Search results for ""Author "Demi"""

Death of the Moguls is a detailed assessment of the last days of the “rulers of film.” Wheeler Winston Dixon examines the careers of such moguls as Harry Cohn at Columbia, Louis B. Mayer at MGM, Jack L. Warner at Warner Brothers, Adolph Zukor at Paramount, and Herbert J. Yates at Republic in the dying days of their once-mighty empires. He asserts that the sheer force of personality and business acumen displayed by these moguls made the studios successful; their deaths or departures hastened the studios’ collapse. Almost none had a plan for leadership succession; they simply couldn't imagine a world in which they didn’t reign supreme.Covering 20th Century-Fox, Selznick International Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Republic Pictures, Monogram Pictures and Columbia Pictures, Dixon briefly introduces the studios and their respective bosses in the late 1940s, just before the collapse, then chronicles the last productions from the studios and their eventual demise in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He details such game-changing factors as the de Havilland decision, which made actors free agents; the Consent Decree, which forced the studios to get rid of their theaters; how the moguls dealt with their collapsing empires in the television era; and the end of the conventional studio assembly line, where producers had rosters of directors, writers, and actors under their command.Complemented by rare, behind-the-scenes stills, Death of the Moguls is a compelling narrative of the end of the studio system at each of the Hollywood majors as television, the de Havilland decision, and the Consent Decree forced studios to slash payrolls, make the shift to color, 3D, and CinemaScope in desperate last-ditch efforts to save their kingdoms. The aftermath for some was the final switch to television production and, in some cases, the distribution of independent film.

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The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot: The Fort Stevens Story recounts the story of President Abraham Lincoln’s role in the Battle of Fort Stevens in July 1864. This engagement stands apart in American history as the only time a sitting American president came under enemy fire while in office. In this new study of this overlooked moment in American history, Cooling poses a troubling question: What if Lincoln had been shot and killed during this short battle, nine months prior to his death by John Wilkes Booth’s hand in Ford's Theater? A potential pivotal moment in the Civil War, the Battle of Fort Stevens could have changed—with Lincoln's demise—the course of American history. The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot, however, is more than a meditation on an alternate history of the United States. It is also a close study of the attempt by Confederate general Jubal Early to capture Washington, DC, to remove Lincoln and the Union government from power, and to turn the tide of the Civil War in the South's favor. The dramatic events of this attempt to capture Washington—and the president with it—unfold in stunning detail as Cooling taps fresh documentary sources and offers a new interpretation of this story of the defense of the nation’s capital. Commemorating this largely forgotten and under-appreciated chapter in the study of Lincoln and the Civil War, The Day Lincoln Was Almost Shot is a fascinating look at this potential turning point in American history.

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In the geological blink of an eye, mammals moved from an obscure group of vertebrates into a class of planetary dominance. Why? J. David Archibald's provocative study identifies the fall of dinosaurs as the factor that allowed mammals to evolve into the dominant tetrapod form. Archibald refutes the widely accepted single-cause impact theory for dinosaur extinction. He demonstrates that multiple factors-massive volcanic eruptions, loss of shallow seas, and extraterrestrial impact-likely led to their demise. While their avian relatives ultimately survived and thrived, terrestrial dinosaurs did not. Taking their place as the dominant land and sea tetrapods were mammals, whose radiation was explosive following nonavian dinosaur extinction. Archibald argues that because of dinosaurs, Mesozoic mammals changed relatively slowly for 145 million years compared to the prodigious Cenozoic radiation that followed. Finally out from under the shadow of the giant reptiles, Cenozoic mammals evolved into the forms we recognize today in a mere ten million years after dinosaur extinction. Extinction and Radiation is the first book to convincingly link the rise of mammals with the fall of dinosaurs. Piecing together evidence from both molecular biology and the fossil record, Archibald shows how science is edging closer to understanding exactly what happened during the mass extinctions near the K/T boundary and the radiation that followed.

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This volume examines how generative mechanisms emerge in the social order and their consequences. It does so in the light of finding answers to the general question posed in this book series: Will Late Modernity be replaced by a social formation that could be called Morphogenic Society? This volume clarifies what a ‘generative mechanism’ is, to achieve a better understanding of their social origins, and to delineate in what way such mechanisms exert effects within a current social formation, either stabilizing it or leading to changes potentially replacing it . The book explores questions about conjuncture, convergence and countervailing effects of morphogenetic mechanisms in order to assess their impact. Simultaneously, it looks at how products of positive feedback intertwine with the results of (morphostatic) negative feedback. This process also requires clarification, especially about the conditions under which morphostasis prevails over morphogenesis and vice versa. It raises the issue as to whether their co-existence can be other than short-lived. The volume addresses whether or not there also is a process of ‘morpho-necrosis’, i.e. the ultimate demise of certain morphostatic mechanisms, such that they cannot ‘recover’. The book concludes that not only are generative mechanisms required to explain associations between variables involved in the replacement of Late Modernity by Morphogenic Society, but they are also robust enough to account for cases and times when such variables show no significant correlations.

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Why human rights don’t work In The Effluent Eye, Rosemary J. Jolly argues for the decolonization of human rights, attributing their failure not simply to state and institutional malfeasance but to the very concept of human rights as anthropocentric—and, therefore, fatally shortsighted. In an engaging mix of literary and cultural criticism, Indigenous and Black critique, and substantive forays into the medical humanities, Jolly proposes right-making in the demise of human rights. Using what she calls an “effluent eye,” Jolly draws on “Fifth Wave” structural public health to confront the concept of human rights—one of the most powerful and widely entrenched liberal ideas. She builds on Indigenous sovereignty work from authors such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Mark Rifkin as well as the littoral development in Black studies from Christine Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, and Tiffany Lethabo King to engage decolonial thinking on a range of urgent topics such as pandemic history and grief; gender-based violence and sexual assault; and the connections between colonial capitalism and substance abuse, the Anthropocene, and climate change. Combining witnessed experience with an array of decolonial texts, Jolly argues for an effluent form of reading that begins with the understanding that the granting of “rights” to individuals is meaningless in a world compromised by pollution, poverty, and successive pandemics. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

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California’s wine country conjures images of pastoral vineyards and cellars lined with oak barrels. As a mainstay of the state’s economy, California wines occupy the popular imagination like never before and drive tourism in famous viticultural regions across the state. Scholars know remarkably little, however, about the history of the wine industry and the diverse groups who built it. In fact, contemporary stereotypes belie how the state’s commercial wine industry was born amid social turmoil and racialized violence in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century California. In The Grapes of Conquest Julia Ornelas-Higdon addresses these gaps in the historical narrative and popular imagination. Beginning with the industry’s inception at the California missions, Ornelas-Higdon examines the evolution of wine growing across three distinct political regimes—Spanish, Mexican, and American—through the industry’s demise after Prohibition. This interethnic study of race and labor in California examines how California Natives, Mexican Californios, Chinese immigrants, and Euro-Americans came together to build the industry. Ornelas-Higdon identifies the birth of the wine industry as a significant missing piece of California history—one that reshapes scholars’ understandings of how conquest played out, how race and citizenship were constructed, and how agribusiness emerged across the region. The Grapes of Conquest unearths the working-class, multiracial roots of the California wine industry, challenging its contemporary identity as the purview of elite populations.

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How ordinary urban objects influence our behavior, exacerbate inequality, and encourage social changeAssumptions about human behavior lie hidden in plain sight all around us, programmed into the design and regulation of the material objects we encounter on a daily basis. In the Midst of Things takes an in-depth look at the social lives of five objects commonly found in the public spaces of New York City and its suburbs, revealing how our interactions with such material things are our primary point of contact with the social, political, and economic forces that shape city life.Drawing on groundbreaking fieldwork and a wealth of original interviews, Mike Owen Benediktsson shows how we are in the midst of things whose profound social role often goes overlooked. A newly built lawn on the Brooklyn waterfront reflects an increasingly common trade-off between the marketplace and the public good. A cement wall on a New Jersey highway speaks to the demise of the postwar American dream. A metal folding chair on a patch of asphalt in Queens exposes the political obstacles to making the city livable. A subway door expresses the simmering conflict between the city and the desires of riders, while a newsstand bears witness to our increasingly impoverished streetscapes.In the Midst of Things demonstrates how the material realm is one of immediacy, control, inequality, and unpredictability, and how these factors frustrate the ability of designers, planners, and regulators to shape human behavior.

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No one captures the border-its history and imagination, its danger, contradiction, and redemption-like Fernando A. Flores, whose stories reimagine and reinterpret the region's existence with peerless style. In his immersive, uncanny borderland, things are never what they seem: a world where the sun is both rising and setting, and where conniving possums efficiently take over an entire town and rewrite its history. The stories in Valleyesque dance between the fantastical and the hyperreal with dexterous, often hilarious flair. A dying Frédéric Chopin stumbles through Ciudad Juárez in the aftermath of his mother's death, attempting to recover his beloved piano that was seized at the border, while a muralist is taken on a psychedelic journey by an airbrushed Emiliano Zapata T-shirt. A woman is engulfed by a used-clothing warehouse with a life of its own, and a grieving mother breathlessly chronicles the demise of a town decimated by violence. In two separate stories, queso dip and musical rhythms are bottled up and sold for mass consumption. And in the final tale, Flores pieces together the adventures of a young Lee Harvey Oswald as he starts a music career in Texas. Swinging between satire and surrealism, grief and joy, Valleyesque is a boundary- and border-pushing collection from a one-of-a-kind stylist and voice. With the visceral imagination that made his debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, a cult classic, Flores brings his vision of the border to life-and beyond.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922 75) was one of the most important Italian intellectuals of the post World War II era. An astonishing polymath poet, novelist, literary critic, political polemicist, screenwriter, and film director he exerted profound influence on Italian culture up to his untimely death at the age of fifty-three. This revised edition of what the New York Times Book Review has called "the standard Pasolini biography" introduces the artist to a new generation of readers. Based on extensive interviews with those who knew Pasolini, both friends and enemies, admirers and detractors, Pasolini Requiem chronicles his growth from poet in the provinces to Italy's leading "civil poet"; his flight to Rome in 1950; the scandalous success of his two novels and political writing; and his transition to film, where he started as a contributor to the golden age of Italian cinema and ended with the shocking Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Pasolini's tragic and still unsolved murder has remained a subject of contentious debate for four decades. The enduring fascination with who committed the crime and why reflects his vital stature in Italy's political and social history. Updated throughout and with a new afterword covering the efforts to reopen the investigation and the legal maelstrom surrounding his demise this edition of Pasolini Requiem is a riveting account of one of the twentieth century's most controversial, ever-present iconoclasts.

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The democratic election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1994 marked the demise of apartheid and the beginning of a new struggle to define the nation’s past. History after Apartheid analyzes how, in the midst of the momentous shift to an inclusive democracy, South Africa’s visual and material culture represented the past while at the same time contributing to the process of social transformation. Considering attempts to invent and recover historical icons and narratives, art historian Annie E. Coombes examines how strategies for embodying different models of historical knowledge and experience are negotiated in public culture—in monuments, museums, and contemporary fine art.History after Apartheid explores the dilemmas posed by a wide range of visual and material culture including key South African heritage sites. How prominent should Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress be in the museum at the infamous political prison on Robben Island? How should the postapartheid government deal with the Voortrekker Monument mythologizing the Boer Trek of 1838? Coombes highlights the contradictory investment in these sites among competing constituencies and the tensions involved in the rush to produce new histories for the “new” South Africa. She reveals how artists and museum officials struggled to adequately represent painful and difficult histories ignored or disavowed under apartheid, including slavery, homelessness, and the attempted destruction of KhoiSan hunter-gatherers. Describing how contemporary South African artists address historical memory and the ambiguities uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Coombes illuminates a body of work dedicated to the struggle to simultaneously remember the past and move forward into the future.

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The electric power industry has been transformed over the past forty years, becoming more reliable and resilient while meeting environmental goals. A big question now is how to prevent backsliding.Pollution, Politics, and Power tells the story of the remarkable transformation of the electric power industry over the last four decades. Electric power companies have morphed from highly polluting regulated monopolies into competitive, deregulated businesses that generate, transmit, and distribute cleaner electricity. Power companies are investing heavily in natural gas and utility-scale renewable resources and have stopped building new coal-fired plants. They facilitate end-use efficiency and purchase excess electricity produced by rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines, helping to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.But these beneficial changes have come with costs. The once-powerful coal industry is on the edge of ruin, with existing coal-fired plants closing and coal mines shutting down. As a result, communities throughout Appalachia suffer from high unemployment and reduced resources, which have exacerbated a spiraling opioid epidemic. The Trump administration’s efforts to revive the coal industry by scaling back environmental controls and reregulating electricity prices have had little effect on the coal industry’s decline.Major advances therefore come with warning signs, which we must heed in charting the continuing course of sustainable electricity. In Pollution, Politics, and Power, Thomas O. McGarity examines the progress made, details lessons learned, and looks to the future with suggestions for building a more sustainable grid while easing the economic downsides of coal’s demise.

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'A hugely entertaining Victorian mystery' New York Times'I enjoyed this - properly creepy and Gothic' Ian Rankin1889. The Scottish Play is coming home.But before the darling couple of London theatre, Henry Irving & Ellen Terry, take their acclaimed Macbeth to the Edinburgh stage terror treads the boards. A grisly message found smeared across the cobbles in blood, foretelling someone's demise. As the bloody prophecies continue to appear Edinburgh's own beloved pair - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray & Inspector Ian Frey - enter the scene. Frey scoffs at this blatant publicity stunt, while McGray is convinced of supernatural affairs. As they scrutinise the key players, they discover that Terry, Irving, and his peculiar, preoccupied assistant (one Bram Stoker) all have reasons to kill, or be killed...But one thing is clear. By occult curse or human hand, death will take bow the night the curtain rises.Praise for the Frey & McGray series:'I enjoyed this - properly creepy and Gothic' Ian Rankin'A hugely entertaining Victorian mystery' New York Times'This is wonderful. A brilliant, moving, clever, lyrical book - I loved it. Oscar de Muriel is going to be a name to watch' Manda Scott'Fun to read and a fast page-turner. Love and murder - they go together like strawberries and cream' Independent'A brilliant mix of horror, history, and humour. Genuinely riveting with plenty of twists, this will keep you turning the pages. It's clever, occasionally frightening and superbly written ... Everything you need in a mystery thriller' Crime Review'Fast-paced, well-researched and thoroughly spellbinding. The mismatched pair is as entertaining as Holmes and Watson at their best' Historical Novel Society

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Imagine you suddenly find yourself in the control room of a vast technological apparatus, sometime in the future, where you are told that science has satisfied all the needs of all living humans. Furthermore, you learn, the next generation of the species will not be produced in the usual way, but instead by this machine, provided only that somebody push a little red button. The catch: you have to give a reason for pushing it. You hesitate: what do you say? Our own world is more like this scenario than we at first may be inclined to admit, not least in the fact that, mutatis mutandis, we seem to be struggling to come up with a good answer. The problem, says Rémi Brague, is fundamentally a metaphysical one. Now, mention of ‘metaphysics’ in decent society these days is likely to elicit a smile or an unimpressed shrug. If there is a shelf with that label on it in your typical bookstore you are as likely to find guides to crystals, chakras, or hemp care there as you are treatises by Aristotle, Aquinas, or Kant. And, in spite of the ongoing revival of academic interest in metaphysics, it remains a rather specialist domain, a marginal sub-discipline in departments of philosophy, be they analytical or continental in cast. If you should take it too seriously, you’ll lose your bearings in the real world, and you’ll go adrift in some ethereal sea of dreams. It is, in a word, irrelevant – right? Wrong, Brague writes. Sustained reflection on the nature of being, undertaken in the hope that something can indeed be said about it, was for millennia considered to be among the most important of intellectual pursuits, and not without reason. With his characteristic combination of erudition and wit, Brague takes us on a sweeping tour of the discipline’s varying fortunes, from its early Athenian practitioners through its Jewish, Muslim, and Christian heirs, to the chorus of critics who in the last few centuries succeeded in putting an end to its dominance. But the questions that metaphysics was asking, Brague shows, did not disappear with its demise, and so, whether implicitly or explicitly, metaphysics itself has resisted relegation to the history books. For the nature of being, and especially our relationship to it, has continued to haunt its triumphant critics. One quintessentially metaphysical claim above all, as Brague suggests, seems to have horrified them: the doctrine that all that is, insofar as it is, is good. And yet, in rejecting the “convertibility” of the “transcendentals” of being and goodness, critics of the old metaphysics – Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Carnap, and Levinas among them – in their own ways offered metaphysical counter-claims, even as they turned increasingly anthropological in their interests. They also raised the stakes. For, whether the denial of the goodness of being can legitimately be attributed some causal responsibility for a world in which our species could rapidly and deliberately ensure its own extinction, this is the world we live in, and that denial does form the basis of the intellectual background from which we tend to begin our speculations. If we need to be able to articulate reasons for our project not to end, then we also need to rethink the rejection that we have come to take for granted. What Brague offers us here is not a narrative of decline, not a Jeremiad, not a nostalgic lament for the thought-world of a bygone era, but a sympathetic outline of some of the major tensions in the philosophical underpinnings of the modernity that we all inhabit. As such, it forms a part of his ongoing effort take modernity “more seriously than it takes itself”, to expose its hidden foundations, and to push it to its logical conclusions. In so doing, he hopes to help clarify where it is that we are going as a species, and to ensure that wherever it is, there is room for us humans in it.

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The history of the Irish College in Rome between 1771 and 1826 offers an insider’s view of more than just the College itself; it sheds important light on the effects of the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 and the suppression of the Church more generally during the French period (1796-1814). Using the Irish College as a prism, this work reveals how troubling, how long, and how deep-rooted the effects of these fateful events were on the Church. For a half-century, the College felt the theological, financial, and administrative anomalies which followed Dominus ac Redemptor, the papal bull of suppression. The men at the centre of the Jesuit plot were also those who took up roles at institutions like the Irish College, following the order’s demise. What is less understood is that the efforts to topple these men and their agendas produced another wave of deleterious effects during the pontificates of Pius VI (r. 1775-1799) and Pius VII (r. 1800-1821). Thus, the lies, or half-truths, which were necessary to effect the Jesuit suppression, were adopted by subsequent administrations, initially to further this agenda under Clement XIV (r. 1769-1774) and later to overturn it, producing a weak Church and ineffective member institutions, such as the Irish College.

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This new publication from Michael Belafi offers some truly intriguing content. Photographs of the mighty Zeppelin at all stages of development feature in a publication that aims to chart the entire course of the airship's history. Named after the German Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, an early pioneer of rigid airship development, the Zeppelin was first flown commercially by Deutsch Luftschiffahrts (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1500 flights. When war hit, it was employed to military advantage, wreaking carnage upon Britain's towns and cities. German defeat in 1918 temporarily halted the airship business (many had to be surrendered under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles), although it did bounce back with the construction of the Graf Zeppelin in the 30s. A series of terrible accidents was soon to signal the demise of the Zeppelin however; following the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, and in the midst of a host of political and economic issues, the Zeppelin was soon to be consigned to the history books as one of the great aviation relics of the 20th Century.This new publication explores each facet of its history, and concludes by assessing the legacy of rigid airship development, still felt to this day.

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In this intimate and revealing memoir, Lou Reed s first wife finally tells the full story of her five-year relationship with the legendary New York singer and songwriter. Bettye met Lou in 1968 as a nineteen-year-old Columbia University student; they were married, briefly, in 1973. Their relationship spanned some of the most pivotal years of his life and career, from the demise of The Velvet Underground to the writing and recording of his seminal solo masterpieces Transformer, for which Lou wrote 'Perfect Day about an afternoon they spent together in the park, and Berlin, which draws on tales from Bettye s childhood. Here, Bettye looks back on their initially idyllic life together on the Upper East Side; Lou s struggle to launch a solo career after leaving perhaps the most influential rock band of all time; his work and friendships with fellow stars David Bowie and Iggy Pop; and his descent into drink and drug abuse following the success of Transformer, which sent him spinning out from gentle soul to rock n roll animal and brought a swift and calamitous end to their relationship. A powerful and poignant meditation on love, loss, and music, Perfect Day offers a fascinating new perspective on the life and legend of one of rock n roll s finest sons.

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The Mehdi Army militia was a towering force in Iraq during the early years of the post-Saddam era. As an aggressive opponent of foreign occupation and one of the principal antagonists in Iraq's brutal sectarian civil war, the militia was central to the violence that ravaged the country and a pivotal political actor. Growing rapidly in size and strength, and controlling entire districts of Baghdad and broad swathes of southern and central Iraq, the Mehdi Army seemed poised to become a Hezbollah-like 'state within a state' that would remain enormously powerful for years to come. Drawing from extensive field experience in one of Baghdad's most volatile militia-held districts, Krohley exposes how, and why, the militia suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed in the midst of the Americans' 'Surge' of forces during 2008. Building from an examination of the Mehdi Army's social and ideological roots, he presents a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood study of the militia's changing fortunes that offers unparalleled local detail and specificity. Krohley shows how the Mehdi Army's demise was ultimately a self-inflicted 'death' as opposed to a triumph of its foes.In so doing, he not only challenges prevailing orthodoxies of counterinsurgency doctrine and the mythology of the Surge, but also offers penetrating insights into the battered state of Iraqi society after decades of dictatorship, privation and war.

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In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community.

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The construction of the European Community (EC) has widely been understood as the product of either economic self-interest or dissatisfaction with the nation-state system. In Europe United, Sebastian Rosato challenges these conventional explanations, arguing that the Community came into being because of balance of power concerns. France and the Federal Republic of Germany—the two key protagonists in the story—established the EC at the height of the cold war as a means to balance against the Soviet Union and one another. More generally, Rosato argues that international institutions, whether military or economic, largely reflect the balance of power. In his view, states establish institutions in order to maintain or increase their share of world power, and the shape of those institutions reflects the wishes of their most powerful members. Rosato applies this balance of power theory of cooperation to several other cooperative ventures since 1789, including various alliances and trade pacts, the unifications of Italy and Germany, and the founding of the United States. Rosato concludes by arguing that the demise of the Soviet Union has deprived the EC of its fundamental purpose. As a result, further moves toward political and military integration are improbable, and the economic community is likely to unravel to the point where it becomes a shadow of its former self.

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The King departed this world during the month of punk Rock's apotheosis. Punk had set out to destroy Elvis, or at least everything he came to represent, but never got the chance. Elvis destroyed himself before anyone else could. Nearly forty years after his death, Rock's ultimate legend and prototype just won't go away and his influence and legacy are to be found not just in music today, but the world over. Elvis Presley has permeated the modern world in ways that are bizarre and inexplicable: a pop icon while he was alive, he has become almost a religious icon in death, a modern-day martyr crucified on the wheel of drugs, celebrity culture, junk food and sex. In Elvis Has Left the Building, Dylan Jones takes us back to those heady days around the time of his death and the rise of punk. He evokes the hysteria and devotion of The King's numerous disciples and imitators, offering a uniquely insightful commentary on Elvis's life, times and outrageous demise. This is a fresh account, written with the authors customary panache, recounting how Elvis single-handedly changed the course of popular music and culture, and what his death meant and still means to us today.

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The Depression era closing of a Ford plant sends Andy and two companions to Moscow to find work in a Soviet automotive plant, where he meets Natasha, an exemplar of the "new Soviet woman." Based on Myra Page's own experiences in Moscow during the first Five-Year Plan, Natasha is a portrait of women's contradictory social position in the early periods of socialist construction. At the core of this novel is a firsthand look at the developing forces and changing relations of production forces that bring about the conversion of Andy into a "Moscow Yankee." While revealing the political and economic policies that would inevitably lead to the demise of Soviet-style socialism, Moscow Yankee refutes the notion that egalitarian societies cannot succeed because they fail to take into account the individualism and greed of "human nature." Barbara Foley's introduction analyzes the Soviet Socialist construction in Page's novel and the politics of the novelistic form in relation to Moscow Yankee. Originally published in 1935 "A picture of Americans lured to Moscow by hope in the 'great experiment,' and of others driven there by the depression, and of still others attracted by the simple desire to get good engineering jobs, Moscow Yankee; has a decided value . . . a sense of life, stirring in the chaos of destruction and reconstruction." -- The New York Times Book Review

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In light of the recent demise of the Soviet Union and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet forces from Central Europe, the debate between neoliberal institutionalism and neorealism has taken on a new relevance. Neorealism and Neoliberalism concentrates on issues of conflict and cooperation with their implications for post-Cold War international relations. Essays by some of today's most prominent political theorists debate the importance of anarchy versus the importance of interdependence in determining state behavior; the feasibility of international cooperation; the impotance of absolute gains versus relative gains as incentive for cooperation; the trade-offs between economic welfare and military security; the importance of state intentions versus state power; and the significance of the emergence of numerous international regimes and institutions. The collection features: -An introduction by David A. Baldwin; -Robert O. Keohane on the realist challenge after the Cold War; -Joseph M. Grieco on relative gains and the limits of cooperation; -Helen Milner on anarchy in international relations theory; -Stephen Krasner on national power and international cooperation; -Charles Lipson on international cooperation in economic and security affairs. Cutting to the heart of the debate over the possibility of a "new world order," Baldwin's collection is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the post-Cold War world.

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The second book in the bestselling spin off series from Percy Jackson and the Olympians -now a major Disney+ series!This crazy messed up world of gods and monsters is Percy Jackson's reality, which pretty much sucks for him.Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, God of the Sea, has woken from a very deep sleep and come face to face with two snake-haired ladies who refuse to die.But they're the least of his problems. Because Percy finds himself at a camp for half-bloods, which doesn't ring any bells for him. There's just one name he remembers from his past.Annabeth.Only one thing is certain - Percy's questing days aren't over. He and fellow demigods Frank and Hazel must face the most important quest of all: the Prophecy of Seven.If they fail, it's not just their camp at risk. Percy's old life, the gods, and the entire world might be destroyed. . .Return to the World of Percy Jackson in the best-selling, brand-new adventure featuring the original hero in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Chalice of the Gods – out now!And don't miss the trio's next adventure in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Wrath of the Triple Goddess, coming soon!

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"Richard Fischer's compelling photographs not only depict flowers in their extraordinary, beautiful stage of birth and maturity but also are stark reminders of their inevitable demise and passing." — Global Art Times Floral is an impressive coffee-table book that aims to archive the biodiversity of our planet, because climate change is now threatening every second plant species. To record the uniqueness and beauty of our nature for posterity, botanical gardens and photographer Richard Fischer have launched an unprecedented art project. At the peak of their life cycle, Fischer photographs the plant with a sophisticated macro technique in his studio. To do this, he uses special light that brings out the filigree structures of his floral photographic model particularly well. The result is outstanding photographs that leave the viewer in rapt amazement, for we have never perceived nature in this way. Richard Fischer presents himself as a Master of Fine Art Photography and creates close-ups of blossoms and flowers that seem almost mystically alien at first glance. The photographer has not simply done nature photography for the illustrated book Floral. His works are art. In the close-ups, every little hair and every vein of leaf becomes visible. The plants appear transparent and yet in bright colours. Text in English and German.

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Demeter Press took on the challenge of discussing multiples through On Mothering Multiples: Complexities and Possibilities, a book that promised to “(re)explore, (re)present, and make meaning of the process of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering experiences with multiples”. Under the editorship of Kathy Mantas, and through diverse contributions of research, artwork and narrative pieces, this topic is explored with diverse voices that elicit nuance towards a subject that often suffers from cliché and overt charm. Daring to taunt the reader who may be beguiled by the blessing of multiples with an unflinching look at subjects such as fetal demise, disability, post-partum depression, the beauty and the beast of the post-twin maternal body, and the society’s obsession and derision with multiples conceived through assistive reproductive technology, this book is a foundational text on the topic of the messiness of multiple births and mothering. This collection manages to be both intensely personal while maintaining the scholarly distance necessary to offer an important contribution to the field of motherhood studies as well as intersecting with grief work and disability studies. Published in 2016, this book remains provocative, and stealth in how it unfurls its wisdom, providing both clarity and further complication on this subject with more insight to gain with each revisit to the text.

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The period from 1925 to 1960 was the heyday of the American Radio Soap Opera. In addition to being part of popular culture, the soap opera had important commercial aspects as well that were not only related to their production, but also to the desperate need to sell products or perish. Both sides of this story are traced in this comprehensive compendium. The dictionary section, made up of more than 500 cross-referenced entries, provides brief vignettes of the more popular and also less well-known "soaps," among them Back Stage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, Pepper Young's Family and The Guiding Light. Other entries evoke those who brought these programs to life: the actors, announcers, scriptwriters, networks, and even the sponsors. Nor are the basic themes, the stock characters and the gimmick, forgotten. The book's introduction defines the soap opera, examines the span of the radio serial, reviews its origins and its demise, and focuses on the character types that made up its denizens. The chronology outlines the period and the bibliography offers further reading. Together, these elements make a comprehensive reference work that researchers will find invaluable long into the future.

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If you’ve sought treatment for and have been diagnosed with depression, you have made a huge first step toward healing and creating a happier life. But sometimes there are growing pains along the way, and if you are in a relationship, often your partner will feel these pains right along with you.When you are feeling depressed, you may worry that you aren’t good enough for your partner, or become irritable around them. You may even push them away when you feel like your emotions are beyond your control. In addition, your sense of intimacy may diminish, and your sex life may fizzle as a result of fatigue and medications. The hard truth is that feelings of isolation, worthlessness, and tiredness can all take a hefty toll on your love life. But you don’t have to let clinical depression be the demise of your relationship.Using an integrative approach based in mindfulness, interpersonal psychotherapy (ITP), acceptance and commitment therapy ACT), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), When Depression Hurts Your Relationship offers practical skills to help readers with depression reignite intimacy with their partners.If you suffer from depression, this book is a must-read to help keep your romantic relationship healthy, exciting, and rewarding for you both.

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A gripping account of the months before and after Stalin’s death and how his demise reshaped the course of twentieth-century history Joshua Rubenstein’s riveting account takes us back to the second half of 1952 when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin’s murderous regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower with armed force, and was also broadening a vicious campaign against Soviet Jews. Stalin’s sudden collapse and death in March 1953 was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the twentieth century.The Last Days of Stalin is an engaging, briskly told account of the dictator’s final active months, the vigil at his deathbed, and the unfolding of Soviet and international events in the months after his death. Rubenstein throws fresh light on the devious plotting of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and other “comrades in arms” who well understood the significance of the dictator’s impending death; the witness-documented events of his death as compared to official published versions; Stalin’s rumored plans to forcibly exile Soviet Jews; the responses of Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles to the Kremlin’s conciliatory gestures after Stalin’s death; and the momentous repercussions when Stalin’s regime of terror was cut short.

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In the winter of 1909, a political bombshell exploded in tsarist Russia. Scandal swept not only the empire but the entire world with the exposure of the secret life of one man. Newspaper headlines introduced him as a 'twentieth-century Judas,' and since his initiation to the most notorious villains' club, his name, Evno Filipovich Azef, has remained in the Russian tradition as a synonym for scandalous duplicity, unscrupulous perfidy, and criminal provocation. His story is inseparable from the history of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary party (PSR) and the terrorism that plagued the tsarist regime in the first decade of the twentieth century. More than 17,000 people were killed or wounded throughout the empire between 1905 and 1910 as a result of political assassination attempts alone. The use of undercover police spies to infiltrate oppositionist groups was a primary means of combatting terrorist activity. Enter Evno Azef, a man who, before being reviled by Socialist-Revolutionary party leaders as a traitorous double agent, would spend fifteen years inside the PSR, the largest terrorist organization in Russia. A man who would rise to a position of prominence in the party's Central Committee, and become one of the most trusted leaders of its famous terrorist arm, the SR Combat Organization: Evno Azef, Russian master spy. A thorough investigation based on all available documentary resources-available for the first time due to the Soviet government's demise-Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution sorts out the facts of the case from rumors and legends. Entangled in Terror explores the background and history of the radical SR party and its Combat Organization, the course of Azef's career, his role within the party, and the extent and frequency of his contacts with the secret police. The book evaluates the consequences of the Azef affair for the party, for the Russian revolutionary movement, and for terrorism in Russia. Finally, Entangled in Terror examines Azef's personal motivations: was he seduced by money or did he seek adventure and the thrill of a double life? A gripping expose on high-stakes political intrique, Entangled in Terror tells a powerful, true-to-life tale of power, money, deception, and deadly consequences.

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Many of London’s Victorian buildings are built of coarse-textured yellow bricks. These are ‘London stocks’, produced in very large quantities all through the nineteenth century and notable for their ability to withstand the airborne pollutants of the Victorian city. Whether visible or, as is sometimes the case, hidden behind stonework or underground, they form a major part of the fabric of the capital. Until now, little has been written about how and where they were made and the people who made them. Peter Hounsell has written a detailed history of the industry which supplied these bricks to the London market, offering a fresh perspective on the social and economic history of the city. In it he reveals the workings of a complex network of finance and labour. From landowners who saw an opportunity to profit from the clay on their land, to entrepreneurs who sought to build a business as brick manufacturers, to those who actually made the bricks, the book considers the process in detail, placing it in the context of the supply-and-demand factors that affected the numbers of bricks produced and the costs involved in equipping and running a brickworks. Transport from the brickfields to the market was crucial and Dr Hounsell conducts a full survey of the different routes by which bricks were delivered to building sites - by road, by Thames barge or canal boat, and in the second half of the century by the new railways. The companies that made the bricks employed many thousands of men, women and children and their working lives, homes and culture are looked at here, as well as the journey towards better working conditions and wages. The decline of the handmade yellow stock was eventually brought about by the arrival of the machine-made Fletton brick that competed directly with it on price. Brickmaking in the vicinity of London finally disappeared after the Second World War. Although its demise has left little evidence in the landscape, this industry influenced the development of many parts of London and the home counties, and this book provides a valuable record of it in its heyday.

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It was an age of mighty heroes, misunderstood monsters, and complex villains. With the publication of Fantastic Four No. 1 in November 1961, comics giant Marvel inaugurated a transformative era in pop culture. Through the next two decades, the iconic Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the X-Men leapt, darted, and towered through its pages. Captain America was resurrected from his 1940s deep-freeze and the Avengers became the World’s Greatest Super Heroes. Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and dozens more were added to the pantheon, each with their own rogues’ gallery of malevolent counterparts. Nearly 60 years later, these thrilling characters from the 1960s and ’70s are more popular than ever, fighting the good fight in comics, toy aisles, and blockbuster movies around the world. In The Marvel Age of Comics 1961–1978, legendary writer and editor Roy Thomas takes you to the heart of this seminal segment in comic history—an age of triumphant character and narrative innovation that reinvented the super hero genre. With more than 500 images and insider insights, the book traces the birth of champions who were both epic in their powers and grounded in a world that readers recognized as close to their own; relatable heroes with the same problems, struggles, and shortcomings as everyone else. By the ’70s, we see how the House of Ideas also elevated horror, sword and sorcery, and martial arts in its stable of titanic demigods, introducing iconic characters like Man-Thing, Conan, and Shang-Chi and proving that their brand of storytelling could succeed and flourish outside of the capes and tights. Behind it all, we get to know the extraordinary Marvel architects whose names are almost as familiar as the mortals (and immortals!) they brought to life—Stan “The Man” Lee, Jack “King” Kirby, and Steve Ditko, along with a roster of greats like John Romita, John Buscema, Marie Severin, Jim Steranko, and countless others. The result is a behind-the-scenes treasure trove and a jewel for any comic fan’s library, brimming with the innovation and energy of an invincible era for Marvel and its heroes alike. © 2020 MARVEL

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Developing Asia has been the site of some of the last century's fastest growing economies as well as some of the world's most durable authoritarian regimes. Many accounts of rapid growth alongside monopolies on political power have focused on crony relationships between the state and business. But these relationships have not always been smooth, as anti-corruption campaigns, financial and banking crises, and dramatic bouts of liberalization and crackdown demonstrate. Why do partnerships between political and business elites fall apart over time? And why do some partnerships produce stable growth and others produce crisis or stagnation? In Precarious Ties, Meg Rithmire offers a novel account of the relationships between business and political elites in three authoritarian regimes in developing Asia: Indonesia under Suharto's New Order, Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional, and China under the Chinese Communist Party. All three regimes enjoyed periods of high growth and supposed alliances between autocrats and capitalists. Over time, however, the relationships between capitalists and political elites changed, and economic outcomes diverged. While state-business ties in Indonesia and China created dangerous dynamics like capital flight, fraud, and financial crisis, Malaysia's state-business ties contributed to economic stagnation. To understand these developments, Rithmire presents two conceptual models of state-business relations that explain their genesis and why variation occurs over time. She shows that mutual alignment occurs when an authoritarian regime organizes its institutions, or even its informal practices, to induce capitalists to invest in growth and development. Mutual endangerment, on the other hand, obtains when economic and political elites are entangled in corrupt dealings and invested in perpetuating each other's dominance. The loss of power on one side would bring about the demise of the other. Rithmire contends that the main factors explaining why one pattern dominates over the other are trust between business and political elites, determined during regime formation, and the dynamics of financial liberalization. Empirically rich and sweeping in scope, Precarious Ties offers lessons for all nations in which the state and the private sector are deeply entwined.

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The first work to lay out Roman strategic thinking from its start under Augustus until its final demise in 476 CE From Octavian's victory at Actium (31 bc) to its traditional endpoint in the West (476), the Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years—an impressive number by any standard, and fully one-fifth of all recorded history. In fact, the decline and final collapse of the Roman Empire took longer than most other empires even existed. Any historian trying to unearth the grand strategy of the Roman Empire must, therefore, always remain cognizant of the time scale, in which she is dealing. Although the pace of change in the Roman era never approached that of the modern era, it was not an empire in stasis. While the visible trappings may have changed little, the challenges Rome faced at its end were vastly different than those faced by Augustus and the Julio-Claudians. Over the centuries, the Empire's underlying economy, political arrangements, military affairs, and, most importantly, the myriad of external threats it faced were in constant flux, making adaptability to changing circumstances as important to Roman strategists as it is to strategists of the modern era. Yet the very idea of Rome having a grand strategy, or what it might be, had not concerned historians until Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire appeared forty years ago. Although this pioneering work generated much debate, it failed to win over many ancient historians, in part because of its heavy emphasis on military force and its neglect of considerations of diplomacy, economics, politics, culture, and the changing nature of the threats that confronted Rome. By employing an expansive definition of strategy and by focusing much of the narrative on crucial historical moments and the personalities involved, James Lacey provides a comprehensive, persuasive, and engaging account of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It assimilates the most recent work of classical historians and archaeologists to correct the flaws and omissions of previous accounts, thus presenting the most complete and nuanced narrative of Roman strategic thinking and execution ever published.

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The contributors to this publication met in Warsaw in 2016 to remember Khaled al-As‘ad, a mutual friend whose tragic demise the year before in his native Palmyra, in front of the Museum that he had directed for forty years, became a tragic testimonial to fanaticism and a barbaric destruction of civilization. The conference Life in Palmyra, Life for Palmyra, which brought together an international group of more than thirty scholars, and the publication, which is the result of this meeting, became a tribute to Khaled al-Asʿad and his life’s work. The papers offered here cover a wide range of topics related to Palmyra and its vicinity, spanning a period from the Paleolithic to the Byzantine. Supplementing the volume are some personal messages and reflections, and the score and a recording of Tadmor, a sonata for viola and violoncello composed specially for this occasion. Also included in this volume is the text of the Warsaw Declaration, passed unanimously by members of a round table organized ad hoc at the conference, which coincided with the liberation of Palmyra from ISIS in March 2016. In this document scholars formulated the convictions of the research community regarding the restoration priorities to be implemented in the near future at this important and unique archaeological site.

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From international sensation Ashok K. Banker, pioneer of the fantasy genre in India, comes the first book in a groundbreaking, epic fantasy series inspired by the ancient Indian classic, The MahabharataIn a world where demigods and demons walk among mortals, the Emperor of the vast Burnt Empire has died, leaving a turbulent realm without an emperor. Two young princes, Adri and Shvate, are in line to rule, but birthright does not guarantee inheritance, for any successor must sit upon the legendary Burning Throne and pass The Test of Fire. Imbued with dark sorceries, the throne is a crucible—one that incinerates the unworthy.Adri and Shvate pass The Test and are declared heirs to the empire . . . but there is another with a claim to power, another who also survives: a girl from an outlying kingdom. When this girl, whose father is the powerful demonlord Jarsun, is denied her claim by the interim leaders, Jarsun declares war, vowing to tear the Burnt Empire apart—leaving the young princes Adri and Shvate to rule a shattered realm embroiled in rebellion and chaos . . .Welcome to the Burnt Empire Saga

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Michael J. Devine provides a fresh, wide-ranging, and international perspective on the contested memory of the 1950–1953 conflict that left the Korean Peninsula divided along a heavily fortified demilitarized zone. His work examines “theaters of memory,” including literature, popular culture, public education efforts, monuments, and museums in the United States, China, and the two Koreas, to explain how contested memories have evolved over decades and how they continue to shape the domestic and foreign policies of the countries still involved in this unresolved struggle for dominance and legitimacy. The Korean War Remembered also engages with the revisionist school of historians who, influenced by America’s long nightmare in Vietnam, consider the Korean War an unwise U.S. interference in a civil war that should have been left to the Koreans to decide for themselves. As a former Peace Corps volunteer to Korea, a two-time senior Fulbright lecturer at Korean universities, and former director of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Devine offers the unique perspective of a scholar with half a century of close ties to Korea and the Korean American community, as well as practical experience in the management of historical institutions.

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Winner of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award for General Engineering from the Association of American PublishersOriginally published in 1996. By applying their abundant natural resources to ironmaking early in the eighteenth century, Americans soon made themselves felt in world markets. After the Revolution, ironmakers supplied the materials necessary to the building of American industry, pushing the fuel efficiency and productivity of their furnaces far ahead of their European rivals. In American Iron, 1607-1900, Robert B. Gordon draws on recent archaeological findings as well as archival research to present an ambitious, comprehensive survey of iron technology in America from the colonial period to the industry's demise at about the turn of the twentieth century. Closely examining the techniques—the "hows"—of ironmaking in its various forms, Gordon offers new interpretations of labor, innovation, and product quality in ironmaking, along with references to the industry's environmental consequences. He establishes the high level of skills required to ensure efficient and safe operation of furnaces and to improve the quality of iron product. By mastering founding, fining, puddling, or bloom smelting, ironworkers gained a degree of control over their lives not easily attained by others.

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The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was enacted by Congress in June of 1933 to assist the nation's recovery during the Great Depression. Its passage ushered in a unique experiment in US economic history: under the NIRA, the federal government explicitly supported, and in some cases enforced, alliances within industries. Antitrust laws were suspended, and companies were required to agree upon industry-level "codes of fair competition" that regulated wages and hours and could implement anti-competitive provisions such as those fixing prices, establishing production quotas, and imposing restrictions on new productive capacity. The NIRA is generally viewed as a monolithic program, its dramatic and sweeping effects best measurable through a macroeconomic lens. In this pioneering book, however, Jason E. Taylor examines the act instead using microeconomic tools, probing the uneven implementation of the act's codes and the radical heterogeneity of its impact across industries and time. Deconstructing the Monolith employs a mixture of archival and empirical research to enrich our understanding of how the program affected the behavior and well-being of workers and firms during the two years NIRA existed as well as in the period immediately following its demise.

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Sous l’aspect rassurant d’un recueil érudit, cet album est un permis de chasse aux trésors. Non pour les perceurs de murailles, mais pour les perceurs de mystères. Nul besoin de forcer les secrets des Pyramides ou des palais de Maharajas! Restons ‘Rive gauche’, où la Société Asiatique, libéralement ouverte, ne cesse d’enrichir sa bibliothèque, marquée par la mémoire de Jeanne-Marie Allier, fille du sinologue Paul Demiéville. Quand elle fut fondée, le 1er avril 1822, Paris était la capitale européenne de l’orientalisme. Jusqu’alors l’Asie était le domaine réservé des missionnaires et des marchands, dont le zèle n’était pas désintéressé. Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), traducteur de l’Avesta, fut le premier orientaliste au sens savant du mot. Depuis l’expédition d’Égypte, les orientalistes découvraient un monde encore plus captivant que les utopies des Voyages de Gulliver. À la Société Asiatique affluaient livres, chartes et rouleaux, tablettes d’argile, moulages d’inscriptions lapidaires, papyri, xylographies chinoises, feuilles de latanier couvertes de textes bouddhiques. Plus tard, avec les langues non écrites, arrivèrent des transcriptions sur sacs de ciment, notées à la hâte par les ethnologues. Présents dès 1822, Abel-Rémusat et Champollion affrontaient le même défi: déchiffrer des idéogrammes à l’aide de textes bilingues, sino-mandchou d’un côté, gréco-égyptien de l’autre. La quête des caractères spéciaux nécessaires à l’impression du Journal Asiatique fut un roman d’aventures, où se croisent marchands arméniens partant pour l’Égypte, ambassadeurs du Tsar en Mandchourie, graveurs méritants, et même la générosité du roi de Prusse, donateur des lettres dévanagari. Par l’extension de son champ géographique et disciplinaire, la Société Asiatique reflète la ferveur de milliers d’orientalistes, qui partagent depuis deux siècles le même projet humaniste et universaliste. Chaque livre porte la mémoire d’un savant. L’herbier chinois traduit l’insatiable curiosité du fondateur, le Comte de Lasteyrie. Le manuscrit du Lalita Vistara, est lié aux travaux d’Eugène Burnouf. Les charmantes images chinoises populaires sont un don d’Édouard Chavannes. À l’heure des spécialisations étroites et des cloisonnements excessifs, la présente collection ouvre un espace de réflexion et de citoyenneté universelles. Under the comforting aspect of a lavishly illustrated erudite collection, this album is a treasure hunting license. Not for breaking through walls, but for breaking enigmas. No need to break into the secret corridors of the Pyramids, to enter the mazes of the Maharajas' palaces! We can stay on the 'Left Bank', where the Société Asiatique, open to those who ask, has not ceased, for two centuries, to enrich its library, durably marked by the memory of Jeanne-Marie Allier, daughter of the great sinologist Paul Demiéville. When the Société Asiatique was founded on April 1st 1822, Paris was the European capital of research on the Orient. Until then, the Near East and Asia had been the exclusive domain of missionaries and merchants, whose zeal was not entirely disinterested. Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805) was the first orientalist in the scholarly sense of the word, that is to say 'a true traveler, loving all men as his brothers, sailing all over the world, above wealth and poverty'. Since the Egyptian expedition, the horizon had opened on the depths of Asia. Orientalists discovered a world even more captivating than the amusing utopias of Gulliver's Travels. Certainly, no Asian people wrote diagonally, like Lilliputians or the English ladies. But how can one not marvel at the variety of media? Books, charters and scrolls, clay tablets, casts of lapidary inscriptions, papyri, Chinese xylographs, and leaves of exotic trees covered with Buddhist texts, all flowed in to the Société Asiatique,. Later, when ethnologists began collecting unwritten languages, they sent their transcriptions, hastily noted down on bags of cement. Both present at the first session of the Société Asiatique, Abel-Rémusat and Champollion faced the same challenge at the opposite ends of Asia: to decipher ideograms with the help of bilingual texts, Sino-Manchu on the one hand, Greco-Egyptian on the other. Printing the Journal Asiatique required special characters. The quest for these new fonts is a kind of adventure novel, in which we meet Armenian merchants leaving for Egypt, Tsar's ambassadors in Manchuria, skilled engravers, and even the generosity of the King of Prussia, donor of the Devanagari letters. The Imprimerie Nationale took over under the Second Empire. The library of the Société Asiatique mirrors the fervor of thousands of Orientalists who have shared the same humanist and universalist project for two centuries. Each work bears the memory of a scholar. The Chinese Herbarium reflects the insatiable curiosity of the founder, Count de Lasteyrie. The Lalita Vistara manuscript is linked to the work of Eugene Burnouf. The charming popular Chinese images are a gift from Edouard Chavannes. 'Truth is in the whole', wrote Hegel. At a time of narrow specialization and excessive compartmentalization, the present collection opens up a space for universal reflection and citizenship.

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The collapse of an empire can result in the division of families and the redrawing of geographical boundaries. New leaders promise the return of people and territories that may have been lost in the past, often advocating aggressive foreign policies that can result in costly and devastating wars. The final years of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, the end of European colonization in Africa and Asia, and the demise of the Soviet Union were all accompanied by war and atrocity. These efforts to reunite lost kin are known as irredentism-territorial claims based on shared ethnic ties made by one state to a minority population residing within another state. For Kin or Country explores this phenomenon, investigating why the collapse of communism prompted more violence in some instances and less violence in others. Despite the tremendous political and economic difficulties facing all former communist states during their transition to a market democracy, only Armenia, Croatia, and Serbia tried to upset existing boundaries. Hungary, Romania, and Russia practiced much more restraint. The authors examine various explanations for the causes of irredentism and for the pursuit of less antagonistic policies, including the efforts by Western Europe to tame Eastern Europe. Ultimately, the authors find that internal forces drive irredentist policy even at the risk of a country's self-destruction and that xenophobia may have actually worked to stabilize many postcommunist states in Eastern Europe. Events in Russia and Eastern Europe in 2014 have again brought irredentism into the headlines. In a new Introduction, the authors address some of the events and dynamics that have developed since the original version of the book was published. By focusing on how nationalist identity interact with the interests of politicians, For Kin or Country explains why some states engage in aggressive irredentism and when others forgo those opportunities that is as relevant to Russia and Ukraine in 2014 as it was for Serbia, Croatia, and Armenia in the 1990s.

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Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal democracy had triumphed decisively on the world stage. Having banished fascism in World War II, liberalism had now buried communism, and the result would be an end of major ideological conflicts, as liberal norms and institutions spread to every corner of the globe. With the Brexit vote in Great Britain, the resurgence of right-wing populist parties across the European continent, and the surprising ascent of Donald Trump to the American presidency, such hopes have begun to seem hopelessly naïve. The far right is back, and serious rethinking is in order. In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deepest philosophical roots of such right-wing ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life. Beiner contends that Nietzsche's hatred and critique of bourgeois, egalitarian societies has engendered new disciples on the populist right who threaten to overturn the modern liberal consensus. Heidegger, no less than Nietzsche, thoroughly rejected the moral and political values that arose during the Enlightenment and came to power in the wake of the French Revolution. Understanding Heideggerian dissatisfaction with modernity, and how it functions as a philosophical magnet for those most profoundly alienated from the reigning liberal-democratic order, Beiner argues, will give us insight into the recent and unexpected return of the far right. Beiner does not deny that Nietzsche and Heidegger are important thinkers; nor does he seek to expel them from the history of philosophy. But he does advocate that we rigorously engage with their influential thought in light of current events—and he suggests that we place their severe critique of modern liberal ideals at the center of this engagement.

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Dennis Hale reached the dock just in time to see the Daniel J. Morrell heading out to open waters, a 600-foot freighter that had plied the waters for sixty years, carrying ore from Minnesota’s Iron Range to steel firms around the Great Lakes. The twenty-six-year-old watchman had, quite literally, missed the boat—which meant scrambling to rejoin the Morrell at its next stop or forfeiting a good chunk of his pay package. Seventy-two hours later, Hale would find himself clinging to a life raft alongside the frozen bodies of his crewmates in the violent waves of Lake Huron. The boat would not be reported missing for another twenty-seven hours and by the time the life raft was found, Dennis Hale would remain as the sole survivor of the wreck of the Daniel J. Morrell.This is life-and-death drama on the inland sea as only Michael Schumacher can tell it. In Torn in Two the great Lakes historian recreates the circumstances surrounding the terrible storm of November 29, 1966, that broke the mighty freighter in half, sending twenty-five of the Morrell’s twenty-nine-man crew to their deaths and consigning the surviving four to the freezing raft where all but Hale would perish. At the heart of Torn in Two are the terrible hours spent by Hale on the life raft with his crewmen, clinging to life for thirty-eight hours in freezing temperatures and wearing only a peacoat, life jacket, and boxer shorts. The fight to save Hale and find the others, the Coast Guard hearings into what happened, the discovery of the wreckage—Schumacher’s vivid narrative captures every harrowing detail and curious fact of the Morrell’s demise, finally doing justice to this epic shipwreck fifty years past.

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A Romantic Comedy about Death and Second Chances 30-year-old Nashvillian, Julia Holmes is just weeks away from becoming Mrs. Aaron DeMinthe. For as long as she can remember she’s dreamed of getting married at Whitfield Chapel and now her dreams are about to be realized. Julia has meticulously planned every detail of her big day from the flowers to her gown but the one thing she didn’t plan for is Aaron’s announcement: he needs to tick something off his bucket list before they tie the knot and that something is to hike the last leg of the Appalachian Trail; a project several years in the making. Julia is appalled by this idea and tries to dissuade him from going but his mind is made up and so, she reluctantly gives him her blessing. Less than 48 hours later, as he summits Mt, Katahdin, the last mountain of the trek, he’s struck by lightning and killed, effectively kicking the bucket while ticking something off his bucket list. Julia is grief stricken and inconsolable and despite the fact that she’s surrounded by her best gal pals, her parents and Lincoln Douglas, who was on Mt, Katahdin with Aaron when he died, she loses her grip on reality and quickly starts unravelling at the seams. Returning to Whitfield in search of closure she happens upon the Chapel’s Wedding Director who offhandedly mentions that they’re looking for a Weekend Wedding Assistant and before she can even think about it she takes the job. As she ushers four brides a weekend down the aisle she was supposed to walk down herself, Julia tries to understand why she said “I Do” to a job she never set out to get, in a place she’d only meant to occupy for an afternoon and wonders if she’ll ever find true love again.

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Offers new insights into the struggle against Apartheid, and the poverty and inequality that instigated political resistance. On 3 September 1984 a bloody uprising set the African townships of the Vaal Triangle aflame. Triggered by dissatisfaction over rent increases and a local government that was failing to provide any meaningful political power or social transformation to the black majority, it heralded the insurrectionary period that was to profoundly challenge the administrative and coercive capacities of the apartheid state and greatly contribute towards its demise. Led by a broad coalition of civic organisations, student bodies and trade unions, nationwide protests followed demanding a new political and social order. By the mid-1980s the ideological influence of the African National Congress (ANC) had established its hegemony among township activists and was regarded as the main force in the liberation struggle. Arguing that liberation from poverty and inequality played as significant role in driving the struggle against apartheid as political rights, Rueedi shows how the enactment of the ideals of the 1955 Freedom Charter during the insurrectionary period shaped how communities understood liberation and freedom, both during and after apartheid. She explores the ways in which the establishment and subsequent failure of the model townships was intertwined with struggles for social transformation and dignity; investigates the links between underground networks of the ANC and above ground community structures; and examines how increasing state repression fuelled militancy and political violence, leading to an impasse that signalled the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2023WINNER OF THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2023A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKAn indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today, Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness.'Very good and very instructive.' MARGARET ATWOOD'Written with an almost painful beauty.' JONATHAN FREEDLAND'Took my breath away.' BARBARA DEMICK'Haunting.' OLIVER BURKEMAN'A masterpiece.' JULIA LOVELLA 13-year-old Red Guard revels in the great adventure, and struggles with her doubts. A silenced composer, facing death, determines to capture the turmoil. An idealistic student becomes the 'corpse master' . . .More than fifty years on, the Cultural Revolution's scar runs through the heart of Chinese society, and through the souls of its citizens. Stationed in Beijing for the Guardian, Tania Branigan came to realise that this brutal and turbulent decade continues to propel and shape China to this day. Yet official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists, for the most part, as an absence.Red Memory explores the stories of those driven to confront the era, who fear or yearn for its return. What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?

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Nothing says more about a culture than the way it responds to deeply traumatic events. The Reign of Terror, America's Civil War, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Kennedy assassination, September 11th-watershed moments such as these can be rich sounding boards for the cultural historian patient enough to tease out the traumatic event's complex cultural resonances. This book is about one such moment in the history of modern France. The so-called Terrible Year began with the French army's crushing defeat at Sedan and the fall of the Second Empire in September of 1870, followed by the Prussian occupation of France and first siege of Paris in the fall and winter of that year. But no event of the period proved so deeply traumatic as the Paris Commune of 1871 and the bloody reprisals that attended its demise. Commemorating Trauma engages the rich body of recent scholarly work on cultural trauma to examine a curious conundrum. Why do French literary, historical and philosophical texts written in the aftermath of the Paris Commune so often employ the trope of confusion (in both the phenomenal and cognitive senses of that term) to register and work through the historical traumas of the Terrible Year? And how might these representations of confusion both reflect and inflect the confusions inherent to an ongoing process of social upheaval evident in late nineteenth-century France-a process whose benchmarks include democratization and the blurring of social classes, a persistent and evolving revolutionism, radical reconfigurations of the city as lived environment, and the development of specifically capitalist logics of commerce? These are the two principal questions addressed in this important study of cultural memory.

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When Princeton anthropologist John Borneman arrived in Syria's second-largest city in 2004 as a visiting Fulbright professor, he took up residence in what many consider a "rogue state" on the frontline of a "clash of civilizations" between the Orient and the West. Hoping to understand intimate interactions of religious, political, and familial authority in this secular republic, Borneman spent much time among different men, observing and becoming part of their everyday lives. Syrian Episodes is the striking result. Recounting his experience of living and lecturing in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, John Borneman offers deft, first-person stories of the longings and discontents expressed by Syrian sons and fathers, as well as a prescient analysis of the precarious power held by the regime, its relation to domestic authority, and the conditions of its demise. Combining literary imagination and anthropological insight, the book's discrete narratives converge in an unforgettable portrait of contemporary culture in Aleppo. We read of romantic seductions, rumors of spying, the play of light in rooms, the bargaining of tourists in bazaars, and an attack of wild dogs. With unflinching honesty and frequent humor, Borneman describes his encounters with students and teachers, customers and merchants, and women and families, many of whom are as intrigued with the anthropologist as he is with them. Refusing to patronize those he meets or to minimize his differences with them, Borneman provokes his interlocutors, teasing out unexpected confidences, comic responses, and mutual misunderstandings. He engages the curiosity and desire of encounter and the possibility of ethical conduct that is willing to expose cultural differences. Combining literary imagination and anthropological insight, Syrian Episodes offers an unforgettable portrait of contemporary culture in Aleppo.

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Intellectuals since the Industrial Revolution have been obsessed with whether, when, and why capitalism will collapse. This riveting account of two centuries of failed forecasts of doom reveals the key to capitalism’s durability.Prophecies about the end of capitalism are as old as capitalism itself. None have come true. Yet, whether out of hope or fear, we keep looking for harbingers of doom. In Foretelling the End of Capitalism, Francesco Boldizzoni gets to the root of the human need to imagine a different and better world and offers a compelling solution to the puzzle of why capitalism has been able to survive so many shocks and setbacks.Capitalism entered the twenty-first century triumphant, its communist rival consigned to the past. But the Great Recession and worsening inequality have undermined faith in its stability and revived questions about its long-term prospects. Is capitalism on its way out? If so, what might replace it? And if it does endure, how will it cope with future social and environmental crises and the inevitable costs of creative destruction? Boldizzoni shows that these and other questions have stood at the heart of much analysis and speculation from the early socialists and Karl Marx to the Occupy Movement. Capitalism has survived predictions of its demise not, as many think, because of its economic efficiency or any intrinsic virtues of markets but because it is ingrained in the hierarchical and individualistic structure of modern Western societies.Foretelling the End of Capitalism takes us on a fascinating journey through two centuries of unfulfilled prophecies. An intellectual tour de force and a plea for political action, it will change our understanding of the economic system that determines the fabric of our lives.

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