Search results for ""yale university press""

Exeter Cathedral is but the crowning glory of Devon's wealth of medieval churches, replete with sumptuous fittings and monuments. The county's peak of prosperity from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth-century is reflected too in its castles, its secluded manor houses, and its scores of sturdily built farmhouses. The delights of Devon's well loved seaside and country towns are explored from the distinctive merchants' houses of Totnes and Topsham to the elegant Regency crescents of Teignmouth and Sidmouth. The picture is completed by accounts of the creation of the docks at Plymouth, industrial relics, and the substantial but little known store of Devon's Victorian churches.

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David Octavius Hill (1802–70) was a pioneer photographer, painter, and lithographer. In 1843, he entered into partnership with the young photographer Robert Adamson, and in the next four years they produced an extraordinary body of original and inventive work. This book analyzes the photographic partnership, explains its remarkable success, and places it in the context of Hill’s life and times.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This volume sheds light on the pride of the region - the great medieval churches of York Minster, the Minster and St Mary at Beverley, and Holy Trinity, Hull but also on less well known architectural pleasures of town and county. Outstanding Victorian village churches, including masterpieces by Street & Pearson, are as rewarding as the major country houses of Burton Agnes, Burton Constable and Sledmere. The countryside offes a wide range of monuments, from the beautifully sited ruins of Kirkham Priory to the spectacular Humber Bridge. Farmhouses and cottages of the Wolds, picturesque estate villages and chapels, and industrial structures are all brought into focus. A large section is devoted to York and includes a survey of the historic buildings of the city centre from the Roman period onwards. This is complemented by a detailed exploration of York's eighteenth and nineteenth-century suburbs. Equal care has been applied to the descriptions of Beverley, with its attractive townscape, and the port of Hull, where unexpected highlights include seventeenth-century merchant houses, Georgian almshouses, ornate Victorian pubs, and grand Edwardian public buildings.

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A generous selection of poems by a major Victorian writer, a virtuoso of traditional forms who came to be recognized as a uniquely inventive and original voice in modern poetry This selection of poems by Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), edited by David Bromwich, covers the range of Hardy’s extraordinary work: songs, ballads, and sonnets, dramatic monologues and elegies, along with poems that mark epochal events, such as the end of the Great War. This selection shows why Hardy has been admired as the most inward and personal of the moderns, yet also the most accessible and widely read. Included here is the full and integral text of Chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy, the final selection of his own work that Hardy chose to publish. Bromwich has selected more than one hundred fifty additional poems that cover the length of Hardy’s career, from Wessex Poems to Winter Words. His critical and biographical introduction sets Hardy’s achievement in the context of a career in prose and poetry that has no parallel.

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This collection of writings by specialists from many disciplines explores a wide range of topics relating to English painter George Romney (1734–1802). The contributors to the book address not only Romney’s personality and artistic practice, but also aspects of the cultural context of his work, such as its relation to theater and its diffusion through prints. Key essays discuss the central themes of the artist’s work, his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and his painting technique. Alex Kidson offers in the introduction a survey of previous writings about Romney and their impact on the artist’s reputation two centuries after his death. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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How should Germany commemorate the mass murder of Jews once committed in its name? In 1997, James E. Young was invited to join a German commission appointed to find an appropriate design for a national memorial in Berlin to the European Jews killed in World War II. As the only foreigner and only Jew on the panel, Young gained a unique perspective on Germany’s fraught efforts to memorialize the Holocaust. In this book, he tells for the first time the inside story of Germany’s national Holocaust memorial and his own role in it.In exploring Germany’s memorial crisis, Young also asks the more general question of how a generation of contemporary artists can remember an event like the Holocaust, which it never knew directly. Young examines the works of a number of vanguard artists in America and Europe—including Art Spiegelman, Shimon Attie, David Levinthal, and Rachel Whiteread—all born after the Holocaust but indelibly shaped by its memory as passed down through memoirs, film, photographs, and museums. In the context of the moral and aesthetic questions raised by these avant-garde projects, Young offers fascinating insights into the controversy surrounding Berlin’s newly opened Jewish museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, as well as Germany’s soon-to-be-built national Holocaust memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman.Illustrated with striking images in color and black-and-white, At Memory’s Edge is the first book in any language to chronicle these projects and to show how we remember the Holocaust in the after-images of its history.

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In this clear and accessible book, an eminent political scientist offers a jargon-free introduction to the market system for all readers, with or without a background in economics. "A balanced and novel treatment of a very important set of questions. This is a book of grand scope by an outstanding scholar."—Samuel Bowles, University of Massachusetts, Amherst "Anyone who wants to know more about the market system’s plusses and minuses, how government can help or hinder its workings, and the direction in which it is likely to move should read this clear, fair, and fascinating book."—Robert Heilbroner, professor emeritus, New School University"The Market System resplendently assesses the character, rules, advantages, and shortcomings of the central institution coordinating modern economic and social life. Lindblom marshals his incisive intellect, uncommon range, and pellucid prose to clarify, probe, and exhort. The result is an unsurpassed guide."—Ira I. Katznelson, Columbia University

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For centuries Europeans ruled vast portions of the world, as inhabitants of west European countries sailed to distant continents and took possession of territories whose societies and economies they set out to change. How and why did these farflung empires form, persist, and finally fall? David Abernethy addresses these questions in this magisterial survey of the rise and decline of European overseas empires. Abernethy identifies broad patterns across time and space, interweaving them with fascinating details of cross-cultural encounters. He argues that relatively autonomous profit-making, religious, and governmental institutions enabled west European countries to launch triple assaults on other societies. Indigenous people also played a role in their eventual subjugation by inviting Europeans to intervene in their power struggles. Abernethy finds that imperial decline was often the unanticipated result of wars among major powers. Postwar crises over colonies’ unmet expectations empowered movements that eventually took territories as diverse as the thirteen British North American colonies, Spain’s South American possessions, India, the Dutch East Indies, Vietnam, and the Gold Coast to independence. In advancing a theory of imperialism that includes European and non-European actors, and in analyzing economic, social, and cultural as well as political dimensions of empire, Abernethy helps account for Europe’s long occupation of global center stage. He also sheds light on key features of today’s postcolonial world and the legacies of empire, concluding with an insightful approach to the moral evaluation of colonialism.

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Sir Joshua Reynolds could never have anticipated an edition of his letters; he once told Boswell that “If I felt the same reluctance in taking a Pencil in my hand as I do a pen I should be as bad a Painter as I am a correspondent.” Yet although his surviving letters are those of a busy man, and many are perfunctory responses or requests, they remain of considerable interest to the reader.This is the first edition of letters by Reynolds to be published since 1929. Since that date the number of known letters has almost doubled. The new volume contains a total of 308 letters by the artist to friends, family, and patrons, all of which are accompanied by detailed notes to identify the recipient and illuminate the text.Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

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James II (1633–1701) lacked the charisma of his father, Charles I, but shared his tendency to dismiss the views of others when they differed from his own. Failing to understand his subjects, James was also misunderstood by them. In this highly-regarded biography, John Miller reassesses James II and his reign, drawing on a wide array of primary sources from France, Italy, and Ireland as well as England. Miller argues that the king had many laudable attributes--he was brave, loyal, honorable, and hard-working, and he was at least as benevolent toward his people as his father had been. Yet James’s conversion to Catholicism fueled the distrust of his Protestant subjects who placed the worst possible construction on his actions and statements. Although James came to see the securing of religious freedom for Catholics in the wider context of freedom for all religious minorities, his people naturally doubted the sincerity of his commitment to toleration.The book explores James’s relations with the state and society, focusing on the political, diplomatic, and religious issues that shaped his reign. Miller discusses the human failings, the gulf of understanding between the king and his subjects, and the sheer bad luck that led to James’s downfall. He also considers the reasons for James’s lack of interest in recovering his kingdom after his flight to France in 1688. This revised edition of the book includes a substantial new foreword assessing recent work on the reign.“This is a first-class essay in historical biography. . . . It must displace all previous lives of James II.”—J. P. Kenyon, Observer

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The authors in this book argue that our dedication to maintaining beautiful lawns is contributing to the serious environmental problems facing the planet, and they offer strategies for creating and caring for aesthetically pleasing and ecologically sound lawns. This new edition updates the original text and adds a chapter and illustrations showing what progress has been made in the ecological management of landscapes over the past decade.Reviews of the first edition:“An extremely readable summation of the origins of the addiction to lawns, and of the environmental reasons why Americans should kick the habit.”—Anne Raver, New York Times Book Review“A manual for improving a large part of the American environment while reducing pollution, saving Americans a large amount of money, and beautifying the landscape.”—Edward O. Wilson

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Deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate in many parts of the world, causing destruction of natural habitat and fragmentation of what remains. Nowhere is this problem more pressing than in the Amazon rainforest, which is rapidly vanishing in the face of enormous pressure from humans to exploit it. This book presents the results of the longest-running and most comprehensive study of forest fragmentation ever undertaken, the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP) in central Amazonia, the only experimental study of tropical forest fragmentation in which baseline data are available before isolation from continuous forest took place.A joint project of Brazil’s National Institute for Research in Amazonia and the U.S. Smithsonian Institution, the BDFFP has investigated the many effects that habitat fragmentation has on plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The book provides an overview of the BDFFP, reports on its case studies, looks at forest ecology and tree genetics, and considers what issues are involved in establishing conservation and management guidelines.

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Henry II (1133-1189) was an enigma in his own time and has continued to excite widely divergent judgments ever since. His quarrel with Archbishop Becket, his troubled relationships with his sons and with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and other dramatic incidents of his reign present rich material for historical novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers, but with no unanimity of interpretation. This masterful biography provides a comprehensive reappraisal of Henry II, the man and king. W. L. Warren explores a full range of contemporary sources to illuminate the king’s policy and personality as well as the events of his reign.Henry II’s greatness as a king is not in doubt. From an early age he impressed his will on a turbulent realm and established new standards of law and order in seemingly ungovernable territories. He fought and won the first great war over the balance of power in western Europe, laid the foundations for the growth of English Common Law and of royal administration, and destroyed the possibility that the realm might disintegrate into feudal principalities. Warren focuses on the actions of the king and, while not underrating the importance of the famous crises of Henry’s reign, gives equal attention to incidents that are little-known but equally revealing.

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The evolution and reception of the Renaissance was mediated by developments in various other spheres of early modern life and culture. Foremost among these were the religious changes initiated by the Protestant Reformation, which are discussed in the opening chapters of this book. Religious and cultural developments in Germany are contrasted with sixteenth-century Spain and are further explored through the study of the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes. The place of Renaissance science or natural philosophy is also the subject of critical evaluation in this book. Case studies on the anatomical revolution, Galileo and court patronage, and Paracelsus illustrate new approaches in the field. Subsequent chapters explore the Renaissance fascination with witchcraft and demonology in both learned discourse (Pico’s Strix) and popular drama (The Witch of Edmonton). The volume concludes with a study of one of the most influential and provocative writers of the sixteenth century, Michel de Montaigne, whose Essays provide stimulating material for a reassessment of the impact of the Renaissance on contemporary thought. This volume is the third in a series of three texts designed for the Open University course The Renaissance in Europe: A Cultural Enquiry.

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Founder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VII was a crucial figure in English history. In this acclaimed study of the king’s life and reign, the distinguished historian S. B. Chrimes explores the circumstances surrounding Henry’s acquisition of the throne, examines the personnel and machinery of government, and surveys the king’s social, political, and economic policies, law enforcement, and foreign strategy. This edition of the book includes a new critical introduction and bibliographical updating by George Bernard.

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As we cross the threshold of a new century, which approaches are likely to improve public education? In this book, distinguished scholars discuss recent innovations—charter schools, contracting arrangements, and choice—designed to liberate educators from burdensome bureaucratic controls and improve the level of opportunity for all children.Focusing on the problems in cities, where far too many children have been denied access to quality institutions, the authors examine the lessons to be learned from Catholic schools, site-based management, private entrepreneurs, and specific developments in three cities—New York, Milwaukee, and Chicago. The authors, though realistic about the political and institutional obstacles that stand in the way of meaningful change, foresee the demise of the "one size fits all" approach to schooling. They envision a system of schools that is dynamic, diverse, performance based, and accountable; one that is supportive of professionals, responsive to creativity, intolerant of failure, and committed to high educational standards for all children.Contributors: Louann BierleinAnthony BrykJohn ChubbChester FinnPaul HillValerie LeePaul PetersonDiane RavitchJoseph P. ViterittiPriscilla Wohlstetter

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How much do the English really care about their stately homes? In this pathbreaking and wide-ranging account of the changing fortunes and status of the stately homes of England over the past two centuries, Peter Mandler melds social, cultural, artistic, and political perspectives and reveals much about the relationship of the nation to its past and its traditional ruling elite. Challenging the prevailing view of a modern English culture besotted with its history and its aristocracy, Mandler portrays instead a continuously changing and modernizing society in which both popular and intellectual attitudes toward the aristocracy—and its stately homes—have veered from selective appreciation to outright hostility and only recently to thoroughgoing admiration.With great panache, Mandler adds the missing pieces to the story of the country house. Going beyond its architects and its owners, he brings to center stage a much wider cast of characters—aristocratic entrepreneurs, anti-aristocratic politicians, campaigning conservationists, ordinary sightseers and voters—and a scenario full of incident and local and national color. He traces attitudes toward the stately homes, beginning in the first half of the nineteenth century when public feeling about the aristocracy was mixed and divided. Criticism of the "foreign" and "exclusive" image of the typical aristocratic country house was widespread. At the same time, interest grew in those older houses that symbolized an olden time of imagined national harmony. The Victorian period also saw the first mass tourist industry, and a strong popular demand emerged for the right to visit all the stately homes. By the 1880s, however, hostility toward the aristocracy made appreciation of any country house politically treacherous, and interest in aristocratic heritage declined steadily for sixty years. Only after 1945, when the aristocracy was no longer seen as a threat, was a gentle revival of the stately homes possible, Mandler contends, and only since the 1970s has that revival become a triumphant appreciation. He enters today's debate with a discussion of how far people today—and tomorrow—are willing to see the aristocracy's heritage as their own.

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In this thought-provoking book, clinical psychologist and professor of religious studies James W. Jones presents a dialogue between contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and contemporary theology. He sheds new light on the interaction of religion and psychology by viewing it from the perspective of world religions, providing an epistemological framework for the psychology of religion that draws on contemporary philosophy of science, and bringing out the importance of gender as a category of analysis. Developments in psychoanalysis provide new resources for theological reflection, Jones contends. The Freudian view that human nature is isolated and instinctual has shifted to a vision of the self as constituted in and through relationships. Jones uses this relational model of human nature to explore the convergence between contemporary psychoanalysis, feminist theorizing, and themes in religious thought found in a variety of traditions. He also critiques the reductionism inherent in Freud's discussion of religion and proposes nonreductionistic and genuinely psychoanalytic ways for psychoanalysis to treat religious topics. For therapists, psychologists, theologians, and others interested in spiritual or psychological issues, Jones offers illuminating clinical material and insightful analysis.

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Edward Norgate, aristocratic friend of Charles I and the Earl of Arundel, made his mark in seventeenth-century England as musician, herald, and courtier. He also wrote Miniatura, a widely circulated study of miniature painting in his era that serves today as both a guide to materials and techniques and a record of the artistic knowledge and taste of Charles' court. This new edition of Norgate's treatise, the first since 1919, introduces and fully annotates the text from technical and art historical perspectives, firmly establishing the prime importance of Norgate's work.The book provides a detailed account of Norgate's life and many interests, his readership, and his technique. The editors—a noted scholar of seventeenth-century art and an authority on the techniques and materials of miniature painting—closely examine Norgate's text and compare it with other contemporary treatises, placing his techniques in the context of the period. The treatise itself, first written in 1627-28 and then substantially revised in 1648, sets forth in great detail the methods of English miniaturists, from the composition and preparation of pigments and brushes to lighting in the studio. Norgate acknowledges indebtedness to Hilliard, comments on other artists' styles and techniques, and reveals through his own views the English aristocracy's interest in and assimilation of European artistic culture.Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

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This book traces the origins and growth of modern art, assessing the intrinsic qualities of individual works and describing the social forces in play. It covers various areas including works of Impressionism, Cubism, Constructivism and Surrealism.

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A survey of how the Aegean peoples expressed themselves during a period of some 5000 years after the end of the Bronze Age (circa 1100 BC), and before the rise of Greek art. Work produced in the ambience of the palaces of Crete (including the palace of Minos at Knossos) and of Mycenae on the mainland is fully described and illustrated. For purposes of clarity the arts are considered by function and material rather than by geographical region or chronological period; but the main political upheavals affecting them are kept in mind. Little wall-painting has survived, and the so-called minor arts are examined for the light they thow on it, as well as to assess artistic development in the Aegean as a whole.

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“This book should be required reading for professionals in early education and makes thought-provoking reading for anyone aware of his or her own cultural blinkers.”—Penelope Leach, New York Times Book Review"[An] important study of the way preschools both reflect and affect social change. . . . A must read for those who take social issues seriously."—Carole C. Kemmerer, Los Angeles TimesAs the numbers of mothers in the workforce grows, the role of the extended family diminishes, and parents feel under greater pressure to give their children an educational headstart, industrialized societies are increasingly turning to preschools to nurture, educate, and socialize young children. Drawing on their backgrounds in anthropology, human development, and education, Tobin, Wu, and Davidson present a unique comparison of the practices and philosophies of Japanese, Chinese, and American preschool education and discuss how changes in childcare both reflect and affect larger social change. The method used is innovative: the authors first videotaped a preschool in each culture, then showed the tapes to preschool staff, parents, and child development experts. Through their vivid descriptions of a day in each country's preschools, photographs made from their videotapes, and Chinese, Japanese, and American evaluations of their own and each other's schools, we are drawn into a multicultural discussion of such issues as freedom, conformity, creativity, and discipline.

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What is fair? How and when can punishment be legitimate? Is there recompense for human suffering? How can we understand ideas about immortality or an afterlife in the context of critical thinking on the human condition? In this book L. E. Goodman presents the first general theory of justice in this century to make systematic use of the Jewish sources and to bring them into a philosophical dialogue with the leading ethical and political texts of the Western tradition. Goodman takes an ontological approach to questions of natural and human justice, developing a theory of community and of nonvindictive yet retributive punishment that is grounded in careful analysis of various Jewish sources—biblical, rabbinic, and philosophical, His exegesis of these sources allow Plato, Kant, and Rawls to join in a discourse with Spinoza and medieval rationalists, such as Saasidah and Maimonides, who speak in a very different idiom but address many of the same themes. Drawing on sources old and new, Jewish and non-Jewish, Goodman offers fresh perspectives on important moral and theological issues that will be of interest to both Jewish and secular philosophers.

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Eleanor Harz Jorden and Mari Noda, authors of the widely used language textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language, now offer the first volume of the much anticipated companion to it, Japanese: The Written Language. This new series is designed to enable the learner of Japanese to establish a solid foundation for communicating with the Japanese through the written language. It is arranged so that each lesson coordinates with the lesson in Japanese: The Spoken Language of the same number. This first volume, devoted exclusively to the katakana syllabary, which is used to represent loanwords in Japanese, provides the most comprehensive pedagogical treatment of the subject available today. Audio files and flash cards are available from the web, and a workbook is available for separate purchase.

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García explores the relationship of class, race, and labor in El Paso, documenting the evolution of work, housing, education, politics, and culture in the Mexican community. Desert Immigrants makes a significant contribution not only to Chicano and Mexican history, but to the history of immigration and labor and urban studies as well.

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A groundbreaking reassessment that foregrounds Van Gogh's profound engagement with the industrial age while making his work newly relevant for our world today

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More than three hundred previously unpublished texts from the Yale Babylonian Collection

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Evocative poems and prose fragments about home, selected by one of the most celebrated poets of our time “This is a book of longing, yes, and also spiritual discernment, political awareness, historical memory, and deep intimacy.”—Carolyn Forché In this poignant collection, Christian Wiman draws together one hundred evocative poems and prose fragments about home, exploring home’s deep theological, literary, philosophical, historical, political, and social dimensions. Wiman calls home “a house, a country, a language, a love, a longing, a grief, a god.” It’s “a word that disperses into more definitions than one book can contain.” The tensions between diffusion and concentration, roaming and rootedness, precarity and security are everywhere in this book, often in the same poem. Ranging from early modernism to the current moment, and from southern Africa to the Arctic Circle, the selections are as diverse as the poets included. Collectively they envision an imaginative home for even the most homeless of modern readers. Completed entirely during quarantine, amid the miseries of separation and isolation, the collection offers a powerful vision of home as both a place and a way.

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A look at the origins of British abolitionism as a problem of eighteenth-century science as well as one of economics and humanitarian sensibilities

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WINNER OF THE ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT'S 2023 GEORGE R. TERRY BOOK AWARD A groundbreaking account which shows how the public sector must adapt, but also persevere, in order to advance technology and innovation From self-driving cars to smart grids, governments are experimenting with new technologies to significantly change the way we live. Innovation has become vitally important to states across the world. Rainer Kattel, Wolfgang Drechsler, and Erkki Karo explore how public bodies pursue innovation, looking at how new policies are designed and implemented. Spanning Europe, the USA and Asia, the authors show how different institutions finance new technologies and share cutting-edge information. They argue for the importance of “agile stability,” demonstrating that in order to successfully innovate, state organizations have to move nimbly like start-ups and yet ensure stability at the same time. And that, particularly in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments need both long-term policy and dynamic capabilities to handle crises. This vital account explores the complex and often contradictory positions of innovating public bodies—and shows how they can overcome financial and political resistance to change for the good of us all.

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A leading contrarian thinker explores the ethical paradox at the heart of history's wounds The conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayana’s celebrated phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Today, the consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget, is nearly absolute. And yet is this right? David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, “inoculate” the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds—whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces—neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option—sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget. Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times—the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9/11—Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses and abuses of historical memory. His contentious, brilliant, and elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy.

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A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for this volume writings penned during trips and wanderings over the span of several decades. He has traveled through these years with many beloved companions, to whom he dedicates the book, and sought the kind of journey “that occurs when you abandon yourself to [the gentle current of time] and to whatever life brings.” Taken together Magris’s essays share a clearly identified theme. They represent the motif of the journey in all its aspects—literary, metaphysical, spiritual, mythical, philosophical, historical—as well as the author’s comprehensive understanding of the subject or, one might say, of his own way of being in the world. Traveling from Spain to Germany to Poland, Norway, Vietnam, Iran, and Australia, he records particular moments and places through a highly personal lens. A writer’s writer and a reader’s traveler, Magris proves that wandering is equal part wondering.

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An essential book for the 21st-century citizen who seeks a lively guided tour of the ancient Greek Olympics What was it like to attend the Olympics in 388 B.C.? Would the experience resemble Olympic festivals as we celebrate them today? This remarkable book transports us back to the heyday of the city-state and classical Greek civilization. It invites us to enter this distant, alien, but still familiar culture and discover what the Greeks did and didn't do during five thrilling days in August 2,400 years ago.In the Olympic Stadium there were no stands, no shade—and no women allowed. Visitors sat on a grassy bank in the searing heat of midsummer to watch naked athletes compete in footraces, the pentathlon, horse and chariot races, and three combat sports—wrestling, boxing, and pankration, everyone's favorite competition, with virtually no rules and considerable blood and pain. This colorfully illustrated volume offers a complete tour of the Olympic site exactly as athletes and spectators found it. The book evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the crowded encampment; introduces the various attendees (from champions and charlatans to aristocrats and prostitutes); and explains the numerous exotic religious rituals. Uniquely detailed and precise, this guide offers readers an unparalleled opportunity to travel in time, back to the excitement of ancient Olympia.

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This volume completes Bible scholar Michael V. Fox’s comprehensive commentary on the book of Proverbs. As in his previous volume on the early chapters of Proverbs, the author here translates and explains in accessible language the meaning and literary qualities of the sayings and poems that comprise the final chapters. He gives special attention to comparable sayings in other wisdom books, particularly from Egypt, and makes extensive use of medieval Hebrew commentaries, which have received scant attention in previous Proverb commentaries. In separate sections set in smaller type, the author addresses technical issues of text and language for interested scholars. The author’s essays at the end of the commentary view the book of Proverbs in its entirety and investigate its ideas of wisdom, ethics, revelation, and knowledge. Out of Proverbs’ great variety of sayings from different times, Fox shows, there emerges a unified vision of life, its obligations, and its potentials.

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