Search results for ""author sam"

The Way We Wed: A History of Wedding Fashion presents styles and stories from the Renaissance to the present day, chronicling evolving fashions as well as changing customs, lifestyles, and values. And because all wedding attire has a tale to tell, The Way We Wed also reveals fascinating personal stories of those who wore it. While the book is a visually and thematically rich source of bridal inspiration for all seasons, it's far from a monotonous parade of white gowns. The long white wedding dress is a relatively recent innovation popularized by Queen Victoria; it has traditionally been reserved for the upper classes, and abandoned in times of war, economic hardship, or mourning. The Way We Wed showcases wedding gowns of all colors and styles from around the world, as well as going-away dresses, accessories (shoes, veils, hats, fans, and tiaras), and clothes worn by flower girls, bridesmaids, mothers of the bride, and grooms. Same-sex weddings are represented, and the book features celebrity brides (Angelina Jolie, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Diana, Martha Washington, Solange Knowles, Ellen DeGeneres, Meghan Markle) as well as everyday anonymous couples. Illustrated with 100 gorgeous photos, The Way We Wed is a rich celebration of the art of wedding fashion across time and cultures, and those whose style and circumstances made a statement.

Read more less

In the blink of a summer, Bea goes from having a best friend and a place she belongs to being dropped and invisible, eating lunch alone and only talking to teachers. The end of sixth grade and the start of Camp Amelia can't come soon enough. But then the worst part of school, ex-best friend Maisy, shows up in Bea's safe place and ruins it all. Maisy lands in the same bunk as Bea and summer suddenly seems dire. Never having camped a day in her life, Maisy agrees: it's hopeless. She should be at home, spending time with her little sister and hanging out with her super popular crew of friends--not at this stupid adventure camp failing everything and being hated by everyone. In a desperate bid to belong, Maisy offers Bea a deal: if Bea helps her fit in at the camp, she will get Bea into the M & M's, their town's popular clique, when they enter seventh grade in the fall. The Popularity Pact is born.Written by an alumna of Sarah Lawrence College's The Writing Institute, The Popularity Pact: Camp Clique is the first part of an exciting new middle grade duology that deals with coming of age, friendship between girls, and the power of trust. The novel's engaging but accessible style is sure to lend it broad appeal and make it a success.

Read more less

Islamic asset management has been growing at a similar rate as the Islamic financial industry as a whole and at the time of writing close to 700 funds are incorporated in the major databases with an estimated funds under management of around $70 billion. This book reviews the Islamic asset management industry in detail, including the types of funds offered and their operational procedures. It shows that although there are differences between conventional and Islamic asset management, these do not appear to have a significant impact on how the funds perform. Sharia'a compliant funds are therefore an attractive alternative for Muslim and non-Muslim investors alike. Key Features Contains valuable information on Shari'ah compliant fund structures and the type of instruments that can be invested in Considers practical implementation matters such as operational issues, available indices and the role of the Shari'ah Supervisory Board Includes case studies of the funds available to investors including the BLME $ Income Fund, SWIP Islamic Global Equity Fund, the Saudi Al Rajhi Fund Range and the Malaysian blue chip i-VCAP-MyETF-DJIM25 Features a glossary of abbreviations and key Arabic terms Relevant to investors and practitioners in the industry, and to non-Muslims interested in investing based on the same set of principles, norms and values

Read more less

At the height of the Middle Ages, a peculiar system of perpetual exile--or abjuration--flourished in western Europe. It was a judicial form of exile, not political or religious, and it was meted out to felons for crimes deserving of severe corporal punishment or death. From England to France explores the lives of these men and women who were condemned to abjure the English realm, and draws on their unique experiences to shed light on a medieval legal tradition until now very poorly understood. William Chester Jordan weaves a breathtaking historical tapestry, examining the judicial and administrative processes that led to the abjuration of more than seventy-five thousand English subjects, and recounting the astonishing journeys of the exiles themselves. Some were innocents caught up in tragic circumstances, but many were hardened criminals. Almost every English exile departed from the port of Dover, many bound for the same French village, a place called Wissant. Jordan vividly describes what happened when the felons got there, and tells the stories of the few who managed to return to England, either illegally or through pardons. From England to France provides new insights into a fundamental pillar of medieval English law and shows how it collapsed amid the bloodshed of the Hundred Years' War.

Read more less

Despite heightened partisanship in the U.S. Congress and constituencies split along ideological lines, congressional representatives frequently buck their parties and seldom do precisely what voters ask. In Personal Roots of Representation, Barry Burden challenges standard explanations of legislative preferences to emphasize the important role that personal influences play in representatives' voting behavior. This timely book is the first to examine the extent to which the very same values, experiences, and interests that shape congressional members as individuals and guide their own life choices similarly shape their policymaking decisions. Burden takes a close look at legislative decision making in the areas of tobacco regulation, vouchers and school choice, and religion and bioethics. He finds that personal factors become more significant when legislators are acting proactively rather than reactively, grappling with specific policy issues, and defending rather than challenging the status quo. Marshaling both qualitative and quantitative evidence, Burden reveals that the personal roots of representatives' actions can be as influential as the usual suspects of partisanship and constituency--and that personal factors quite often have the greatest impact when the policymaking stakes are at their highest. Personal Roots of Representation is a provocative book that raises pressing new questions about legislative discretion and the accountability of our elected officials.

Read more less

The Great Migration was the most significant event in black life since emancipation and Reconstruction. Passionately Human, No Less Divine analyzes the various ways black southerners transformed African American religion in Chicago during their Great Migration northward. A work of religious, urban, and social history, it is the first book-length analysis of the new religious practices and traditions in Chicago that were stimulated by migration and urbanization. The book illustrates how the migration launched a new sacred order among blacks in the city that reflected aspects of both Southern black religion and modern city life. This new sacred order was also largely female as African American women constituted more than 70 percent of the membership in most black Protestant churches. Ultimately, Wallace Best demonstrates how black southerners imparted a folk religious sensibility to Chicago's black churches. In doing so, they ironically recast conceptions of modern, urban African American religion in terms that signified the rural past. In the same way that working class cultural idioms such as jazz and the blues emerged in the secular arena as a means to represent black modernity, he says, African American religion in Chicago, with its negotiation between the past, the present, rural and urban, revealed African American religion in modern form.

Read more less

Spanish villagers tell many folktales that describe in metaphorical language the struggles of young men and women as they emerge from their parental families and join in love. In this book James Taggart presents dozens of orally transmitted tales, including "Snow White," "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Blancaflor," and dragonslayer stories, collected from seven villages in the region of CNBceres, and analyzes the differences in male and female approaches to telling them. His study shows how men and women use the tales to grapple with some of the contradictions found in gender relations in their culture, which conditions men to be sexually assertive and to marry virgins and which teaches women to fear the men who court them. Taggart interprets the male-female dialogue voiced through storytelling by linking the content of specific tales to the life experiences and gender of the storyteller. Men and women, he finds, carry out an exchange of ideas by retelling the same stories and altering the plots and characters to express their respective views of courtship. This indirect narrative dialogue conveys an understanding of the opposite sex and establishes a common model of marriage that permits men and women to overcome their fear of each other and bond in heterosexual love.

Read more less

For many centuries, Hindus have taken it for granted that the religious images they place in temples and home shrines for purposes of worship are alive. Hindu priests bring them to life through a complex ritual "establishment" that invokes the god or goddess into material support. Priests and devotees then maintain the enlivened image as a divine person through ongoing liturgical activity: they must awaken it in the morning, bathe it, dress it, feed it, entertain it, praise it, and eventually put it to bed at night. In this linked series of case studies of Hindu religious objects, Richard Davis argues that in some sense these believers are correct: through ongoing interactions with humans, religious objects are brought to life. Davis draws largely on reader-response literary theory and anthropological approaches to the study of objects in society in order to trace the biographies of Indian religious images over many centuries. He shows that Hindu priests and worshipers are not the only ones to enliven images. Bringing with them differing religious assumptions, political agendas, and economic motivations, others may animate the very same objects as icons of sovereignty, as polytheistic "idols," as "devils," as potentially lucrative commodities, as objects of sculptural art, or as symbols for a whole range of new meanings never foreseen by the images' makers or original worshipers.

Read more less

Give and Take offers a new history of government in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868), one that focuses on ordinary subjects: merchants, artisans, villagers, and people at the margins of society such as outcastes and itinerant entertainers. Most of these individuals are now forgotten and do not feature in general histories except as bystanders, protesters, or subjects of exploitation. Yet despite their subordinate status, they actively participated in the Tokugawa polity because the state was built on the principle of reciprocity between privilege-granting rulers and duty-performing status groups. All subjects were part of these local, self-governing associations whose members shared the same occupation. Tokugawa rulers imposed duties on each group and invested them with privileges, ranging from occupational monopolies and tax exemptions to external status markers. Such reciprocal exchanges created permanent ties between rulers and specific groups of subjects that could serve as conduits for future interactions.This book is the first to explore how high and low people negotiated and collaborated with each other in the context of these relationships. It takes up the case of one domain—Ōno in central Japan—to investigate the interactions between the collective bodies in domain society as they addressed the problem of poverty.

Read more less

Better Living Through Economics consists of twelve case studies that demonstrate how economic research has improved economic and social conditions over the past half century by influencing public policy decisions. Economists were obviously instrumental in revising the consumer price index and in devising auctions for allocating spectrum rights to cell phone providers in the 1990s. But perhaps more surprisingly, economists built the foundation for eliminating the military draft in favor of an all-volunteer army in 1973, for passing the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1975, for deregulating airlines in 1978, for adopting the welfare-to-work reforms during the Clinton administration, and for implementing the Pension Reform Act of 2006 that allowed employers to automatically enroll employees in a 401(k). Other important policy changes resulting from economists’ research include a new approach to monetary policy that resulted in moderated economic fluctuations (at least until 2008!), the reduction of trade impediments that allows countries to better exploit their natural advantages, a revision of antitrust policy to focus on those market characteristics that affect competition, an improved method of placing new physicians in hospital residencies that is more likely to keep married couples in the same city, and the adoption of tradable emissions rights which has improved our environment at minimum cost.

Read more less

For the most part, competition policy literature has focused on large economies. Yet the economic paradigms on which such policies are based do not necessarily apply to small market economies. This book demonstrates that optimal competition policy is very much dependent on the size of an economy. Whether and how firms compete is a matter of the natural conditions of the markets in which firms operate. A critical feature of small economies is the concentrated nature of many of their markets, which are often protected by high entry barriers. Competition policy must be designed to deal effectively with these unique obstacles to competition. Accordingly, applying the same competition policy to all economies alike may be contrary to the policy's goals. Michal Gal's thorough analysis shows the effects of market size on competition policy, ranging from rules of thumb to more general policy prescriptions, such as goals and remedial tools. Competition policy in small economies is becoming increasingly important, since the number of small jurisdictions adopting such policy is rapidly growing. Gal's focus extends beyond domestic competition policy to the evaluation of the current trend toward the worldwide harmonization of policies. This book will provide important guidance to academics, policy makers, and practitioners of competition policy as well as to anyone interested in the globalization of competition laws.

Read more less

Population ecology has matured to a sophisticated science with astonishing potential for contributing solutions to wildlife conservation and management challenges. And yet, much of the applied power of wildlife population ecology remains untapped because its broad sweep across disparate subfields has been isolated in specialized texts. In this book, L. Scott Mills covers the full spectrum of applied wildlife population ecology, including genomic tools for non-invasive genetic sampling, predation, population projections, climate change and invasive species, harvest modeling, viability analysis, focal species concepts, and analyses of connectivity in fragmented landscapes. With a readable style, analytical rigor, and hundreds of examples drawn from around the world, Conservation of Wildlife Populations (2nd ed) provides the conceptual basis for applying population ecology to wildlife conservation decision-making. Although targeting primarily undergraduates and beginning graduate students with some basic training in basic ecology and statistics (in majors that could include wildlife biology, conservation biology, ecology, environmental studies, and biology), the book will also be useful for practitioners in the field who want to find - in one place and with plenty of applied examples - the latest advances in the genetic and demographic aspects of population ecology. Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/mills/wildlifepopulations.

Read more less

A report is only useful if those who receive it understand what it means. Knowing how to use Crystal Reports gives you the edge in producing reports from your database that really are crystal clear. Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies is a quick and easy guide to get you going with the latest version of this bestselling report-writing software. In fact, it’s so popular that previous editions have made it a bestseller too. Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies gives you just what you should know to produce the reports you’ll need most often, including how to: Pull specific information from your database, sort and group it, and find the details you need Use dynamic or cascading prompts Troubleshoot and print reports and save time with templates View reports on your LAN Write formulas to retrieve specific information Create and update OLAP reports Format reports, control page breaks, and even add graphics or Flash files Enhance your reports with charts and maps Use Crystal Reports in the enterprise There’s also a companion Web site with sample reports from the book and links to sites with more related information. With Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies by your side, you’ll soon be able to create reports from simple to spectacular, whenever the need arises.

Read more less

Once thought to be nothing more than diversions for children and nerds, games have become an integral part of everyday life. Educators are trying to make learning more fun by introducing games into the classroom while cutting-edge managers are doing the same in the workplace. Doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs are deploying games to help solve some of the world's most pressing problems.But according to Adam Penenberg, it's not the games themselves that improve our lives, but rather smart game design and its impact on the brain that can lead us to become immersed in a task we find enjoyable. The individuals and institutions that have used games to achieve this effect are often rewarded with astounding results.Examples include:* A software developer who changed Microsoft's mind-numbing code review process into a fun, team based game.* Google, which indexed its massive image database with unpaid volunteers by turning the process into a game.* A medical student who created a simple game that helped her overcome distractions and dramatically increased her productivity.Drawing on the latest brain science on attention and engagement plus his own firsthand reporting, Penenberg shows how organizations like Google, Microsoft, hospitals, and the military have used game design in bold new ways.

Read more less

The second installment of Thomas B. Dozeman’s authoritative commentary on the book of Joshua Following the Pentateuch in the traditional canon, the book of Joshua chronicles the conquest of the Canaanite nations, the distribution of the newly acquired land to the twelve tribes of Israel, and Joshua’s death at the conclusion of the covenant ceremony at Shechem. The second half of the book traces the development of a burgeoning pan-Israelite identity as the tribes receive territorial assignments, form a political league, and unite in the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel. In the second volume of his two-volume commentary on the book of Joshua, Thomas B. Dozeman provides an overview of critical debates surrounding the composition of the book, its function in relationship to the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets, and the role of geography in ancient literature. He shows how the book of Joshua originated as an independent Samarian myth of tribal conquest and land distribution, and outlines how it evolved into its role as an Israelite origin story. Complete with a thorough introduction and a new translation of these twelve chapters, this volume explores how the book of Joshua employs the twin themes of genealogy and geography to underscore both unity and difference among the tribes, conveying ancient Israelite beliefs about ownership, identity, and power.

Read more less

Having “discovered” the flavors of barbacoa, bibimbap, bánh mi, sambusas, and pupusas, white middle-class eaters are increasingly venturing into historically segregated neighborhoods in search of “authentic” eateries run by—and for—immigrants and people of color. Fueled by media attention and capitalized on by developers, this interest in "ethnic" food and places contributes to gentrification, and the very people who produced these vibrant foodscapes are increasingly excluded from them. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, geographer Pascale Joassart-Marcelli traces the transformation of three urban San Diego neighborhoods whose foodscapes are shifting from serving the needs of longtime minoritized residents who face limited food access to pleasing the tastes of wealthier and whiter newcomers. The $16 Taco illustrates how food can both emplace and displace immigrants, shedding light on the larger process of gentrification and the emotional, cultural, economic, and physical displacement it produces. It also highlights the contested food geographies of immigrants and people of color by documenting their contributions to the cultural food economy and everyday struggles to reclaim ethnic foodscapes and lead flourishing and hunger-free lives. Joassart-Marcelli offers valuable lessons for cities where food-related development projects transform neighborhoods at the expense of the communities they claim to celebrate.

Read more less

Risk Management in the Behavioral Health Professions is a comprehensive handbook for mental health and social service providers on prevention of malpractice lawsuits and licensing-board complaints. Frederic G. Reamer draws on his extensive firsthand experience as an expert witness in litigation and licensing-board cases throughout the United States to give readers an insider’s view of practical risk-management strategies. He provides in-depth discussion of common risk areas and steps practitioners can take to protect clients and themselves.Key topics include confidentiality and privileged communication; service delivery, including informed consent, assessment, boundary issues, suicide risk management, and use of technology; impaired practitioners; supervision and consultation; documentation; deception and fraud; and interruption and termination of services. Reamer offers pragmatic advice about how to respond to a lawsuit or licensing-board complaint. He emphasizes the challenges and risks related to remote service provision, especially during public health crises and pandemics. The book includes sample risk-management forms and templates as well as extensive case examples that illustrate fundamental risk-management concepts.Designed for behavioral health professionals including social workers, psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychiatrists, and substance use disorder treatment counselors, this book is an indispensable resource on how to navigate challenging ethics and risk-management issues.

Read more less

At the beach, bodies converge with the elements and strange treasures come to light. Departing from the conventional association of modernism with the city, this book makes a case for the coastal zone as a surprisingly generative setting for twentieth-century literature and art. An unruly and elusive confluence of human and more-than-human forces, the seashore is also a space of performance—a stage for loosely scripted, improvisatory forms of embodiment and togetherness.The beach, Hannah Freed-Thall argues, was to the modernist imagination what mountains were to Romanticism: a space not merely of anthropogenic conquest but of vital elemental and creaturely connection. With an eye to the peripheries of capitalist leisure, Freed-Thall recasts familiar seaside practices—including tide-pooling, beachcombing, gambling, and sunbathing—as radical experiments in perception and sociability. Close readings of works by Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Claude McKay, Samuel Beckett, Rachel Carson, and Gordon Matta-Clark, among others, explore the modernist beach as a queer refuge, a precarious commons, a scene of collective exhaustion and endurance, and a visionary threshold at the end of the world.Interweaving environmental humanities, queer and feminist theory, and cultural history, Modernism at the Beach offers new ways of understanding twentieth-century literature and its relation to ecological thought.

Read more less

In "Electing Judges", leading judicial politics scholar James L. Gibson responds to the growing chorus of critics who fear that the politics of running for office undermine judicial independence. While many people have opinions on the topic, few have supported them with actual empirical evidence. Gibson rectifies this situation, offering the most systematic and comprehensive study to date of the impact of campaigns on public perceptions of fairness, impartiality, and the legitimacy of elected state courts - and his findings are both counterintuitive and controversial. Gibson finds that ordinary Americans do not conclude from campaign promises that judges are incapable of making impartial decisions. Instead, he shows, they understand the process of deciding cases to be an exercise in policymaking, rather than of simply applying laws to individual cases - and consequently think it's important for candidates to reveal where they stand on important issues. Negative advertising also turns out to have a limited effect on perceptions of judicial legitimacy, though the same cannot be said for widely hated campaign contributions. Taking both the good and bad into consideration, Gibson argues that elections are ultimately beneficial in boosting the legitimacy of courts, despite the slight negative effects of some campaign activities. "Electing Judges" will initiate a lively debate inside both the halls of justice and the academy.

Read more less

This book provides parents and teachers of children on the autism spectrum (aged 2-5 years) with strategies for promoting childrens optimal social, emotional, language, and academic competence. It includes verbal and nonverbal strategies to help caregivers to enter in childrens attention spotlight and expand their interest and joy in relationships with others. The book includes sample adult-child social and emotion coaching scripts for interacting with children and suggestions for modelling, initiating, and prompting social behaviours and joint activities. Also included are other connection and communication strategies such as sensory games, visual prompts and pictures, gestures, pretend and puppet play, and intentional communication. Through repeated, sensitive and responsive interactions, parents and teachers can learn to enter the child's attention spotlight and to jointly share experiences that bring the child interest and joy. This results in a strong interpersonal connection and gradually leads to the child's desire and ability to communicate and share emotions and experiences with others. This child-focused and developmentally based way of communicating and teaching leads to a stronger relationship, more emotional connection, more emotion regulation, and less frustration for parents, teachers, and the child!

Read more less

Corporate governance has been much in the news in recent years and lawyers are devoting increasing amount of attention to it. The passage of major federal legislation in 2002 (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act a.k.a. SOX) and 2010 (the Dodd-Frank Act) were particularly important developments, generating much new law and, as a result, much new legal work. Curiously, however, the law school casebook market has largely ignored these trends.Corporate governance is regulated by many of the same laws covered in the basic Business Associations course, but increasingly is also regulated by laws—such as SOX and Dodd-Frank—that get short shrift in the typical Business Associations casebook and course. In contrast, those laws are the core focus of the text.In addition to the pertinent laws, the book brings into play sources such as stock exchange listing standards and the rules issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and similar quasi-governmental bodies. Importantly, however, lawyers practicing in the corporate governance space must be knowledgeable not only about the law but also best practice. The text therefore makes frequent references to best practice advice drawn from sources such as law firm client memoranda.

Read more less

Since the end of World War II, runaway fears of Soviet imperialism, global terrorism, and anarchy have tended to drive American foreign policy toward an imperial agenda. At the same time, uncurbed appetites have wasted the environment and driven the country's market economy into the ditch. How can we best sustain our identity as a people and resist the distortions of our current anxieties and appetites? Ethicist William F. May draws on America's religious and political history and examines two concepts at play in the founding of the country - contractual and covenantal. He contends that the biblical idea of a covenant offers a more promising way than the language of contract, grounded in self-interest alone, to contain our runaway anxieties and appetites. A covenantal sensibility affirms, "We the people (not simply, We the individuals, or We the interest groups) of the United States". It presupposes a history of mutual giving and receiving and of bearing with one another that undergirds all the traffic in buying and selling, arguing and negotiating, that obtain in the rough terrain of politics. May closes with an account of the covenantal agenda ahead, and concludes with the vexing issue of immigrants and undocumented workers that has singularly tested the covenant of this immigrant nation.

Read more less

The Animal Catalyst deals with the 'question' of 'what is an animal' and also in some instances, 'what is a human'? It pushes critical animal studies in important new directions; it re-examines basic assumptions, suggests new paradigms for how we can live and function ecologically, in a world that is not simply "ours." It argues that it is not enough to recognise the ethical demands placed upon us by our encounters with animals, or to critique our often murderous treatment of them: this simply reinforces human exceptionalism. Featuring contributions from leading academics, lawyers, artists and activists, the book examines key issues such as: - How "compassion" for animals reinforces ideas of what distinguishes human beings from other animals. - How speciesism and human centricity are built into the legal system. - How individualist subjectivity works in relation to animals who may not think of themselves in the same way. - How any consideration of animal others must involve a radical deconstruction of our very notion of the "human." - How art, philosophy and literature can both avoid speciesism and deliver the human from subjectivity. This volume is a unique project which stands at the cutting edge of both animal rights philosophies and posthuman/artistic/abstract philosophies of identity. It will be of great interest to undergraduates and researchers in philosophy, ethics, particularly continental philosophy, critical theory and cultural studies.

Read more less

There are few things in life more traumatic than discovering that your partner is having an affair. You are not only coping with the pain and anger but also the sense that your partner is a stranger. How could someone you love, and thought that you knew, treat you in this way? How can you ever trust your partner again? Don't panic. Millions upon millions of ordinary men and women have trodden the same path and come out the other end with not only their love restored but a significantly stronger and better relationship. Whether you are the discoverer of the affair or whether you were discovered, Marshall offers guidance and support, and explains:- The seven stages that couples move through from discovery to recovery. - What makes people more vulnerable to affairs.- The eight types of affairs and how understanding your partner's affair is key to deciding whether you should stay or go.- How to stop your imagination running wild and your brain from going into meltdown.- Why some couples emerge stronger and why others get derailed from the recovery process.With over 25 years' experience as a marital therapist, Marshall draws on hundreds of case studies, and provides sensible, compassionate and practical advice.

Read more less

Is the West prepared for a world where power is shared with China? A world in which China asserts the same level of global leadership that the USA currently assumes? And can we learn to embrace Chinese political culture, as China learned to embrace ours? Here, one of the world's leading voices on China, Kerry Brown, takes us past the tired cliches and inside the Chinese leadership - as they lay out a roadmap for working in a world in which China shares dominance with the West. From how, and why, China as a dominant superpower has been inevitable for many years, to how the attempts to fight the old battles are over, Brown digs deeper into the problematic nature of China’s current situation - its treatment of dissent, of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the severe limitations on its management of relations with other cultures and values. These issues impact the way the West sees China, China sees the West, and how both see themselves. There are obstacles to the West accepting a more prominent place for China in the world – but just because this will be a difficult process does not mean that it should not happen. As Kerry Brown writes: history is indeed ending, but not how the West thought it would.

Read more less

A step-by-step guide to develop a flexible comprehensive operational due diligence program for private equity and real estate funds Addressing the unique aspects and challenges associated with performing operational due diligence review of both private equity and real estate asset classes, this essential guide provides readers with the tools to develop a flexible comprehensive operational due diligence program for private equity and real estate. It includes techniques for analyzing fund legal documents and financial statements, as well as methods for evaluating operational risks concerning valuation methodologies, pricing documentation and illiquidity concerns. Covers topics including fund legal documents and financial statement analysis techniques Includes case studies in operational fraud Companion website includes sample checklists, templates, spreadsheets, and links to laws and regulations referenced in the book Equips investors with the tools to evaluate liquidity, valuation, and documentation Also by Jason Scharfman: Hedge Fund Operational Due Diligence: Understanding the Risks Filled with case studies, this book is required reading for private equity and real estate investors, as well as fund managers and service providers, for performing due diligence on the noninvestment risks associated with private equity and real estate funds.

Read more less

This book explores the idea of privacy at sea, from early sixteenth-century maritime expansions to nineteenth-century naval developments. In this period, the sea became a focal point of political and economic ambition as technological and cultural shifts enabled a more extensive exploration of maritime spaces and global coexistence at sea. The exploration of the sea and the conflicts arising from establishing control over maritime routes demanded a more nuanced distinction and negotiation between State and private efforts. Privateering, for example, became a bridge between the private enterprises and the State’s warfares or trade struggles, demonstrating that the sea required public control at the same time as it enabled private endeavours. Although this tension between private and public interests has been explored in military and economic studies, questions of how the private appeared in maritime history have been discussed only through a particularly merchantile lens. This volume adds a new dimension to this discussion by focusing on how privacy and the private were perceived and created by the historical agents at sea. We aim to move beyond the mercantile “private” as a direct opposite to the “public” or the State, thereby opening the discussion of privacy at sea as a multiplicity of lived experiences.Chapters 1, 8 and 14 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Read more less

WINNER of the James Tait Black Prize 2021.WINNER of The Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021.Lush and frothy, incisive and witty, Shola von Reinhold's decadent queer literary debut immerses readers in the pursuit of aesthetics and beauty, while interrogating the removal and obscurement of Black figures from history.Solitary Mathilda has long been enamored with the 'Bright Young Things' of the 20s, and throughout her life, her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things that she adores, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists' residency in Dun, a small European town Hermia was known to have lived in during the 30s. The artists' residency throws her deeper into a lattice of secrets and secret societies that takes hold of her aesthetic imagination, but will she be able to break the thrall of her Transfixions?From champagne theft and Black Modernisms, to art sabotage, alchemy and lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cults, Mathilda's journey through modes of aesthetic expression guides her to truth and the convoluted ways it is made and obscured.

Read more less

Mythologies is a masterpiece of analysis and interpretation. At its heart, Barthes’s collection of essays about the “mythologies” of modern life treats everyday objects and ideas – from professional wrestling, to the Tour de France, to Greta Garbo’s face – as though they are silently putting forward arguments. Those arguments are for modernity itself, the way the world is, from its class structures, to its ideologies, to its customs. In Barthes’s view, the mythologies of the modern world all tend towards one aim: making us think that the way things are, the status quo, is how they should naturally be. For Barthes, this should not be taken for granted; instead, he suggests, it is a kind of mystification, preventing us from seeing things differently or believing they might be otherwise. His analyses do what all good analytical thinking does: he unpicks the features of the arguments silently presented by his subjects, reveals their (and our) implicit assumptions, and shows how they point us towards certain ideas and conclusions. Indeed, understanding Barthes’ methods of analysis means you might never see the world in the same way again.Six skills combine to make up our ability to think critically. Mythologies is an especially fine example of a work that uses the skills of analysis and creative thinking.

Read more less

“Thrillingly refreshing, a propulsive story built around a fascinating cast of characters…brutal and beautiful and bold and Black in every way.” —Tor.com Magic is women’s work; war is men’s. But in the coming battle, none of that will matter. Men do not become mystics. They become warriors. But eighteen-year-old Salo has never been good at conforming to his tribe’s expectations. For as long as he can remember, he has loved books and magic in a culture where such things are considered unmanly. Despite it being sacrilege, Salo has worked on a magical device in secret that will awaken his latent magical powers. And when his village is attacked by a cruel enchantress, Salo knows that it is time to take action. Salo’s queen is surprisingly accepting of his desire to be a mystic, but she will not allow him to stay in the tribe. Instead, she sends Salo on a quest. The quest will take him thousands of miles north to the Jungle City, the political heart of the continent. There he must gather information on a growing threat to his tribe. On the way to the city, he is joined by three fellow outcasts: a shunned female warrior, a mysterious nomad, and a deadly assassin. But they’re being hunted by the same enchantress who attacked Salo’s village. She may hold the key to Salo’s awakening—and his redemption.

Read more less

While in exile on St Helena, Napoleon dictated a commentary on the wars of Julius Caesar, later published in 1836. In each chapter he summarized the events of one campaign, then added comments from the standpoint of his own military knowledge. Over the nearly two millennia between Caesar and Napoleon some aspects of warfare had changed, notably the introduction of firearms. But much remained the same: the rate of movement of armies (at the foot pace of horse or man); human muscle power as the main source of energy for construction work; some military techniques, notably bridge construction; as well as the actual territory fought over by Caesar and later by Napoleon. Napoleon's commentary thus provides a fascinating and highly authoritative insight into Caesar's wars, as well as providing a window into Napoleon's own thinking and attitudes. Napoleon in places detects mistakes on the part of Caesar and his enemies, and says what they should have done differently. Remarkably, this is thought to be the first full English translation of Napoleon's work. Napoleon Bonaparte was born to an obscure Corsican family but rose through the ranks of the French army to become Emperor of France, conqueror of most of Europe and acknowledged military genius. He wrote this book while in exile on St Helena.The translator. RA Maguire, is a former civil engineer with a longstanding interest in military and ancient history.

Read more less

'Vividly portrays the human face of young women on the margins of society, women who defy being statistics, who have their own stories and loves to tell' Sophie WardWINNER OF THE PORTICO PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE OCKHAM AWARDSIt is 1973 and Jude - known to her friends as Toto - has just graduated from art school and moves into a house in a run-down part of Leeds. Jude is a chaotic wild child who flirts with the wrong kind of people, drinks too much and gets stoned too often. Never happy to stay in one place for very long, her restlessness takes her on hitchhiking jaunts up and down the country. Her best friend, Nel, is the only steady influence Jude has but Nel's life isn't as perfect as it seems.Reports of attacks on women punctuate the news and Jude takes off again, suffocated by an affair she has been having with a married woman. But what she doesn't realise is that the violence is moving ever closer to home: there is Janice across the road who lives in fear of being beaten up again by her pimp and Nel, whose perfect life is coming undone at her boyfriend's hands. At the same time infamous murderers, Fred and Rosemary West, are stalking the country, on the lookout for girls like Jude.

Read more less

Create an inspiring, humanizing, and student-driven learning experience for your classroom In Woven Together: How Unpacking Your Teacher Identity Creates a Stronger Learning Community, expert educator Dr. Courtney E. Rose delivers a student-driven approach to teaching that demonstrates how to bring your full self to the classroom. You’ll learn to create space for your students to do the same thing, de-standardizing the current norms of the classroom while embracing their unique experiences, perspectives and understandings to create more meaningful learning experiences. Focusing specifically on teachers and teacher educators, this book explains the core issues associated with curriculum design and instructional implementation. It also includes: Personal narratives from current educators and activities for deep reflection on how your identity impacts and informs your instruction Methods for co-creating a classroom community and culture that works for your diverse student body Action-oriented solutions and strategies for creating transformative learning experiences by putting your students at the forefront of your classroom’s learning environment An indispensable resource for teachers already in the classroom, as well as pre-service teachers preparing to enter the classroom, Woven Together is the student-focused guide that education professionals have been waiting for.

Read more less

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey's latest meticulous work examines how economics can become a more "human" science. Economic historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has distinguished herself through her writing on the Great Enrichment and the betterment of the poor—not just materially but spiritually. In Bettering Humanomics she continues her intellectually playful yet rigorous analysis with a focus on humans rather than the institutions. Going against the grain of contemporary neo-institutional and behavioral economics which privilege observation over understanding, she asserts her vision of “humanomics,” which draws on the work of Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith, and most prominently, Adam Smith. She argues for an economics that uses a comprehensive understanding of human action beyond behaviorism. McCloskey clearly articulates her points of contention with believers in “imperfections,” from Samuelson to Stiglitz, claiming that they have neglected scientific analysis in their haste to diagnose the ills of the system. In an engaging and erudite manner, she reaffirms the global successes of market-tested betterment and calls for empirical investigation that advances from material incentives to an awareness of the human within historical and ethical frameworks. Bettering Humanomics offers a critique of contemporary economics and a proposal for an economics as a better human science.

Read more less

The Perfect Fit shows us how globalization works through the many people and places involved in making women’s shoes. We know a lot about how clothing and shoes are made cheaply, but very little about the process when they are made beautifully. In The Perfect Fit, Claudio E. Benzecry looks at the craft that goes into designing shoes for women in the US market, revealing that this creative process takes place on a global scale. Based on unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, The Perfect Fit offers an ethnographic window into the day-to-day life of designers, fit models, and technicians as they put together samples and prototypes, showing how expert work is a complement to and a necessary condition for factory exploitation. Benzecry looks at the decisions and constraints behind how shoes are designed and developed, from initial inspiration to the mundane work of making sure a size seven stays constant. In doing so, he also fosters an original understanding of how globalization works from the ground up. Drawing on five years of research in New York, China, and Brazil, The Perfect Fit reveals how creative decisions are made, the kinds of expertise involved, and the almost impossible task of keeping the global supply chain humming.

Read more less

In contemporary debates, communication is variously invoked as a panacea for the problems of both democracy and love, as a dream of a new information society brought about by new technologies, and as a wistful ideal of human relations. How, and why, did communication come to shoulder the load it carries? In John Durham Peters's work, the teachings of Socrates and Jesus, the theology of Saint Augustine, the political philosophy of Locke, and the American tradition from Emerson through William James all become relevant for understanding communication in our age. Peters finds that thinkers across the centuries have struggled with the same questions - how we can hope for contact with others, what has become of human beings in increasingly technological times, how new modes of communication have altered the ways the world is imagined and how we relate to others - and he weaves intellectual history and communications history together. The book traces the yearning for contact not only through philosophy and literature but also by exploring the cultural reception of communication technologies from the telegraph to the radio. The history of communication, Peters shows, is not a triumphant progress toward global harmony but rather a collection of uncanny devices that conjure angels, spirits and alien intelligences. His is an account of a complex concept that has both shaped us and been shaped by us.

Read more less

Sociological research is hard enough already you don't need to make it even harder by smashing about like a bull in a china shop, not knowing what you're doing or where you're heading. Or so says John Levi Martin in this witty, insightful, and desperately needed primer on how to practice rigorous social science. Thinking Through Methods focuses on the practical decisions that you will need to make as a researcher where the data you are working with comes from and how that data relates to all the possible data you could have gathered. This is a user's guide to sociological research, designed to be used at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Rather than offer mechanical rules and applications, Martin chooses instead to team up with the reader to think through and with methods. He acknowledges that we are human beings and thus prone to the same cognitive limitations and distortions found in subjects and proposes ways to compensate for these limitations. Martin also forcefully argues for principled symmetry, contending that bad ethics makes for bad research, and vice versa. Thinking Through Methods is a landmark work one that students will turn to again and again throughout the course of their sociological research.

Read more less

One of the ways in which topology has influenced other branches of mathematics in the past few decades is by putting the study of continuity and convergence into a general setting. This new edition of Wilson Sutherland's classic text introduces metric and topological spaces by describing some of that influence. The aim is to move gradually from familiar real analysis to abstract topological spaces, using metric spaces as a bridge between the two. The language of metric and topological spaces is established with continuity as the motivating concept. Several concepts are introduced, first in metric spaces and then repeated for topological spaces, to help convey familiarity. The discussion develops to cover connectedness, compactness and completeness, a trio widely used in the rest of mathematics. Topology also has a more geometric aspect which is familiar in popular expositions of the subject as `rubber-sheet geometry', with pictures of Möbius bands, doughnuts, Klein bottles and the like; this geometric aspect is illustrated by describing some standard surfaces, and it is shown how all this fits into the same story as the more analytic developments. The book is primarily aimed at second- or third-year mathematics students. There are numerous exercises, many of the more challenging ones accompanied by hints, as well as a companion website, with further explanations and examples as well as material supplementary to that in the book.

Read more less

A murder she doesn’t remember committing. Or a killer she doesn’t remember meeting? Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. She is dropped off at her apartment, but is confronted by a stranger who claims to live there. Confused, she reaches for her phone to call for help – only to find that in its place is a bloodstained knife. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in scribbles repeating the same two words: STAY AWAKE.Last she recalls, Liv was a successful writer for a New York magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in the city. She is horrified to see news reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message: the same message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night before waking in a moving car? Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing and trying to piece together the fragments of her life. But there’s someone who knows exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget – permanently.An electrifying thriller that unfolds at a breakneck speed, Stay Awake is guaranteed to keep you up all night. Perfect for fans of S J Watson, Lisa Unger and Riley Sager. Praise for Stay Awake 'Misdirection has always been a key tool in her toolbox, and she uses it to perfection in this beautifully conceived and executed thriller.' Booklist'Goldin skillfully interweaves Liv’s tense, propulsive present-day narration... Shocking twists and resourceful, well-drawn female characters keep the pages turning as the clever mystery unfolds. Goldin reliably entertains.' Publisher's Weekly‘One of the very best new thrillers I've read this year. The character writing, development, pacing and storytelling are just wonderful. One of those books that you want to race through but don't want to miss a single detail. This is a must, must, must read and sure to be in my books of the year.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘Wow!!! This will definitely be one of the best books I read this year… captivating and complex. A must read.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘Oh wow this was such a damn good read. For me the book was unique, clever and addictive. I loved the twists and I loved the characters… a book not to be missed.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘An intelligent and well crafted mystery thriller with a well thought out plot, a protagonist you can root for, a very intriguing mystery, tension and suspense and of course, the obligatory twists!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘A cracking plot that takes the amnesia plot to a new level. A fast paced thriller that kept me hooked.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘WOW. I mean WOW. Megan Goldin is a genius – I have nothing else to say. I think I knew where the plot was going but I was wrong BIG TIME. This was sooooo good!!!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘Really enjoyed this book, totally gripping and I totally recommend.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘Megan Goldin has created another high intensity thriller. Absolutely loved this book and its heart palpitating plot. All book lovers will absolutely be enthralled.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review‘A thriller you’ll want to stay up late for.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review

Read more less

One woman's incredible story of life on the front lines as an emergency medical worker in New York City.On the streets of New York City, EMTs and paramedics do more than respond to emergencies; they eat and drink together, look out for each other’s safety, mercilessly make fun of one another, date one other, and, most crucially, share terrifying experiences and grave injustices suffered under the city’s long-broken EMS system. Their loyalty to one another is fierce and absolute. As Jennifer Murphy shows in the gripping and moving First Responder, they are a family. A dysfunctional family, perhaps, but what family isn't? Many in the field of pre-hospital emergency care have endured medical trauma and familial hardship themselves. Some are looking to give back. Some are desperate for family. Some were inspired by 9/11. Still others want to become doctors, nurses, firefighters, cops, and want to cut their teeth on the streets. As rescuers, they never want people to die or get hurt. But if they are going to die or get hurt, first responders want to be there. Despite the vital role they play New York City, EMTs are paid less than trash collectors, and far less than any other first responder makes, even though the burden of medical emergencies fall on the backs of EMTs and medics. Yet for Jennifer and her brothers and sisters, it's a calling more than a job. First responders are constantly exposed to infectious diseases, violence, and death. The coronavirus pandemic did not change that math; the public is just more aware of it. After 9/11, EMT training schools experienced a surge in applications from civilians wanting to become first responders, inspired by rescuers who responded to the terrorist attacks and rushed into the burning towers when everyone else ran out. The same will almost certainly be true post-coronavirus as people are moved by a desire to help in times of crisis in a more direct way. Funny and heartwarming, inspiring and poignant, First Responder follows Jennifer's journey to becoming an EMT and working during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. She will bring readers inside an intense world filled with crisis, rescue, grief, uncertainty, and dark humor. First Responder will move readers to a greater understanding and appreciation of those fighting for them—wherever they live—in a world they hardly know or could imagine.

Read more less

It is possible to access the same sense of well-being, clarity, inner freedom, and loving connection realized by the world’s meditation masters. We can do this by shifting our awareness in the midst of our daily lives. Shift into Freedom presents innovative teacher Loch Kelly’s training manual for actively participating in the evolution of your own consciousness. Synthesizing insights from neuroscience and psychology with wisdom from the world’s contemplative traditions, Shift into Freedom offers an accessible and remarkably powerful series of meditations that lead us to a little-known natural capacity called "awake awareness." Through an unfolding process of "small glimpses, many times," these exercises shift us from a thought-based knowing to an awareness-based way of operating in the world. With continued practice, we learn to "unhook" from our customary home in our ego-based identity—and then sustain an embodied presence and relatedness known as "open-hearted awareness." Loch Kelly teaches that this is "the meeting place of awakening and growing up, where we have the capacity to handle a fully emotional, intimate life and act with authenticity and compassion." Learn more about: • How to separate awareness from thinking to realize that thoughts and emotions are not the center of who we are • How insights from neuroscience can help us learn how to embody awakening • Ego-identification, a pattern of thought that co-opts the body’s boundary program and creates a mistaken identity • The paradox of "being home while returning home" • Finding the off-switch for the chattering mind • How to intentionally and immediately shift into peace of mind any time of your day • Awakening as a natural process of human development, which unfolds as waking up, waking in, and waking out • Meditation practices for all phases of the journey of awakening and embodiment • Four stages of spiritual growth: recognition, realization, stabilization, and expression • Untying the "knots" in our mindbody system to liberate us from our deepest doubts and fears • How to move from deliberate mindfulness to effortless mindfulness and heart mindfulness • How to effortlessly focus without using attention • Discovering your innate happiness that is not dependent on circumstances • How to welcome and liberate sub-personalities after initial awakening • A user’s manual for your consciousness to help you free yourself from the limits of ego-identification and live from open-hearted awareness

Read more less

Los devocionales para usted y su hijo, uno al lado del otro, hacen que esta edición familiar especial del éxito de ventas de Max Lucado, Gracia para todo momento, sea ideal para incorporar los devocionales en su rutina familiar.Cada uno de los cien devocionales en este hermoso libro ofrece una lectura para adultos de Gracia para todo momento y una lectura para niños sobre el mismo tema de Gracia para todo momento para niños.Con los devocionales lado a lado, usted y sus hijos pueden leer cada devocional y luego hablar y orar juntos. Los devocionales incluyen las Escrituras para leer en voz alta y preguntas enriquecedoras diseñadas para llevar a su familia más profundamente en la fe, ya sea en la mesa del desayuno, en las cenas familiares o justo antes de acostarse. Este nuevo devocional familiar viene en respuesta a innumerables solicitudes de lectores de una herramienta que equipa a la familia para leer Gracia para todo momento juntos. Disfrute de un tiempo familiar de calidad con la adición de debates de fe más ricos, para que pueda crecer en Cristo a través de las generaciones. Ya sea que su familia haya compartido devociones durante años o que desee iniciar un nuevo hábito, este libro lo invita a celebrar la gracia que Dios nos ofrece a cada uno de nosotros.Grace for the Moment Family DevotionalThe devotionals for you and your child, side by side, make this special family edition of Max Lucado's bestseller, Grace for the Moment, ideal for incorporating devotionals into your family routine.Each of the 100 devotions in this beautiful book offers an adult reading from Grace for the Moment and a children's reading on the same topic from Grace for the Moment for Kids.With the devotions next to one another, you and your children can read each devotion and then talk and pray together. Devotions include Scripture for reading aloud and enriching questions designed to take your family deeper in faith—whether over the breakfast table, at family dinners, or just before bed.This new family devotional comes in response to countless requests for a tool that equips a family to read Grace for the Moment together. Enjoy quality family time with the addition of richer faith discussions so that you can grow in Christ across the generations. Whether your family has shared devotions for years or you are hoping to jump-start a new habit, this book invites you to celebrate the grace God offers each one of us.

Read more less

In the 1820s, two families, unknown to each other, worked on farms in the American wilderness. It seemed unlikely that the families would ever meet—and yet, they did. The son of one family, the famed actor John Wilkes Booth, killed the son of the other, President Abraham Lincoln, in the most significant assassination in American history. The murder, however, did not come without warning—in fact, it had been foretold. In the Houses of Their Dead is the first book of the many thousands written about Lincoln to focus on the president’s fascination with Spiritualism, and to demonstrate how it linked him, uncannily, to the man who would kill him. Abraham Lincoln is usually seen as a rational, empirically-minded man, yet as acclaimed scholar and biographer Terry Alford reveals, he was also deeply superstitious and drawn to the irrational. Like millions of other Americans, including the Booths, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, suffered repeated personal tragedies, and turned for solace to Spiritualism, a new practice sweeping the nation that held that the dead were nearby and could be contacted by the living. Remarkably, the Lincolns and the Booths even used the same mediums, including Charles Colchester, a specialist in “blood writing” whom Mary first brought to her husband, and who warned the president after listening to the ravings of another of his clients, John Wilkes Booth. Alford’s expansive, richly-textured chronicle follows the two families across the nineteenth century, uncovering new facts and stories about Abraham and Mary while drawing indelible portraits of the Booths—from patriarch Julius, a famous actor in his own right, to brother Edwin, the most talented member of the family and a man who feared peacock feathers, to their confidant Adam Badeau, who would become, strangely, the ghostwriter for President Ulysses S. Grant. At every turn, Alford shows that despite the progress of the age—the glass hypodermic syringe, electromagnetic induction, and much more—death remained ever-present, and thus it was only rational for millions of Americans, from the president on down, to cling to beliefs that seem anything but. A novelistic narrative of two exceptional American families set against the convulsions their times, In the Houses of Their Dead ultimately leads us to consider how ghost stories helped shape the nation.

Read more less

Leading animal rights activist Gene Baur examines the real cost of the meat on our plates -- for both humans and animals alike -- in this provocative and thorough examination of the modern farm industry. Many people picture cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens as friendly creatures who live happily within the confines of a peaceful family farm, arriving as food for humans only at the end of their sun-drenched lives. That's what Gene Baur had been told -- but when he first visited a stockyard he realized that this rosy depiction couldn't be more inaccurate. Amid the stench, noise, and filth, his attention was drawn in particular to one sheep who had been cast aside for dead. But as Baur walked by, the sheep raised her head and looked right at him. She was still alive, and the one thing Baur knew for sure that day was that he had to get her to safety. Hilda, as she was later named, was nursed back to health and soon became the first resident of Farm Sanctuary -- an organization dedicated to the rescue, care, and protection of farm animals. The truth is that farm production does not depend on the family farmer with a small herd of animals but instead resembles a large, assembly-line factory. Animals raised for human consumption are confined for the entirety of their lives and often live without companionship, fresh air, or even adequate food and water.Viewed as production units rather than living beings with feelings, ten billion farm animals are exploited specifically for food in the United States every year. In Farm Sanctuary, Baur provides a thoughtprovoking investigation of the ethical questions involved in the production of beef, poultry, pork, milk,and eggs -- and what each of us can do to stop the mistreatment of farm animals and promote compassion. He details the triumphs and the disappointments of more than twenty years on the front lines of the animal protection movement. And he introduces sanctuary. us to some of the special creatures who live at Farm Sanctuary -- from Maya the cow to Marmalade the chicken -- all of whom escaped horrible circumstances to live happier, more peaceful lives. Farm Sanctuary shows how all of us have an opportunity and a responsibility to consume a kinder plate, making a better life for ourselves and animals as well. You will certainly never think of a hamburger or chicken breast the same way after reading this book.

Read more less

One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels That Will Sweep You Away” and LitHub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2021.” For fans of Amy Bloom’s White Houses and Colm Tóibín’s The Master, a page-turning novel about Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and the art, drama, and romance that defined her coming-of-age during World War II.1940. A train carrying exiled German prisoners from a labor camp arrives in southern France. Within moments, word spreads that Nazi capture is imminent, and the men flee for the woods, desperate to disappear across the Spanish border. One stays behind, determined to ride the train until he reaches home, to find a woman he refers to simply as “her.” 1937. Leonora Carrington is a twenty-year-old British socialite and painter dreaming of independence when she meets Max Ernst, an older, married artist whose work has captivated Europe. She follows him to Paris, into the vibrant revolutionary world of studios and cafes where rising visionaries of the Surrealist movement like Andre Breton, Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Salvador Dali are challenging conventional approaches to art and life. Inspired by their freedom, Leonora begins to experiment with her own work, translating vivid stories of her youth onto canvas and gaining recognition under her own name. It is a bright and glorious age of enlightenment—until the shadow of war looms over Europe and headlines emerge denouncing Max and his circle as “degenerates,” leading to his arrest and imprisonment. Left along as occupation spreads throughout the countryside, Leonora battles terrifying circumstances to survive, reawakening past demons that threaten to consume her. As Leonora and Max embark on remarkable journeys together and apart, the full story of their tumultuous and passionate love affair unfolds, spanning time and borders as they seek to reunite and reclaim their creative power in a world shattered by war. When their paths cross with Peggy Guggenheim, an art collector and socialite working to help artists escape to America, nothing will be the same. Based on true events and historical figures, Leonora in the Morning Light is an unforgettable story of love, art, and destiny that restores a twentieth-century heroine to her rightful place in our collective imagination.

Read more less

COMPARATIVE URBANISM ‘Comparative Urbanism fully transforms the scope and purpose of urban studies today, distilling innovative conceptual and methodological tools. The theoretical and empirical scope is astounding, enlightening, emboldening. Robinson peels away conceptual labels that have anointed some cities as paradigmatic and left others as mere copies. She recalibrates overly used theoretical perspectives, resurrects forgotten ones long in need of a dusting off, and brings to the fore those often marginalised. Robinson’s approach radically re-distributes who speaks for the urban, and which urban conditions shape our theoretical understandings. With Comparative Urbanism in our hands, we can start the practice of urban studies anywhere and be relevant to any number of elsewheres.’ Jane M. Jacobs, Professor of Urban Studies, Yale-NUS College, Singapore ‘How to think the multiplicity of urban realities at the same time, across different times and rhythmic arrangements; how to move with the emergences and stand-stills, with conceptualisations that do justice to all things gathered under the name of the urban. How to imagine comparatively amongst differences that remain different, individualised outcomes, but yet exist in-common. No book has so carefully conducted a specifically urban philosophy on these matters, capable of beginning and ending anywhere.’ AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield The rapid pace and changing nature of twenty-first century urbanisation as well as the diversity of global urban experiences calls for new theories and new methodologies in urban studies. In Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies, Jennifer Robinson proposes grounds for reformatting comparative urban practice and offers a wide range of tactics for researching global urban experiences. The focus is on inventing new concepts as well as revising existing approaches. Inspired by postcolonial and decolonial critiques of urban studies she advocates for an experimental comparative urbanism, open to learning from different urban experiences and to expanding conversations amongst urban scholars across the globe. The book features a wealth of examples of comparative urban research, concerned with many dimensions of urban life. A range of theoretical and philosophical approaches ground an understanding of the radical revisability and emergent nature of concepts of the urban. Advanced students, urbanists and scholars will be prompted to compose comparisons which trace the interconnected and relational character of the urban, and to think with the variety of urban experiences and urbanisation processes across the globe, to produce the new insights the twenty-first century urban world demands.

Read more less

Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism’s remarkable growth from its humble origins in the early nineteenth century to its current prominence in global life. In contrast to most contemporary accounts of humanitarianism that concentrate on the last two decades, Michael Barnett ties the past to the present, connecting the antislavery and missionary movements of the nineteenth century to today’s peacebuilding missions, the Cold War interventions in places like Biafra and Cambodia to post–Cold War humanitarian operations in regions such as the Great Lakes of Africa and the Balkans; and the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 to the emergence of the major international humanitarian organizations of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival work, close encounters with many of today’s leading international agencies, and interviews with dozens of aid workers in the field and at headquarters, Empire of Humanity provides a history that is both global and intimate. Avoiding both romanticism and cynicism, Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism’s enduring themes, trends, and, most strikingly, ethical ambiguities. Humanitarianism hopes to change the world, but the world has left its mark on humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has undergone three distinct global ages—imperial, postcolonial, and liberal—each of which has shaped what humanitarianism can do and what it is. The world has produced not one humanitarianism, but instead varieties of humanitarianism. Furthermore, Barnett observes that the world of humanitarianism is divided between an emergency camp that wants to save lives and nothing else and an alchemist camp that wants to remove the causes of suffering. These camps offer different visions of what are the purpose and principles of humanitarianism, and, accordingly respond differently to the same global challenges and humanitarianism emergencies. Humanitarianism has developed a metropolis of global institutions of care, amounting to a global governance of humanity. This humanitarian governance, Barnett observes, is an empire of humanity: it exercises power over the very individuals it hopes to emancipate. Although many use humanitarianism as a symbol of moral progress, Barnett provocatively argues that humanitarianism has undergone its most impressive gains after moments of radical inhumanity, when the "international community" believes that it must atone for its sins and reduce the breach between what we do and who we think we are. Humanitarianism is not only about the needs of its beneficiaries; it also is about the needs of the compassionate.

Read more less

We always listen out for the train when we're down in the cutting because sometimes they come quicker than you expect. There aren't as many trains as there used to be. Mostly just the freight ones, like the one that nearly killed us on the bus . . . The best train is the Southern Aurora. It goes all the way from Melbourne to Sydney, and from Sydney to Melbourne. It stops in Mittigunda because we're pretty much exactly halfway between.'Jimmy is a kid growing up fast on the poorest street in town. He tries to do everything right and look out for his mum and his younger brother. His older brother is in jail, so it's up to Jimmy to hold things together. But small-town life is unforgiving if you're from the other side of the tracks.If only his mum didn't drink so much.If only he could win the school billycart race.If only his best friend understood.If only he could stop his mum's boyfriend from getting angry.If only he was there.Jimmy soon learns that even when you get things right, everything can still go wrong.'If you only read one Australian fiction book this year, let it be this one' Samuel Johnson'Evocative and authentic, Brandi has created a world filled with equal parts hope and dread. Southern Aurora is a special book' Sarah Bailey'Another quietly riveting, emotionally potent novel from Mark Brandi' The Age'The master of small-town dread' Canberra Times 'Heart-wrenching' The Australian Women's Weekly 'Another page-turner' Who Weekly 'Mark Brandi has delivered a protagonist that could well become one of Australia's classic characters. There's a Mark Twain innocence and inner wisdom to Jimmy, one far beyond most adults' Weekend Australian 'Brandi's poignant and deceptively uncomplicated tale pulses with foreboding - but also hope' Courier Mail 'Unforgettable and unsurpassable . . . Brandi's observations are breathtakingly original and his insights are astute. Southern Aurora tackles issues with a purity that's as rare as it is precious' Better Reading 'A beautiful and deeply affecting book . . . Mark Brandi proves himself a master raconteur, in a work characterised by gentle humour, perceptiveness and kindness' Living Arts Canberra'A powerful and deeply moving portrayal of a sensitive, vulnerable boy battling against the odds for a happy life' Brisbane Times'Moving and well-crafted' AU Review

Read more less