Search results for ""Author MANUS"

A mathematical tour of some of the greatest unsolved ciphers of all timeIn 1953, a man was found dead from cyanide poisoning near the Philadelphia airport with a picture of a Nazi aircraft in his wallet and an enciphered message taped to his abdomen. In 1912, a book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich came into possession of an illuminated cipher manuscript once belonging to Emperor Rudolf II, who was obsessed with alchemy and the occult. Wartime codebreakers tried—and failed—to unlock the book’s secrets, and it remains an enigma to this day. In this lively and entertaining book, Craig Bauer examines these and other vexing ciphers yet to be cracked. Some may reveal the identity of a spy or serial killer, provide the location of buried treasure, or expose a secret society—while others may be elaborate hoaxes. He lays out the evidence surrounding each cipher, describes the efforts to decipher it, and invites readers to try their hand at puzzles that have stymied so many others.

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The hidden life of the greatest surviving work of Inca artThe most celebrated Andean artwork in the world is a five-hundred-year-old Inca tunic made famous through theories about the meanings of its intricate designs, including attempts to read them as a long-lost writing system. But very little is really known about it. The Royal Inca Tunic reconstructs the history of this enigmatic object, presenting significant new findings about its manufacture and symbolism in Inca visual culture.Andrew James Hamilton draws on meticulous physical examinations of the garment conducted over a decade, wide-ranging studies of colonial Peruvian manuscripts, and groundbreaking research into the tunic’s provenance. He methodically builds a case for the textile having been woven by two women who belonged to the very highest echelon of Inca artists for the last emperor of the Inca Empire on the eve of the Spanish invasion in 1532. Hamilton reveals for the first

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Essays on the turbulent history of Syon Abbey, focussing on the role played by reading and writing in constructing its identity and experience. Founded in 1415, the double monastery of Syon Abbey was the only English example of the order established by the fourteenth-century mystic St Bridget of Sweden. After its dispersal at the Dissolution, the community survived in exile and was briefly restored during the reign of Mary I; but with the accession of Elizabeth I, some of the nuns and brothers once again sought refuge on the Continent, first in the Netherlands and later in Lisbon. This volumeof essays traces the fortunes of Syon Abbey and the Bridgettine order between 1400 and 1700, examining the various ways in which reading and writing shaped its identity and defined its experience, and exploring the interconnections between late medieval and post-Reformation monastic history and the rapidly evolving world of communication, learning, and books. They extend our understanding of religious culture and institutions on the eve of the Reformationand the impulses that inspired initiatives for early modern Catholic renewal, and also illuminate the spread of literacy and the gradual and uneven transition from manuscript to print between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries. In the process, the volume engages with larger questions about the origins and consequences of religious, intellectual and cultural change in late medieval and early modern England. E.A. JONES is Senior Lecturerin English, University of Exeter; ALEXANDRA WALSHAM is Professor of Modern History and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Contributors: E.A. Jones, Alexandra Walsham, Peter Cunich, Virginia Bainbridge, Vincent Gillespie, C. Annette Grise, Claire Walker, Caroline Bowden, Claes Gejrot, Ann Hutchison

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This is the first encyclopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book features more than 150 authoritative and accessible articles by an international team of leading experts in history, politics, literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Organized thematically and chronologically, this indispensable reference provides critical facts and balanced context for greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims. Part I covers the medieval period; Part II, the early modern period through the nineteenth century, in the Ottoman Empire, Africa, Asia, and Europe; Part III, the twentieth century, including the exile of Jews from the Muslim world, Jews and Muslims in Israel, and Jewish-Muslim politics; and Part IV, intersections between Jewish and Muslim origins, philosophy, scholarship, art, ritual, and beliefs. The main articles address major topics such as the Jews of Arabia at the origin of Islam; special profiles cover important individuals and places; and excerpts from primary sources provide contemporary views on historical events. Contributors include Mark R. Cohen, Alain Dieckhoff, Michael Laskier, Vera Moreen, Gordon D. Newby, Marina Rustow, Daniel Schroeter, Kirsten Schulze, Mark Tessler, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and many more. * Covers the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today * Written by an international team of leading scholars * Features in-depth articles on social, political, and cultural history * Includes profiles of important people (Eliyahu Capsali, Joseph Nasi, Mohammed V, Martin Buber, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Edward Said, Messali Hadj, Mahmoud Darwish) and places (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Baghdad) * Presents passages from essential documents of each historical period, such as the Cairo Geniza, Al-Sira, and Judeo-Persian illuminated manuscripts * Richly illustrated with more than 250 images, including maps and color photographs * Includes extensive cross-references, bibliographies, and an index

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Travel back in time and witness both everyday life and great moments in history in this fascinating compilation of diaries through the ages.Bringing together historical and literary diaries, artists' sketchbooks, explorers' journals, and scientists' notebooks, Remarkable Diaries provides an intimate insight into the lives and thoughts of some of the most interesting people of the last two thousand years. Discover what it was like to build a pyramid, sail the seas with Magellan, travel into the heart of Africa, or serve on the Western Front. Find out how writers and artists planned their masterpieces, and how scientists developed their groundbreaking theories.Arranged chronologically, Remarkable Diaries takes you into the pages of the world's greatest diaries, notebooks, and letters, including those of Samuel Pepys, Henry-David Thoreau, the Goncourt brothers, Virginia Woolf, and Anne Frank. Stunning reproductions of the original notebooks and manuscripts are complemented by extracts and quotations, and illustrated features set the diaries in their cultural and historical context.Essential reading for everyone who is passionate about history and literature, Remarkable Diaries provides a fascinating insight into the everyday lives, thoughts, and feelings of men and women through the centuries.

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Ancient Egyptians imagined the afterlife as a kind of journey you had to make to get to paradise – but it was quite a hazardous journey so you would need help along the way. So spells and magic formulas written on papyrus were placed in coffins and burial chambers and believed to protect and aid the deceased in duat, or the underworld. These funerary texts were developed over many centuries into individualized collections known as the Book of the Dead. One of the best-known versions, the ‘Papyrus of Ani’, is featured here. Some 192 spells are known, although no single manuscript contains them all. The spells are designed to give the dead mystical knowledge in the afterlife, offer incantations to help preserve different parts of the deceased, and protect the dead from hostile forces. Some of the spells are to make sure you can control your own body after death. The ancient Egyptians believed that a person was made up of different elements: body, spirit, name, heart, all embodiments of a person, and they were afraid that these elements would disperse when you died. Presented in a high-quality Chinese-bound format with accompanying illustrations, Egyptian Book of the Dead is an ideal resource of esoteric wisdom for anyone interested in Ancient Egyptian notions of death and the path to the afterlife.

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La pharmacopee syriaque demeure encore aujourd'hui peu connue, malgre l'edition datant de 1913 d'un gros volume que nous evons a E.A. Wallis Budge mais qui est loin d'etre parfaite, et un manuscrit inedit de la BnF auquel est apparente un autre de la collection Mingana. L'auteur s'est donne pour tache dans ce petit lexique de rassembler tous les termes, avec les references exactes qui manquaient chez Budge, comprenant les noms de plantes, joliment illustres par cliches fournis par Mme S. Amigues, ainsi que les termes mineraux et animaliers qui entraient dans la composition des recettes pharmacologiques. Le principal but de cet ouvrage est de determiner l'origine linguistique des mots syriaques, une grande partie venant du grec. Cependant un nombre non negligeable de mots issus du moyen-perse ou de persan / arabo-persan est a remarquer. Cela montre combien la pharmacopee en syriaque, comme d'autre sciences (medecine, philosophie, etc.) a herite du grec, attestant par la que les Syriens furent les transmetteurs aux Arabes de ces sciences, comme les specialistes l'oublient trop souvent et comme l'auteur l'a deja montre dans des articles precedents.

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The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. The Bible is meant to be savored, not skimmed. The NET Bible Journal Edition equips you to put more into your time with the Bible. With its extra-wide margins and thick paper, this Bible is perfect for journaling your reactions and insights, writing your prayers, listing your questions, and more.Featuring the New English Translation—the newest translation of the biblical languages into English, based on the most up-to-date manuscript discoveries and research—the NET Bible Journal Edition is the perfect choice for anyone who puts pen to paper to engage more deeply with the Word.Features include: Lined, wide margins for notes and reflections Premium paper for enduring note-taking Durable Smyth-sewn binding lays flat in your hand or on your desk Abbreviated set of NET translators’ notes Two satin ribbon markers Single-column Scripture text 8.75-point print size designed with the exclusive Thomas Nelson NET Comfort Print® typeface

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Following Levita’s statement, the Masorah transmitted by medieval illuminated manuscripts was generally considered as less significant for the study of the biblical and masoretical knowledge in the Jewish world. The biblical codices produced in Ashkenaz were considerably disregarded compared to Spanish codices. Challenging this assertion, this work engages in a reflection on the link between the standard Eastern tradition and the Ashkenazic biblical text-culture of the 13th century. Élodie Attia provides an edition of thirteen cases taken from MS Vat. Ebr. 14, offering the oldest series of Masoretic notes written inside figurative and ornamental designs. Its critical apparatus offers an unprecedented comparison with the oldest Eastern and Ashkenazic sources to evaluate if the scribe paid more attention to aesthetic details than to the textual contents. In an unexpected way, the Masoretic notes of Elijah ha-Naqdan, even written in figurative forms, show a close philological link with the Masorah of the eastern Tiberian sources and prove that the presence of figurative elements neither represents a loss nor a distortion of Masoretic knowledge, but rather illustrates a development in the Masoretic tradition.

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The Geoffrey Chaucer of this book is not the Father of English Literature that you think you know. In this wide-ranging collection of essays you will find wartime Chaucer, postcolonial Chaucer, feminist Chaucer, misogynist Chaucer, radical Chaucer and conservative Chaucer, among many other interpretations. Featuring beautiful illustrations of early manuscripts and rare editions, Chaucer Here and Now gives a picture of how varied adaptations of and responses to his work have been, from fifteenth- century scribes who finished off incomplete tales, through early printers who constructed Chaucer as the Father of the Nation, to contemporary postcolonial writers such as Zadie Smith. The book moves through years of censorship, the creation of children’s Chaucer, Protestant Chaucer and imperial Chaucer – and the travels of Chaucer all around the world. It also explores Chaucer on film and Chaucer in the present moment. Today’s creative responses follow in a line of irreverent, partial responses that we can trace back to Chaucer’s very first readers and editors, showing that Chaucer is available for every here and now to remake, rework and reinvent.

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Representing nearly thirty years of research by one of the leading scholars in the field, this series of in-depth studies examines selected aspects of the music of the great Spanish composer in the late Renaissance, Tomás Luis de Victoria. Presenting new insights into both the musical style and language and the compositional procedure of this contemporary of Palestrina, Lasso and Byrd, Eugene Cramer illuminates the extent to which Victoria's compositions are musically related. The book reveals that the falsobordone or fabordón played a much larger role in Victoria's music than has previously been thought. Cramer also demonstrates that Victoria's parody or imitation technique, especially in respect to his Masses of 1592, extended the parameters that are generally thought to be characteristic of works of this type. Of special interest is the discussion of thirty-eight works, including thirty-four psalm settings that are attributed to Victoria in extant manuscript sources. Extensively illustrated with over 130 musical examples, these studies will not only interest the serious student of sacred music, but also the performer, both the singer and the conductor alike.

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Obscure Locks, Simple Keys is a comprehensive study of this most enigmatic of all of SmauelBeckett's texts. Chris Ackerley's approach, which has some similarities to genetic editing, is based on an extensive study of the manuscripts and different editions (including the French translation, overseen by Beckett himself) of the novel, and the long introduction covers the complex history of the book's composition and publication. The book includes a thematic Index and extensive Bibliography, as well as two appendices: one deals with 'Textual changes and errata in the major editions of Watt'; the other with the tangled question of 'The evolution of Watt'. Most of the work, however, concerns the detailed annotation of the text, and examines the range of literary, religious and philosophical matters that have informed and shaped the text. The primary aim of the volume is to offer a complete exposition of the novel's disconcerting difficulties, but another major objective, given the parlous state of previous editions, was to identify and correct the long history of textual error, with a view to the future publication of a better text.

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Shortly after the third edition of "Leaves of Grass" was published in 1860, Walt Whitman seemed to drop off the literary map, not to emerge again until his brother George was wounded at Fredericksburg, two and a half years later. Past critics have tended to read this silence as evidence of Whitman's indifference to the Civil War during its critical early months. In this penetrating, original, and beautifully written book, Ted Genoways reconstructs those forgotten years - locating Whitman directly through unpublished letters and never-before-seen manuscripts, as well as mapping his associations through rare period newspapers and magazines in which he published.Genoways' account fills a major gap in Whitman's biography and debunks the myth that Whitman was unaffected by the country's march to war. Instead, "Walt Whitman and the Civil War" reveals the poet's active participation in the early Civil War period and elucidates his shock at the horrors of war months before his legendary journey to Fredericksburg, correcting in part the poet's famous assertion that the 'real war will never get in the books'.

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At the turn of the century, Colorado's Cripple Creek District captured the national imagination with the extraordinary wealth of its gold mines and the unquestionable strength of the militant Western Federation of Miners. Elizabeth Jameson tells the entertaining story of Cripple Creek, the scene in 1894 of one of radical labor's most stunning victories and, in 1903 and 1904, of one of its most crushing defeats. Jameson draws on working-class oral histories, the Victor and Cripple Creek Daily Press published by 34 of the local labor unions, and the 1900 manuscript census. She connects unions with lodges and fraternal associations, ethnic identity, families, households, and partisan politics. Through these ties, she probes the differences in age, skill, gender, marital status, and ethnicity that strained working-class unity and contributed to the fall of labor in Cripple Creek. Jameson's book will be required reading for western, ethnic, and working-class historians seeking an alternative interpretation of western mining struggles that emphasizes class, gender, and multiple sources of social identity.

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The political and civil criticism found in the poetry of Robert Burns has influenced readers for over two centuries. The emotional impact reached high levels when the poems were read by people who have lost their liberty, prisoners in HMP Kilmarnock. From the city which gave birth to Burns’ first poetry volume, a workshop within prison led to new inspired creations according to different personal backgrounds. Independence in these new poems is desired not only for Scotland, but also for contemporary slaves, war victims and immigrants. On a personal level, independence from substances and mental illness is also at stake; because the worst enemy often fought against, is our own self. This collection includes the original sources of inspiration, beloved poems by Burns. Among them, To a Mouse, A Man’s A Man for A’ That, and Tree of Liberty. The poems are accompanied by images of Burns’ manuscripts and paintings from the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. A moving and impressive collection from independent minds being nostalgic about the carefree past or wondering whether liberty was ever acquired.

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Monstrous births, rains of blood, apparitions of battles in the sky – people in early modern England found all of these events to carry important religious and political meanings. In An age of wonders, available in paperback for the first time, William E. Burns explores the process by which these events became religiously and politically insignificant in the Restoration period. The story involves the establishment of early modern science, the shift from ‘enthusiastic’ to reasonable religion, and the fierce political combat between the Whigs and the Tories.This historical study is based on close readings of a variety of primary sources, both print and manuscript. Burns claims that prodigies lost their religious meaning and became subjects of scientific enquiry as a result of political struggles, first by the supporters of the restored monarchy and the Church of England against Protestant dissenters, and then by the Whig defenders of the Revolution of 1688 against the Tories and the Jacobites.By integrating religious and political history with the history of science, An age of wonders will be of great use to those working in the field of early modern history.

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Thirteen Months in Dixie, or, the Adventures of a Federal Prisoner in Texas, is a frolicking true tale of adventure, hardship, and heroism during the last days of the Civil War - in the protagonist's own words. And it is finally available to the general public after being hidden away for decades as a family heirloom.Oscar Federhen was a new recruit to the 13th Massachusetts Light Artillery when he shipped out to Louisiana in the spring of 1864 to participate in the Red River Campaign. Not long after his arrival at the front, a combination of ill-luck and bad timing led to his capture. Federhen was marched overland to Tyler, Texas, where he was held as a prisoner of war in Camp Ford, the largest POW camp west of the Mississippi River.Thirteen Months in Dixie recounts Federhen's often horrifying and sometimes thrilling ordeals as a starving prisoner. The captured artillerist tried to escape many times and faced sadistic guards and vicious hounds before making good his deadly effort. And his ordeal was just beginning. Making his way back to Union lines forced him to range cross-country through northeast Texas. He had to dodge regular Confederates, irregulars, and Comanches, but was captured a second time and escaped yet again, finally witnessing the collapse of Confederate army in the spring of 1865 in freedom.Jeaninne Honstein and Steven Knowlton have carefully transcribed and annotated this incredible manuscript to orient the reader to the places, people, and manners described within it. Prominent within its pages are numerous illustrations, including two from Federhen's own pen. Thirteen Months in Dixie is not only a gripping true story of courage, adventure, and devotion to duty, but a valuable primary source about the lives of Civil War prisoners and everyday Texans during the conflict.

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While William Dean Howells is today best remembered as Mark Twain’s staunchest defender, Howells was, at his peak, the unrivaled man of letters in America: he had no contemporary equal. The achievements of both Twain and Henry James have since surpassed those of Howells in the literary hierarchy, but the work of Howells still remains an important part of American letters. In The Early Prose Writings of William Dean Howells, 1852–1861, Thomas Wortham provides a chronological assortment of Howells’ first prose compositions, beginning with apprentice pieces published before the writer’s eighteenth birthday. Born in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, Howells also lived in Hamilton, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus, where Howells’ father, a printer and newspaper publisher, would move the family and set up shop. Howells started writing as a newspaperman, and this volume assembles pieces by Howells which appeared in the Ashtabula Sentinel, the Kingsville Academy Casket, and the Ohio Farmer, as well as the complete text of “The Independent Candidate”—his first attempt in print of an extended work of fiction—serialized in the Ashtabula Sentinel in 1854–55. Also included here is Howels’ novela, Geoffrey: A Study of American Life, a thoughtful psychological study, which was never published, as well as Howells’ letters to the New York World, in which he recorded his impressions and experiences relating to Ohio’s early response to the declaration of the War Between the States. Dr. Wortham furnishes extensive source annotations to document quotations and references as well as framing each selection by Howells with background and explanatory glosses. As he points out, “Howells’ literary life is not wanting in sufficient documentation,” but his apprentice work—“that long foreground which has in his instance been too largely represented by a handful of mediocre poems, has been lost in old files of newspapers, journals, and manuscripts.” Thanks to Dr. Wortham’s careful scholarship, American literature now has a much more detailed and accurate picture of the young Howells and his early works.

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This book contains all the essays and reviews that W. H. Auden wrote during the years when he was living in England, and also includes the full original versions of his two illustrated travel books, Letters from Iceland (written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice) and Journey to a War (written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood). Auden's early prose ranges from extravagant indiscreet travel diaries through sharply observed critiques of writers from John Skelton to Winston Churchill. It includes studies of Communism and Christianity; audaciously wide-ranging essays on literature, psychology, and politics; and writings about gossip, sex, prisons, and schools. The editor's notes include explanations of contemporary and private allusions. The long "Last Will and Testament" written in verse by Auden and MacNeice, which Evelyn Waugh described as a "gossip column," is annotated in full. The book will interest not only Auden's many admirers, but everyone concerned with twentieth-century literature and culture. About the series: In 1928, Stephen Spender hand-printed thirty copies of a small volume of poems by his friend W. H. Auden--the first published book by a man who was to become the dominant literary figure of his generation and one of the century's greatest poets. Sixty years later, Princeton University Press inaugurated an edition of the complete works of Auden, which is intended to serve as the definitive text for all the works Auden published or intended to publish in the form in which he expected to see them printed: his plays and other drama, libretti, essays and reviews, and poems. The Complete Works of W. H. Auden will provide a unique opportunity to solve the numerous textual problems connected with the severe revisions Auden made in his own works. The texts are newly edited from Auden's manuscripts by Edward Mendelson, the literary executor of the Auden estate.

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This volume contains Professor Roland Teske’s translation of William of Auvergne’s Divine Rhetoric along with the Latin text, introduction, and notes. The Latin text improves on that of the 1674 printed edition by the use of two early manuscripts of the work. William was a theologian at the University of Paris and bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death in 1249. He is mainly known for his huge Teaching on God in the Mode of Wisdom, in which he made extensive use of the works of Avicenna and Aristotle as they were becoming known through translations in order to come to some understanding of the Christian faith and philosophy. Although the majority of his writings focus upon the mysteries of the faith and philosophical questions about the nature of human beings, their God, and their world, William was also a bishop with a deep concern for his clergy and people. In his Divine Rhetoric he aimed to explain and illustrate for his priests and people the art of prayer or, as he put it in the subtitle, The Oratorical Art of Divine Eloquence. The work lists and explains seven characteristics or perfections of prayer, but it is perhaps best known for its application of Ciceronian rules of oratory to Christian oratory or prayer.

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Rick Antonson has traveled to parts of the world that are not simply exotic but sometimes damned near inaccessible. He has climbed to the summit of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, traveling beyond to Iraq and Iran and Armenia. He has undertaken an improbable overland journey to the ancient city of Timbuktu, an enlightening look into efforts to preserve the city's priceless manuscripts. Now he has traversed the notorious Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, a country some call 'the last wild place on earth.' The trail is a narrow, 60-mile footpath featuring rough jungle, 6,000 feet in elevation change, and punishing weather extremes. In a country unfairly locked in Western misperceptions, the track is inhospitable terrain yet home to hospitable indigenous peoples, who live among the rusting reminders of the Japanese, Australian, and American armies that clashed in some of the deadliest protracted combat of World War II. In Walking With Ghosts in Papua New Guinea, Antonson shares a journey of physical and mental endurance in his inimitable way, in the company of a mixed band of resolute adventurers, blending fascinating historical context with the tribulations of unexpected discoveries in faraway lands.

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The Yellowstone grizzly population has grown from an estimated 136 bears when first granted federal protection as a threatened species to as many as 1,000 grizzlies in a tri-state region today. No longer limited to remote wilderness areas, grizzlies now roam throughout the region—in state parks, school playgrounds, residential subdivisions, on farms and ranches, and in towns and cities throughout the region. Return of the Grizzly tells the story of the successful effort to recover this large carnivore, the policy changes and disputes between bear managers and bear advocates, and for the first time, provides insight to what recovery means for the people who now live with grizzlies across a broad landscape. From cowboys on horseback chased by a charging grizzly, and grizzlies claiming game animals downed by human hunters, to the numerous self-defense killing of grizzlies that occur each year, the manuscript examines increases in conflicts and human fatalities caused by grizzlies in this ecosystem inhabited by humans who live there year-round. Human–bear interactions, grizzly attacks and deaths, avoiding attacks, effects on agriculture, wildlife protesters, the consequences of bear habituation, and more are all covered.

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Majestic, noble, brave lions, with their tawny coats and luminous eyes, have inspired countless stories, traditions and beliefs. Whether we are seduced by their beauty or drawn to danger, we want to be near them. No other animal has had such an enduring symbolic resonance; lions have been painted on wood and canvas, chiselled in stone, cast in metal and featured on the pages of medieval manuscripts. In this lavishly illustrated book, Deirdre Jackson draws on the latest scientific research, folklore, travel literature, lion tamers' memoirs and little-known sources to guide readers on a memorable cultural safari. Roaring lions sound invincible, but like other large, wide-ranging predators they are in danger of disappearing. Poised at the top of the ecological pyramid, these adaptable and gregarious animals have always been far less plentiful than those on which they prey. The vulnerable African lion is now confined to the sub-Sahara, and its Asian cousin is critically endangered. "Lion", one of the few books to consider both, traces our relationship with the animals through the centuries and paints a fresh picture of these charismatic creatures.

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Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of the key Muslim map-makers and the art of Islamic cartography. Muslims were uniquely placed to explore the edges of the inhabited world and their maps stretched from Isfahan to Palermo, from Istanbul to Cairo and Aden. Over a similar period, Muslim artists developed distinctive styles, often based on geometrical patterns and calligraphy. Map-makers, including al-Khwārazmī and al-Idrīsī, combined novel cartographical techniques with art, science and geographical knowledge. The results could be aesthetically stunning and mathematically sophisticated, politically charged as well as a celebration of human diversity. 'Islamic Maps' examines Islamic visual interpretations of the world in their historical context, through the lives of the map-makers themselves. What was the purpose of their maps, what choices did they make and what was the argument they were trying to convey? Lavishly illustrated with stunning manuscripts, beautiful instruments and Qibla charts, this book shows how maps constructed by Muslim map-makers capture the many dimensions of Islamic civilisation, providing a window into the worldviews of Islamic societies.

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Edited version of the 1837 journal of American musician Lowell Mason written while traveling through Europe. By the middle of the nineteenth century Lowell Mason (1792-1872) was probably the most famous native-born musician in America. Concentrating almost exclusively on vocal music, he built a spectacular reputation as a choir directorand teacher. He published many collections of sacred music that sold in unprecedented numbers and made him a household name. In 1837 he traveled to Europe on a little-publicized trip. This was a bold move decades before such trips by American musicians became commonplace, and his diaries from this time are a primary source of information on early nineteenth-century European music. This edition of Mason's 1837 journal has been carefully edited: throughout, Broyles has attempted to reproduce the original manuscript faithfully, making adjustments only where necessary for intelligibility. Appendices include a list names with brief biographies, an itinerary of the tour, and those letters received during the trip that still survive. An introduction completes this unique and highly readable volume. Michael Broyles is Distinguished Professor of Music and Professor of American History Emeritus at PennState University and Visiting Professor at Florida State University.

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Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari'a Imamate (1913–1958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Oman—such as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological sites—have saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrative conditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage, it also generates anxieties and emotional sensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.

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Becoming Reinaldo Arenas explores the life and work of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990), who emerged on the Latin American cultural scene in the 1960s and quickly achieved literary fame. Yet as a political dissident and an openly gay man, Arenas also experienced discrimination and persecution; he produced much of his work amid political controversy and precarious living conditions. In 1980, having survived ostracism and incarceration in Cuba, he arrived in the United States during the Mariel boatlift. Ten years later, after struggling with poverty and AIDS in New York, Arenas committed suicide. Through insightful close readings of a selection of Arenas's works, including unpublished manuscripts and correspondence, Olivares examines the writer's personal, political, and artistic trajectory, focusing on his portrayals of family, sexuality, exile, and nostalgia. He documents Arenas's critical engagement with cultural and political developments in revolutionary Cuba and investigates the ways in which Arenas challenged literary and national norms. Olivares's analysis shows how Arenas drew on his life experiences to offer revealing perspectives on the Cuban Revolution, the struggles of Cuban exiles, and the politics of sexuality.

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James Raven, a leading historian of the book, offers a fresh and accessible guide to the global study of the production, dissemination and reception of written and printed texts across all societies and in all ages. Students, teachers, researchers and general readers will benefit from the book's investigation of the subject's origins, scope and future direction. Based on original research and a wide range of sources, What is the History of the Book? shows how book history crosses disciplinary boundaries and intersects with literary, historical, media, library, conservation and communications studies. Raven uses examples from around the world to explore different traditions in bibliography, palaeography and manuscript studies. He analyses book history's growing global ambition and demonstrates how the study of reading practices opens up new horizons in social history and the history of knowledge. He shows how book history is contributing to debates about intellectual and popular culture, colonialism and the communication of ideas. The first global, accessible introduction to the field of book history from ancient to modern times, What is the History of the Book? is essential reading for all those interested in one of society's most important cultural artefacts.

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The fourth volume of Mr. Link's biography of Woodrow Wilson and the history of his times covers the period from autumn 1915 to spring 1916. Since this was a time of extreme domestic political controversy and recurring crises with Mexico and Germany, the volume has no single theme. Mr. Link describes fully the negotiation of the House-Grey memorandum and European reaction to it; the armed ship controversy; the Sussex crisis; and the events that nearly led to war with Mexico in 1916. Materials found in German, British, and French archives and manuscript collections are used, as well as from American sources. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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W. B. Yeats is one of the most important writers in English of the twentieth century, and the system of A Vision is generally recognized as fundamental to the power and achievement of his later poetry. Yet this strange mixture of esoteric geometry, lunar symbolism, and sweeping generalization has proven frustrating to generations of readers, who have found it obscure in both matter and presentation. This book helps readers to approach and understand the origins, structure, and implications of the system. Concentrating on the 1937 revised edition of A Vision, the treatment is divided into major topic areas with several levels: a general introduction to each topic; a fuller and deeper examination of that topic, drawing on A Vision's two versions and the manuscript background, and forming the bulk of each chapter; an examination of how the topic manifests in Yeats's literary work; full notes to explore conceptual and textual problems. The first three chapters examine the background and origins of A Vision; the central seven chapters look at the major elements involved in the system; the following four at the major processes of life and history. The main treatment ends with a summary and conclusion, and is supplemented by a glossary of terms and appendices.

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The less it is part of everyday life, the more the appeal of handwriting grows. This wonderful selection of treasures from the Bodleian Library introduces remarkable individuals through documents written by their own hands. From the second century BCE to the present, individual lives and relationships are illuminated through the writing that has been left behind. We see Elizabeth I attempting to win over her new stepmother, Alan Bennett working out the character of Mr Toad, Henry Moore advising soap and water for cleaning sculpture and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin balancing childcare with discovering the structure of penicillin. Here you will find letters, first drafts, autograph albums and hastily scribbled notes, fair copies, marked-up proofs and doodles. Divided into themed categories, the entries feature novelists Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler; scientists Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein; reformers Emmeline Pankhurst, Florence Nightingale and Mohandas Gandhi; and explorers Walter Ralegh, T.E. Lawrence and Patrick Leigh Fermor among many others. Each of these extraordinary people has passed on a manuscript or document with a fascinating story to tell.

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Authoritative reference guide, using the documents in which arms and armour first appeared to explain and define them. Medieval arms and armour are intrinsically fascinating. From the smoke and noise of the armourer's forge to the bloody violence of the battlefield or the silken panoply of the tournament, weapons and armour - and those who made and bore them - are woven into the fabric of medieval society. This sourcebook will aid anyone who seeks to develop a deeper understanding by introducing and presenting the primary sources in which these artefacts are first mentioned. Over a hundred original documents are transcribed and translated, including wills and inventories, craft statutes, chronicle accounts, and challenges to single combat. The book also includes an extensive glossary, lavishly illustrated with forty-six images of extant armour and weapons from the period, and contemporary artistic depictions from illuminated manuscripts and other sources. This book will therefore be of interest to a wide audience, from the living history practitioner, crafter, and martial artist, to students of literature, military history, art, and material culture.

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James Raven, a leading historian of the book, offers a fresh and accessible guide to the global study of the production, dissemination and reception of written and printed texts across all societies and in all ages. Students, teachers, researchers and general readers will benefit from the book's investigation of the subject's origins, scope and future direction. Based on original research and a wide range of sources, What is the History of the Book? shows how book history crosses disciplinary boundaries and intersects with literary, historical, media, library, conservation and communications studies. Raven uses examples from around the world to explore different traditions in bibliography, palaeography and manuscript studies. He analyses book history's growing global ambition and demonstrates how the study of reading practices opens up new horizons in social history and the history of knowledge. He shows how book history is contributing to debates about intellectual and popular culture, colonialism and the communication of ideas. The first global, accessible introduction to the field of book history from ancient to modern times, What is the History of the Book? is essential reading for all those interested in one of society's most important cultural artefacts.

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This book is a systematic linguistic study of, and commentary upon, Julian of Norwich’s A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman. Luke Penkett draws attention to the medieval anchoress’s stylistic brilliance, clarifies complicated passages for the twenty-first century reader, and summarises and builds upon the wisdom of the most up-to-date scholarly research to inspire fresh insight of what is the earliest record of a woman writing in the English language. Penkett gives context to Julian’s writing with a survey of other English literary texts of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He offers a detailed analysis of the notable vocabulary and syntax employed by Julian, her rhetorical techniques, and of what we can learn from the stylistic choices of Julian as both ‘listener’ and ‘communicator’. The book concludes with a fascinating study of what we can learn of the initial reader and listener responses to Julian’s writing from the marginalia found in the manuscript of the Short Text of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman. This book will bring richer meaning to Julian’s words for those who know them well and assist understanding for those discovering her for the first time, perhaps seeking wisdom and comfort in challenging circumstances or to deepen their prayer life.

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This volume fundamentally re-examines textual approaches to the New Testament and its manuscripts in the age of digital editing and media. Using the eccentric work of Herman Charles Hoskier as a shared foundation for analysis, contributors examine the intellectual history of New Testament textual scholarship and the production of critical editions, identify many avenues for further research, and discuss the methods and protocols for producing the most recent set of editions of the New Testament: the Editio Critica Maior. Instead of comprising the minute refinement of a basically acceptable text, textual scholarship on the New Testament is a vibrant field that impinges upon New Testament Studies in unexpected and unacknowledged ways. Contributors:Garrick V. Allen, J. K. Elliott, Gregory Peter Fewster, Peter J. Gurry, Juan Hernández Jr., H. A. G. Houghton, Annette Hüffmeier, Dirk Jongkind, Martin Karrer, Jennifer Wright Knust, Jan Krans, Thomas J. Kraus, Christina M. Kreinecker, Curt Niccum, D. C. Parker, Jacob Peterson, Stanley E. Porter, Catherine Smith, Jill Unkel, Klaus Wachtel, Tommy Wasserman, An-Ting Yi

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A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.Creating the Qur’an presents the first systematic historical-critical study of the Qur’an’s origins, drawing on methods and perspectives commonly used to study other scriptural traditions. Demonstrating in detail that the Islamic tradition relates not a single attested account of the holy text’s formation, Stephen J. Shoemaker shows how the Qur’an preserves a surprisingly diverse array of memories regarding the text’s early history and its canonization. To this he adds perspectives from radiocarbon dating of manuscripts, the linguistic history of Arabic, the social and cultural history of late ancient Arabia, and the limitations of human memory and oral transmission, as well as various peculiarities of the Qur’anic text itself. Considering all the relevant data to present the most comprehensive and convincing examination of the origin and evolution of the Qur’an available, Shoemaker concludes that the canonical text of the Qur’an was most likely produced only around the turn of the eighth century.

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TAMBIÉN CONOCIDO COMO FECHO O MAL DE OJOLa fascinación o aojamiento, tema objeto del presente tratado del Marqués de Villena, es lo que comúnmente conocemos como ?Mal de ojo?. Villena (1384-1418), es el primero en proponer una teoría científica sobre este tema tan controvertido.Escrito en forma epistolar, este pequeño libro describe el Mal de Ojo como una enfermedad mental y espiritual, detalla los tres grandes remedios preventivos ?supersticiosos, virtuales y cualitativos?, analiza los procedimientos para detectar su existencia y los métodos para tratarlo, como por ejemplo los rituales con piedras preciosas o las hojas de albahaca.La presente edición, introducida y anotada por Carmen de la Maza, reproduce un manuscrito de la obra y viene acompañada por un estudio sobre el Mal de Ojo en el judaísmo.

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Edward Thomas wrote a lifetime's poetry in two years. Already a dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only in December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at Arras. Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about the trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and generic range expose the limits of that category too. A central figure in modern poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade English poetry in the early 20th century. Edna Longley published an acclaimed edition of Edward Thomas' "Poems" and "Last Poems" in 1973. Her work advanced Thomas' reputation as a major modern poet. Now she has produced a revised version, which includes all his poems and draws on freshly available archive material. The extensive notes contain substantial quotations from Thomas' prose, letters and notebooks, as well as a new commentary on the poems. The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas' poems helps us to understand their depth and complexity, together with their contexts in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in English poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas' criticism feeds into his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as 'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small but significant ways from that of other extant collections of Thomas' poems. The Bloodaxe edition is larger (with more comprehensive notes) than Faber's "Collected Poems" by Edward Thomas as well as a pound cheaper. More importantly, for academic sales, the Bloodaxe text is more authoritative than Faber's (which uses R. George Thomas' 1978 text). Edna Longley has used manuscripts, proofs and newly available archive material to establish a text for Edward Thomas' complete poetry which will now be used by scholars and students in all future discussions of his work.

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When David Gascoyne celebrated his seventeenth birthday in Paris in 1933, he already had a poetry collection and a novel to his name. He spent much of the next few years in the French capital associating with Eluard, Dali, Ernst, Breton, Peret and other surrealists. By the age of 20 he had firmly established himself within the movement with the publication of his groundbreaking A Short Survey of Surrealism and the poems of Man's Life Is This Meat. In 1938 Holderlin's Madness marked his move away from surrealism in 'a renewal of vision', followed by his milestone collection, Poems 1937-1942 (1943). After the war Gascoyne revisited Paris, publishing A Vagrant and other poems in 1950 and Night Thoughts, the acclaimed BBC radiophonic poem for voices and orchestra, in 1956. Despite several breakdowns he continued to write, particularly during the latter years of his long life, producing few poems, but many translations, reviews and literary criticism, memoirs and obituaries. Even so it was his contention that he was 'a poet who wrote himself out when young and then went mad'. This self-deprecating judgement could not be further from the opinion of those who knew him and valued his achievement. As his fellow poet and lifelong friend, Kathleen Raine, wrote on Gascoyne's 80th birthday: You are the chosen one To speak the words of blessing In this time. This New Collected Poems, compiled by Gascoyne's friend and editor Roger Scott, comprises work that the poet chose to preserve, together with uncollected and unpublished material; all meticulously researched from notebooks and manuscripts held in the British Library and internationally in academic institutions. It falls to present-day readers of Gascoyne's poems to experience the impact of his work, to recognize its significance in twentieth-century literature, and its continuing relevance.

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This book is a comprehensive, cutting-edge guide designed to educate readers on the essentials of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), while emphasizing the crucial aspects of security, ethics, and privacy. The book aims to equip AI practitioners, IT professionals, data scientists, security experts, policy-makers, and students with the knowledge and tools needed to develop, deploy, and manage AI and ML systems securely and responsibly. The book is divided into several sections, each focusing on a specific aspect of AI. It begins by introducing the fundamentals of AI technolgies, providing an overview of their history, development, and various types. This is followed by a deep dive into popular AI algorithms and large language models (LLMs), including GPT-4, that are at the forefront of AI innovation. Next, the book explores the critical security aspects of AI systems, examining the importance of security and the key challenges faced in this domain. It also delves into the common threats, vulnerabilities, and attack vectors, as well as risk assessment and management strategies. This manuscript covers data security, model security, system and infrastructure security, secure development practices, monitoring and auditing, supply chain security, and secure deployment and maintenance. Another key focus of the book is privacy and ethical considerations in AI systems. Topics covered include bias and fairness, transparency and accountability, and privacy and data protection. The book also addresses legal and regulatory compliance, providing an overview of relevant regulations and guidelines, and discussing how to ensure compliance in AI systems through case studies and best practices.This book is a comprehensive, cutting-edge guide designed to educate readers on the essentials of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), while emphasizing the crucial aspects of security, ethics, and privacy. The book aims to equip AI practitioners, IT professionals, data scientists, security experts, policy-makers, and students with the knowledge and tools needed to develop, deploy, and manage AI and ML systems securely and responsibly.

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Brand new deluxe edition of this definitive companion to The Hobbit, quarter-bound, stamped in gold foil with a unique design inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s own artwork, featuring a ribbon marker and housed in a matching custom-built slipcase. The Hobbit was first published on 21 September 1937. Like its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, it is a story that ‘grew in the telling’, and many characters and plot threads in the published text are quite different from the story J.R.R. Tolkien first wrote to read aloud to his young sons as one of their ‘fireside reads’. Together in one volume, The History of the Hobbit presents the complete text of the unpublished manuscript of The Hobbit, accompanied by John Rateliff’s lively and informative account of how the book came to be written and published. Recording the numerous changes made to the story both before and after publication, he examines – chapter by chapter – why those changes were made and how they reflect Tolkien’s ever-growing concept of Middle-earth. As well as reproducing the original version of one of the world’s most popular novels – both on its own merits and as the foundation for The Lord of the Rings – this book includes many little-known illustrations and draft maps for The Hobbit by Tolkien himself. Also featured are extensive commentaries on the dates of composition, how Tolkien’s professional and early mythological writings influenced the story, the imaginary geography he created, and how Tolkien came to revise the book years after publication to accommodate events in The Lord of the Rings. Endorsed by Christopher Tolkien as a companion to his essential 12-volume The History of Middle-earth, this thoughtful and exhaustive examination of one of the most treasured stories in English literature offers fascinating new insights for those who have grown up with this enchanting tale, and will delight any who are about to enter Bilbo’s round door for the first time.

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This critical edition of the Cistercian astronomer and conciliarist Hermann Zoest of Münster’s De fermento et azimo, surviving in a dozen complete manuscripts, makes available the greatest medieval treatise concerning the type of bread that Jesus broke at the Last Supper. Since the so-called Schism of 1054, the Greeks, who employed ordinary leavened bread in the sacrament of the Eucharist, routinely claimed that the Latin use of unleavened bread was invalid and did not involve the Body of Christ. Hermann composed his treatise in 1436 at the Council of Basel, with the oecumenical goal of facilitating Church Union. Relying on astronomy, biblical exegesis, conversation with Greeks, and, in a later revision, information from the famous Jewish convert Bishop Paul of Burgos, Hermann came to the conclusion that the Last Supper occurred before Passover when the Jews were still eating leavened bread, although he allowed for the possibility that Jesus established a new rite with unleavened bread. After enumerating the disagreements between Greeks and Latins, Hermann advised that they focus on the faith and ignore what he labelled ceremonial differences.

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The Chronicle of King Gälawdewos (r. 1540–1559), reporting the nineteen years of the king’s reign, is one of the most useful and significant historical sources for the history of Christian-Muslim relation in the sixteenth century of Ethiopia and the Horn. It represents a peculiar text in Gǝʿǝz historiography both because of its narrative structure and the underlying sources used by the chronicler. Numerous Arabisms appear in the text, which eventually suggest that the Chronicle was written by a person with an outstanding knowledge of Arabic, in 1561. The book presents a new critical edition based on all available manuscripts and provides some detailed introductory notes and an English translation. The new edition yields philological findings concerning the Chronicle of King Gälawdewos in particular and new inputs that call for re-editing the Ethiopian royal chronicles in general. It also adds valuable by now not recorded items for Gǝʿǝz lexicography and corrects historical distortions resulted from the previous edition. Above all, the work provides a text-critically established edition of the Chronicle of King Gälawdewos accompanied by an up-to-date concisely annotated translation, which offer new insights into the late medieval history and historiography of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

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Le règne du souverain Khusro Ier (531-579) fut une période-phare de l’histoire de la Perse sassanide, marquée aussi par des persécutions sporadiques à l’encontre des chrétiens d’origine zoroastrienne. Parmi ces martyrs figurent de grands personnages de la société civile tels Grigor Pirian-Gusnasp, général en chef des armées du roi, un haut-fonctionnaire et juge du nom de Yazd-panah ainsi qu’un notable de la cour, `Awira. Le plus illustre fut sans doute le catholicos Mar Abba (540-552), réunificateur de l’Église d’Orient après un schisme de près de vingt-cinq ans, canoniste, exégète, restaurateur de la discipline ecclésiastique qui avait été affaiblie depuis l’action entreprise par Barsauma en 484, controversiste réputé avec les zoroastriens et les chrétiens syro-orthodoxes, médiateur de paix pour les communautés chrétiennes. Ces textes, mis par écrit par des contemporains des événements, sont les seules hagiographies syro-orientales de cette époque à nous être parvenues en syriaque et présentent une remarquable qualité d’informations sur le paysage socio-religieux et politique de l’Orient au VIe siècle. Une édition critique commentée, accompagnée d’une traduction en français, est pour la première fois proposée à partir des uniques manuscrits existants de Londres, Berlin et du Vatican.

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"The Method" is a manuscript of theorems and proofs written and diagrammed by the mathematician Archimedes at Constantinople in the second half of the tenth century. "The Method" is a book of poems by Sasha Steensen. The former "The Method" is a text that has survived, at least in parts, through a series of processes that includes palimpsesting - the dismantling/reassembling and subsequent overwriting of text-thievery, obscurantism, acquisition, and conservation.The latter text takes the former and its history, which has been invisible, overwritten, and requisitioned for use value, as a jumping-off place for her own meditation on the relationships that develop between a person and her historical truth, a person and her writings. Steensen's "The Method" treads carefully in the terrain of fact that foregrounds her investigations, and emerges centuries and centuries on in the only moment that remains to us. "I thought: The Method, so happily recovered. I am the one who called us all together. I driven time. I wars and waves. I was. I go over sea-lanes rife with fish. I did not. I saw a shadow on the water. I know this situation makes a perfect poem, but I will not."

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A measure of our need for integrity, John Beebe writes, is that ""we rarely allow ourselves an examination of the concept itself. To do so would betray an unspoken philosophic, poetic, and psychological rule of our culture: not to disturb the mystery of what we desire most."" In this book, Beebe reveals much about the nature of integrity while honoring its central mystery. Beebe traces the evolution of the concept from a moral and theological notion to a psychological one. He explores the Eastern understanding of integrity, as well, basing his discussion on pre-Confucian manuscripts of the Tao Te Ching. Viewing anxiety and shame as functions of integrity, he shows the contributions depth psychology can make to integrity's development. He also looks at the ways sex difference and our resulting notions of gender have colored our culture's experience and expression of integrity. Drawing on his own years of experience as a psychotherapist, Beebe shows how the holding environment of psychotherapy can use delight and rage, and dreams and transference to reveal and foster individual integrity. ""Integrity in Depth"" is a groundbreaking work that moves the reader to think in a new way about the psychological basis of moral wholeness.

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From his rich, colourful and uncompromising oeuvre, it's easy to see why Khosrow Hassanzadeh is one of Iran's leading contemporary artists. A former fruit seller and volunteer soldier, he cuts an unusual figure in Tehran's high society art scene. Hassanzadeh works primarily with photography, collage, painting and mixed media, often layering contemporary images and photographs with figures drawn from Persian illuminated manuscripts and Farsi calligraphy. His stark paintings of figures wrapped in burial shrouds are reminiscent of Philip Guston's cartoon-like style but with a sinister immediacy; these images of shrouded corpses are seen all too often in today's tormented Middle East. Treating subjects as diverse as the Iran-Iraq war, murdered prostitutes, women in chadors and Iranian wrestlers, Hassanzadeh's multi-layered, humanist works place individuals at the centre of things and unflinchingly examine harsh political realities. The fact that his work is mainly exhibited outside Iran despite its focus on contemporary Iranian society makes for an intriguing, though slightly uneasy relationship with the Western art world. Each series is prefaced with an essay by leading scholars and critics contextualizing the work.

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How were the first fonts made? Who invented italics? When did we work out how to print in colour? Many of the standard features of printed books were designed by pioneering typographers and printers in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Although Johannes Gutenberg is credited with printing the first books in Europe with moveable type, at the height of the Renaissance many different European printers and publishers found innovative solutions to replicate the appearance of manuscript books in print and improve on them. The illustrated examples in Typographic Firsts originate in those early decades, bringing into focus the influences and innovations that shaped the printed book and established a Western typographic canon. From the practical challenges of polychromatic printing or printing music staves and notes to the techniques for illustrating books with woodcuts, producing books for children and the design of the first fonts, these stories chart the invention of the printed book, the world’s first means of mass communication. Also covering title pages, maps, printing in gold and printing in colour, this book shows how a mixture of happenstance and brilliant technological innovation came together to form the typographic and design conventions of the book.

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