presence in space. Siah Armajani: Follow This Line asks visitors to follow the artist across a shifting terrain, first within the context of pre-revolution Iran, and later, postwar and present-day America. Though Armajani is best known today for his works of public art—bridges, gazebos, reading rooms—located across the United States and Europe, this groundbreaking exhibition argues for a thoughtful reexamination of his studio as the site of a rich and generative practice. His works engage a range of references: from Persian calligraphy to the manifesto, letter and talisman; from poetry to mathematical equations and computer programming; from the abstract expressionist canvas to American vernacular architecture, Bauhaus design and Russian constructivism. Published to accompany Armajani's first major US retrospective, this catalog is his most comprehensive publication to date. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, it offers new scholarship on his six-decade-long career and also includes previously unpublished texts. Contributions by Nazgol Ansarinia, Sam Durant, Barbad Golshiri and Slavs and Tatars speak to Armajani's influence on a younger generation of artists based in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Read more less

America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776. The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

Read more less

A practical workbook of activities designed to supercharge GCSE students’ resilience, positivity, organisation and determination. Successful students approach their studies with the right behaviours, skills and attitudes: they understand how to learn and revise effectively, they’re determined and organised, they give more discretionary effort and they get top results. Success at GCSE is a result of character, not intelligence. The GCSE Mindset Student Workbook offers students a structured way to work through the 40 activities in Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin’s The GCSE Mindset (ISBN 978-178583184-3). It coaches students to develop the key characteristics which will help them be successful at GCSE: vision, effort, systems, practice and attitude (VESPA). Based on the authors’ collective 30-plus years of teaching and coaching, this practical workbook will enable students to break through barriers, build resilience, better manage their workload and release their potential. While categorised thematically under the VESPA umbrella, the activities have been sequenced chronologically by month in order to chart the student’s journey through the academic year and to help navigate the psychological terrain ahead. Each activity has been designed with a pupil audience in mind, takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete, and allows space for students to record and reflect on their answers and to organise their thinking. Sold in packs of 25, the workbook sets are ideally suited for GCSE teachers and tutors who want their classes to benefit from the GCSE mindset and are using The GCSE Mindset.

Read more less

With his special forces training completed, Sergeant Roland Barker was allocated to Operation Arundel as its radio operator. Led by Captain Martin Smith MC, he was parachuted into the Dolomites in 1944. The team’s brief was to cause havoc in the area around the Italian border and to infiltrate into Austria. Whilst attempting to evade German forces, Sergeant Barker and Major Bill Smallwood were navigating mountainous terrain when the Major fell injuring himself and thus was unable to move rapidly. Despite their best efforts, both Smallwood and Barker were subsequently captured by pursuing German troops who they were unable to outpace. Barker provides a vivid account of being ‘interrogated’ by the SS and Gestapo and despite the threats and the terrible conditions, the true nature of their mission was never revealed to the enemy. Having survived these experiences, he was incarcerated in Stalag Luft XVIII in Southern Austria. Ever defiant, Barker escaped by having himself admitted to the camp hospital and made his way into Hungary, from where, as this account of his wartime service reveals, he was eventually repatriated to the UK. After the war Barker opted to remain in the Army, at which point he took a commission. Promoted to Major, Barker became the Officer Commanding 22 SAS in Malaya. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Malaya in 1953, before he could see through his plan to have his memoir published.

Read more less

The campaign for Atlanta was pivotal to the outcome of the American Civil War. Roughly 190,000 men waged war across northern Georgia in a struggle that lasted 133 days. Today a national park at Kennesaw commemorates this titanic fight, and there are a surprising number of physical reminders still extant across the state.The struggle for Atlanta divides naturally into two stages. The first half of the campaign, from May to mid-July, can be defined as a war of maneuver, called by one historian the “Red Clay Minuet.” Under Joseph E. Johnston the Confederate Army of Tennessee repeatedly invited battle from strong defensive positions. Under William T. Sherman, the combined Federal armies of the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio repeatedly avoided attacking those positions; Sherman preferring to outflank them instead. Though there were a number of sharp, bloody engagements during this phase of the campaign, the combats were limited. Only the battles of Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain could be considered general engagements.Johnston’s repeated retreats and the commensurate loss of terrain finally forced Confederate President Jefferson Davis to replace him with a more aggressive commander—John B. Hood.This work will portray the first half of the Atlanta Campaign in text and images, using both historic sketches and photographs, as well as post-war and modern images. Extant trenches, rifle pits, redoubts, shoupades, and other works, as well as the battlefields, will be covered, as well as surviving historic structures and the monuments and cemeteries that commemorate the campaign.

Read more less

From the abolition era to the Civil Rights movement to the age of Obama, the promise of perfectibility and improvement resonates in the story of American democracy. But what exactly does racial "progress" mean, and how do we recognize and achieve it? Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress After Slavery uncovers a surprising answer to this question in the writings of American authors and activists, both black and white. Conventional narratives of democracy stretching from Thomas Jefferson's America to our own posit a purposeful break between past and present as the key to the viability of this political form--the only way to ensure its continual development. But for Pauline E. Hopkins, Frederick Douglass, Stephen Crane, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton E. Griggs, Callie House, and the other figures examined in this book, the campaign to secure liberty and equality for all citizens proceeds most potently when it refuses the precepts of progressive time. Placing these authors' post-Civil War writings into dialogue with debates about racial optimism and pessimism, tracts on progress, and accounts of ex-slave pension activism, and extending their insights into our contemporary period, Laski recovers late-nineteenth-century literature as a vibrant site for doing political theory. Untimely Democracy ultimately shows how one of the bleakest periods in American racial history provided fertile terrain for a radical reconstruction of our most fundamental assumptions about this political system. Offering resources for moments when the march of progress seems to stutter and even stop, this book invites us to reconsider just what democracy can make possible.

Read more less

This book is about Madeleine Slade (1892-1982) and Catherine Mary Heilemann (1901-1982), two English associates of Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869-1948), known in India as Mira Behn and Sarala Behn. The odysseys of these women present a counternarrative to the forces of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and globalized development. The book examines their extraordinary journey to India to work with Gandhi and their roles in India’s independence movement, their spiritual strivings, their independent work in the Himalayas, and most importantly, their contribution to the evolution of Gandhian philosophy of socio-economic reconstruction and environmental conservation in the present Indian state of Uttarakhand. The author shows that these women developed ideas and practices that drew from an extensive intellectual terrain that cannot be limited to Gandhi’s work. She delineates directions in which Gandhian thought and experiments in rural development work and visions of a new society evolved through the lives, activism, and written contributions of these two women. Their thought and practice generated a new cultural consciousness on sustainability that had a key influence in environmental debates in India and beyond and were responsible for two of the most important environmental movements of India and the world: the Chipko Movement or the movement against commercial green felling of trees by hugging them, and the protest against the Tehri high dam on the Bhagirathi River. To this day, their teachings and philosophies constitute a useful and significant contribution to the search for and implementation of global ideas of ecological conservation and human development.

Read more less