Search results for ""Author Cro"
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Crisis of Calvinism in Revolutionary England, 1640-1660: Arminian Theologies of Predestination and Grace
This book investigates a puzzling and neglected phenomenon - the rise of English Arminianism during the decade of puritan rule. Throughout the 1650s, numerous publications, from scholarly folios to popular pamphlets, attacked the doctrinal commitments of Reformed Orthodoxy. This anti-Calvinist onslaught came from different directions: episcopalian royalists (Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndike, Peter Heylyn), radical puritan defenders of the regicide (John Goodwin and John Milton), and sectarian Quakers and General Baptists. Unprecedented rejection of Calvinist soteriology was often coupled with increased engagement with Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant alternatives. As a result, sophisticated Arminian publications emerged on a scale that far exceeded the Laudian era. Cromwellian England therefore witnessed an episode of religious debate that significantly altered the doctrinal consensus of the Church of England for the remainder of the seventeenth century. The book will appeal to historians interested in the contested nature of 'Anglicanism' and theologians interested in Protestant debates regarding sovereignty and free will. Part One is a work of religious history, which charts the rise of English Arminianism across different ecclesial camps - episcopal, puritan and sectarian. These chapters not only introduce the main protagonists but also highlight a surprising range of distinctly English Arminian formulations. Part Two is a work of historical theology, which traces the detailed doctrinal formulations of two prominent divines - the puritan John Goodwin and the episcopalian Henry Hammond. Their Arminian theologies are set in the context of the Western theological tradition and the soteriological debates, that followed the Synod of Dort. The book therefore integrates historical and theological enquiry to offer a new perspective on the crisis of 'Calvinism' in post-Reformation England.
£80.00
Gallaudet University Press,U.S. Understanding International Sign: A Sociolinguistic Study
In Understanding International Sign, Lori A. Whynot examines International Sign (IS) to determine the extent it is comprehended by signers from different countries. She focuses exclusively on expository lecture IS used in conference settings and presents the first empirical research on its effectiveness for communicating rich information to diverse audience members. International Sign is regarded as a lingua franca that is employed by deaf people to communicate with other deaf people who do not share the same conventionalized local sign language. Contrary to widely-held belief, sign languages are not composed of a unified system of universal gestures rather, they are distinctly different, and most are mutually unintelligible from one another. The phenomenon of IS has emerged through increased global interaction during recent decades, driven by a rise in the number of international conferences and events and by new technologies that allow for enhanced global communication. IS is gaining acceptance for providing communicative access to conference audience members who do not have knowledge of the designated conference languages, and it is being recruited for use due to the prohibitive expense of providing interpreting services in numerous different sign languages. However, it is not known how well audience members understand IS, and it may actually limit equal access to the interpreted information. Whynot compares IS to native sign languages and analyzes the distribution of linguistic elements in the IS lexicon and their combined effect on comprehension. Her findings indicate that audiences with diverse sign languages understand much less of IS presentations than has been previously assumed. Whynot's research has crucial implications for expository IS usage, training, and interpreting and sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses inherent in cross-linguistic, signed contact settings.
£68.00
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HISTORICAL WRITERS' ASSOCIATION CROWN AWARDS 2022 ‘Compelling and often horrifying’ THE TIMES Best Paperbacks of 2022 The epic, moving stories of Britain's search to recover, identify and honour the missing soldiers of the First World War By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders. In The Searchers, Robert Sackville-West brings together the extraordinary, moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the remarkable lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss: Rudyard Kipling's quest for his son's grave; E.M. Forster’s conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria; desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of bodies. It was a search that would span a century: from the department set up to investigate the fate of missing comrades in the war’s aftermath to the present day, when DNA profiling continues to aid efforts to recover, identify and honour these men. As the rest of the country found ways to repair and move on, countless families were consumed by this mission, undertaking arduous, often hopeless, journeys to discover what happened to their husbands, brothers and sons. Giving prominence to the personal battles of those left behind, The Searchers brings the legacy of war vividly to life in a testament to the bravery, compassion and resilience of the human spirit.
£12.99
Guilford Publications Writing a Proposal for Your Dissertation, Second Edition: Guidelines and Examples
The encouraging book that has guided thousands of students step by step through crafting a strong dissertation proposal is now in a thoroughly revised second edition. It includes new guidance for developing methodology-specific problem statements, an expanded discussion of the literature review, coverage of the four-chapter dissertation model, and more. Terrell demonstrates how to write each chapter of the proposal, including the problem statement, purpose statement, and research questions and hypotheses; literature review; and detailed plans for data collection and analysis. "Let's Start Writing" exercises serve as building blocks for drafting a complete proposal. Other user-friendly features include case-study examples from diverse disciplines, “Do You Understand?” checklists, and end-of-chapter practice tests with answers. Appendices present an exemplary proposal written three ways to demonstrate quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches, and discuss how to structure a four-chapter dissertation. New to This Edition *Introduction offering a concise overview of the entire proposal-writing process and the doctoral experience. *Additional help with tailoring problem and purpose statements for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies. *Expanded discussion of the review of literature, including a criterion for judging the quality of primary versus secondary sources. *Many new examples from different disciplines, such as studies of depression treatments, approaches to reducing offender recidivism, health effects of irradiated crops, strength training in college football, and remote teaching and learning during COVID-19. *Focus on the five-chapter model is broadened to include specific guidance for four-chapter dissertations. *Broader, more detailed reference list and glossary.
£33.01
Taylor & Francis Inc Reviews in Food and Nutrition Toxicity, Volume 3
Including the latest reviews of the most current issues related to food and nutrition toxicity, Reviews in Food and Nutrition Toxicity, Volume 3 distills a wide range of research on food safety and food technology. Put together by a strong team with a wealth of broad experience, the continuation of this important new series includes contributions from the fields of medicine, public health, and environmental science. Topics covered in Volume Three include:MEG-related toxic, pathological, and etiological findings in the liver, stomach, blood, testes/uterus, kidneys, peritoneum, and skin Current information on pharmacokinetic and toxicodynamic aspects of methyl mercury toxicity The limits set by various agencies for, and the possible effects of, exposure to Uranium via ingestion and inhalation Evidence that nutrition can modify PCB toxicity and its implications in numerous age-related diseases The most recent findings on oxysterols' toxic and pro-atherosclerotic effects and the use of antioxidants supplements to prevent their generation in foods Examples of published safety data, drug interactions, and problems with formulated products Potential dangers and benefits of genetically modified foods, moral and ethical issues, and benefit risk ratios Emerging issues in food contamination, recently-discovered contaminants, the increased use of genetically engineered crops, and their effects on children New views on the onset of celiac disease, its symptoms outside the gastrointestinal tract, and its diagnosis and management A timely compilation, the book sheds light on the most important issues in food safety today. It is a valuable resource for anyone involved in the food industry or academics researching food science and food technology.
£185.00
Duke University Press Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia
The stories of Indonesian women have often been told by Indonesian men and Dutch men and women. This volume asks how these representations—reproduced, transformed, and circulated in history, ethnography, and literature—have circumscribed feminine behavior in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia. Presenting dialogues between prominent scholars of and from Indonesia and Indonesian women working in professional, activist, religious, and literary domains, the book dissolves essentialist notions of “women” and “Indonesia” that have arisen out of the tensions of empire.The contributors examine the ways in which Indonesian women and men are enmeshed in networks of power and then pursue the stories of those who, sometimes at great political risk, challenge these powers. In this juxtaposition of voices and stories, we see how indigenous patriarchal fantasies of feminine behavior merged with Dutch colonial notions of proper wives and mothers to produce the Indonesian government’s present approach to controlling the images and actions of women. Facing the theoretical challenge of building a truly cross-cultural feminist analysis, Fantasizing the Feminine takes us into an ongoing conversation that reveals the contradictions of postcolonial positionings and the fragility of postmodern identities. This book will be welcomed by readers with interests in contemporary Indonesian politics and society as well as historians, anthropologists, and other scholars concerned with literature, gender, and cultural studies.Contributors. Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Sita Aripurnami, Jane Monnig Atkinson, Nancy K. Florida, Daniel S. Lev, Dédé Oetomo, Laurie J. Sears, Ann Laura Stoler, Saraswati Sunindyo, Julia I. Suryakusuma, Jean Gelman Taylor, Sylvia Tiwon, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Diane L. Wolf
£31.00
University of Pennsylvania Press The Bishop's Utopia: Envisioning Improvement in Colonial Peru
In December 1788, in the northern Peruvian city of Trujillo, fifty-one-year-old Spanish Bishop Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón stood surrounded by twenty-four large wooden crates, each numbered and marked with its final destination of Madrid. The crates contained carefully preserved zoological, botanical, and mineral specimens collected from Trujillo's steamy rainforests, agricultural valleys, rocky sierra, and coastal desert. To accompany this collection, the Bishop had also commissioned from Indian artisans nine volumes of hand-painted images portraying the people, plants, and animals of Trujillo. He imagined that the collection and the watercolors not only would contribute to his quest to study the native cultures of Northern Peru but also would supply valuable information for his plans to transform Trujillo into an orderly, profitable slice of the Spanish Empire. Based on intensive archival research in Peru, Spain, and Colombia and the unique visual data of more than a thousand extraordinary watercolors, The Bishop's Utopia recreates the intellectual, cultural, and political universe of the Spanish Atlantic world in the late eighteenth century. Emily Berquist Soule recounts the reform agenda of Martínez Compañón—including the construction of new towns, improvement of the mining industry, and promotion of indigenous education—and positions it within broader imperial debates; unlike many of his Enlightenment contemporaries, who elevated fellow Europeans above native peoples, Martínez Compañón saw Peruvian Indians as intelligent, productive subjects of the Spanish Crown. The Bishop's Utopia seamlessly weaves cultural history, natural history, colonial politics, and art into a cinematic retelling of the Bishop's life and work.
£45.00
University of Pennsylvania Press English Letters and Indian Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 175-183
As rigid and unforgiving as the boarding schools established for the education of Native Americans could be, the intellectuals who engaged with these schools—including Mohegans Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson, and Montauketts David and Jacob Fowler in the eighteenth century, and Cherokees Catharine and David Brown in the nineteenth—became passionate advocates for Native community as a political and cultural force. From handwriting exercises to Cherokee Syllabary texts, Native students negotiated a variety of pedagogical practices and technologies, using their hard-won literacy skills for their own purposes. By examining the materials of literacy—primers, spellers, ink, paper, and instructional manuals—as well as the products of literacy—letters, journals, confessions, reports, and translations—English Letters and Indian Literacies explores the ways boarding schools were, for better or worse, a radical experiment in cross-cultural communication. Focusing on schools established by New England missionaries, first in southern New England and later among the Cherokees, Hilary E. Wyss explores both the ways this missionary culture attempted to shape and define Native literacy and the Native response to their efforts. She examines the tropes of "readerly" Indians—passive and grateful recipients of an English cultural model—and "writerly" Indians—those fluent in the colonial culture but also committed to Native community as a political and cultural concern—to develop a theory of literacy and literate practice that complicates and enriches the study of Native self-expression. Wyss's literary readings of archival sources, published works, and correspondence incorporate methods from gender studies, the history of the book, indigenous intellectual history, and transatlantic American studies.
£52.20
University of Pennsylvania Press Nightclub City: Politics and Amusement in Manhattan
In the Roaring Twenties, New York City nightclubs and speakeasies became hot spots where traditions were flouted and modernity was forged. With powerful patrons in Tammany Hall and a growing customer base, nightclubs flourished in spite of the efforts of civic-minded reformers and federal Prohibition enforcement. This encounter between clubs and government-generated scandals, reform crusades, and regulations helped to redefine the image and reality of urban life in the United States. Ultimately, it took the Great Depression to cool Manhattan's Jazz Age nightclubs, forcing them to adapt and relocate, but not before they left their mark on the future of American leisure. Nightclub City explores the cultural significance of New York City's nightlife between the wars, from Texas Guinan's notorious 300 Club to Billy Rose's nostalgic Diamond Horseshoe. Whether in Harlem, Midtown, or Greenwich Village, raucous nightclub activity tested early twentieth-century social boundaries. Anglo-Saxon novelty seekers, Eastern European impresarios, and African American performers crossed ethnic lines while provocative comediennes and scantily clad chorus dancers challenged and reshaped notions of femininity. These havens of liberated sexuality, as well as prostitution and illicit liquor consumption, allowed their denizens to explore their fantasies and fears of change. The reactions of cultural critics, federal investigators, and reformers such as Fiorello La Guardia exemplify the tension between leisure and order. Peretti's research delves into the symbiotic relationships among urban politicians, social reformers, and the business of vice. Illustrated with archival photographs of the clubs and the characters who frequented them, Nightclub City is a dark and dazzling study of New York's bygone nightlife.
£27.99
University of Nebraska Press Separation Scenes: Domestic Drama in Early Modern England
This analysis of five exemplary domestic plays—the anonymous Arden of Faversham and A Warning for Fair Women (1590s), Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607), Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (ca. 1613), and Walter Mountfort’s The Launching of the Mary, or The Seaman’s Honest Wife (1632)—offers a new approach to the emerging ideology of the private and public, or what Ann C. Christensen terms “the tragedy of the separate spheres.” Feminist scholarship has identified the fruitful gaps between theories and practices of household government in early modern Europe, while work on the global Renaissance attends to commercial expansion, cross-cultural encounters, and colonial settlements. Separation Scenes brings these critical concerns together to expose the intimate and disruptive relationships between the domestic culture and business culture of early modern England. Separation Scenes argues that domestic plays make the absence of husbands for business the subject of tragedy by focusing not on where men traveled but on whom and what they left behind. Elements that critics have rightly associated with domestic tragedy—adultery, sensational murders, and the lavishly articulated operations of domestic life—define this world, which, Christensen argues, was equally shaped by the absence of husbands. Her interpretations of these domestic plays invite us to historicize and further complicate the seemingly universal binary between a feminine “private sphere” and a masculine “public sphere.” Separation Scenes demonstrates how domestic drama played an active, dynamic, and critical role in deliberating the costs of commercial travel as it disrupted domestic conduct and prompted realignments within the home.
£45.00
Cornell University Press Black Yanks in the Pacific: Race in the Making of American Military Empire after World War II
By the end of World War II, many black citizens viewed service in the segregated American armed forces with distaste if not disgust. Meanwhile, domestic racism and Jim Crow, ongoing Asian struggles against European colonialism, and prewar calls for Afro-Asian solidarity had generated considerable black ambivalence toward American military expansion in the Pacific, in particular the impending occupation of Japan. However, over the following decade black military service enabled tens of thousands of African Americans to interact daily with Asian peoples—encounters on a scale impossible prior to 1945. It also encouraged African Americans to share many of the same racialized attitudes toward Asian peoples held by their white counterparts and to identify with their government's foreign policy objectives in Asia. In Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green tells the story of African American engagement with military service in occupied Japan, war-torn South Korea, and an emerging empire of bases anchored in those two nations. After World War II, African Americans largely embraced the socioeconomic opportunities afforded by service overseas—despite the maintenance of military segregation into the early 1950s—while strained Afro-Asian social relations in Japan and South Korea encouraged a sense of insurmountable difference from Asian peoples. By the time the Supreme Court declared de jure segregation unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, African American investment in overseas military expansion was largely secured. Although they were still subject to discrimination at home, many African Americans had come to distrust East Asian peoples and to accept the legitimacy of an expanding military empire abroad.
£38.00
Princeton University Press The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism
The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nationOn a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelical, but his Christian admirers anointed him as their political champion, believing he would lead America back to God. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover reveals how Hoover and his FBI teamed up with leading white evangelicals and Catholics to bring about a white Christian America by any means necessary.Lerone Martin draws on thousands of newly declassified FBI documents and memos to describe how, under Hoover’s leadership, FBI agents attended spiritual retreats and worship services, creating an FBI religious culture that fashioned G-men into soldiers and ministers of Christian America. Martin shows how prominent figures such as Billy Graham, Fulton Sheen, and countless other ministers from across the country partnered with the FBI and laundered bureau intel in their sermons while the faithful crowned Hoover the adjudicator of true evangelical faith and allegiance. These partnerships not only solidified the political norms of modern white evangelicalism, they also contributed to the political rise of white Christian nationalism, establishing religion and race as the bedrock of the modern national security state, and setting the terms for today’s domestic terrorism debates.Taking readers from the pulpits and pews of small-town America to the Oval Office, and from the grassroots to denominational boardrooms, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover completely transforms how we understand the FBI, white evangelicalism, and our nation’s entangled history of religion and politics.
£22.50
Princeton University Press For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality
A history of the twentieth-century feminists who fought for the rights of women, workers, and the poor, both in the United States and abroadFor the Many presents an inspiring look at how US women and their global allies pushed the nation and the world toward justice and greater equality for all. Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Cobble follows egalitarian women’s activism from the explosion of democracy movements before World War I to the establishment of the New Deal, through the upheavals in rights and social citizenship at midcentury, to the reassertion of conservatism and the revival of female-led movements today.Cobble brings to life the women who crossed borders of class, race, and nation to build grassroots campaigns, found international institutions, and enact policies dedicated to raising standards of life for everyone. Readers encounter famous figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, and Mary McLeod Bethune, together with less well-known leaders, such as Rose Schneiderman, Maida Springer Kemp, and Esther Peterson. Multiple generations partnered to expand social and economic rights, and despite setbacks, the fight for the many persists, as twenty-first-century activists urgently demand a more caring, inclusive world.Putting women at the center of US political history, For the Many reveals the powerful currents of democratic equality that spurred American feminists to seek a better life for all.
£37.80
SPCK Publishing Psalms for the City: Original poetry inspired by the places we call home
The whole of life can be found in the psalms. It can also be found in our cities. Psalms for the City is a beautifully illustrated book of poetry that offers comfort, inspiration and encouragement for the heart and soul, as John-Paul Flintoff puts into vibrant, captivating and sometimes heart-wrenching words the pockets of peace he has found in the midst of the non-stop noise and colourful chaos of the city. Inspired by the psalms – some of the oldest and most soul-stirring poetry in the world – Flintoff’s fluid style and technical skills take us on a private tour of our most-loved urban landscapes and reveal the spiritual nourishment in some of its most famous sights. In countless churches and sacred spaces, he shows us locations to lament; he teaches us to discover joy in crowded marketplaces; and shares how he found hope searching the horizon atop Hampstead Heath. With his own hand-drawn illustrations to accompany the poems, Psalms for the City is a book that poetry lovers will treasure and is perfect for fans of Charlie Mackesy. Presented in a beautiful hardback format, it will also make a wonderful gift for friends and family, and for those who love the diversity of city life. Open and honest, these are modern day psalms that chart John-Paul’s discovery that the extraordinary places welcomed the ordinary, and that when we’re looking closely, the ordinary places can become extraordinary. Psalms for the City is an invitation to take your imagination on a pilgrimage across the city, experiencing the full depths of what it means to be human today.
£14.99
Pennsylvania State University Press Titian’s Icons: Tradition, Charisma, and Devotion in Renaissance Italy
Winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize from the Renaissance Society of AmericaTitian, one of the most successful painters of the Italian Renaissance, was credited by his contemporaries with painting a miracle-working image, the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross. Taking this unusual circumstance as a point of departure, Christopher J. Nygren revisits the scope and impact of Titian’s life’s work. Nygren shows how, motivated by his status as the creator of a miracle-working object, Titian played an active and essential role in reorienting the long tradition of Christian icons over the course of the sixteenth century.Drawing attention to Titian’s unique status as a painter whose work was viewed as a conduit of divine grace, Nygren shows clearly how the artist appropriated, deployed, and reconfigured Christian icon painting. Specifically, he tracks how Titian continually readjusted his art to fit the shifting contours of religious and political reformations, and how these changes shaped Titian’s conception of what made a devotionally efficacious image. The strategies that were successful in, say, 1516 were discarded by the 1540s, when his approach to icon painting underwent a radical revision. Therefore, this book not only tracks the career of one of the most important artists in the tradition of Western painting but also brings to light new information about how divergent agendas of religious, political, and artistic reform interacted over the long arc of the sixteenth century.Original and erudite, this book represents an important reassessment of Titan’s approach to devotional subject matter. It will appeal to students and specialists as well as art aficionados interested in Titian and in religious painting.
£80.06
Columbia University Press Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground
Buddhism and Science brings together distinguished philosophers, Buddhist scholars, physicists, and cognitive scientists to examine the contrasts and connections between the worlds of Western science and Eastern spirituality. This compilation was inspired by a suggestion made by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, himself one of the contributors, after one of a series of cross-cultural scientific dialogues in Dharamsala, India, sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute. Other contributors such as William L. Ames, Matthieu Ricard, and Stephen LaBerge assess not only the fruits of inquiry from East and West but also shed light on the underlying assumptions of these disparate worldviews. Their essays creatively address a broad range of topics: from quantum theory's surprising affinities with the Buddhist concept of emptiness, to the increasing need in the West for a more contemplative science attuned to the first-person investigation of the mind, to the important ways in which the psychological study of "lucid dreaming" maps similar terrain to the cultivation of the Tibetan Buddhist discipline of dream yoga. Reflecting its wide variety of topics, Buddhism and Science is comprised of three sections. The first presents two historical overviews of the engagements between Buddhism and modern science or, rather, how Buddhism and modern science have defined, rivaled, or complemented one another. The second describes the ways Buddhism and the cognitive sciences inform each other; the third addresses points of intersection between Buddhism and the physical sciences. On the broadest level this work illuminates how different ways of exploring the nature of human identity, the mind, and the universe at large can enrich and enlighten one another.
£31.50
The University of Chicago Press This Land Is Your Land: The Story of Field Biology in America
Field biology is enjoying a resurgence due to several factors, the most important being the realization that there is no ecology, no conservation, and no ecosystem restoration without an understanding of the basic relationships between species and their environments—an understanding gleaned only through field-based natural history. With this resurgence, modern field biologists find themselves asking fundamental existential questions such as: Where did we come from? What is our story? Are we part of a larger legacy? In This Land Is Your Land, seasoned field biologist Michael J. Lannoo answers these questions and more in a tale rooted in the people and institutions of the Midwest. It is a story told from the ground up, a rubber boot–based natural history of field biology in America. Lannoo illuminates characters such as John Wesley Powell, William Temple Hornaday, and Olaus and Adolph Murie—homegrown midwestern field biologists who either headed east to populate major research centers or went west to conduct their fieldwork along the frontier. From the pioneering work of Victor Shelford, Henry Chandler Cowles, and Aldo Leopold to contemporary insights from biologists such as Jim Furnish and historians such as William Cronon, Lannoo’s unearthing of American—and particularly midwestern—field biologists reveals how these scientists influenced American ecology, conservation biology, and restoration ecology, and in turn drove global conservation efforts through environmental legislation and land set-asides. This Land Is Your Land reveals the little-known legacy of midwestern field biologists, whose ethos and discoveries have enabled us to preserve and understand not just their land, but all lands.
£26.96
The University of Chicago Press Sex on the Kitchen Table: The Romance of Plants and Your Food
At the tips of our forks and on our dinner plates, a buffet of botanical dalliance awaits us. Sex and food are intimately intertwined, and this relationship is nowhere more evident than among the plants that sustain us. From lascivious legumes to horny hot peppers, most of humanity’s calories and other nutrition come from seeds and fruits—the products of sex—or from flowers, the organs that make plant sex possible. Sex has also played an arm’s-length role in delivering plant food to our stomachs, as human handmade evolution (plant breeding, or artificial selection) has turned wild species into domesticated staples. In Sex on the Kitchen Table, Norman C. Ellstrand takes us on a vegetable-laced tour of this entire sexual adventure. Starting with the love apple (otherwise known as the tomato) as a platform for understanding the kaleidoscopic ways that plants can engage in sex, successive chapters explore the sex lives of a range of food crops, including bananas, avocados, and beets, finally ending with genetically engineered squash—a controversial, virus-resistant vegetable created by a process that involves the most ancient form of sex. Peppered throughout are original illustrations and delicious recipes, from sweet and savory tomato pudding to banana puffed pancakes, avocado toast (of course), and both transgenic and non-GMO tacos. An eye-opening medley of serious science, culinary delights, and humor, Sex on the Kitchen Table offers new insight into fornicating flowers, salacious squash, and what we owe to them. So as we sit down to dine and ready for that first bite, let us say a special grace for our vegetal vittles: let’s thank sex for getting them to our kitchen table.
£20.61
Casemate Publishers Among the Firsts: Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard L. Bolland's Unconventional War: D-Day 82nd Airborne Paratrooper, Oss Special Forces Commander of Operation Rype
Unconventional warfare tactics can have a considerable effect on the outcome of any war. During World War II, the United States government developed and employed two new methods of fighting. The first was the development of 'paratroop' units, as they were first called. The second was the formation of a covert and sabotage operations branch called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Lt. Colonel Bolland was involved in both of these 'firsts'. During the D-Day invasion he parachuted behind enemy lines, jumping out of the 82nd Airborne lead aircraft with General James Gavin. After fighting with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment for thirty-three days straight, he returned to England and became involved with the OSS Scandinavian Section. He served as Field Commander for their Operation, code named Rype. This was the only American military undertaking, albeit covert, in Norway during the entire course of the war.As a young boy growing up in rural western Minnesota, Bolland got his military start with the Minnesota National Guard, before being accepted to West Point, solely on merit. His military career lasted seventeen years. Lt. Colonel Bolland ended up with numerous decorations including the Norwegian Liberation Medal and Citation, the Bronze Star for valour, the French Fouragerre of Croix de Guerre with Palms and posthumously the Congressional Gold medal awarded to the OSS Society on behalf of all former OSS members that served during the war.His story reveals the struggles, successes, failures and ultimate victories, detailing what went right and what went wrong with these new unconventional methods of fighting.
£24.75
Little, Brown Book Group Agatha Raisin and the Witches' Tree
'No wonder she's been crowned Queen of Cosy Crime' Mail on SundayToil and trouble in store for Agatha!Cotswolds inhabitants are used to bad weather, but the night sky is especially foggy as Rory and Molly Harris, the new vicar and his wife, drive slowly home from a dinner party in their village of Sumpton Harcourt. They struggle to see the road ahead - but then screech to a halt. Right in front of them, aglow in the headlights of their car, a body hangs from a lightning-blasted tree at the edge of town. But it's not suicide; Margaret Darby, an elderly spinster of the parish, has been murdered - and the villagers are bewildered as to who would commit such a crime, and why. Agatha Raisin rises to the occasion, delighted to have some excitement back in her life as if truth be told, she was getting bored of the long run of lost cats and divorces on the books. But Sumpton Harcourt is an isolated and unfriendly village, she finds a place that poses more questions than answers. And when two more murders follow the first, Agatha begins to fear for her reputation - and her life. That the village has its own coven of witches certainly doesn't make her feel any better...Praise for M. C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series'A Beaton novel is like The Archers on speed' Daily Mail'Agatha is like Miss Marple with a drinking problem, a pack-a-day habit and major man lust. In fact, I think she could be living my dream life' Entertainment Weekly'The detective novels of M C Beaton, a master of outrageous black comedy, have reached cult status' The Times
£8.99
Pindar Press Jan van Eyck and Portugal 's "Illustrious Generation"
Barbara von Barghahn is Professor of Art History at George Washington University and a specialist in the art history of Portugal, Spain, and their colonial dominions, as well as Flanders (1400-1800). In 1993, she was conferred O Grão Comendador in the Portuguese Order of Prince Henry the Navigator. She has spent nearly a decade completing research about Jan van Eyck's diplomatic visits to the Iberian Peninsula. This manuscript investigates Van Eyck's patronage by the Crown of Portugal and his role as diplomat-painter of the Duchy of Burgundy following his first voyage to Lisbon in 1428-1429 when he painted two portraits of Infanta Isabella, who became the third wife of Philip the Good in 1430. New portrait identifications are provided in the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and its iconographical prototype, the lost Fountain of Life. These altarpieces are analyzed with regard to King João I's conquest of Ceuta, achieved by his sons who were hailed as an"illustrious generation." Strong family ties between the dynastic houses of Avis and Lancaster explain Lusitania 's sustained fascination with Arthurian lore and the Grail quest. Several chapters of this book are overlaid with a chivalric veneer. A second "secret mission" to Portugal in 1437 by Jan van Eyck is postulated and this diplomatic visit is related to Prince Henrique the Navigator's expedition to Tangier and King Duarte's attempts to forge an alliance with Alfonso V of Aragon. Late Eyckian commissions are reviewed in light of this ill-fated crusade and additional new portraits are identified. The most significant artist of Renaissance Flanders appears to have been patronized as much by the House of Avis as by the Duchy of Burgundy.
£150.00
Island Press Spirit of Dialogue: Lessons from Faith Traditions in Transforming Conflict
We tend to approach conflict from the perspective of competing interests. A farmer's interest lies in preserving water for crops, while an environmentalist's interest is in using that same water for instream habitats. It's hard to see how these interests intersect. But what if there was a different way to understand each party's needs? Aaron T. Wolf has spent his career mediating such conflicts, both in the U.S. and around the world. He quickly learned that in negotiations, people are not automatons, programed to defend their positions, but are driven by a complicated set of dynamics--from how comfortable (or uncomfortable) the meeting room is to their deepest senses of self. What approach or system of understanding could possibly untangle all these complexities? Wolf's answer may be surprising to Westerners who are accustomed to separating religion from science, rationality from spirituality. Wolf draws lessons from a diversity of faith traditions to transform conflict. True listening, as practiced by Buddhist monks, as opposed to the "active listening" advocated by many mediators, can be the key to calming a colleague's anger. Alignment with an energy beyond oneself, what Christians would call grace, can change self-righteousness into community concern. Shifting the discussion from one about interests to one about common values--both farmers and environmentalists share the value of love of place--can be the starting point for real dialogue. As a scientist, Wolf engages religion not for the purpose of dogma but for the practical process of transformation. Whether atheist or fundamentalist, Muslim or Jewish, Quaker or Hindu, any reader involved in difficult dialogue will find concrete steps towards a meeting of souls.
£23.71
McGraw-Hill Education Breaking into Venture: An Outsider Turned Venture Capitalist Shares How to Take Risks, Create Power, and Build Life-Changing Wealth
Long-held secrets of the world’s most elite VC investors revealed!Whether you’re an investor, entrepreneur, or career-focused business professional, developing a venture capitalist (VC) mindset will give you the edge on the competition every time—but VCs traditionally operate in a corner of finance cloaked in obscurity and secrecy. Now, Breaking into Venture draws the curtain on this exclusive club, providing priceless insights into how its members think and invest.This groundbreaking guide levels the playing field by outlining how the industry actually works, as well as the 9 fundamental principles of thinking like a successful VC, providing everything you need to navigate the rapidly changing technology landscape. By learning how VCs think, you’ll unlock your own potential, whether you’re looking to invest like a pro, develop and launch a successful business, or create the career of your dreams. Breaking into Venture covers every angle, including: The three keys to success in venture capital: accessing great investments, analyzing which ones to support, and adding value post-investment How to build a relevant network from scratch The importance of building a "narrative" that communicates who you are, why you're relevant, what you're looking for, and how you can support your investments How to identify limitations and biases when choosing investments The “5 Ts” of how VCs evaluate companies: team, technology, TAM, terms, and timing This game-changing guide democratizes the VC world by showing the ropes to those who aren’t already part of the "in crowd," aren’t already wealthy, or don't even know where Sand Hill Road is. With Breaking into Venture, you have everything you need to leverage the VC mindset for investing or career success.
£17.99
Simon & Schuster Ltd The Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life
Air bags cause accidents, because well-protected drivers take more risks. This well-documented truth comes as a surprise to most people, but not to economists, who have learned to take seriously the proposition that people respond to incentives. In The Armchair Economist, Steven E. Landsburg shows how the laws of economics reveal themselves in everyday experience and illuminate the entire range of human behavior. Why does popcorn cost so much at the cinema? The 'obvious' answer is that the owner has a monopoly, but if that were the whole story, there would also be a monopoly price to use the toilet. When a sudden frost destroys much of the Florida orange crop and prices skyrocket, journalists point to the 'obvious' exercise of monopoly power. Economists see just the opposite: If growers had monopoly power, they'd have raised prices before the frost. Why don't concert promoters raise ticket prices even when they are sure they will sell out months in advance? Why are some goods sold at auction and others at pre-announced prices? Why do boxes at the football sell out before the standard seats do? Why are bank buildings fancier than supermarkets? Why do corporations confer huge pensions on failed executives? Why don't firms require workers to buy their jobs? Landsburg explains why the obvious answers are wrong, reveals better answers, and illuminates the fundamental laws of human behavior along the way. This is a book of surprises: a guided tour of the familiar, filtered through a decidedly unfamiliar lens. This is economics for the sheer intellectual joy of it.
£9.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Studying the Novel
Consistently praised for its readability and scholarship, Studying the Novel is the ideal undergraduate companion to the study of the novel and shorter fiction. Revised throughout to reflect the profound impact of e-reading and digital resources on the writing, reading, and analysis of fiction, the eighth edition includes a new chapter on popular fiction that covers children’s fiction, horror and the gothic, science fiction, the detective story, the comic novel, and the graphic novel. The chapter on World Literature has been expanded to include sections on fiction and apartheid, and the fiction of disability, and information on electronic resources has been thoroughly updated. Providing a complete guide to the study of prose fiction in one reader-friendly volume, the book covers: - The history and diversity of the novel, from early ancestors to new electronic forms - The novel, the novella, and the short story - Realism, modernism, and postmodernism - Analysing fiction: narrators, character, structure, theme, and dialogue - Popular fiction - Critical approaches to studying the novel - Practical guidance on textual analysis, the choice and use of criticism, electronic resources, and essay writing - Film and TV adaptations, and reading novels in translation - World literature Comprehensive cross-referencing allows readers to locate information quickly. Technical terms and concepts such as ‘perspective and voice’, symbol and image, Free Indirect Discourse, and many others are all explained with the help of examples from a wide range of fictional works. A Glossary provides additional explanations of terms and concepts the student is likely to encounter, and each chapter concludes with a set of study questions.
£29.13
University of Minnesota Press Absolute Artist: The Historiography of a Concept
The myth of the artist-genius has long had a unique hold on the imagination of western culture. Iconoclastic, temperamental, and free from the constraints of society, these towering figures have been treated as fixed icons regardless of historical context or individual situation. In this text, Catherine M. Soussloff challenges this view in a consideration of the social construction of the artist from the 15th century to the present. Traditional art history has held that the concept of the artist-genius arose in the Enlightenment. Soussloff disputes this, arguing that earlier writings - artist biographies written as long ago as the early 15th century - determined and continue to determine the structure and terrain of the myth of the artist. Moving chronologically through historical writing about the artist, Soussloff shifts from 15th-century Florence to 19th-century Germany, the birthplace of the discipline of art history in its academic form, and considers the cultural historiography of Aby Warburg and Jacob Burckhardt. She discusses art history and psychoanalysis in early 20th-century Vienna, demonstrating the rich cross-fertilization between these two fields in exploring the concept of the artist. In addition, Soussloff scrutinizes the historical situation of Jewish art historians and psychoanalysts in Vienna in the 1930s, considering the impact of Jewish identity on the discourse of art history. The book concludes with a discussion of the "artist anecdote", found in all versions of the artist biography genre. It analyzes the artist's biography as a rhetorical form and literary genre rather than as an unassailable source of fact and knowledge. The book is intended for students and researchers in art history and literature.
£21.99
Columbia University Press Different Views in Hudson River School Painting
Hudson River School artists shared an awe of the magnificence of nature as well as a belief that the untamed American scenery reflected the national character. In this new work, color reproductions of more than 115 paintings capture the beauty and illuminate the aesthetic and philosophical principles of the Hudson River School painters. The pieces included in this volume reflect a period (1825-1875) when American landscape painting was most thoroughly explored and formalized with personal, artistic, cultural, and national identifications. Judith Hansen O'Toole reveals the subtleties and quiet majesty of the works and discusses their shared iconography, the ways in which artists responded to one another's paintings, and how the paintings reflected nineteenth-century American cultural, intellectual, and social milieus. Different Views is also the first major study to examine closely the Hudson River School artists' practice of creating thematically related pairs and series of paintings. O'Toole considers painters' use of this method to express different moods and philosophical concepts. She observes artists' representations of landscape and their nuanced depictions of weather, light, and season. By comparing and contrasting Hudson River School paintings, O'Toole reveals differences in meaning, emotion, and cultural connotation. Different Views in Hudson River School Painting contains reproductions of works from a range of prominent and lesser-known artists, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederic Kensett, and John William Casilear. The works come from a leading private collection and were recently exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.
£27.00
Amberley Publishing High Tension: FDR's Battle to Power America
From the highest halls of power to the remote corners of rural America, featuring amazing technological innovation and an epic battle between the captains of a corrupted industry and America’s most politically astute president, here is the story behind the greatest peacetime achievement in US history – the electrification of an entire nation under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When Roosevelt took office in the depths of the Depression, high tension – or high voltage – power lines had been marching across the country for decades, delivering urban Americans a parade of life-transforming inventions from electric lights and radios to refrigerators and washing machines. But most rural Americans still lived in the punishing pre-electric era, unconnected to the grid, their lives consumed and bodies broken by backbreaking chores. High Tension is the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s battle against the ‘Power Trust,’ an elaborate Wall Street-controlled web of holding companies, to electrify all of America – even when the corrupt captains of the industry and their cronies cried that running lines to rural areas would not be profitable and that in a free market there would simply have to be a divide between the electricity haves and have-nots. FDR knew better. And in this story of shrewd political manoeuvring, towering business figures and greedy villains, John A. Riggs has chronicled democracy’s greatest balancing act of government intervention with private market forces. Here is the tale of how FDR's efforts brought affordable electricity to all Americans, powered the industrial might that won the Second World War, and established a model for public-private solutions today in areas such as transportation infrastructure, broadband, and health care.
£10.99
University of California Press Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage
Over the past two decades, North Americans have become increasingly interested in understanding and reclaiming the rites that mark significant life passages. In the absence of meaningful rites of passage, we speed through the dangerous intersections of life and often come to regret missing an opportunity to contemplate a child's birth, mark the arrival of maturity, or meditate on the loss of a loved one. Providing a highly personal, thoroughly informed, and cross-cultural perspective on rites of passage for general readers, this book illustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions. The work of a major scholar who has spent years writing and teaching about ritual, "Deeply into the Bone" instigates a conversation in which readers can fruitfully reflect on their own experiences of passage.Covering the significant life events of birth, initiation, marriage, and death, chapters include first-person stories told by individuals who have undergone rites of passage, accounts of practices from around the world, brief histories of selected ritual traditions, and critical reflections probing popular assumptions about ritual. The book also explores innovative rites for other important events such as beginning school, same-sex commitment ceremonies, abortion, serious illness, divorce, and retirement. Taking us confidently into the abyss separating the spiritual from the social scientific, the personal from the scholarly, and the narrative from the analytical, Grimes synthesizes an impressive amount of information to help us find more insightful ways of comprehending life's great transitions. As we face our increasingly complex society, "Deeply into the Bone" will help us reclaim the power of rites and understand their effect on our lives.
£30.00
Oxford University Press Inc The Chiefs Now in This City: Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America
During the years of the Early Republic, prominent Native leaders regularly traveled to American cities--Albany, Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, Montreal, Quebec, New York, and New Orleans--primarily on diplomatic or trade business, but also from curiosity and adventurousness. They were frequently referred to as "the Chiefs now in this city" during their visits, which were sometimes for extended periods of time. Indian people spent a lot of time in town. Colin Calloway, National Book Award finalist and one of the foremost chroniclers of Native American history, has gathered together the accounts of these visits and from them created a new narrative of the country's formative years, redefining what has been understood as the "frontier." Calloway's book captures what Native peoples observed as they walked the streets, sat in pews, attended plays, drank in taverns, and slept in hotels and lodging houses. In the Eastern cities they experienced an urban frontier, one in which the Indigenous world met the Atlantic world. Calloway's book reveals not just what Indians saw but how they were seen. Crowds gathered to see them, sometimes to gawk; people attended the theatre to watch “the Chiefs now in this city” watch a play. Their experience enriches and redefines standard narratives of contact between the First Americans and inhabitants of the American Republic, reminding us that Indian people dealt with non-Indians in multiple ways and in multiple places. The story of the country's beginnings was not only one of violent confrontation and betrayal, but one in which the nation's identity was being forged by interaction between and among cultures and traditions.
£26.99
Dorling Kindersley Ltd Kings & Queens of England and Scotland
Discover the vivid stories of Britain's iconic rulers, from 600 CE to the present day.From the Saxons to the Windsors, Britain's royal lineage is brought to life in the pages of this visual guide. Confused about which Henry had six wives and which was crowned at the age of eight? Kings and Queens of England and Scotland documents the public and private lives of the royal dynasties. Year-by-year chronologies reveal the major events of each monarch's reign, while family trees trace the royal lineage and claim to the throne of each royal house. This new edition features recent royal events, including the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and a biography of King Charles III. With crisp biographies of each sovereign, illustrated with contemporary portraits, painting, or statues. Kings and Queens of England and Scotland is an essential handy reference for all history buffs, and includes the following: - Accessible guide to the monarchs of both England and Scotland with extensive royal history distilled into a handy, compact format.- Concise summaries of every English sovereign from Alfred the Great and his Saxon ancestors to King Charles III.- Family tree for each of the royal houses.- Contemporary portraits, paintings, or photographs with each monarch's profile.- Concise bullet-point summaries of key events in each monarch's reign.The ideal history book for history buffs of all ages, whether you are or know of a fan of royal history, or looking for the perfect gift book for history students - Kings and Queens of England and Scotland is your go-to guide for a complete history of the monarchy.
£9.99
Peeters Publishers L'Europe De L'exegese Au XVIe Siecle: Interpretations De La Parabole Des Ouvriers a La Vigne (Matthieu 20,1-16)
Cet ouvrage est au croisement de deux disciplines: l'histoire et l'exegese. En matiere d'exegese, il entreprend de suivre a la trace les interpretations qui ont ete donnees a la parabole des ouvriers de la onzieme heure (Mt 20,1-16) tout au long du 16e siecle. Pour permettre une comparaison adequate des differentes interpretations, a ete mise au point une grille de lecture (inspiree de T. Todorov et de P. Ricoeur), dans laquelle sont reprises de maniere systematique toutes les operations que peut impliquer l'interpretation d'un texte. On y trouve en particulier les dispositifs formels de l'interpretation (langue, plan, langage methodologique...); les operations elaborant le sens direct ou litteral du texte (mise en oeuvre des codes lexicaux, narratifs, historiques, litteraires...); et les operations elaborant son sens indirect ou symbolique (mise en oeuvre des symbolismes lexical et propositionnel, des contextes paradigmatique et syntagmatique, de l'intertextualite, de la reappropriation du lecteur, du monde du texte...). L'application de cette methode aux differents commentaires permet de voir les operations que chacun favorise et comment il fait parler le texte biblique en lui donnant sens. Cela nous interpelle par rapport a notre propre construction du sens, dans l'exegese actuelle. En matiere historique, j'analyse d'abord la publication du texte de Mt 20,1-16 dans ses differentes editions (textes grecs, syriaques et latins) et ses multiples traductions (en latin, allemand, neerlandais, francais, italien, espagnol...). Des tableaux des variantes textuelles permettent de suivre l'evolution des traductions et de reperer leurs choix methodologiques. On decouvre ensuite les grands commentateurs du debut du 16e siecle: Erasme et Lefevre d'Etaples, tetes de file d'une exegese centree sur les codes lexicaux; Luther et Melanchthon, tetes de file d'une exegese basee sur le but du texte, dans laquelle brillent Bucer, Cajetan, Zwingli, Valdes, Bullinger. Puis on voit apparaitre une generation d'auteurs pratiquant des ponts entre les ecoles (Musculus, Titelman, Estienne) ou relancant l'ecole humaniste (Calvin, Beze) et, enfin, des ecoles tres marquees au niveau confessionnel, mais integrant les elements provenant d'autres confessions (Jansenius de Gand, Arias Montanus, Aretius, Piscator, Maldonado, Salmeron). Apparait ainsi une Europe de l'exegese: les pionniers du debut du siecle entament une revolution culturelle en matiere d'interpretation, qui franchit toutes les frontieres nationales ou confessionnelles; elle se repercute au cours du siecle en d'innombrables variations et approfondissements, qui touchent tous les pays europeens et determinent les courants d'un vaste echange d'idees. On decouvre ainsi un chapitre important de l'histoire des idees, qui se diffusent de Salamanque a Wittenberg, de Rome a Paris, de Varsovie a Londres, de Louvain a Strasbourg, de Geneve a Naples, bref un fondement de l'Europe actuelle.
£95.49
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Power of Nothing to Lose: The Hail Mary Effect in Politics, War, and Business
Following books by Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely, noted economics professor William L. Silber explores the Hail Mary effect, from its origins in sports to its applications to history, nature, politics, and business.A quarterback like Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers gambles with a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game when he has nothing to lose -- the risky throw might turn defeat into victory, or end in a meaningless interception. Rodgers may not realize it, but he has much in common with figures such as George Washington, Rosa Parks, Woodrow Wilson, and Adolph Hitler, all of whom changed the modern world with their risk-loving decisions.In The Power of Nothing to Lose, award-winning economist William Silber explores the phenomenon in politics, war, and business, where situations with a big upside and limited downside trigger gambling behavior like with a Hail Mary. Silber describes in colorful detail how the American Revolution turned on such a gamble. The famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night to attack the enemy may not look like a Hail Mary, but it was. Washington said days before his risky decision, “If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up.” Rosa Parks remained seated in the white section of an Alabama bus, defying local segregation laws, an act that sparked the modern civil rights movement in America. It was a life-threatening decision for her, but she said, “I was not frightened. I just made up my mind that as long as we accepted that kind of treatment it would continue, so I had nothing to lose.” The risky exploits of George Washington and Rosa Parks made the world a better place, but demagogues have inflicted great damage with Hail Marys. Towards the end of World War II, Adolph Hitler ordered a desperate counterattack, the Battle of the Bulge, to stem the Allied advance into Germany. He said, “The outcome of the battle would spell either life or death for the German nation.” Hitler failed to change the war’s outcome, but his desperate gamble inflicted great collateral damage, including the worst wartime atrocity on American troops in Europe.Silber shares these illuminating insights on these figures and more, from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump, asylum seekers to terrorists and rogue traders. Collectively they illustrate that downside protection fosters risky undertakings, that it changes the world in ways we least expect.
£20.00
Fordham University Press On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870
In On the Edge of Freedom, David G. Smith breaks new ground by illuminating the unique development of antislavery sentiment in south central Pennsylvania—a border region of a border state with a complicated history of slavery, antislavery activism, and unequal freedom. During the antebellum decades every single fugitive slave escaping by land east of the Appalachian Mountains had to pass through the region, where they faced both significant opportunities and substantial risks. While the hundreds of fugitives traveling through south central Pennsylvania (defined as Adams, Franklin, and Cumberland counties) during this period were aided by an effective Underground Railroad, they also faced slave catchers and informers. “Underground” work such as helping fugitive slaves appealed to border antislavery activists who shied away from agitating for immediate abolition in a region with social, economic, and kinship ties to the South. And, as early antislavery protests met fierce resistance, area activists adopted a less confrontational approach, employing the more traditional political tools of the petition and legal action. Smith traces the victories of antislavery activists in south central Pennsylvania, including the achievement of a strong personal liberty law and the aggressive prosecution of kidnappers who seized innocent African Americans as fugitives. He also documents how their success provoked Southern retaliation and the passage of a strengthened Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. The Civil War then intensified the debate over fugitive slaves, as hundreds of escaping slaves, called “contrabands,” sought safety in the area, and scores were recaptured by the Confederate army during the Gettysburg campaign. On the Edge of Freedom explores in captivating detail the fugitive slave issue through fifty years of sectional conflict, war, and reconstruction in south central Pennsylvania and provocatively questions what was gained by the activists’ pragmatic approach of emphasizing fugitive slaves over immediate abolition and full equality. Smith argues that after the war, social and demographic changes in southern Pennsylvania worked against African Americans’ achieving equal opportunity, and although local literature portrayed this area as a vanguard of the Underground Railroad, African Americans still lived “on the edge of freedom.” By the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was rallying near the Gettysburg battlefield, and south central Pennsylvania became, in some ways, as segregated as the Jim Crow South. The fugitive slave issue, by reinforcing images of dependency, may have actually worked against the achievement of lasting social change.
£27.99
World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd Analytic Hyperbolic Geometry: Mathematical Foundations And Applications
This is the first book on analytic hyperbolic geometry, fully analogous to analytic Euclidean geometry. Analytic hyperbolic geometry regulates relativistic mechanics just as analytic Euclidean geometry regulates classical mechanics. The book presents a novel gyrovector space approach to analytic hyperbolic geometry, fully analogous to the well-known vector space approach to Euclidean geometry. A gyrovector is a hyperbolic vector. Gyrovectors are equivalence classes of directed gyrosegments that add according to the gyroparallelogram law just as vectors are equivalence classes of directed segments that add according to the parallelogram law. In the resulting “gyrolanguage” of the book one attaches the prefix “gyro” to a classical term to mean the analogous term in hyperbolic geometry. The prefix stems from Thomas gyration, which is the mathematical abstraction of the relativistic effect known as Thomas precession. Gyrolanguage turns out to be the language one needs to articulate novel analogies that the classical and the modern in this book share.The scope of analytic hyperbolic geometry that the book presents is cross-disciplinary, involving nonassociative algebra, geometry and physics. As such, it is naturally compatible with the special theory of relativity and, particularly, with the nonassociativity of Einstein velocity addition law. Along with analogies with classical results that the book emphasizes, there are remarkable disanalogies as well. Thus, for instance, unlike Euclidean triangles, the sides of a hyperbolic triangle are uniquely determined by its hyperbolic angles. Elegant formulas for calculating the hyperbolic side-lengths of a hyperbolic triangle in terms of its hyperbolic angles are presented in the book.The book begins with the definition of gyrogroups, which is fully analogous to the definition of groups. Gyrogroups, both gyrocommutative and non-gyrocommutative, abound in group theory. Surprisingly, the seemingly structureless Einstein velocity addition of special relativity turns out to be a gyrocommutative gyrogroup operation. Introducing scalar multiplication, some gyrocommutative gyrogroups of gyrovectors become gyrovector spaces. The latter, in turn, form the setting for analytic hyperbolic geometry just as vector spaces form the setting for analytic Euclidean geometry. By hybrid techniques of differential geometry and gyrovector spaces, it is shown that Einstein (Möbius) gyrovector spaces form the setting for Beltrami-Klein (Poincaré) ball models of hyperbolic geometry. Finally, novel applications of Möbius gyrovector spaces in quantum computation, and of Einstein gyrovector spaces in special relativity, are presented.
£155.00
Prometheus Books Pirates of the Slave Trade: The Battle of Cape Lopez and the Birth of an American Institution
No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. There was no way to predict just how monumental an impact this obscure but fierce naval battle off the coast of West Africa would have on British colonies and the future of slavery in America. Gentlemen of Fortune is a groundbreaking exploration of the figures and events surrounding this lesser-known naval battle, the outcome of which signaled a major turning point in the Atlantic slave trade and triggered a deep and lasting legacy.Gentlemen of Fortune focuses on three fascinating figures whose fates would violently converge: Jan Conny, a charismatic leader of the Akan people who made lucrative deals with pirates and smugglers while making enemies out of the British and Dutch; the infamous pirate Black Bart, who worked his way from an anonymous navigator to a pirate king and one of the British Empire’s most notorious enemies in the region; and British naval captain Chaloner Ogle, tasked by the Crown with hunting down and killing Black Bart at all costs. At the Battle of Cape Lopez, these three men and the massive historical forces at their backs would finally find each other—and the world would be transformed forever.By defeating Black Bart at the Battle of Cape Lopez, the British Empire was able to achieve supremacy in the West African slave trade. Chattel slavery—in which an enslaved person is considered fully the private property of an owner—was born, and it was soon brought to America.In this landmark narrative history, historian Angela Sutton outlines the complex network of trade routes spanning the Atlantic Ocean trafficked by agents of empire, private merchants, and brutal pirates alike. Drawing from a wide range of primary historical sources, most of which—because they are written in Dutch and German—have not been engaged with by popular audiences, Sutton offers a new perspective on how a single battle played a pivotal role in reshaping the slave trade in ways that affect America to this day. Between its engaging narrative style filled with swashbuckling naval battles and tales of adventure at sea, its wide array of rigorous and detailed research, and its implications towards modern America, Gentlemen of Fortune is an essential addition to every history reader’s shelves.
£22.50
Lehigh University Press Theatre in Dublin, 1745–1820: A Calendar of Performances
Theatre in Dublin,1745–1820: A Calendar of Performances is the first comprehensive, daily compendium of more than 18,000 performances that took place in Dublin’s many professional theatres, music halls, pleasure gardens, and circus amphitheatres between Thomas Sheridan’s becoming the manager at Smock Alley Theatre in 1745 and the dissolution of the Crow Street Theatre in 1820. The daily performance calendar for each of the seventy-five seasons recorded here records and organizes all surviving documentary evidence pertinent to each evening’s entertainments, derived from all known sources, but especially from playbills and newspaper advertisements. Each theatre’s daily entry includes all preludes, mainpieces, interludes, and afterpieces with casts and assigned roles, followed by singing and singers, dancing and dancers, and specialty entertainments. Financial data, program changes, rehearsal notices, authorship and premiere information are included in each component’s entry, as is the text of contemporary correspondence and editorial contextualization and commentary, followed by other additional commentary, such as the many hundreds of printed puffs, notices, and performance reviews. In the cases of the programs of music halls, pleasure gardens, and circuses, the playbills have generally been transcribed verbatim. The calendar for each season is preceded by an analytical headnote that presents several categories of information including, among other things, an alphabetical listing of all members of each company, whether actors, musicians, specialty artists, or house servants, who are known to have been employed at each venue. Limited biographical commentary is included, particularly about performers of Irish origin, who had significant stage careers but who did not perform in London. Each headnote presents the seasons’s offerings of entertainments of each theatrical type (prelude, mainpiece, interlude, afterpiece) analyzed according to genre, including a list of the number of plays in each genre and according to period in which they were first performed. The headnote also notes the number of different plays by Shakespeare staged during each season and gives particular attention to entertainments of “special Irish interest.” The various kinds of benefit performance and command performances are also noted. Finally, this Calendar of Performances contains an appendix that furnishes a season-by-season listing of the plays that were new to the London patent theatres, and, later, of the important “minors.” This information is provided in order for us to understand the interrelatedness of the London and Dublin repertories.
£138.00
Lehigh University Press Theatre in Dublin, 1745–1820: A Calendar of Performances
Theatre in Dublin,1745–1820: A Calendar of Performances is the first comprehensive, daily compendium of more than 18,000 performances that took place in Dublin’s many professional theatres, music halls, pleasure gardens, and circus amphitheatres between Thomas Sheridan’s becoming the manager at Smock Alley Theatre in 1745 and the dissolution of the Crow Street Theatre in 1820. The daily performance calendar for each of the seventy-five seasons recorded here records and organizes all surviving documentary evidence pertinent to each evening’s entertainments, derived from all known sources, but especially from playbills and newspaper advertisements. Each theatre’s daily entry includes all preludes, mainpieces, interludes, and afterpieces with casts and assigned roles, followed by singing and singers, dancing and dancers, and specialty entertainments. Financial data, program changes, rehearsal notices, authorship and premiere information are included in each component’s entry, as is the text of contemporary correspondence and editorial contextualization and commentary, followed by other additional commentary, such as the many hundreds of printed puffs, notices, and performance reviews. In the cases of the programs of music halls, pleasure gardens, and circuses, the playbills have generally been transcribed verbatim. The calendar for each season is preceded by an analytical headnote that presents several categories of information including, among other things, an alphabetical listing of all members of each company, whether actors, musicians, specialty artists, or house servants, who are known to have been employed at each venue. Limited biographical commentary is included, particularly about performers of Irish origin, who had significant stage careers but who did not perform in London. Each headnote presents the seasons’s offerings of entertainments of each theatrical type (prelude, mainpiece, interlude, afterpiece) analyzed according to genre, including a list of the number of plays in each genre and according to period in which they were first performed. The headnote also notes the number of different plays by Shakespeare staged during each season and gives particular attention to entertainments of “special Irish interest.” The various kinds of benefit performance and command performances are also noted. Finally, this Calendar of Performances contains an appendix that furnishes a season-by-season listing of the plays that were new to the London patent theatres, and, later, of the important “minors.” This information is provided in order for us to understand the interrelatedness of the London and Dublin repertories.
£138.00
Nova Science Publishers Inc Gaucher's Disease: From Diagnosis to Treatment
This book was designed as an educational resource for all professionals involved in the care of patients with Gaucher disease (GD). Chapter 1 is an introduction about GD. GD is the most common autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disease (LSD) due to the deficiency or absence of the activity of enzyme glucosylceramidase (GCase) or also known as acidï¢- glucosidase (GBA1) or uridine phosphate glucosylceramide synthase (UDP-GLC). Defects in these enzymes cause miss-sorting or loss function of lysosomal proteins leading to accumulation of glucocerebroside (GLC) in the tissue macrophages monocyte. Accumulation of GLC cause enlargement of the spleen, destruction of bone, anemia, thrombocytopenia, and abnormalities of the lungs. GD is classified into three types: type 1 GD (GD1) is a chronic and non-neuronopathic accounting for 95% of GD cases, and types 2 and 3 (GD2, GD3) involves nerve cell destruction causing acute brainstem dysfunction or progressive neuroleptic deterioration, respectively. Chapter 1 review disease classification, epidemiology, pathophysiology, and clinical manifestations of GD. Chapter 2 discusses GD diagnosis and clinical presentations from prenatal, new-born, first year of life, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood patients suspected to have GD. Several biomarkers, tools used to detect abnormal biomarkers such as chitotriosidase, pulmonary and activation-regulated chemokines, and other inflammatory markers are discussed, in addition to methods used to detect these biomarkers. Chapter 3 highlights available enzyme replacement therapy (ERT), clinical trials, dosing, and adverse drug reaction of each ERT, pregnancy information, and effect of ERT on endocrine and metabolic profiles. Chapter 4 discusses available substrate reduction therapy (SRT), clinical trials, dosing, adverse drug reaction, pregnancy information, drug-drug interaction and patients' polymorphism profiles that influence the dosing of SRT. Chapter 5 discusses type 2 and 3 GD which are the neuronopathic variants of the GD, genotype and phenotype of the patients, role of ERT or SRT or gene therapy, chaperone therapy, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Chapter 6 discusses common complication of GD such as bone and hepatocellular abnormalities, increased risk of cancer and Parkinson Disease development. Chapter 7 highlights several novel therapies with their mechanisms of action, details regarding ongoing or completed clinical trials such as newer SRT lucerastat which is on clinical trials for possible use in GD3. At this time, there are no drugs available to treat GD2 or GD3. Promising novel therapy include pharmacology chaperone (PC), antioxidants, and gene therapy. There are 2 PCs currently being tested in clinical trial, ambroxol and arimoclomol. Ambroxol, an over-the-counter drugs has been used to treat various airway infections, showed promising result to cross blood brain barrier that provide promising options for GD3 treatment.
£76.49
Rowman & Littlefield Avenging Pearl Harbor: The Saga of America's Battleships in the Pacific War
It was a miracle three years in the making, a testimony to American fortitude and ingenuity—and perhaps the key to why the United States won a war that after Pearl Harbor seemed hopeless.Impeccably researched deep in the archives at Pearl Harbor and Washington DC, Revenge of the Dreadnoughts is colorfully written, personal, chilling, visceral,Historian Keith Warren Lloyd brings his gift for injecting life and personalities and heretofore untold stories of the men and women involved-–members of what became known as The Greatest Generation—whose heroism and sacrifice brought about the miraculous new life of a sleeping military force that was reeling and on its knees.It is a story has never before been old in such detail and with such vibrancy.On the night of 24 October 1944, a force of two battleships, one heavy cruiser and four destroyers from the Imperial Japanese Navy steamed into Surigao Strait in the Philippines. Their objective: to attack the invasion fleet of General Douglas MacArthur’s army in Leyte Gulf. Alerted by scouting PT boats, the U.S. 7th Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf prepared a deadly trap. Waiting for the enemy force were five American battleships and supporting cruisers and destroyers. Oldendorf performed the classic naval maneuver of “crossing the T” which allowed the American ships to fire broadsides at the oncoming Japanese vessels, while the enemy could only fire with their forward turrets. When the smoke cleared, the Japanese fleet had been all but annihilated. Only one destroyer escaped. The victorious American battleships were the Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, California, and Tennessee, five of the eight dreadnoughts that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor.The five ships had been raised, repaired, modified and re-manned. After three long years, they finally had their revenge. Revenge of the Dreadnoughts takes readers from the attack on Pearl Harbor, telling the story of the severe damage dealt to each ship and the incredible acts of courage performed by the sailors of each crew that morning. It continues with how each ship was raised and repaired—Herculean in scope-- and the mustering of new commanders, officers and crewmen. The final drama unfolds as of each ship returns triumphantly to the battle fleet, and the ultimate triumph at the battle of Surigao Strait.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Leadership in Modern War: From WW2 to the War Against ISIS
How would you react under fire? Fight or flight? What if you were in charge of a squad of men, with their lives in your hands? The next decision you make could be fatal for you and your comrades or could be devastating to your enemy. The wrong decision could haunt you for the rest of your career and beyond. The decisions taken by commanders in the field are analyzed in a detached manner by historians. But what, for example, was the thought process of a reconnaissance tank officer operating far ahead of any supporting troops in the Second World War, or a machine-gunner trying to differentiate friend from foe in the Gulf War? How might a British infantry officer in the Iraq War deal with the situations he faced in combat, or a platoon commander in the War Against ISIS, where the enemy had no fear of dying and even embraced it? How do you come to terms with the consequences of your decisions, the right ones as well as the tragically wrong ones? James Brooks presents defining moments such as these to put you in the shoes of the decision-maker. You can decide when to cross a bridge in Taliban territory, whether to land a helicopter under fire to rescue Marines in danger, and how to lead a command center targeting ISIS through air strikes. These decisions, compared with what the veterans did themselves, teach more about humanity than they do about the tactics of war and serve as lessons for the decisions we face in everyday life. In a career that traced the rise and fall of ISIS from 2014 to 2021, James served in the US Marine Corps as a scout sniper platoon commander, intelligence officer, and counter-propaganda mission lead. After two deployments to the Middle East and a year-and-a-half fighting ISIS propaganda online, James returned to his hometown to teach a subject called Perspectives in Modern War to high school seniors. Building from the stories of his own service, as well as those of the men and women he fought alongside, in Leadership in Modern War James captures these lessons and explores just what it is like to be on the front line facing your foe. Warfare has changed in the twenty-first century, but the enduring lessons of conflict remain the same. It is brutal and unforgiving - but it is also character-defining.
£22.50
Octopus Publishing Group Love Is Love: The absolute must-have guide to coming out from your favourite agony uncles
'An incredibly valuable and inclusive resource for young LGBT+ people... A much needed reminder that nobody needs to go through the queer experience alone.' Calum McSwiggan As TikTok and social media stars, every day Matthew and Ryan invite millions of people into their lives as a gay couple. From playing pranks to their adventures travelling, they are proud to share their love for each other (and their cute furbaby Roscoe) with the world.For the LGBTQIA+ community, Matthew and Ryan are not only the fun-loving faces of social media - they've become the online agony uncles for a new generation, receiving countless messages from their followers looking for answers to so many questions including:When should I come out? And how?I'm worried my child will get bullied for being different. How can I protect them? My family don't accept me. What should I do? I don't know what I identify as. How can I figure it out?Matthew and Ryan know it can be an emotional rollercoaster, and they are here to support and guide you every step of the way. Packed with bite-size entries, tips and advice on everything from coming out to working through some of the confusing feelings you might have, looking after your mental health, finding your tribe and feeling confident in your own skin, Matthew and Ryan have created the ultimate guidebook they wish they'd been given when they were discovering who they were.They share their inspirational journeys - how they each found themselves and then each other. From Tinder and the moment they met across a crowded dancefloor with Matthew dressed as an ice lolly to the joyful life they've created together.Love Is Love will help you navigate your journey through the rainbow and show you how to be proud to be authentically YOU!Read what everyone is saying about Love Is Love:'A lot of guts and vulnerability... such a valuable resource for kids grappling with their sexuality or gender identity. I definitely wish the book had existed when I was a kid!... I was charmed.' Goodreads reviewer'A great resource for young people struggling with their identities' Goodreads reviewer'Super cute... perfect for pride month.' Goodreads reviewer'Upbeat and inspiring.' Goodreads reviewer
£9.04
Penned in the Margins City State: New London Poetry
City State showcases the work of twenty-seven London writers between the ages of 16 and 36. From hyperlinked walks of Battersea bombsites and guerilla gardening projects to jagged urban lyrics and dark hymns to the East End, City State presents a confident, entertaining and truly diverse snapshot of the best new poetry from London.Featuring poems by: Jay Bernard, Caroline Bird, Ben Borek, Siddhartha Bose, Tom Chivers, Swithun Cooper, Alex Davies, Inua Ellams, Laura Forman, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Christopher Horton, Kirsten Irving, Annie Katchinska, Amy Key, Chris McCabe, Marianne Munk, Holly Pester, Heather Phillipson, Nick Potamitis, Imogen Robertson, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Ashna Sarkar, Jon Stone, Barnaby Tidman, Ahren Warner, James Wilkes, Steve Willey"We are offered London as a test case for a new diversity of means and manner, from sassy performance scripts to the solid blocks of densely disjunctive language characterised as innovative or avant-garde. [City State proposes] a central space that is also the meeting place of many edges."Philip Gross, Poetry London"City State is [a] journey across the metropolis in rush hour: a journey that by turns bewilders, delights and throws up unpalatable truths. The anthology showcases a real range of styles, from Jacob Sam-La Rose's heartfelt verse, to Chris McCabe's complex, darkly witty observations. Though diverse, the poets featured here often seem to riff around several themes that are associated with London itself: dislocation, escapism, breathlessness."Helen Mort"Performance poets are wedged side by side with the new crop of post-langpo practitioners and sculptors of sound; formalism and new narrative jostle for position with cut-ups, found poems and the inheritors of a confessional poetics [...] What seems to unit the best of the poets here is a quality of looking outward: they are aware of, and play with, the possibilities of language and form; they draw on a recognisable tradition but refresh it, linguistically and subjectively [...] There is a great deal of vitality and versatility among the younger generation of emerging poets in the country's capital."Simon Turner"Here is a good, deep shaft drilled into the poetry of the capital. [...] What I like about this anthology is its range. There are poets here who, I guess, could fit into the latest Bloodaxe catalogue with relative ease. There are others, like Nick Potamitis or Steve Wiley and Alex Davies, who are much more experimental and are carrying on the work of poets such as Allen Fisher and Iain Sinclair. And there are poets coming out of a more performance-oriented stream such as Jacob Sam-La Rose, whose wonderfully ironic 'How to be Black' is one of the many highlights of this collection.[...] A true anthology of what's going on in poetry now."Steven WalingTom Chivers (editor) was born in 1983 in South London. A writer, editor and promoter of poetry, his publications include The Terrors (Nine Arches Press, 2009) and How To Build A City (Salt Publishing, 2009). A winner of the inaugural Crashaw Prize, he is Associate Editor of Tears in the Fence, was Poet in Residence at The Bishopsgate Institute, London, and has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Tom is Director of Penned in the Margins and Co-Director of London Word Festival.
£9.99
Lonely Planet Global Limited Lonely Planet Fijian Phrasebook & Dictionary
Lonely Planet's Fijian Phrasebook and Dictionary is your handy passport to culturally enriching travels with the most relevant and useful Fijian phrases and vocabulary for all your travel needs. Book hikes along inland trails and order local cuisine with ease and all with your trusted travel companion.With language tools in your back pocket, you can truly get to the heart of wherever you go, so begin your journey now!Get More From Your Trip with Easy-to-Find Phrases for Every Travel Situation!Feel at ease with essential tips on culture, manners, idioms and multiple meaningsOrder with confidence, explain food allergies, and try new foods with the menu decoderSave time and hassles with vital phrases at your fingertipsNever get stuck for words with the 3500-word two-way, quick-reference dictionaryBe prepared for both common and emergency travel situations with practical phrases and terminologyMeet friends with conversation starter phrasesGet your message across with easy-to-use pronunciation guidesInside Lonely Planet's Fijian Phrasebook and Dictionary:Full-colour throughoutUser-friendly layout organised by travel scenario categoriesSurvival phrases inside front cover for at-a-glance, on-the-fly cuesConvenient features5 Phrases to Learn Before You Go10 Ways to Start a Sentence10 Phrases to Sound like a LocalListen For - phrases you may hearLook For - phrases you may see on signsShortcuts - easy-to-remember alternatives to the full phrasesQandA - suggested answers to questions askedCoversBasics - time, dates, numbers, amounts, pronunciation, reading tips, grammar rulesPractical - travel with kids, disabled travellers, sightseeing, business, banking, post office, internet, phones, repairs, bargaining, accommodation, directions, border crossing, transportSocial - meeting people, interests, feelings, opinions, going out, romance, culture, activities, weatherSafe Travel - emergencies, police, doctor, chemist, dentist, symptoms, conditionsFood - ordering, at the market, at the bar, dishes, ingredientsThe Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet's Fijian Phrasebook and Dictionary, a pocket-sized comprehensive language guide, provides on-the-go language assistance; great for language students and travellers looking to interact with locals and immerse themselves in local culture.Check out our Fast Talk Phrasebook mobile app for on-the-go language needs. (Available languages: German, Latin Spanish, European Spanish, French, and Italian.)About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, videos, 14 languages, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day.'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' New York Times'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' Fairfax Media (Australia)
£7.02
Little, Brown Book Group The World's 100 Weirdest Sporting Events: From Gravy Wrestling in Lancashire to Wife Carrying in Finland
When we think of the world's great sporting events, we tend to focus on spectacles such as the World Cup, the Olympics, the Derby, the Monaco Grand Prix or the University Boat Race. Yet there is also an alternative world of competition where participants risk life, limb and often dignity for meagre rewards in truly weird sporting pursuits. Step forward the Indonesian sport of sepak bola api, a variation of football in which the barefoot players kick a ball that is on fire; Germany's Mud Olympics, at which competitors play soccer, volleyball and handball while knee-deep in mud; yak racing from Mongolia; Oregon's Pig-N-Ford Races where drivers speed around the track while carrying a live pig under one arm; and Australia's variation of the Boat Race, the Henley-on-Todd Regatta, where, instead of rowing, teams carry their boats along the dry bed of the River Todd. This book lists geographically the world's 100 weirdest sports events, giving full details of their rules and colourful history. They include the grotesque (the national sport of Afghanistan is buzkashi, in which riders on horseback aim to drag the headless carcass of a dead goat towards their opponents' goal), the dangerous (Japanese hardcore wrestlers batter each other with glass fluorescent light tubes instead of their bare hands), and the downright daft in the form of the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships, the World Flounder Tramping Championships, the World Gravy Wrestling Championships and the World Shin-Kicking Championships. Races are staged in all kinds of transportation. Canada is home to the Great Klondike Outhouse Race (for portable toilets), the Vancouver Bathtub Race, and the Windsor Pumpkin Regatta; Colorado hosts the annual Emma Crawford Coffin Races; and the pride of Yorkshire is the Great Knaresborough Bed Race, where teams push a bed (containing human occupant) along a 2.4-mile course that requires a wet crossing of the River Nidd. Animals feature heavily, too. As well as traditional races for ostriches (complete with jockeys), cockroaches (no jockey required), armadillos, sheep, and Oklahoma City's splendid Dachshund Dash, rubber-duck racing is one of the fastest growing sports of recent years with events being held in several countries. Other competitions test an animal's ability to do more than just run or float, such as elephant polo, dog surfing, camel wrestling, rabbit show jumping and pig diving. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that in the near future we may even be treated to synchronized pig diving. Although the plunging porkers might disagree, the appeal of many of these sports is enhanced by taking part. If cheese rolling or volcano boarding are too energetic for your taste, ice golf or underwater hockey too uncomfortable, and lingerie football wouldn't show off your legs to best effect, you could always enjoy more leisurely pursuits like the world championships in rock, paper, scissors or pooh sticks. If, on the other hand, you prefer a watching brief, you could try your hand at cow patty bingo, a North American contest where a field is divided into numbered squares, and contestants bet on which square the cow will take a poop. It is probably the only occasion in life when you can make money from one number two on top of another.
£11.69
Black Heron Press All Fire All Water
Judith Roche's fourth collection of poems, All Fire All Water, consists of four parts. "Rivers Have Memories," the first part, explores nature and our relationship to it. Poems include fish and birds, bees and wolves, storms and the changing of the seasons. Drawing from the Salish Sea, where Roche lives, the Pacific Ocean, and the northern Great Lakes, these poems are steeped in water. But there's plenty of the fire of passion in this collection as well. In "A Bird Caught in the Throat," Roche turns to "The Face of War" and the horrors of unnecessary suffering; e.g., the "blood for oil" the 20th and 21st century have brought us. She writes of a usually well-intentioned friend from her liberal church who says she would torture those who are cruel to animals. In "Hoffa" she invokes a childhood memory of the unthinking pain adults can inflict on children, in this case, James Hoffa (the son, not his famous father) in the 11th grade.In "The Husbands Sweet," a play on suite, she looks back from a great distance to a marriage both painful and beloved. These poems are in turn ironic, playful, rueful, and humorous, but still keep all of the sorrow intact. There are poems of other assignations after the bitter breakup of the marriage.The final section is "We Are Stardust," the title taken from the Joni Mitchell song. These poems pose existential questions and explorations of identity and the possibilities of honest communication with others. Roche has a nonverbal, handicapped son and these poems are informed by some of the frustration of communication with him, other than that infused by profound love. She wonders if we can understand the nonverbal language of other creatures, especially crows, and the possibility of bridging the gaps between us and other sentient beings, including ancient beings. In "Linear B" and "Linear A" she tries to understand ancient Greece, the culture and the people, through what we know of their language. In "Metaphors of Dust," she explores where we come from: "As it turns out, we actually are stardust./ I thought it was a metaphor/ of life and space and time./ Apparently, our materials are 13 million years old./ We are star stuff pondering the story/ told in the life of the stars."Throughout this collection, the poems are infused with the music of the language in careful interplay of assonance and consonance.
£13.95
Archaeopress Immagini del tempo degli dei, immagini del tempo degli uomini: Un’analisi delle iconografie dei mesi nei calendari figurati romani e bizantini e del loro contest storico-culturale
A characteristic shared by the Roman and Byzantine illustrated calendars is that they represent the twelve months of the year, referable to an iconographic repertoire which is divided into three themes: the astrological-astronomical, the festive-ritual and the rural-seasonal. With regard to the first type, the months are depicted through images of the signs of the zodiac, often associated with images of the guardian deities of the months; the second category includes depictions of the months that refer to some important religious festivals; finally, the third theme includes images of the months that allude to the most important work activities performed in the countryside. The figurative calendars, which in most cases are made on mosaics, are characterized by a wide distribution in terms of time, concentrated between the 3rd and 6th century, and geography, with the areas of greatest attestation consisting of Italy, Africa Proconsularis, Greece and Arabia. With regard to the architectural context, the calendars from the West are prevalently documented in the domus, while those from the East are particularly attested in ecclesiastical buildings. The aim of research presented in this volume is the in-depth study of the connections between the meaning of the iconography of the Roman and Byzantine illustrated calendars and their historical and cultural context. Italian description: La caratteristica comune dei calendari figurati romani e bizantini consiste nella rappresentazione dei dodici mesi dell’anno, riferibile a un repertorio iconografico articolato in tre temi: quelli di tipo astrologico-astronomico, festivo-rituale e rurale-stagionale. Per quanto riguarda la prima tipologia, i mesi sono raffigurati mediante le immagini dei segni zodiacali, spesso associate a quelle delle divinità tutelari mensili; la seconda categoria include quelle raffigurazioni dei mesi che si riferiscono ad alcune importanti festività religiose; la terza tematica, infine, comprende quelle immagini dei mesi che alludono alle più rilevanti attività lavorative svolte in ambito campestre. I calendari figurati, realizzati nella maggioranza dei casi su mosaico, si contraddistinguono per un’ampia distribuzione in senso temporale, con una concentrazione cronologica fra il III e il VI secolo d.C., e geografico, con le aree di maggior attestazione costituite dall’Italia, l’Africa Proconsularis, la Grecia e l’Arabia. In merito invece al contesto architettonico, i calendari di provenienza occidentale sono documentati in prevalenza presso le domus, mentre per quanto concerne quelli orientali, sono attestati in particolare negli edifici ecclesiastici. L’obiettivo della ricerca presentata in questo volume si focalizza sull’approfondimento delle connessioni esistenti tra il significato dell’iconografia dei calendari figurati romani e bizantini e il loro contesto storico- culturale.
£86.78
WW Norton & Co The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World
A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise of a modern world. She brings to the fore neglected sites, such as Corsica, with its pioneering constitution of 1755, and tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, the first place on the globe permanently to enfranchise women. She highlights the role of unexpected players, such as Catherine the Great of Russia, who was experimenting with constitutional techniques with her enlightened Nakaz decades before the Founding Fathers framed the American constitution. Written constitutions are usually examined in relation to individual states, but Colley focuses on how they crossed boundaries, spreading into six continents by 1918 and aiding the rise of empires as well as nations. She also illumines their place not simply in law and politics but also in wider cultural histories, and their intimate connections with print, literary creativity, and the rise of the novel. Colley shows how—while advancing epic revolutions and enfranchising white males—constitutions frequently served over the long nineteenth century to marginalize indigenous people, exclude women and people of color, and expropriate land. Simultaneously, though, she investigates how these devices were adapted by peoples and activists outside the West seeking to resist European and American power. She describes how Tunisia generated the first modern Islamic constitution in 1861, quickly suppressed, but an influence still on the Arab Spring; how Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone—inspired by the American Civil War—devised plans for self-governing nations in West Africa; and how Japan’s Meiji constitution of 1889 came to compete with Western constitutionalism as a model for Indian, Chinese, and Ottoman nationalists and reformers. Vividly written and handsomely illustrated, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen is an absorbing work that—with its pageant of formative wars, powerful leaders, visionary lawmakers and committed rebels—retells the story of constitutional government and the evolution of ideas of what it means to be modern.
£28.00