Search results for ""author various"

‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,’ said Samuel Johnson in 1777. Since then the capital has been characterised variously as a ‘riddle’, a ‘cesspool’ and a ‘modern Babylon’, and both Londoners and visitors alike have continued to share their candid views of a great city in a variety of literary forms. This compact gift book is packed full of witty, scandalous and entertaining quotations about this famous city from the Middle Ages to the current decade.

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A work in the history of systematic philosophy that is itself animated by a systematic philosophic aspiration, this book by one of the most prominent American philosophers working today provides an entirely new way of looking at the development of Western philosophy from Descartes to the present.Brandom begins by setting out a historical context and outlining a methodological rationale for his enterprise. Then, in chapters on Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Frege, Heidegger, and Sellars, he pursues the most fundamental philosophical issues concerning intentionality, and therefore mindedness itself, revealing an otherwise invisible set of overlapping themes and explanatory strategies. Variously functionalist, inferentialist, holist, normative, and social pragmatist in character, the explanations of intentionality offered by these philosophers, taken together, form a distinctive tradition. The fresh perspective afforded by this tradition enriches our understanding of the philosophical topics being addressed, provides a new conceptual vantage point for viewing our philosophical ancestors, and highlights central features of the sort of rationality that consists in discerning a philosophical tradition--and it does so by elaborating a novel, concrete instance of just such an enterprise.

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It's 2:47am when Dr Nick Trout, a British vet working in Boston, USA, is abruptly woken and called in to the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital to see if he can save the life of Sage, a ten year-old German Shephard with a critical stomach condition. The case is severe, the outlook bleak, and Dr Trout is her only chance. So begins an intimate and exhilarating journey into a typical day in a far from typical job.TELL ME WHERE IT HURTS takes the reader to the heart of the trials and tribulations of life as a veterinary surgeon, a life filled with heartbreak, triumph, anxiety, and of course, cuddly pets and their variously crazy, desperate, and demanding owners. The day's events come alive with Trout's breezy and companionable narration, and while he illustrates many of the issues pertinent to 21st century pet medicine, at its heart, the book reminds us that while the technology may have moved on from James Herriot's day, the essential characters, humour, and humanity remain the same as ever.

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Clarice Lispector's sensational, prize-winning debut novel Near to the Wild Heart was published when she was just twenty-three and earned her the name 'Hurricane Clarice'. It tells the story of Joana, from her wild, creative childhood, as the 'little egg' who writes poems for her father, through her marriage to the faithless Otávio and on to her decision to make her own way in the world. As Joana, endlessly mutable, moves through different emotional states, different inner lives and different truths, this impressionistic, dreamlike and fiercely intelligent novel asks if any of us ever really know who we are.Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown. References to her literary work pervade the music and literature of Brazil and Latin America. She was born in the Ukraine in 1920, but in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Civil War, the family fled to Romania and eventually sailed to Brazil. In 1933, Clarice Lispector encountered Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, which convinced her that she was meant to write. She published her first novel, Near to the Wildheart in 1943 when she was just twenty-three, and the next year was awarded the Graça Aranha Prize for the best first novel. Many felt she had given Brazillian literature a unique voice in the larger context of Portuguese literature. After living variously in Italy, the UK, Switzerland and the US, in 1959, Lispector with her children returned to Brazil where she wrote her most influential novels including The Passion According to G.H. She died in 1977, shortly after the publication of her final novel, The Hour of the Star.

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Weeds are variously defined as plants growing where they are not wanted, plants that interfere with human activity. Weeds affect everyone in the world by reducing crop yield and quality, delaying or interfering with harvesting, interfering with animal feeding, reducing animal health, preventing water flow, as plant parasites, etc. It is estimated that those problems cause $ billions worth of crop losses annually and the global cost of controlling weeds also runs into many $ billions every year. Atlas of Weed Mapping presents an introductory overview on the occurrence of the most common weeds of the world. The book notably includes: Description of cropping practices and explanations for the global distribution of weeds Invasive plant mapping Aquatics and wetland plants with histological plant details Theoretical and practical aspects of weed mapping Aspects on the documentation of herbicide resistance Biodiversity, rare weeds and the dominance of the most common weeds Fully illustrated with more than 800 coloured figures and a number of tables, this new characterisation of anthropogenic vegetation will be interesting for readers of a great number of disciplines such as agriculture, botany, ecology, geobotany and plant community research. More than a hundred experts have contributed data to this unique compilation.

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Changing critical views of Hemingway's great novel of the Lost Generation, from publication to the present. In the eight decades since its publication, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, like a Rorschach blot, has measured not only critics' opinions of Hemingway but also the critical temper of the times. An initial reviewer saw thebook as a satire on American expatriates, an unflattering portrait of wastrels and a nymphomaniac wandering Europe. Other critics of the time saw it as a reflection of post-First World War malaise, inscribing for history the LostGeneration - those critics, that is, who took it as a serious literary effort and did not simply dismiss it as pornographic, as Hemingway's own parents did. Since then the novel has been interpreted, variously, as a study of an impotent man's existential dilemma, re-read as a modern-day version of the Fisher King myth, attacked by feminist critics as the macho diatribe of a misogynist, and, most recently, seen as a study of gender roles and the performanceof masculinity. There is no other book that surveys the entire span of The Sun Also Rises criticism, documents the fashionable waves in which criticism has traveled, and points out how each age interprets the novel to suititself, reflecting the cultural concerns of the moment. Peter Hays is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

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This book investigates the impact of the ever-changing story of William Wallace on Scottish national identity. Freed from the historian's bedrock of empiricism by a lack of corroborative sources, the biography of this short-lived late-medieval patriot has long been incorporated into the ideology of nationalism. It is to explain this assimilation, and to deconstruct the myriad ways that Wallace's biography has been endlessly refreshed as a national narrative, over many generations, that forms this investigation. William Wallace: A National Tale examines the elision of Wallace's after-life into narrative ascendency, dominating the ideology and politics of nationalism in Scotland. This narrative is conceptualised as the national tale, a term taken out of its literary moorings to scrutinise how the personal biography of a medieval patriot has been evoked and presented as the nation's biography over seven centuries of time. Through the verse of Blind Harry, the romance of Jane Porter, to the historical imaginations of Braveheart and Brave, Scotland's national tale has been forged. This is a fresh, engaging and timely exploration into Wallace's hold over Scotland's national mythology. It reappraises William Wallace as a national figure. It explores Wallace variously as: A Protestant, A Scottish Chief, A Romantic Hero, and a Hollywood Hero. It examines Scotland's obsession with the need for a national hero.

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Animation variously entertains, enchants, and offends, yet there have been no convincing explanations of how these films do so. Shadow of a Mouse proposes performance as the common touchstone for understanding the principles underlying the construction, execution, and reception of cartoons. Donald Crafton's interdisciplinary methods draw on film and theater studies, art history, aesthetics, cultural studies, and performance studies to outline a personal view of animated cinema that illuminates its systems of belief and world making. He wryly asks: Are animated characters actors and stars, just like humans? Why do their performances seem live and present, despite our knowing that they are drawings? Why is animation obsessed with distressing the body? Why were California regional artists and Stanislavsky so influential on Disney? Why are the histories of animation and popular theater performance inseparable? How was pictorial space constructed to accommodate embodied acting? Do cartoon performances stimulate positive or negative behaviors in audiences? Why is there so much extreme eating? And why are seemingly insignificant shadows vitally important? Ranging from classics like The Three Little Pigs to contemporary works by Svankmajer and Plympton, these essays will engage the reader's imagination as much as the subject of animation performance itself.

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The delightful decorations that characterize Pennsbury pottery have made it a favorite type of American wares since the pottery's origin in 1950 and a rapidly growing field of collectible interest today. This book presents the history of the family-run business in Pennsylvania with the maker's marks, complete listing of the patterns, reproduction of the 1959 catalog, and hundreds of color photographs of the pottery pieces. The German immigrant founders of the pottery works, the Below family, incorporated american nationalistic folk art designs such as the eagle and shield, as well as charming figures in Amish dress with Pennsylvania "Dutch" inscriptions and famous bird designs, into the decorations. the glazes combine cheerful colors on the characteristic beige backgrounds of the brown clay pottery. Tablewares predominate these useful and decorative wares that are recognized as American folk art forms. After its closure in 1970, the Pennsbury molds and traditions were continued variously by the Lewis Brothers Pottery, the Glen View, and Pennington Pottery, and their wares, as the relate to Pennsbury, also are shown in numerous examples and explained. This book gives the enthusiast a wealth of documentation and pictorial reference for identifying, collecting, and enjoying Pennsbury art pottery.

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Explores one of the most prominent and debated trends within the horror genre Offers the first in-depth study of one of the twenty-first-century horror genre's most important and divisive developments Explores the shared aesthetics, themes, and reception of the post-horror corpus Updates existing debates about horror cinema, artistic value, and cultural taste Listen to David Church discuss his book on the Full Contact Nerd podcast Horror's longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed 'elevated horror' and 'post-horror,' films such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema. Case studies include: It Follows The Witch The Babadook Get Out Hereditary Midsommar Goodnight Mommy It Comes at Night The Invitation I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House mother! A Dark Song A Ghost Story "

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In June 1916, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener set sail from Orkney on a secret mission to bolster the Russian war effort. Just a mile off land and in the teeth of a force 9 gale, HMS Hampshire suffered a huge explosion, sinking in little more than fifteen minutes. Crew and passengers numbered 749; only twelve survived. Kitchener’s body was never found. Remembered today as the face of the famous First World War recruitment drive, at the height of his career Kitchener was fêted as Britain’s greatest military hero since Wellington. By 1916, however, his star was in its descent. A controversial figure who did not make friends easily in Cabinet, he was considered by many to be arrogant, secretive and high-handed. From the moment his death was announced, rumours of a conspiracy began to flourish, with the finger pointed variously at the Bolsheviks, Irish nationalist saboteurs and even the British government. Using newly released files kept secret for almost 100 years, former Cabinet minister David Laws unravels the true story behind the demise of this complex figure, debunking the conspiracy theories and revealing the crucial blunders that the government and military sought to cover up. The result is the definitive account of an event that shook the country and which has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

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When they first began to appear in the 1930s, George Campbell's poems blasted through the colonial Victorianism of contemporary Jamaican poetry. Dubbed 'the poet of the revolution' by Jamaica's founding political father, Norman Manley, Campbell was the one Caribbean poet whom Derek Walcott acknowledged as an inspiration.Campbell wrote about the struggle for independence and the appalling social conditions that drove the Jamaican masses to revolt, and about the rising consciousness of black Jamaicans after centuries of oppression. He wrote out of a consciousness of history and religious faith, a faith in which, for him, Jesus and Lenin were not incompatible icons. He also wrote about love, its ecstasies and bitter disappointments, and some of his very best poems are luminous celebrations of Jamaica's natural beauty.George Campbell was born of Jamaican parents in Panama in 1916 and lived variously in Columbia and Costa Rica before returning to Jamaica. He became intensely involved in the nationalist movement and with the Manley family, who championed the poetry he was beginning to write. First Poems appeared in 1945. In the same year, Campbell migrated to New York, where he worked in theatre and dance. In 1978, he returned to Jamaica, working as a consultant to the Institute of Jamaica and the People's National Party archives. In 1994 he returned to New York, where he died in 2002.

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A fascinating and beautifully illustrated volume that explains what street trees tell us about humanity’s changing relationship with nature and the city “A deep . . . dive into urban society’s need for—and relationship with—trees that sought to return the natural world to the concrete jungle.”—Adrian Higgins, Washington Post Winner of the Foundation for Landscape Studies' 2019 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize Today, cities around the globe are planting street trees to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, as landscape historian Sonja Dümpelmann explains, the planting of street trees in cities to serve specific functions is not a new phenomenon. In her eye-opening work, Dümpelmann shows how New York City and Berlin began systematically planting trees to improve the urban climate during the nineteenth century, presenting the history of the practice within its larger social, cultural, and political contexts. A unique integration of empirical research and theory, Dümpelmann’s richly illustrated work uncovers this important untold story. Street trees—variously regarded as sanitizers, nuisances, upholders of virtue, economic engines, and more—reflect the changing relationship between humans and nonhuman nature in urban environments. Offering valuable insights and frameworks, this authoritative volume will be an important resource for years to come.

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Since its publication in 1929, the story of Doña Bárbara has haunted the collective Latin-American imagination, and has been adapted variously both for the small and big screen. Doña Bárbara Unleashed explores how Rómulo Gallegos’s original story has been kept alive yet altered by subsequent screen adaptations; the book illustrates how film and telenovela adaptations have reinterpreted Doña Bárbara in order to mirror changes in societal norms, such as the role of women in Latin American societies, and audience expectations. Particular attention is given to how spectators in the twenty-first century have played a crucial role influencing the alterations to which Gallegos’s original plot has been subjected. Now Doña Bárbara Unleashed offers an original way of studying screen adaptations by engaging several adaptations of the same source text in dialogue with each other, rather than simply comparing adaptations to the source text. This is a ground-breaking study that further develops readings through more traditional theories of screen adaptations with approaches emerging from fandom studies and audience responses.

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First published in 1974, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock grew out of a magazine article coauthored by Jan Reid. His first book was a sensation in Texas. It portrayed an Austin-based live music explosion variously described as progressive country, cosmic cowboys, and outlaw country. The book has been hailed as a model of how to write about popular music and the life of performing musicians. Written in nine months, Reid's account focuses on predecessors of the 1960s and the swarm of newborn venues, the most enduring one the justly famed Armadillo World Headquarters; profiles of singer-songwriters that included Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphey, Steven Fromholz, B.W. Stevenson, Willis Alan Ramsey, Bobby Bridger, Rusty Wier, Kinky Friedman, and the one who became an international star and one of America's most treasured performers, Willie Nelson; and the rowdy heat-stricken debut of Willie's Fourth of July Picnics.Though Reid has resisted the writerly trend of specialization in his career, his debut brought him back to popular music and musicians' lives in Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Texas Tornado: The Music and Times of Doug Sahm, and now a related novel, The Song Leader. The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock is a landmark of popular culture in Texas and the Southwest. Readers will be glad to once more have it back.

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Philip Hook takes the lid off the world of art dealing to reveal the brilliance, cunning, greed and daring of its practitioners. In a richly anecdotal narrative he describes the rise and occasional fall of the extraordinary men and women who over the centuries have made it their business to sell art to kings, merchants, nobles, entrepreneurs and museums. From its beginnings in Antwerp, where paintings were sometimes sold by weight, to the rich hauteur of the contemporary gallery in London, Paris and New York, art dealing has been about identifying what is intangible but infinitely desirable, and then finding clients for whom it is irresistible. Those who have purveyed art for a living range from tailors, spies and the occasional anarchist to scholars, aristocrats, merchants and connoisseurs, each variously motivated by greed, belief in their own vision of art and its history, or simply the will to win. The cast of characters includes Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' champion; Herwath Walden, who first brought Modernism into the limelight; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, high priest of Cubism; Leo Castelli, dealer-midwife to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art; and Peter Wilson, the charismatic Sotheby's chairman who made the auction room theatre. Philip Hook's history is one of human folly, greed and duplicity, interspersed with ingenuity, inspiration and acts of heroism. Rogues' Gallery is learned, witty and irresistibly readable.

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For much of cycling's "Fabulous Fifties" it was Brian Robinson alone who flew the flag for Britain abroad - that is until three young men set out to emulate his success, starting from ground zero. This book tells the story of how, along with fellow Yorkshireman Vic Sutton and South Londoner John Andrew, the intrepid Tony Hewson set off to conquer the European racing scene, first off in an old, battered, converted ex-WD ambulance, then in an oil-leaking pre-war Wolseley with a caravan in tow. Variously mistaken for gypsies, terrorists, undertakers, even market traders, these were our original cash-starved, have-a-go pioneers, whose inspiration prompted Tom Simpson and succeeding generations of would-be stars to cross the Channel. It is an often hilarious sometimes sad but never bitter saga of daring-do that found the trio rubbing shoulders with Coppi, Anquetil, Van Looy and the other greats of the era. It tells of how Andrews won a place in the prestigious Mercier-BP trade team and of how Sutton conquered the headlines with a brilliant display of climbing in the mountaains of the 1959 Tour and its relates Hewson's own pickings of primes and placings in after-Tour criteriums.It also provides a wonderfully evocative insight into what life was like in France and Belgium back in that far-off era.

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Carry Walt Whitman’s wisdom with you in this inspirational guide that features 60 selections from his most insightful poems. Walt Whitman, the great American poet of the 19th century (1819–1892), celebrated his body, the land, the commonest of people, the plants and leaves, and the cosmos in Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. Working variously as a printer, journalist, teacher, and Civil War nurse, Whitman traveled across the continent, soaking the ink of the wilds and the urban into his pen. His poetry is an invitation into the wilds of Nature and human nature. In Meditations of Walt Whitman, editor Chris Highland pairs 60 short selections from Whitman’s poetry with a relevant quote from a historical or contemporary writer and thinker, from Aristotle to Alice Walker, Lord Byron to Arthur C. Clarke. Take this pocket-size guide with you on backpacks, nature hikes, and camping trips. Let Whitman’s words enrich your experience as you ponder the wilderness from riverbank, mountaintop, or as you relax beside your campfire. Inside you’ll find: 60 inspiring selections of poetry from Walt Whitman Relevant text from other philosophical minds Short excerpts for convenient reading This sampler from Whitman’s poems draws from the heart of each passage. Let Whitman’s words accompany you on your own trails of discovery and help you discover the earth, your likeness.

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"The chronology of the Italian Renaissance, its character, and context have long been a topic of discussion among scholars. Some date its beginnings to the fourteenthcentury work of Giotto, others to the generation of Masaccio, Brunelleschi, and Donatello that fl ourished from around 1400. The close of the Renaissance has also proved elusive. Mannerism, for example, is variously considered to be an independent (but subsidiary) late aspect of Renaissance style or a distinct style in its own right."

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This book celebrates and seeks to understand the overlooked appearances of hybrid forms in visual culture; artefacts and practices that meld or interweave incongruous elements in innovative ways. And with an emphasis on the material aspects of such entities, the book adopts the term 'mixed form' for them. Focusing on key phenomena in the last half millennium, such as the cabinet of curiosities, the broadside ballad and the chapbook as early forms of image-text, the scrapbook, assemblage, and, in digital times, so-called 'mixed reality,' the book argues that while the quality of inconsistency is traditionally dismissed, its expression nevertheless plays a vital role in social life. Crucially, Mixed Forms of Visual Culture relates its phenomena to the emergence of the division of labour under capitalism and addresses the shifting relationships between art and life, when singularity and uniformity are variously valued and dismissed in the two arenas, and at different points in history. Two of the book's chapters take the form of visual essays, with one comprising an anthology of found scrapbook pages and the other offering an analysis of artists' scrapbooks. The book is richly illustrated throughout.

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This book celebrates and seeks to understand the overlooked appearances of hybrid forms in visual culture; artefacts and practices that meld or interweave incongruous elements in innovative ways. And with an emphasis on the material aspects of such entities, the book adopts the term 'mixed form' for them. Focusing on key phenomena in the last half millennium such as the cabinet of curiosities, the broadside ballad and the chapbook as early forms of image-text, the scrapbook, assemblage, and, in digital times, so-called 'mixed reality,' the book argues that while the quality of inconsistency is traditionally dismissed, its expression nevertheless plays a vital role in social life. Crucially, Mixed Forms of Visual Culture relates its phenomena to the emergence of the division of labour under capitalism and addresses the shifting relationships between art and life, when singularity and uniformity are variously valued and dismissed in the two arenas, and at different points in history. Two of the book's chapters take the form of visual essays, with one comprising an anthology of found scrapbook pages and the other offering an analysis of artists' scrapbooks. The book is richly illustrated throughout.

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The brutality and racial hatred exhibited by Japan’s military during the Pacific War piqued outrage in the West and fanned resentments throughout Asia. Public understanding of Japan’s wartime atrocities, however, often fails to differentiate the racial agendas of its military and government elites from the racial values held by the Japanese people. While not denying brutalities committed by the Japanese military, Honored and Dishonored Guests overturns these standard narratives and demonstrates rather that Japan’s racial attitudes during wartime are more accurately discerned in the treatment of Western civilians living in Japan than the experiences of enemy POWs.The book chronicles Western communities in wartime Japan, using this body of experiences to reconsider allegations of Japanese racism and racial hatred. Its bold thesis is borne out by a broad mosaic of stories from dozens of foreign families and individuals who variously endured police harassment, suspicion, relocation, starvation, denaturalization, internment, and torture, as well as extraordinary acts of charity. The book’s account of stranded Westerners—from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe to the mountain resorts of Karuizawa and Hakone—yields a unique interpretation of race relations and wartime life in Japan.

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Documenting youth participation in the South African anti-apartheid struggle, Youth and Identity Politics in South Africa examines identity construction and negotiation in the region of KwaZulu/Natal. Based on extensive interviews, Sibusisiwe Nombuso Dlamini presents life stories of survival and identity negotiation in a region and at a time where to be youthful and politically active was to be associated with membership in Nelson Mandela's African National Congress -- a potentially dangerous association. Zulus are far from being an homogenous group. Dlamini examines the dynamics both of group identification -- that of being a young Zulu -- and of the differences, both class and regional. Further, she looks at the discourses of participation in the liberation struggle, and how these discourses intersect with KwaZulu/Natal identity and party politics. Youth and Identity Politics in South Africa shows how the youth identify variously as fans of jazz or hip-hop who espouse a none-racial national character, as athletes who feel a strong connection to traditional Zulu patriarchy, or in many other social and political subcultures. This is a rich and unprecedented youth-centred ethnography that paints a unique picture of the lives of South African youth.

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The brutality and racial hatred exhibited by Japan’s military during the Pacific War piqued outrage in the West and fanned resentments throughout Asia. Public understanding of Japan’s wartime atrocities, however, often fails to differentiate the racial agendas of its military and government elites from the racial values held by the Japanese people. While not denying brutalities committed by the Japanese military, Honored and Dishonored Guests overturns these standard narratives and demonstrates rather that Japan’s racial attitudes during wartime are more accurately discerned in the treatment of Western civilians living in Japan than the experiences of enemy POWs.The book chronicles Western communities in wartime Japan, using this body of experiences to reconsider allegations of Japanese racism and racial hatred. Its bold thesis is borne out by a broad mosaic of stories from dozens of foreign families and individuals who variously endured police harassment, suspicion, relocation, starvation, denaturalization, internment, and torture, as well as extraordinary acts of charity. The book’s account of stranded Westerners—from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe to the mountain resorts of Karuizawa and Hakone—yields a unique interpretation of race relations and wartime life in Japan.

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Casting fresh light on the renowned productions of auteurs such as Antonioni, Fellini, and Bresson and drawing out from the shadows a range of important but lesser-known works, "Screening Modernism" is the first comprehensive study of European art cinema's postwar heyday. Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, Andras Balint Kovacs' encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film, Kovacs begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally, drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way, he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema. Exploring not only modernism's origins but also its stylistic, thematic, and cultural avatars, "Screening Modernism" ultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.

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The Duke of Wellington described the Battle of Waterloo as ‘the most desperate business I ever was in. I was never so near being beat’. The courage of British troops that day has been rightly praised ever since, but the fact that one-third of the forces which gave him his narrow victory were subjects, not of George III, but of the King of the Netherlands, has been almost completely ignored. This book seeks to correct a grave injustice through the study of Dutch sources – both primary and secondary – the majority of which have never been used by English-speaking historians.The Dutch-Belgians have been variously described as inexperienced, incompetent and cowardly, a rogue element in the otherwise disciplined Allied Army. It is only now being tentatively acknowledged that they alone saved Wellington from disaster at Quatre Bras.He had committed a strategic error in that, as Napoleon advanced, his own troops were scattered over a hundred kilometres of southern Belgium. Outnumbered three to one, the Netherlanders gave him time to concentrate his forces, and save Brussels from French occupation. At Waterloo itself, on at least three occasions when the fate of the battle ‘hung upon the cusp’ their engagement with the enemy aided British recovery. Their commander – the Prince of Orange – is viciously described as an arrogant fool, ‘a disaster waiting to happen’ and even a dangerous lunatic. According to the assessment of the Duke himself, he was a reliable and courageous subordinate.The Dutch material in this book reveals a new dimension for familiar events in the Campaign, and includes many unseen illustrations. For the first time, a full assessment is made of the challenge which Willem I faced as King of a country hastily cobbled together by the Congress of Vienna, and of his achievement in assembling, equipping and training thirty thousand men from scratch in eighteen months. This is a timely reassessment in the two hundredth anniversary year of the battle of Waterloo. The veneration which the Duke of Wellington justifiably enjoyed after the Waterloo Campaign should not be allowed to forgive his lifelong lack of acknowledgment of the debt he owed the Netherlanders. As he once said himself, ‘there should be glory enough for all’, and it is high time that they are allowed to claim their share.

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Historically speaking, theology can be said to operate “materiaphobically.” Protestant Christianity in particular has bestowed upon theology a privilege of the soul over the body and belief over practice, in line with the distinction between a disembodied God and the inanimate world “He” created. Like all other human, social, and natural sciences, religious studies imported these theological dualisms into a purportedly secular modernity, mapping them furthermore onto the distinction between a rational, “enlightened” Europe on the one hand and a variously emotional, “primitive,” and “animist” non-Europe on the other. The “new materialisms” currently coursing through cultural, feminist, political, and queer theories seek to displace human privilege by attending to the agency of matter itself. Far from being passive or inert, they show us that matter acts, creates, destroys, and transforms—and, as such, is more of a process than a thing. Entangled Worlds examines the intersections of religion and new and old materialisms. Calling upon an interdisciplinary throng of scholars in science studies, religious studies, and theology, it assembles a multiplicity of experimental perspectives on materiality: What is matter, how does it materialize, and what sorts of worlds are enacted in its varied entanglements with divinity? While both theology and religious studies have over the past few decades come to prioritize the material contexts and bodily ecologies of more-than-human life, Entangled Worlds sets forth the first multivocal conversation between religious studies, theology, and the body of “the new materialism.” Here disciplines and traditions touch, transgress, and contaminate one another across their several carefully specified contexts. And in the responsiveness of this mutual touching of science, religion, philosophy, and theology, the growing complexity of our entanglements takes on a consistent ethical texture of urgency.

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The crusades influenced western European society in the middle ages far beyond the military campaigns themselves. Reactions and involvement did not always follow the assumptions of ideology or supporters, medieval or modern. In this wide ranging collection of articles spanning thirty years, Christopher Tyerman explores the relationships between action and perception, ambition and practice, propaganda and support. One section concentrates on the role the crusade played in the politics and elite culture of the early fourteenth century, particularly in France. A further series of essays examines the nature of crusading as a phenomenon from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, notably the contrasts between official, literary and popular reception, and how it was variously understood by contemporaries and promoted by apologists in England, continental Europe and the Baltic. Finally, the structure of crusading armies is explored in a sequence that analyses the organisation of expeditions, including communal decision-making on the First Crusade, the sociology of recruitment and, in a previously unpublished major study, the importance of pay to crusaders from 1096 onwards.The crusades influenced western European society in the middle ages far beyond the military campaigns themselves. Reactions and involvement did not always follow the assumptions of ideology or supporters, medieval or modern. In this wide ranging collection of articles spanning thirty years, Christopher Tyerman explores the relationships between action and perception, ambition and practice, propaganda and support. One section concentrates on the role the crusade played in the politics and elite culture of the early fourteenth century, particularly in France. A further series of essays examines the nature of crusading as a phenomenon from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, notably the contrasts between official, literary and popular reception, and how it was variously understood by contemporaries and promoted by apologists in England, continental Europe and the Baltic. Finally, the structure of crusading armies is explored in a sequence that analyses the organisation of expeditions, including communal decision-making on the First Crusade, the sociology of recruitment and, in a previously unpublished major study, the importance of pay to crusaders from 1096 onwards.

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The 17th International Aegean Conference / Rencontre égéenne internationale MNEME was organised by the University of Udine, Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Humanities, starting from the many suggestions given by several studies which have been recently devoted to the perception of and confrontation with the past in ancient societies as well as to the manifold practices of memory including memorializing and memory keeping. Scholars have focused on the important function of social memory for the construction of collective identities including ethnicity. Construction, re-use and manipulation of the past have been identified in several contexts as ideological strategies favouring cultural continuity. On the one hand, well-defined chronological limits have been reconsidered following the evidence of long-term dynamics based on the reproduction of relevant social practices through space and time. On the other hand, phenomena of cultural discontinuity and innovation have also resulted in being profoundly connected to the approach that ancient communities had towards their past, which they variously expressed in monumental architecture, funerary layout, iconographic and stylistic traditions and social practices in both ceremonial and domestic contexts. Furthermore, fragmentation, sacrifice or storage of material culture and economic resources - phenomena relevant to different systems of political economy - are in turn strongly connected to the practice of memory, with an impact on the cultural landscape including settlement as well as funerary domains.

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A richly diverse collection of classical Indian terms for expressing the many moods and subtleties of emotional experienceWords for the Heart is a captivating treasury of emotion terms drawn from some of India’s earliest classical languages. Inspired by the traditional Indian genre of a “treasury”—a wordbook or anthology of short texts or poems—this collection features 177 jewellike entries evoking the kinds of phenomena English speakers have variously referred to as emotions, passions, sentiments, moods, affects, and dispositions. These entries serve as beautiful literary and philosophical vignettes that convey the delightful texture of Indian thought and the sheer multiplicity of conversations about emotions in Indian texts. An indispensable collection, Words for the Heart reveals how Indian ways of interpreting human experience can challenge our assumptions about emotions and enrich our lives. Brings to light a rich lexicon of emotion from ancient India Uses the Indian genre of a “treasury,” or wordbook, to explore the contours of classical Indian thought in three of the subcontinent’s earliest languages—Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit Features 177 alphabetical entries, from abhaya (“fearlessness”) to yoga (“the discipline of calm”) Draws on a wealth of literary, religious, and philosophical writings from classical India Includes synonyms, antonyms, related words, and suggestions for further reading Invites readers to engage in the cross-cultural study of emotions Reveals the many different ways of naming and interpreting human experience

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As Christian leaders in the first through fifth centuries embraced ascetic interpretations of the Bible and practices of sexual renunciation, sexual slander—such as the accusations Paul leveled against wayward Gentiles in the New Testament—played a pivotal role in the formation of early Christian identity. In particular, the imagined construct of the lascivious, literal-minded Jew served as a convenient foil to the chaste Christian ideal. Susanna Drake examines representations of Jewish sexuality in early Christian writings that use accusations of carnality, fleshliness, bestiality, and licentiousness as strategies to differentiate the "spiritual" Christian from the "carnal" Jew. Church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Hippolytus of Rome, Origen of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom portrayed Jewish men variously as dangerously hypersexual, at times literally seducing virtuous Christians into heresy, or as weak and effeminate, unable to control bodily impulses or govern their wives. As Drake shows, these carnal caricatures served not only to emphasize religious difference between Christians and Jews but also to justify increased legal constraints and violent acts against Jews as the interests of Christian leaders began to dovetail with the interests of the empire. Placing Christian representations of Jews at the root of the destruction of synagogues and mobbing of Jewish communities in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, Slandering the Jew casts new light on the intersections of sexuality, violence, representation, and religious identity.

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An intriguing case study on how popular images of Oceania, mediated through a developing culture of celebrity, contributed to the formation of British identity both domestically and as a nascent imperial power in the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century metropolitan Britain was entranced by stories emanating from the furthest edge of its nascent empire. In the experience of eighteenth-century Britain, Oceania was both a real place, evidencedby the journals of adventurers like Joseph Banks, the voyage books of Captain James Cook and the growing collection of artefacts and curiosities in the British Museum, and a realm of fantasy reflected in theatre, fashion and the new phenomenon of mass print. In this innovative study Ruth Scobie shows how these multiple images of Oceania were filtered to a wider British public through the gradual emergence of a new idea of fame - commodified, commercial, scandalous - which bore in some respects a striking resemblance to modern celebrity culture and which made figures such as Banks and Cook, Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers on Pitcairn Island into public icons. Bringing together literary texts, works of popular culture, visual art and theatrical performance, Scobie argues that the idea of Oceania functioned variously as reflection, ideal and parody both in very local debates over the problemsof contemporary fame and in wider considerations of national identity, race and empire. RUTH SCOBIE is a Stipendiary Lecturer at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.

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The recipient of a 2000 MacArthur fellowship, Ben Katchor (b. 1951) is a beloved comics artist with a career spanning four decades. Published in indie weeklies across the United States, his comics are known for evoking the sensorium of the modern metropolis. As part of the Biographix series edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, Ben Katchor offers scholars and fans a thorough overview of the artist’s career from 1988 to 2020. In some of his early strips published in the 1980s in the New York Press and Forward, Katchor introduced one of his quintessential characters, Julius Knipl, a real estate photographer. By crafting Knipl as an urban flâneur prone to wandering, Katchor was able to variously demonstrate his absurd humor and linguistic whimsy alongside narratives packed with social critique. Three volumes collecting the Julius Knipl strips, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer; Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay; and The Beauty Supply District, helped cement Katchor as a distinguished comics artist and social commentator. Later works, such as The Cardboard Valise, Hand-Drying in America, and The Dairy Restaurant, have diversified his comics legacy. Rooted in close analyses of the artist’s numerous series and collections, each chapter in Ben Katchor is dedicated to a distinct aspect of the urban experience. Individual pages from Katchor’s work depict not only the visual, but also the auditory, tactile, and olfactory dimensions of life in the city.

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Apart from herpes and Lulu - everything is eventually swept away Just one shimmering pearl of wisdom from popstar and polymath James Maker, whose worldly observations will (like herpes) once again be on everyone's lips thanks to his award-winning memoir, remastered with new chapters. If you hadn't heard of rock bands Raymonde or RPLA - fronted by James in the 80s and 90s - you might be forgiven for mistaking AutoFellatio for fiction. But here fact is more fantastical than any novel, as we follow our hero from Bermondsey enfant terrible to Valencian grande dame, a scenic journey that stops off variously at Morrissey confidant, dominatrix, singer, songwriter and occasional actor, and is literally littered with memorable bons mots and hilarious anecdotes that make you feel like you've hit the wedding-reception jackpot of being unexpectedly seated next to the groom's flamboyant uncle. According to Wikipedia, very few men can perform the act of autofellatio. We never discover whether James is one of them but certainly, as a storyteller, he is one in a million. WINNER OF THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2011 'Bloody Brilliant' JULIE BURCHILL 'Glitteringly epigrammatic, it's a glam-rock Naked Civil Servant in court shoes. But funnier. And tougher.' MARK SIMPSON 'Pistol sharp, loaded with witty one-liners and peppered with Maker's scatter gun observations on life, music and the meaning of good hair.' PAUL BURSTON

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Gregory Heyworth’s Desiring Bodies considers the physical body and its relationship to poetic and corporate bodies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Beginning in the odd contest between body and form in the first sentence of Ovid’s protean Metamorphoses, Heyworth identifies these concepts as structuring principles of civic and poetic unity and pursues their consequences as refracted through a series of romances, some typical of the genre, some problematically so. Bodies, in Ovidian romance, are the objects of human desire to possess, to recover, to form, or to violate. Part 1 examines this desire as both a literal and socio-political phenomenon through readings of Marie de France’s Lais, Chrétien de Troyes’ Cligès and Perceval, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, texts variously expressing social, economic, and political culture in romance. In part 2, Heyworth is concerned with missing or absent bodies in Petrarch’s Rime sparse, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and Milton’s Paradise Lost and the generic rupture they cause in lyric, tragedy, and epic. Throughout, Heyworth draws on social theorists such as Kant, Weber, Simmel, and Elias to explore the connection between social and literary form. The first comparative, diachronic study of romance form in many years, Desiring Bodies is a persuasive and important cultural history that demonstrates Ovid’s pervasive influence not only on the poetics but on the politics of the medieval and early modern Western tradition.

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Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous giftsSolution: Give better ones in return Philip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters: Can we have a pony – please? I want to go to boarding school – please? At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweep and FreeCell, Philip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing instruction manuals for Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously (he has been variously mistaken as a doctor/waiter and sinologist) Philip tells the world he is a scriptwriter, even though all he has managed to pen is a story he calls Wang the Unlucky Scholar. But, above all, Philip is worrying about his best friends Sean and Barry. The problem is simple: they give great presents. Their gifts are exquisite: a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice. They give them indiscriminately: on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever. And, most distressingly, these presents break all bounds of generosity: two FA Cup Final tickets beside the royal box, a skiing holiday for Philip's entire family. These are gifts that hurt a man's pride, these are gifts that can never be matched.

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Whilst Richard I is one of medieval England’s most famous kings he is also the most controversial. He has variously been considered a great warrior but a poor king, a man driven by the quest for fame and glory but also lacking in self-discipline and prone to throwing away the short-term advantages that his military successes brought him. In this reassessment W. B. Bartlett looks at his deeds and achievements in a new light. The result is a compelling new portrait of ‘the Lionheart’ which shows that the king is every bit as remarkable as his medieval contemporaries found him to be. This includes his Muslim enemies, who spoke of him as their most dangerous and gallant opponent. It shows him to be a man badly let down by some of those around him, especially his brother John and the duplicitous French king Philip. The foibles of his character are also exposed to the full, including his complicated relationships with the key women in his life, especially the imposing contemporary figure of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his wife, Berengaria, with whom he failed to produce an heir, leading to later suggestions of homosexuality. This is a new Richard, one for the twenty-first century, and a re-evaluation of the life story of one of the greatest personalities of medieval Europe.

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An eyewitness to profound change affecting marine environments on the Newfoundland coast, Antony Adler argues that the history of our relationship with the ocean lies as much in what we imagine as in what we discover.We have long been fascinated with the oceans, seeking “to pierce the profundity” of their depths. In studying the history of marine science, we also learn about ourselves. Neptune’s Laboratory explores the ways in which scientists, politicians, and the public have invoked ocean environments in imagining the fate of humanity and of the planet—conjuring ideal-world fantasies alongside fears of our species’ weakness and ultimate demise.Oceans gained new prominence in the public imagination in the early nineteenth century as scientists plumbed the depths and marine fisheries were industrialized. Concerns that fish stocks could be exhausted soon emerged. In Europe these fears gave rise to internationalist aspirations, as scientists sought to conduct research on an oceanwide scale and nations worked together to protect their fisheries. The internationalist program for marine research waned during World War I, only to be revived in the interwar period and again in the 1960s. During the Cold War, oceans were variously recast as battlefields, post-apocalyptic living spaces, and utopian frontiers.The ocean today has become a site of continuous observation and experiment, as probes ride the ocean currents and autonomous and remotely operated vehicles peer into the abyss. Embracing our fears, fantasies, and scientific investigations, Antony Adler tells the story of our relationship with the seas.

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This unique book captures the rise of New York's passionately musical Irish-Catholics and provides a compelling history of early New York City. The Unstoppable Irish follows the changing fortunes of New York's Irish Catholics, commencing with the evacuation of British military forces in late 1783 and concluding one hundred years later with the completion of the initial term of the city's first Catholic mayor. During that century, Hibernians first coalesced and then rose in uneven progression from being a variously dismissed, despised, and feared foreign group to ultimately receiving de facto acceptance as constituent members of the city's population. Dan Milner presents evidence that the Catholic Irish of New York gradually integrated (came into common and equal membership) into the city populace rather than assimilated (adopted the culture of a larger host group). Assimilation had always been an option for Catholics, even in Ireland. In order to fit in, they needed only to adopt mainstream Anglo-Protestant identity. But the same virile strain within the Hibernian psyche that had overwhelmingly rejected the abandonment of Gaelic Catholic being in Ireland continued to hold forth in Manhattan and the community remained largely intact. A novel aspect of Milner's treatment is his use of song texts in combination with period news reports and existing scholarship to develop a fuller picture of the Catholic Irish struggle. Products of a highly verbal and passionately musical people, Irish folk and popular songs provide special insight into the popularly held attitudes and beliefs of the integration epoch.

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Most people have a story to tell about a remarkable coincidence that in some instances changed the course of their lives. These uncanny occurrences have been variously interpreted as evidence of divine influence, fate, or the collective unconscious. Less common are explanations that explore the social situations and personal preoccupations of the individuals who place the most weight on coincidences. Drawing on a variety of coincidence stories, renowned anthropologist Michael Jackson builds a case for seeing them as allegories of separation and loss—revealing the hope of repairing sundered lives, reconnecting estranged friends, reuniting distant kin, closing the gap between people and their gods, and achieving a sense of emotional and social connectedness with others in a fragmented world.

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This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work of Robert Bresson, one of the most respected and acclaimed directors in the history of cinema.. The first monograph on his work to appear in English for many years dealing not only with his thirteen feature-length films but also his little-seen early short Affaires publiques and his short treatise Notes on cinematography.. The films are considered in chronological order, using a perspective that draws variously on spectator theory, Catholic mysticism, gender theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.. The major critical responses to his work, from the adulatory to the dismissive, are summarized and analyzed.. The work includes a full filmography and a critical bibliography.

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This is a book about what it's like being a birder in an age of natural decline. It is part autobiographical - tales of spell-binding birding encounters that left indelible memories - and it is part reflective. The travellers' tales of birding adventures are about places and events that were variously entertaining, amusing, captivating, inspiring, exciting and awesome, literally. They also feature the amazing, eccentric, dedicated, inspiring people in the birding community. Travels to Madagascar, Cambodia, India and many other places are recalled. There is birding in the Himalayas, in the Australian outback, on the Southern Oceans and in hotel gardens and city parks and there are tales of the 'big listers', 'big-lensers', professional guides, and local conservation workers who try to keep their habitats safe for us. There are lots of images to accompany these stories. Martin's experiences in becoming a birder late in life revealed some strange behaviour which he soon learnt to take for granted as a member of the birding community. Why tear off chasing the next tick when we were having such a good time in the forest we were already exploring? Why was seeing a rare parrot in a cage less significant than seeing a 'wild' one that was being hand-fed in a nature reserve? Why was he visiting all those rubbish tips and sewerage farms in search of birds when birding excursions to a forest or a natural wetland were so much more pleasing? There are chapters about all of these puzzles and oddities, and more - their origins and, in some cases, how they shape our behaviour in somewhat perverse ways - on 'authentic' birding, the origins and importance of the life list, on rarities and trophy birds, and why the idea of a 'species' is elusive yet so important. All these tales and reflections are shaped by birding during an extinction crisis and the growing biodiversity crisis. As he observed trashed habitats and vanishing bird populations during his travels, Martin's growing dismay and alarm about these issues coloured everything. So he came to ponder what birders are doing in response, whether it is for good or harm. There is the paradox of 'extinction birding' - it is not difficult today to see some vanishingly rare birds, because they are hanging on in reserved, fenced spaces, kept alive by artifices such as captive breeding. Because our visits to these places provide funds, we are also among these species' last hopes for survival. Is this the best we can do? More self-reflection among all birders is necessary. Faced with the growing crisis, we can all do better.

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How many otherwise well-educated readers know that the familiar orange carrot was once a novelty? It is a little more than 400 years old. Domesticated in Afghanistan in 900 AD, the purple carrot, in fact, was the dominant variety until Dutch gardeners bred the young upstart in the seventeenth century. After surveying paintings from this era in the Louvre and other museums, Dutch agronomist Otto Banga discovered this stunning transformation. The story of the carrot is just one of the hidden tales this book recounts. Through portraits of a wide range of foods we eat and love, from artichokes to strawberries, The Carrot Purple traces the path of foods from obscurity to familiarity. Joel Denker explores how these edible plants were, in diverse settings, invested with new meaning. They acquired not only culinary significance but also ceremonial, medicinal, and economic importance. Foods were variously savored, revered, and reviled. This entertaining history will enhance the reader’s appreciation of a wide array of foods we take for granted. From the carrot to the cabbage, from cinnamon to coffee, from the peanut to the pistachio, the plants, beans, nuts, and spices we eat have little-known stories that are unearthed and served here with relish.

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The events which unfolded south of Brussels on 18 June 1815 conferred instant immortality on those who took part in them. For the Duke of Wellington, Waterloo consummated victory in a long battle for what he considered to be his due recognition. Whilst he guarded that reputation jealously, he also jeopardised it by his decision to enter politics in what proved to be an especially partisan age. Even the outpouring of national grief which accompanied his death in 1852 could not totally obscure the ambivalence he had aroused in life. The memory of Waterloo, meanwhile, followed its own trajectory. Travellers initially flocked to the battlefield as if drawn by a magnet. What the triumph meant for Britain, and the wider world, moreover, became a battle in itself, one fought variously in the political, literary and artistic theatres of war. As the nineteenth century advanced, it was only Waterloo’s less-exalted participants who, relatively, faded from view – or were ignored. Drawing on many under-utilised sources to illuminate some less familiar themes, this timely study offers fresh perspectives on one of Britain’s best-known figures, as well as on the nature of heroism. The reader is also given pause for thought as to appropriate forms of commemoration and how national celebrations are prone to manipulation, for their own purposes, by those in government.

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Established in 1917 to train Royal Flying Corps aircrew, during WWI Duxford was also the base for two United States Aero Squadrons, 137 and 159, and by the end was a mobilisation airfield for three DH9 day bomber squadrons. During the 1920s and 30s, expansion continued apace, with three fighter squadrons, 19, 29 and 111, and the presence of many illustrious names, including Harry Broadhurst, Johnny Kent and Frank Whittle. The first aerodrome in Fighter Command to receive the Spitfire (in August 1938), Duxford rose to supreme prominence during the early part of the Second World War. Part of 12 Group detailed to protect the industrial midlands and north east Britain, the base’s role during the Battle of Britain was mired in controversy due to the ‘Big Wing’ tactics of Douglas Bader and Trafford Leigh-Mallory. From October 1942 to the end of the war, Duxford was essentially an American base for, variously, the 8th Air Force, 350th and 78th Fighter Groups. Postwar the RAF operated jets from the station until 1961 when the future was put on hold. Managing to avoid the ignominy of becoming a prison or sports complex, the Imperial War Museum finally came to the rescue making Duxford into today’s premier international air museum. Richard Smith’s research has led him to numerous previously unpublished collections from which he has unearthed some marvellous images of historical significance. A must for the collector, historian or veteran of the times.

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Whether tall office buildings, high-rise apartments, or lofty hotels, skyscrapers have been stars in American cinema since the silent era. Cinema’s tall buildings have been variously represented as unbridled aspiration, dens of iniquity and eroticism, beacons of democracy, and well-oiled corporate machines. Considering their intriguing diversity, Merrill Schleier establishes and explains the impact of actual skyscrapers on America’s ideologies about work, leisure, romance, sexual identity, and politics as seen in Hollywood movies. Schleier analyzes cinematic works in which skyscrapers are an integral component, interpreting the iconography and spatial practices in these often fictional modern buildings, especially on concepts of gender. Organized chronologically and thematically, she offers close readings of films including Safety Last, Skyscraper Souls, Wife vs. Secretary, Baby Face, The Fountainhead, and Desk Set. Opening with the humorous antics of Harold Lloyd, the premier skyscraper actor of the silent era, the book moves through the disillusionment of the Depression era, in which skyscrapers are employed as players in moralistic, class-conscious stories, to post–World War II and its reimagining of American political and economic values and ends with the complicated prosperity of the 1950s and the lives of white-collar workers and their spouses. Taking inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, among works of other critical theorists, Schleier creates in this book a model for understanding architecture as a purveyor of desire and class values and, ultimately, contributes broadly to thinking on the rich intersection of the built environment, cinema, and gender.

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In the 1980s and 1990s, Nicolas Jabko suggests, the character of European integration altered radically, from slow growth to what he terms a "quiet revolution." In this book he traces the political strategy that underlay the move from the Single Market of 1986 through the official creation of the European Union in 1992 to the coming of the euro in 1999. The official, shared language of the political forces behind this revolution was that of market reforms—yet, as Jabko notes, this was a very strange "market" revolution, one that saw the building of massive new public institutions designed to regulate economic activity, such as the Economic and Monetary Union, and deeper liberalization in economic areas unaffected by external pressure than in truly internationalized sectors of the European economy. What held together this remarkably diverse reform movement? Precisely because "the market" wasn't a single standard, the agenda of market reforms gained the support of a vast and heterogenous coalition. The "market" was in fact a broad palette of ideas to which different actors could appeal under different circumstances. It variously stood for a constraint on government regulations, a norm by which economic activities were (or should be) governed, a space for the active pursuit of economic growth, an excuse to discipline government policies, and a beacon for new public powers and rule-making. In chapters on financial reform, the provision of collective services, regional development and social policy, and economic and monetary union, Jabko traces how a coalition of strange bedfellows mobilized a variety of market ideas to integrate Europe.

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Emancipating Lincoln seeks a new approach to the Emancipation Proclamation, a foundational text of American liberty that in recent years has been subject to woeful misinterpretation. These seventeen hundred words are Lincoln’s most important piece of writing, responsible both for his being hailed as the Great Emancipator and for his being pilloried by those who consider his once-radical effort at emancipation insufficient and half-hearted.Harold Holzer, an award-winning Lincoln scholar, invites us to examine the impact of Lincoln’s momentous announcement at the moment of its creation, and then as its meaning has changed over time. Using neglected original sources, Holzer uncovers Lincoln’s very modern manipulation of the media—from his promulgation of disinformation to the ways he variously withheld, leaked, and promoted the Proclamation—in order to make his society-altering announcement palatable to America. Examining his agonizing revisions, we learn why a peerless prose writer executed what he regarded as his “greatest act” in leaden language. Turning from word to image, we see the complex responses in American sculpture, painting, and illustration across the past century and a half, as artists sought to criticize, lionize, and profit from Lincoln’s endeavor.Holzer shows the faults in applying our own standards to Lincoln’s efforts, but also demonstrates how Lincoln’s obfuscations made it nearly impossible to discern his true motives. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Proclamation, this concise volume is a vivid depiction of the painfully slow march of all Americans—white and black, leaders and constituents—toward freedom.

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