Search results for ""author rath"

There is considerable pressure on Small Island Developing States globally to introduce or to strengthen intellectual property regimes. This pressure comes in a number of forms, including bilateral and multilateral Free Trade Agreement negotiations and development assistance programmes such as those of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The aim of this book is to offer a competing model of intellectual property policy using the Pacific Islands as a case study. This competing model is one based on local conceptions of culture and indigenous understandings about use, knowledge and transfer of intangible property. Adopting such a base as a starting point will enable the weaving together of multiple regulatory strategies to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, stimulate and reward innovation and creativity, and protect rights over traditional knowledge in ways that have meaning and resonance for local populations. Elements of western intellectual property frameworks can also form important strands in intellectual property policies. However, these elements should be incorporated, and possibly reinterpreted, within the local framework.The approach advocated in this book opens up a number of different roads for intellectual property policy. First, it encourages the exploration of non-state regulatory mechanisms, such as customary norms and institutions, community protocols, and also membership of international NGOs, in regulating the use of intellectual property. In most Pacific Island countries there is little state capacity to implement and police intellectual property laws and so creative use should be made of the possibilities offered by non-state structures. Second, it suggests centralising culture and the protection of traditional knowledge at the heart of intellectual property policy, rather than treating it as a secondary issue to be dealt with by sui generis legislation. Here, traditional knowledge forms the basis of culture and development and cannot and should not be separated from modern or scientific notions of creativity and innovation. A pragmatic incremental approach to intellectual property policy development is also advocated, requiring countries to thoroughly assess the advantages and disadvantages of any new intellectual property law within their local context, to consider how to adaptively implement this in a way suited to the local context, as well as to realistically assess the state's capacity for enforcement. Finally, the book challenges a number of claims made about intellectual property law and development, demonstrating that a far more fine-grained analysis of the nexus between the two is required than currently offered by the WIPO Development Agenda.

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The simple, revolutionary 100 calorie system and cookbook that lets you enjoy all your delicious comfort food favorites! THE PERFECT PORTION COOKBOOK is the first of its kind, filled with 150 delicious comfort food classics that you can eat “guilt free,” because each recipe has been crafted in multiples of 100 calories. You can choose the perfect portion that is right for you. Why Do This? It’s easy…WE ALL LOVE FOOD! Especially homemade comfort food. But, it’s often hard to know how much we should be eating of the foods we love. And when there is no easy way to know how many calories we are really eating, it’s so easy to unknowingly overeat. Up until now there has been no easy way to create perfect personalized portion sizes, except for learning a complicated calorie-counting system. So here’s the idea: create a simple calorie-counting system that’s built right into every recipe—a system so easy that you can see the size and quantity of a 100-calorie portion. When you see the 100-calorie size, you can choose the number of units to include in your perfectly portioned meal or snack. So whether you want 100, 200, 300, 400 or 500 calories, you can build the perfect portions and meals that’s right for you. Knowledge is power, so the goal is to provide you with a guide that keeps you in “check” to still eat the foods you love, yet be aware of the perfect portion that’s right for you! The Goal? To be able for you to eat the foods you love, without feeling compromised! Inside this book you’ll find: Great-tasting recipes and based on one of 150 American favorite foods, each easily divisible into 100-calorie portions. Attention to portion sizes, making sure not to skimp, but rather enhance portions through healthful food swaps. Realistic recommendations for portion sizes, adjustable by meal. Breakfast or dinner might be a 300-, 400- or 500-calorie portion, depending on your eating preferences. WOW indulgent recipes, such as decadent desserts, in the 100- or 200-calorie range, so that you could satisfy your sweet tooth in a guilt-free way! Now you can “have your cake and eat it too”…. literally! Bon appétit!

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Some of the most stunning architectural structures in India are to be found below ground: these are its stepwells, ancient water stores. Stepwells are unique to India and from around the 3rd century CE were built throughout the country, particularly in the arid western regions. Excavated several stories underground in order to reach the water table, these cavernous spaces not only provided water all year long but also fulfilled other functions; they offered pilgrims and other travelers a respite from the heat, and became places in which villagers could socialize. Stepwell construction evolved so that, by the 11th century, the wells were amazingly complex feats of architecture and engineering.The journalist Victoria Lautman first encountered stepwells three decades ago and now, a seasoned traveller to India, she has devoted several years to documenting these fascinating but largely unknown edifices before they disappear. Of the thousands of stepwells that proliferated across India, most were abandoned as a result of modernization and the depletion of water tables. Often commissioned by royal or wealthy patrons, the wells vary greatly in scale, layout, materials and shape. Those in what is now Gujarat state also served as subterranean Hindu temples that featured columned pavilions and elaborate stone carvings of deities. Islamic wells were generally less flamboyant, but incorporated arched side niches. Today, few stepwells are in use. The majority have been left to silt up, fill with rubbish and crumble into disrepair. Gradually, however, the Indian government and heritage organizations have come to recognize the need to preserve these architectural wonders. In 2014 India's best-known stepwell, the Rani ki Vav in Patan, northern Gujarat, became a UNESCO World Heritage site.In her introduction, Lautman discusses why and where the stepwells were built. She reflects on the reasons they became derelict and considers how the appreciation of stepwells is changing with the work of organizations and individuals who aim to protect and restore them. The main part of the book is arranged in a broadly chronological order, with up to six pages devoted to each of c. 80 stepwells, every one unique in design and engineering. The name, location (including GPS coordinates) and approximate date of each well accompany color photographs and a concise commentary by Lautman on the history and architecture of the well and her experience of visiting it. While many of the stepwells are rather decrepit, their magnificent engineering and great beauty cannot fail to impress.

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The recent financial crisis brought to light many of the misunderstandings and misuses of exotic derivatives. With market participants on both the buy and sell-side having been found guilty of not understanding the products they were dealing with, never before has there been a greater need for clarification and explanation. Exotic Options and Hybrids is a practical guide to structuring, pricing and hedging complex exotic options and hybrid derivatives that will serve readers through the recent crisis, the road to recovery, the next bull market and beyond. Written by experienced practitioners, it focuses on the three main parts of a derivative’s life: the structuring of a product, its pricing and its hedging. Divided into four parts, the book covers a multitude of structures, encompassing many of the most up-to-date and promising products from exotic equity derivatives and structured notes to hybrid derivatives and dynamic strategies. Based on a realistic setting from the heart of the business, inside a derivatives operation, the practical and intuitive discussions of these aspects make these exotic concepts truly accessible. Adoptions of real trades are examined in detail, and all of the numerous examples are carefully selected so as to highlight interesting and significant aspects of the business. The introduction of payoff structures is accompanied by scenario analysis, diagrams and lifelike sample term sheets. Readers learn how to spot where the risks lie to pave the way for sound valuation and hedging of such products. There are also questions and accompanying discussions dispersed in the text, each exploited to illustrate one or more concepts from the context in which they are set. The applications, the strengths and the limitations of various models are highlighted, in relevance to the products and their risks, rather than the model implementations. Models are de-mystified in separately dedicated sections, but their implications are alluded to throughout the book in an intuitive and non-mathematical manner. By discussing exotic options and hybrids in a practical, non-mathematical and highly intuitive setting, this book will blast through the misunderstanding of exotic derivatives, enabling practitioners to fully understand and correctly structure, price and hedge theses products effectively, and stand strong as the only book in its class to make these “exotic” concepts truly accessible.

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Challenging Contextuality: Bibles and Biblical Scholarship in Context provides a new and innovative contribution to the study of biblical texts by bringing together current approaches to biblical interpretation. The volume sets the agenda for the future of the field and provides a synthesis of approaches to date. In doing so, it aligns itself with the broadly shared hermeneutical conviction that contextuality is a catalyst for interpretation. This applies in equal measure to approaches and methods that are often framed as ''traditional'' or ''mainstream'' (e.g. the methodological canon of the historical critical approach as the offspring of the European Enlightenment) and those that are often dubbed ''contextual'' (e.g. forms of feminist or ''indigenous'' interpretation). The volume grounds contextual biblical interpretation within the broader landscape of biblical studies, and the chapters are all interested in the contexts in which bibles are read. Rather than a series of examples of

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Climate variability and human management strategies on crop stands were major factors that frequently affected agricultural yields among indigenous populations from central Mexico. This work seeks to model food production in ancient Tepeaca, a Late Postclassic (AD 1325-1521) and Early Colonial (16th century) state level-polity settled on the central highlands of Puebla, by applying a model that recognizes the presence of two independent and interconnected forms of food production: subsistence agriculture and institutional agriculture. Crop stands within this region depended heavily on rainfed conditions, a form of agriculture that often generates unstable interannual fluctuations in yields. Archaeology acknowledges the effects of such variations on the economy of households and institutions, but attention has been largely put on estimating average productivity values over long periods rather than focusing on interannual divergences. Such instability of agricultural production was recorded among modern Tepeaca’s agriculturalists through an ethnographic survey. This crucial information, along with archaeological data and local 16th century historical sources, is used for modeling the effects of climate variability among prehispanic populations and serves to better comprehend the organization of past agrarian structures, tribute systems and land tenure organization at the household and regional levels.

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“I would rather have this book published than anything that has ever been written about me,” Theodore Roosevelt said to his editor shortly before TR’s death in January 1919. Alas , Roosevelt was never to see publication of the collection, which went on to become an instant bestseller that was reprinted six times between September and November 1919. Most of the letters in this book were written by Theodore Roosevelt to his children over a period of over a dozen years, from their early childhood through maturity. Indeed, long before they were able to read he sent them what they called “picture letters,” with crude drawings of his own in illustration of the written text, drawings precisely adapted to the childish imagination and intelligence. From the youngest to the oldest, Roosevelt always wrote to them as equals. He was always their playmate and “boon companion,” whether they were toddling infants or youths standing at the threshold of life. The letters are filled with fatherly advice, delicious humor, and anecdotes about the domestic life of a President and his family. Of course, animals are always at center stage, whether it’s describing the funeral for a beloved pet rabbit, or a pig that TR has chosen to name Maude.

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Internationally recognized for its superior scholarship, Modern Fiction Studies was one of the first journals to publish articles on postcolonial studies. Since postcolonialism's inception, scholars have defined, clarified, and enriched its conceptions and theoretical development in the pages of MFS. This anthology collects the best and most important articles on postcolonial literary studies published in MFS in the past thirty years. Postcolonial Literary Studies brings together groundbreaking scholarship focusing on significant works of fiction by such writers as Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and more. The essays feature ideas that helped shape the discipline from its earliest stages to the present and represent some of the finest examples of literary, theoretical, historical, and cultural criticism. With its focus on literary figures and texts, rather than solely on theory, this volume fills a significant gap in the fields of postcolonialism, global studies, and literary criticism in general. This rich collection of essays by the field's leading scholars will prove indispensable to instructors and students across a broad spectrum of humanistic studies. It not only highlights the development and transformation of postcolonial literary study but also, by mapping out new directions of study, considers its continual significance and expansion.

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While the United States was founded on abstract principles of certain "unalienable rights," its legal traditions are based in British common law, a fact long decried by progressive reformers. Common law, the complaint goes, ignores abstract rights principles in favor of tradition, effectively denying equality to large segments of the population. The nineteenth-century women's rights movement embraced this argument, claiming that common law rules of property and married women's status were at odds with the nation's commitment to equality. Conventional wisdom suggests that this tactic helped pave the way for voting rights and better jobs. In Constitutional Context, Kathleen S. Sullivan presents a fresh perspective. In revisiting the era's congressional debates, state legislation, judicial opinions, news accounts, and work of political activists, Sullivan finds that the argument for universal, abstract rights was not the only, or best, path available for social change. Rather than erecting a new paradigm of absolute rights, she argues, women's rights activists unwittingly undermined common law's ability to redress grievances, contributing heavily to the social, cultural, and political stagnation that characterizes the place of women and the movement today. A challenging and thoughtful study of what is commonly thought of as an era of progress, Constitutional Context provides the groundwork for a more comprehensive understanding and interpretation of constitutional law.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION A schoolgirl catches the eye of the future leader of Nazi Germany. An aspiring playwright writes to a convicted serial killer, seeking inspiration. A pair of childhood sweethearts reunite to commit rape and murder. A devoted Mormon wife follows her husband into the wilderness after he declares himself a prophet. The twelve stories in The Love of a Bad Man imagine the lives of real women, all of whom were the lovers, wives, or mistresses of various ‘bad’ men in history. Beautifully observed, fascinating, and at times horrifying, the stories interrogate power, the nature of obsession, and the lengths some women will go to for the men they love. PRAISE FOR LAURA ELIZABETH WOOLLETT ‘Like Helen Garner, Laura Woollett is impelled to explore the darkest corners of the human heart, the savage cognitive distortions of love; to understand and empathise with the monstrous, rather than to instinctively recoil or judge … Woollett's pitch-perfect command of narrative voice, period, and psychology creates 12 tales to fascinate and unnerve.’ The Age ‘The Love of a Bad Man imagines the inner lives of historical figures who committed crimes all in the name of love … The stories treat death with a gothic inevitability and explore human darkness with a light touch.’ The Guardian

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The time has come for us to stop thinking about illnesses like cancer as something the body 'gets' or 'has' but rather to think of them as something the body does. In this landmark work, leading researcher and physician Dr David Agus takes readers on a journey to decode the mystery of health and the human body. For decades we've tried to whittle down our understanding of the body to a fine point - a mutation, a germ, a deficiency or a number. But this has led us astray from a fundamental basic understanding of our bodies as systems. The End of Illness presents a system's view of the body, urging readers to begin viewing their total health as a complex network of processes that cannot be explained by any single pathway or focal point. In many instances, it does us no good to try and understand a certain disease; we just need to control it, much like an air traffic controller manages planes without knowing how to actually fly one. This radically different perspective on health will not only change how we care for ourselves, but also the next generation of treatments, and cures. The book also shows readers how to personalize their self-care; much of the advice is surprisingly simple and affordable - such as wearing good shoes and eating lunch at the same time every day.

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Paolo Cherchi Usai provides a comprehensive introduction to the study, research and preservation of silent cinema from its heyday in the early 20th century to its present day flourishing. He traces the history of the moving image in its formative years, from Edison’s and Lumière’s first experiments to the dawn of ‘talkies’; provides a clear guide to the basics of silent film technology; introduces the technical and creative roles involved in its production, and presents silent cinema as a performance event, rather than a passive viewing experience. This new, greatly expanded edition takes the reader on a new journey, exploring silent cinema in the broader context of technology, culture, and society, from the invention of celluloid film and its related machinery to film studios, laboratories, theatres and audiences. Among the people involved in the creation of a new art form were filmmakers, actors and writers, but also engineers, entrepreneurs, and projectionists. Their collective efforts, and the struggle to preserve their creative work by archives and museums, are interwoven in a compelling story covering three centuries of media history, from the magic lantern to the reinvention of silent cinema in digital form. The new edition also includes comprehensive resource information for the study, research, preservation and exhibition of silent cinema.

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This book is an original study of the challenge of implementing sustainable development in Western democracies. It highlights the obstacles which sustainable development presents for strategic governance and critically examines how these problems can best be overcome in a variety of different political contexts.The renowned international contributors, including leading policy experts, try to identify the forms of governance necessary to realize the functions of sustainable development. With the help of detailed case studies, they document and analyze specific governance mechanisms for pursuing and achieving this aim. They move on to offer clearly formulated conclusions on the relationship between the demands of sustainable development and the current norms and practices of Western democracy. The book also raises the fundamental question of whether change can ever be achieved if the overriding goal of development is not firmly stated as 'sustainability' rather than 'business as usual'.This book offers a balanced focus on the difficulties and successes of promoting sustainable development through strategic governance. It will be of particular relevance to those interested in the institutional mechanisms of governance and policy implementation. The book will also appeal to scholars and students of political science, organizational studies and business administration, and policymakers and NGOs directly involved in the task of implementing sustainable development.

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Since it was established as a discipline in 1991, knowledge management has contributed significantly to our understanding of how firms can achieve competitive advantage. To build a foundation for competitive advantage, however, a company must first consider knowledge management as a strategic asset. It must truly grasp how knowledge management can be utilized to build the future of the company. Here Jon-Arild Johannessen examines the history of knowledge management in order to highlight the contributions that the discipline can make to twenty-first-century strategic challenges. Through a series of case studies, Johannessen delves into the relations between knowledge management, organizational learning, innovation, and internal training in order to show how they can help firms gain sustainable competitive advantage. Using systemic thinking, a new way of looking at knowledge management, Johannessen focuses on how organizations can use their data to think about how to create their own futures rather than simply to adapt to what others have created—how they can go beyond red ocean and even blue ocean theories in order to create their own oceans of possibility. For the new perspective it offers on the biggest contemporary strategic challenges in business, Knowledge Management as a Strategic Asset is essential reading for managers, researchers, and anyone interested in the cutting edge of strategic thinking.

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How afforestation reveals the often-concealed politics between humans and plantsIn Plant Life, Rosetta S. Elkin explores the procedures of afforestation, the large-scale planting of trees in otherwise treeless environments, including grasslands, prairies, and drylands. Elkin reveals that planting a tree can either be one of the ultimate offerings to thriving on this planet, or one of the most extreme perversions of human agency over it. Using three supracontinental case studies—scientific forestry in the American prairies, colonial control in Africa’s Sahelian grasslands, and Chinese efforts to control and administer territory—Elkin explores the political implications of plant life as a tool of environmentalism. By exposing the human tendency to fix or solve environmental matters by exploiting other organisms, this work exposes the relationship between human and plant life, revealing that afforestation is not an ecological act: rather, it is deliberately political and distressingly social. Plant Life ultimately reveals that afforestation cannot offset deforestation, an important distinction that sheds light on current environmental trends that suggest we can plant our way out of climate change. By radicalizing what conservation protects and by framing plants in their total aliveness, Elkin shows that there are many kinds of life—not just our own—to consider when advancing environmental policy.

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A rich, narrative exploration of the ways love defies, survives, thrives, and dies as lovers contend with US immigration policy. For mixed-citizenship couples, getting married is the easy part. The US Supreme Court has confirmed the universal civil right to marry, guaranteeing every couple's ability to wed. But the Supreme Court has denied that this right to marriage includes married couples' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on US soil, creating a challenge for mixed-citizenship couples whose individual-level rights do not translate to family-level protections. While US citizens can extend legal inclusion to their spouses through family reunification, they must prove their worthiness and the worthiness of their love before their relationship will be officially recognized by the state. In Unauthorized Love, Jane López offers a comprehensive, critical look at US family reunification law and its consequences as experienced by 56 mixed-citizenship American couples. These couples' stories––of integration and alienation, of opportunity and inequality, of hope and despair––make tangible the consequences of current US immigration laws that tend to favor Whiteness, wealth, and heteronormativity, as well as the individual rather than the family unit, in awarding membership and official belonging. In examining the experiences of couples struggling to negotiate intimacy under the constraints of immigration policy, López argues for a rethinking of citizenship as a family affair.

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Recently, many critics have questioned the idea of universal citizenship by pointing to the racial, class, and gendered exclusions on which the notion of universality rests. Rather than jettison the idea of universal citizenship, however, R. Andrés Guzmán builds on these critiques to reaffirm it especially within the fields of Latina/o and ethnic studies. Beyond conceptualizing citizenship as an outcome of recognition and admittance by the nation-state—in a negotiation for the right to have rights—he asserts that, insofar as universal citizenship entails a forceful entrance into the political from the latter’s foundational exclusions, it emerges at the limits of legality and illegality via a process that exceeds identitarian capture.Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and philosopher Alain Badiou’s notion of “generic politics,” Guzmán advances his argument through close analyses of various literary, cultural, and legal texts that foreground contention over the limits of political belonging. These include the French Revolution, responses to Arizona’s H.B. 2281, the 2006 immigrant rights protests in the United States, the writings of Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, Frantz Fanon’s account of Algeria’s anticolonial struggle, and more. In each case, Guzmán traces the advent of the “citizen” as a collective subject made up of anyone who seeks to radically transform the organizational coordinates of the place in which she or he lives.

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Emerging as a discipline in the first half of the twentieth century, the information sciences study how people, groups, organizations, and governments create, share, disseminate, manage, search, access, evaluate, and protect information, as well as how different technologies and policies can facilitate and constrain these activities. Given the broad span of the information sciences, it is perhaps not surprising that there is no consensus regarding its underlying theory—the purposes of it, the types of it, or how one goes about developing new theories to talk about new research questions.Diane H. Sonnenwald and the contributors to this volume seek to shed light on these issues by sharing reflections on the theory-development process. These reflections are not meant to revolve around data collection and analysis; rather, they focus on the struggles, challenges, successes, and excitement of developing theories. The particular theories that the contributors explore in their essays range widely, from theories of literacy and reading to theories of design and digital search. Several chapters engage with theories of the behavior of individuals and groups; some deal with processes of evaluation; others reflect on questions of design; and the rest treat cultural and scientific heritage. The ultimate goal, Sonnenwald writes in her introduction, is to “encourage, inspire, and assist individuals striving to develop and/or teach theory development.”

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This ground-breaking book expertly brings together the many effective dementia interventions to reduce the symptoms of this debilitating condition and also, for the first time, a Cost-Benefit Analysis of those interventions to establish whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Focussing on new interventions such as years of education, medicare eligibility, hearing aids and vision correction, Robert Brent also takes an innovative look at the need to reduce elder abuse and initiate an international convention for human rights. Cost-Benefit Analysis and Dementia takes an insightful look at dementia by using a behavioural definition and explaining how the symptoms can affect daily life activities, rather than just using the medical definition. It examines the causality of dementia interventions to establish their effectiveness, dealing with the risk factors and expanding the current list of interventions. Furthermore, it provides an in-depth three-step procedure for evaluating the monetary benefits of those interventions to establish whether these are found to be socially worthwhile. Written in a comprehensive, yet accessible style, this book will be an excellent resource for economists interested in the Cost-Benefit Analysis of dementia care. Healthcare professionals and policymakers as well as non-professionals will find the different interventions discussed to reduce symptoms of dementia illuminating and informative.

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Do we want to perpetuate a Jim Crow health system?" A brilliant, idealistic physician asked that question in Alabama in 1966. Her answer was no—it led to her murder. Unearthing the truth of Jean Cowsert's life and death is a central concern of David Barton Smith's Race, Murder, and Medicine. Unearthing the grim history of our healthcare system is another. Race-related disparities in American death rates, exacerbated once again by the Covid-19 pandemic, have persisted since the birth of the modern U.S. medical system a century ago. A unique but fundamentally racist history has prevented the United States from providing the kind of healthcare assurances that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations. The underlying story is one of political, medical, and bureaucratic machinations, all motivated by a deliberate, racist design. In Race, Murder, and Medicine, David Barton Smith traces the Jean Cowsert story and the cold case of her death as a through line to explain the construction and fulfillment of an unequal healthcare system that would rather sacrifice many than provide for Black Americans. Cowsert's suspicious death came at a key moment in the struggle for universal healthcare in the wealthiest country on earth. Race, Murder, and Medicine is a history of those failed efforts, and a story of selective amnesia about one doctor's death and the movement she died for.

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When does racial description become racism? Critical race studies has not come up with good answers to this question because it has overemphasized the visuality of race. According to dominant theories of racial formation, we see race on bodies and persons and then link those perceptions to unjust practices of racial inequality. Racial Worldmaking argues that we do not just see race. We are taught when, where, and how to notice race by a set of narrative and interpretive strategies. These strategies are named “racial worldmaking” because they get us to notice race not just at the level of the biological representation of bodies or the social categorization of persons. Rather, they get us to embed race into our expectations for how the world operates. As Mark C. Jerng shows us, these strategies find their most powerful expression in popular genre fiction: science fiction, romance, and fantasy. Taking up the work of H.G. Wells, Margaret Mitchell, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick and others, Racial Worldmaking rethinks racial formation in relation to both African American and Asian American studies, as well as how scholars have addressed the relationships between literary representation and racial ideology. In doing so, it engages questions central to our current moment: In what ways do we participate in racist worlds, and how can we imagine and build one that is anti-racist?

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In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy.

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A vivid ethnography of the global and transnational dimensions of gay identity as lived by Filipino immigrants in New York City, Global Divas challenges beliefs about the progressive development of a gay world and the eventual assimilation of all queer folks into gay modernity. Insisting that gay identity is not teleological but fraught with fissures, Martin Manalansan IV describes how Filipino gay immigrants, like many queers of color, are creating alternative paths to queer modernity and citizenship. He makes a compelling argument for the significance of diaspora and immigration as sites for investigating the complexities of gender, race, and sexuality.Manalansan locates diasporic, transnational, and global dimensions of gay and other queer identities within a framework of quotidian struggles ranging from everyday domesticity to public engagements with racialized and gendered images to life-threatening situations involving AIDS. He reveals the gritty, mundane, and often contradictory deeds and utterances of Filipino gay men as key elements of queer globalization and transnationalism. Through careful and sensitive analysis of these men’s lives and rituals, he demonstrates that transnational gay identity is not merely a consumable product or lifestyle, but rather a pivotal element in the multiple, shifting relationships that queer immigrants of color mobilize as they confront the tribulations of a changing world.

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A cat in a tutu is worth a thousand words!Using the most common embroidery stitches, Cat Mania Embroidery places your feline friends in wacky situations of the kind they'd probably get themselves into, given half the chance. Wide-eyed "Who—me?" cats; dancing, frolicking cats; cats in the air and in the water(!); and cats full of attitude who'll try just about anything once. Whatever the setting or situation, they have never been more adorable!With this book you can make nearly 70 quirky cat motifs, and almost 30 different projects, including: Decorative items featuring adventurous cats in bottles, teapots and other tight spaces A wind chime of under-the-sea cats—even a mermaid cat (oops—a mercat?) A rather surprised airborne cat on a little pouch Cats making themselves useful for once, as bookmarks Cats in the bathtub, flying to the moon, dancing the hula, and up to all kinds of lighthearted antics Illustrated step-by-step instructions teach the basics and offer a refresher in the stitches you'll use. Lessons on making appliques and patches, covered panels, fringes, and finished hoops are also included. This book is suitable for both novice and experienced embroiderers, and their cat-loving friends will be thrilled to receive an embroidered gift sporting a curious cat that looks just like theirs!

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In Ethics in Economics , Jonathan B. Wight provides an overview of the role that ethical considerations play in economic debates. Whereas much of the field tends to focus on welfare outcomes, Wight calls for a deeper examination of the origin and evolution of our moral norms. He argues that economic life relies on three interrelated ethical systems: outcome-based, duty- and rule-based, and virtue-based. Integrating contemporary theoretical and applied research on ethics within a historical framework, Wight provides a thorough and accessible outline of all three schools, explaining how they fit or contrast with the economic welfare model. The book then uses these conceptual underpinnings to examine a range of contemporary topics, such as the 2008 financial crisis, the moral limits to markets, the findings of experimental economics, and the nature of economic justice. Wight's analysis is guided by the innovative concept of ethical pluralism—the recognition that each system has appropriate applications, and that no one prevails. He makes the case that considering a wider moral framework, rather than concentrating on utility maximization, can lead to a richer understanding of human behavior and better policy decisions. An incisive overview in a blossoming area of interest within Economics, this book is ideal for undergraduates or uninitiated readers who seek an introduction to this topic.

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Barack Obama's election as the first black president in American history forced a reconsideration of racial reality and possibility. It also incited an outpouring of discussion and analysis of Obama's personal and political exploits. Paint the White House Black fills a significant void in Obama-themed debate, shifting the emphasis from the details of Obama's political career to an understanding of how race works in America. In this groundbreaking book, race, rather than Obama, is the central focus. Michael P. Jeffries approaches Obama's election and administration as common cultural ground for thinking about race. He uncovers contemporary stereotypes and anxieties by examining historically rooted conceptions of race and nationhood, discourses of "biracialism" and Obama's mixed heritage, the purported emergence of a "post-racial society," and popular symbols of Michelle Obama as a modern black woman. In so doing, Jeffries casts new light on how we think about race and enables us to see how race, in turn, operates within our daily lives. Race is a difficult concept to grasp, with outbursts and silences that disguise its relationships with a host of other phenomena. Using Barack Obama as its point of departure, Paint the White House Black boldly aims to understand race by tracing the web of interactions that bind it to other social and historical forces.

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Previous notions of what constitutes "citizenship" within a country have been steadily challenged by the movement towards a globalized world. Examining the everyday habits of citizens and non-citizens, the contributors to Recasting the Social in Citizenship show how citizenship has increasingly been determined by social behaviours rather than by civil or political affiliations. Broadening the debate by interpreting the social not only as rights and privileges, but also as everyday struggles, this volume offers studies that range from environmental and security issues to transnational migration and military transformations. It further discusses debates over multiculturalism and integration and takes a fresh look at how social activities such as eating, commuting, smoking, as well as sexual habits of citizens and non-citizens have become increasingly governed by the state. Tracing developments in politics and social actions that have bound together citizens and non-citizens, Engin F. Isin and the volume's contributors explore the social sites that have become objects of government, and considers how these subjects are sites of contestation, resistance, differentiation and identification. In doing so, they provide significant insights into the changing states of citizenship and social governance, making Recasting the Social in Citizenship an engaging collection that will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, and anyone with a concern about immigration and citizenship.

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Few philosophers have left a legacy like that of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He has been credited not only with inventing the differential calculus, but also with anticipating the basic ideas of modern logic, information science, and fractal geometry. He made important contributions to such diverse fields as jurisprudence, geology and etymology, while sketching designs for calculating machines, wind pumps, and submarines. But the common presentation of his philosophy as a kind of unworldly idealism is at odds with all this bustling practical activity. In this book Richard. T. W. Arthur offers a fresh reading of Leibniz’s philosophy, clearly situating it in its scientific, political and theological contexts. He argues that Leibniz aimed to provide an improved foundation for the mechanical philosophy based on a new kind of universal language. His contributions to natural philosophy are an integral part of this programme, which his metaphysics, dynamics and organic philosophy were designed to support. Rather than denying that substances really exist in space and time, as the idealist reading proposes, Leibniz sought to provide a deeper understanding of substance and body, and a correct understanding of space as an order of situations and time as an order of successive things. This lively and approachable book will appeal to students of philosophy, as well as anyone seeking a stimulating introduction to Leibniz's thought and its continuing relevance.

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Building a Nation at War argues that the Chinese Nationalist government’s retreat inland during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), its consequent need for inland resources, and its participation in new scientific and technical relationships with the United States led to fundamental changes in how the Nationalists engaged with science and technology as tools to promote development.The war catalyzed an emphasis on applied sciences, comprehensive economic planning, and development of scientific and technical human resources—all of which served the Nationalists’ immediate and long-term goals. It created an opportunity for the Nationalists to extend control over inland China and over education and industry. It also provided opportunities for China to mobilize transnational networks of Chinese-Americans, Chinese in America, and the American government and businesses. These groups provided technical advice, ran training programs, and helped the Nationalists acquire manufactured goods and tools. J. Megan Greene shows how the Nationalists worked these programs to their advantage, even in situations where their American counterparts clearly had the upper hand. Finally, this book shows how, although American advisers and diplomats criticized China for harboring resources rather than putting them into winning the war against Japan, US industrial consultants were also strongly motivated by postwar goals.

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This ground-breaking study is the first to employ modern international relations theory to place Roman militarism and expansion of power within the broader Mediterranean context of interstate anarchy. Arthur M. Eckstein challenges claims that Rome was an exceptionally warlike and aggressive state - not merely in modern but in ancient terms - by arguing that intense militarism and aggressiveness were common among all Mediterranean polities from ca 750 B.C. onwards. In his wide-ranging and masterful narrative, Eckstein explains that international politics in the ancient Mediterranean world was, in political science terms, a multipolar anarchy: international law was minimal, and states struggled desperately for power and survival by means of warfare.Eventually, one state, the Republic of Rome, managed to create predominance and a sort of peace. Rome was certainly a militarized and aggressive state, but it was successful not because it was exceptional in its ruthlessness, Eckstein convincingly argues; rather, it was successful because of its exceptional ability to manage a large network of foreign allies, and to assimilate numerous foreigners within the polity itself. This book shows how these characteristics, in turn, gave Rome incomparably large resources for the grim struggle of states fostered by the Mediterranean anarchy - and hence they were key to Rome's unprecedented success.

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This book provides an exploration of the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. It explores the ways psychoanalysts and other clinicians are taught to evade direct emotional connections with their patients. Sullivan, suggesting that relatedness is the basis of emotional health, examines the universal struggle between socially oriented energies that struggle toward truth and narcissistic impulses that push us to take refuge in lies. She maintains that, rather than making interpretations, it is the clinician’s capacity to bring relatedness to the clinical encounter which is the crucial factor.Examining the work of both Jung and Bion, Sullivan draws on the overlap between their ideas on the psyche and the nature of the unconscious. The book uses clinical examples to examine the implications that these perspectives have for the practising therapist.Specific areas of discussion include: the creative unconscious the structure of narcissism transformation in analytic work. New modes of listening and relating that deepen analytic work and greatly facilitate transformative changes are described in easy-to-follow language that will help the therapist to find new approaches to a wide range of patients. The Mystery of Analytical Work will be of interest to Jungians, psychoanalysts and all those with an interest in analytic work.

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Once thought to be nothing more than diversions for children and nerds, games have become an integral part of everyday life. Educators are trying to make learning more fun by introducing games into the classroom while cutting-edge managers are doing the same in the workplace. Doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs are deploying games to help solve some of the world's most pressing problems.But according to Adam Penenberg, it's not the games themselves that improve our lives, but rather smart game design and its impact on the brain that can lead us to become immersed in a task we find enjoyable. The individuals and institutions that have used games to achieve this effect are often rewarded with astounding results.Examples include:* A software developer who changed Microsoft's mind-numbing code review process into a fun, team based game.* Google, which indexed its massive image database with unpaid volunteers by turning the process into a game.* A medical student who created a simple game that helped her overcome distractions and dramatically increased her productivity.Drawing on the latest brain science on attention and engagement plus his own firsthand reporting, Penenberg shows how organizations like Google, Microsoft, hospitals, and the military have used game design in bold new ways.

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How American colonists reinterpreted their British and colonial histories to help establish political and cultural independence from Britain"Recounts the fascinating process by which the colonists established a new identity and created a uniquely American history"—Journal of the American Revolution“A powerful, clearly made argument that scholars on the revolution’s origins will need to reckon with.” —Frank Cogliano, University of Edinburgh In Past and Prologue, Michael Hattem shows how colonists’ changing understandings of their British and colonial histories shaped the politics of the American Revolution and the origins of American national identity. Between the 1760s and 1800s, Americans stopped thinking of the British past as their own history and created a new historical tradition that would form the foundation for what subsequent generations would think of as “American history.” This change was a crucial part of the cultural transformation at the heart of the Revolution by which colonists went from thinking of themselves as British subjects to thinking of themselves as American citizens. Rather than liberating Americans from the past—as many historians have argued—the Revolution actually made the past matter more than ever. Past and Prologue shows how the process of reinterpreting the past played a critical role in the founding of the nation.

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Chinese Esoteric Buddhism is generally held to have been established as a distinct and institutionalized Buddhist school in eighth-century China by “the Three Great Masters of Kaiyuan”: Śubhākarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra. Geoffrey C. Goble provides an innovative account of the tradition’s emergence that sheds new light on the structures and traditions that shaped its institutionalization.Goble focuses on Amoghavajra (704–774), contending that he was the central figure in Esoteric Buddhism’s rapid rise in Tang dynasty China, and the other two “patriarchs” are known primarily through Amoghavajra’s teachings and writings. He presents the scriptural, mythological, and practical aspects of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism in the eighth century and places them in the historical contexts within which Amoghavajra operated. By telling the story of Amoghavajra’s rise to prominence and of Esoteric Buddhism’s corresponding institutionalization in China, Goble makes the case that the evolution of this tradition was predicated on Indic scriptures and practical norms rather than being the product of conscious adaptation to a Chinese cultural environment. He demonstrates that Esoteric Buddhism was employed by Chinese rulers to defeat military and political rivals. Based on close readings of a broad range of textual sources previously untapped by English-language scholarship, this book overturns many assumptions about the origins of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism.

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Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven-dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. In Religious Statecraft, Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order backwards. This provocative book examines the politics of Islam rather than political Islam-demonstrating that religious narratives can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites' threat perceptions. Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran's factional and international politics. He argues that the Islamists' gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religion. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically construct and deploy Shia-inspired ideologies to gain credibility and raise mass support. Based on micro-level analysis of original material and documents recently released in the Persian media as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics and revises our understanding of the revolution, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.-Iran relations.

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The Anthropocene marks the age of significant human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems, dramatically underscoring the reality that human life is not separate from nature but an integral part of it. Culturally, ecologically, and socially destructive practices such as resource extraction have led to this moment of peril. These practices, however, implicate more than industrial and economic systems: they are built into the political theology of American exceptionalism, compelling us to reimagine human social and political life on Earth. American Immanence seeks to replace the dominant American political tradition, which has resulted in global social, economic, and environmental injustices, with a new form of political theology, its dominant feature a radical democratic politics. Michael S. Hogue explores the potential of a dissenting immanental tradition in American religion based on philosophical traditions of naturalism, process thought, and pragmatism. By integrating systems theory and concepts of vulnerability and resilience into the lineages of American immanence, he articulates a political theology committed to democracy as an emancipatory and equitable way of life. Rather than seeking to redeem or be redeemed, Hogue argues that the vulnerability of life in the Anthropocene calls us to build radically democratic communities of responsibility, resistance, and resilience. American Immanence integrates an immanental theology of, by, and for the planet with a radical democratic politics of, by, and for the people.

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On the surface, The Philosophical Hitchcock: Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness, is a close reading of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece Vertigo. This, however, is a book by Robert B. Pippin, one of our most penetrating and creative philosophers, and so it is also much more. Even as he provides detailed readings of each scene in the film, and its story of obsession and fantasy, Pippin reflects more broadly on the modern world depicted in Hitchcock's films. Hitchcock's characters, Pippin shows us, repeatedly face problems and dangers rooted in our general failure to understand others--or even ourselves--very well, or to make effective use of what little we do understand. Vertigo, with its impersonations, deceptions, and fantasies, embodies a general, common struggle for mutual understanding in the late modern social world of ever more complex dependencies. By treating this problem through a filmed fictional narrative, rather than discursively, Pippin argues, Hitchcock is able to help us see the systematic and deep mutual misunderstanding and self-deceit that we are subject to when we try to establish the knowledge necessary for love, trust, and commitment, and what it might be to live in such a state of unknowingness. A bold, brilliant exploration of one of the most admired works of cinema, The Philosophical Hitchcock will lead philosophers and cinephiles alike to a new appreciation of Vertigo and its meanings.

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Between Pizzagate, QAnon, and the now ubiquitous cries of “fake news,” it’s tempting to think that we’re living in an unprecedentedly fertile age for conspiracy theories. But the sad fact is that these narratives of suspicion—and the delusional psychologies that fuel them—have been a constant presence in American life for nearly as long as there’s been an America. In this sweeping book, Thomas Konda traces the country’s obsession with conspiratorial thought from the early days of the Republic up to our own anxious moment. Conspiracies of Conspiracies details centuries of sinister speculations—from anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism to UFOs and reptilian humanoids—and their often incendiary outcomes. Rather than simply rehashing the surface eccentricities of such theories, Konda draws from his unprecedented assemblage of conspiratorial writing to crack open the mindsets that lead people toward these self-sealing worlds of denial. What is distinctively American about these theories, he argues, is not simply our country’s homegrown obsession with them but their ongoing prevalence and virulence. Konda shows that conspiracy theories are less a harmless sideshow than the dark and secret heart of American political history—one that threatens to poison the bloodstream of our increasingly sick body politic.

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From its inception in Greek antiquity, the science of optics was aimed primarily at explaining sight and accounting for why things look as they do. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the analytic focus of optics had shifted to light: its fundamental properties and such physical behaviors as reflection, refraction, and diffraction. This dramatic shift which A. Mark Smith characterizes as the Keplerian turn" lies at the heart of this fascinating and pioneering study. Breaking from previous scholarship that sees Johannes Kepler as the culmination of a long-evolving optical tradition that traced back to Greek antiquity via the Muslim Middle Ages, Smith presents Kepler instead as marking a rupture with this tradition, arguing that his theory of retinal imaging, which was published in 1604, was instrumental in prompting the turn from sight to light. Kepler's new theory of sight, Smith reveals, thus takes on true historical significance: by treating the eye as a mere light-focusing device rather than an image-producing instrument as traditionally understood Kepler's account of retinal imaging helped spur the shift in analytic focus that eventually led to modern optics. A sweeping survey, From Sight to Light is poised to become the standard reference for historians of optics as well as those interested more broadly in the history of science, the history of art, and cultural and intellectual history."

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In "Electing Judges", leading judicial politics scholar James L. Gibson responds to the growing chorus of critics who fear that the politics of running for office undermine judicial independence. While many people have opinions on the topic, few have supported them with actual empirical evidence. Gibson rectifies this situation, offering the most systematic and comprehensive study to date of the impact of campaigns on public perceptions of fairness, impartiality, and the legitimacy of elected state courts - and his findings are both counterintuitive and controversial. Gibson finds that ordinary Americans do not conclude from campaign promises that judges are incapable of making impartial decisions. Instead, he shows, they understand the process of deciding cases to be an exercise in policymaking, rather than of simply applying laws to individual cases - and consequently think it's important for candidates to reveal where they stand on important issues. Negative advertising also turns out to have a limited effect on perceptions of judicial legitimacy, though the same cannot be said for widely hated campaign contributions. Taking both the good and bad into consideration, Gibson argues that elections are ultimately beneficial in boosting the legitimacy of courts, despite the slight negative effects of some campaign activities. "Electing Judges" will initiate a lively debate inside both the halls of justice and the academy.

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The escalating growth of our technological knowledge in the last century has been nothing short of breathtaking – but has it rendered us wiser? Or godlier? We have lost something priceless, and seem to be trying to replace it with more and more ‘information’. We need wisdom! Communications technology leaves us no rest to work things out: mostly we just react, and worry, and fail – and react again. We make business decisions; ethical decisions; relationship decisions; against a continuously moving landscape that doesn’t allow them to be satisfying… consistent… dependable. To cope we must have wisdom! There is no better starting point than the Book of Proverbs. Its purpose is to impart wisdom to those who want it. From its pages God promises to set us on ‘The path of life’ (Prov. 15:24). ‘You don’t understand! I don’t have time! ‘You do…because, after years of painstaking study, John Kitchen has produced a work that is authoritative, comprehensive and insightful. He examines the chronology, authorship, composition, structure and context of Proverbs and does the hard work of providing cross–references alerting the reader to rich veins running beneath the surface of Proverbs and other Biblical books. You want wisdom to help run your life? Think you are running out of time? Then this is a priceless, timeless book that will reward your investment as you seek to gain wisdom, rather than knowledge.

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Detailed enough for use as an atlas and concise enough for efficient review, Human Gross Anatomy provides concentrated coverage of anatomy that promotes learning rather than rote memorization. Clear, high quality cadaveric photographs and explanatory diagrams are presented side by side with bulleted explanations to help students develop a true understanding of anatomical structures.Addressing current curriculum trends with a systemic approach--while maintaining the regional approach used in dissection labs--this practical, user-friendly text highlights important muscle information through “Action Boxes” and uses color-coded labels for origin, insertion, and innervation. Human Gross Anatomy is ideal for anatomy students in medical, osteopathic, dental, physical therapy, chiropractic, physician assistant, and nurse practitioner programs. Atlas images combine with bulleted text to promote learning versus rote memorization High quality cadaveric photographs show dissections that students can achieve, supporting visual understanding Systems approach presented within each regional chapter to align with a range of curricula Muscle information highlighted in “action boxes” with color coding for origin, insertion, innervation Helpful Notes and Clinical Notes put images in context Extensive osteology coverage enhances student understanding of this subdiscipline Available with interactive eBook at no additional cost

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It was Hitler’s boast that the Third Reich would last a thousand years. Instead it lasted only twelve. But into its short life was packed the most cataclysmic series of events that Western civilisation has ever known.William Shirer is one of the very few historians to have gained full access to the secret German archives which the Allies captured intact. He was also present at the Nuremberg trials. First published sixty years ago, Shirer’s account of the years 1933–45, when the Nazis, under the rule of their despotic leader Adolf Hitler, ruled Germany is held up as a classic of its time. Some of his views have not stood the test of time but in this book Shirer explores how the Nazis commandeered the Holocaust, one of the most shocking acts of evil in modern history, plunged the world into a second war, and changed the face of modern history and modern Europe forever.‘One of the most important works of history of our time.’ New York Times‘I can think of no book which I would rather put in the hands of anyone who wanted to find out what happened in Germany between 1930 and 1945, and why the history of those years should never be forgotten’ Alan Bullock

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Rebel Witch reminds witches of the wondrous opportunity to jump into experimentation and invent something wild and individual, a practice shaped by their individual personality and life journey, rather than allowing themselves to be spoon-fed. It challenges witches to design a nurturing practice that is truly theirs. There's information about all the elements of the craft, from energy raising, sacred space creation and receiving signs to casting spells, holding rituals, scrying, potions and much more … crucially, in each case the topic is discussed from an exciting contemporary perspective. So, when Kelly-Ann talks about sacred texts, she stresses that you can choose the texts that resonate with you – so why not Alice in Wonderland or Narnia? Maybe you want to move away from the traditional Wheel of the Year and create your own divisions? Instead of honouring a traditional deity, why not construct your own, choosing elements from rock stars, movie icons or fictional heroes? Or embody magical signs in your clothing and jewellery? Creativity and experimentation are encouraged, with tips to help the reader to be inventive. A curious reader with a desire to create an inspired, deeply personal path and free themselves from conformity will finish the book ready to take action and make magick happen!

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An American Art Colony demonstrates the social dimension of American art in the 20th century, paying special attention to the role of fellow artists, nonartists and the historical context of art production. The book treats the art colony, not as a static addendum to an artist’s profile, but rather an essential ingredient in artistic life. The art colony here becomes an historical entity that changes over time and influences the kind of art that ensues. It is a special methodology of the study that collective features of three generation of artists help clarify how artists engage their audiences. Since many of these artists worked within the cultural confines of metropolitan New York and its magazine industry, they cultivated subjects that were recognizable by ordinary citizens. Early on, they drew from the emergent suburban life of their neighbors for their artistic themes. Gradually these contexts become more formally institutionalized and their subjects gravitated away from themes of ordinary life to themes more exotic, expressionistic and fanciful. A key methodology for this study consisted of an analysis of collective biographies of 170 participating artists. The theme of modern art explains here how abstraction was suborned to public images, widening the very meaning of the term modern.

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Writer Susan Tweit and her economist-turned-sculptor husband Richard Cabe had just settled into their version of a “good life” when Richard saw thousands of birds one day—harbingers of the brain cancer that would kill him two years later. This compelling and intimate memoir chronicles their journey into the end of his life, framed by their final trip together, a 4,000-mile-long delayed honeymoon road trip. As Susan and Richard navigate the unfamiliar territory of brain cancer treatment and learn a whole new vocabulary—craniotomies, adjuvant chemotherapy, and brain geography—they also develop new routines for a mindful existence, relying on each other and their connection to nature, including the real birds Richard enjoys watching. Their determination to walk hand in hand, with open hearts, results in profound and difficult adjustments in their roles. Bless the Birds is not a sad story. It is both prayer and love song, a guide to how to thrive in a world where all we hold dear seems to be eroding, whether simple civility and respect, our health and safety, or the Earth itself. It’s an exploration of living with love in a time of dying—whether personal or global—with humor, unflinching courage, and grace. And it is an invitation to choose to live in light of what we love, rather than what we fear.

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The tragedy of American science is that its direction is determined by private profit rather than by the desire to improve the human condition. As a result, Conner argues, Big Science has been irredeemably corrupted by Big Money. This corruption threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the medicines we take.The Tragedy of American Science explores how the U.S. economy’s addiction to military spending distorts and deforms science by making it overwhelmingly subservient to military interests. The primary motive driving American science and technology has become the search for new and more efficient ways to kill people. This transforms science from the classic ideal of a creative force for the advancement of humankind into its destructive and antihuman opposite. That those trillions of dollars in resources and scientific talent are not devoted to solving the problems of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction is one of the greatest tragedies of our times.While the underlying problems may appear intractable, Conner compellingly argues that replacing the current science-for-profit system with a science-for-human-needs system is not an impossible, utopian dream. But to get there, we’ll need to grapple with this important history.

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In looking closely at Horace Walpole's Correspondence, George E. Haggerty shows how these letters, when taken in aggregate, offer an astonishingly vivid account of the vagaries of eighteenth-century masculinity. Walpole talks about himself obsessively: his wants, his needs, his desires; his physical and mental pain; his artistic appreciation and his critical responses. It is impossible to read these letters and not come away with a vivid impression of a complex personality from another age. Haggerty examines the ways in which Walpole presents himself as an eighteenth-century gentleman, and considers his personal relationships, his needs and aspirations, his emotionalism and his rationality—in short, his construction of himself—in order to see what it tells us about the age in general and more specifically, about masculinity in an era of social flux. This study of Walpole and his epistolary relations offers a unique window into both the history of masculinity in the eighteenth century and the codification of friendship as the preeminent value in western culture. Recent studies have tried to rewrite Walpole in a twenty-first century mold while this work looks at the writer and the ways in which he constructs himself and his relations, not in hopes of uncovering a lurid secret, but rather in pursuit of the figure that he created and that has fascinated generations of readers and writers since the eighteenth century.

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