Search results for ""author dom"
University of Minnesota Press The Birth of Computer Vision
A revealing genealogy of image-recognition techniques and technologies Today’s most advanced neural networks and sophisticated image-analysis methods come from 1950s and ’60s Cold War culture—and many biases and ways of understanding the world from that era persist along with them. Aerial surveillance and reconnaissance shaped all of the technologies that we now refer to as computer vision, including facial recognition. The Birth of Computer Vision uncovers these histories and finds connections between the algorithms, people, and politics at the core of automating perception today.James E. Dobson reveals how new forms of computerized surveillance systems, high-tech policing, and automated decision-making systems have become entangled, functioning together as a new technological apparatus of social control. Tracing the development of a series of important computer-vision algorithms, he uncovers the ideas, worrisome military origins, and lingering goals reproduced within the code and the products based on it, examining how they became linked to one another and repurposed for domestic and commercial uses. Dobson includes analysis of the Shakey Project, which produced the first semi-autonomous robot, and the impact of student protest in the early 1970s at Stanford University, as well as recovering the computer vision–related aspects of Frank Rosenblatt’s Perceptron as the crucial link between machine learning and computer vision.Motivated by the ongoing use of these major algorithms and methods, The Birth of Computer Vision chronicles the foundations of computer vision and artificial intelligence, its major transformations, and the questionable legacy of its origins. Cover alt text: Two overlapping circles in cream and violet, with black background. Top is a printed circuit with camera eye; below a person at a 1977 computer.
£22.99
University of Minnesota Press Showroom City: Real Estate and Resistance in the Furniture Capital of the World
A unique and engaging account of local urban decision-making within the globalizing world High Point, North Carolina, is known as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” Once a manufacturing stronghold, most of its furniture factories have closed over the past forty years, with production shipped off to low-wage countries. Yet as manufacturing left, the city tightened its hold on a biannual global exposition that serves as the world’s furniture fashion runway. At the High Point Market, visitors from more than one hundred nations traverse twelve million square feet of meticulous design. Downtown buildings—once courthouses, movie theaters, post offices, and gas stations—are now chic showroom spaces, even as many sit empty between each exposition.In Showroom City, John Joe Schlichtman applies an ethnographic lens to the global exposition’s relationship with High Point after it defeated rival Chicago in the 1960s and established itself as the world’s dominant furniture center. In recent decades, following trends in global finance, private equity firms were increasingly behind downtown High Point’s real estate transactions, coordinated by buyers far removed from the region. Then, in one massive transaction in 2011, a firm funded by Bain Capital purchased every major showroom building, and the majority of downtown real estate was under one owner. Showroom City is a story of exclusionary growth and unchecked development, of a city flailing to fill the void left by its dwindling factories. But beyond that Schlichtman engages the general lessons behind both High Point’s deindustrialization and its stunning reinvention as a furniture fashion, merchandising, and design node. With great nuance, he delves deeply to reveal how power operates locally and how citizens may affirm, exploit, influence, and resist the takeover of their community.
£23.99
Princeton University Press 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated
A bold reassessment of what caused the Late Bronze Age collapseIn 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen?In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries.A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age—and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.
£14.99
Princeton University Press The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy
How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to todayAs right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even some conservatives, worry that democratic principles are under threat. In The Spectre of Race, Michael Hanchard argues that the current rise in xenophobia and racist rhetoric is nothing new and that exclusionary policies have always been central to democratic practices since their beginnings in classical times. Contending that democracy has never been for all people, Hanchard discusses how marginalization is reinforced in modern politics, and why these contradictions need to be fully examined if the dynamics of democracy are to be truly understood.Hanchard identifies continuities of discriminatory citizenship from classical Athens to the present and looks at how democratic institutions have promoted undemocratic ideas and practices. The longest-standing modern democracies —France, Britain, and the United States—profited from slave labor, empire, and colonialism, much like their Athenian predecessor. Hanchard follows these patterns through the Enlightenment and to the states and political thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he examines how early political scientists, including Woodrow Wilson and his contemporaries, devised what Hanchard has characterized as "racial regimes" to maintain the political and economic privileges of dominant groups at the expense of subordinated ones. Exploring how democracies reconcile political inequality and equality, Hanchard debates the thorny question of the conditions under which democracies have created and maintained barriers to political membership.Showing the ways that race, gender, nationality, and other criteria have determined a person's status in political life, The Spectre ofRace offers important historical context for how democracy generates political difference and inequality.
£31.50
Rowman & Littlefield How Trump Happened: A System Shock Decades in the Making
The stunning 2016 election and presidency of Donald Trump was decades in the making. Three trends since the 1960s created the conditions for his triumph. First, a growing popular discontent with government, long evident in public opinion, created a widespread distrust of established leaders and institutions. Second, America underwent the rise of “professional government.” Governing professionals are an elite built on merit through occupational accomplishment. They now dominate interest groups, the bureaucracy, courts, presidency, and Congress. Many government professionals perceive little need to mobilize the public in the way parties did in previous eras. This has furthered the sense of disconnect among the public and created a self-reinforcing chain. Third, political parties and governing institutions are now polarized into rival teams of ideological, partisan elites. The intense battles between these divergent teams often result in government gridlock. These conditions produce ripe opportunities for “outsider” candidates to mount popular movements against politics as usual. How did Donald Trump leverage his outsider status into a 2016 electoral victory? Four factors propelled him into the White House. First, Trump’s long career as a public celebrity gave him an identity and “brand” widely known to the public and which generated massive free media coverage as a candidate. Second, Trump and his campaign ably used social media to further amplify his message. Third, decades of polarized political elites, governmental professionalism and mounting popular discontent made an “outsider” message attractive to millions of voters in 2016. Fourth, Trump was blessed with a political opponent, Hillary Clinton, who represented the polarized and professional governing class that Trump rightly saw as an inviting target for his outsider message and demeanor. That is how Trump happened.
£22.50
New York University Press Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence
How activists in Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil provide inspiration and strategies for combating the gender violence epidemic in the United States How can the U.S. learn from the perspectives of anti-gender violence activists in South America and Africa as we seek to end intimate violence in this country? The U.S. has consistently positioned itself as a moral exemplar, seeking to export its philosophy and values to other societies. Yet in this book, Traci C. West argues that the U.S. has much to learn from other countries when it comes to addressing gender-based violence. West traveled to Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil to interview activists involved in the struggle against gender violence. In each of these places, as in the United States, Christianity and anti-black racism have been implicated in violence against women. In Ghana and Brazil, in particular, their Christian colonial and trans-Atlantic slave trade histories directly connect with the socioeconomic development of the Americas and historic incidents of rape of black slave women. With a transnational focus on religion and racism, West brings a new perspective to efforts to systemically combat gender violence. Calling attention to forms of violence in the U.S. and international settings, such as marital rape, sex trafficking of women and girls, domestic violence, and the targeting of lesbians, the book offers an expansive and nuanced view of how to form activist solidarity in tackling this violence. It features bold and inspiring approaches by black women leaders working in each setting to uproot the myriad forms of violence against women and girls. Ultimately, West calls for us to learn from the lessons of Africana activists, drawing on a defiant Africana spirituality as an invaluable resource in the quest to combat the seemingly chronic problem of gender-based violence.
£73.80
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Battles That Created England 793-1100: How Alfred and his Successors Defeated the Vikings to Unite the Kingdoms
In popular imagination the warfare of the Early Middle Ages is often obscure, unstructured, and unimaginative, lost between two military machines, the Romans' and the Normans', which saw the country invaded and partitioned. In point of fact, we have a considerable amount of information at our fingertips and the picture that should emerge is one of English ability in the face of sometimes overwhelming pressures on society, and a resilience that eventually drew the older kingdoms together in new external responses which united the English' in a common sense of purpose. This is the story of how the Saxon kingdoms, which had maintained their independence for generations, were compelled to unite their forces to resist the external threat of the Viking incursions. The kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex were gradually welded into one as Wessex grew in strength to become the dominant Saxon kingdom. From the weak thelred to the strong Alfred, rightly deserving the epithet Great', to the strong, but equally unfortunate, Harold, this era witnessed brutal hand-to-hand battles in congested melees, which are normally portrayed as unsophisticated but deadly brawls. In reality, the warriors of the era were experienced fighters often displaying sophisticated strategies and deploying complex tactics. Our principal source, replete with reasonably reliable reportage, are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, comprehensive in collation though subject to oral distortion and mythological excursions. The narrative of these does not appear to flow continuously, leaving too much to imagination but, by creating a complementary matrix of landscapes, topography and communications it is possible to provide convincing scenery into which we can fit other archaeological and philological evidence to show how the English nation was formed in the bloody slaughter of battle.
£29.84
Transworld Publishers Ltd Dancer's Lament: (Path to Ascendancy: 1): an ingenious and imaginative fantasy from a master of the genre
Fantastic world-building meets spellbinding storytelling in this must-read fan-favourite from Esslemont. Ideal for fans of Steven Erikson, David Gemmell and Brandon Sanderson.'This book hits all the right notes at all the right times' -- FANTASY BOOK REVIEW'Highly entertaining . . . streamlined, tightly-plotted and structured' -- TOR.COM'An awesome read' -- ***** Reader review'Esslemont at his best' -- ***** Reader review'Totally absorbing' -- ***** Reader review'You'll find this hard to put down' -- ***** Reader review***********************************************************************************************************It was once a land ravaged by war, minor city states, baronies and principates fighting for supremacy. But when the rival cities of Tali and Quon formed an alliance, Quon Tali came into being.However that was generations ago, that dynasty has collapsed and the regional powers are now clawing at each others throats once more. But at the heart of Quon Tali lies the powerful city state of Li Heng which has for centuries enjoyed relative stability under the guidance of the powerful sorceress known as the "Protectress".She is not someone likely to tolerate the arrival of two particular young men into her domain: one is determined to prove he is the most skilled assassin of his age; the other is his quarry - a Dal Hon mage who is proving annoyingly difficult to kill.And now, under a new and ambitious king, the forces of Itko Kan are marching on Li Heng from the south. His own assassins, the Nightblades, have been sent ahead into the city, and rumours abound that he has inhuman, nightmarish forces at his command. So as shadows and mistrust swirl and monstrous beasts run rampage through Li Heng's streets, it seems chaos is come - but in chaos, as a certain young Dal Hon mage would say, there is opportunity . . .
£10.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC River Cottage Much More Veg: 175 vegan recipes for simple, fresh and flavourful meals
Want to cook more veg for your family, but have no idea where to start? Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is here to help, with a whole host of veg-centric recipes that are easy, foolproof and delicious. Let’s ‘Eat Them To Defeat Them’! Hugh’s River Cottage Veg Every Day! became the UK’s best-selling vegetable cookbook, persuading us through sheer temptation to make vegetables the mainstay of our daily cooking. In this much-anticipated follow-up, Hugh delivers more irresistible recipes, and this time, takes things one step further. Fuelled by his passionate belief that plant foods should be the dominant force in our kitchens, Hugh has put cheese, butter, cream, eggs, and refined flour and sugar firmly to one side. Instead, he uses veg, fruit, wholegrains, nuts, seeds, spices and cold-pressed oils to explore the length and breadth of what can be achieved with natural, unprocessed plant foods. River Cottage Much More Veg! makes it clear that unadulterated ingredients are the very best building blocks for delicious and healthy meals. In typical Hugh style, the recipes are easy, utterly foolproof,delicious, and full of plenty of swap-out suggestions. All but a handful are gluten-free, and at least half the dishes require 20 minutes (or less) hands-on work time. With recipes such as Roast squash and chickpeas with spicy apricot sauce, Blackened cauliflower with pecans and tahini, Spiced beetroot, radicchio and orange traybake, Celeriac and seaweed miso broth, Seared summer cabbage with rosemary, chilli and capers, and Baked celery agrodolce, River Cottage Much More Veg! demonstrates how easy it is to make versatile, plentiful and delicious vegetables the bedrock of your diet.
£23.40
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Somme 1916: Touring the French Sector
With a few notable exceptions, the French efforts on the Somme have been largely missing or minimised in British accounts of the Battle of the Somme. And yet they held this sector of the Front from the outbreak of the war until well into 1915 and, indeed, in parts into 1916\. It does not hurt to be reminded that the French army suffered some 200,000 casualties in the 1916 offensive. David O Mara s book provides an outline narrative describing the arrival of the war on the Somme and some of the notable and quite fierce actions that took place that autumn and, indeed, into December of 1914\. Extensive mine warfare was a feature of 1915 and beyond on the Somme; for example under Redan Ridge and before Dompierre and Fay. The French limited offensive at Serre in June 1915 is reasonably well known, but there was fighting elsewhere for example the Germans launched a short, sharp, limited attack at Frise in January 1916, part of the diversionary action before the Germans launched their ill-fated offensive at Verdun. The book covers the Somme front from Gommecourt, north of the Somme, to Chaulnes, at the southern end of the battle zone of 1916\. The reader is taken around key points in various tours. For many British visitors the battlefields south of the Somme will be a revelation; there is much to see, both of cemeteries and memorials, but also substantial traces of the fighting remain on the ground, some of which is accessible to the public. It has always been something of a disgrace that there is so little available, even in French, to educate the public in an accessible written form about the substantial effort made by France s army on the Somme; this book and subsequent, more detailed volumes to be published in the coming years will go some way to rectify this. British visitors should be fascinated by the story of these forgotten men of France and the largely unknown part of the Somme battlefield.
£24.26
University of Missouri Press The Poetry of Louise Glück: A Thematic Introduction
A dominant figure in American poetry for more than thirty-five years, Louise Glück has been the recipient of virtually every major poetry award and was named U.S. poet laureate for 2003–2004. In a new full-length study of her work, Daniel Morris explores how this prolific poet utilizes masks of characters from history, the Bible, and even fairy tales.Morris treats Glück’s persistent themes—desire, hunger, trauma, survival—through close reading of her major book-length sequences from the 1990s: Ararat, Meadowlands, and The Wild Iris. An additional chapter devoted to The House on Marshland (1975) shows how its revision of Romanticism and nature poetry anticipated these later works. Seeing Glück’s poems as complex analyses of the authorial self via sustained central metaphors, Morris reads her poetry against a narrative pattern that shifts from the tones of anger, despair, and resentment found in her early Firstborn to the resignation of Ararat—and proceeds in her latest volumes, including Vita Nova and Averno, toward an ambivalent embrace of embodied life.By showing how Glück’s poems may be read as a form of commentary on the meanings of great literature and myth, Morris emphasizes her irreverent attitude toward the canons through which she both expresses herself and deflects her autobiographical impulse. By discussing her sense of self, of Judaism, and of the poetic tradition, he explores her position as a mystic poet with an ambivalent relationship to religious discourse verging on Gnosticism, with tendencies toward the ancient rabbinic midrash tradition of reading scripture. He particularly shows how her creative reading of past poets expresses her vision of Judaism as a way of thinking about canonical texts.The Poetry of Louise Glück is a quintessential study of how poems may be read as a form of commentary on the meanings of great literature and myth. It clearly demonstrates that, through this lens of commentary, one can grasp more firmly the very idea of poetry itself that Glück has spent her career both defining and extending.
£31.31
WW Norton & Co The Games: A Global History of the Olympics
For millions of people around the world, the Summer and Winter Games are a joy and a treasure, but how did they develop into a global colossus? How have they been buffeted by—and, in turn, affected by—world events? Why do we care about them so much? From the reinvention of the Games in Athens in 1896 to Rio in 2016, best-selling sportswriter David Goldblatt brilliantly traces their history through national triumphs and tragedies, individual victories and failures. Here is the story of grand Olympic traditions such as winners’ medals, the torch relay, and the eternal flame. Here is the story of popular Olympic events such as gymnastics, the marathon, and alpine skiing (as well as discontinued ones like tug-of-war). And here in all their glory are Olympic icons from Jesse Owens to Nadia Comaneci, Abebe Bikila to Bob Beamon, the Dream Team to Usain Bolt. Hailed in the Wall Street Journal for writing about sports “with the expansive eye of a social and cultural critic,” Goldblatt goes beyond the medal counts to tell how women fought to be included in the Olympics on equal terms, how the wounded of World War II led to the Paralympics, and how the Olympics reflect changing attitudes to race and ethnicity. He explores the tensions between the Games’ amateur ideals and professionalization and commercialism in sports, the pitched battles between cities for the right to host the Games, and their often disappointing economic legacy. And in covering such seminal moments as Jesse Owens and Hitler at Berlin in 1936, the Black Power salute at Mexico City in 1968, the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, and the Miracle on Ice at Lake Placid in 1980, Goldblatt shows how prominently the modern Olympics have highlighted profound domestic and international conflicts. Illuminated with dazzling vignettes from over a century of the Olympics, this stunningly researched and engagingly written history captures the excitement, drama, and kaleidoscopic experience of the Games.
£23.99
WW Norton & Co Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science
In the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, economics seems anything but a science. In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within, takes a close look at economics to examine when it falls short and when it works, to give a surprisingly upbeat account of the discipline. Drawing on the history of the field and his deep experience as a practitioner, Rodrik argues that economics can be a powerful tool that improves the world—but only when economists abandon universal theories and focus on getting the context right. Economics Rules argues that the discipline's much-derided mathematical models are its true strength. Models are the tools that make economics a science. Too often, however, economists mistake a model for the model that applies everywhere and at all times. In six chapters that trace his discipline from Adam Smith to present-day work on globalization, Rodrik shows how diverse situations call for different models. Each model tells a partial story about how the world works. These stories offer wide-ranging, and sometimes contradictory, lessons—just as children’s fables offer diverse morals. Whether the question concerns the rise of global inequality, the consequences of free trade, or the value of deficit spending, Rodrik explains how using the right models can deliver valuable new insights about social reality and public policy. Beyond the science, economics requires the craft to apply suitable models to the context. The 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers challenged many economists' deepest assumptions about free markets. Rodrik reveals that economists' model toolkit is much richer than these free-market models. With pragmatic model selection, economists can develop successful antipoverty programs in Mexico, growth strategies in Africa, and intelligent remedies for domestic inequality. At once a forceful critique and defense of the discipline, Economics Rules charts a path toward a more humble but more effective science.
£20.81
Springer International Publishing AG Revealing Media Bias in News Articles: NLP Techniques for Automated Frame Analysis
This open access book presents an interdisciplinary approach to reveal biases in English news articles reporting on a given political event. The approach named person-oriented framing analysis identifies the coverage’s different perspectives on the event by assessing how articles portray the persons involved in the event. In contrast to prior automated approaches, the identified frames are more meaningful and substantially present in person-oriented news coverage. The book is structured in seven chapters: Chapter 1 presents a few of the severe problems caused by slanted news coverage and identifies the research gap that motivated the research described in this thesis. Chapter 2 discusses manual analysis concepts and exemplary studies from the social sciences and automated approaches, mostly from computer science and computational linguistics, to analyze and reveal media bias. This way, it identifies the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches for identifying and revealing media bias. Chapter 3 discusses the solution design space to address the identified research gap and introduces person-oriented framing analysis (PFA), a new approach to identify substantial frames and to reveal slanted news coverage. Chapters 4 and 5 detail target concept analysis and frame identification, the first and second component of PFA. Chapter 5 also introduces the first large-scale dataset and a novel model for target-dependent sentiment classification (TSC) in the news domain. Eventually, Chapter 6 introduces Newsalyze, a prototype system to reveal biases to non-expert news consumers by using the PFA approach. In the end, Chapter 7 summarizes the thesis and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the thesis to derive ideas for future research on media bias. This book mainly targets researchers and graduate students from computer science, computational linguistics, political science, and further social sciences who want to get an overview of the relevant state of the art in the other related disciplines and understand and tackle the issue of bias from a more effective, interdisciplinary viewpoint.
£34.99
Johns Hopkins University Press Baroque Modernity: An Aesthetics of Theater
A groundbreaking study on the vital role of baroque theater in shaping modernist philosophy, literature, and performance.Finalist for the Outstanding Book Award by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Honorable Mention for the Balakian Prize by the International Comparative Literature Association, Winner of the Helen Tartar Book Subvention Award by the American Comparative Literature Association, Finalist of the MSA First Book Prize by the Modernist Studies AssociationBaroque style—with its emphasis on ostentation, adornment, and spectacle—might seem incompatible with the dominant forms of art since the Industrial Revolution, but between 1875 and 1935, European and American modernists connected to the theater became fascinated with it. In Baroque Modernity, Joseph Cermatori argues that the memory of seventeenth-century baroque stages helped produce new forms of theater, space, and experience around the turn of the twentieth century. In response, modern theater helped give rise to the development of the baroque as a modern philosophical idea. The book focuses on avant-gardists whose writing takes place between theory and performance: philosophical theater-makers and theatrical philosophers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Stéphane Mallarmé, Walter Benjamin, and Gertrude Stein. Moving between page and stage, this study tracks the remnants of seventeenth-century theater through modernist aesthetics across an array of otherwise disparate materials, including modern opera, Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater, poetic tragedies, and miracle plays. By reexamining the twentieth century's engagements with Gianlorenzo Bernini, William Shakespeare, Claudio Monteverdi, Calderón de la Barca, and other seventeenth-century predecessors, the book delineates an enduring tradition of baroque performance. Along the way, Cermatori expands our familiar narratives of "the modern" and traces a history of theatricality that reverberates into the twenty-first century. Baroque Modernity will appeal to readers in a wide array of disciplines, including comparative literature, theater and performance, art and music history, intellectual history, and aesthetic theory.
£30.50
Edinburgh University Press Geopolitics and Governance in North Africa: Local Challenges, Global Implications
Examines the impact of the changing geopolitical environment on a range of governance issues in North Africa Discusses cases from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Mauritania, using field work carried out throughout the region Situates the North Africa region within several global contexts such as the West, Africa, and the Middle East Offers both in-depth country case studies as well as cross-cutting thematic chapters including a focus on gender issues Tackles major global challenges including climate change, socioeconomic inequality and global power competition (Russia and China) Combines an academic and policy approach to the region to speak to a variety of audiences North Africa was once on the geopolitical periphery of Middle East dynamics, but it has increasingly come to shape regional trends. In addition to internal political and economic transformations that were accelerated by the protests of 2011 and that have upended or reshaped the lives of millions of the region's inhabitants, the region is also contending with a range of external challenges. These include the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic transformation, changing market dynamics including energy markets, the growing presence of new regional actors like Russia and China, and the changing role of traditional allies such as the European Union, Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and the United States. These dynamics are compounded by other natural and man-made climate changes and demographic changes that worsen them. This volume shows why North Africa, sometimes considered a backwater within a broader Middle East context, actually is the leading edge of change for the region and deserving of far more attention from the international community. North African countries are facing a dizzying array of challenges related to domestic and global trends--political transformation either recent or underway, economic stagnation now worsened by the pandemic, social challenges associated with a frustrated young population--are giving the region more geopolitical relevance with implications for the broader Middle East, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa.
£126.57
Vagabond Voices Presbyopia
"My sight if fades and fading faded forms reveals; ageing looks beyond its age to shrivelled centuries beyond decades." The presbyopic poet cannot focus on "the self as subject", but only on what is distant. This collection of poetry attempts to detach the writer from the obsessions that have dominated poetry for so long: sentiment, love, feelings and the autobiographical in general. To completely dispose of these would be dogmatic, and Cameron argues that some of the greatest poets are both presbyopic and myopic. "And yet he fell apart, and headstrong held to that one truth, while falling and parting for his way, his lonely way of wanting justice for the damned." This poetry is unfashionably but unashamedly political and philosophical. Cameron continues to express in another form the contempt he feels for utilitarianism in general, and in particular its crude and extreme variety, as peddled by neo-conservative politicians and their intellectual bag-carriers. At the same time, he attempts to invent new poetic forms. Inspired by some Italian poets (especially Eugenio Montale), he uses metre and some rhyme, but then breaks it up by introducting enjambement and internal rhymes as well. There are English influences too: most surprisingly Rudyard Kipling's "Mary Gloster" in part inspired "Zarathustra's Last Interview", the longest narrative poem in this collection. "We thank thee Lord for having made us free to rule the world and liberate its inner need to be so much more like us." This poetry is unashamedly anti-imperialist. "That war with wings of death does twist and crush and kill the flimsy leathered bag of flesh and bone and liquid life that spills upon the sands, requires no second telling." This poetry is unashamedly anti-war. "Only this empty moment which I spectate is in my clasp; amongst this fractured stillness, something knowable comes close and just eludes the closing fingers of my mind's grasp" This poetry is for those who have more doubts than certainties.
£11.25
Columbia University Press Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti
Rosi Braidotti's nomadic theory outlines a sustainable modern subjectivity as one in flux, never opposed to a dominant hierarchy yet intrinsically other, always in the process of becoming, and perpetually engaged in dynamic power relations both creative and restrictive. Nomadic theory offers an original and powerful alternative for scholars working in cultural and social criticism and has, over the past decade, crept into continental philosophy, queer theory, and feminist, postcolonial, techno-science, media, and race studies, as well as into architecture, history, and anthropology. This collection provides a core introduction to Braidotti's nomadic theory and its innovative formulations, which playfully engage with Deleuze, Foucault, Irigaray, and a host of political and cultural issues. Arranged thematically, essays begin with such concepts as sexual difference and embodied subjectivity and follow with explorations in technoscience, feminism, postsecular citizenship, and the politics of affirmation. Braidotti develops a distinctly positive critical theory that rejuvenates the experience of political scholarship. Inspired yet not confined by Deleuzian vitalism, with its commitment to the ontology of flows, networks, and dynamic transformations, she emphasizes affects, imagination, and creativity and the politics of radical immanence. Incorporating ideas from Nietzsche and Spinoza as well, Braidotti establishes a critical-theoretical framework equal parts critique and creation. Ever mindful of the perils of defining difference in terms of denigration and the related tendency to subordinate sexualized, racialized, and naturalized others, she explores the eco-philosophical implications of nomadic theory, feminism, and the irreducibility of sexual difference and sexuality. Her dialogue with technoscience is crucial to nomadic theory, which deterritorializes the established understanding of what counts as human, along with our relationship to animals, the environment, and changing notions of materialism. Keeping her distance from the near-obsessive focus on vulnerability, trauma, and melancholia in contemporary political thought, Braidotti promotes a politics of affirmation that has the potential to become its own generative life force.
£82.80
Oxford University Press A History of the County of Stafford: Volume XVII
Historical accounts of three important industrial towns of the Black Country fill the present volume. West Bromwich, Smethwick, and Walsall are all close neighbours and all former county boroughs. West Bromwich had a domes-tic nailing industry in the 16th century but remained a scattered settlement on the heathland of the coal measures until the development of its mining and iron industry in the mid 19th. Smethwick's growth began with the building of the Birmingham canal in the late 18th century and was particularly marked from the 1830s-. Walsall, an early medieval borough with its church standing on a limestone hill at the town's centre, underwent a rapid increase in population from the 1820s. Immigrants to man the indus-tries of the area have included French and Belgians in the early 19th century, and in the mid 20th people from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent. The pattern of communications feeding the industries is a palimpsest of ancient roads bridging the small streams of the Mid-lands plateau, the successive networks of canals and railways, and the motorways of the 1960s. Household names like Mitchells & Butlers,Chances, G.K.N., and Tube Investments are reminders of the industrial strength and variety of the area, which has also included brick- making, brush-making, chemicals, cloth and clothing, coal-mining, engineering of many types, iron-smelting, ironstone mining, leather trades, limestone-mining, and organ-building. Along with the large factories and numerous small workshops are remarkable buildings of other kinds, such as West Bromwich manor-house, a classicmedieval example, and the former Sand-well Hall, seat of the earls of Dartmouth. Apart from manufacturers many well known people have been connected with the area, including Joseph Chamberlain in politics, Madeleine Carroll and Sidney Barnes in entertainment and sport, and in literature Jerome K. Jerome and Sir Henry Newbolt.
£75.00
Surrey Books,U.S. Burn the Place: A Memoir
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDA singular, powerfully expressive debut memoir that traces one chef’s struggle to find her place and what happens once she does.Burn the Place is a galvanizing memoir that chronicles Iliana Regan’s journey from foraging on the family farm to running her Michelin-starred restaurant, Elizabeth. Her story is raw like that first bite of wild onion, alive with startling imagery, and told with uncommon emotional power.Regan grew up the youngest of four headstrong girls on a small farm in Northwest Indiana. While gathering raspberries as a toddler, Regan preternaturally understood to pick just the ripe fruit and leave the rest for another day. In the family’s leaf-strewn fields, the orange flutes of chanterelles beckoned her while they eluded others.Regan has had this intense, almost otherworldly connection with food and the earth it comes from since her childhood, but connecting with people has always been more difficult. She was a little girl who longed to be a boy, gay in an intolerant community, an alcoholic before she turned twenty, and a woman in an industry dominated by men—she often felt she “wasn’t made for this world,” and as far as she could tell, the world tended to agree. But as she learned to cook in her childhood farmhouse, got her first restaurant job at age fifteen, taught herself cutting-edge cuisine while running a “new gatherer” underground supper club, and worked her way from front-of-house staff to running her own kitchen, Regan found that food could help her navigate the strangeness of the world around her.Regan cooks with instinct, memory, and an emotional connection to her ingredients that can’t be taught. Written from that same place of instinct and emotion, Burn the Place tells Regan’s story in raw and vivid prose and brings readers into a world—from the Indiana woods to elite Chicago kitchens—that is entirely original and unforgettable.
£17.99
Nova Science Publishers Inc Liability for Commercial Outer Space Activities: Need for a Legal Framework in India
The book responds to the dissonance between the increase of commercial outer space activities and the absence of any legal framework in India. While holding a great promise, international space law remains a stable principle that the launching country is liable for any damage caused by outer space activities. The quantity of risk increases more when outer space is used not only by the sovereign states but also by non-governmental entities for commercial benefit. Both the municipal and international law accepted that money damages should compensate the harm. Therefore, allocation of the liability must be shared by the actual wrong doer. State practices are developed for the allocation of liability with non-governmental entities. The argument attacks the substance and structure of space policy in India, undermining claims as to its effectiveness and even sustainability. In responding to these challenges, this book uses analytical and comparative methods with the dynamic processes such as interview (structured and unstructured) to address the central question of basis and fundamental framework of space law in India. The objective of the thesis is to develop a plausible normative framework in India relating to commercial outer space activities. This normative framework provides a platform for exiting international legal norm and practices, as well as the basis of alternative understanding of international space law and the potential response to those problems, which are coherent and consistent with the use of outer space commercially by any country. The book offers three inter related conclusions. First, it identifies the international legal norms as the basis for the development of national legal framework in India. Secondly, it demonstrates those state practices developed by space-advanced nations who adopted national space legislation for the promotion and control of commercial outer space activities, and provides a useful legal framework background for adoption of domestic legal framework in India. Thirdly, it develops a normative framework for the commercial outer space activities in India.
£65.69
The History Press Ltd The Discovery of Sussex
There is a greater difference between life in Sussex today and life one hundred years ago than there was between the times of our great-grandparents and of Queen Elizabeth, for in 1900 Sussex away from the seaside resorts had more in common with the Sussex of 1700 than today's county. Horse power still set the pace of life and thistledown floated up from the spacious sheepwalks in high summer. Hazel and chestnut coppice was still cut regularly, men had not left off singing, and the bell-teams of wagon horses on the road were familiar sounds in what was called 'sleepy, snoozy, Sussex'.This book examines the social, cultural and environmental changes which went into the making of modern Sussex from the end of the 18th century, particularly those that resulted from the invasion of wide-eyed Londoners as tourists and health-seekers, writers and artists, weekenders or permanent residents, in the half-century up to 1939. Those in favour of innovation and progress, who wanted to let things run their course, gave their active or tacit support to change, but there were others who abhorred the modern age and tried angrily to reverse the process. There were also those who fought on behalf of the countryside and resisted urbanisation by means of landscape protection, thus saving much of the county from bricks and mortar.Sussex became a foil to the metropolis on its doorstep, functioning as a re-discovered Eden in the guise of an undeclared national park, with values and lifestyles at variance with those of the capital city. The remarkable efflorescence of painting, writing, arts and crafts, domestic architecture, and landscape design and planning was deeply affected by the nostalgia for the countryside which accompanied the rapid and largely unplanned metropolitan growth. Writers and promoters of tourism created a rural ideology designed to meet the strains and stresses of the new urban mode of existence.
£22.50
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Serpent Sword
'HISTORICAL FICTION DOESN'T GET MUCH BETTER THAN THIS' ANGUS DONALD AD 633 Beobrand is a young man with a shadowy past. As an outsider in the kingdom of Bernicia, he is compelled to join his brother, Octa, as a warrior in the household of King Edwin. He must learn to fight with sword and shield to defend the war-ravaged kingdoms of Northumbria. In a period of great upheaval for Dark Age Britain, all he finds is death and war. Men and women strive to seize control of their destinies in a time of despair, and the land is rife with danger as warlords vie for supremacy and dominion. Amongst the blood and the betrayals, Beobrand learns of his brother's near-certain murder. Inexperienced but ruthless, Beobrand must form his own allegiances and learn to fight as a warrior with sword and shield. Driven by a desire for vengeance and a relentless pursuit of his enemies, he faces challenges which transform him from a boy to a man who stands strong in the clamour and gore of the shieldwall. As he closes in on his kin's slayer, can Beobrand mete out the retribution he craves without sacrificing his honour... or even his soul? Praise for Matthew Harffy: 'Nothing less than superb... The tale is fast paced and violence lurks on every page' Historical Novel Society 'Beobrand is the warrior to follow' David Gilman 'A tale that rings like sword song in the reader's mind' Giles Kristian 'A brilliant characterization of a difficult hero in a dangerous time. Excellent!' Christian Cameron 'A terrific novel. It illuminates the Dark Ages like a bolt of lightning' Toby Clements 'Battles, treachery, revenge and a healthy dose of Dark Age adventure' Simon Turney 'Matthew Harffy tells a great story' Joanna Hickson 'Harffy's writing just gets better and better... He is really proving himself the rightful heir to Gemmell's crown' Jemahl Evans 'Harffy has a real winner on his hands... A genuinely superb novel' Steven McKay 'A breathtaking novel that sweeps the reader into a dark and dangerous world' Paul Fraser Collard
£9.99
Seal Press Parachute Women: Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones have long been considered one of the greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time. At the forefront of the British Invasion and heading up the counterculture movement of the 1960s, the Stones' innovative music and iconic performances defined a generation, and fifty years later, they're still performing to sold-out stadiums around the globe. Yet, as the saying goes, behind every great man is a greater woman, and behind these larger-than-life rockstars were four incredible women whose stories have yet to be fully unpacked. . . until now.In Parachute Women, Elizabeth Winder introduces us to the four women who inspired, styled, wrote for, remixed, and ultimately helped create the legend of the Rolling Stones. Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, and Bianca Jagger put the glimmer in the Glimmer Twins and taught a group of straight-laced boys to be bad. They opened the doors to subterranean art and alternative lifestyles, turned them on to Russian literature, occult practices, and LSD. They connected them to cutting edge directors and writers, won them roles in art house films that renewed their appeal. They often acted as unpaid stylists, providing provocative looks from their personal wardrobes. They remixed tracks for chart-topping albums, and sometimes even wrote the actual songs. More hip to the times than the rockers themselves, they consciously (and unconsciously) kept the band current--and confident--with that mythic lasting power they still have today.Lush in detail and insight, and long overdue, Parachute Women is a group portrait of the four audacious women who transformed the Stones into international stars, but who were themselves marginalized by the male-dominated rock world of the late '60s and early '70s. Written in the tradition of Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us, it's a story of lust and rivalries, friendships and betrayals, hope and degradation, and the birth of rock and roll.
£22.50
University of California Press Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde
Regarded as one of the founders of the postwar American independent cinema, the legendary Maya Deren was a poet, photographer, ethnographer, filmmaker and impresario. Her efforts to promote an independent cinema have inspired filmmakers for over fifty years. "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943) ranks among the most widely viewed of all avant-garde films. The eleven essays gathered here examine Maya Deren's writings, films, and legacy from a variety of intriguing perspectives. Some address her relative neglect during the rise of feminist film theory; all argue for her enduring significance. The essays cast light on her aesthetics and ethics, her exploration of film form and of other cultures, her role as (woman) artist and as film theorist. "Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde" also includes one of the most significant reflections on the nature of art and the responsibilities of the filmmaker ever written - Deren's influential but long out-of-print book, "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film", in its entirety. Among the topics covered in this volume are Deren's ties with the avant-garde of her day and its predecessors; her perspective on vodoun ritual, possession ceremonies, and social harmony; her work in relation to the modern dance tradition and its racial inflections; her thoughts, written in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about science, including how form can embody moral principles; the complex issue of the 'woman artist' in an avant-garde dominated by men; her famous dispute with Anais Nin; and, an exploration of issues of identification and desire in her major films. As the first critical evaluation of the enduring significance of Maya Deren, this book clarifies the filmmaker's theoretical and cinematic achievements and conveys the passionate sense of moral purpose she felt about her art. It is a long-overdue tribute to one of the most important and least written about filmmakers in American cinema, an artist who formulated the terms and conditions of independent cinema that remain with us today.
£26.10
Little, Brown Book Group The Fall: The End of the Murdoch Empire
THE BOOK THAT BROUGHT DOWN RUPERT MURDOCH - AND A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERMeet the Murdochs and the disastrously dysfunctional family of Fox News. Until recently, they formed the most powerful media and political force in America. Now their empire is cracking up and crashing down. In his irresistible trilogy on the chaotic Trump presidency - Fire and Fury, Siege, and Landslide - the journalist Michael Wolff led readers deep into the twisted corridors of the White House. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the Murdoch family and key players, he plunges us behind the scenes of another empire of influence, and the result is astonishing and unforgettable. Here is Rupert Murdoch, the ninety-two-year-old billionaire - concerned about his legacy, but more concerned about profits. Here are his contentious children, jockeying to take over when the old man is gone. Here is star anchor Tucker Carlson considering a run for the presidency while his bosses have other plans for him. Sean Hannity, the richest man in television, has his own plans: to put Trump back in office. While presenter Laura Ingraham is just trying to survive in a man's world. As the fallout from the 2020 election and the Dominion lawsuit pummels the reputation of the network, the battling Murdoch heirs position themselves for the final act in this riveting drama."Michael Wolff's books were my foundation and port of entry for working on Succession." Jeremy Strong ("Kendall Roy")Praise for Fire and Fury:#1 New York Times bestseller, a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, Financial Times'The pages of Wolff's book are littered with insults and intrigue, backstabbing and dysfunction' Washington Post'What makes the book significant is its sly, hilarious portrait of a hollow man, into the black hole of whose needy, greedy ego the whole world has virtually vanished' Guardian
£22.50
Hodder & Stoughton Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism
"as indispensable to confronting, say, your domineering mother-in-law or your local city council as it is to helping foment an ongoing and ever-escalating insurrection against, say, a sexist, racist, nepotistic power-mad oligarchy threatening to destroy democracy as we know it...My advice: Buy one" - VOGUEA guerrilla guide to radical protest and joyful political resistance from artist, activist and Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova. The face of modern protest is wearing a brightly colored ski mask.Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot, is a creative activist, professional protestor, brazen feminist, shocking visual artist, and force to be reckoned with. Her spontaneous, explosive approach to political action has involved jumping over barbed wire, kissing police officers, giving guerilla performances in crowded subway cars, and going on a hunger strike to protest the abuse of prisoners. She's been horse-whipped by police in Sochi, temporarily blinded when officers threw green paint in her eyes, and monitored by the Russian government. But what made Nadya an activist icon overnight happened on February 21, 2012, when she was arrested for performing an anti-Putin protest song in a Moscow church.She was sent to a Russian prison for 18 months and emerged as an international symbol of radical resistance, as calls to "Free Pussy Riot" resounded around the world. With her emblematic ski mask, black lipstick, and unwavering bravery, Nadya has become an emissary of hope and optimism despite overwhelming and ugly political corruption.Read & Riot is structured around Nadya's ten rules for revolution (Be a pirate! Make your government shit its pants! Take back the joy!) and illustrated throughout with stunning examples from her extraordinary life and the philosophies of other revolutionary rebels throughout history. Rooted in action and going beyond the typical "call your senator" guidelines, Read & Riot gives us a refreshing model for civil disobedience, and encourages our right to question every status quo and make political action exciting--even joyful.
£9.99
Amberley Publishing Lincolnshire Railways
England’s second largest county contains a wealth of railway history. The county was dominated by two companies – the Great Central in the north and the Great Northern in the centre and south. The county was also penetrated by the Midland Railway and there were no fewer than three joint lines. In the south the Midland & Great Northern Joint passed through from west to east, while the Great Northern & Great Eastern Joint ran north to south. In the far north-west of the county was the Isle of Axholme Railway, jointly owned by the North Eastern and the Lancashire & Yorkshire. The East Coast Main Line passes through the west of the county and this stretch includes the major railway centre of Grantham and Stoke Bank, where Mallard made its record-breaking run. Other important railway junctions are Sleaford, Boston, Spalding and Lincoln. On the coast are the seaside towns of Skegness, Mablethorpe, Sutton and Cleethorpes, which in the tourist season would see the arrival by train of thousands of holidaymakers. Further north is Grimsby, which provided numerous fish trains. So important was this traffic that the Great Central had a class of engine commonly used on these trains known as ‘Fish Engines’. Next comes the important port of Immingham, Britain’s busiest, which sees some 240 train movements per week. On the north Lincolnshire coast is New Holland, from where the railway-owned ferry used to cross to Hull. Further west is the steel-making town of Scunthorpe, which has its own railway system and is another important customer of the railway. There were other railways too: the Immingham Electric Railway, the Alford steam tram, and the potato railways – one system of which extended to more than twenty miles. RAF Cranwell had its own branch line. There are three tourist railways, one standard gauge and two narrow gauge. Using a wealth of rare and previously unseen photographs, Patrick Bennett documents Lincolnshire’s railways.
£15.99
Oxford University Press Inc Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea
Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013 Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer. That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.
£13.99
Peeters Publishers Les premières années du roi Zimrî-Lîm de Mari. Première partie
Le tome XXXIII des Archives royales de Mari avait pour but de réunir les textes qui ont trait aux premières années du règne de Zimrî-Lîm, le dernier roi de Mari. Vu la quantité du matériel épigraphique à disposition, il doit être en fait complété par un tome XXXIV. Ce premier volume fait apparaître les figures politiques majeures qui ont administré les Bord-de-l’Euphrate comme on appelait alors le royaume de Mari, soit surtout Bannum et Sumu-hadû, des personnalités dont la réalité avait été mal perçue. Un second volume doit réunir les textes qui concernent en majorité les Nomades mâr yamîna, les soi-disant Benjaminites, qui après avoir aidé au renversement du pouvoir instauré par le roi d’Ékallatum, Samsî-Addu, (RHM) se sont rebellés contre le nouveau monarque. Il doit réunir la documentation qui concerne deux générations de rois bédouins ainsi que ceux qui ont aidé le roi de Mari à venir à bout des rebelles. Ces ouvrages ARMT XXXIII et XXXIV cherchent à établir la chronologie des textes, autant ceux qui ont déjà été publiés (et aujourd’hui souvent difficiles d’accès) que ceux qui étaient encore inédits. Les chercheurs disposeront ainsi d’une documentation qui va de la prise de Tuttul par les gens de Zimrî-Lîm, au repli des forces d’Eshnunna, abandonnant leur projet de dominer la partie orientale du RHM. Le cadre géographique est tout entier dans la Syrie actuelle, mais inclut pour une bonne part de la documentation qui concerne l’Ouest de la Haute-Djéziré, le Taurus, la vallée du Balih, et l’amont de l’actuelle Der ez-Zor, toutes contrées mal documentées jusqu’à présent pour l’époque dite «amorrite», soit le XVIIIe siècle avant notre ère. Une telle entreprise a son utilité dans la mesure où elle présente l’ensemble de la documentation disponible, tout en respectant l’unité des dossiers, ce qui n’a pu qu’entraîner des chevauchements dans la documentation, tous les dignitaires n’étant pas apparus ni disparus au même moment. Elle a, naturellement, ses fragilités dans la mesure où aucune lettre n’est explicitement datée et où plusieurs documents ont pu se croiser, sans compter que la plupart du temps il est difficile de connaître le suivi des opérations annoncées, certains programmes pouvant être abandonnés. L’état matériel de la documentation laisse, en outre, beaucoup à désirer, les tablettes cunéiformes ayant été trouvées par grandes masses difficilement gérables. Le travail d’édition a été opéré à partir d’un jeu de transcriptions et d’une couverture photographique que l’on pourra consulter sur la base de données ARCHIBAB.
£140.09
Edition Axel Menges Parks & Gardens in Greater Paris / Parcs et jardins de Paris et ses environs
Text in French. Depuis plus de 350 ans les Parisiens ont conçu mais aussi préservé de phénoménaux espaces en plein air, ouverts au public. Dans son livre Jacqueline Widmar Stewart suit le tissage de la tapisserie des parcs de Paris et ses environs. LIdentification de lépoque á laquelle il a été construit peut donner á chaque parc des qualités multidimensionnelles et permet aux lecteurs de découvrir ces grands espaces verts tout comme les Parisiens. De nombreuses couches déléments et de thèmes tissent les parcs français. Aussi loin que lon remonte dans lhéritage ancien, les vestiges de lhistoire de Paris apparaissent dans tous les parcs, quelque soit leur taille. La répartition équilibrée des espaces verts dans la ville reflète une époque majeure du 19ème siècle; les parcs contemporains maintiennent ces traditions. Un certain nombre de parcs et jardins français du 17ème siècle ont appartenu initialement aux domaines royaux, mais maintenant accueillent le public. En aparté il convient de noter que le premier parc de Paris, le Jardin des Tuileries, a ouvert ses portes au public en 1667. Soigneusement conçus et méticuleusement adaptés aux besoins de lépoque, certains parcs ont camouflé le délabrement urbain inesthétique avec splendeur; dautres ont converti des sites industriels á un usage récréatif, tout en maintenant des liens culturels avec le passé. Beaucoup de merveilles invitent tous ceux qui pénètrent dans les sphères magiques de Paris: une promenade paysagère de plusieurs kilomètres au-dessus de rues animées; un jardin moderne suspendu au-dessus dune gare de train; un parc sur la rive dun canal avec ses grandes curiosités architecturales rouges; une allée au milieu dune île de la Seine; un marais récemment construit qui abrite déjá des canetons colverts; des nuages de parfum émanant des roses de la collection originale de Joséphine Bonaparte; au moins deux jardins ayant appartenu au célèbre sculpteur Auguste Rodin. Depuis ses études secondaires dans lIndiana, la langue et la littérature françaises ont fasciné Jacqueline Widmar Stewart, qui a étudié aux Universités du Colorado et du Michigan et qui a obtenu son doctorat en droit á lUniversité de Stanford á Palo Alto. Son premier livre, The Glaciers Treasure Trove: A Field Guide to the Lake Michigan Riviera, se penche sur les histoires géologiques et philanthropiques de cinq parcs au sud du lac, près de Chicago. Son deuxième livre, Finding Slovenia: A Guide to Old Europes New Country, met en valeur les merveilles de la terre natale de ses grands-parents. En 2011 Edition Axel Menges a publié Parks and Gardens in Greater Paris, maintenant aussi disponible en français. Champagne Regained, publié par Edition Axel Menges en 2013, raconte lhistoire de la boisson et du commerce du Champagne, depuis la période médiévale.
£46.00
Paulist Press International,U.S. Hadewijch: The Complete Works
"Each volume has been critically chosen, lucidly translated and excellently introduced by internationally acknowledged scholars. (The publisher) must be praised for its selectivity, overall book format, original cover designs by contemporary artists, and indexes for each volume." Theological Studies Hadewijch: The Complete Works translation and introduction by Mother Columbia Hart, O.S.B., preface by Paul Mummers, S.J. "May God give us a renewed mind For noble and free love, To make us so new in our life That Love may bless us And renew, with new taste, Those to whom she can give new fullness; Love is the new and powerful recompense Of those whose life renews itself for Love alone." Hadewijch (A Beguine of the 13th Century) Belonging to the early thirteenth century, Hadewijch brings us a spiritual message of extraordinary power. She was endowed in no less degree than St. Teresa of Avila with the gifts of visionary mysticism and literary genius. She felt herself strongly a woman, as can be seen from her choosing to join the women's movement of her day, that of the Beguines, who dedicated themselves to a life of true spirituality without taking the veil. Hadewijch understood that she was called to communicate to others the profound knowledge of the things of God granted to her in her mystical life. She directed her apostolate to some younger Beguines, and nearly all her writings, both prose and poetry, were intended for them. She mentions other spiritual friends, some in distant countries. Her experiences and her message, however , however, remained hidden; she attained to no celebrity among her contemporaries. The way of immediate fame was for other women mystics. St. Hildegard (1098-1179), the visionary and writer, enjoyed high reputation Clairvaux, and crowned heads. Hadewijch's contemporary, St. Lutgard (1183-1246), was widely known for her visions of the Sacred Heart, which won her the friendship of persons like the Master General of the Dominican Order and Duchess Marie of Brabant (daughter of King Louis VIII of France), and after her death made her tomb a place of pilgrimage. Where Hadewijch was buried, however, no one knows and her writings, after passing through the hands of John of Ruusbroec and his circle, were lost to sight until the nineteenth century. Since the rediscovery of Hadewijch, her importance has been progressively appreciated, and the hidden dimension of her life is now open so that we may share it according to the particular needs of our own day. †
£26.99
New York University Press Geek Girls: Inequality and Opportunity in Silicon Valley
Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2023 An inside account of gender and racial discrimination in the high-tech industry Why is being a computer “geek” still perceived to be a masculine occupation? Why do men continue to greatly outnumber women in the high-technology industry? Since 2014, a growing number of employment discrimination lawsuits has called attention to a persistent pattern of gender discrimination in the tech world. Much has been written about the industry’s failure to adequately address gender and racial inequalities, yet rarely have we gotten an intimate look inside these companies. In Geek Girls, France Winddance Twine provides the first book by a sociologist that “lifts the Silicon veil” to provide firsthand accounts of inequality and opportunity in the tech ecosystem. This work draws on close to a hundred interviews with male and female technology workers of diverse racial, ethnic, and educational backgrounds who are currently employed at tech firms such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and at various start-ups in the San Francisco Bay area. Geek Girls captures what it is like to work as a technically skilled woman in Silicon Valley. With a sharp eye for detail and compelling testimonials from industry insiders, Twine shows how the technology industry remains rigged against women, and especially Black, Latinx, and Native American women from working class backgrounds. From recruitment and hiring practices that give priority to those with family, friends, and classmates employed in the industry, to social and educational segregation, to academic prestige hierarchies, Twine reveals how women are blocked from entering this industry. Women who do not belong to the dominant ethnic groups in the industry are denied employment opportunities, and even actively pushed out, despite their technical skills and qualifications. While the technology firms strongly embrace the rhetoric of diversity and oppose discrimination in the workplace, Twine argues that closed social networks and routine hiring practices described by employees reinforce the status quo and reproduce inequality. The myth of meritocracy and gender stereotypes operate in tandem to produce a culture where the use of race-, color-, and power-evasive language makes it difficult for individuals to name the micro-aggressions and forms of discrimination that they experience. Twine offers concrete insights into how the technology industry can address ongoing racial and gender disparities, create more transparency and empower women from underrepresented groups, who continued to be denied opportunities.
£35.00
Columbia University Press Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus
Valentinus was a popular, influential, and controversial early Christian teacher. His school flourished in the second and third centuries C.E. Yet because his followers ascribed the creation of the visible world not to a supreme God but to an inferior and ignorant Creator-God, they were from early on accused of heresy, and rumors were spread of their immorality and sorcery. Beyond Gnosticism suggests that scholars approach Valentinians as an early Christian group rather than as a representative of ancient "Gnosticism"-a term notoriously difficult to define. The study shows that Valentinian myths of origin are filled with references to lifestyle (such as the control of emotions), the Christian community, and society, providing students with ethical instruction and new insights into their position in the world. While scholars have mapped the religio-historical and philosophical backgrounds of Valentinian myth, they have yet to address the significance of these mythmaking practices or emphasize the practical consequences of Valentinians' theological views. In this groundbreaking study, Ismo Dunderberg provides a comprehensive portrait of a group hounded by other Christians after Christianity gained a privileged position in the Roman Empire. Valentinians displayed a keen interest in mythmaking and the interpretation of myths, spinning complex tales about the origin of humans and the world. As this book argues, however, Valentinian Christians did not teach "myth for myth's sake." Rather, myth and practice were closely intertwined. After a brief introduction to the members of the school of Valentinus and the texts they left behind, Dunderberg focuses on Valentinus's interpretation of the biblical creation myth, in which the theologian affirmed humankind's original immortality as a present, not lost quality and placed a special emphasis on the "frank speech" afforded to Adam by the supreme God. Much like ancient philosophers, Valentinus believed that the divine Spirit sustained the entire cosmic chain and saw evil as originating from conspicuous "matter." Dunderberg then turns to other instances of Valentinian mythmaking dominated by ethical concerns. For example, the analysis and therapy of emotions occupy a prominent place in different versions of the myth of Wisdom's fall, proving that Valentinians, like other educated early Christians, saw Christ as the healer of emotions. Dunderberg also discusses the Tripartite Tractate, the most extensive account to date of Valentinian theology, and shows how Valentinians used cosmic myth to symbolize the persecution of the church in the Roman Empire and to create a separate Christian identity in opposition to the Greeks and the Jews.
£55.80
Columbia University Press East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World
A common misconception holds that Marco Polo "opened up" a closed and recalcitrant "Orient" to the West. However, this sweeping history covering 4,000 years of international relations from the perspective of China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia shows that the region's extensive involvement in world affairs began thousands of years ago. In a time when the writing of history is increasingly specialized, Warren I. Cohen has made a bold move against the grain. In broad but revealing brushstrokes, he paints a huge canvas of East Asia's place in world affairs throughout four millennia. Just as Cohen thinks broadly across time, so too, he defines the boundaries of East Asia liberally, looking beyond China, Japan, and Korea to include Southeast Asia. In addition, Cohen stretches the scope of international relations beyond its usual limitations to consider the vital role of cultural and economic exchanges. Within this vast framework, Cohen explores the system of Chinese domination in the ancient world, the exchanges between East Asia and the Islamic world from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the emergence of a European-defined international system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book covers the new imperialism of the 1890s, the Manchurian crisis of the early 1930s, the ascendancy of Japan, the trials of World War II, the drama of the Cold War, and the fleeting "Asian Century" from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. East Asia at the Center is replete with often-overlooked or little-known facts, such as: * A record of persistent Chinese imperialism in the region * Tibet's status as a major power from the 7th to the 9th centuries C.E., when it frequently invaded China and decimated Chinese armies * Japan's profound dependence on Korea for its early cultural development * The enormous influence of Indian cuisine on that of China * Egyptian and Ottoman military aid to their Muslim brethren in India and Sumatra against European powers * Extensive Chinese sea voyages to Arabia and East Africa-long before such famous Westerners as Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus took to the seas East Asia at the Center's expansive historical view puts the trials and advances of the past four millennia into perspective, showing that East Asia has often been preeminent on the world stage-and conjecturing that it might be so again in the not-so-distant future.
£22.50
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Blood, Metal and Dust: How Victory Turned into Defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY 2021, THE BRITISH ARMY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021, AS A FINALIST FOR THE 2020 ARMY HISTORICAL FOUNDATION DISTINGUISHED WRITING AWARDS. FIRST RUNNER UP IN THE TEMPLER MEDAL BOOK PRIZE 2021. 'With a soldier’s eye for telling operational details, Ben Barry offers an authoritative, compelling and inevitably bleak account of the American and British campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.' Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King’s College London Newly revised and updated with in-depth analysis of the current situation in Afghanistan after American withdrawal, Blood, Metal and Dust is an authoritative account of how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were played out, explaining their underlying politics and telling the story of what happened on the ground. From the high-ranking officer who wrote the still-classified British military analysis of the war in Iraq comes the authoritative history of two conflicts which have overshadowed the beginning of the 21st century. Inextricably linked to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated more than a decade of international politics, and their influence is felt to this day. Blood, Metal and Dust is the first military history to offer a comprehensive overview of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing in-depth accounts of the operations undertaken by both US and UK forces. Brigadier Ben Barry explores the wars which shaped the modern Middle East, providing a detailed narrative of operations as they unfolded. With unparalleled access to official military accounts and extensive contacts in both the UK and the US militaries, Brigadier Barry is uniquely placed to tell the story of these controversial conflicts, and offers a rounded account of the international campaigns which irrevocably changed the global geopolitical landscape.
£16.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Evil Online
"I am delighted to offer my highest praise to Dean Cocking and Jeroen van den Hoven's brilliant new book, Evil Online. The confrontation between good and evil occupies a central place in the challenges facing our human nature, and this creative investigation into the spread of evil by means of all-powerful new technologies raises fundamental questions about our morality and values. Cocking and Van den Hoven's account of the moral fog of evil forces us to face both the demons within each of us as well as the demons all around us. In the end, we are all enriched by their perceptive analyses."—Phil Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Stanford University Principal Investigator, Stanford Prison Experiment "The internet offers new and deeply concerning opportunities for immorality, much of it shocking and extreme. This volume explains with great insight and clarity the corrupting nature of the internet and the moral confusion it has produced. It will play a vital role in the growing debate about how to balance the benefits of the internet against the risks it poses to all of us. Evil Online is an excellent book."—Roger Crisp, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford We now live in an era defined by the ubiquity of the internet. From our everyday engagement with social media to trolls on forums and the emergence of the dark web, the internet is a space characterized by unreality, isolation, anonymity, objectification, and rampant self-obsession—the perfect breeding ground for new, unprecedented manifestations of evil. Evil Online is the first comprehensive analysis of evil and moral character in relation to our increasingly online lives. Chapters consider traditional ideas around the phenomenon of evil in moral philosophy and explore how the dawn of the internet has presented unprecedented challenges to older theoretical approaches. Cocking and Van den Hoven propose that a growing sense of moral confusion—moral fog—pushes otherwise ordinary, normal people toward evildoing, and that values basic to moral life such as autonomy, intimacy, trust, and privacy are put at risk by online platforms and new technologies. This new theory of evildoing offers fresh insight into the moral character of the individual, and opens the way for a burgeoning new area of social thought. A comprehensive analysis of an emerging and disturbing social phenomenon, Evil Online examines the morally troubling aspects of the internet in our society. Written not only for academics in the fields of philosophy, psychology, information science, and social science, Evil Online is accessible and compelling reading for anyone interested in understanding the emergence of evil in our digitally-dominated world.
£14.36
Yale University Press The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers
How the character of war is changing and how militaries can successfully adapt to meet the challenge This book by military strategist Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., is the definitive take on the race for military dominance in the twenty-first century. It shows how militaries that successfully pursue disruptive innovation can gain a major advantage over their rivals, while those that fail to do so risk exposing their countries to great danger. The Precision Warfare Revolution introduced by the U.S. military in the First Gulf War found the United States enjoying a near monopoly in this form of warfare for several decades. But now other powers have these capabilities. The U.S. military also confronts an emerging military revolution driven by advances across a wide range of technologies—from artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to quantum computing and additive manufacturing. To stay competitive, the U.S. military must pursue disruptive innovation in a race with other militaries to exploit war’s changing character. Clues exist as to the winner’s identity. They are revealed by militaries that went beyond the bounds of mere innovation to overturn the existing forms of warfare, changing the course of history and the fate of nations. Through exploring their experiences, Krepinevich shows how the U.S. military can win the race to identify and exploit the “next big thing” in warfare.
£37.24
University of Nebraska Press Remembering World War I in America
Poised to become a significant player in the new world order, the United States truly came of age during and after World War I. Yet many Americans think of the Great War simply as a precursor to World War II. Americans, including veterans, hastened to put experiences and memories of the war years behind them, reflecting a general apathy about the war that had developed during the 1920s and 1930s and never abated. In Remembering World War I in America Kimberly J. Lamay Licursi explores the American public’s collective memory and common perception of World War I by analyzing the extent to which it was expressed through the production of cultural artifacts related to the war. Through the analysis of four vectors of memory—war histories, memoirs, fiction, and film—Lamay Licursi shows that no consistent image or message about the war ever arose that resonated with a significant segment of the American population. Not many war histories materialized, war memoirs did not capture the public’s attention, and war novels and films presented a fictional war that either bore little resemblance to the doughboys’ experience or offered discordant views about what the war meant. In the end Americans emerged from the interwar years with limited pockets of public memory about the war that never found compromise in a dominant myth.
£23.99
University of Texas Press Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters
This collection ponders the personal and political implications for Haitians at home and abroad resulting from the devastating 2010 earthquake. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 was a debilitating event that followed decades of political, social, and financial issues. Leaving over 250,000 people dead, 300,000 injured, and 1.5 million people homeless, the earthquake has had lasting repercussions on a struggling nation. As the post-earthquake political situation unfolded, Myriam Chancy worked to illuminate on-the-ground concerns, from the vulnerable position of Haitian women to the failures of international aid. Originally presented at invited campus talks, published as columns for a newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago, and circulated in other ways, her essays and creative responses preserve the reactions and urgencies of the years following the disaster. In Harvesting Haiti, Chancy examines the structures that have resulted in Haiti's post-earthquake conditions and reflects at key points after the earthquake on its effects on vulnerable communities. Her essays make clear the importance of sustaining and supporting the dignity of Haitian lives and of creating a better, contextualized understanding of the issues that mark Haitians’ historical and present realities, from gender parity to the vexed relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
£31.00
Ohio University Press Theories of Dependent Foreign Policy and the Case of Ecuador in the 1980s
How do economic weakness and dependence influence foreign policy decisions and behavior in third world countries? Theories in Dependent Foreign Policy examines six foreign policy theories: compliance, consensus, counterdependence, realism, leader preferences and domestic politics, and each is applied to a series of case studies of Ecuador’s foreign policy during the 1980s under two regimes: Osvaldo Hurtado (1981-1984) and his successor León Febres Cordero (1984-1988). Hey shows that Ecuador during this period represented the third world in many ways. It was a new democracy, having just emerged from years of military rule, extremely indebted to the West, and dependent on primary product export economy that relied heavily on importers, especially the United States. Jeanne Hey finds that some of the most popular and enduring theories in western research, such as realism and compliance, poorly account for Ecuadorian foreign policy. She explains that poor countries like Ecuador have substantial foreign policy latitude in the diplomatic area. Drawing on archival research and interviews with policy makers including Presidents Hurtado and Febres Cordero, Dr. Hey convincingly argues that many of the traditional foreign policy theories do not “fit” dependent states, and inadequately account for the complexity of foreign policy in the third world.
£25.99
Rutgers University Press Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women
Raped and colonized, coerced and silenced--this has been the position of Haitian women within their own society, as well as how they have been seen by foreign occupiers. Romanticized symbols of nationhood, they have served, however unwillingly, as a politicized site of contestation between opposing forces. In this first book-length study in English devoted exclusively to Haitian women's literature, Myriam Chancy finds that Haitian women have their own history, traditions, and stories to tell, tales that they are unwilling to suppress or subordinate to narratives of national autonomy. Issues of race, class, color, caste, nationality, and sexuality are all central to their fiction--as is an urgent sense of the historical place of women between the two U.S. occupations of the country. Their novels interrogate women's social and political stance in Haiti from an explicitly female point of view, forcefully responding to overt sexual and political violence within the nation's ambivalent political climate. Through daring and sensitive readings, simultaneously historical, fictional and autobiographical, Chancy explores this literature, seeking to uncover answers to the current crisis facing these women today, both within their country and in exile.The writers surveyed include Anne-christine d'Adesky, Ghislaine Rey Charlier, Marie Chauvet, Jan J. Dominique, Nadine Magloire, and Edwidge Danticat, whose work has recently achieved such high acclaim.
£31.00
University of Nebraska Press Remembering World War I in America
Poised to become a significant player in the new world order, the United States truly came of age during and after World War I. Yet many Americans think of the Great War simply as a precursor to World War II. Americans, including veterans, hastened to put experiences and memories of the war years behind them, reflecting a general apathy about the war that had developed during the 1920s and 1930s and never abated. In Remembering World War I in America Kimberly J. Lamay Licursi explores the American public’s collective memory and common perception of World War I by analyzing the extent to which it was expressed through the production of cultural artifacts related to the war. Through the analysis of four vectors of memory—war histories, memoirs, fiction, and film—Lamay Licursi shows that no consistent image or message about the war ever arose that resonated with a significant segment of the American population. Not many war histories materialized, war memoirs did not capture the public’s attention, and war novels and films presented a fictional war that either bore little resemblance to the doughboys’ experience or offered discordant views about what the war meant. In the end Americans emerged from the interwar years with limited pockets of public memory about the war that never found compromise in a dominant myth.
£40.50
University of Nebraska Press Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival
Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer is Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s searching account of her life as a mixed-blood woman coming of age off reservation, yet deeply immersed in her Huron, Métis, and Cherokee heritage. In a style at once elliptical and achingly clear, Hedge Coke details her mother’s schizophrenia; the domestic and community abuse overshadowing her childhood; and torments both visited upon her—(rape and violence) and inflicted on herself (alcohol and drug abuse during her youth). Yet she managed to survive with her dreams and her will, her sense of wonder and promise undiminished.The title Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer refers to life-revelations guiding the award-winning poet and writer through her many trials, as well as her labors in tobacco fields, factories, construction, and fishing; her motherhood; her involvement with music and performance; and the melding of language and experience that brought order to her life. Hedge Coke shares insights gathered along the way, insights touching on broader Native issues such as modern life in the diaspora; lack of a national eco-ethos; the threat of alcohol, drug abuse, and violence; and the ongoing onslaught on self amid a complex, mixed heritage.
£12.99
Cornell University Press Dictators at War and Peace
Why do some autocratic leaders pursue aggressive or expansionist foreign policies, while others are much more cautious in their use of military force? The first book to focus systematically on the foreign policy of different types of authoritarian regimes, Dictators at War and Peace breaks new ground in our understanding of the international behavior of dictators. Jessica L. P. Weeks explains why certain kinds of regimes are less likely to resort to war than others, why some are more likely to win the wars they start, and why some authoritarian leaders face domestic punishment for foreign policy failures whereas others can weather all but the most serious military defeat. Using novel cross-national data, Weeks looks at various nondemocratic regimes, including those of Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin; the Argentine junta at the time of the Falklands War, the military government in Japan before and during World War II, and the North Vietnamese communist regime. She finds that the differences in the conflict behavior of distinct kinds of autocracies are as great as those between democracies and dictatorships. Indeed, some types of autocracies are no more belligerent or reckless than democracies, casting doubt on the common view that democracies are more selective about war than autocracies.
£24.99
Columbia University Press Transforming Palliative Care in Nursing Homes: The Social Work Role
The teacher and gerontological social work scholar Mercedes Bern-Klug joins experts on nursing, law, medicine, sociology, and social work to provide a thorough understanding of nursing home palliative care. Their broad definition of palliative care treats comfort care as appropriate across the illness experience, not just at the end of life. Because a majority of nursing home residents are older adults facing multiple, advanced chronic conditions, this book is grounded in the provision of palliative care-especially palliative psychosocial care. Yet its practice recommendations can also be applied to other long-term care settings, such as assisted living. The contributors combine scholarship with practical wisdom in each chapter, mixing reviews of scholarly literature with insights gleaned from clinical practice. Chapter topics comply with the eight domains of palliative care developed by the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care. Some focus on care of the resident, while others concern the resident's family. A special section addresses self-care for nursing home staff members, and another discusses nursing home rituals to mark the death of a resident. Bern-Klug concludes with an overview of the factors that will shape the future of palliative care for advanced chronic illness.
£112.50
The University of Chicago Press The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology
The Genealogical Science analyzes the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history. A biological discipline that relies on genetic data in order to reconstruct the geographic origins of contemporary populations - their histories of migration and genealogical connections to other present-day groups - this historical science is garnering ever more credibility and social reach, in large part due to a growing industry in ancestry testing. In this book, Nadia Abu El-Haj examines genetic history's working assumptions about culture and nature, identity and biology, and the individual and the collective. Through the example of the study of Jewish origins, she explores novel cultural and political practices that are emerging as genetic history's claims and "facts" circulate in the public domain and illustrates how this historical science is intrinsically entangled with cultural imaginations and political commitments. Chronicling late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century understandings of race, nature, and culture, she identifies continuities and shifts in scientific claims, institutional contexts, and political worlds in order to show how the meanings of biological difference have changed over time. Through her focus on Jewish origins, she also analyzes genetic history as the latest iteration of a cultural and political practice now over a century old.
£26.96
New York University Press Words Made Flesh: Nineteenth-Century Deaf Education and the Growth of Deaf Culture
During the early nineteenth century, schools for the deaf appeared in the United States for the first time. These schools were committed to the use of the sign language to educate deaf students. Manual education made the growth of the deaf community possible, for it gathered deaf people together in sizable numbers for the first time in American history. It also fueled the emergence of Deaf culture, as the schools became agents of cultural transformations. Just as the Deaf community began to be recognized as a minority culture, in the 1850s, a powerful movement arose to undo it, namely oral education. Advocates of oral education, deeply influenced by the writings of public school pioneer Horace Mann, argued that deaf students should stop signing and should start speaking in the hope that the Deaf community would be abandoned, and its language and culture would vanish. In this revisionist history, Words Made Flesh explores the educational battles of the nineteenth century from both hearing and deaf points of view. It places the growth of the Deaf community at the heart of the story of deaf education and explains how the unexpected emergence of Deafness provoked the pedagogical battles that dominated the field of deaf education in the nineteenth century, and still reverberate today.
£66.60