Search results for ""Author Alex"

The human race is on a 10,000 year urban adventure. Our ancestors wandered the planet or lived scattered in villages, yet by the end of this century almost all of us will live in cities. But that journey has not been a smooth one and urban civilizations have risen and fallen many times in history. The ruins of many of them still enchant us. This book tells the story of the rise and fall of ancient cities from the end of the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Middle Ages. It is a tale of war and politics, pestilence and famine, triumph and tragedy, by turns both fabulous and squalid. Its focus is on the ancient Mediterranean: Greeks and Romans at the centre, but Phoenicians and Etruscans, Persians, Gauls, and Egyptians all play a part. The story begins with the Greek discovery of much more ancient urban civilizations in Egypt and the Near East, and charts the gradual spread of urbanism to the Atlantic and then the North Sea in the centuries that followed. The ancient Mediterranean, where our story begins, was a harsh environment for urbanism. So how were cities first created, and then sustained for so long, in these apparently unpromising surroundings? How did they feed themselves, where did they find water and building materials, and what did they do with their waste and their dead? Why, in the end, did their rulers give up on them? And what it was like to inhabit urban worlds so unlike our own - cities plunged into darkness every night, cities dominated by the temples of the gods, cities of farmers, cities of slaves, cities of soldiers. Ultimately, the chief characters in the story are the cities themselves. Athens and Sparta, Persepolis and Carthage, Rome and Alexandria: cities that formed great families. Their story encompasses the history of the generations of people who built and inhabited them, whose short lives left behind monuments that have inspired city builders ever since - and whose ruins stand as stark reminders to the 21st century of the perils as well as the potential rewards of an urban existence.

Read more less

From its trademark row houses to Benjamin Henry Latrobe's landmark Cathedral (now Basilica) of the Assumption, Baltimore architecture can rightly claim to be as eclectic, exciting, and inspiring as that of any American city. Many of its important buildings figure prominently in the oeuvres of leading American architects: Latrobe, Robert Mills, Maximilien Godefroy, Richard Upjohn, Stanford White, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe among them. Yet Baltimore's distinctive urban environment also owes much to the achievements of local talents, including Robert Cary Long Sr. and Jr., John Rudolph Niernsee and James Crawford Neilson, E. Francis Baldwin and Josias Pennington, Laurence Hall Fowler, Alexander Cochran-not to mention generations of skilled craftsmen and builders. Baltimore's architecture rewards close study, and in The Architecture of Baltimore contributors and editors Mary Ellen Hayward and Frank R. Shivers, Jr., have brought together an impressive group of scholars, writers, and critics to provide a fresh account of the city's architectural history. The narrative begins by looking at eighteenth-century Georgian buildings that reflect the grandeur of the style, goes on to the prosperous port city's Federal-period achievements, including many country houses with their delicate details, then proceeds to Baltimore's monumental contributions to early nineteenth-century American neoclassical design. Romantic stylings follow, with excursions into the Greek and Gothic Revivals, and the popular Italianate-mode for town and country houses, the soaring spires of churches, and the classical dignity of public spaces like the Peabody Library. Later in the nineteenth century a picturesque eclecticism produced such monuments as the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's Mount Royal Station, as well as intriguing changes to the city's versatile row houses. Contributors discuss the evolution of industrial buildings and the growth of the city's architectural profession. The Architecture of Baltimore also addresses the arrival of modernism in Charm City, examines the origins and challenges of historic preservation, and assesses the Baltimore renaissance of the period 1955-2000, which saw the construction of Charles Center, Harborplace, and the sports complex at Camden Yards. Here at last we have a comprehensive guide to Baltimore's architectural heritage-lost and still-standing alike. Illustrated with nearly 600 photographs, architectural plans, maps, and details, this impressive work of scholarship also offers an engaging narrative of the history of Baltimore itself-its men and women of all stations, its taste and traditional preferences, its good choices and lamentable ones, and its built environment as a social and cultural chronicle.

Read more less

Big Finish picks up the events after Miracle Day with Torchwood: Aliens Among Us.Captain Jack and Gwen Cooper have restarted Torchwood. But it's in a very different Cardiff. Something terrible has happened to the city. With every day getting darker, will Torchwood need to adopt a whole new approach? 1. Changes Everything by James Goss.Tyler Steele has washed up in Cardiff looking for a fresh start. A disgraced journalist, he's looking into the Red Doors movement - are they really behind the terrorist attacks on immigrants? Who is stirring up the racism and hatred in the city, and what does outsourcing contractor 3Sol have to do with it? 2. Aliens & Sex & Chips & Gravy by James Goss. Has Cardiff really been invaded by aliens? Tyler thinks he's found a lead - the daughter of the mysterious Ro-Jedda is getting married and has booked a private party. If Torchwood can infiltrate it, there's a chance they'll end up closer to the truth. Free bar, canapes, and the chance to find out what's really going on. What could possibly go wrong? 3. Orr by Juno Dawson. Vincent Parry is the most successful property developer in Cardiff. A while ago he made an agreement with the mysterious Ro-Jedda, and it is an arrangement he has come to bitterly regret. Something has to be done - but it's going to cost him everything he loves. With time running out for Cardiff, Torchwood encounter an alien who knows them only too well. 4. Superiority Complex by A K Benedict. Poverty and homelessness are on the rise in Cardiff. The streets are full of the desperate and the dispossessed. So, of course, it's the right time to open a 7-star luxury, all-inclusive hotel. And, naturally, the hotel is for aliens only. As the humans stand outside the gates and look hungrily in, there's one thing that makes them smile. Someone is murdering the guests.Torchwood has appeared on both UK and US television, BBC radio productions, novels, and now - courtesy of Big Finish - in new audio plays. This release marks the first of three sets collectively created as a fifth series following on from the four series on TV, with Russell T Davies advising on the new arcs, storylines and characters. CAST: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Tom Price (Sgt Andy Davidson), Paul Clayton (Mr Colchester), Alexandria Riley (Ng), Jonny Green (Tyler Steele), and Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Stephen Critchlow (The Mayor), Rachel Atkins (Ro-Jedda), Ruth Lloyd (Vorsun), Sophie Colquhoun (Madrigal), Rhian Marston-Jones (Quenel), Lu Corfield (Brongwyn), Rhys Whomsley (Osian), Sharon Morgan (Mary Cooper), David Sibley (Vincent Parry), Sam Beart (Catrin Parry), Anthony Boyle (Hotel Manager), Sam Jones (Toobert Jailert), Wilf Scolding (Personal Trainer) NOTE: Torchwood contains adult material and is not suitable for younger listeners.

Read more less

A fake relationship with a one-night stand is anything but an act in this witty and heartfelt new romantic comedy that is perfect for fans of Alexandria Bellefleur, Casey McQuiston and Rosie Danan.--- Everyone around Iris Kelly is in love.And she's happy for all of them, truly. So what if she misses her friends and family, who are busy with their perfectly paired partners. At least she has her brand-new career writing romance novels (the irony), right?Wrong. She is completely out of ideas after having spent all of her romantic energy on her debut. Perfectly happy to ignore her problems as usual, Iris goes to a Portland bar. But a night of dancing with a sexy stranger named Stefania turns into the worst one-night stand Iris has had in her life (vomit and crying are regretfully involved).To get her mind off everything, Iris tries out for a local play only to come face-to-face with Stefania-or, Stevie, her real name. When Stevie desperately asks Iris to play along as her girlfriend, Iris is shocked but goes along with it in a bid to get her creative juices flowing.As the two women play the part of a couple, they turn into a constant state of hot-and-bothered and soon it just comes down to who will make the real first move . . .Why readers love Ashley Herring Blake . . .'A hot, frothy romcom with a relatable heart beating at its centre. I can't wait for the rest of the series!' Talia Hibbert'A truly exquisite romance . . . I'm wildly in love with this book' Rachel Lynn Solomon'A swoon-worthy, laugh-out-loud romp of a romance' Kosoko Jackson'Snappy banter and seriously scorching chemistry; you'll need a very cold shower after this read!' Lana Harper'Charming and entertaining . . . Blake's masterful blend of sexual tension and growing affection will have readers swooning' Karelia Stetz-Waters'Snarky, steamy, and swoony in equal measure, I never wanted this book to end' Meryl Wilsner

Read more less

This Festschrift in honor of Prof. Edward F. Wente contains contributions by forty-three of his colleagues and friends. Contents: Publications and Communications of Edward F. Wente ( C. E. Jones ); A Monument of Khaemwaset Honoring Imhotep ( J. P. Allen ); Feuds or Vengeance? Rhetoric and Social Forms ( J. Baines ); Theban Seventeenth Dynasty ( J. von Beckerath ); Inventory Offering Lists and the Nomenclature for Boxes and Chests in the Old Kingdom ( E. Brovarski ); A Case for Narrativity: Gilt Stucco Mummy Cover in the Graeco-Roman Museum, Alexandria, Inv. 27808 ( L. H. Corcoran ); Opening of the Mouth as Temple Ritual ( E. Cruz-Uribe ); A Letter of Reproach ( R. J. Demaree ); Creation on the Potter's Wheel at the Eastern Horizon of Heaven ( P. F. Dorman ); The Border and the Yonder Side ( G. Englund ); Enjoying the Pleasures of Sensation: Reflections on a Significant Feature of Egyptian Religion ( R. B. Finnestad ); Some Comments on Khety's Instruction for Little Pepi on His Way to School (Satire on the Trades) ( J. L. Foster ); On Fear of Death and the Three bwts Connected with Hathor ( P. J. Frandsen ); Two Inlaid Inscriptions of the Earliest Middle Kingdom ( H. Goedicke ); Historical Background to the Exodus: Papyrus Anastasi VIII ( S. I. Groll ); The Mummy of Amenhotep III ( J. E. Harris ); Fragmentary Quartzite Female Hand Found in Abou-Rawash ( Z. Hawass ); Two Stelae of King Seqenenre Djehuty-aa of the Seventeenth Dynasty ( H. Jacquet-Gordon ); A Marital Title from the New Kingdom ( J. J. Janssen ); Remarks on Continuity in Egyptian Literary Tradition ( R. Jasnow ); Ethnic Considerations in Persian Period Egypt ( J. H. Johnson ); The nfrw-Collar Reconsidered ( W. R. Johnson ); The Wealth of Amun of Thebes under Ramesses II ( K. A. Kitchen ); Wie jung ist die memphitische Philosophie auf dem Shabaqo-Stein? ( R. Krauss ); 'Listening' to the Ancient Egyptian Woman: Letters, Testimonials, and Other Expressions of Self ( B. S. Lesko ); Some Further Thoughts on Chapter 162 of the Book of the Dead ( L. H. Lesko ); Royal Iconography of Dynasty 0 ( T. J. Logan ); The Auction of Pharaoh ( J. G. Manning ); Semi-Literacy in Egypt: Some Erasures from the Amarna Period ( P. Der Manuelian ); Vinegar at Deir el-Medina ( N. B. Millet ); Observations on Pre-Amarna Theology during the Earliest Reign of Amenhotep IV ( W. J. Murnane ); Zum Kultbildritual in Abydos ( J. Osing ); Sportive Fencing as a Ritual for Destroying the Enemies of Horus ( P. A. Piccione ); An Oblique Reference to the Expelled High Priest Osorkon? ( R. K. Ritner ); The Ahhotep Coffins: The Archaeology of an Egyptological Reconstruction ( A. M. Roth ); A Litany from the Eighteenth Dynasty Tomb of Merneith ( D. P. Silverman ); Nag-ed-Deir Papyri ( W. K. Simpson ); O. Hess = O. Naville = O. BM 50601: An Elusive Text Relocated ( M. J. Smith ); Celibacy and Adoption among God's Wives of Amun and Singers in the Temple of Amun: A Re-examination of the Evidence ( E. Teeter ); New Kingdom Temples at Elkab ( C. C. Van Siclen III ); Menstrual Synchrony and the 'Place of Women' in Ancient Egypt (OIM 13512) ( T. G. Wilfong ); Serra East and the Mission of the Middle Kingdom Fortresses in Nubia ( B. B. Williams ); End of the Late Bronze Age and Other Crisis Periods: A Volcanic Cause? ( F. J. Yurco ).

Read more less

This special collection of intermediate to advanced piano repertoire has been lovingly curated by internationally renowned pianist, Isata Kanneh-Mason. Inspired by her musical journey from childhood prodigy to accomplished performer, and drawing on her championship of female composers and composers of colour, Isata has handpicked a wonderfully diverse melange of music for players to explore. Alongside classical masterpieces such as Clara Schumann's Notturno, players will find repertoire by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, George Gershwin and Alexander Desplat as well as a stunning new work by Errollyn Wallen. Carefully edited and fingered, Piano Inspiration 2 is ideal both for recreational playing and those seeking own-choice repertoire for ABRSM Performance Grades (Grades 7+). -12 pieces for intermediate to advanced players, each holding special significance to Isata -A wonderful array of styles, composers and traditions that span four centuries of piano music -An original work by Errollyn Wallen, specially composed for this collection -Ideal for own-choice repertoire selection in ABRSM Performance Grades (Grades 7+) Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is in great demand in the UK and internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. She offers eclectic and interesting repertoire and has performed at many of the world's finest concert venues, including the Royal Albert Hall for her BBC Proms solo debut in 2023. As a Decca recording artist, she entered the UK classical charts at No. 1 with her 2019 album Romance, and has since released Summertime, featuring twentieth-century American repertoire; Muse, a duo album with her brother Sheku; and Childhood Tales, which showcases music inspired by a nostalgia for youth. Isata is recipient of the coveted Leonard Bernstein Award and the Opus Klassik Award for best young artist.

Read more less

THE GOOD AUDITION GUIDES: Helping you select and perform the audition piece that is best suited to your performing skills In this volume of the Good Audition Guides, you'll find fifty fantastic speeches for men, all written since the year 2000, by some of our most exciting dramatic voices. Playwrights featured in Contemporary Monologues for Men include Howard Brenton, Jez Butterworth, Alexi Kaye Campbell, Caryl Churchill, Ariel Dorfman, Ella Hickson, Lucy Kirkwood, Bruce Norris, Jack Thorne and Enda Walsh, and the plays themselves were premiered at the very best theatres across the UK including the National Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, the Bush and the Young Vic, Manchester Royal Exchange, Birmingham Rep, the Traverse in Edinburgh, and many on the stages of the Royal Court. Drawing on her experience as an actor, director and teacher at several leading drama schools, Trilby James prefaces each speech with a thorough introduction including the vital information you need to place the piece in context (the who, what, when, where and why) and suggestions about how to perform the scene to its maximum effect (including the character’s objectives and keywords). Contemporary Monologues for Men also features an introduction on the whole process of selecting and preparing your speech, and approaching the audition itself. The result is the most comprehensive and useful contemporary monologue book now available. ‘Sound practical advice for anyone attending an audition… a source of inspiration for teachers and students alike’ Teaching Drama Magazine on The Good Audition Guides

Read more less

Cilka's Journey is the million copy bestselling sequel to the phenomenon The Tattooist of Auschwitz.Don't miss the conclusion to The Tattooist of Auschwitz Trilogy, Three Sisters. Available now.'She was the bravest person I ever met'Lale Sokolov, The Tattooist of Auschwitz In 1942 Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival.After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to a desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle. Innocent, imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, each day a battle for survival. Cilka befriends a woman doctor, and learns to nurse the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under unimaginable conditions. And when she tends to a man called Alexandr, Cilka finds that despite everything, there is room in her heart for love.Cilka's Journey is a powerful testament to the triumph of the human will. It will move you to tears, but it will also leave you astonished and uplifted by one woman's fierce determination to survive, against all odds.- - - - - - - - 'Her truly incredible story is one to be read by everyone.' Sun'Cilka's extraordinary courage in the face of evil and her determination to survive against the odds will stay with you long after you've finished reading this heartrending book.' Sunday Express'Her courage and determination to survive makes for a heartrending read.' Daily Mirror

Read more less

WATERSTONES BEST BOOKS OF 2022 – SPORT 'A brilliant new perspective on World Cup management... Superbly insightful .' – Jamie Carragher 'Superb - great stories about the greatest tournament' – Daniel Taylor Master tacticians, crazy tyrants and lucky generals... This insightful investigation reveals the mindsets and, frankly, at times unbelievable approaches of the coaches who strive to deliver football's ultimate prize. HOW DO YOU WIN THE WORLD CUP? Godlike genius or the focus of a disappointed nation's fury – the world's most prestigious tournament makes or breaks a national coach. Only 20 managers have guided their team to World Cup glory, so what are their secrets? From revolutionary tactics to hare-brained schemes, this book searches for the keys to the most exclusive club in international football. They may silently plot on the bench or manically gesticulate from the sidelines, but what can the coach really do to influence their team's performance? Discover the tactical innovations and brilliant strategies as well as the bizarre superstitions, psychological masterclasses and bonkers team-building regimes that managers have employed in the quest for that iconic trophy. Charting the successes, failures, dramas and controversies of 90 years of World Cup action, through the insights of journalists, players and managers with first-hand experience of World Cup competition, this book comprehensively documents the lengths the man in the dugout will go to in order to bring home the greatest prize. The book features contributions from leading World Cup stars, including Luiz Felipe Scolari, Geoff Hurst, Carlos Alberto Parreira, Pierre Littbarski, Roberto Martinez, Mick McCarthy, Tomas Brolin, Jamie Carragher, Alexi Lalas, Patrick Barclay, Raphael Honigstein and Graham Hunter.

Read more less

The growth and development of the Lincoln Record Society in its first hundred years highlights the contribution of such organisations to historical life. In 2010 the Lincoln Record Society celebrates its centenary with the publication of the hundredth volume in its distinguished series. Local record societies, financed almost entirely from the subscriptions of their members, have made an important contribution to the study of English history by making accessible in printed form some of the key archival materials relating to their areas. The story of the Lincoln society illustrates the struggles and triumphsof such an enterprise. Founded by Charles Wilmer Foster, a local clergyman of remarkable enthusiasm, the LRS set new standards of meticulous scholarship in the editing of its volumes. Its growing reputation is traced here througha rich archive of correspondence with eminent historians, among them Alexander Hamilton Thompson and Frank Stenton. The difficulties with which Kathleen Major, Canon Foster's successor, contended to keep the Society alive duringthe dark days of the Second World War are vividly described. The range of volumes published has continued to expand, from the staple cartularies and episcopal registers to more unusual sources, Quaker minutes, records ofCourts of Sewers and seventeenth-century port books. While many of the best-known publications have dealt with the medieval period, notably the magnificent Registrum Antiquissimum of Lincoln Cathedral, there have also beeneditions of eighteenth-century correspondence, twentieth-century diaries, and pioneering railway photographs of the late Victorian era. This story shows the Lincoln Record Society to be in good heart and ready to begin its secondcentury with confidence. Nicholas Bennett is currently Vice-Chancellor and Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral.

Read more less

The 1980s saw the rise of Ronald Reagan and the New Right in American politics, the popularity of programs such as thirtysomething and Dynasty on network television, and the increasingly widespread use of VCRs, cable TV, and remote control in American living rooms. In Seeing Through the Eighties, Jane Feuer critically examines this most aesthetically complex and politically significant period in the history of American television in the context of the prevailing conservative ideological climate. With wit, humor, and an undisguised appreciation of TV, she demonstrates the richness of this often-slighted medium as a source of significance for cultural criticism and delivers a compelling decade-defining analysis of our most recent past.With a cast of characters including Michael, Hope, Elliot, Nancy, Melissa, and Gary; Alexis, Krystle, Blake, and all the other Carringtons; not to mention Maddie and David; even Crockett and Tubbs, Feuer smoothly blends close readings of well-known programs and analysis of television’s commercial apparatus with a thorough-going theoretical perspective engaged with the work of Baudrillard, Fiske, and others. Her comparative look at Yuppie TV, Prime Time Soaps, and made-for-TV-movie Trauma Dramas reveals the contradictions and tensions at work in much prime-time programming and in the frustrations of the American popular consciousness. Seeing Through the Eighties also addresses the increased commodification of both the producers and consumers of television as a result of technological innovations and the introduction of new marketing techniques. Claiming a close relationship between television and the cultures that create and view it, Jane Feuer sees the eighties through televison while seeing through television in every sense of the word.

Read more less

A bold new look at war and diplomacy in Europe that traces the idea of a unified continent in attempts since the eighteenth century to engineer lasting peace.Political peace in Europe has historically been elusive and ephemeral. Stella Ghervas shows that since the eighteenth century, European thinkers and leaders in pursuit of lasting peace fostered the idea of European unification.Bridging intellectual and political history, Ghervas draws on the work of philosophers from Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who wrote an early eighteenth-century plan for perpetual peace, to Rousseau and Kant, as well as statesmen such as Tsar Alexander I, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman, and Mikhail Gorbachev. She locates five major conflicts since 1700 that spurred such visionaries to promote systems of peace in Europe: the War of the Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Each moment generated a “spirit” of peace among monarchs, diplomats, democratic leaders, and ordinary citizens. The engineers of peace progressively constructed mechanisms and institutions designed to prevent future wars.Arguing for continuities from the ideals of the Enlightenment, through the nineteenth-century Concert of Nations, to the institutions of the European Union and beyond, Conquering Peace illustrates how peace as a value shaped the idea of a unified Europe long before the EU came into being. Today the EU is widely criticized as an obstacle to sovereignty and for its democratic deficit. Seen in the long-range perspective of the history of peacemaking, however, this European society of states emerges as something else entirely: a step in the quest for a less violent world.

Read more less

The United States possesses extraordinary holdings of seventeenth-century Flemish paintings. In this pioneering and richly illustrated volume, twelve scholars and museum curators reveal the origins of these collections by examining the American approach to and interest in the collecting of Flemish art over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Chronicling in lively detail the roles played by individuals in forming private and public collections, the essays in this volume illuminate how and why collectors and museums in the United States embraced the Flemish masters with such enthusiasm. They trace how the taste for specific genres and the appreciation for certain artists, in particular Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, changed over the years, and they explore the historical and cultural motivations behind these trends. In doing so, they consider the effect of the great bequests of Flemish paintings to American museums and examine the private collections of the main tastemakers for Flemish painting, including the Baltimore merchant Robert Gilmor; John Graver Johnson, the leading corporate lawyer of the Gilded Age; and the California oil magnate J. Paul Getty. Gorgeously illustrated with almost one hundred representative pieces, this important contribution to the scholarship on American collecting of Flemish art will interest art lovers and stimulate further research in the fields of art history and museum history.In addition to the editor, the contributors include Ronni Baer, Adam Eaker, Lance Humphries, George S. Keyes, Margaret R. Laster, Alexandra Libby, Louisa Wood Ruby, Dennis P. Weller, Arthur K. Wheelock, Marjorie Wieseman, and Anne T. Woollett.

Read more less

‘DARK AND DEVIOUS’ Stephen King ‘UTTERLY ENGROSSING’ Daily Mail ‘TWISTY AND RICHLY ATMOSPHERIC’ Ruth Ware ‘TIGHTLY PLOTTED AND UTTERLY GRIPPING' Sarah Pinborough ‘A HAUNTING THRILLER’ Women’s Weekly ‘TOTALLY ABSORBING’ T.M. Logan ‘AN UNSETTLING, LABYRINTHINE TALE’ New York Times____________________________________________________________________ One twin ran. The other vanished. Neither escaped… DON’T TRUST ANYONECat’s twin sister El has disappeared. But there’s one thing Cat is sure of: her sister isn’t dead. She would have felt it. She would have known. DON’T TRUST YOUR MEMORIESTo find her sister, Cat must return to their dark, crumbling childhood home and confront the horrors that wait there. Because it’s all coming back to Cat now: all the things she has buried, all the secrets she’s been running from. DON’T TRUST THIS STORY…The closer Cat comes to the truth, the closer to danger she is. Some things are better left in the past…________________________________________________________ ‘AN ADDICTIVE SLICE OF GOTHIC’ i paper ‘TOLD WITH THUMPING HEART AND EXTRAORDINARY TENDERNESS’ Kiran Millwood Hargrave ‘THE LOVE CHILD OF GILLIAN FLYNN AND STEPHEN KING’ Greer Hendricks READERS ARE FALLING IN LOVE WITH MIRRORLAND… ‘Dark, dazzling, full of surprises and perfectly executed’ Sheri K ‘An adult fairy tale, a domestic noir and a heartbreaker, all in one’ Rebecca W ‘Creepy as hell and absolutely brilliant’ Vikkie W ‘Poignant and compelling… What an imagination to have crafted such a story’ Carol C ‘A beautifully written story that holds you enthralled from first page to last’ Sarah M ‘This is a book that will keep you awake all night’ Maria P ‘Hugely compelling…I found the entire book officially unputdownable!’ Alexandra G

Read more less

'Anything can happen... You turn the pages wondering, 'Whatever next?''' - SFXPolly, an average, completely ordinary property lawyer, is convinced she's losing her mind. Someone keeps drinking her coffee. And talking to her clients. And doing her job. And when she goes to the dry cleaner's to pick up her dress for the party, it's not there. Not the dress - the dry cleaner's.And then there are the chickens who think they are people. Something strange is definitely going on - and it's going to take more than a magical ring to sort it out.A wonderfully quirky and comedic outing from the hugely talented Tom HoltBooks by Tom Holt: Walled Orchard Series Goatsong The Walled Orchard J.W. Wells & Co. Series The Portable Door In Your Dreams Earth, Air, Fire and Custard You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps The Better Mousetrap May Contain Traces of Magic Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages YouSpace Series Doughnut When It's A Jar The Outsorcerer's Apprentice The Good, the Bad and the Smug Novels Expecting Someone Taller Who's Afraid of Beowulf Flying Dutch Ye Gods! Overtime Here Comes the Sun Grailblazers Faust Among Equals Odds and Gods Djinn Rummy My Hero Paint your Dragon Open Sesame Wish you Were Here Alexander at World's End Only Human Snow White and the Seven Samurai Olympiad Valhalla Nothing But Blue Skies Falling SidewaysLittle PeopleSong for NeroMeadowlandBarkingBlonde BombshellThe Management Style of the Supreme BeingsAn Orc on the Wild Side

Read more less

One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) emigrated to Britain after the forced closure of the Bauhaus, following his colleague Walter Gropius. This book examines the two years he spent in Britain in the mid-1930s before moving on to the United States - two intense years filled with commissions, collaborations, opportunities, disappointments, artistic exchanges and friendship.Moholy-Nagy was especially known in the UK as a photographer, his photos having previously been published in the Architectural Review. Although brief, Moholy-Nagy's English period represented the peak of his photographic activity. In Britain, he also worked as a graphic designer on books, advertisements and on London Transport posters. He worked as an art advisor for Simpsons' menswear store and designed publicity for the Isokon Furniture Company. He made a couple of documentary films – Lobsters and New Architecture at London Zoo and worked as a designer on Things to Come for Alexander Korda. As well as the films and photographic essays for the AR, he was introduced by John Betjeman to publisher John Miles, who commissioned him to illustrate three books: The Street Markets of London, Eton Portrait and An Oxford University Chest. He also worked with Gropius and Maxwell Fry on various exhibition designs, gave lectures and wrote articles throughout his stay, and The London Gallery held an exhibition of his work in January 1937. This highly visual book weaves together rarely seen images, documents and narrative to create a fascinating picture of the man and the artist during this critical and highly productive phase of his life.

Read more less

The Mathematician's Brain poses a provocative question about the world's most brilliant yet eccentric mathematical minds: were they brilliant because of their eccentricities or in spite of them? In this thought-provoking and entertaining book, David Ruelle, the well-known mathematical physicist who helped create chaos theory, gives us a rare insider's account of the celebrated mathematicians he has known-their quirks, oddities, personal tragedies, bad behavior, descents into madness, tragic ends, and the sublime, inexpressible beauty of their most breathtaking mathematical discoveries. Consider the case of British mathematician Alan Turing. Credited with cracking the German Enigma code during World War II and conceiving of the modern computer, he was convicted of "gross indecency" for a homosexual affair and died in 1954 after eating a cyanide-laced apple--his death was ruled a suicide, though rumors of assassination still linger. Ruelle holds nothing back in his revealing and deeply personal reflections on Turing and other fellow mathematicians, including Alexander Grothendieck, Rene Thom, Bernhard Riemann, and Felix Klein. But this book is more than a mathematical tell-all. Each chapter examines an important mathematical idea and the visionary minds behind it. Ruelle meaningfully explores the philosophical issues raised by each, offering insights into the truly unique and creative ways mathematicians think and showing how the mathematical setting is most favorable for asking philosophical questions about meaning, beauty, and the nature of reality. The Mathematician's Brain takes you inside the world--and heads--of mathematicians. It's a journey you won't soon forget.

Read more less

'Raw, elemental and beautiful.' Telegraph'This is quite simply the best book about motherhood I have ever read.' - Eleanor Mills in the Sunday Times Mother to five children, Clover Stroud has navigated family life across two decades, both losing and finding herself. In her touching, provocative and profoundly insightful book, she captures a sense of what motherhood really feels like - how intense, sensuous, joyful, boring, profound and dark it can be.My Wild and Sleepless Nights examines what it means to be a mother, and reveals with unflinching honesty the many conflicting emotions that this entails: the joy and the wonder, the loneliness and despair. MORE PRAISE FOR CLOVER STROUD:'Clover's expertise is writing about family life in a way that feels both new and entirely familiar' - Pandora Sykes'As tender, blazing, funny and unflinching as the love it describes. I want to give this triumphant book to every mother I know' - Rachel Joyce'Stroud is always willing to rip open her very soul in order to reveal the truth about her life - and every time a woman tells the truth like this, it sets another woman free' - Elizabeth Gilbert'I read in one greedy gulp and am still slightly reeling. Extraordinary writing... For mothers and those even vaguely interested in family dynamics it is fascinating' - Alexandra HeminsleyCharting the course of one year, the first in her youngest child's life, Clover searches for answers to questions that many of us would be too afraid to admit to - not only about motherhood, but also about female sexuality and identity. Her story will speak to all mothers, and anyone about to embark on that journey.

Read more less

An "effervescent" (Rachel Lynn Solomon) Christmas LGBTQIA+ New Adult RomCom, perfect for fans of Schitt's Creek and Red White & Royal Blue.Bring a little joy to the world?Not today, Santa.Matthew Prince is young, rich, and thoroughly spoiled. So what if his parents barely remember he exists and the press is totally obsessed with him? He's on top of the world. But one major PR misstep later, and Matthew is cut off and shipped away to spend the holidays in his grandparents' charming small town hellscape. Population: who cares?It's bad enough he's stuck in some festive winter wonderland-it's even worse that he has to share space with Hector Martinez, an obnoxiously attractive local who's unimpressed with anything and everything Matthew does.Just when it looks like the holiday season is bringing nothing but heated squabbles, the charity gala loses its coordinator and Matthew steps in as a saintly act to get home early on good behavior...with Hector as his maddening plus-one. But even a Grinch can't resist the unexpected joy of found family, and in the end, the forced proximity and infectious holiday cheer might be enough to make a lonely Prince's heart grow three sizes this year.People Are Raving About Timothy Janovsky:"This book made my queer heart so very full and deeply happy."-Anita Kelly"A cinematic daydream guaranteed to steal your heart."-Julian Winters"Wonderfully upbeat and sweet."-Suzanne Park"Full of hope and heart."-Alexandria Bellefleur"[A] fresh, sweet, and swoony love story that blends coming-of-age comedy with the nuances of exploring sexual identity."-Alison Cochrun

Read more less

An authoritative new history of the Roman conquest of Britain Why did Julius Caesar come to Britain? His own account suggests that he invaded to quell a resistance of Gallic sympathizers in the region of modern-day Kent -- but there must have been personal and divine aspirations behind the expeditions in 55 and 54 BCE. To the ancients, the Ocean was a body of water that circumscribed the known world, separating places like Britain from terra cognita, and no one, not even Alexander the Great, had crossed it. While Caesar came and saw, he did not conquer. In the words of the historian Tacitus, "he revealed, rather than bequeathed, Britain to Rome." For the next five hundred years, Caesar's revelation was Rome's remotest imperial bequest. Conquering the Ocean provides a new narrative of the Roman conquest of Britain, from the two campaigns of Caesar up until the construction of Hadrian's Wall across the Tyne-Solway isthmus during the 120s CE. Much of the ancient literary record portrays this period as a long march of Roman progress but recent archaeological discoveries reveal that there existed a strong resistance in Britain, Boudica's short lived revolt being the most celebrated of them, and that Roman success was by no means inevitable. Richard Hingley here draws upon an impressive array of new information from archaeological research and recent scholarship on the classical sources to provide a balanced picture of the military activities and strategies that led to the conquest and subjugation of Britain. Conquering the Ocean is the fullest picture to date of a chapter in Roman military history that continues to captivate the public.

Read more less

Before colonial Americans could declare independence, they had to undergo a change of heart. Beyond a desire to rebel against British mercantile and fiscal policies, they had to believe that they could stand up to the fully armed British soldier. Prelude to Revolution uncovers one story of how the Americans found that confidence. On April 19, 1775, British raids on Lexington Green and Concord Bridge made history, but it was an episode nearly two months earlier in Salem, Massachusetts, that set the stage for the hostilities. Peter Charles Hoffer has discovered records and newspaper accounts of a British gunpowder raid on Salem. Seeking powder and cannon hidden in the town, a regiment of British Regulars were foiled by quick-witted patriots who carried off the ordnance and then openly taunted the Regulars. The prudence of British commanding officer Alexander Leslie and the persistence of the patriot leaders turned a standoff into a bloodless triumph for the colonists. What might have been a violent confrontation turned into a local victory, and the patriots gloated as news spread of "Leslie's Retreat." When British troops marched on Lexington and Concord on that pivotal day in April, Hoffer explains, each side had drawn diametrically opposed lessons from the Salem raid. It emboldened the rebels to stand fast and infuriated the British, who vowed never again to back down. After relating these battles in vivid detail, Hoffer provides a teachable problem in historic memory by asking why we celebrate Lexington and Concord but not Salem and why New Englanders recalled the events at Salem but then forgot their significance. Praise for the work of Peter Charles Hoffer "This book more than succeeds in achieving its goal of helping students understand and appreciate the cultural and intellectual environment of the Anglophone world." (New England Quarterly, reviewing When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield). "A synthetic essay of considerable grace and scope...An excellent overview of the field." (Journal of Legal History, reviewing Law and People in Colonial America).

Read more less

This is a unique book written by one of the leading scholars in the field. It uses detailed case studies to analyze the successes, failures and challenges of renewable energy initiatives in developing and emerging countries.Incorporating the insights and perspectives of researchers who come from the respective countries covered, the study compares some of the most exciting success stories, including: China's meteoric rise from near zero use of renewable energy to being the world leader in solar thermal, solar photovoltaic and wind energy; Brazil's success in becoming the world s top ethanol producer and exporter; and India's pioneering use of a hedge plant to produce biodiesel and its use of animal and human wastes for rural electrification. The book also describes Indonesia s disastrous palm oil program which cut down its forests and excavated its peat bogs. It concludes that good leadership is the largest factor in success, but that it is also critical to include public participation, training, transparency, environmental consideration, fair labor practices, protection against exploitation and enforcement.This book is designed to be helpful to other countries seeking to initiate renewable energy programs. It will appeal to local administrators and policymakers, field personnel from UN agencies and NGOs, and renewable energy funders, as well as to academic researchers.Contents: Preface Introduction 1. Case Studies of Renewable Energy in China with Chen Yitong, Long Xue and Zheyuan Liu 2. Nuclear Power in China: Successes and Challenges with Jingru Feng 3. Renewable Energy in the Philippines with Alvin K. Leong 4. Case Study of the Implementation of the Integrated Solar Combined Cycle Pilot Plant in Aïn Beni Mathar, Morocco with Alexis Thuau 5. Case Study of Biofuels in India with Sayan S. Das 6. Case Study of Renewable Energy in Brazil with Douglas S. Figueiredo and Lia Helena M.L. Demange 7. Case Study of Indonesia's Palm Oil-based Biodiesel Program with Christopher J. Riti 8. Case Study of Renewable Energy in Pakistan with Shakeel Kazmi 9. Conclusion Index

Read more less

Before colonial Americans could declare independence, they had to undergo a change of heart. Beyond a desire to rebel against British mercantile and fiscal policies, they had to believe that they could stand up to the fully armed British soldier. Prelude to Revolution uncovers one story of how the Americans found that confidence. On April 19, 1775, British raids on Lexington Green and Concord Bridge made history, but it was an episode nearly two months earlier in Salem, Massachusetts, that set the stage for the hostilities. Peter Charles Hoffer has discovered records and newspaper accounts of a British gunpowder raid on Salem. Seeking powder and cannon hidden in the town, a regiment of British Regulars were foiled by quick-witted patriots who carried off the ordnance and then openly taunted the Regulars. The prudence of British commanding officer Alexander Leslie and the persistence of the patriot leaders turned a standoff into a bloodless triumph for the colonists. What might have been a violent confrontation turned into a local victory, and the patriots gloated as news spread of "Leslie's Retreat." When British troops marched on Lexington and Concord on that pivotal day in April, Hoffer explains, each side had drawn diametrically opposed lessons from the Salem raid. It emboldened the rebels to stand fast and infuriated the British, who vowed never again to back down. After relating these battles in vivid detail, Hoffer provides a teachable problem in historic memory by asking why we celebrate Lexington and Concord but not Salem and why New Englanders recalled the events at Salem but then forgot their significance. Praise for the work of Peter Charles Hoffer "This book more than succeeds in achieving its goal of helping students understand and appreciate the cultural and intellectual environment of the Anglophone world." (New England Quarterly, reviewing When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield). "A synthetic essay of considerable grace and scope...An excellent overview of the field." (Journal of Legal History, reviewing Law and People in Colonial America).

Read more less

The new edition of the popular survey of Near Eastern civilization from the Bronze Age to the era of Alexander the Great A Companion to the Ancient Near East explores the history of the region from 4400 BCE to the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE. Original and revised essays from a team of distinguished scholars from across disciplines address subjects including the politics, economics, architecture, and heritage of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Part of the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, this acclaimed single-volume reference combines lively writing with engaging and relatable topics to immerse readers in this fascinating period of Near East history. The new second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include new developments in relevant fields, particularly archaeology, and expand on themes of interest to contemporary students. Clear, accessible chapters offer fresh discussions on the history of the family and gender roles, the literature, languages, and religions of the region, pastoralism, medicine and philosophy, and borders, states, and warfare. New essays highlight recent discoveries in cuneiform texts, investigate how modern Egyptians came to understand their ancient history, and examine the place of archaeology among the historical disciplines. This volume: Provides substantial new and revised content covering topics such as social conflict, kingship, cosmology, work, trade, and law Covers the civilizations of the Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Israelites, and Persians, emphasizing social and cultural history Examines the legacy of the Ancient Near East in the medieval and modern worlds Offers a uniquely broad geographical, chronological, and topical range Includes a comprehensive bibliographical guide to Ancient Near East studies as well as new and updated references and reading suggestions Suitable for use as both a primary reference or as a supplement to a chronologically arranged textbook, A Companion to the Ancient Near East, 2nd Edition is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students, instructors in the field, and scholars from other disciplines.

Read more less

Major edition revealing key ideas and events in the lives and work of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and Victorian literary circles: 5,800 letters (including 2,000 previously unpublished letters) to 330 recipients. The best of these letters, flowing rapidly from his pen, radiate charisma and enthusiasm, warmth and care for his friends, and a total engagement with art and literature. BURLINGTON MAGAZINE [Julian Treuherz] 1835-1854: This nine-volume edition will represent the definitive collection of extant Rossetti correspondence, an outstanding primary witness to the range of ideas and opinions that shaped Rossetti's art and poetry. The largest collection ofRossetti's letters ever to be published, it features all known surviving letters, a total of almost 5,800 to over 330 recipients, and includes 2,000 previously unpublished letters by Rossetti and selected letters to him. In addition to this, about 100 drawings taken from within letter texts are also reproduced. In its entirety the collection will give an invaluable and unparalleled insight into Rossetti's character and art, and will form a rich resource for students and scholars studying all aspects of his life and work. The correspondence has been transcribed from collections in sixty-four manuscript repositories, containing Rossetti's letters to his companions in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt and Stephens; friends such as Boyce and Bell Scott; his early patrons, Ellen Heaton and James Leathart; and his publisher friend, Alexander Macmillan. An additional twenty-two printed sources have also been accessed. Index; extensive annotations.WILLIAM E. FREDEMAN (1928-1999) was professor of English at the University of British Columbia from 1956-1991. His many books, articles and reviews on the Pre-Raphaelites and their followersinclude his important Pre-Raphaelitism: A Bibliocritical Study. He died in 1999 with this edition almost completed. An editorial committee chaired by Betty Fredeman has been formed to see it through the press.

Read more less

A milestone in U.S. historiography, Haunted by Empire brings postcolonial critiques to bear on North American history and draws on that history to question the analytic conventions of postcolonial studies. The contributors to this innovative collection examine the critical role of “domains of the intimate” in the consolidation of colonial power. They demonstrate how the categories of difference underlying colonialism—the distinctions advanced as the justification for the colonizer’s rule of the colonized—were enacted and reinforced in intimate realms from the bedroom to the classroom to the medical examining room. Together the essays focus attention on the politics of comparison—on how colonizers differentiated one group or set of behaviors from another—and on the circulation of knowledge and ideologies within and between imperial projects. Ultimately, this collection forces a rethinking of what historians choose to compare and of the epistemological grounds on which those choices are based.Haunted by Empire includes Ann Laura Stoler’s seminal essay “Tense and Tender Ties” as well as her bold introduction, which carves out the exciting new analytic and methodological ground animated by this comparative venture. The contributors engage in a lively cross-disciplinary conversation, drawing on history, anthropology, literature, philosophy, and public health. They address such topics as the regulation of Hindu marriages and gay sexuality in the early-twentieth-century United States; the framing of multiple-choice intelligence tests; the deeply entangled histories of Asian, African, and native peoples in the Americas; the racial categorizations used in the 1890 U.S. census; and the politics of race and space in French colonial New Orleans. Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, and Nancy F. Cott each provide a concluding essay reflecting on the innovations and implications of the arguments advanced in Haunted by Empire.Contributors. Warwick Anderson, Laura Briggs, Kathleen Brown, Nancy F. Cott, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, Martha Hodes, Paul A. Kramer, Lisa Lowe, Tiya Miles, Gwenn A. Miller, Emily S. Rosenberg, Damon Salesa, Nayan Shah, Alexandra Minna Stern, Ann Laura Stoler, Laura Wexler

Read more less

On a September afternoon in 1853, three African American men from St. Philip's Church walked into the Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and took their seats among five hundred wealthy and powerful white church leaders. Ultimately, and with great reluctance, the Convention had acceded to the men's request: official recognition for St. Philip's, the first African American Episcopal church in New York City. In Faith in Their Own Color, Craig D. Townsend tells the remarkable story of St. Philip's and its struggle to create an autonomous and independent church. His work unearths a forgotten chapter in the history of New York City and African Americans and sheds new light on the ways religious faith can both reinforce and overcome racial boundaries. Founded in 1809, St. Philip's had endured a fire; a riot by anti-abolitionists that nearly destroyed the church; and more than forty years of discrimination by the Episcopalian hierarchy. In contrast to the majority of African Americans, who were flocking to evangelical denominations, the congregation of St. Philip's sought to define itself within an overwhelmingly white hierarchical structure. Their efforts reflected the tension between their desire for self-determination, on the one hand, and acceptance by a white denomination, on the other.The history of St. Philip's Church also illustrates the racism and extraordinary difficulties African Americans confronted in antebellum New York City, where full abolition did not occur until 1827. Townsend describes the constant and complex negotiation of the divide between black and white New Yorkers. He also recounts the fascinating stories of historically overlooked individuals who built and fought for St. Philip's, including Rev. Peter Williams, the second African American ordained in the Episcopal Church; Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn an M.D.; pickling magnate Henry Scott; the combative priest Alexander Crummell; and John Jay II, the grandson of the first chief justice of the Supreme Court and an ardent abolitionist, who helped secure acceptance of St. Philip's.

Read more less

The fascinating, true, story of baseball’s amateur origins. “Explores the conditions and factors that begat the game in the 19th century and turned it into the national pastime....A delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat.”—Paul Dickson, The Wall Street JournalBaseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. The founders were the hundreds of uncredited amateurs — ordinary people — who played without gloves, facemasks or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses and fought against the South in the Civil War.But that’s not the way the story has been told. The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. You have read that baseball’s color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You have been told that the clean, corporate 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were baseball’s first professional club. Not true. They weren’t the first professionals; they weren’t all that clean, either. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseball’s first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics—and modern pitching.Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans weren’t invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasn’t part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see a game, the writing was on the outfield wall.When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage, and famous stars. Professional baseball invented an organization, but not the sport itself. Baseball’s amazing amateurs had already done that.Thomas W. Gilbert’s history is for baseball fans and anyone fascinating by history, American culture, and how great things began.

Read more less

Sir Winston Churchill's paternal grandmother and the mother of Randolph Churchill, the 7th Duchess of Marlborough, has been a slight figure in many other people's biographies yet her own story as a member of a remarkable family has never been fully told, until now. Frances Anne Emily Vane-Tempest-Stewart's family background, as well as her own life, is steeped in great historical names and occasions. She was the eldest daughter of the 3rd Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry, two well-known, glamorous individuals: her father was a military hero, second in command to Wellington in the Napoleonic wars, and her mother one of the wealthiest women in England. Her godfather was the Duke of Wellington, her uncle Lord Castlereagh, British Foreign Secretary, Queen Victoria was a lifelong personal friend and contemporary and her political circle included both Disraeli and Gladstone. Tsar Alexander I of Russia was a mysterious, romantic figure among the shadows of her childhood. Frances' arrival at Blenheim Palace in 1843 as the bride of John Winston, 7th Marquess of Blandford resulted in the great ancestral seat's regeneration as a family home, as a social and political focus for the life of the nation and for the neighbourhood of Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Frances the Duchess gave loyal support not only to her husband but also her younger son, Randolph, in his political career, and became a stable and abiding influence on her famous grandson, Winston Churchill, shaping his character, ambitions and later achievements. Her own crowning achievement, fully and dramatically told in this book, is her humanity, leadership and skill, through her Famine Relief Committtee, in averting the effects of the Irish potato famine of 1879, which threatened to repeat the wholesale loss of life of the famine of the 1840s, when she was Vicereine of Ireland. Margaret Elizabeth Forster has found new, original material and unpublished family photographs from the Marlborough personal archives to recount this absorbing, remarkable biography and to restore a most gracious woman to her proper place at Blenheim.

Read more less

Key documents relating to Auchinleck's career up to the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942, including his time as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army and of the Middle East Theatre. The outbreak of war in 1939 saw the then Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck recalled to England to take command of the newly formed 4 Corps. Between April and June 1940 he commanded British troops in the ill-fated Norway campaign. He then returned to the UK to take command of 5 Corps in Southern Command during the invasion threat of 1940. In January 1941 Auchinleck returned to India and started some much needed reforms of what was still, very much, a 'colonial army' before becoming C in C Middle East in June 1941. In the Middle East, Auchinleck faced many challenges in commanding a multi-national force, largely composed of 'citizen soldiers' and his problems were complicated by the demands of Winston Churchill, an anxious Prime Minister who desperately wanted to show his allies and the British public a major victory. Auchinleck is open to the charges that he did not fully understand armoured warfare and that he appointed a number of the wrong men to key posts. However, he did manage to fight Axis forces to a standstill at the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942 before being replaced by the team of Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander and General Bernard Montgomery. This volume is based on the Auchinleck papers held in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester and aims to bring these important records to a much wider audience.

Read more less

Based partly on a series of posts coming out of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion blog, this volume includes greatly expanded essays by Ruth Mas, Sarah Imhoff and James Crossley as well as new pieces by Devin Stewart, Carlos Segovia, Alexandre Caeiro and Emmanuelle Stefanidis, Russell McCutcheon and Salman Sayyid. This volume, thus, brings together a variety of scholars both inside and outside of Islamic Studies in order to grapple with such questions as: what, if anything, is unique about Islamic Studies? How should Islamic studies as religious studies engage with postcolonial critique? What is the role of identity politics in such endeavors? What are the lines between descriptive (hermeneutic) work and theoretical explanations of Islamic texts? What can scholars in related areas, such as the study of Judaism and early Christianity, offer to this conversation by way of analogy? Can ethical, political, or theological concerns function critically to help theorize Islam? The volume is divided into four sections: Theory and Identity Politics in the Study of Islam, which looks at the role of identity, knowledge production, and political commitments among scholars of Islam; Critique and Identity in Qur'anic Studies, which deals with challenges in applying critical-historical methods to the study of the Qur'an and how these methods relate to some of the issues raised Omid Safi and Aaron Hughes; Comparative Views from Outside Islamic Studies, which provides a comparative view of how scholars have dealt with similar concerns in the study of Judaism and Christianity; and A Critical Appraisal, which offers a direct challenge to Safi and Hughes.

Read more less

Although the radical populist movement that arose in Russia during the reign of Tsar Alexander II has been well documented, this important study opens with questions that haven't yet been addressed: How did Russian radical populists manage to carry out a three-year campaign of revolutionary violence, killing or wounding scores of people, including top government officials, and eventually taking the life of the tsar himself? And how did this all occur under the noses of the tsar's political police, who deployed vast resources and huge numbers of officials in an exhaustive effort to stop the killing? In Underground Petersburg, Christopher Ely argues that the most powerful weapon of populist terrorism was the revolutionary underground it created. Attempts to convey populist ideals in the public sphere met with resistance at every turn. When methods such as propaganda campaigns and street demonstrations failed, populists created a sophisticated urban underground. Linked to the newly discovered weapon of terrorist violence, this base of operations allowed them to live undetected in the midst of the city, produce their own weaponry, and attempt to ignite an insurrection through violent attacks—putting terrorism on the map as a technique of political rebellion. Accessible to non-specialists, this insightful study reinterprets radical populism, clarifying its crucial place in Russian history and elucidating its contribution to the history of terrorism. Underground Petersburg will appeal to scholars and students of Russia, as well as those interested in terrorism and insurrectionary movements, urban studies, and the sociology of subcultures.

Read more less

Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Talk to Me thrives on an important late 20th-century cultural development in design: a shift from the centrality of function to that of meaning. From this new perspective, objects contain information that goes well beyond their immediate use or appearance, providing access to complex systems and networks and acting as gateways and interpreters. Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us, and designers write the initial script that lets us develop and improvise the dialogue. Talk to Me focuses on objects that involve direct interaction, such as interfaces, information systems, communication devices, and projects that establish a practical, emotional or even sensual connection between their users and entities such as cities, companies, governmental institutions, as well as other people. The featured objects range in date from the early 1980s – beginning with the first Graphic User Interface, developed by Xerox Parc in 1981 – with particular attention given to projects from the last five years and to several ones currently in development. Included are a diverse array of examples, from computer and machine interfaces to websites, video games, devices and tools, and installations. Organized thematically, Talk to Me features essays by Paola Antonelli, Jamer Hunt, Alexandra Midel, Kevin Slavin, and Koi Vinh. By introducing design practices that are becoming increasingly crucial to our world, the book presents a highly distilled sample of today’s best design production that uses technology in creative and unexpected ways, showing how rich and deep design’s influence will be on our future.

Read more less

The revelation that the U.S. Department of Defense had hired anthropologists for its Human Terrain System project—assisting its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq—caused an uproar that has obscured the participation of sociologists in similar Pentagon-funded projects. As the contributors to Sociology and Empire show, such affiliations are not new. Sociologists have been active as advisers, theorists, and analysts of Western imperialism for more than a century. The collection has a threefold agenda: to trace an intellectual history of sociology as it pertains to empire; to offer empirical studies based around colonies and empires, both past and present; and to provide a theoretical basis for future sociological analyses that may take empire more fully into account. In the 1940s, the British Colonial Office began employing sociologists in its African colonies. In Nazi Germany, sociologists played a leading role in organizing the occupation of Eastern Europe. In the United States, sociology contributed to modernization theory, which served as an informal blueprint for the postwar American empire. This comprehensive anthology critiques sociology's disciplinary engagement with colonialism in varied settings while also highlighting the lasting contributions that sociologists have made to the theory and history of imperialism.Contributors. Albert Bergesen, Ou-Byung Chae, Andy Clarno, Raewyn Connell, Ilya Gerasimov, Julian Go, Daniel Goh, Chandan Gowda, Krishan Kumar, Fuyuki Kurasawa, Michael Mann, Marina Mogilner, Besnik Pula, Anne Raffin, Emmanuelle Saada, Marco Santoro, Kim Scheppele, George Steinmetz, Alexander Semyonov, Andrew Zimmerman

Read more less

In A Forgetful Nation, the renowned postcolonialism scholar Ali Behdad turns his attention to the United States. Offering a timely critique of immigration and nationalism, Behdad takes on an idea central to American national mythology: that the United States is “a nation of immigrants,” welcoming and generous to foreigners. He argues that Americans’ treatment of immigrants and foreigners has long fluctuated between hospitality and hostility, and that this deep-seated ambivalence is fundamental to the construction of national identity. Building on the insights of Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida, he develops a theory of the historical amnesia that enables the United States to disavow a past and present built on the exclusion of others.Behdad shows how political, cultural, and legal texts have articulated American anxiety about immigration from the Federalist period to the present day. He reads texts both well-known—J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass—and lesser-known—such as the writings of nineteenth-century nativists and of public health officials at Ellis Island. In the process, he highlights what is obscured by narratives and texts celebrating the United States as an open-armed haven for everyone: the country’s violent beginnings, including its conquest of Native Americans, brutal exploitation of enslaved Africans, and colonialist annexation of French and Mexican territories; a recurring and fierce strand of nativism; the need for a docile labor force; and the harsh discipline meted out to immigrant “aliens” today, particularly along the Mexican border.

Read more less

A lively history of the peculiar math of votingSince the very birth of democracy in ancient Greece, the simple act of voting has given rise to mathematical paradoxes that have puzzled some of the greatest philosophers, statesmen, and mathematicians. Numbers Rule traces the epic quest by these thinkers to create a more perfect democracy and adapt to the ever-changing demands that each new generation places on our democratic institutions.In a sweeping narrative that combines history, biography, and mathematics, George Szpiro details the fascinating lives and big ideas of great minds such as Plato, Pliny the Younger, Ramon Llull, Pierre Simon Laplace, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John von Neumann, and Kenneth Arrow, among many others. Each chapter in this riveting book tells the story of one or more of these visionaries and the problem they sought to overcome, like the Marquis de Condorcet, the eighteenth-century French nobleman who demonstrated that a majority vote in an election might not necessarily result in a clear winner. Szpiro takes readers from ancient Greece and Rome to medieval Europe, from the founding of the American republic and the French Revolution to today's high-stakes elective politics. He explains how mathematical paradoxes and enigmas can crop up in virtually any voting arena, from electing a class president, a pope, or prime minister to the apportionment of seats in Congress.Numbers Rule describes the trials and triumphs of the thinkers down through the ages who have dared the odds in pursuit of a just and equitable democracy.

Read more less

A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artistsBetween the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination—poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious—displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens. Celestial Aspirations explores how British literature and art during that period exploited classical representations of these soaring themes—through philosophical, scientific and poetic flights of the mind; the ascension of the disembodied soul; and the celestial glorification of the ruler.From textual reachings for the heavens in Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne and Cowley, to the ceiling paintings of Rubens, Verrio and Thornhill, Philip Hardie focuses on the ways that the history, ideologies and aesthetics of the postclassical world received and transformed the ideas of antiquity. In England, narratives of ascent appear on the grandest scale in Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic built around a Christian plot of falling and rising, and one of the most intensely classicizing works of English poetry. Examining the reception of flight up to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and Tennyson, Hardie considers the Whig sublime, as well as the works of Alexander Pope and Edward Young. Throughout, he looks at motivations both public and private for aspiring to the heavens—as a reward for political and military achievement on the one hand, and as a goal of individual intellectual and spiritual exertion on the other.Celestial Aspirations offers an intriguing look at how creative minds reworked ancient visions of time and space in the early modern era.

Read more less

Volume 102 of Harvard Studies in Classical Philology includes the following contributions: Mika Kajava, “Hestia: Hearth, Goddess, and Cult”; Jonathan Burgess, “Untrustworthy Apollo and the Destiny of Achilles: Iliad 24.55–63”; Anna Bonifazi, “Relative Pronouns and Memory: Pindar beyond Syntax”; William Race, “Pindar’s Olympian 11 Re-Visited Post-Bundy”; Michael Clarke, “An Ox-Fronted River-God (Sophocles, Trachiniae 12–13)”; William Allan, “Religious Syncretism: The New Gods of Greek Tragedy”; Edward Harris, “Notes on a Lead Letter from the Athenian Agora”; Miriam Hecquet-Devienne, “A Legacy from the Library of the Lyceum? Inquiry into the Joint Transmission of Theophrastus’ and Aristotle’s Metaphysics Based on Evidence Provided by Manuscripts E and J”; Jordi Pàmias, “Dionysus and Donkeys on the Streets of Alexandria: Eratosthenes’ Criticism of Ptolemaic Ideology”; Craige B. Champion, “Polybian Demagogues in Political Context”; Marco Fantuzzi, “The Magic of (Some) Allusions: Philodemus AP 5.107 (GPh 3188 ff.; 23 Sider)”; Brian Krostenko, “Binary Phrases and the Middle Style as Social Code: Rhetorica ad Herennium”; Deborah Steiner, “Catullan Excavations: Pindar’s Olympian 10 and Catullus 68”; Andrew Dyck, “Cicero’s Devotio: The Rôles of Dux and Scape-Goat in His Post Reditum Rhetoric”; Mario Geymonat, “Capellae at the End of the Eclogues”; Sergio Casali, “Nisus and Euryalus: Exploiting the Contradictions in Virgil’s Doloneia”; Thomas Cole, “Ovid, Varro, and Castor of Rhodes: The Chronological Architecture of the Metamorphoses”; Niklas Holzberg, “Impersonating the Banished Philosopher: Pseudo-Seneca’s Liber Epigrammaton”; E. Courtney, “On Editing the Silvae”; and D. R. Shackleton Bailey, “On Editing the Silvae: A Response.”

Read more less

Examines spaces of inner life in eighteenth-century England to shed new light on interiority in literature and visual and material culture. In what kinds of spaces do we become most aware of the thoughts in our own heads? In My Dark Room, Julie Park explores places of solitude and enclosure that gave eighteenth-century subjects closer access to their inner worlds: grottos, writing closets, landscape follies, and the camera obscura, that beguiling “dark room” inside which the outside world in all its motion and color is projected. The camera obscura and its dreamlike projections within it served as a paradigm for the everyday spaces, whether in built environments or in imaginative writing, that generated the fleeting states of interiority eighteenth-century subjects were compelled to experience and inhabit.My Dark Room illuminates the spatial and physical dimensions of inner life in the long eighteenth century by synthesizing material analyses of diverse media, from optical devices and landscape architecture to women’s intimate dress, with close readings of literary texts not traditionally considered together, among them Andrew Marvell’s country house poem Upon Appleton House, Margaret Cavendish’s experimental epistolary work Sociable Letters, Alexander Pope’s heroic verse epistle Eloisa to Abelard, and Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela. Park also analyzes letters and diaries, architectural plans, prints, drawings, paintings, and more, drawing our attention to the lively interactions between spaces and psyches in private environments. Park’s innovative method of “spatial formalism” reveals how physical settings enable psychic interiors to achieve vitality in lives both real and imagined.

Read more less

A collection of 36 extraordinary stories originally told on stage, featuring work by writers, entertainers, thinkers, and community leaders. Spanning comedy and tragedy, Alien Nation brilliantly illuminates what it’s like to be an immigrant in America.America would not be America without its immigrants. This anthology, adapted from storytelling event “This Alien Nation,” captures firsthand the past and present of immigration in all its humor, pain, and weirdness. Contributors—some well-known, others regular (and fascinating) people—share moments from their lives, reminding us that immigration is not just a word dropped in the news (simplified to something you are “for” or “against”), but a world—rich with unique voices, perspectives, and experiences. Travel from the Central Park playground where “tattle-tales” among nannies inspire Christine Lewis’s activism to an Alexandrian garden half a century ago courtesy of writer André Aciman. Visit a refugee camp in Gaza as described by actress and comedian Maysoon Zayid, and follow Intersex activist Tatenda Ngwaru as she flees Zimbabwe with dreams of meeting Oprah. Witness efforts from comedian Aparna Nancherla's mother to make Aparna less shy, and Orange is the New Black's Laura Gómez makes an unlikely connection in a bed-and-breakfast. Compelling and inspirational, Alien Nation is a celebration of immigration and an exploration of culture shock, isolation and community, loneliness and hope, heartbreak and promise—it’s a poignant reminder of our shared humanity at a time we need it greatly, and a thoughtful, entertaining tribute to cultural diversity.

Read more less

A highly readable history of the military and political events of World War One, this wide-ranging book begins with the state of Europe before the war then embarks on major chapters chronicling the war a year at a time. Major battles are interspersed with sections detailing the weapons used from dreadnoughts and anti-aircraft guns to U-boats and heavy field artillery, with specification boxes providing key technical details on each weapon. A final chapter looks at the aftermath of war and the newly emerging European states. All aspects of the conflict are covered, from common illnesses through to the use of propaganda and atrocities on all sides. Key fact boxes delve into the lives of the political leaders, generals and fighters, and also discuss the political movements which flourished. The first battle of Ypres, battles in Champagne and Artois, the winter offensive against Russia, and the breaking of the Hindenburg line are all discussed in detail. It chronicles the course of each year of the war, and details the major events, including the battle of the Marne, the first day of the Somme, the race to the sea, and the stalemate on the Italian front. Fascinating fact boxes highlight the lives of important political leaders and generals, such as Alexei Brusilov, Henri-Philippe Petain, Douglas Haig, David Lloyd George and President Woodrow Wilson. Illustrated with compelling and evocative photographs taken during World War One, and featuring informative maps and battleplans.

Read more less

In the deep midwinter, there's a murder to solve... Christmas is coming and the snow is falling, but with the de Luce family finances in a parlous state, Colonel de Luce has been forced to rent out the family home to a film company.For Flavia and her sisters it's as if all their belated Christmases have come at once - but filming is soon slowed by a series of nasty accidents and then brought to a halt as a heavy snowstorm cuts Buckshaw off from the outside world. As they prepare to wait out the weather, they are stunned by a gruesomely dramatic murder - and suddenly Flavia, in the midst of designing an experiment to prove the existence of Father Christmas - has another, far deadlier mystery to solve.Praise for the historical Flavia de Luce mysteries: 'The Flavia de Luce novels are now a cult favourite' Mail on Sunday 'A cross between Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle and the Addams family...delightfully entertaining' Guardian Fans of M. C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin, Frances Brody and Alexander McCall Smith will enjoy the Flavia de Luce mysteries: 1. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie 2. The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag 3. A Red Herring Without Mustard 4. I Am Half Sick of Shadows 5. Speaking From Among the Bones 6. The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches 7. As Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust 8. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd 9. The Grave's a Fine and Private Place If you're looking for a cosy crime series to keep you hooked then look no further than the Flavia de Luce mysteries. * Each Flavia de Luce mystery can be read as a standalone or in series order *

Read more less

Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows meets Alexandra Bracken’s Passenger in this spellbinding conclusion to the “vivid and compelling” (BCCB) New York Times bestselling Last Magician series.Unite the Stones Free the City Remake the World Once, Esta believed that she could change the fate of magic. She traveled to the past and stopped the Magician from destroying a mystical book that held the key to freeing her people from the Brink, an energy barrier that traps all Mageus who cross it. But the Book was more than she bargained for. So was the Magician she was tasked to steal it from. Hunted by an ancient evil, Esta and Harte have raced through time and across a continent to track down the powerful artifacts they need to bind the Book’s devastating power. They’ve lost family, betrayed friends, and done what they’d both vowed never to do: fallen in love with the one person who could truly destroy them. Now, with only one artifact left, their search has brought them back to New York, the city where it all began. But nothing in Manhattan is as they left it. Their friends have scattered, their enemies have grown more powerful, and as the deadly Brink beckons, their time is running out. If they can’t find a way to end the threat they’ve created, then the very heart of magic will die—and it will take the world down with it.

Read more less

Alexander Reddington was never supposed to be the duke. He was supposed to spend his days with his beloved botany research and fulfill his life-long dream of discovering the origin of one of England’s rarest plants…and beating his botanical rival to the punch. But when his childless older brother dies, leaving the title to him, his studies are going to have to take a back seat to his duties. Which include fulfilling his brother’s promise to marry one of the Earl of Abberforth’s daughters. The last thing Miss Lavinia Wynnburn expected was being chosen as the new Duke of Beaubrooke’s wife. She’d thought that honor would have gone to her elegant eldest sister, or even her vibrant youngest sister. No one ever noticed Lavinia. Until at the biggest wedding of the season the duke walked past her sisters and asked her to dance. Now she’s his duchess and has more attention and invitations than she ever dreamed. And she knows just what she’s going to do with them. Get her studious husband out from under his books and into society. Much to his chagrin. Despite their clashing personalities and opposite outlooks on life, the newlyweds can’t seem to help falling for one another. But unexpected discoveries reveal that past choices and intentions may not have been what they seemed, threatening everything the couple has worked to build. If they can’t resolve their pasts, they’ll never have a future.

Read more less

Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows meets Alexandra Bracken’s Passenger in this spellbinding conclusion to the “vivid and compelling” (BCCB) New York Times bestselling Last Magician series.Unite the Stones Free the City Remake the World Once, Esta believed that she could change the fate of magic. She traveled to the past and stopped the Magician from destroying a mystical book that held the key to freeing her people from the Brink, an energy barrier that traps all Mageus who cross it. But the Book was more than she bargained for. So was the Magician she was tasked to steal it from. Hunted by an ancient evil, Esta and Harte have raced through time and across a continent to track down the powerful artifacts they need to bind the Book’s devastating power. They’ve lost family, betrayed friends, and done what they’d both vowed never to do: fallen in love with the one person who could truly destroy them. Now, with only one artifact left, their search has brought them back to New York, the city where it all began. But nothing in Manhattan is as they left it. Their friends have scattered, their enemies have grown more powerful, and as the deadly Brink beckons, their time is running out. If they can’t find a way to end the threat they’ve created, then the very heart of magic will die—and it will take the world down with it.

Read more less

An instructive book that examines the practice of drawing for illustration through case studies and sketchbooks, written by one of the world’s foremost experts and teachers on the subject. This essential handbook explores the subject of drawing for illustration in-depth, with an emphasis on drawing as a skill and fundamental language that every illustrator should master. It aims to encourage students through examples and case studies, by showcasing the often-unseen world of draughtsmanship that underpins the finished graphic. From book illustration to graphic novels, caricatures to commercial design, it draws on contemporary sketchbooks, projects and historical examples to make the connection between the practice of drawing from observation and drawing from imagination. Martin Salisbury sets out by explaining the fundamentals of this exciting discipline, before outlining the basic principles of line, tone, composition and colour through inspiring examples. Different approaches to drawing including anecdotal, sequential and reportage are examined, to enable students to acquire their own personal visual language. Interviews with illustrators also provide invaluable insight into the creative process, as they outline their challenges and motivations, and what drawing personally means for them. Packed with visual inspiration, this book features detailed analysis of works by key illustrators from past and present including George Cruikshank, Egon Schiele, Ronald Searle and Sheila Robinson through to Laura Carlin, Alexis Deacon and Isabelle Arsenault, looking at the differing roles drawing plays in their particular illustrative languages and how styles have changed over time.

Read more less

A celebration of reading, of libraries, and of the mysterious human desire to give order to the universe Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the “complete” libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written—Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.

Read more less

The most authoritative and highly regarded single-volume history of India – from ancient time to the modern day. Five millennia of the sub-continent’s social, economic, political and cultural history are interpreted by one of our finest writers on India and the Far East. India’s history begins with a highly advanced urban civilisation in the Indus valley, regressing to a tribal and pastoral nomadism, and then evolving into a uniquely stratified society. The pattern of inward invasion plus outward migration was established early: from Alexander the Great via the march of Islam and the great Moghuls to the coming of the East India Company and the establishment of the British Raj. Older, richer and more distinctive than almost any other, India’s culture furnishes all that the historian could wish for in the way of continuity and diversity. The peoples of the Indian subcontinent, while sharing a common history and culture, are not now, and never have been, a single unitary state; the book accommodates Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as other embryonic nation states like the Sikh Punjab, Muslim Kashmir and Assam. In this brilliant new edition, John Keay continues the narrative of India’s history – covering events from partition to the present day and examining the very different fortunes of the three successor states: Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Republic of India. Based on the latest research, this is an indispensible history of a country set to be a definitive influence on the future of world economics, politics and culture.

Read more less