Search results for ""author pierre""

The unbuttoned, unkempt, unlikely fiction of Pierre Siniac is a slap in the face of the traditional crime novel, and The Collaborators is his best and most hilarious book...

Read more less

In turns touching and disturbing, this powerfully suggestive story describes a young boy coming of age on his father's farm while being stalked by the new, mentally handicapped employee. Set against a backdrop of abandonment, betrayal, and confusion, the novel explores the human psyche and the contemporary theme of child abuse with subtlety and masterful writing.

Read more less

The performance of an company depends both on its technological expertise and its managerial and organizational effectiveness. Production management is an important part of the process for manufacturing firms. The organization of production relies in general on the implementation of a certain number of basic functions, among which the scheduling function plays an essential role. This title presents recently developed methods for resolving scheduling issues. The basic concepts and the methods of production scheduling are introduced and advanced techniques are discussed, providing readers with a comprehensive and accessible guide to employing this process.

Read more less

Since the 1980s there has been a renewed interest in attempts to introduce a sense of history into economic literature. In this book, the authors argue that it is not possible to explain a state of the world without first analysing the processes that lead to that state. The contributions collected in this volume share a critical stance towards the timelessness and a historical theorizing of mainstream economics. Past states in the development of an economic process set the range of possibilities for future development and can be used to construct theories based on the irreversibility of economic time. Many of these notable contributors argue that the study of the history of economic thought is important in two ways. Firstly, because it provides important insights into the ways that economists of the past attempted to address the problems of history and secondly, because it helps us to understand the present state of economics as being itself the outcome of a path dependent process.Evolutionary economists, economic theorists and historians, as well as economists interested in the evolution of economic and other social institutions, will find this challenging collection of papers essential reading.

Read more less

Legends of Today brings together the first three volumes that Enki Bilal has created in collaboration with the scriptwriter Pierre Christin: The Cruise of Forgotten (1975), The Stone Vessel (1976) and The City That Did Not Exist (1977). Antagonised by an enigmatic character with supernatural powers, which serves as a theme for the trilogy, the three stories delve into the lives of various traditional communities (a village of the Landes, a Breton fishing port, a small working-class town in the North) as they fight against the police, the army, and all those in power, whose action, at the time, was very controversial. An endearing panorama of the generous utopias of the time, nourished by modern fantasy and a certain humor that still preserves freshness today.

Read more less

A disturbing and controversial new take on the zombie genre! A new virus, one that only affects children, spreads through the world, turning the next generation into rabid killers. Now humanity must kill its children or face extinction...A complex story of humanity on the brink.

Read more less

In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.

Read more less

This is the fourth of five volumes based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title ‘General Sociology’. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts which have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach. Having elaborated the concepts of habitus and field in previous volumes, Bourdieu now undertakes an analysis of the relations between them, showing that social fields are objects of perception and knowledge for the agents engaged in them. The field of forces is the source of different visions of the social world, visions that are linked to agents’ positions via the specific interests that motivate them and the habitus that is, at least partly, the product of the determining factors associated with their position. This relation between the world perceived and our cognitive structures explains why the social world commonly appears as self-evident. Visions of the social world are necessarily different and often antagonistic, and the field of forces is at once the source and the goal of struggles over its present and future being: the struggle for the legitimate principle of vision and division helps to transform or conserve the field of forces that underlies the agents' standpoints. An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu’s most important ideas, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu’s work across the social sciences and humanities, and to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of the 20th century.

Read more less

Between 1954 and 1960, in the midst of the Algerian War, more than two million Algerian peasants – a quarter of the population – were forcibly resettled. They were removed from their homes and villages and relocated in camps controlled by the French military in what was one of the largest and most brutal displacements of a rural population in history.It was in this context of colonial violence that Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad set out to examine transformations in the fundamental structures of peasant economy and thought. By destroying the spatial and temporal frameworks of ordinary existence and reorganizing the life of peasants, the process of uprooting completed what the imperial policy of land confiscation and the spread of monetary exchange had started: the ‘depeasantization’ of agrarian communities stripped of the social and cultural means to make sense of the present and orient themselves to the future. This destruction of the traditional way of life was exacerbated by the quasi-urban conditions of the resettlement shantytowns, which brought about irreversible transformations in economic attitudes at the same time as they accelerated the contagion of needs, plunging the uprooted individuals into a ‘traditionalism of despair’ suited to daily survival in conditions of extreme uncertainty. Through their detailed analysis of these processes Bourdieu and Sayad provide a powerful account both of the destruction of a traditional way of life and of the brutal effects of colonial power.This classic text, now published in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, politics, migration studies, postcolonial studies and the social sciences and humanities generally, and to anyone concerned with the impact of colonization and its aftermath.

Read more less

How does France reconcile the modern movement toward pluralism and decentralization with a strong central governing power? One of the country's most distinguished political historians offers a radical new interpretation of the development of democracy in France and the relationship between government and its citizens.Since the publication of Tocqueville's Ancient Regime and the Revolution, French political structures have been viewed as the pure expression of a native Jacobinism, itself the continuation of an old absolutism. This interpretation has served as both a diagnosis of and an excuse for the inability to accept pluralism and decentralization as norms of a modern democracy, as evidenced in such policies as the persistence of the role of prefects and the ban on headscarves in schools.Pierre Rosanvallon, by contrast, argues that the French have cherished and demonized Jacobinism at the same time; their hearts followed Robespierre, but their heads turned toward Benjamin Constant. The Demands of Liberty traces the long history of resistance to Jacobinism, including the creation of associations and unions and the implementation of elements of decentralization. Behind the ideological triumph of the state lies the conflicting creation of an active civil society.In exploring these tensions, Rosanvallon takes the debate far beyond traditional views of liberalism versus republicanism and offers an innovative analysis of why the French system has worked despite Jacobinism.

Read more less

Continuing the tradition of the Advances in Chemical Physics series, Volume 101: Chemical Reactions and Their Control on the Femtosecond Time Scale details the extraordinary findings reported at the XXth Solvay Conference on Chemistry, held at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, from November 28 to December 2, 1995. This new volume discusses the remarkable opportunities afforded by the femtosecond laser, focusing on the host of phenomena this laser has made it possible to observe. Examining molecules on the intrinsic time scale of their vibrations as well as their dissociative motions and electronic excitations represents only part of a broadened scientific window made possible by the femtosecond laser. The assembled studies, with follow-up discussions, reflect the many specialties and perspectives of the Conference's 65 participants as well as their optimism concerning the breadth of scientific discovery now open to them. The studies shed light on the laser's enhanced technical reach in the area of coherent control of chemical reactions as well as of more general quantum systems. The theoretical fundamentals of femto-chemistry, the unique behavior of the femtosecond laser, and a view toward future technological applications were also discussed: Femtochemistry: chemical reaction dynamics and their control Coherent control with femtosecond laser pulses Femtosecond chemical dynamics in condensed phases Control of quantum many-body dynamics Experimental observation of laser control Solvent dynamics and RRKM theory of clusters High-resolution spectroscopy and intramolecular dynamics Molecular Rydberg states and ZEKE spectroscopy Transition-state spectroscopy and photodissociation Quantum and semiclassical theories of chemical reaction rates. A fascinating and informative status report on the cutting-edge chemical research made possible by the femtosecond laser, Chemical Reactions and Their Control on the Femtosecond Time Scale is an indispensable volume for professionals and students alike. The femtosecond laser and chemistry's extraordinary new frontier of molecular motions observed on the scale of a quadrillionth of a second. Research chemists have only tapped the surface of the spectacular reach and precision of the femtosecond laser, a technology that has allowed them to observe the dynamics of molecules on the intrinsic time scale of their vibrations, dissociative motions, and electronic excitations. Volume 101 in the Advances in Chemical Physics series, Chemical Reactions and Their Control on the Femtosecond Time Scale details their extraordinary findings, presented at the XXth Solvay Conference on Chemistry, in Brussels. The studies reflect the work, in part, of the Conference's 65 participants, including many prominent contributors. Together they shed light on the laser's enhanced technical range in the area of coherent control of chemical reactions as well as of more general quantum systems. The theoretical fundamentals of femtochemistry, the unique behavior of the femtosecond laser, and a view toward future technological applications were also discussed. An exceptionally up-to-date examination of the chemical analyses made possible by the femtosecond laser, Chemical Reactions and Their Control on the Femtosecond Time Scale is an important reference for professionals and students interested in enhancing their research capabilities with this remarkable tool. From 1993 to 1996, she worked with Dr. P. Gaspard at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, on the application of new semiclassical techniques to elementary chemical reaction processes.

Read more less

The author has many years of experience working in psychiatric institutions. Presents an introduction to the concept of the transferential constellation. Reflects on the future of humanistic psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychiatry practice.

Read more less

This book deals with the phenomenological theory of first-order structural phase transitions, with a special emphasis on reconstructive transformations in which a group-subgroup relationship between the symmetries of the phases is absent. It starts with a unified presentation of the current approach to first-order phase transitions, using the more recent results of the Landau theory of phase transitions and of the theory of singularities. A general theory of reconstructive phase transitions is then formulated, in which the structures surrounding a transition are expressed in terms of density-waves, providing a natural definition of the transition order-parameters, and a description of the corresponding phase diagrams and relevant physical properties. The applicability of the theory is illustrated by a large number of concrete examples pertaining to the various classes of reconstructive transitions: allotropic transformations of the elements, displacive and order-disorder transformations in metals, alloys and related structures, crystal-quasicrystal transformations.

Read more less

Since the 1980s, society’s wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon—the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic equality at their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics.For eighteenth-century revolutionaries, equality meant understanding human beings as fundamentally alike and then creating universal political and economic rights. Rosanvallon sees the roots of today’s crisis in the period 1830–1900, when industrialized capitalism threatened to quash these aspirations. By the early twentieth century, progressive forces had begun to rectify some imbalances of the Gilded Age, and the modern welfare state gradually emerged from Depression-era reforms. But new economic shocks in the 1970s began a slide toward inequality that has only gained momentum in the decades since.There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state, Rosanvallon says. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today’s realities.

Read more less

Detailing the understanding and performance of the French mélodie, famous French baritone Pierre Bernac provides insight in this book for singers, accompanists, and concert-goers. Teamed with composer Francis Poulenc for more than 25 years, Bernac and Poulenc became legend as one of the first duos to be recognized as equals within the music arena. Texts and performance guidance for over 200 songs from 18 different composers including Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc are given in French with line-for-line translations in English. This comprehensive approach to the French repertoire also includes tips on pronunciation, performance, and interpretation.

Read more less

Including more than 60 elegantly illustrated recipes, Pierre Hermé Macarons is the definitive guide to macarons. The uncontested leader of French pastry chefs, Pierre Hermé has made the macaron famous, one of the most coveted, sought-after desserts from Tokyo to Paris to New York. In this comprehensive look at the beloved pastry, the classics such as vanilla and chocolate are explored alongside Hermé’s masterful inventions. His entirely original and inspired flavour combinations—such as cucumber and tangerine, wasabi cream and strawberry, and hazelnut and asparagus—make it clear why Hermé’s macarons are famous the world over. The genius pâtissier’s best macarons, including many of his newest recipes, are revealed for the first time in a gorgeous volume that almost rivals the beauty of the exquisite creations featured within. Hardcover includes a removable step-by-step guide to techniques used throughout the book.

Read more less

This is the fifth and final volume based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title ‘General Sociology’. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts which have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach. In this volume, Bourdieu develops his view of the social world as the site of a struggle for the legitimate vision of the world. The specific weapon used in these struggles is what Bourdieu calls symbolic capital, which is economic, cultural or social capital when perceived through suitable categories of perception. All forms of power seek to impose their own categories of perception in a way that is both recognised and misrecognised. This is how forms of power establish themselves as legitimate, because legitimacy is a force of recognition based on misrecognition, that is, recognised in a way that prevents us from recognising its arbitrariness. By rejecting the opposition between structuralist objectification and subjectivist constructivism, sociology can seek to grasp both the objective structure of social fields and the properly political strategies that agents use in order to establish and impose their viewpoint. And it can do so without forgetting that the whole world of social construction is oriented by the perception agents have of the social world, which depends on their position in the structures of social fields and their dispositions, themselves fashioned by these structures. An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu’s most important ideas, the five volumes of this series will be of great value to students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu’s work across the social sciences and humanities, and they will be of interest to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of the twentieth century.

Read more less

From 1980 to 1988, Iran and Iraq fought the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. The tragedies included the slaughter of child soldiers, the use of chemical weapons, the striking of civilian shipping in the Gulf, and the destruction of cities. The Iran-Iraq War offers an unflinching look at a conflict seared into the region’s collective memory but little understood in the West. Pierre Razoux shows why this war remains central to understanding Middle Eastern geopolitics, from the deep-rooted distrust between Sunni and Shia Muslims, to Iran’s obsession with nuclear power, to the continuing struggles in Iraq. He provides invaluable keys to decipher Iran’s behavior and internal struggle today.Razoux’s account is based on unpublished military archives, oral histories, and interviews, as well as audio recordings seized by the U.S. Army detailing Saddam Hussein’s debates with his generals. Tracing the war’s shifting strategies and political dynamics—military operations, the jockeying of opposition forces within each regime, the impact on oil production so essential to both countries—Razoux also looks at the international picture. From the United States and Soviet Union to Israel, Europe, China, and the Arab powers, many nations meddled in this conflict, supporting one side or the other and sometimes switching allegiances.The Iran-Iraq War answers questions that have puzzled historians. Why did Saddam embark on this expensive, ultimately fruitless conflict? Why did the war last eight years when it could have ended in months? Who, if anyone, was the true winner when so much was lost?

Read more less

Now a major French film Au revoir là-haut - Prix Goncourt-winning masterpiece by the writer who brought you Alex, Irène and Camille."One of the most pleasurable reading experiences of recent years" - David Mills, The Sunday TimesOctober 1918: the war on the Western Front is all but over. Desperate for one last chance of promotion, the ambitious Lieutenant Henri d'Aulnay Pradelle sends two scouts over the top, and secretly shoots them in the back to incite his men to heroic action once more.And so is set in motion a series of devastating events that will inextricably bind together the fates and fortunes of Pradelle and the two soldiers who witness his crime: Albert Maillard and Édouard Péricourt.Back in civilian life, Albert and Édouard struggle to adjust to a society whose reverence for its dead cannot quite match its resentment for those who survived. But the two soldiers conspire to enact an audacious form of revenge against the country that abandoned them to penury and despair, with a scheme to swindle the whole of France on an epic scale.Meanwhile, believing her brother killed in action, Édouard's sister Madeleine has married Pradelle, who is running a little scam of his own...Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Read more less

Few would disagree that Western democracies are experiencing a crisis of representation. In the United States, gerrymandering and concentrated political geographies have placed the Congress and state legislatures in a stranglehold that is often at odds with public opinion. Campaign financing ensures that only the affluent have voice in legislation. Europeans, meanwhile, increasingly see the European Union as an anti-democratic body whose “diktats” have no basis in popular rule. The response, however, has not been an effective pursuit of better representation. In Good Government, Pierre Rosanvallon examines the long history of the alternative to which the public has gravitated: the empowered executive.Rosanvallon argues that, faced with everyday ineptitude in governance, people become attracted to strong leaders and bold executive action. If these fail, they too often want even stronger personal leadership. Whereas nineteenth-century liberals and reformers longed for parliamentary sovereignty, nowadays few contest the “imperial presidency.” Rosanvallon traces this history from the Weimar Republic to Charles De Gaulle’s “exceptional” presidency to the Bush-Cheney concentration of executive power.Europeans rebelling against the technocratic EU and Americans fed up with the “administrative state” have turned to charismatic figures, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orbán, who tout personal strength as their greatest asset. This is not just a right-wing phenomenon, though, as liberal contentment with Obama’s drone war demonstrates. Rosanvallon makes clear that contemporary “presidentialism” may reflect the particular concerns of the moment, but its many precursors demonstrate that democracy has always struggled with tension between popular government and concentrated authority.

Read more less

No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First published in 1979, the book is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. In the course of everyday life we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu demonstrates that our different aesthetic choices are all distinctions - that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. This fascinating work argues that the social world functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.

Read more less

This title provides a comprehensive overview of elastoplasticity relating to soil and rocks. Following a general outline of the models of behavior and their internal structure, each chapter develops a different area of this subject relating to the author's particular expertise. The first half of the book concentrates on the elastoplasticity of soft soils and rocks, while the second half examines that of hard soils and rocks.

Read more less

The financial turmoil of the late 1990s resulted partly from an excessive dependency between countries and regions. This important and timely new book examines the growing interdependency between Europe and East Asia and provides suggestions to prevent financial crises in the future.Special attention is given to the contributions of international trade and investment to deeper regional and global integration, and particular emphasis is placed on major issues such as: the organization of multinationals and the relationship between exports and foreign direct investment Asian and European firms as global actors and the role of trade in the integration of the two regions the changing patterns of East Asian economies as host and home countries for direct investment In conclusion the authors argue that more emphasis should be placed on direct investment rather than speculative inflows. This will create a more stable environment for the contribution of foreign capital to the growth of East Asian economies, and reduce both dependency between regions and the risk of financial instability in the future.The Global Integration of Europe and East Asia will be welcomed by those working in the fields of international economics and business, European and Asian Studies and the globalization of the world economy.

Read more less

A manuscript of obscenely erotic poetry from Pierre Louÿs, written in secret and published after his death By turns amusing and offensive, Pierre Louÿs’ Pybrac is possibly the filthiest collection of poetry ever published, and offers a taste of what the Marquis de Sade might have produced if he had ever turned his hand to verse. First published posthumously in 1927, Pybrac was, with The Young Girl’s Handbook of Good Manners, one of the first of Louÿs’ secret erotic manuscripts to see clandestine publication. Composed of 313 rhymed alexandrine quatrains, the majority of them starting with the phrase "I do not like to see…," Pybrac is in form a mockery of sixteenth-century chancellor poet Guy Du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac, whose moralizing quatrains were common literary fare for young French readers until the nineteenth century. Louÿs spent his life coming up with his own ever-growing collection of rhymed moral precepts (suitable only for adult readers): a dizzying litany describing everything he "disliked" witnessing, from lesbianism, sodomy, incest and prostitution to perversions extreme enough to give even a modern reader pause. With the rest of his erotic manuscripts, the original collection of over 2,000 quatrains was auctioned off and scattered throughout private collections; but like everything erotic, what remains, collected here, conveys an impression of unending absurdity and near-hypnotic obsession.

Read more less

Support for those embarking on an authentic spiritual search. Throughout his decades as a social activist and self-transformation teacher, as well as through his spiritual work with death row inmates, Pierre Pradervand noticed more and more people moving away from organized religion. He also realized that many were still seeking a spiritual dimension in their lives. Yet, with so many options available, especially so many “spiritual fast food” options, selecting the right spiritual path can be difficult. In this guide, Pierre offers support for those embarking on an authentic spiritual search. He explores how to discover the practices that best correspond to your unique spiritual expectations. He focuses in depth on helping you answer three fundamental questions: “Who am I deep down?”, “What am I really looking for in my spiritual quest?”, and “What is the deep motivation of my search?” He shows how integrity, generosity, and discernment are essential components of any lasting spiritual path. Revealing his own difficulties on the spiritual path, the author shares his journey to rediscover his spiritual power after losing it all. He explains how he reoriented his spiritual quest in a straightforward, less dogmatic way—which led him to discover the gentle art of blessing and the simple path to becoming an embodiment of divine love. Showing how to cultivate your inner voice and intuition to become your own empowered spiritual authority, this guide reveals how to see more clearly, avoid pitfalls, open your spiritual horizons, and move toward your own unique spiritual path founded on discernment, perseverance, and divine love.

Read more less