Search results for ""Author MICHEL""

Are we doomed? As individuals, certainly, eventually, inevitably. But as a species? As a civilization? Leading catastrophe engineer Michel Bruneau thinks perhaps not. The Blessings of Disaster draws on knowledge from multiple disciplines to illustrate how our civilization’s future successes and failures in dealing with societal threats—be they pandemics, climate change, overpopulation, monetary collapse, and nuclear holocaust—can be predicted by observing how we currently cope with and react to natural and technological disasters. Maybe most importantly, this entertaining and often counter-intuitive book shows how we can think in better ways about disasters, to strengthen and extend our existence as both individuals and as a species.When it comes to rare extreme events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornados, volcanic eruptions, technological accidents, terrorist attacks, pandemics, and even existential threats, it is in our nature to set ourselves up for disasters because the gamble may be worth it. But only maybe.The Blessing of Disaster is the very real story of the relationship between humans and disasters – and it’s not a simple one. Bringing together his decades-long career spanning the globe as an earthquake and disaster engineer, detailed catastrophe case studies from extreme events like Japan’s Kobe earthquake and category 5 hurricanes in the American South, along with thoughtful and practical solutions, Bruneau provides a thorough examination of the structural challenges that face today’s (and tomorrow’s) world.How we cope with today’s threats is indicative of what the future holds. Contrary to popular forecasts, it is not all gloom and doom – but some of it definitely is.

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Michel Fiffe's biggest book yet covers a lot of ground: COPRA's earliest adventure, a deep look at their rogues gallery, and their latest mega arc that paves the way for the big finale! From brand new issues and long out-of-print rarities, to previously unseen comics and tons of extras from an army of guest cartoonists, COPRA Round Seven has it all! Collects COPRA #25, 42-45 & COPRA VERSUS #1-5

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COPRA's 10th Anniversary kicks off with an oversized hardcover compendium of its first twelve seminal issues. From writer/artist Michel Fiffe comes the opening salvo of the world's greatest superhero revenge series. Dive into a formalist battle royal of mercenary misfits and celebrate a decade of COPRA in style.Collects COPRA #1-12

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''No other thriller writer can make you break into a sweat and break your heart at the same time'' THE TIMESLeyli Maal is a beautiful Malian woman, mother of three, living in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Marseille. Her quiet life as a well-integrated immigrant is suddenly shaken when her beautiful eldest daughter, Bamby, becomes the main suspect in two murders linked to a lethal illegal immigration racket.Is Bamby really involved? And why is everyone desperate to get their hands on Leyli''s mysterious red notebook?

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Advanced Bread and Pastry, A Professional Approach is a comprehensive guide to bread, viennoiserie, and pastry that is designed for students, professionals, and enthusiasts. Balancing a respect for tradition with modern approaches to method and technique, Advanced Bread and Pastry unites appealing presentation and indispensable instruction. It is written to help today���s baker respond to the recent evolution of ingredients, products, and presentation. The recipes (called formulas) are based on a variety of classica methods and processes. With this strong foundation of knowledge, a baker or pastry chef can develop further skills, experiment with new ideas, and understand any formula.

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If you want to introduce alternative power supplies around the home and garden or even live totally off-grid in your boat, caravan or yurt and need a practical introduction to solar power and 12 volt supplies, here is an essential guide to the subject. Not only will it save you money, it will show you how to run your lights, laptop, DVDs and music, and even your tools and household products, from a simple 12 volt system. Be in control of more of your home's own energy supply, develop a low impact way of living and be prepared for power cuts and for power down situations in the future! Do It Yourself 12 Volt Solar Power begins with a lesson in how electricity works and the main components of a DIY solar system. The author uses clear diagrams and terms. There is, of course, more technical information as the book progresses, but don't worry, this no-nonsense guide provides a useful, back-to-basics approach for the layperson. This is a reference book that will help you trouble-shoot and get the best value for money from what you can find hidden in the back of the garage. Quirky and humorous, it also shows you how to make a sun following system using just a bicycle wheel, a pallet and the motor from a CD player!

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What does the head of the Kremlin think about? What are his hopes and aims for the lands bordering Russia, for Europe, and even the world? In January 2014, the Kremlin sent its senior civil servants, governors and party bigwigs a special New Year’s present: philosophy books, by 19th and 20th century Russian thinkers. This reading list is not optional: the president himself has cited these authors in landmark speeches, and they need to understand what he means. The most persistent of the bunch will find these great works strangely familiar, full of the national leader's role in an 'authentic' democracy, the importance of being conservative, the urgency of rooting morality in religion, and the historic struggle of the Russian people against the timeless hostility of the West. President Putin is the man who manages and manipulates these existential anxieties. And since the annexation of Crimea, the need to decrypt his vision for the nation—propelled by the Kremlin’s Eurasian neo-imperialists and prophets of `Russian-way’ conservatism—has become more pressing than ever. In this revealing and engrossing book, Michel Eltchaninoff invites us inside the psyche of the Russian president for a better understanding of his doctrine and geopolitical vision. He offers answers to an urgent question for our 21st century world: what is Vladimir Putin thinking?

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Sauces have always played an important role in cooking. They complement and enhance so many foods, adding nuances of flavour and taking dishes to new heights. With his wealth of culinary knowledge, Michel Roux is recognised as a master at the art of sauce-making. This comprehensive collection of over 200 sauces has attained classic status as the essential guide in every good cook's kitchen. The techniques and methods of sauce making are explained simply and clearly, many illustrated with step-by-step instructions and photographs. A comprehensive directory which recommends the best sauces for key dishes and ingredients is also included.

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This small, portable book presents a unique perspective on the human body for artists to study and implement in their drawing work. In this book, artist and teacher Michel Lauricella simplifies the human body into basic, synthetic shapes and forms, offering profound insight for artists of all kinds, sparking the imagination and improving one's obse

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The Archibald Finch saga continues with another thrilling adventure! It’s been months since our hero returned from Lemurea, but nothing is back to normal. When Archibald realises he isn’t the only thing that crash-landed at the manor that night, he knows he’ll need to return to the dark world he only just left. Archibald is a changed boy. He stands up to bullies and hangs out with the gargoyles that used to scare him. But for all his new toughness, he's also a lost boy who misses his friends in Lemurea. When strange footprints are discovered on the manor grounds, he realizes a piece of that world has followed him home... Without golems, witches or magic, Archibald knows there's little to stop what's prowling the London suburbs, which means he'll have to return to Lemurea to seek Faerydae's help. In a new adventure for Archibald, Hailee, Oliver, and Faerydae, two worlds collide—two worlds with more in common than any of the kids could’ve imagined. A hunt for clues, golems, and Marodors unearths some shocking answers and hard truths as Archibald and his companions embark on yet another daring journey that tests each of them in different ways.

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History, magic, and adventure collide in this riveting middle-grade fantasy novel about an unusual boy who unlocks an ancient relic—and with it, a forgotten world. Befriended by a band of young witches, Archibald Finch must quickly adapt to survive in Lemurea, where a battle born in the Middle Ages is still unfolding . . . Archibald is a risk-averse boy with quirks that earn him plenty of eye-rolls, especially from his older sister, Hailee. Things get worse when his parents move the family from London to his grandmother’s creepy manor in the English countryside. Now he has to deal with hairless dolls in the library, weird stone creatures on the roof, and a spooky forest at the edge of the backyard. But these turn out to be the least of Archibald's problems . . . One day, as he's exploring the cavernous house, he finds a curious globe that whisks him away to a secret world, hidden for 500 years. Archibald finds himself on a thrilling adventure full of medieval magic, mysterious symbols, and the strangest beasts, while Hailee—who witnessed her brother’s disappearance—embarks on a daring quest to find him.

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The volume collects a series of lectures given by the renowned French thinker Michel Foucault late in his career. The book is composed of two parts: a talk, "Parresia," delivered at the University of Grenoble in 1982, and a series of lectures entitled "Discourse and Truth," given at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, which appears here for the first time in its full and correct form. Together, they provide an unprecedented account of Foucault's reading of the Greek concept of parresia, often translated as "truth-telling" or "frank speech." In typically Foucauldian style, the lectures trace the transformation of this concept across Greek, Roman, and early Christian thought, from its origins in pre-Socratic Greece to its role as a central element of the relationship between teacher and student. In mapping the concept's history, Foucault's concern is not to advocate for free speech; rather, his aim is to explore the moral and political position one must occupy in order to take the risk to speak truthfully. In his analysis of parresia, Foucault both advances his project of a history of the present and paves the way for a genealogy of the critical attitude in modern and contemporary societies. These essays--carefully edited and including notes and introductory material to fully illuminate Foucault's insights--are a major addition to Foucault's English-language corpus that no scholar of ancient or modern philosophy will want to miss.

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Michel Odent, the leading pioneer for natural childbirth, indicates that the period between conception and a child's first birthday is critical to life-long health. In this prophetic book - first published in 1986 and reproduced here in its original form - he argues that different parts of the 'primal adaptive system' develop, regulate and adjust themselves during foetal life and the time around birth and infancy. 'Everything which happens during this period of dependence on the mother has an influence on this basic state of health, this primal health.' He suggests that the later well-being of adults, their ability to withstand the 'diseases of civilization' such as hypertension, cancer, alcoholism and failures of the immune system resulting in AIDS, allergies and viral diseases, can all be traced back to society's ignorance of the vital importance of the primal period. Since the first edition of this groundbreaking work, research has continued apace, offering further evidence to substantiate Odent's ideas. In the important new "Introduction and Postscript", the author reviews recent developments and relates them to the central themes of Primal Health. This book is essential reading for all who care about the health of our children and the ongoing health of society as a whole.

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'Riveting! Bussi spins psychological suspense at its finest with this consuming tale of one child, two families, and the dark secrets that define us all. Clear your schedule; this book is worth it!' - Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Crash & Burn and Find HerOn the night of 22 December 1980, a plane crashes on the Franco-Swiss border and is engulfed in flames. 168 out of 169 passengers are killed instantly. The miraculous sole survivor is a three-month-old baby girl. Two families, one rich, the other poor, step forward to claim her, sparking an investigation that will last for almost two decades. Is she Lyse-Rose or Emilie? Eighteen years later, having failed to discover the truth, private detective Crédule Grand-Duc plans to take his own life, but not before placing an account of his investigation in the girl's hands. But, as he sits at his desk about to pull the trigger, he uncovers a secret that changes everything - then is killed before he can breathe a word of it to anyone . . .

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'The thrill is that you're actually figuring it out on your own. You're engaging with another language, not just parroting it... It's an excellent way to start, and leaves the listener thinking, Hey, Ich kann do dis.' - New Yorker, David Sedaris, humorist and author, on learning German with the Michel Thomas MethodLooking for a convenient language course that fits your lifestyle and gets you speaking a new language in a matter of weeks, not years? The original no-books, no-homework, no-memorizing method is in tune with the way the brain prefers to receive, store and retrieve information. You'll stick with it because you'll love it.* Pick up Spanish naturally and unforgettably without strain or stress* Learn from listening and speaking, without the pressure of writing or memorizing* Build up your Spanish in manageable steps by thinking out answers for yourself WHY IS THE METHOD SO SUCCESSFUL?'What you understand, you know; and what you know, you don't forget.' - Michel Thomas Before there was machine learning, there was Michel Thomas. For over 50 years he worked on decoding languages by breaking them down into their most essential component parts. These 'building blocks' are introduced to the learner sequentially in such a way that you reconstruct the language for yourself - to form your own sentences, to say what you want, when you want. This unique method draws on the principles of instructional psychology and works with the way your brain prefers to receive, store and retrieve information. Knowledge is structured and organized so that you absorb the language easily and don't forget it. The method is designed to eliminate the stress which prevents you from relaxing and allowing the brain to work in the way which accepts learning in a seemingly painless, very exciting and highly motivating way.HOW DO THE COURSES WORK?'All stress inhibits true and effective learning' - Michel Thomas During the course, you will join Michel Thomas and two students in a live lesson, learning from both their successes and their mistakes to keep you motivated and involved throughout the course. You, as the learner, become the third student and participate actively in the class. Within the very first hour you will be able to construct simple phrases by listening and thinking out answers for yourself without the pressure of writing or stress of having to memorize. You will learn at your own pace, pausing and repeating where necessary, and complete the course in about 20-30 hours. By the end of the course, you will understand and have the confidence to speak basic Spanish. WHAT WILL I ACTUALLY ACHIEVE?'I am the architect who builds the house. It's up to you to decorate it.' - Michel ThomasThe Michel Thomas Method will help you kick-start, continue, and flourish in your Spanish language learning journey. It is not intended to get you perfectly fluent, but it will get you speaking and using Spanish, with proper pronunciation, faster than most any other method. It is designed to give you a strong foundation and good working knowledge of a language from which you can expand and later 'add decoration' to. It is a rapid method for learning, but still requires effort and concentration on the part of the learner. WHAT'S NEW IN THIS NEW EDITION? This new edition includes an audio review course to let you quickly revise and consolidate your learning once you've completed the full course. WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THE COURSE?* Foundation Spanish includes 8 audio course CDs and 2 audio review CDs to continue and consolidate your knowledge. The booklet is available to download from www.michelthomas.com. *Note that the course content is the same as the previously entitled Total Spanish course, but the CD-ROM has been replaced with audio review CDs. LEARN ANYWHERE! Reclaim your pockets of free time to learn a new language! Don't be tied to chunky books or your computer, Michel Thomas Method audio courses let you learn whenever and wherever you want, in as little or as much time as you have. WHERE DO I GO NEXT? Intermediate Spanish follows on from the Foundation course.

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'The thrill is that you're actually figuring it out on your own. You're engaging with another language, not just parroting it... It's an excellent way to start, and leaves the listener thinking, Hey, Ich kann do dis.' - New Yorker, David Sedaris, humorist and author, on learning German with the Michel Thomas MethodLooking for a convenient language course that fits your lifestyle and gets you speaking a new language in a matter of weeks, not years? The original no-books, no-homework, no-memorizing method is in tune with the way the brain prefers to receive, store and retrieve information. You'll stick with it because you'll love it. * Pick up French naturally and unforgettably without strain or stress* Learn from listening and speaking, without the pressure of writing or memorizing* Build up your French in manageable steps by thinking out answers for yourself WHY IS THE METHOD SO SUCCESSFUL?'What you understand, you know; and what you know, you don't forget.' - Michel Thomas Before there was machine learning, there was Michel Thomas. For over 50 years he worked on decoding languages by breaking them down into their most essential component parts. These 'building blocks' are introduced to the learner sequentially in such a way that you reconstruct the language for yourself - to form your own sentences, to say what you want, when you want. This unique method draws on the principles of instructional psychology and works with the way your brain prefers to receive, store and retrieve information. Knowledge is structured and organized so that you absorb the language easily and don't forget it. The method is designed to eliminate the stress which prevents you from relaxing and allowing the brain to work in the way which accepts learning in a seemingly painless, very exciting and highly motivating way.HOW DO THE COURSES WORK?'All stress inhibits true and effective learning' - Michel Thomas During the course, you will join Michel Thomas and two students in a live lesson, learning from both their successes and their mistakes to keep you motivated and involved throughout the course. You, as the learner, become the third student and participate actively in the class. Within the very first hour you will be able to construct simple phrases by listening and thinking out answers for yourself without the pressure of writing or stress of having to memorize. You will learn at your own pace, pausing and repeating where necessary, and complete the course in about 20-30 hours. By the end of the course, you will understand and have the confidence to speak basic French.WHAT WILL I ACTUALLY ACHIEVE?'I am the architect who builds the house. It's up to you to decorate it.' - Michel ThomasThe Michel Thomas Method will help you kick-start, continue, and flourish in your French language learning journey. It is not intended to get you perfectly fluent, but it will get you speaking and using French, with proper pronunciation, faster than most any other method. It is designed to give you a strong foundation and good working knowledge of a language from which you can expand and later 'add decoration' to. It is a rapid method for learning, but still requires effort and concentration on the part of the learner. WHAT'S NEW IN THIS NEW EDITION? This new edition includes an audio review course to let you quickly revise and consolidate your learning once you've completed the full course. WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THE COURSE?* Foundation French includes 8 audio course CDs and 2 audio review CDs to continue and consolidate your knowledge. The booklet is available to download from www.michelthomas.com. *Note that the course content is the same as the previously entitled Total French course, but the CD-ROM has been replaced with audio review CDs. LEARN ANYWHERE! Reclaim your pockets of free time to learn a new language! Don't be tied to chunky books or your computer, Michel Thomas Method audio courses let you learn whenever and wherever you want, in as little or as much time as you have. WHERE DO I GO NEXT? Intermediate French follows on from the Foundation course.

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Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space. With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.

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The work of Fabrice Samyn is as diverse as it is complex, often referencing masterpieces of art history. In his paintings, sculptures and drawings, the artist manages to translate and magnify details from the paintings of the old masters. With his fascination for the spoken word and everyday poetry, he also follows the path taken before him by his Belgian compatriot René Magritte.

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Solidification is one of the oldest processes for producing complex shapes for applications ranging from art to industry, and remains as one of the most important commercial processes for many materials. Since the 1980s, numerous fundamental developments in the understanding of solidification processes and microstructure formation have come from both analytical theories and the application of computational techniques using commonly available powerful computers. This book integrates these developments in a comprehensive volume that also presents and places them in the context of more classical theories. This second edition highlights the key concepts within each chapter to help guide the reader through the most important aspects of the topics. The figures are now in color, in order to improve the visualization of phenomena and concepts. Recent important developments in the field since the first edition was published have also been added. The three-part text is aimed at graduate and professional engineers. The first part, Fundamentals and Macroscale Phenomena, presents the thermodynamics of solutions and then builds on that subject to motivate and describe equilibrium phase diagrams. Transport phenomena are discussed next, focusing on the issues of most importance to liquid-solid phase transformations, then moving on to describing in detail both analytical and numerical approaches to solving such problems. The second part, Microstructure, employs these fundamental concepts for the treatment of nucleation, dendritic growth, microsegregation, eutectic and peritectic solidification, and microstructure competition. This part concludes with a chapter describing the coupling of macro- and microscopic phenomena in microstructure development. The third and final part describes various types of Defects that may occur, with emphasis on porosity, hot tearing and macrosegregation, presented using the modeling tools and microstructure descriptions developed earlier.

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Building on Oliver Williamson's original analysis, the contributors introduce new ideas, different perspectives and provide tools for better understanding changes in the approach to regulation, the reform of public utilities, and the complex problems of governance. They draw largely upon a transaction cost approach, highlighting the challenges faced by major economic sectors and identifying critical flaws in prevailing views on regulation. Deeply rooted in sector analysis, the book conveys a central message of new institutional economics: that theory should be continuously confronted by facts, and reformed or revolutionized accordingly. With its emphasis on the institutional embeddedness of regulatory issues and the problems generated by the 'benign neglect' of institutional factors in the reform of major public utilities, this book will provide a wide-ranging audience with challenging views on the dynamics of regulatory approaches. Economists, political scientists, postgraduate students, researchers and policymakers with an interest in institutional economics and economic organization will find the book to be a stimulating and enlightening read.

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Fast track route to fostering and exploiting a creative dynamic in any organisation Covers the key areas of creative team working and brainstorming, leading projects with a creative output, choosing and backing winning ideas and motivating and rewarding staff Examples and lessons from some of the world's most creative businesses, including AOL Time-Warner, BMW, IDEO and Nortel Networks, and ideas from the smartest thinkers, including Edward de Bono, Gary Hamel, Richard Pascale and W. Chan Kim Includes a glossary of key concepts and a comprehensive resources guide

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The work of Michel Houellebecq – one of the most widely read and controversial novelists of our time – is marked by the thought of Schopenhauer. When Houellebecq came across a copy of Schopenhauer's Aphorisms in a library in his mid-twenties, he was bowled over by it and he hunted down a copy of his major philosophical work, The World as Will and Representation. Houellebecq found in Schopenhauer – the radical pessimist, the chronicler of human suffering, the lonely misanthrope – a powerful conception of the human condition and of the future that awaits us, and when Houellebecq’s first writings appeared in the early 1990s, the influence of Schopenhauer was everywhere apparent. But it was only much later, in 2005, that Houellebecq began to translate and write a commentary on Schopenhauer’s work. He thought of turning it into a book but soon abandoned the idea and the text remained unpublished until 2017. Now available in English for the first time, In the Presence of Schopenhauer is the story of a remarkable encounter between a novelist and a philosopher and a testimony to the deep and enduring impact of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on one of France’s greatest living writers.

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The migration crisis of recent years has elicited a double response: on the one hand, many states have responded by tightening border controls, in an attempt to restrict population movements, while on the other hand many citizens have responded by welcoming new arrivals, offering them shelter, food and whatever help they could provide. By so doing, they have re-awakened an old form of anthropology that was long-considered to be dead – that of hospitality. In this book, Agier develops an original anthropology of hospitality that starts from the reality of hospitality as a social relationship, albeit an asymmetrical one, in which each party has rights and duties. He argues that, with the decline of state and religious support, hospitality is now making a comeback at individual and municipal levels but these local initiatives, while important, are insufficient to respond to the scale of migration in the world today. We need a new hospitality policy for the modern era, one that will regard hospitality as a right rather than a favour and will treat the stranger as a guest rather than as an alien or an enemy. This timely and original book will be of great interest to students and scholars in anthropology, sociology and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with migration and refugees in the world today.

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'I will build the foundation of the house, but it's up to you to decorate it.' Michel ThomasExperience significant results in a remarkably short period of time thanks to the unique Michel Thomas Method, perfected over 50 years by celebrated psycholinguist Michel Thomas. The method works in tune with how the brain prefers to receive, store and then retrieve information. You'll stick with it, because you'll love it.* Improve your German naturally and unforgettably, without strain* Learn from listening and speaking, without the pressure of writing or memorizing* Build up your German in manageable steps by thinking out answers for yourselfHow does it work?Learning vocabulary is notoriously difficult if attempted in the traditional way - with long lists and hours of memorization. With the Michel Thomas Method, new words and phrases are presented in such a way that they cannot be forgotten. In this five-hour phase-two course, Michel Thomas Method teacher Marion O'Dowd introduces over 1,000 carefully chosen 'power words,' including verbs and everyday phrases. Learning alongside two genuine students, you will exponentially build up your vocabulary by unlocking what you already know. What's new?This new edition includes remastered audio and comes in new, eco-friendly recyclable packaging.Why is it so successful? 'What you understand, you know; and what you know, you don't forget.' - Michel ThomasMichel Thomas believed that the greatest barrier to any form of learning was stress: stress from worrying about remembering what you are being taught, stress from being afraid to make a mistake, stress from failing.With the Michel Thomas Method, all the attention is focused on removing stress and tension from the learning environment. The teacher takes on full responsibility for your understanding, and therefore your remembering, of what is being taught. In fact, the Michel Thomas Method forbids you from trying to memorize. There's no writing, no books, no homework.The Michel Thomas Method works by stripping away all inessential language and breaking down the most important language into its component parts. Crystal-clear building blocks are then presented, and only when they are absorbed and understood is the next piece of the puzzle introduced, enabling you to reconstruct the language for yourself - to form your own sentences, to say what you want, when you want.What's in the Course?*German Vocabulary Course comprises 5 course CDs. The booklet is available to download from www.michelthomas.com.*Note that the course content is the same as the previously entitled German Vocabulary Builder+ course, but does not include a CD-ROM.Learn anywhereMichel Thomas Method audio courses let you learn whenever you want: at home, in your car, or on the move. The audio CDs are MP3-compatible.What learners are sayingI experienced the same sort of pleasure that you got from suddenly getting a crossword clue right or cracking a code...the finger-snapping moment of, Oh My God! I've just understood what you've said to me in Spanish or you've just understood me! -Peter LØVSTRØM , Actor, 2017I've used Michel Thomas to get off the starting block for French, Italian and Spanish and I'm always surprised by how much I can say after only a few hours of listening. The Michel Thomas Italian course organises verbs into logical groups which helps you pick them up fast. And perhaps more importantly, it shows you how to use this grammar to build useful sentences. -Katie from Joyoflanguages.com

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Learn about the luxury brand industry from the inside out with this masterful and insightful resource The newly revised Fourth Edition of Luxury Brand Management in Digital and Sustainable Times delivers a timely re-examination of what constitutes the contemporary luxury brand landscape and the current trends that shape the sector. Distinguished experts and authors Michel Chevalier and Gerald Mazzalovo provide readers with a comprehensive treatment of the macro- and micro-economic aspects of management, communication, distribution, logistics, and creation in the luxury industry. Readers will learn about the growing importance of authenticity and sustainability in the management of fashion, perfume, cosmetics, spirits, hotels and hospitality, jewelry, and other luxury brands, as well as the strategic issues facing the companies featured in the book. The new edition offers: A new chapter on the "Luxury of Tomorrow," with a particular focus on authenticity and durable development A completely revised chapter on "Communication in Digital Times," which takes into account the digital dimension of brand identity and its implications on customer engagement activities and where the concept of Customer Journey is introduced as a key marketing tool A rewritten chapter on "Luxury Clients" that considers the geographical changes in luxury consumption Considerations on the emerging notion of "New Luxury" Major updates to the data and industry figures contained within the book and a new section dedicated to the hospitality industry New semiotic analytical tools developed from the authors’ contemporary brand management experiences Perfect for MA and MBA students, Luxury Brand Management also belongs on the bookshelves of marketing, branding, and advertising professionals who hope to increase their understanding of the major trends and drivers of success in this sector.

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With subtle, bemused humor and an unerring eye for human frailty, Michel Layaz is known for his tender writing about the hidden tensions within families, the awkwardness of adolescence, and the drama of intimacy between friends and lovers. His fifth novel, My Mother's Tears, is his most poignant yet. The adult narrator of My Mother's Tears has returned to clean out his childhood home after his mother's death. In thirty short chapters, each focused on a talismanic object or resonant episode from his childhood, the narrator tries to solve the mystery behind the flood of tears with which his strikingly beautiful, intelligent, and inscrutable mother greeted his birth. Like insects preserved in amber, these objects--an artificial orchid, a statue, a pair of green pumps, a steak knife, a fishing rod and reel, among others--are surrounded by an aura that permeates the narrator's life. Interspersed with these chapters are fragments from the narrator's conversation with his present lover, a woman who demands that he verbally confront his past. This difficult conversation charts his gradual liberation from the psychological wounds he suffered growing up. Not only an account of a son's attempt to understand his enigmatic mother, My Mother's Tears is also a moving novel about language and memory that explores the ambivalent power of words to hurt and to heal, to revive the past and to put childhood demons to rest.

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For the first time in English, the introductory volume in a major French philosopher’s groundbreaking series of poetic transdisciplinary works Michel Serres is recognized as one of the giants of postwar French philosophy of knowledge, along with Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilbert Simondon. His early five-volume series Hermes, which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, was an intellectual supernova in its proposition that culture and science shared the same mythic and narrative structures. Hermes I: Communication marks the start of a major publishing endeavor to introduce this foundational series into English. Building on the figure of the Greek god Hermes, who presides over the realms of communication and interpretation, Hermes I embarks on a reflection concerning the history of mathematics via Descartes and Leibniz and culminates by way of a Bachelardian logoanalytic reading of Homer, Dumas, Molière, Verne, and the story of Cinderella. We observe a singular poetic philosopher seeking to bridge the gap between the liberal arts and the sciences through a profound mathematical and poetic fable regarding information theory, history, and art, establishing a new way to think about the production of knowledge during the late twentieth century. In these pages, students and scholars of philosophy will discover an extraordinary project of thought as vital to critical reflection today as it was fifty years ago.

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To free his father and himself from his mother's tyranny, Pierre Rivière decided to kill her. On June 3,1835, he went inside his small Normandy house with a pruning hook and cut to death his mother, his eighteen-year-old sister, and his seven-year-old brother. Then, in jail, he wrote a memoir to justify the whole gruesome tale. Michel Foucault, author of Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish, collected the relevant documents of the case, including medical and legal testimony, police records. and Rivière's memoir. The Rivière case, he points out, occurred at a time when many professions were contending for status and power. Medical authority was challenging law, branches of government were vying. Foucault's reconstruction of the case is a brilliant exploration of the roots of our contemporary views of madness, justice, and crime.

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If not by nature, then by habit, people tend to match one thing with another—man and woman, laughter and tears, sickness and health, fire and water, master and servant—thereby accentuating similarities and contrasts and opening a field of relations. In The Mirror of Ideas, Michel Tournier examines these pairs and a host of others to demonstrate how pairing one object or idea with another generates the work of imagination, philosophy, and creative thinking of all kinds. Tournier treats pairs both lowly and exalted—moving from fork and spoon, horse and bull, cat and dog, to fear and anguish, poetry and prose, body and soul, being and nothingness. Hardly an exhaustive inventory of traditional pairs, his selection nonetheless opens the door to patterns deeply embedded in culture and civilization, speech and writing, memory and habit. Possessed of both brilliant surfaces and surprising depths, Tournier’s myriad reflections on the mirror of language reveal why his works have generated international attention and acclaim.

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Jean and Paul are identical twins. Outsiders, even their parents, cannot tell them apart, and call them Jean-Paul. The mysterious bond between them excludes all others; they speak their own language; they are one perfectly harmonious unit; they are, in all innocence, lovers. For Paul, this unity is paradise, but as they grow up Jean rebels against it. He takes a mistress and deserts his brother, but Paul sets out to follow him in a pilgrimage that leads all around the world, through places that reflect their separation-the mirrored halls of Venice, the Zen gardens of Japan, the newly divided city of Berlin. The exquisite love story of Jean-Paul is set against the ugliness and pain of human existence. Gemini is a novel of extraordinary proportions, intricate images, and profound thought, in which Michel Tournier tells his fascinating story with an irresistible humor.

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Exploring the interrelationship between war and politics, a series of lectures by the late French philosopher traces the evolution of a new understanding of society and its relation to war, revealing war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

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Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space. With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.

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This text offers a new beginning for philosophy rooted in a theory of questioning which the author calls "problematology." He argues that a new beginning is necessary in order to resituate philosophy, science and linguistic analysis. For Meyer, philosophy does not solve problems or give answers but instead shows how propositions are related to a whole field of questions that give them meaning. Reason is identified not with answers but with the question-answer process. Meyer pursues this theory of reason and meaning in a critique of Western philosophy from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle through Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Foucault. He provides an analysis of Descartes' notion of radical doubt and demonstrates its implications for the subsequent philosophical tradition. Meyer argues that recent work in rhetoric points toward a theory of radical questioning and claims that the methods of rhetoric and argumentation must be turned back on philosophy itself in order to recover the original significance of metaphysics as the science of ultimate questions.

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There are several concepts within the social sciences that refer to the fundamental realities on which the various disciplines focus their attention. The concept of the "center," as defined by Edward Shils, has such a status in sociology, for it deals with and attempts to provide an answer to the central question of the discipline—the question of the constitution of society. "Center" is a commonly used term with a variety of meanings. According to editors Liah Greenfeld and Michel Martin, "center" carries a twofold meaning when used as a concept. In its first sense, it is a synonym for "central value system," referring to irreducible values and beliefs that establish the identity of individuals and bind them into a common universe. In its second sense, "center" refers to "central institutional system," the authoritative institutions and persons who often express or embody the central value system. Both meanings imply a corresponding idea of "periphery," referring both to the elements of society that need to be integrated and to institutions and persons who lack authority. The original essays compiled in this volume examine and apply the concept of the center in different contexts. The contributors come from a broad range of disciplines—classics, religion, philosophy, history, literary criticism, anthropology, political science, and sociology—which serves to underscore the far-reaching significance of the Shilsean theory of society. The interrelated subsets of the "center-periphery" theme addressed here include: symbolic systems, intellectuals, the expansion of the center into the periphery, parallel concepts in the work of other scholars besides Shils, and the paths of research inspired by these concepts. The volume features an introspective essay by Shils himself, in which he reexamines his central ideas in the light of new experiences and the ideas of others, some of them contained in this volume. By drawing together such diverse scholars around a unified idea, this collection achieves a cohesion that makes it an exciting contribution to the comparative analysis of social and cultural systems. A collective effort in social theory, Center: Ideas and Institutions is a testimony to the breadth and complexity of one of man's ideas.

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On a train from Paris to Rome on his way to surprise his lover, the businessman Leon Delmont begins to mull over his past and question the decisions he has made about his future. These musings - together with his impressions of the unfolding scenery, conjectures about his fellow passengers and some recurring leitmotifs - form the basis of a riveting narrative that provides a psychological case study of an everyman and subtly illustrates the onset of the protagonist's doubts and fears. Published in 1957 and awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Michel Butor's groundbreaking third novel remains the most popular and widely read work of the nouveau roman genre. Famously written in the second person in order to immerse the reader more fully into the psyche of the main character, Changing Track pulls off the rare feat of being at once experimental and accessible, disquieting and engrossing.

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In March 1985, the National Museum of Luxembourg unexpectedly received a generous bequest from the estate of Edward Steichen, the Luxembourg-born and world-renowned American photographer. The bequest comprises a total of 178 prints, including 175 photographs by Steichen himself that cover almost all aspects of his photographic oeuvre — from the pictorialist images of his early years to portraiture, fashion, advertising, landscapes, and family photographs. For the first time, this extraordinary collection is presented in a comprehensive scholarly manner, with full-page illustrations of all 178 photographs. In addition, the publication includes six new essays by five authors that deal with questions of identification, techniques, and dating of the prints as well as their conservation and preservation. They examine the provenance and impact history of the collection and compare the significance of the Luxembourg donation with other bequests made at the same time to institutions in the United States and overseas. The significance of the astonishingly large number of family photographs in the Luxembourg bequest and Steichen’s special role as a mediator of Modernism between Europe and the New World are also explored. Texts by: Kerstin Bartels Gerd Hurm, Julia Niewind, Malgorzata Nowara, Michel Polfer, Françoise Poos, Gilles Zeimet

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The volume contains twenty-eight studies of various aspects of the case systems of Sumerian, Hurrian, Elamite, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Old Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Indo-European, the languages of the Bisitun inscription, Hittite, Armenian, Sabellic, Gothic, Latin, Icelandic, Slavic, Russian, Ouralien, Tokharian and Etruscan. The volume concludes with a paper on future directions.

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The study of the European Union has historically been a theoretical battleground. Since the 1990s, new theoretical directions such as neo-institutionalism, multi-level governance and constructivism have provided a new impetus. However, despite these new inroads, empirical work has often remained sociologically and empirically underspecified. This volume seeks to bridge the gap between theory and fieldwork by developing an actor-centred political sociology. In doing so, the volume engages in a critical dialogue with the constructivist framework and proposes to build on its insights through a sociological hardening centred on European actors.The renewal of European studies through political sociology is only useful if it generates new understandings through empirical observation. This volume seeks to take a new tack on constructivism by asking what it is that Europe constructs by looking at three areas- social spaces and professions, policy 'problems' and policies and policy instruments such as the Eurobarometer.

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