Search results for ""author matt"

Fever has long been recognized as a symptom of disease. Until the past century it was considered a healthy sign; since then this view has changed and the use of drugs to reduce fever has grown quite common. Acting on the revival of interest as to whether the effects of fever are beneficial or harmful, Matthew Kluger and other physiologists began a series of experiments designed to resolve this question. This book synthesizes their research, making a case not only for the beneficial function of fever but also for the re-evaluation of current clinical practices regarding fever. Originally published in 1979. 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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In the electronic age, documents appear to have escaped their paper confinement. But we are still surrounded by flows of paper with enormous consequences. In the planned city of Islamabad, order and disorder are produced through the ceaseless inscription and circulation of millions of paper artifacts among bureaucrats, politicians, property owners, villagers, imams (prayer leaders), businessmen, and builders. What are the implications of such a thorough paper mediation of relationships among people, things, places, and purposes? "Government of Paper" explores this question in the routine yet unpredictable realm of the Pakistani urban bureaucracy, showing how the material forms of postcolonial bureaucratic documentation produce a distinctive political economy of paper that shapes how the city is constructed, regulated, and inhabited. Files, maps, petitions, and visiting cards constitute the enduring material infrastructure of more ephemeral classifications, laws, and institutional organizations. Matthew S. Hull develops a fresh approach to state governance as a material practice, explaining why writing practices designed during the colonial era to isolate the government from society have become a means of participation in it.

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In its current state, the global food system is socially and ecologically unsustainable: nearly two billion people are food insecure, and food systems are the number one contributor to climate change. While agro-industrial production is promoted as the solution to these problems, growing global "food sovereignty" movements are challenging this model by demanding local and democratic control over food systems. Translating Food Sovereignty accompanies activists based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States as they mobilize the claim of food sovereignty across local, regional, and global arenas of governance. In contrast to social movements that frame their claims through the language of human rights, food sovereignty activists are one of the first to have articulated themselves in relation to the neoliberal transnational order of networked governance. While this global regulatory framework emerged to deepen market logics, Matthew C. Canfield reveals how activists are leveraging this order to make more expansive social justice claims. This nuanced, deeply engaged ethnography illustrates how food sovereignty activists are cultivating new forms of transnational governance from the ground up.

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Explores the culture that made military shooter video games popular, and key in understanding the War on Terror No video game genre has been more popular or more lucrative in recent years than the “military shooter.” Franchises such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, and those bearing Tom Clancy’s name turn over billions of dollars annually by promising to immerse players in historic and near-future battles, converting the reality of contemporary conflicts into playable, experiences. In the aftermath of 9/11, these games transformed a national crisis into fantastic and profitable adventures, where seemingly powerless spectators became solutions to these virtual Wars on Terror. Playing War provides a cultural framework for understanding the popularity of military-themed video games and their significance in the ongoing War on Terror. Matthew Payne examines post-9/11 shooter-style game design as well as gaming strategies to expose how these practices perpetuate and challenge reigning political beliefs about America’s military prowess and combat policies. Far from offering simplistic escapist pleasures, these post-9/11 shooters draw on a range of nationalist mythologies, positioning the player as the virtual hero at every level. Through close readings of key games, analyses of marketing materials, and participant observations of the war gaming community, Playing War examines an industry mobilizing anxieties about terrorism and invasion to craft immersive titles that transform international strife into interactive fun.

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In Performance and Religion in Early Modern England, Matthew J. Smith seeks to expand our view of “the theatrical.” By revealing the creative and phenomenal ways that performances reshaped religious material in early modern England, he offers a more inclusive and integrative view of performance culture. Smith argues that early modern theatrical and religious practices are better understood through a comparative study of multiple performance types: not only commercial plays but also ballads, jigs, sermons, pageants, ceremonies, and festivals. Our definition of performance culture is augmented by the ways these events looked, sounded, felt, and even tasted to their audiences. This expanded view illustrates how the post-Reformation period utilized new capabilities brought about by religious change and continuity alike. Smith posits that theatrical practice at this time was acutely aware of its power not just to imitate but to work performatively, and to create spaces where audiences could both imaginatively comprehend and immediately enact their social, festive, ethical, and religious overtures. Each chapter in the book builds on the previous ones to form a cumulative overview of early modern performance culture. This book is unique in bringing this variety of performance types, their archives, venues, and audiences together at the crossroads of religion and theater in early modern England. Scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and those generally interested in the Renaissance will enjoy this book.

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Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul might be imagined as brothers with wildly different characters but a strong family resemblance. Paul, the elder sibling, was awkward, abrasive, and zealous. Leonard, the successful younger brother, was a smooth-talking romantic, prone to addiction and depression. Paul died a martyr, not knowing his words would have any effect on the world. Leonard could see his canonization within his lifetime. Yet each became a prophet in his own time, and a poet for the ages.In Prophets of Love Matthew Anderson traces surprising connections between two Jewish thinkers separated by millennia. He explores Leonard's and Paul’s mysticism, their Judaism, their fascination with Jesus, their countercultural perspectives on sex, their ideas about love, and how they each embodied being men. Anderson considers their ambiguous relationships with women, on whom they depended and from whom they often profited, as well as how their legacies continue to evolve and be re-interpreted. This book emphasizes that Paul was first and foremost a Jew, and never rejected his Judaism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the biblical worldviews and language underlying and inspiring every line of Cohen’s poetry.Prophets of Love alters our views of both Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul, re-introducing us to two poetic prophets of divine and human love.

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The six Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf – Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have a disproportionate importance in the global economic system because of their enormous reserves of oil and gas. Matthew Gray provides a brief yet comprehensive profile of these six Gulf states and their modern political economy. Focusing on the postwar period, particularly the last 20 years, he examines the key factors that have shaped these nations’ economies and enabled them to bypass typical development pathways. The book explores how the combination of rentierism, state ownership of key firms and assets, and the use of patron–client networks to distribute favours and opportunities, has created a very effective strategy for regime maintenance and durability. However, the book also outlines how cooptive bargains with society have given the Gulf states a unique set of economic problems, including low levels of innovation and entrepreneurship, reliance on foreign workers and an inflated public sector. With the global demand for hydrocarbons set to decline, the need for the Gulf states to diversify their economies, expand the private sector, and build a more diverse taxation base has become ever more pressing. The book explains the importance of these challenges, which, along with those of geography, regional security, rapidly growing populations, and sectarianism are likely to test the Gulf’s new generation of leaders.

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America’s racial odyssey is the subject of this remarkable work of historical imagination. Matthew Frye Jacobson argues that race resides not in nature but in the contingencies of politics and culture. In ever-changing racial categories we glimpse the competing theories of history and collective destiny by which power has been organized and contested in the United States. Capturing the excitement of the new field of “whiteness studies” and linking it to traditional historical inquiry, Jacobson shows that in this nation of immigrants “race” has been at the core of civic assimilation: ethnic minorities in becoming American were re-racialized to become Caucasian. He provides a counter-history of how nationality groups such as the Irish or Greeks became Americans as racial groups like Celts or Mediterraneans became Caucasian.Jacobson tracks race as a conception and perception, emphasizing the importance of knowing not only how we label one another but also how we see one another, and how that racialized vision has largely been transformed in this century. The stages of racial formation—race as formed in conquest, enslavement, imperialism, segregation, and labor migration—are all part of the complex, and now counterintuitive, history of race. Whiteness of a Different Color traces the fluidity of racial categories from an immense body of research in literature, popular culture, politics, society, ethnology, anthropology, cartoons, and legal history, including sensational trials like the Leo Frank case and the Draft Riots of 1863.

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This book is a quick and easy way to learn basic Chinese Characters.All beginning Chinese language learners struggle to memorize and learn to write Chinese characters. The First 100 Chinese Characters adopts a structural approach which helps students to quickly master the basic characters that are fundamental to this language. This character book is intended for beginning Chinese students. It presents characters that have been carefully selected for rapid and effective learning. The English meanings, pronunciations in hanyu pinyin and alternate forms (if any) for each Chinese character are presented along with a stroke order guide and spaces for writing practice. Printed with gray guidelines, the stroke order guides are designed to be traced over to teach students the standard sequence of strokes used to write the character. Related compounds and phrases are given to assist in vocabulary building. Three indexes at the back allow the characters to be looked up by their English meanings, hanyu pinyin pronunciations, or radicals. Extra practice sheets are also provided. This Chinese character book contains: Step-by-step stroke order diagrams show you how to write each character. Special boxes with grid lines help you practice writing them correctly. Compounds and sample sentences provide easy vocabulary building. Hanyu pinyin romanizations identify and help you pronounce every word.

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This volume provides a timely description of the latest compact MOS transistor models for circuit simulation. The first generation BSIM3 and BSIM4 models that have dominated circuit simulation in the last decade are no longer capable of characterizing all the important features of modern sub-100nm MOS transistors. This book discusses the second generation MOS transistor models that are now in urgent demand and being brought into the initial phase of manufacturing applications. It considers how the models are to include the complete drift-diffusion theory using the surface potential variable in the MOS transistor channel in order to give one characterization equation.

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A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr. Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase holds two contradictory meanings regarding Davis's cultural politics: Did he dance the barricades down, as he liked to think, or did he simply dance down them, as his more radical critics would have it? Davis was at once a pioneering, barrier-busting, anti–Jim Crow activist and someone who was widely associated with accommodationism and wannabe whiteness. Historian Matthew Frye Jacobson attends to both threads, analyzing how industry norms, productions, scripts, roles, and audience expectations and responses were all framed by race against the backdrop of a changing America. In the spirit of better understanding Davis's life and career, Dancing Down the Barricades examines the complexities of his constraints, freedoms, and choices for what they reveal about Black history and American political culture.

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A driving ambition linked Oakland and Kansas City in the 1960s. Each city sought the national attention and civic glory that came with being home to professional sports teams. Their successful campaigns to lure pro franchises ignited mutual rivalries in football and baseball that thrilled hometown fans. But even Super Bowl victories and World Series triumphs proved to be no defense against urban problems in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. Matthew C. Ehrlich tells the fascinating history of these iconic sports towns. From early American Football League battles to Oakland's deft poaching of baseball's Kansas City Athletics, the cities emerged as fierce opponents from Day One. Ehrlich weaves a saga of athletic stars and folk heroes like Len Dawson, Al Davis, George Brett, and Reggie Jackson with a chronicle of two cities forced to confront the wrenching racial turmoil, labor conflict, and economic crises that arise when soaring aspirations collide with harsh realities.Colorful and thought-provoking, Kansas City vs. Oakland breaks down who won and who lost when big-time sports came to town.

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In Le Jazz, Matthew F. Jordan deftly blends textual analysis, critical theory, and cultural history in a wide-ranging and highly readable account of how jazz progressed from a foreign cultural innovation met with resistance by French traditionalists to a naturalized component of the country's identity. Jordan draws on sources including ephemeral critical writing in the press and twentieth-century French literature to trace the country's reception of jazz, from the Cakewalk dance craze and the music's significance as a harbinger of cultural recovery after World War II to its place within French ethnography and cultural hybridity. Countering the histories of jazz's celebratory reception in France, Jordan delves in to the reluctance of many French citizens to accept jazz with the same enthusiasm as the liberal humanists and cosmopolitan crowds of the 1930s. Jordan argues that some listeners and critics perceived jazz as a threat to traditional French culture, and only as France modernized its identity did jazz become compatible with notions of Frenchness. Le Jazz speaks to the power of enlivened debate about popular culture, art, and expression as the means for constructing a vibrant cultural identity, revealing crucial keys to understanding how the French have come to see themselves in the postwar world.

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Economic policymakers use various macroeconomic models, but how reliable are they in real-world conditions? Starting from the premise that all models are wrong, but some are useful, Matteo Iannizzotto introduces and explains the workings of the key economic models available for policymaking. He shows that the inconsistencies and contradictions evident in the real world require the economist to make choices about which models to adopt in certain circumstances and when not to rigidly adhere to a single approach. The book uses a clear and critical step by step analysis to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each model, in a way that enables students to develop their own critical engagement with macroeconomic policymaking. In so doing, the book provides an understanding of the world economy’s fluctuations since the global financial crisis that embraces the uncomfortable fact that inconsistency and the need for a multiplicity of models is central to macroeconomic policy choices. For the many students bewildered by the disconnect between the models in their textbooks and the policy choices so hotly debated in the press, the book will be essential reading.

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Nuclear technology is dual use in nature, meaning that it can be used to produce nuclear energy or to build nuclear weapons. Despite security concerns about proliferation, the United States and other nuclear nations have regularly shared with other countries nuclear technology, materials, and knowledge for peaceful purposes. In Atomic Assistance, Matthew Fuhrmann argues that governments use peaceful nuclear assistance as a tool of economic statecraft. Nuclear suppliers hope that they can reap the benefits of foreign aid—improving relationships with their allies, limiting the influence of their adversaries, enhancing their energy security by gaining favorable access to oil supplies—without undermining their security. By providing peaceful nuclear assistance, however, countries inadvertently help spread nuclear weapons. Fuhrmann draws on several cases of "Atoms for Peace," including U.S. civilian nuclear assistance to Iran from 1957 to 1979; Soviet aid to Libya from 1975 to 1986; French, Italian, and Brazilian nuclear exports to Iraq from 1975 to 1981; and U.S. nuclear cooperation with India from 2001 to 2008. He also explores decision making in countries such as Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, and Syria to determine why states began (or did not begin) nuclear weapons programs and why some programs succeeded while others failed. Fuhrmann concludes that, on average, countries receiving higher levels of peaceful nuclear assistance are more likely to pursue and acquire the bomb—especially if they experience an international crisis after receiving aid.

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In Mary’s Bodily Assumption, Matthew Levering presents a contemporary explanation and defense of the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption. He asks: How does the Church justify a doctrine that does not have explicit biblical or first-century historical evidence to support it? With the goal of exploring this question more deeply, he divides his discussion into two sections, one historical and the other systematic. Levering’s historical section aims to retrieve the rich Mariological doctrine of the mid-twentieth century. He introduces the development of Mariology in Catholic Magisterial documents, focusing on Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Munificentissimus Deus of 1950, in which the bodily Assumption of Mary was dogmatically defined, and two later Magisterial documents, Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium and Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Mater. Levering addresses the work of the neo-scholastic theologians Joseph Duhr, Aloïs Janssens, and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange before turning to the great theologians of the nouvelle théologie—Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Joseph Ratzinger—and their emphasis on biblical typology. Using John Henry Newman as a guide, Levering organizes his systematic section by the three pillars of the doctrine on which Mary’s Assumption rests: biblical typology, the Church as authoritative interpreter of divine revelation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the fittingness of Mary’s Assumption in relation to the other mysteries of faith. Levering’s ecumenical contribution is a significant engagement with Protestant biblical scholars and theologians; it is also a reclamation of Mariology as a central topic in Catholic theology.

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An essential study of parliamentary politics in postwar Iraq and Syria, before the consolidation of authoritarian rule under the Ba’th PartyWhen Parliaments Ruled the Middle East explores three main interrelated issues to clarify what happened between 1946 and 1963 in Iraq and Syria: how and why a parliamentary system prevailed in both countries in the aftermath of the Second World War; what social effects this system triggered, and, in turn, how these changes affected the system; and finally, why the elites in both countries were unable to overcome the unrest that brought an end to both a liberal era and to a certain kind of political game.Drawing on a vast array of sources and rich archival research in French, English, and Arabic, Matthieu Rey highlights the processes of the parliamentary system in the modern era, which are very common to post-independence countries and to any representative regime. He tackles the intersection of multifaceted political phenomena that were present in that moment in Iraq and Syria, including regular elections, the implementation of emergency law, the freedom of the press, the open expression of opinions, the formation of new political parties, frequent military coups, and the joint exercise of power by members of the old classes and reformist newcomers.Treating this period as neither an epilogue of the liberal order nor a prelude to authoritarianism, and stressing the contingent, improvisatory aspects of political history, Rey fundamentally questions the transitional nature of the period and in doing so proposes new ways and tools of examining it.

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When the British monarchy was restored in 1660, King Charles II was faced with the conundrum of what to with those who had been involved in the execution of his father eleven years earlier. Facing a grisly fate at the gallows, some of the men who had signed Charles I's death warrant fled to America. Charles I's Killers in America traces the gripping story of two of these men-Edward Whalley and William Goffe-and their lives in America, from their welcome in New England until their deaths there. With fascinating insights into the governance of the American colonies in the seventeenth century, and how a network of colonists protected the regicides, Matthew Jenkinson overturns the enduring theory that Charles II unrelentingly sought revenge for the murder of his father. Charles I's Killers in America also illuminates the regicides' afterlives, with conclusions that have far-reaching implications for our understanding of Anglo-American political and cultural relations. Novels, histories, poems, plays, paintings, and illustrations featuring the fugitives were created against the backdrop of America's revolutionary strides towards independence and its forging of a distinctive national identity. The history of the 'king-killers' was distorted and embellished as they were presented as folk heroes and early champions of liberty, protected by proto-revolutionaries fighting against English tyranny. Jenkinson rewrites this once-ubiquitous and misleading historical orthodoxy, to reveal a far more subtle and compelling picture of the regicides on the run.

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'The fact that this novel is so witty is incidental to how good it is - it has characters you care about deeply and a heart as big as a cathedral' Miles JuppLet me tell you a story, about a man I knew, and a man I know...Mr Baxter is ninety-four years old when he falls down his staircase and grudgingly finds himself resident at Melrose Gardens Retirement Home. Baxter is many things - raconteur, retired music teacher, rabble-rouser, bon viveur - but 'good patient' he is not. He had every intention of living his twilight years with wine, music and revelry; not tea, telly and Tramadol. Indeed, Melrose Gardens is his worst nightmare - until he meets Gregory. At only nineteen years of age, Greg has suffered a loss so heavy that he is in danger of giving up on life before he even gets going. Determined to save the boy, Baxter decides to enlist his help on a mission to pay tribute to his long-lost love, Thomas: the man with whom he found true happiness; the man he waved off to fight in a senseless war; the man who never returned. The best man he ever knew.With Gregory in tow Baxter sets out on a spirited escape from Melrose, bound for the war graves of Northern France. As Baxter shares his memories, the boy starts to see that life need not be a matter of mere endurance; that the world is huge and beautiful; that kindness is strength; and that the only way to honour the dead, is to live.Baxter's Requiem is a glorious celebration of life, love and seizing every last second we have while we're here.

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A telling look at today’s “reverse” migration of white, middle-class expats from north to south, through the lens of one South American city Even as the “migration crisis” from the Global South to the Global North rages on, another, lower-key and yet important migration has been gathering pace in recent years—that of mostly white, middle-class people moving in the opposite direction. Gringolandia is that rare book to consider this phenomenon in all its complexity.Matthew Hayes focuses on North Americans relocating to Cuenca, Ecuador, the country’s third-largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many began relocating there after the 2008 economic crisis. Most are self-professed “economic refugees” who sought offshore retirement, affordable medical care, and/or a lower–cost location. Others, however, sought adventure marked by relocation to an unfamiliar cultural environment and to experience personal growth through travel, illustrative of contemporary cultures of aging. These life projects are often motivated by a desire to escape economic and political conditions in North America. Regardless of their individual motivations, Hayes argues, such North–South migrants remain embedded in unequal and unfair global social relations. He explores the repercussions on the host country—from rising prices for land and rent to the reproduction of colonial patterns of domination and subordination. In Ecuador, heritage preservation and tourism development reflect the interests and culture of European-descendent landowning elites, who have most to benefit from the new North–South migration. In the process, they participate in transnational gentrification that marginalizes popular traditions and nonwhite mestizo and indigenous informal workers. The contrast between the migration experiences of North Americans in Ecuador and those of Ecuadorians or others from such regions of the Global South in North America and Europe demonstrates that, in fact, what we face is not so much a global “migration crisis” but a crisis of global social justice.

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How to continue to love in the face of pain and loss• Shows how the certainty of change and loss can support rather than diminish love • Shares practices and meditations to help love endure in the face of loss, disappointment, change, or any of the ways relationships and circumstances are altered by time • Explores how to cultivate gratitude for every expression of love we encounter, strengthen compassion for others, and recognize the power of love after life Collaborating with his late son, Jordan, psychologist Matthew McKay offers five ways to keep love alive in a world of impermanence. He explores how to see and know what we love, how to actively care for what we love, how to have compassion for the suffering of others, how to set the daily intention to act with love, and how to turn toward rather than away from the pain of impermanence. McKay shares practices and meditations to help love endure in the face of loss, disappointment, change, or any of the ways relationships and circumstances are altered by time. He examines what love is and is not, including how not to mistake yearning and neediness for love, sex for love, and attraction to beauty for love. He shows how to cultivate gratitude for every expression of love we encounter, learn to care for things we don’t like, and recognize the power of love after life--a love that reaches beyond death. He also provides concrete exercises for communicating with and channeling messages from loved ones who have crossed over. Ultimately, McKay shows that, by running from pain, we run from love. By avoiding pain, we lose the pathway to connection. Yet, by recognizing love in the heart of pain and loss, by knowing that change and impermanence are inevitable, we can navigate life with a compass pointing to love as true north, learning to love more deeply and making what we love more cherished.

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In den für die Entwicklung der evangelischen Kirchen entscheidenden Jahren nach Luthers Tod nahm Johannes Brenz (1499-1570) eine Schlüsselposition ein. Matthias A. Deuschle geht erstmals der Frage nach, welche Theologie Brenz in jenen Jahren vertrat und welche Motive sein Denken und Handeln prägten. Als Hauptquelle dient das umfangreichste dogmatische Werk des schwäbischen Reformators: Die Apologie der Confessio Virtembergica. Sie verteidigt die reformatorische Lehre gegen Angriffe des Dillinger Professors und ehemaligen Beichtvaters Karls V. Pedro de Soto (1495/1500-1563). Die Analyse der bisher nie eingehend untersuchten Schrift nach Entstehung, Inhalt und den auf sie bezogenen Auseinandersetzungen zeigt, daß das Brenzsche Denken auch noch zu jener Zeit, als andernorts die innerevangelischen Streitigkeiten im Vordergrund standen, hauptsächlich von der Auseinandersetzung mit Rom bestimmt war. Es zeigt sich, daß Brenz den Widerspruch gegen die römische Lehre zunehmend auf die Frage nach den - von ihm so genannten - Prinzipien des christlichen Glaubens konzentriert und so erste Schritte auf dem Weg zu einer evangelischen Prinzipienlehre geht. In diesem Zusammenhang erhalten die Schriftlehre, die Ekklesiologie und die Rechtfertigungslehre eine grundlegende Funktion. Ihre Entfaltung steht infolgedessen im Zentrum der Darstellung. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung werden sowohl in die Entwicklung des Brenzschen Denkens als auch in den größeren theologie- und kirchengeschichtlichen Kontext eingeordnet.Das Buch wurde mit dem Johannes-Brenz-Preis 2006 des Vereines für württembergische Kirchengeschichte ausgezeichnet.

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Discover a complete system of magical work based on the myths of Arthur and his knights. With meditations, rituals, visualizations, and pioneering shamanic techniques, Arthurian Magic leads you on a profound soul journey designed to raise consciousness and offer deep levels of wisdom. From Dr. John Dee to the Order of the Golden Dawn to the more recent fascination with the mysteries of the Grail and the Templars, dozens of magical groups and countless individuals have turned to the myths of Arthur and his knights for initiation, inspiration, and instruction. This book is a guide for beginners and more experienced practitioners to incorporate the deep spiritual power of the Grail stories into their lives.

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A timely re-examination of the pros and cons of legalizing drug use. Combining a unique visual approach with carefully constructed narrative text, this book provides a survey of the history of drug use, a review of the impact of the war on drugs, an appraisal of the effects of legal vs illegal drugs and an evaluation of the impact of the decriminalization of drugs. According to archaeological and historical records, ethanol in the form of beer in Sumeria and wine in Egypt has been used recreationally for 13,000 years, while psychotropic drugs have been used for thousands of years, mainly for religious purposes. This book sets out the history of the use of drugs since the Neolithic age, and explores the evolution of recreational drug use from the mid-18th century on. It considers the lethal and social impact of heavy use of legal alcohol or nicotine vs the hazards to health and society associated with illegal drugs. It evaluates the effects of the 50-year failed global war on drugs on the criminal production and trafficking of drugs on the black market and on the abuse, health and imprisonment of end users. Finally, it argues for the decriminalization of all drugs and the state regulation of the drug market, with suitable controls and regulation for each drug type.

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The last decade has seen a growing social movement towards collectivity, sharing and participation. This paradigm shift is reflected in architecture as well: In recent years, increasingly innovative collective housing projects, organized around the principle of trading in private spaces for larger, more luxurious shared spaces, have been emerging across the globe – many of them realized through bottom-up grassroots initiatives. The return of the collective in architecture has resulted in surprising architectural solutions that also create new urban spaces. The publication Together! The New Architecture of the Collective presents around twenty international building projects from Europe Japan, and the US that provide innovative platforms for collective living in the present day. A selection of projects are discussed in detail, ad extensive photo essays offer rich and vivid impressions of the daily collective and private lie and everyday routines in these buildings. Interviews with movers and shakers from the collective housing scene, written by international journalists, offer insights and background information on the processes and people that have made each project possible. All that is complemented by theoretical and historical context, including analytical essays by experts in the field, info graphics providing facts and figures, diagrams explaining how different collective housing models work, and an extensive timeline detailing genealogy of the collective housing movement in the twentieth century.

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This book is a quick and easy way to learn basic Chinese Characters.All beginning Chinese language learners struggle to memorize and learn to write Chinese characters. The First 100 Chinese Characters adopts a structural approach which helps students to quickly master the basic characters that are fundamental to this language. This character book is intended for beginning Chinese students and features characters that have been carefully selected for rapid and effective learning. The English meanings, pronunciations in hanyu pinyin and alternate forms (if any) for each Chinese character are presented along with a stroke order guide and spaces for writing practice. The stroke order guides are printed with gray guidelines, designed to be traced over to teach students the standard sequence of strokes used to write the character. Related compounds and phrases are given to assist in vocabulary building. Three indexes at the back allow the characters to be looked up by their English meanings, hanyu pinyin pronunciations, or radicals. Extra practice sheets are also provided. This Chinese character book contains: Step-by-step stroke order diagrams show you how to write each character. Special boxes with grid lines help you practice writing them correctly. Compounds and sample sentences provide easy vocabulary building. Hanyu pinyin romanizations identify and help you pronounce every word.

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This user-friendly book is aimed at helping students of Mandarin Chinese learn and remember Chinese characters.At last—there is a truly efficient and enjoyable way to learn Chinese characters! This book helps students to learn and remember both the meanings and the pronunciations of over 800 characters. This otherwise daunting task is made more accessible by the use of techniques based on the psychology of learning and memory. Fundamental principles include the use of visual imagery, the visualization of short "stories," and the systematic building up of more complicated characters from basic building blocks. Although Learning Chinese Characters is a comprehensive book intended for students, it can be used by anyone with an interest in Chinese characters, without any prior knowledge of Chinese. It can be used alongside (or after, or even before) a course in the Chinese language. All characters are simplified (as in mainland China) but traditional characters are also given, when available. Key features: Specially designed pictures and stories are used in a structured way to make the learning process more enjoyable and effective, reducing the need for rote learning to the absolute minimum. The emphasis throughout is on learning and remembering the meanings and pronunciations of the characters. Tips are also included on learning techniques and how to avoid common problems. Characters are introduced in a logical sequence, which also gives priority to learning the most common characters first. Modern simplified characters are used, with pronunciations given in pinyin. Key information is given for each character, including radical, stroke-count, traditional form, compounds, and guidance on writing the character. This is a practical guide with a clear, concise and appealing layout, and it is well-indexed with clear lookup methods. The 800 Chinese characters and 1,033 compounds specified for the original HSK 1-3 proficiency tests are covered.

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In Better Must Come, Matthew D. Marr reveals how social contexts at various levels combine and interact to shape the experiences of transitional housing program users in two of the most prosperous cities of the global economy, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Marr, who has conducted fieldwork in U.S. and Japanese cities for over two decades, followed the experiences of thirty-four people as they made use of transitional housing services and after they left such programs. This comparative ethnography is groundbreaking in two ways—it is the first book to directly focus on exits from homelessness in American or Japanese cities, and it is the first targeted comparison of homelessness in two global cities.Marr argues that homelessness should be understood primarily as a socially generated, traumatic, and stigmatizing predicament, rather than as a stable condition, identity, or culture. He pushes for movement away from the study of "homeless people" and "homeless culture" toward an understanding of homelessness as a condition that can be transcended at individual and societal levels. Better Must Come prescribes policy changes to end homelessness that include expanding subsidized housing to persons without disabilities and experiencing homelessness chronically, as well as taking broader measures to address vulnerabilities produced by labor markets, housing markets, and the rapid deterioration of social safety nets that often results from neoliberal globalization.

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A free region deeply influenced by southern mores, the Lower Middle West represented a true cultural and political median in Civil War–era America. Here grew a Unionism steeped in the mythology of the Loyal West--a myth rooted in regional and racial animosities and the belief that westerners had won the war. Matthew E. Stanley's intimate study explores the Civil War, Reconstruction, and sectional reunion in this bellwether region. Using the lives of area soldiers and officers as a lens, Stanley reveals a place and a strain of collective memory that was anti-rebel, anti-eastern, and anti-black in its attitudes--one that came to be at the forefront of the northern retreat from Reconstruction and toward white reunion. The Lower Middle West's embrace of black exclusion laws, origination of the Copperhead movement, backlash against liberalizing war measures, and rejection of Reconstruction were all pivotal to broader American politics. And the region's legacies of white supremacy--from racialized labor violence to sundown towns to lynching--found malignant expression nationwide, intersecting with how Loyal Westerners remembered the war.A daring challenge to traditional narratives of section and commemoration, The Loyal West taps into a powerful and fascinating wellspring of Civil War identity and memory.

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The Luminous Way to the East offers a comprehensive survey of the historical, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of the first stage of the Christian mission to China. It explores the complex and multifaceted process of the interaction with the different cultural and religious milieux that the Church of the East experienced in its diffusion throughout Central Asia and into China during the first millennium. Matteo Nicolini-Zani provides an overview of the Christian presence in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907) by reconstructing the composition and organization of Christian communities, the geographical location of Christian monasteries, and the related historical events attested by the sources. Through a new and richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian texts produced in Tang China, the volume provides a documented look at what was the earliest, and perhaps the most extraordinary, encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture and religions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). It shows how East Syriac Christianity in its eastward expansion along the Silk Road from Persia to China was open to the adoption of other languages and imagery and was able to enculturate the Christian teaching into new cultural and religious forms without losing its identity.

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A deeply researched and poignant reflection on the practice of forgiveness in an unforgiving world “Broad in its philosophical sweep and fine in its literary analysis, this work redefines forgiveness as the modest yet heroic ability to hold pain and anger together with hope and nonviolence.”—Joie Szu-Chiao Chen, Lion’s Roar Matthew Ichihashi Potts explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than as an instrument of healing or justice. Though forgiveness is often linked with reconciliation or the abatement of anger, Potts resists these associations, asserting instead that forgiveness is simply the refusal of retaliatory violence through practices of penitence and grief. It is an act of mourning irrevocable wrong, of refusing the false promises of violent redemption, and of living in and with the losses we cannot recover. Drawing on novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison, and on texts from the early Christian to the postmodern, Potts diagnoses the real dangers of forgiveness yet insists upon its enduring promise. Sensitive to the twenty-first-century realities of economic inequality, colonial devastation, and racial strife, and considering the role of forgiveness in the New Testament, the Christian tradition, philosophy, and contemporary literature, this book heralds the arrival of a new and creative theological voice.

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Research tells us that when most people suffer from a mental health crisis, the first person they turn to for help is not a physician, a psychiatrist, or a social worker, but a pastor, a priest, or a minister. In other words, a leader in their church. Unfortunately, many church leaders are not trained to recognize mental illness and don’t know when to refer someone to a mental health professional. The consequence—unintended yet tragic—is continued and unnecessary suffering.Madness and Grace is a comprehensive guide for church ministry to alleviate this situation. Written by Dr. Matthew Stanford, the book is carefully constructed to help build competency in detecting a wide spectrum of mental disorders, such as knowing when a person is contemplating suicide based on telltale patterns of speech. It also explodes common discriminatory myths that stigmatize people with mental illness, such as the myth that they are more prone to violence than others. Dr. Stanford has treated clients throughout his career who were afflicted with all manner of mental disorders. In Madness and Grace, he takes the full extent of his experience and makes it accessible and actionable for the lay reader. He begins by explaining what constitutes a mental illness and how these disorders are classified according to science. He next teaches how to notice the presence of a mental illness by listening carefully to phraseology, observing behavior, and asking discerning questions. He goes on to discuss methods of treatment, common religious concerns about mental health, and ways church communities can support people on the road to recovery. As a Christian, Dr. Stanford wants his fellow believers to know that acknowledging and seeking help for a mental illness is not a sign of weak faith. That’s why, in addition to sharing his medical expertise with church leaders, he commends pertinent biblical passages that underscore God’s concern for our mental wellbeing. These passages provide strength and comfort as complements to clinically-derived treatment and are essential to Dr. Stanford’s approach. “When working with those in severe psychological distress,” he writes, “compassion and grace are always the first line of pastoral care.”

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Covers 20.04, 20.10, and 21.04 Ubuntu Linux Unleashed 2021 Edition is filled with unique and advanced information for everyone who wants to make the most of the Ubuntu Linux operating system. This new edition has been thoroughly updated by a long-time Ubuntu user and early community leader to reflect the exciting new Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release, with a forthcoming online update mid-2021, at the halfway mark before the next LTS release comes out. Linux writer Matthew Helmke covers all you need to know about Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation, configuration, productivity, command-line usage, development, systems administration, server operations, networking, virtualization, cloud computing, DevOps, and more—including intermediate-to-advanced techniques you won't find in any other book. Helmke presents up-to-the-minute introductions to Ubuntu's key productivity and web development tools, programming languages, hardware support, and more. You will find new or improved coverage of the Ubuntu desktop experience, common web servers and software stacks, an introduction to containers like Docker and Kubernetes, as well as a wealth of systems administration information that is stable and valuable over many years. Configure and use the Ubuntu desktop Get started with multimedia and productivity applications Manage Linux services, users, and software packages Administer and run Ubuntu from the command line Automate tasks and use shell scripting Provide secure remote access and configure a secure VPN Manage kernels and modules Administer file, print, email, proxy, LDAP, DNS, and HTTP servers (Apache, Nginx, or alternatives) Work with databases (SQL) and learn about NoSQL alternatives Get started with virtualization and cloud deployment, including information about containers Learn about options for managing large numbers of servers, including in the cloud Learn the basics about popular programming languages including Python, PHP, Perl, and gain an introduction to new alternatives such as Go and Rust

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'D'Ancona makes his case well... The book is well written and thoughtful' -- The Times'A heartfelt attempt to renew liberal ideals for the coming decades... How sorely our public debate needs others to express themselves similarly.' -- Henry Mance, Financial Times'An urgent and exhilarating account of how populism, prejudice & polarisation have corrupted objective truth and public discourse. D'Ancona's sparkling prose provides an explanation of how we got here and, crucially, how we might get out.' -- James O'Brien'A book so rich in thought, wisdom and persuasion I find myself sharing the ideas within it with everyone I meet... In the much-mourned absence of Christopher Hitchens, d'Ancona is fast becoming the voice of enlightenment for our bewildered age.' -- Emily Maitlis'A tonic for our times that blows open any complacency following Trump's defeat that the demise of populism and nativism is inevitable. In beautifully written prose, D'Ancona puts forward hopeful ideas and timely inspiration for a progressive politics to replace it.' -- David Lammy'A brilliant, lucid, fearless tract, just what the historical moment ordered.' -- Andrew O'Hagan'D'Ancona's regular practical suggestions help to take it beyond mere theory and into the real world... Decision-makers would do well to read it.' -- Charlotte Henry, TLS***This is a call to arms. The old tools of political analysis are obsolete - they have rusted and are no longer fit for purpose. We've grown lazy, wedded to the assumption that, after ruptures such as Brexit, the pandemic, and the rise of the populist Right, things will eventually go 'back to normal'.Award-winning political writer Matthew d'Ancona invites you to think afresh: to seek new ways of challenging political extremism, bombastic populism and democratic torpor on both Left and Right. In this ground-breaking book, he proposes a new way of understanding our era and plots a way forward. With rigorous analysis, he argues that we need to understand the world in a new way, with a framework built from the three I's: Identity, Ignorance and Innovation.

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Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023 From The Passion of the Christ to Life of Brian, and from The Ten Commandments to Last Temptation of Christ, filmmakers have been adapting the stories of the Bible for over 120 years, from the first time the Höritz Passion Play was filmed in the Czech Republic back in 1897. Ever since, these stories have inspired musicals, comedies, sci-fi, surrealist visions and the avant-garde not to mention spawning their own genre, the biblical epic. Filmmakers across six continents and from all kinds of religious perspectives (or none at all), have adapted the greatest stories ever told, delighting some and infuriating others. 100 Bible Films is the indispensable guide to this wide and varied output, providing an authoritative but accessible history of biblical adaptations through one hundred of the most interesting and significant biblical films. Richly illustrated with film stills, this book depicts how such films have undertaken a complex negotiation between art, commerce, entertainment and religion. Matthew Page traces the screen history of the biblical stories from the very earliest silent passion plays, via the golden ages of the biblical epic, through to more innovative and controversial later films as well as covering significant TV adaptations. He discusses films made not only by some of our greatest filmmakers, artists such as Martin Scorsese, Jean Luc Godard, Alice Guy, Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lotte Reiniger, Carl Dreyer and Luis Buñuel, but also those looking to explore their faith or share it with lovers of cinema the world over.

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What if historical fiction were understood as a disfiguring of calculus? Or poems enacting the formation and breakdown of community as expositions of irrational numbers? What if, in other words, literary texts possessed a kind of mathematical unconscious? The persistence of the rhetoric of "two cultures," one scientific, the other humanities-based, obscures the porous border and productive relationship that has long existed between literature and mathematics. In eighteenth-century Scottish universities, geometry in particular was considered one of the humanities; anchored in philosophy, it inculcated what we call critical thinking. But challenges to classical geometry within the realm of mathematics obligated Scottish geometers to become more creative in their defense of the traditional discipline; and when literary writers and philosophers incorporated these mathematical problems into their own work, the results were not only ingenious but in some cases pioneering. Literature After Euclid tells the story of the creative adaptation of geometry in Scotland during and after the long eighteenth century. It argues that diverse attempts in literature and philosophy to explain or even emulate the geometric achievements of Isaac Newton and others resulted in innovations that modify our understanding of descriptive and bardic poetry, the aesthetics of the picturesque, and the historical novel. Matthew Wickman's analyses of these innovations in the work of Walter Scott, Robert Burns, James Thomson, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and other literati change how we perceive the Scottish Enlightenment and the later, modernist ethos that purportedly relegated the "classical" Enlightenment to the dustbin of history. Indeed, the Scottish Enlightenment's geometric imagination changes how we see literary history itself.

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In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance made the Ohio River the dividing line between slavery and freedom in the West, yet in 1861, when the Civil War tore the nation apart, the region failed to split at this seam. In Slavery's Borderland, historian Matthew Salafia shows how the river was both a physical boundary and a unifying economic and cultural force that muddied the distinction between southern and northern forms of labor and politics. Countering the tendency to emphasize differences between slave and free states, Salafia argues that these systems of labor were not so much separated by a river as much as they evolved along a continuum shaped by life along a river. In this borderland region, where both free and enslaved residents regularly crossed the physical divide between Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, slavery and free labor shared as many similarities as differences. As the conflict between North and South intensified, regional commonality transcended political differences. Enslaved and free African Americans came to reject the legitimacy of the river border even as they were unable to escape its influence. In contrast, the majority of white residents on both sides remained firmly committed to maintaining the river border because they believed it best protected their freedom. Thus, when war broke out, Kentucky did not secede with the Confederacy; rather, the river became the seam that held the region together. By focusing on the Ohio River as an artery of commerce and movement, Salafia draws the northern and southern banks of the river into the same narrative and sheds light on constructions of labor, economy, and race on the eve of the Civil War.

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A tour of Mars in the human imagination, from ancient astrologers to modern explorers. Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Due to its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and its potential as our best hope for settlement, Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars surveys the red planet’s place in the human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement. National Air and Space Museum curator Matthew Shindell describes how historical figures across eras and around the world have made sense of this mysterious planet. We meet Mayan astrologer priests who incorporated Mars into seasonal calendars and religious ceremonies; Babylonian astrologers who discerned bad omens; figures of the Scientific Revolution who struggled to comprehend it as a world; Victorian astronomers who sought signs of intelligent life; and twentieth- and twenty-first-century scientists who have established a technological presence on its surface. Along the way, we encounter writers and artists from each of these periods who take readers and viewers along on imagined journeys to Mars. By focusing on the diverse human stories behind the telescopes and behind the robots we know and love, Shindell shows how Mars exploration has evolved in ways that have also expanded knowledge about other facets of the universe. Captained by an engaging and erudite expert, For the Love of Mars is a captivating voyage through time and space for anyone curious about Curiosity and the red planet.

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A down-to-earth, visual guidebook that shows how to ‘read’, understand and get the most out of art. For beginners, art history might seem a daunting subject with complex rules and impenetrable technical language. Even for more seasoned art lovers the question of how to think about art is a perennial riddle. Art Unpacked is the perfect resource for both audiences: an engaging, visual primer for the general reader, as well as educators. Designed like an instruction manual, fifty key artworks from around the world are deconstructed with pithy explanations, diagrams and close-ups, in order to reveal the elements that make up a masterpiece. Dating from the earliest times to the present, the artworks under analysis are drawn from many cultures, and cover all forms of visual media including: drawing, illustration, photography, prints and sculpture. Matthew Wilson’s simplicity of approach, using established art historical methods, enables the reader to discover the fundamentals of art history, from considerations of function, historical context, iconography and artists’ experience, to broader issues of identity including feminism, gender and postcolonialism. Whether it’s the mask of Tutankhamun or Dorothea Lange’s photograph of Migrant Mother, Hokusai’s Great Wave or Kara Walker’s Gone, each image is dissected on the page in a no-nonsense style, with explanatory notes detailing artists’ sources of inspiration, associated styles and movements, plus any relevant quotes, related visuals and other contextual and issue-led information with keywords for handy cross-referencing. The resulting book is a dynamic, visual resource that will inspire and spark enjoyment of art in all its forms.

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A story of passion, desire and fierce emotion, the first in the new Seasons trilogy is the must-read for all fans of Sadie Matthews' After Dark series, and will win her legions of new ones.Freya Hammond is used to people fulfilling her every whim. Wealthy and spoiled, she lives a butterfly existence of fashion and parties and is accustomed to getting her own way. Which is why the new bodyguard is riling her. Miles Murray is ex-SAS and obeys her instructions with barely repressed scorn. She can sense that he doesn't think much of her. The Hammonds have been staying at their luxurious retreat high in the Alps. Now Miles is driving Freya to the airport but the rapidly worsening weather and a near-miss with a dangerously driven jeep causes him to lose control, and sends the car plummeting off the side of the mountain. When Freya comes to, she is lying on the freezing ground, Miles beside her. The car is a mangled mess far below them. Now Freya needs Miles to save her life. Using all his survival skills, Miles manages to locate an old shepherd's hut and get them both there despite Freya's twisted ankle. Rescue will surely come before too long... but until then Freya is no longer in control. The tension between them is soon at fever pitch as she tries to dominate a man who no longer obeys her orders.And when rescue does come, how will they return to their old life of mistress and bodyguard after what has happened between them?

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In late seventeenth-century London, the most provocative images were produced not by artists, but by scientists. Magnified fly-eyes drawn with the aid of microscopes, apparitions cast on laboratory walls by projection machines, cut-paper figures revealing the "exact proportions" of sea monsters - all were created by members of the Royal Society of London, the leading institutional platform of the early Scientific Revolution. Wicked Intelligence reveals that these natural philosophers shaped Restoration London's emergent artistic cultures by forging collaborations with court painters, penning art theory, and designing triumphs of baroque architecture such as St Paul's Cathedral. Offering an innovative approach to the scientific image-making of the time, Matthew C. Hunter demonstrates how the Restoration project of synthesizing experimental images into scientific knowledge, as practiced by Royal Society leaders Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren, might be called "wicked intelligence." Hunter uses episodes involving specific visual practices-for instance, concocting a lethal amalgam of wax, steel, and sulfuric acid to produce an active model of a comet-to explore how Hooke, Wren, and their colleagues devised representational modes that aided their experiments. Ultimately, Hunter argues, the craft and craftiness of experimental visual practice both promoted and menaced the artistic traditions on which they drew, turning the Royal Society projects into objects of suspicion in Enlightenment England. The first book to use the physical evidence of Royal Society experiments to produce forensic evaluations of how scientific knowledge was generated, Wicked Intelligence rethinks the parameters of visual art, experimental philosophy, and architecture at the cusp of Britain's imperial power and artistic efflorescence.

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A channeled guide to the life-death transition experience and how to prepare for the wonders of the afterlife• Reveals the afterlife as a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness • Explains how to navigate the early stages of the afterlife, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life • Includes exercises and meditations to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit There is no better source of information on death and the afterlife than someone who has died and lives in spirit. Channeling his late son, Jordan, psychologist Matthew McKay offers a postdeath guide for the living, revealing in vivid detail what to expect when we die and how to prepare for the wonders of the afterlife. Specifically describing the transition experience and the early stages of the afterlife, including how to navigate each stage, Jordan shows how death is a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness. He explains how a soul that has newly crossed over is an amnesiac, arriving without senses, a nervous system, and all that has anchored us to the world. Jordan details how to navigate without a body, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life and instead view it as another stage of being. He shows that the inferno described by Dante is an optional nightmare caused by thought projections that overwhelm the newly transitioned soul, and he reveals that the bardos are where souls who are beset with fear and false beliefs spend time learning and recovering. Providing profound relief from the fear of death, as well as exercises to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit, Jordan’s message reveals how love is the bonding element that holds all of consciousness--and the afterlife--together. McKay also documents the unbreakable bond between the living and the dead and teaches the skill of channeling, allowing you to connect to loved ones who have passed.

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - MILLIONS OF COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDEGloriously bonkers - Guardian, Best Autobiographies and Memoirs of 2020A rollicking, contemplative trip - Financial TimesFrom the Academy Award®-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call 'catching greenlights.'So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.It's a love letter. To life.It's also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.Good luck.

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In Ruled Reading and Biblical Criticism, Matthew T. Bell contends that the gulf in interpretive priorities between ancient and modern readers has been exaggerated and that careful study of early Christian reading practices suggests that it is both possible and productive to recontextualize early Christian “ruled reading” for a postmodern setting.Modern prejudice holds that ancient Christian interpretation was relatively unconcerned with history and concomitantly determined to foist extrascriptural doctrinal commitments onto scripture, silencing those layers of scripture’s meaning that modern criticism has been most concerned with uncovering. In this book, Bell argues that, when the ethos and theology of reading in the early Church are taken into account, premodern interpretive priorities turn out to be less implausible than the modern world has believed them to be. Through close reading of ancient Christian texts, Bell outlines an ontology of scripture wherein the relationship between early Christianity’s “Rule of Faith,” on one hand, and its scriptures, on the other, was expressly constructed as a hermeneutical spiral, the slant of which was designed to attend to and be edified by textually mediated conundrums and intellectual provocations. Viewed along that spiral, the Church’s Rule was as “scriptural” as the Church’s catalog of scriptures was “ruled.” This book will be welcomed by academics who study early Christianity and scripture, as well as scholars interested in reconsidering Christian hermeneutical questions for a postmodern age.

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New Lines takes the pulse of a society increasingly drawn to the power of the digital map, examining the conceptual and technical developments of the field of geographic information science as this work is refracted through a pervasive digital culture. Matthew W. Wilson draws together archival research on the birth of the digital map with a reconsideration of the critical turn in mapping and cartographic thought. Seeking to bridge a foundational divide within the discipline of geography—between cultural and human geographers and practitioners of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)—Wilson suggests that GIS practitioners may operate within a critical vacuum and may not fully contend with their placement within broader networks, the politics of mapping, the rise of the digital humanities, the activist possibilities of appropriating GIS technologies, and more.Employing the concept of the drawn and traced line, Wilson treads the theoretical terrain of Deleuze, Guattari, and Gunnar Olsson while grounding their thoughts with the hybrid impulse of the more-than-human thought of Donna Haraway. What results is a series of interventions—fractures in the lines directing everyday life—that provide the reader with an opportunity to consider the renewed urgency of forceful geographic representation. These five fractures are criticality, digitality, movement, attention, and quantification. New Lines examines their traces to find their potential and their necessity in the face of our frenetic digital life.

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If our oil addiction is so bad for us, why don’t we kick the habit? Looking beyond the usual culprits—Big Oil, petro-states, and the strategists of empire—Lifeblood finds a deeper and more complex explanation in everyday practices of oil consumption in American culture. Those practices, Matthew T. Huber suggests, have in fact been instrumental in shaping the broader cultural politics of American capitalism.How did gasoline and countless other petroleum products become so central to our notions of the American way of life? Huber traces the answer from the 1930s through the oil shocks of the 1970s to our present predicament, revealing that oil’s role in defining popular culture extends far beyond material connections between oil, suburbia, and automobility. He shows how oil powered a cultural politics of entrepreneurial life—the very American idea that life itself is a product of individual entrepreneurial capacities. In so doing he uses oil to retell American political history from the triumph of New Deal liberalism to the rise of the New Right, from oil’s celebration as the lifeblood of postwar capitalism to increasing anxieties over oil addiction.Lifeblood rethinks debates surrounding energy and capitalism, neoliberalism and nature, and the importance of suburbanization in the rightward shift in American politics. Today, Huber tells us, as crises attributable to oil intensify, a populist clamoring for cheap energy has less to do with American excess than with the eroding conditions of life under neoliberalism.

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What are the future prospects for literary knowledge now that literary texts—and the material remains of authorship, publishing, and reading—are reduced to bitstreams, strings of digital ones and zeros? What are the opportunities and obligations for book history, textual criticism, and bibliography when literary texts are distributed across digital platforms, devices, formats, and networks? Indeed, what is textual scholarship when the "text" of our everyday speech is a verb as often as it is a noun? These are the questions that motivate Matthew G. Kirschenbaum in Bitstreams, a distillation of twenty years of thinking about the intersection of digital media, textual studies, and literary archives. With an intimate narrative style that belies the cold technics of computing, Kirschenbaum takes the reader into the library where all access to Toni Morrison's "papers" is mediated by digital technology; to the bitmapped fonts of Kamau Brathwaite's Macintosh; to the process of recovering and restoring fourteen lost "HyperPoems" by the noted poet William Dickey; and finally, into the offices of Melcher Media, a small boutique design studio reimagining the future of the codex. A persistent theme is that bits—the ubiquitous ones and zeros of computing—are never self-identical, but always inflected by the material realities of particular systems, platforms, and protocols. These materialities are not liabilities: they are the very bulwark on which we stake the enterprise for preserving the future of literary heritage.

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