Search results for ""counterpoint""

Southwest Book Awards, Border Regional Library Association (BRLA) Uses key words and striking images to explore violence and everyday life in Juárez, Mexico. Juárez, Mexico, is known for violence. The femicides of the 1990s, and the cartel mayhem that followed, made it one of the world's most dangerous cities. Along with the violence came a new lexicon that traveled from person to person, across rivers and borders—wherever it was needed to explain the horrors taking place. From personal interviews, media accounts, and conversations on the street, Julián Cardona and Alice Leora Briggs have collected the words and slang that make up the brutal language of Juárez, creating a glossary that serves as a linguistic portrait of the city and its violence. Organized alphabetically, the entries consist of Spanish and Spanglish, accompanied by short English definitions. Some also feature a longer narrative drawn from interviews—stories that put the terms in context and provide a personal counterpoint to media reports of the same events. Letters, and many of the entries, are supplemented with Briggs’s evocative illustrations, which are reminiscent of Hans Holbein’s famous Alphabet of Death. Together, the words, drawings, and descriptions in ABCedario de Juárez both document and interpret the everyday violence of this vital border city.

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Paul is a top business executive hoping to be the next CEO of Ascendant—a New York-based tech giant. He neglects everything—his family and himself—in the race to the top. His fast-paced life is interrupted when he travels to Glastonbury, England, to visit friends in a village rich in history and mysticism. Glastonbury represents a complete counterpoint to Paul’s elite corporate day job. It compares to an amusement park, with shops and venues catering to spiritual seekers ranging from would-be witches, goddesses and druids, and burned-out hippies. Like many seekers before him, he is attracted to the energy of a nearby hill—Tor—said to be the mythical Isle of Avalon. Paul meets a beautiful soul reader, Christine, who reads his soul and plants the seeds that turn his life upside down. When he returns to New York, his wife, Mary, is skeptical. Is Paul having a spiritual awakening or is he falling in love with an attractive charlatan? His journey both scares and intrigues her as she watches him struggle to navigate between the business and spiritual worlds. A series of synchronistic events draws Paul closer to Glastonbury and Christine, compelling him and a reluctant Mary to return, unaware that their lives will never be the same.

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Not Out of Hate—published in Burmese in 1955 and set in 1939–42—was Ma Ma Lay’s fifth novel and one that further cemented her status as one of twentieth-century Burma’s foremost writers and voices for change. A journalist by trade, Lay applied her straightforward observational style with compassion and purpose to the story of Way Way, a teenage village girl whose quiet life assisting her father in his rice-brokerage business is disrupted by the arrival of U Saw Han, the cosmopolitan Burmese rice trader twenty years her senior. When she first encounters him, Way Way is entranced by his Western furnishings, servants, and mannerisms. The two marry, but before long, it becomes clear that U Saw Han’s love is a stifling one that seeks to obliterate her traditional ways. Not Out of Hate was enormously popular in Burma and went through several editions in the 1950s and 1960s. When Ohio University Press published its English translation, in 1991, it became the first significant fictional account of prewar Burma available in English since George Orwell’s Burmese Days, and provided a Burmese counterpoint to Orwell’s novel. Translated into English here for the first time, the novel is an engaging drama, finely observed work of social realism, and stirring rejection of Western cultural dominance.

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Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She worked as a seamstress, attended the Institute for Colored Youth, and was an active member of her community. She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community. Her diaries allow the reader to experience the Civil War in “real time” and are a counterpoint to more widely known diaries of the period. Judith Giesberg has written an accessible introduction, situating Davis and her diaries within the historical, cultural, and political context of wartime Philadelphia. In addition to furnishing a new window through which to view the war’s major events, Davis’s diaries give us a rare look at how the war was experienced as a part of everyday life—how its dramatic turns and lulls and its pervasive, agonizing uncertainty affected a northern city with a vibrant black community.

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In a world where women and girls are constantly under attack from the media with photoshopped, airbrushed images and pop-stars that tell them all they need to do is party all the time, kiss a lot of boys, be a “mean girl” to gain popularity, max their credit cards to buy designer clothes, etc., The Lost Art of Ladyhood communicates the counterpoint to those of our teen pop stars. Happiness does not come from revealing all your skin, going clubbing every weekend where you get so drunk you don’t remember who you kissed, or maxing your credit cards just so you can buy the latest designer jeans. Happiness comes from living a life of character.Teaching girls how to be ladylike has little to do with crossing your ankles and sipping tea correctly; it’s about giving them tools and skills they can use to serve others, to be grateful, to think positively, to set powerful goals, to protect themselves from toxic relationships, and to learn to love themselves enough to where they learn to love others. The Lost Art of Ladyhood is a road map for navigate your way to confidence, classy-ness, character, and learning the lost art of being a lady.

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The first book of legal advice for the hip hop generation, Covering areas ranging from how to secure the best public defender to what to do when driving DWB, this is a step-by-step guide to the criminal system for those who need it most written by a criminal defense attorney who knows this world from the inside out.A counterpoint to the Law and Order justice the public sees and believes in. This is the real criminal justice system, as told from someone inside, someone fights it ever day. This is not a manual for how to get off, how to be a better criminal. It is proof that the system will eat you up and spit you out if you dare to become involved or think you can beat it. Raw Law authoritatively addresses the legal issues faced by the hip hop generation, and offers a simple guide on how to avoid certain situations and how to learn and respond to others. Here readers will learn the truths and untruths of the justice system and how they can protect themselves from the worst of it. But most of all, they will learn how to follow the first rule of the criminal justice system: AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.

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A Sunday Times must read book of 2019 'An out-of-this-world read ... brilliant and compelling. Morton is a high-octane British science journalist, and every chapter is littered with material that strikes, amazes or haunts ... this is a book filled not just with a lifetime's knowledge of its subject but with a lifetime's suppressed excitement.' James McConnachie, Sunday Times Every generation has looked up from the Earth and wondered at the beauty of the Moon. 50 years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse - with the whole world watching through their eyes. In this short but wide-ranging book, Oliver Morton explores the history and future of humankind's relationship with the Moon. A counterpoint in the sky, it has shaped our understanding of the Earth from Galileo to Apollo. Its gentle light has spoken of love and loneliness; its battered surface of death and the cosmic. For some, it is a future on which humankind has turned its back. For others, an adventure yet to begin. Advanced technologies, new ambitions and old dreams mean that men, women and robots now seem certain to return to the Moon. What will they learn there about the universe, the Earth-and themselves? And, this time, will they stay?

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Barack Obama’s political ascendancy has focused considerable global attention on the history of Kenya generally and the history of the Luo community particularly. From politicos populating the blogosphere and bookshelves in the U.S and Kenya, to tourists traipsing through Obama’s ancestral home, a variety of groups have mobilized new readings of Kenya’s past in service of their own ends. Through narratives placing Obama into a simplified, sweeping narrative of anticolonial barbarism and postcolonial “tribal” violence, the story of the United States president’s nuanced relationship to Kenya has been lost amid stereotypical portrayals of Africa. At the same time, Kenyan state officials have aimed to weave Obama into the contested narrative of Kenyan nationhood. Matthew Carotenuto and Katherine Luongo argue that efforts to cast Obama as a “son of the soil” of the Lake Victoria basin invite insights into the politicized uses of Kenya’s past. Ideal for classroom use and directed at a general readership interested in global affairs, Obama and Kenya offers an important counterpoint to the many popular but inaccurate texts about Kenya’s history and Obama’s place in it as well as focused, thematic analyses of contemporary debates about ethnic politics, “tribal” identities, postcolonial governance, and U.S. African relations.

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This JPS ethics series deals with some of the most critical moral issues of our time.What are our obligations and rights to our own bodies? What does Judaism say about tattoos? Piercings? About our obligations to exercise and eat properly? What about smoking? Alcohol? Recreational drugs? Who owns our organs? What about our eggs and sperm? If resources are limited, whose body comes first and how do we decide? Why do so many young Jews suffer from eating disorders? Each volume in this series presents traditional and contemporary sources on specific topics, followed by hypothetical cases and study questions to provoke discussion. Supplementing these are brief essays written by a diverse group—political figures and journalists, business professionals and authors, scholars and artists, young voices and old, traditional believers and iconoclasts. As a conclusion, Dorff and Newman present their own reflections, providing a counterpoint to the contributors' perspectives. These voices from the Jewish tradition and today’s Jewish community give us new questions and perspectives to think about and encourage us to consider our moral choices in a new light. Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices takes a hard look at important and controversial topics of our time. Future volumes include Power; War and National Security; Sexual Relations; and The Internet.

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Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She worked as a seamstress, attended the Institute for Colored Youth, and was an active member of her community. She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community. Her diaries allow the reader to experience the Civil War in “real time” and are a counterpoint to more widely known diaries of the period. Judith Giesberg has written an accessible introduction, situating Davis and her diaries within the historical, cultural, and political context of wartime Philadelphia. In addition to furnishing a new window through which to view the war’s major events, Davis’s diaries give us a rare look at how the war was experienced as a part of everyday life—how its dramatic turns and lulls and its pervasive, agonizing uncertainty affected a northern city with a vibrant black community.

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The Art of Possibility offers a set of breakthrough practices for creativity in all human enterprises. This inspirational book is a synthesis of Rosamund Stone Zander's knowledge of cutting-edge psychology and Benjamin Zander's experiences as the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Infused with the energy of their dynamic partnership, the book joins together Ben's extraordinary talent as a mover and shaker, teacher, and communicator with Rosamund's genius for creating innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment. In lively counterpoint, the authors provide us with a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of our lives. The Zanders' deceptively simple practices are based on two premises: that life is composed as a story ("it's all invented") and that, with new definitions, much more is possible than people ordinarily think. The book shifts our perspective with uplifting stories, parables, and anecdotes. From "Giving an A" to the mysterious "Rule Number 6" to "Leading from Any Chair"--the account of Ben's stunning realization that the conductor/leader's power is directly linked to how much greatness he is willing to grant to others--each practice offers an opportunity for personal and organizational transformation.

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A practical manual for building musical understanding and physical skills, intended for conductors at all stages of development. This book is a practical manual for anyone who stands on a podium helping an ensemble make music. The four main chapters address the major obligations of the conductor: (1) bringing the musical tones to life in the most beautiful,most moving way possible; (2) freeing the mind to fully absorb all the tones; (3) freeing the body of unnecessary tension; and (4) effectively using the freed mind and body to influence the sounds. Each chapter begins with a summary of the underlying principles, presents real-life applications, and offers exercises for developing skills. Video demonstrations of the exercises as well as downloadable scores and parts are available on a companion website. The parts, in multiple transpositions, allow for hands-on experience where standard instrumental complements are unavailable. Markand Thakar, music director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, is an internationally renowned pedagogue of conducting. A protégé of the legendary Sergiu Celibidache and former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Thakar is author of Looking for the "Harp" Quartet: An Investigation into Musical Beauty (University of Rochester Press, 2011) and Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making (Yale University Press, 1990).

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Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680–1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart a more autonomous path. The loss of Brazil and New Netherland were twin blows to Dutch imperial pretensions. Yet the Dutch Atlantic hardly faded into insignificance. Instead, the influence of the Dutch remained, as they were increasingly drawn into the imperial systems of Britain, Spain, and France. In their synthetic and comparative history, Klooster and Oostindie reveal the fragmented identity and interconnectedness of the Dutch in three Atlantic theaters: West Africa, Guiana, and the insular Caribbean. They show that the colonies and trading posts were heterogeneous in their governance, religious profiles, and ethnic compositions and were marked by creolization. Even as colonial control weakened, the imprint of Dutch political, economic, and cultural authority would mark territories around the Atlantic for decades to come. Realm between Empires is a powerful revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and provides a much-needed counterpoint to the more widely known British and French Atlantic histories.

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Neil Ansell's THE LAST WILDERNESS is a mesmerising book on nature and solitude by a writer who has spent his lifetime taking solitary ventures into the wild. For any readers of the author's previous book, DEEP COUNTRY, Robert Macfarlane's THE OLD WAYS or William Atkins THE MOOR.Shortlisted for the 2018 Wainwright Golden Beer Book PrizeShortlisted for the 2018 Highland Book Prize 'Ansell has the rare skill of combining vividly the intimacy of detail and the astonishing grandeur of this North West coastline of Scotland. Through his keen eyes we look again at the familiar with a sense of wondrous revelation' Madeleine Bunting 'Beautiful...a testimony to reticent courage' Daily MailThe experience of being in nature alone is here set within the context of a series of walks that Neil Ansell takes into the most remote parts of Britain, the rough bounds in the Scottish Highlands. He illustrates the impact of being alone as part of nature, rather than outside it.As a counterpoint, Neil Ansell also writes of the changes in the landscape, and how his hearing loss affects his relationship with nature as the calls of the birds he knows so well become silent to him.

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'Well, a corpse is a natural thing; but this was the dreadfullest sight I ever sid...' Sheridan Le Fanu is one of the indispensable figures in the history of Gothic and horror fiction-the most important such writer in English, certainly, between Poe and M. R. James. While a number of his sensation and mystery novels were popular with mid-Victorian readers, it was in shorter forms that he truly excelled, and most showed himself an innovator in the field of uncanny fiction. Tales such as 'Carmilla' and 'Green Tea' prompted M. R. James to remark, 'he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer'. This landmark critical edition includes the original versions of all five stories later collected in the superb In a Glass Darkly, along with seven equally chilling tales spanning the length of Le Fanu's career, from 'Schalken the Painter', a pioneering story of the walking dead, to 'Laura Silver Bell', a haunting exploration of the dark side of fairy lore. Aaron Worth's introduction discusses the paranoid, claustrophobic world of Le Fanu's fiction as a counterpoint-one in its own way equally modern-to the cosmic horror tale as practiced by such writers as H. P. Lovecraft.

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Fairy tales are supposed to be magical, surprising, and exhilarating, an enchanting counterpoint to everyday life that nonetheless helps us understand and deal with the anxieties of that life. Today, however, fairy tales are far from marvelous - in the hands of Hollywood, they have been stripped of their power, offering little but formulaic narratives and tame surprises. If we want to rediscover the power of fairy tales - as Armando Maggi thinks we should - we need to discover a new mythic lens, a new way of approaching and understanding, and thus re-creating, the transformative potential of these stories. In Preserving the Spell, Maggi argues that the first step is to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that together created the fairy tales we know today. He begins his exploration with the ur-text of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, then traces its path through later Italian, French, English, and German traditions, with particular emphasis on the Grimm Brothers' adaptations of the tales, which are included in the first-ever English translation in an appendix. Carrying his story into the twentieth century, Maggi mounts a powerful argument for freeing fairy tales from their bland contemporary forms, and reinvigorating our belief that we still can find new, powerfully transformative ways of telling these stories.

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'Fans of Alexander McCall Smith will love Scotty Elliott's Sibanda series' Sunday Times (SA)Detective Sibanda and Sergeant Ncube are back!Two bodies are discovered near Gubu, one burning at the base of a tree struck by lightning and, on the banks of the Zambezi, a second killing which threatens to tear Detective Sibanda's life apart. The victims are not connected as one is a foreign wildlife researcher and the other a local driver, but Sibanda's intuition tells him the murders are linked. The only clues are a fragment of material found in the brain of one victim, a puncture wound in the thigh of the other, and a diary full of coded names.As the men investigate further, they find links to an ivory smuggling gang and in their pursuit of the killer, Sibanda and Ncube not only have to cope with their temperamental Landrover, their chief inspector's lack of cooperation, but a rough and remote landscape full of wild and dangerous adventure.Praise for C. M. Elliott:"C.M. Elliott has created a lively cast of characters and an intricate, clever plot..." - Margaret von Klemperer, The Witness"A thrilling detective yarn and a finely-drawn picture of the counterpoint between the gentle music of the bush and the harsher notes of poachers' deadly gunfire - The Citizen

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Examines the cultural significance of the werewolf film Provides the first academic monograph dedicated to developing a cultural understanding of the werewolf film Reconsiders the psychoanalytic paradigms that have dominated scholarly discussion of werewolves in pop culture Includes over 40 individual case studies to illustrate how werewolf films can be understood as products of their cultural moment Identifies the cinematic werewolf's most common metaphorical dimensions Horror monsters such as the vampire, the zombie and Frankenstein's creature have long been the subjects of in-depth cultural studies, but the cinematic werewolf has often been considered little more than the 'beast within' a psychoanalytic analogue for the bestial side of man. This book, the first scholarly study of the werewolf in cinema, redresses the balance by exploring over 100 years of werewolf films, from The Werewolf (1913) to Wildling (2018) via The Wolf Man (1941), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Howling (1981) and WolfCop (2014). Revealing the significance of she-wolves and wolf-men as evolving metaphors for the cultural fears and anxieties of their times, Phases of the Moon serves as a companion and a counterpoint to existing scholarship on the werewolf in popular culture, and illustrates how we can begin to understand one of our oldest mythical monsters as a rich and diverse cultural metaphor.

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Young Nour is a North African desert tribesman. It is 1909, and as the First World War looms Nour's tribe - the Blue Men - are forced from their lands by French colonial invaders. Spurred on by thirst, hunger, suffering, they seek guidance from a great spiritual leader. The holy man sends them even further from home, on an epic journey northward, in the hope of finding a land in which they can again be free. Decades later, an orphaned descendant of the Blue Men - a girl called Lalla - is living in a shantytown on the coast of Morocco. Lalla has inherited both the pride and the resilience of her tribe - and she will need them, as she makes a bid to escape her forced marriage to a wealthy older man. She flees to Marseilles, where she experiences both the hardships of immigrant life - as a hotel maid - and the material prosperity of those who succeed - when she becomes a successful model. And yet Lalla does not betray the legacy of her ancestors.In these two narratives set in counterpoint, Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio tells - powerfully and movingly - the story of the 'last free men' and of Europe's colonial legacy - a story of war and exile and of the endurance of the human spirit.

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The remarkable story of how Greek-speaking writers and thinkers sustained and developed the intellectual legacy of Classical Greece under the rule of Rome. In 146 BC, Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic; some sixty years later, when Athens and other Greek city-states rebelled against Rome, the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato, laying waste the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied. However, the traditions of Greek cultural life would continue to flourish – across the eastern Mediterranean world and beyond – during the centuries of Roman rule that followed, in the lives and work of a distinguished array of philosophers, rhetoricians, historians, doctors, scientists, geographers and theologians. Charles Freeman's accounts of such luminaries as the polymathic physician Galen, the soldier-botanist Dioscorides, the Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Ptolemy and the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with 'interludes' that counterpoint and contextualise a sequence of unjustly neglected and richly influential lives. This is the story of a vibrant, constantly evolving tradition of intellectual inquiry across a period of more than five hundred years, from the second century BC to the start of the fifth century ad – one that would help shape the intellectual landscape of the Middle Ages and long after. The Children of Athena is a cultural history on an epic scale.

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A profound and genre-defying work of literature about love, death, and illness from one of Portugal’s most celebrated writers “One of the essential writers of our tormented times.”—Alberto Manguel, Times Literary Supplement “Little prepares one for this extraordinary book, in which each chapter, covering a single day, and lasting a single sentence, offers a teeming stream of consciousness. . . . Even pain is alive, and alive is the word for this book, alive and enduring.”— Michael Autrey, Booklist Incapacitated after the removal of a malignant tumor, the narrator, António, spends his days in a Lisbon hospital enduring the humiliations of severe illness. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he revisits fragments of his life and the people who passed through it. He recalls the village where he lived as a child near the Mondego River amid the eucalyptus and pines, his parents and grandparents and their tight-knit community of potato farmers and tungsten miners, and the woman he loved—an unexpected polyphony of voices and places sounding in sharp counterpoint to debilitating pain. By the Rivers of Babylon conjures the past and the present all at once, revealing the power of memory to embolden us in the face of extraordinary suffering. This is António Lobo Antunes’s homage to the beauty of a cherished life in its confrontation with imminent death.

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In Gone Girls, 1684-1901, Nora Gilbert argues that the persistent trope of female characters running away from some iteration of 'home' played a far more influential role in the histories of both the rise of the novel and the rise of modern feminism than previous accounts have acknowledged. For as much as the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novel may have worked to establish the private, middle-class, domestic sphere as the rightful (and sole) locus of female authority in the ways that prior critics have outlined, it was also continually showing its readers female characters who refused to buy into such an agenda--refusals which resulted, strikingly often, in those characters' physical flights from home. The steady current of female flight coursing through this body of literature serves as a powerful counterpoint to the ideals of feminine modesty and happy homemaking it was expected officially to endorse, and challenges some of novel studies' most accepted assumptions. Just as the #MeToo movement has used the tool of repeated, aggregated storytelling to take a stand against contemporary rape culture, Gone Girls, 1684-1901 identifies and amplifies a recurrent strand of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British storytelling that served both to emphasize the prevalence of gendered injustices throughout the period and to narrativize potential ways and means for readers facing such injustices to rebel, resist, and get out.

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Identity Politics and the Third World revisits the theories of identification in challenging existing methods of ascertaining developing world identities on the grounds of objectivity and universality. The construction of postcolonial identities refers to the creation of systems of identification. This construction is undertaken at two levels: by the colonizer, in the form of myths about the subject races and a simultaneous belief in the notion that the subject cannot represent him/herself; and subsequently, by the colonized in an attempt to resist colonization and establish a sense of solidarity against the rulers. In the global context, the third world becomes a market place where identities are framed by the laws of consumer dynamics. Identities are again constructed here on two levels: by the forces of multinational economics, in the form of essentially hybrid, homogenously differentiated communities, and, in counterpoint, by the myths of unique national cultures.This book is designed to describe and critically analyse the structuring of identity and culture and the politics that informs them. Centering on the concepts of ‘polarity’ and ‘in-betweenness’, the idea of cosmopolitan or global identity is deconstructed in the wake of capitalist consumerism and multinational politics using the theories of identity construction and representation as formulated by Edward Said and Homi Bhabha for understanding colonialist politics and the postcolonial condition.

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The OfficeUS Agenda, the catalogue for the U.S. Pavilion, serves simultaneously as a guide and counterpoint to the exhibition. Organized into stories of expertise, exchange, and export, the Agenda frames the narratives that have projected the organizational structures and branded identity of U.S. architecture firms internationally from 1914-2014. The Agenda includes thirteen essays of original scholarship, including Barry Bergdoll, Beatriz Colomina, Jorge Otero-Pailos and Keller Easterling. OfficeUS, the U.S. Pavilion for the 2014 International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, reframes the history of U.S. architecture through the lens of export in two interrelated constructs: "The Office" and "The Repository." The Repository presents 1000 projects designed by 200 US offices working abroad in a chronological archive of the last 100 years. Collectively these projects tell multiple, imbricated stories of U.S. firms, typologies, and technologies, as well as a broader narrative of modernization and its global reach. The Office engages these projects, revisiting their premises and conclusions over the course of the Biennale. It functions as a laboratory staffed by a diverse group of resident design partners collaborating with outpost offices and a rotating cast of visiting experts. Together, these two halves of OfficeUS create both an historical record of the U.S. contribution to global architectural thought, and a petri dish in which that record is submitted to contemporary agents of disruption and critique.

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World-renowned experts debate key topics in pediatric neurosurgery In Controversies in Pediatric Neurosurgery, leading clinicians from around the globe present concrete advice and frank commentary on alternative options for the treatment and management of specific cranial and spinal disorders. Each succinct, easily accessible chapter addresses a different condition in a point/counterpoint format that discusses the pros and cons of the various treatment options, including surgical approaches and techniques. This highly practical, balanced coverage equips readers to make well-informed choices when selecting the most appropriate treatment modality for a particular diagnosis. Features: Lessons Learned at the end of each chapter, in which the authors summarize the debate with multiple viewpoints and carefully considered recommendations based on published evidence and their own clinical experience Incisive dialogue on twenty hot topics in the field, including how to manage arachnoid cysts, craniosynostosis, tethered cord, hydrocephalus, chiari malformations, epilepsy, aneurysms, and more Clinical and personal insights from international contributors on the variability of surgical training, experience, and available resources in different parts of the world Guidance on how to discuss treatment options and strategies to patients and their families This book is essential reading for every clinician, resident, or fellow who needs a firm understanding of the most controversial issues in pediatric neurosurgery to be able to make the best decision for the appropriate treatment option for patients in their care.

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In this original study, Christopher Alan Reynolds examines the influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on two major nineteenth-century composers, Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann. During 1845 46 the compositional styles of Schumann and Wagner changed in a common direction, toward a style that was more contrapuntal, more densely motivic, and engaged in processes of thematic transformation. Reynolds shows that the stylistic advances that both composers made in Dresden in 1845 46 stemmed from a deepened understanding of Beethoven's techniques and strategies in the Ninth Symphony. The evidence provided by their compositions from this pivotal year and the surrounding years suggests that they discussed Beethoven's Ninth with each other in the months leading up to the performance of this work, which Wagner conducted on Palm Sunday in 1846. Two primary aspects that appear to have interested them both are Beethoven's use of counterpoint involving contrary motion and his gradual development of the Ode to Joy" melody through the preceding movements. Combining a novel examination of the historical record with careful readings of the music, Reynolds adds further layers to this argument, speculating that Wagner and Schumann may not have come to these discoveries entirely independently of each other. The trail of influences that Reynolds explores extends back to the music of Bach and ahead to Tristan and Isolde, as well as to Brahms's First Symphony.

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Contesting Conquest presents an important set of indigenous and Spanish accounts that document Spain’s efforts to establish control over western Mexico during the first half of the sixteenth century.Though the 1521 defeat of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan signaled the downfall of the Aztec empire, large areas outside of central Mexico still remained beyond the Spaniards’ control. Home to groups such as the Maya of present-day Yucatan and Guatemala and the diverse peoples of western Mexico, these regions were remarkably resilient in the face of Spanish conquest. Ida Altman provides the first English translations of a set of accounts that directly reflect the perspectives of these indigenous peoples. These include a chronicle of Mendoza’s campaign during the Mixton War, a letter from the exiled rebel leader Tenamaztle, and an account written by or on behalf of the rulers of the indigenous community of Xalisco. The narratives are supplemented by translations from Spanish sources that shed light on indigenous-Spanish interaction and conflict. Together these accounts provide insights into indigenous struggles and illuminate the resistance met by their would-be conquerors.Providing multiple perspectives on Spanish campaigns to conquer modern-day Mexico and giving indigenous voices equal weight to that of the conquistadores, this book is an essential counterpoint to standard narratives of the Spanish conquest. It will be especially useful to students and scholars of Latin American colonial history.

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Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters of development and of the growth of material production, consumption, and technology decried what they perceived as the isolation and backwardness of the place and sought to "uplift" the mountain people through education and industrialization. Ronald D Eller has worked with local leaders, state policymakers, and national planners to translate the lessons of private industrial-development history into public policy affecting the region.In Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945, Eller examines the politics of development in Appalachia since World War II with an eye toward exploring the idea of progress as it has evolved in modern America. Appalachia's struggle to overcome poverty, to live in harmony with the land, and to respect the diversity of cultures and the value of community is also an American story. In the end, Eller concludes, "Appalachia was not different from the rest of America; it was in fact a mirror of what the nation was becoming."

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If readers of the twentieth century feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of writing and information, they can find in Samuel Johnson a sympathetic companion. Johnson's career coincided with the rapid expansion of publishing in England-not only in English, but in Latin and Greek; not only in books, but in reviews, journals, broadsides, pamphlets, and books about books. In 1753 Johnson imagined a time when "writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found." Three years later, he wrote that England had become "a nation of authors" in which "every man must be content to read his book to himself." In Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading, Robert DeMaria considers the surprising influence of one of the greatest readers in English literature. Johnson's relationship to books not only reveals much about his life and times, DeMaria contends, but also provides a dramatic counterpoint to modern reading habits. As a superior practitioner of the craft, Johnson provides a compelling model for how to read-indeed, he provides different models for different kinds of reading. DeMaria shows how Johnson recognized early that not all reading was alike-some requiring intense concentration, some suited for cursory glances, some requiring silence, some best appreciated amid the chatter of a coffeehouse. Considering the remarkable range of Johnson's reading, DeMaria discovers in one extraordinary career a synoptic view of the subject of reading.

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In 1907, in a quiet English village, Theodora Bosanquet answered Henry James’s call for someone to transcribe his edits and additions to his formidable body of work. The aging James had agreed to revise his novels and tales into the twenty-four-volume New York Edition. Enter Bosanquet, a budding writer who would record the dictated revisions and the prefaces that would become a lynchpin of his legacy. Embracing the role of amanuensis and creative counterpoint cautiously at first, Bosanquet kept a daily diary over the nine years that she worked with James, as their extraordinary partnership evolved. Bosanquet became the first audience for James’s compositions and his closest literary associate—and their relationship ultimately resulted in James’s famed “deathbed dictations.” At the same time, the homosexuality of each was an unspoken but important influence on their mutual support and companionship. Susan Herron Sibbet’s posthumous novel gifts us with the voice of a young woman writer drawn into the intimate circle of an aging master, and is a moving addition to previous literary treatments of James and Bosanquet, even as it hews closer to fact than other works do. The Constant Listener is itself the work of an accomplished poet, and will speak to fans of James, historical fiction, and themes of art, love, sexuality, and identity.

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Big Bill Otter was one member of the early American working class not preoccupied with republican principles or the heritage of the Revolution. Big Bill Otter—apprentice, journeyman, master plasterer—was a thug. Otter's autobiography, first published in 1835, provides a rare and fascinating counterpoint to romantic notions of virtuous, respectable craftsmen in the early republic. His Life and Adventures offer an inside account of the brawling racism common in the early nineteenth century and sharply detail the rowdy male subculture of the times. Born in England and conscripted into the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars, Otter jumped ship and came to New York City in 1801. He apprenticed as a plasterer and joined an urban gang; later he was a master plasterer, tavernkeeper, slavecatcher, "Jackson man," bigot, town bully, notorious practical joker, borderline psychopath, mayoral candidate, and all-round "jolly fellow." History of My Own Times is one of the few first-person accounts of a rural artisan in pre-genteel America. The book depicts the ambiguities of race relations in the early nineteenth century, sheds light on its definition of manhood, and conveys a sense of humor very different from today's. Richard B. Stott's introduction an,d commentary place Otter in the context of his times and explore the significance of his autobiography in understanding the social and cultural history of the early American republic.

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This book brings a new perspective to the study of Joyce's great novel. The author argues the case for employing the concept of irony as an explicatory tool in the study of Ulyssesóand indeed of the whole Joycean canon. Moreover he uses modern critical theory to enlarge our understanding of irony itself and to suggest how such theory has an appropriate object of attention in Joyce. Wright defines irony as "the use of a 'false' textual surface to direct a reader's attention towards initially concealed premises or implications". Thus an author lays a partly false trail, but one which usually leads towards a more authenthic or appropriate understanding of the subject under discussion. Joyce's work is full of this kind of semantic counterpoint. Indeed, it is essential to his whole comic method. Both Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man and Ulysses are full of ironic contrasts between the desire for order, certainty and stability on the one hand and random meetings and perverse associations. The author argues that Joyce's other favorite techniques of ambiguity and punning are so closely related to that of irony that all three may legitimately be considered as a unity, specially formed and deployed by Joyce in his mature work. ; Contents: Preface; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; Local Ironies; Single-Episode Ironies; Inter-Episode Ironies; Ironies from Early Joyce; Ironies from Homer to Shakespeare; Bibliography; Index.

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Beginning with the publication of The Back Country in 1968, Gary Snyder's long-cherished association with New Directions continued through the publication of his poetry books: the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling Turtle Island (1974), and Myths & Texts (1978), as well as his prose works, Earth House Hold (1969) and The Real Work (1980), all essential titles on the New Directions list. Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems, a finalist for the National Book Award, was published in 1993 by Pantheon, and his long-anticipated epic poem Mountains and Rivers without End was published by Counterpoint in 1997. Snyder has had a seminal place among American landscape writers. "As a poet," he once wrote, "I hold the most archaic values on earth." He has long been associated with Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other poets such as Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan. His poetics are founded in Poundian modernism, Chinese and Japanese poetry, and ancient oral native traditions. Look Out is a collection personally compiled by Gary Snyder for New Directions, containing poems and essays from all his New Directions books. It offers first-time readers a chance to see the evolution of his thought and poetry, spanning two decades, and old-time fans the opportunity to behold all the favorites, in a new Bibelot edition. Also included here is Snyder's Introduction, as well as a new poem written about the late New Directions founder James Laughlin.

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Who are the people of India? What are their rights? What are their claims on the Indian Constitution and on democracy? We the People, the fourth volume in the Rethinking India series, brings together a collection of essays that explores the process of germination and growth of undisputed universal rights, and of them being developed as tangible entitlements in India. The essays also examine the continuing challenge of establishing, realizing and protecting these entitlements.The authors are academics, activists and practitioners who have a strong relationship with social movements. Their narratives trace the use of the rights-based framework of the Indian Constitution by sociopolitical movements in order to strengthen the economic, cultural and social rights of ordinary Indians. The multiple perspectives draw upon and contextualize the complex relationship of the citizen with the state, society and market in democratic India. Their sharp critiques have a counterpoint in stories of creative, successful alternatives designed by peoples' collectives.There is both an explicit and implicit challenge to conservative notions of 'market-led development' that see competition and profits as central to 'progress' and success. The essays showcase the continuing dialectic between established constitutional rights and shifting state policy. They provide invaluable insight at a time when many sacred pillars of neoliberal 'globalization' are crumbling, and the capitalist superstructure is itself turning to the state for survival. They promote understanding and scholarship, and enliven debates as we continue to search for answers in uncertain and challenging times.

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A selection of sharp, witty, and impeccably crafted poems from A. E. Stallings, the award-winning poet and translator. This Afterlife: Selected Poems brings together poetry from A. E. Stallings's four acclaimed collections, Archaic Smile, Hapax, Olives, and Like, as well as a lagniappe of outlier poems. Over time, themes and characters reappear, speaking to one another across years and experience, creating a complex music of harmony, dissonance, and counterpoint. The Underworld and the Afterlife, ancient history and the archaeology of the here and now, all slant rhyme with one another. Many of these poems unfold in the mytho-domestic sphere, through the eyes of Penelope or Pandora, Alice in Wonderland or the poet herself. Fulfilling the promise of the energy and sprezzatura of Stallings's earliest collection, her later technical accomplishments rise to meet the richness of lived experience: of marriage and motherhood, of a life lived in another language and country, of aging and mortality. Her chosen home of Greece adds layers of urgency to her fascination with Greek mythology; living in an epicenter of contemporary crises means current events and ancient history are always rubbing shoulders in her poems. Expert at traditional received forms, Stallings is also a poet of restless experiment, in cat's-cradle rhyme schemes, nonce stanzas, supple free verse, thematic variation, and metaphysical conceits. The pleasure of these poems, fierce and witty, melancholy and wise, lies in a timeless precision that will outlast the fickleness of fashion.

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Like many indigenous groups that have endured centuries of subordination, the Berber/Amazigh peoples of North Africa are demanding linguistic and cultural recognition and the redressing of injustices. Indeed, the movement seeks nothing less than a refashioning of the identity of North African states, a rewriting of their history, and a fundamental change in the basis of collective life. In so doing, it poses a challenge to the existing political and sociocultural orders in Morocco and Algeria, while serving as an important counterpoint to the oppositionist Islamist current.This is the first book-length study to analyze the rise of the modern ethnocultural Berber/Amazigh movement in North Africa and the Berber diaspora. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman begins by tracing North African history from the perspective of its indigenous Berber inhabitants and their interactions with more powerful societies, from Hellenic and Roman times, through a millennium of Islam, to the era of Western colonialism. He then concentrates on the marginalization and eventual reemergence of the Berber question in independent Algeria and Morocco, against a background of the growing crisis of regime legitimacy in each country. His investigation illuminates many issues, including the fashioning of official national narratives and policies aimed at subordinating Berbers in an Arab nationalist and Islamic-centered universe; the emergence of a counter-movement promoting an expansive Berber "imagining" that emphasizes the rights of minority groups and indigenous peoples; and the international aspects of modern Berberism.

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The political thought of Muslim societies is all too often defined in religious terms, in which the writings of clerics are seen as representative and ideas about governance are treated as an extension of commentary on sacred texts. Disenchanting the Caliphate offers a groundbreaking new account of political discourse in Islamic history by examining Abbasid imperial practice, illuminating the emergence and influence of a vibrant secular tradition.Closely reading key eighth-century texts, Hayrettin Yücesoy argues that the ulema’s discourse of religious governance and the political thought of lay intellectuals diverged during this foundational period, with enduring consequences. He traces how notions of good governance and reflections on prudent statecraft arose among cosmopolitan literati who envisioned governing as an art. Competent in nonreligious branches of knowledge and trained in administrative professions, these belletrists articulated and defended secular political practices, reimagining the caliphal realm as politically constituted rather than natural. They sought to improve administrative efficiency and bolster state control for an empire made up of diverse cultures. Their ideas about moral cultivation, temporal reasoning, and governmental rationality endured for centuries as a counterpoint to religious rulership. Drawing on this history, Yücesoy critiques the concept of “Islamic political thought,” calling for decolonizing debates about “secular” and “religious” politics.Theoretically rich and historically grounded, Disenchanting the Caliphate is an insightful and provocative reconsideration of key strands of political discourse in the intellectual history of Muslim societies.

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Until 2008 Nevada was the fastest-growing state in America. But the recession stopped this urbanizing gallop in the Mojave Desert, and Las Vegas froze at exactly the point where its aspirational excesses were most baroque and unfettered. In this third Radius Books installment of noted photographer Michael Light's aerial survey of the inhabited West, the photographer eschews the glare of the Strip to hover intimately over the topography of America's most fevered residential dream: castles on the cheap, some half-built, some foreclosed, some hanging on surrounded by golf courses gone bankruptcy brown, some still waiting to spring from empty cul-de-sacs. Throughout, Light characteristically finds beauty and empathy amidst a visual vertigo of speculation, overreach, environmental delusion and ultimate geological grace. Janus-faced in design, one side of the book plumbs the surrealities of "Lake Las Vegas," a lifestyle resort comprised of 21 Mediterranean-themed communities built around a former sewage swamp. The other side of the book dissects nearby Black Mountain and the city's most exclusive-and empty -future community where a quarter billion dollars was spent on moving earth that has lain dormant for the past six years. Following the boom and bust history of the West itself, Light's photographs terrifyingly and poignantly show the extraction and habitation industries as two sides of the same coin. Essays by two of the world's most celebrated cultural and landscape thinkers, Rebecca Solnit and Lucy Lippard, offer resonant counterpoint.

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'After all that - how, you might wonder, could one not become a fatalist?' Lermontov's hero, Pechorin, is a young army officer posted to the Caucasus, where his adventures - amorous and reckless - do nothing to alleviate his boredom and cynicism. World-weary and self-destructive, Pechorin is alienated from those around him yet he is full of passion and romantic ardour, sensitive as well as arrogant. His complex, contradictory character dominates A Hero of Our Time, the first great Russian novel, in which the intricate narrative unfolds episodically, transporting the reader from the breathtaking terrain of the Caucasus to the genteel surroundings of spa resorts. Told in an engaging yet pointedly ironic style, the story expresses Lermontov's own estrangement from the stifling conventions of bourgeois society and the oppression of Russian autocracy, but it also captures a longing for freedom through acts of love and bravery. This new edition also includes Pushkin's Journey to Arzrum, in which Pushkin describes his own experiences of Russia's military campaigns in the Caucasus and which provides a fascinating counterpoint to Lermontov's novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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One of the few books on contemporary Native writing in Canada, Helen Hoy's absorbing and provocative work raises and addresses questions around 'difference' and the locations of cultural insider and outsider in relation to texts by contemporary Native women prose writers in Canada. Drawing on post-colonial, feminist, post-structuralist and First Nations theory, it explores the problems involved in reading and teaching a variety of works by Native women writers from the perspective of a cultural outsider. In each chapter, Hoy examines a particular author and text in order to address some of the basic theoretical questions of reader location, cultural difference, and cultural appropriation, finally concluding that these Native authors have refused to be confined by identity categories such as 'woman' or 'Native,' and have themselves provided a critical voice guiding how their texts might be read and taught. Hoy has written a thoughtful and original work, combining theoretical and textual analysis with insightful and witty personal and pedagogical narratives, as well as poetic and critical epigraphs - the latter of which function as counterpoint to the scholarly argument. The analysis is self-reflexive, making issues of difference and power ongoing subjects of investigation, which interact with the literary texts themselves, and which render the readings more clearly local, partial, and accountable. This highly imaginative volume will appeal to Canadianists, feminists, and the growing number of scholars in the field of Native Studies.

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Several biographies of Américo Paredes have been published over the last decade, yet they generally overlook the paradoxical nature of his life’s work. Embarking on an in-depth, critical exploration of the significant body of work produced by Paredes, José E. Limón (one of Paredes’s students and now himself one of the world’s leading scholars in Mexican American studies) puts the spotlight on Paredes as a scholar/citizen who bridged multiple arenas of Mexican American cultural life during a time of intense social change and cultural renaissance.Serving as a counterpoint to hagiographic commentaries, Américo Paredes challenges and corrects prevailing readings by contemporary critics of Paredes’s Asian period and of such works as the novel George Washington Gómez, illuminating new facets in Paredes’s role as a folklorist and public intellectual. Limón also explores how the field of cultural studies has drifted away from folklore, or “the poetics of everyday life,” while he examines the traits of Mexican American expressive culture. He also investigates the scholarly paradigm of ethnography itself, a stimulating inquiry that enhances readings of Paredes’s best-known study, “With His Pistol in His Hand,” and other works. Underscoring Paredes’s place in folklore and Mexican American literary production, the book questions the shifting reception of Paredes throughout his academic career, ultimately providing a deep hermeneutics of widely varied work. Offering new conceptions, interpretations, and perspectives, Américo Paredes gives this pivotal literary figure and his legacy the critical analysis they deserve.

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Featuring forewords from bandmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, this is the official and fully authorised biography of the world’s most revered and celebrated drummer. Mid-1962. The newly formed Rolling Stones are on the hunt for a permanent drummer. Their sights are set on Charlie Watts, a jazz musician already well-known within London’s rhythm and blues clubs. Fortunately for future Stones fans the world over, they persuade him to take on the job. Once installed at the drum seat, Charlie would not miss a beat for the rest of his life. He was there throughout the swinging sixties as the Stones reached superstardom and for the well-documented debauchery of the 1970s, typified by the iconic album Exile on Main St. Battling his own demons by the eighties, Charlie emerged unscathed, cementing his reputation as the thoughtful, cultured but no less compelling counterpoint to his more raucous bandmates. For almost 60 years – through all the band bust-ups, bereavements and changes in personnel both on stage and off – Charlie remained the rock at the heart of the Rolling Stones. At the same time, he was the antithesis of the rock-star archetype, an intensely private man who valued his family above all else. Drawing on new interviews with his family, friends and former bandmates – including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – Charlie’s Good Tonight is the remarkable life story of Charlie Watts: official, authorised and as it’s never been told before.

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Featuring forewords from bandmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, this is the official and fully authorised biography of the world’s most revered and celebrated drummer. Mid-1962. The newly formed Rolling Stones are on the hunt for a permanent drummer. Their sights are set on Charlie Watts, a jazz musician already well-known within London’s rhythm and blues clubs. Fortunately for future Stones fans the world over, they persuade him to take on the job. Once installed at the drum seat, Charlie would not miss a beat for the rest of his life. He was there throughout the swinging sixties as the Stones reached superstardom and for the well-documented debauchery of the 1970s, typified by the iconic album Exile on Main St. Battling his own demons by the eighties, Charlie emerged unscathed, cementing his reputation as the thoughtful, cultured but no less compelling counterpoint to his more raucous bandmates. For almost 60 years – through all the band bust-ups, bereavements and changes in personnel both on stage and off – Charlie remained the rock at the heart of the Rolling Stones. At the same time, he was the antithesis of the rock-star archetype, an intensely private man who valued his family above all else. Drawing on new interviews with his family, friends and former bandmates – including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – Charlie’s Good Tonight is the remarkable life story of Charlie Watts: official, authorised and as it’s never been told before.

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A Muslim scholar with extensive experience in Africa, T. Abdou Maliqalim Simone was recruited by the Islamic fundamentalist Shari'a Movement in Sudan to act as consultant for its project to unite Muslims and non-Muslims in Khartoum's shanty towns. Based on his interviews with hundreds of individuals during this time, plus extensive historical and archival research, "In Whose Image?" is an examination of the use of Islam as a tool for political transformation. Drawing a detailed portrait of political fundamentalism during the 1985-89 period of democratic rule in the Sudan, Simone shows how the Shari'a Movement attempted to shape a viable social order by linking religious integrity and economic development, where religious practice was to dominate all aspects of society and individuals' daily lives. However, because Sudanese society is remarkably diverse ethnically and religiously, this often led to conflict, fragmentation and violence in the name of Islam. Simone's own Islamic background leads him to deplore the violence and the devastating psychological, economic and cultural consequences of one form of Islamic radicalism, while holding to the hope that a viable form of this inherently political religion can in fact be applied. As a counterpoint, he ends with a discussion of South Africa's Call of Islam, which seeks political unity through a more tolerant interpretation of Islam. As an introduction to religious discourse in Africa, this book should be of interest to students and scholars of African Studies, Religious Studies, Anthropology and Political Science.

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Hitler's tyranny is still difficult to understand today. In this book, Ralf Georg Reuth examines ten aspects of this catastrophe. Among other things, he asks: Was anti-Semitism more pronounced in Germany than elsewhere? Was Versailles responsible for Hitler's rise, and why did the Germans follow a racial fanatic like him? How did his war differ from all others before it? The disturbing answers provide an overall picture that shows: Hitler was not just the consequence of German history, but the result of chance, deception, and seduction. This thought-provoking new study takes aim at several of the 'sacred cows' of Hitler scholarship from the past forty years. Reuth interrogates and challenges a range of orthodox views on such topics as how mainstream politicians facilitated Hitler's rise to power, the Fuhrer's infamous pact with Stalin, and the complicity of ordinary Germans in his genocidal tyranny. Eschewing a conventional chronological approach in favour of a forensic analysis of Adolf Hitler's mainsprings of action both as chancellor and military commander, Reuth portrays Hitler as the apotheosis of a specifically German strain of militarism and imperialism, shifting the focus firmly back on to the mindset and modus operandi of Hitler himself. The portrait that emerges is one of a murderous fantasist and political opportunist driven by an all-embracing ideology of racial superiority. Reuth's account courts controversy on a few points but offers a fascinating counterpoint to much recent scholarship.

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Doctors at War is a candid account of a trauma surgical team based, for a tour of duty, at a field hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan. Mark de Rond tells of the highs and lows of surgical life in hard-hitting detail, bringing to life a morally ambiguous world in which good people face impossible choices and in which routines designed to normalize experience have the unintended effect of highlighting war's absurdity. With stories that are at once comical and tragic, de Rond captures the surreal experience of being a doctor at war. He lifts the cover on a world rarely ever seen, let alone written about, and provides a poignant counterpoint to the archetypical, adrenaline-packed, macho tale of what it is like to go to war.Here the crude and visceral coexist with the tender and affectionate. The author tells of well-meaning soldiers at hospital reception, there to deliver a pair of legs in the belief that these can be reattached to their comrade, now in mid-surgery; of midsummer Christmas parties and pancake breakfasts and late-night sauna sessions; of interpersonal rivalries and banter; of caring too little or too much; of tenderness and compassion fatigue; of hell and redemption; of heroism and of playing God. While many good firsthand accounts of war by frontline soldiers exist, this is one of the first books ever to bring to life the experience of the surgical teams tasked with mending what war destroys.

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Western admirers have long seen the Islamic garden as an earthly reflection of the paradise said to await the faithful. However, such simplification, Ruggles contends, denies the sophistication and diversity of the art form. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes immerses the reader in the world of the architects of the great gardens of the Islamic world, from medieval Morocco to contemporary India. Just as Islamic culture is historically dense, sophisticated, and complex, so too is the history of its built landscapes. Islamic gardens began from the practical need to organize the surrounding space of human civilization, tame nature, enhance the earth's yield, and create a legible map on which to distribute natural resources. Ruggles follows the evolution of these early farming efforts to their aristocratic apex in famous formal gardens of the Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in Agra. Whether in a humble city home or a royal courtyard, the garden has several defining characteristics, which Ruggles discusses. Most notable is an enclosed space divided into four equal parts surrounding a central design element. The traditional Islamic garden is inwardly focused, usually surrounded by buildings or in the form of a courtyard. Water provides a counterpoint to the portioned green sections. Ranging across poetry, court documents, agronomy manuals, and early garden representations, and richly illustrated with pictures and site plans, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes is a book of impressive scope sure to interest scholars and enthusiasts alike.

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Michael Snediker offers a much-needed counterpoint to queer theoretical discourse, which has long privileged melancholy, self-shattering, incoherence, shame, and the death drive. Recovering the forms of positive affect that queer theory has jettisoned, Snediker insists that optimism must itself be taken beyond conventional tropes of hope and futurity and reimagined as necessary for critical engagement. Through fresh, perceptive, and sensitive readings of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Hart Crane, Jack Spicer, and Elizabeth Bishop, Snediker reveals that each of these poets demonstrated an interest in the durability of positive affects. Dickinson, Snediker argues, expresses joy and grace as much as pain and loss, and the myriad cryptic smiles in Hart Crane’s White Building contradict prevailing narratives of Crane’s apocryphal literary failures and eventual suicide. Snediker’s ambitious and sophisticated study, informed by thinkers such as Winnicott, Deleuze, and de Man, both supplements and challenges the work of queer theory’s leading figures, including Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Lee Edelman. Queer Optimism revises our understanding of queer love and affiliation, examining Spicer’s serial collusion with matinee idol Billy the Kid as well as the critically neglected force of Bishop’s epistolary and poetic reparations of the drowned figure of Hart Crane. In doing so, Snediker persuasively reconceives a theoretical field of optimism that was previously unavailable to scrupulous critical inquiry and provides a groundbreaking approach to modern American poetry and poetics.

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