Search results for ""author rath"

Literary Criticism offers a concise overview of literary studies in the English-speaking world from the early twentieth century to the present. Joseph North steps back from the usual tangle of figures, schools, and movements in order to analyze the intellectual paradigms that underpinned them. The result is a radically new account of the discipline’s development, together with a trenchant argument about where its political future lies.People in today’s literature departments often assume that their work is politically progressive, especially when compared with the work of early- and mid-twentieth-century critics. North’s view is less cheering. For when understood in relation to the longer arc of the discipline, the current historicist and contextualist mode in literary studies represents a step to the Right. Since the global turn to neoliberalism in the late 1970s, all the major movements within literary studies have been diagnostic rather than interventionist in character: scholars have developed sophisticated techniques for analyzing culture, but they have retreated from systematic attempts to transform it. In this respect, the political potential of current literary scholarship compares poorly with that of earlier critical modes, which, for all their faults, at least had a programmatic commitment to cultural change.Yet neoliberalism is now in crisis—a crisis that presents opportunities as well as dangers. North argues that the creation of a genuinely interventionist criticism is one of the central tasks facing those on the Left of the discipline today.

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'Betrayal is a new departure and a bold one . . . Pinter has found a way of making memory active and dramatic, giving an audience the experience of the mind's accelerating momentum as it pieces together the past with a combination of curiosity and regret. He shows man betrayed not only by man, but by time - a recurring theme which has found its proper scenic correlative . . . Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with a sardonic forgiveness . . . a master craftsman honouring his talent by setting it new, difficult tasks' New Society'There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks . . . Pinter's narrative method takes "what's next?" out of the spectator's and replaces it with the rather deeper "how?" and "why?" Why did love pass? How did these people cope with the lies, the evasions, the sudden dangers, panic and the contradictory feelings behind their own deftly engineered masks? The play's subject is not sex, not even adultery, but the politics of betrayal and the damage it inflicts on all involved.' The TimesFirst staged at the National Theatre in 1978, Betrayal was revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 1991. Twenty years after its first showing, it returned to the National in 1998.

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A joyful and celebratory gift book devoted to the work of the much-loved English artist Eric Ravilious (1903–1942) and the influence of natural forms and themes in his work. Eric Ravilious was a designer, painter, printmaker and illustrator best known for his depictions of the English landscape, particularly the South Downs. Often described as a particularly ‘English’ artist, key to his style was an ability to convey in watercolour the mild vagaries of the British climate. His engagement with nature, though romantic rather than precise, pervades his works in many different techniques. This book explores his appreciation of the natural world and the techniques he used in a variety of media to convey those elements. Drawing on the V&A’s collections, more than 100 beautiful images capture Ravilious’s deep enjoyment of everything in nature, from dewponds, cockerels, grassy hills, owls, greenhouse geraniums, cornsheaves and snow, to the rainy seas, airport-runway puddles and tideswept beaches of his later work as a war artist. The book includes sections on weather, plants, landscape, animals and birds, and ends with a section devoted to man in the landscape, showcasing Ravilious’s love of rusting machinery and other signs of human presence within nature, not least his famous depictions of hillside chalk figures. This book will appeal to those with a love of English landscapes, flora and fauna or an interest in British art and design in the interwar period.

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Wireless Connectivity: An Intuitive and Fundamental Guide Wireless connectivity has become an indispensable part, a commodity associated with the way we work and play. The latest developments, the 5G, next-generation Wi-Fi and Internet of Things connectivity, are the key enablers for widespread digitalization of practically all industries and public sector segments. This immense development within the last three decades have been accompanied by a large number of ideas, articles, patents, and even myths. This book introduces the most important ideas and concepts in wireless connectivity and discusses how these are interconnected, whilst the mathematical content is kept minimal. The book does not follow the established, linear structure in which one starts from the propagation and channels and then climbs up the protocol layers. The structure is, rather, nonlinear, in an attempt to follow the intuition used when one creates a new technology to solve a certain problem. The target audience is: Students in electronics, communication, and networking Wireless engineers that are specialized in one area, but want to know how the whole system works, without going through all the details and math Computer scientists that want to understand the fundamentals of wireless connectivity, the requirements and, most importantly, the limitations Engineers in energy systems, logistics, transport and other vertical sectors that are increasingly reliant on wireless technology

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A history that extends from the 1750s to the present, In Pursuit of Privilege recounts upper-class New Yorkers' struggle to create a distinct world guarded against outsiders, even as economic growth and democratic opportunity enabled aspirants to gain entrance. Despite their efforts, New York City's upper class has been drawn into the larger story of the city both through class conflict and through their role in building New York's cultural and economic foundations. In Pursuit of Privilege describes the famous and infamous characters and events at the center of this extraordinary history, from the elite families and wealthy tycoons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the Wall Street executives of today. From the start, upper-class New Yorkers have been open and aggressive in their behavior, keen on attaining prestige, power, and wealth. Clifton Hood sharpens this characterization by merging a history of the New York economy in the eighteenth century with the story of Wall Street's emergence as an international financial center in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the dominance of New York's financial and service sectors in the 1980s. Bringing together several decades of upheaval and change, he shows that New York's upper class did not rise exclusively from the Gilded Age but rather from a relentless pursuit of privilege, affecting not just the urban elite but the city's entire cultural, economic, and political fabric.

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Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political institutions that, in failing to listen well to survivors, deny them redress by negating their testimony and thwarting their claims for justice. Jill Stauffer examines the root causes of ethical loneliness and how those in power revise history to serve their own ends rather than the needs of the abandoned. Out of this discussion, difficult truths about the desire and potential for political forgiveness, transitional justice, and political reconciliation emerge. Moving beyond a singular focus on truth commissions and legal trials, she considers more closely what is lost in the wake of oppression and violence, how selves and worlds are built and demolished, and who is responsible for re-creating lives after they are destroyed. Stauffer boldly argues that rebuilding worlds and just institutions after violence is a broad obligation and that those who care about justice must first confront their own assumptions about autonomy, liberty, and responsibility before an effective response to violence can take place. In building her claims, Stauffer draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Amery, Eve Sedgwick, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as concrete cases of justice and injustice across the world.

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Why, after a childhood of emotional neglect and abuse, would a man move next door to the very parents who caused him pain? And how can a woman emerge from her mother's control in order to form healthy adult relationships? Giving up family attachments that failed to meet our needs as children, David Celani argues, is the hardest psychological task an adult can undertake. Yet the reality is that many adults re-create the most painful aspects of their early relationships with their parents in new relationships with peers and romantic partners, frustrating themselves and discouraging them from leaving their family of origin. Leaving Home emphasizes the life-saving benefits of separating from destructive parents and offers a viable program for personal emancipation. Celani's program is based on Object-Relations Theory, a branch of psychoanalysis developed by Scottish analyst Ronald Fairbairn. The human personality, Fairbairn argued, is not the result of inherited (and thus immutable) instincts. Rather, the developing child builds internal relational templates that guide his future interactions with others based on the conscious and unconscious memories he internalized from his primary relationship-the one he experienced with his parents. While a child's attachment to parents who were neglectful or even abusive is not uncommon, there is a way out. Articulate, sensitive, and replete with examples from Celani's twenty-six years of clinical practice, this book outlines the practical steps to leaving home.

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The volume collects a series of lectures given by the renowned French thinker Michel Foucault late in his career. The book is composed of two parts: a talk, "Parresia," delivered at the University of Grenoble in 1982, and a series of lectures entitled "Discourse and Truth," given at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, which appears here for the first time in its full and correct form. Together, they provide an unprecedented account of Foucault's reading of the Greek concept of parresia, often translated as "truth-telling" or "frank speech." In typically Foucauldian style, the lectures trace the transformation of this concept across Greek, Roman, and early Christian thought, from its origins in pre-Socratic Greece to its role as a central element of the relationship between teacher and student. In mapping the concept's history, Foucault's concern is not to advocate for free speech; rather, his aim is to explore the moral and political position one must occupy in order to take the risk to speak truthfully. In his analysis of parresia, Foucault both advances his project of a history of the present and paves the way for a genealogy of the critical attitude in modern and contemporary societies. These essays--carefully edited and including notes and introductory material to fully illuminate Foucault's insights--are a major addition to Foucault's English-language corpus that no scholar of ancient or modern philosophy will want to miss.

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Over decades of consulting with corporations and the people who run them and 30 years teaching MBA students the nuances of organisational power, Jeffrey Pfeffer has watched numerous people suffer career reversals even as others prevail despite the odds. The most common mistake: most of us don't have a realistic understanding of what makes some people more successful than others. We tend to subscribe to the just world phenomenon, believing that life is fair, rendering us unprepared for the challenges and competition of the real world. Now, Pfeffer brings decades of research and incredible insights to a wide audience. Brimming with counterintuitive advice, numerous examples from a variety of countries, and surprising but research-based findings, his groundbreaking guide reveals the strategies and tactics that separate the winners from the losers. Power, he argues, is a force that can be used and harnessed for individual gain, but also for the benefit of organisations and society. Power, however, cannot be learned from those in charge - their advice often puts a rosy spin on their ascent and focuses on what should have worked, rather than what did. Instead, he reveals the actual paths to power and career success. Iconoclastic and grounded in the realpolitik of human interaction, "Power" is an essential organisational survival manual and a new standard in the field of leadership and management.

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How was the Soviet Union like a soup kitchen? In this important and highly revisionist work, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick explains that a reimagining of the Communist state as a provider of goods for the ‘deserving poor’ can be seen as a powerful metaphor for understanding Soviet life as a whole. By positioning the state both as a provider and as a relief agency, Fitzpatrick establishes it as not so much a prison (the metaphor favoured by many of her predecessors), but more the agency that made possible a way of life. Fitzpatrick’s real claim to originality, however, is to look at the relationship between the all-powerful totalitarian government and its own people from both sides – and to demonstrate that the Soviet people were not totally devoid of either agency or resources. Rather, they successfully developed practices that helped them to navigate everyday life at a time of considerable danger and multiple shortages. For many, Fitzpatrick shows, becoming an informer and reporting fellow citizens – even family and friends – to the state was a successful survival strategy. Fitzpatrick's work is noted mainly as an example of the critical thinking skill of reasoning; she marshals evidence and arguments to deliver a highly persuasive revisionist description of everyday life in Soviet time. However, her book has been criticized for the way in which it deals with possible counter-arguments, not least the charge that many of the interviewees on whose experiences she bases much of her analysis were not typical products of the Soviet system.

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The Republic is Plato's most complete and incisive work – a detailed study of the problem of how best to ensure that justice exists in a real society, rather than as merely the product of an idealized philosophical construct. The work considers several competing definitions of justice, and looks closely not only at what exactly a "just life" should be, but also at the ways in which society can organise itself in ways that maximise the opportunities for every member to live justly. Much of the discussion is via imagined dialogues, giving Plato the opportunity to deploy the tools of Socratic debate to remarkable effect; nowhere else, it can be argued, is the Socratic dialectic better exemplified than in The Republic. In large measure, Plato's success is the product of the acute analytical ability that he demonstrates throughout his surviving oeuvre. No one is better at understanding the relationships between the various parts of a successful argument than Plato, and The Republic also demonstrates the Greek philosopher has few peers when it comes to looking for and highlighting the core assumptions that underlie an argument. The demolition of competing views that Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates is based on a series of relentless interventions and counter-examples that this mastery makes possible. Combining analytical skills with great powers of reasoning to produce a well-structured solution that deals emphatically with counter-arguments, Plato crafts one of the most enduring works of philosophy in the entire western canon.

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Described as the most widely read and influential serious writer of the twentieth century, George Orwell remains relevant in our own era of contested media. He continues to attract a large readership. This book is about Orwell’s post-war cultural moment c. 1948. Taking his Diaries of the time as inspiration, together with his famous final novel, 1984 (published 1949), and treating them as contiguous texts, Brian May considers the gaps, equivocations, and contradictions in Orwell's message and asks what Orwell would have written next. But 1948 is more than a work of literary criticism: rather, it balances critical discussion with creative intervention, being one-half literary-critical commentary, and one-half fictional departure – a novella titled “From the Archives of Oceania,” which quotes, parodies and pastiches Orwell's Diaries, offering a possible prequel. Together these elements offer a resource for the reader to interrogate anew such difficult issues as Orwell's sexism and anti-Semitism; to explore the tensions between various intertwining strands of thought that cast Orwell as both realist and idealist, Puritan and individualist; and to better understand Orwell's curious affection for the natural world. 1948 will appeal to all readers and critics of Orwell, but also to students of dystopian fiction, "revisionary" fiction and "reception study," which highlights the audience’s contribution to an artwork's meaning.

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'Wodehouse is a tonic' - New Yorker. A Wodehouse pick-me-up that'll lift your spirits, whatever your mood.Cheaper and more effective than Valium’.*Offers ‘relief from anxiety, raginess or an afternoon-long tendency towards the sour’.*‘Read when you’re well and when you’re poorly; when you’re travelling, and when you’re not; when you’re feeling clever, and when you’re feeling utterly dim.’*Whatever your mood, P. G. Wodehouse, widely acknowledged to be ‘the best English comic novelist of the century’*, is guaranteed to lift your spirits. Why? Because ‘Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.’*How? ‘You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.’**Olivia Williams *Caitlin Moran *Lynne Truss *Sebastian Faulks *Evelyn Waugh *Stephen FryMeet the Young Men in Spats – all members of the Drones Club, all crossed in love and all busy betting their sometimes non-existent fortunes on unlikely outcomes – that's when they're not recovering from driving their sports cars through, rather than round, Marble Arch.These wonderful comic short stories are the essence of innocent fun. Here, you'll encounter some of Wodehouse's favourite characters – and, in 'The Amazing Hat Mystery', one of his favourite stories.Contents:- The Amazing Hat Mystery - Uncle Fred Flits By - Trouble Down at Tudsleigh

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD'Maximilian Ponder is lying face up, dead, on the dining table in his own front room. This is something you really should know, right from the start. 'Max would also have wanted you to know that this is a Henri II style, French, walnut extending dining table, standing on solid turned legs with fretwork decor to the middle, also with ebony and sandalwood inlay, designed by the French furniture maker Nicolas Rastin and probably dating from around 1900 ...'Maximilian Ponder shut himself away for thirty years in an attempt to record every memory he ever had. Now he lies dead, surrounded by his magnum opus - The Catalogue - an exhaustive set of notebooks and journals that he hopes will form the map of one human mind. But before his friend Adam Last can call the police and inform them of Max's death, one rather gruesome task remains in order for Max's project to be complete. Interspersed with sections from The Catalogue, Adam tells the story of the man he knew - a man whose life changed dramatically the day he buried a dead labrador and fought a duel with his father. What emerges is both the story of a friendship, and also of a lifelong obsession, a quest to understand the human mind, memory and what constitutes a life.

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While previous EW exploited flaws in the analogue equipment to corrupt or degrade the sensor detection or localisation capabilities, EW is now an information battle. Modern autonomous threat sensors can readily detect and locate targets by incorporating state of the art high speed digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms that focus on the classification of targets via target physical features. As a result the autonomous threat has a significant advantage over attacking forces consisting of armoured vehicles, aircraft or ships. To elucidate the state of EW, this book focuses on the example of autonomous anti ship missiles (ASM) attacking a naval fleet rather than airborne battles, thus filling a significant gap in the EW literature. It describes modern DSP algorithms that have been published by ASM development personnel from several nations, including the People's Republic of China and the Russian federation and outlines instances where it has been successfully used against ships. The book elaborates on the mathematical techniques employed and the advantages of incorporating digital signal processing algorithms into the autonomous sensor. With straight forward DSP algorithms, ASM can rapidly identify and distinguish electronically generated false targets, passive decoys, chaff and true targets. Moreover, special sensor waveforms now proactively probe the targets for enhanced feature measurements, and modern multi-channel optimal DSP readily mitigates noise jamming.

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Love food but hate spending hours in the kitchen? This book is the answer, with over 350 delicious recipes ready in less than 30 minutes'Easily my first choice for a simple, good, workable and readable cookery book' Nigella Lawson_______ Nigel Slater presents over 350 creative, delicious and nourishing recipes and suggestions for those who'd rather spend more of their time eating than cooking.From simple snacks to dinner-party desserts, all the dishes in Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food can be ready to eat in 30 minutes or under.These delicious meals include . . .- Roast Pork Sandwiches with Pickled Walnuts and Crackling- Caramelised Onion and Parsley Frittata- Baked Fish Steaks with Tomato and Breadcrumbs- Grilled Chicken with Red Chilli, Garlic and Yoghurt- Spiced Lamb Kofta with Pine Nuts and Red Cabbage- Stir-fried Beef with Broccoli and MushroomsFull of tips and tricks, feasts and quick-fixes, this is the staple cookbook that every household needs._______ 'Not just a cookery book for gourmets and foodies, but for real people too' Sophie Grigson 'Nigel Slater offers us a decade's worth of fresh, original cookery ideas with spoonfuls of wit' Observer 'Designed to appeal to people who love food but don't want to spend hours slaving away at the stove (i.e. nearly everybody in Britain)' Independent on Sunday

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For many, video games are like magic. They hide in the dark and then appear from nowhere, fully formed. Based on over a dozen firsthand interviews that cover genre-defining games and the titles that inspired them Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Deus Ex, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Splinter Cell, Prey, The Last of Us Part II, and more this book shines a flashlight into the shadowy corners of game development history, uncovering the untold stories behind these formative titles. These insider interviews cover development struggles, internal conflicts, changes in direction, and insight into the reasoning and challenges behind specific mechanics and development decisions. There's the story of how Thief was developed, in part, by an indie band. It covers Metal Gear Solid's localisation issues and the Americanisation of Hideo Kojima's seminal stealth series, along with a page from the original Metal Gear Solid design document. Elsewhere, one of IO Interactive's founders explains why Hitman's Agent 47 is inspired by Coca-Cola, the creator of Assassin's Creed tells us his vision for the future of the series, and there are plenty of surprises besides. Rather than looking back at the genre as a whole, it traces a line through and connects the dots via personal stories and anecdotes from the people who were there. Foreword written by Arkane's Harvey Smith.

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A FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE MONTH (APRIL 2017) Humans have become subservient to algorithms. Every day brings a new Moneyball fix - a maths whiz who will crack open an industry with clean fact-based analysis rather than human intuition and experience. As a result, we have stopped thinking. Machines do it for us. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings. Too many companies have lost touch with the humanity of their customers, while marginalising workers with arts-based skills. Contrary to popular thinking, Madsbjerg shows how many of today's biggest success stories stem not from 'quant' thinking but from deep, nuanced engagement with culture, language, and history. He calls his method sensemaking. In this landmark book, Madsbjerg lays out five principles for how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals can use it to solve their thorniest problems. He profiles companies using sensemaking to connect with new customers, and takes readers inside the work process of sensemaking 'connoisseurs' like investor George Soros, architect Bjarke Ingels, and others. Both practical and philosophical, Sensemaking is a powerful rejoinder to corporate groupthink and an indispensable resource for leaders and innovators who want to stand out from the pack.

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To understand the ethics of immigration, we need to start from the way it is enacted and understood by everyday actors: through practices of hospitality and hostility. Drawing on feminist and poststructuralist understandings of ethics and hospitality, this book offers a new approach to immigration ethics by exploring state and societal responses to immigration from the Global North and South. Rather than treating ethics as a determinable code for how we ought to behave toward strangers, it explores hospitality as a relational ethics—an ethics without moralism—that aims to understand and possibly transform the way people already do embrace and deflect obligations and responsibilities to each other. Building from specific examples in Colombia, Turkey, and Tanzania, as well as the EU, US and UK, hospitality is developed as a structural and emotional practice of drawing and redrawing boundaries of inside and outside; belonging and non-belonging. It thereby actively creates a society as a communal space with a particular ethos: from a welcoming home to a racialised hostile environment. Hospitality is therefore treated as a critical mode of reflecting on how we create a 'we' and relate to others through entangled histories of colonialism, displacement, friendship, and exploitation. Only through such a reflective understanding can we seek to transform immigration practices to better reflect the real and aspirational ethos of a society. Instead of simple answers—removing borders or creating global migration regimes—the book argues for grounded negotiations that build from existing local capacities to respond to immigration.

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Hadimba is a primary village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, a rural area known as the Land of Gods. As the book shows, Hadimba is a goddess whose vitality reveals itself in her devotees' rapidly changing encounters with local and far from local players, powers, and ideas. These include invading royal forces, colonial forms of knowledge, and more recently the onslaught of modernity, capitalism, tourism, and ecological change. Hadimba has provided her worshipers with discursive, ritual, and ideological arenas within which they reflect on, debate, give meaning to, and sometimes resist these changing realities, and she herself has been transformed in the process. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and textual materials gathered in the region from 2009 to 2017, The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess is rich with myths and tales, accounts of dramatic rituals and festivals, and descriptions of everyday life in the celebrated but remote Kullu Valley. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to tell the story of Hadimba from the ground up, or rather, from the center out, portraying the goddess in varying contexts that radiate outward from her temple to local, regional, national, and indeed global spheres. The result is an important contribution to the study of Indian village goddesses, lived Hinduism, Himalayan Hinduism, and the rapidly growing field of religion and ecology.

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A growing body of knowledge has revealed the profound impact of the social determinants of health—the social, political, and economic factors apart from health care that influence health. The question is no longer if social factors are important influences on health, but rather how social factors operate and how to address them most effectively, efficiently, and equitably. Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities is a comprehensive resource for students and educators to understand the wide-ranging effects of social and political factors, including racism, on individual health. Drawing on Paula Braveman's seminal work in health equity, this volume explains how upstream drivers like law and policy are at the beginning of causal chains influencing health, and in particular how systemic issues like racism are core drivers of health outcomes. Each chapter examines how different social determinants of health—such as income, education, stress, work, and racism—are impacted by upstream social factors and how those factors influence health and health disparities through complex pathways. Chapters also include approaches for future practitioners and policymakers to most effectively activate health-promoting pathways while interrupting health-damaging ones. Complete with chapter summaries and discussion questions, Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities is the definitive classroom guide to understanding and addressing social disparities in health, particularly racial and socioeconomic disparities.

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A quick trip to the capital goes horribly wrong when Blotto and Twinks get accidentally involved in London's criminal underworld . . .It starts innocently enough at the intimate review 'absolutely everyone is talking about', Light and Frothy, where its glamorous star, Frou Frou Gavotte, has rather taken the fancy of Blotto's school friend Giles 'Whiffler' Trumpington. But while Blotto and Whiffler wait for the star outside the theatre to take her to dinner, Whiffler is seized and manhandled into the back of a cab which then drives off into the night . . . Leaving Blotto with the problem of how to rescue his kidnapped schoolmate.Naturally, he enlists Twinks's help and the two of them encounter actors, singers, impresarios, revue writers, cockney showgirls and Scotland Yard's finest - and white slave traders, who succeed in abducting Twinks - leaving it up to Blotto and his trusty chauffeur, Corky Froggett, to rescue her before she's shipped off to foreign parts forever . . .Praise for Simon Brett'A new Simon Brett is an event for mystery fans' P. D. James'Murder most enjoyable' Colin Dexter'One of British crime's most assured craftsmen . . . Crime writing just like in the good old days, and perfect entertainment' Guardian'Few crime writers are so enchantingly gifted' Sunday Times'Simon Brett writes stunning detective stories. I would recommend them to anyone' Jilly Cooper

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This open access book explores unusual perceptual, or perception-like, experiences. These are often meaningful to those who have them and may be sympathetically or unsympathetically interpreted by others. One interpretation, especially when voices are associated with unusual behaviour, is that they are evidence of mental disorder. Ostensibly such interpretations are sympathetic (showing concern for someone who is ill) but in practice they are used to deny the meaning and value of the experiences for those concerned, thus depriving them (and others) of creative and innovative ways of understanding the human condition. The question is thus one of the meaning. Are such experiences meaningful only as indicators of a diagnosis, or are they meaningful in other ways, shedding light on human self-understanding and perhaps even a wider spiritual reality? Psychiatry has tended to see such phenomena as diagnostically meaningful but not as sources of deeper insight into the human condition. This book takes three 14th century examples of women who heard spiritually significant voices: Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, and Joan of Arc. Each of these women, in different ways, has left an enduring legacy in literature and history. Modern psychiatric commentary on the voices that they reported has generally focussed on diagnosis rather than on wider questions of meaning. These commentaries will be used as a lens through which to consider how contemporary psychiatric practice might be enriched by the humanities and enabled to find a more spiritually empathetic, if not also sympathetic, enriching and meaning enhancing perspective on unusual mental phenomena. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

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Bestselling Amish novelist Linda Byler spins a sweet tale of heartache, disappointment, and ultimately hopes fulfilled at Christmastime. Liz had been in love once, had even been engaged. In fact, the wedding had been planned, the barn cleaned, and the celery was set to be harvested to make the traditional wedding soup. Just two weeks before the day she was to exchange vows with her beloved, he changed his mind, and that was that. The humiliation was almost as bad as the heartbreak. The whole community had celebrated her engagement, had participated in the wedding planning, had started giving her advice on keeping a home and raising children. When the wedding was canceled, no one knew what to say. She had to bear the pitying looks and awkward glances for many months. She vowed never to be such a fool again, never to trust her heart to a man who could just up and leave her with hardly an explanation. She'd rather be an old maid than go through that again. Years pass, and Liz has made peace with her life as a single woman, a "leftover blessing" as the Amish say. She can admit to herself that Matthew, the owner of the Amish restaurant at the market where she works, is handsome. And she is aware that he is single. But she reminds herself over and over that it's not worth feeling anything for the man. He's her boss and that's it. So why does she look forward to work so much every day? And why can't she make her heart beat at a normal pace when he comes near? Linda Byler is beloved for her skillful story telling and true-to-life descriptions of Amish food, faith, and culture. As an Amish woman herself, she can share details of Amish life that few can replicate. In this charming novel, Byler shares intimate details of day-to-day life in an Amish community while spinning a sweet tale of love and hopes fulfilled at Christmastime.

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Escape the frenetic modern world and embark on a journey of a lifetime. Ever dreamed of walking the Camino de Santiago, driving Route 66 or riding the Trans-Siberian Railway? It may sound clichéd, but sometimes it really is all about the journey, rather than the destination and what better way to see the world than by moving through it.If setting out on an adventure is on your bucket list, but you don't know where to start, Unforgettable Journeys will have you lacing up your hiking boots, hitting the road or taking to the high seas. Encompassing everywhere from Antarctica to Zambia, over 200 hikes, drives, cycling trails, train routes and boat trips are brought to life with inspiring narrative, sumptuous photography and illustrative maps. We even suggest alternative routes, so it’s easy to plan your next trip. Make your next trip magical as you explore: - Over 200 journeys illustrated with inspiring photography and maps- Experiential text to transport the reader there; descriptive, narrative and full of story - Practical information (duration, difficulty, start and end point, options to take an organized tour – if available – or go it alone).- Sustainable and slow travel options have been covered where possible- Feature boxes give the routes context- Alternative ways to make the same journey and similar trips are pulled out Organized by type of trip – cruises, road trips, train rides, and journeys by two feet and two wheels, each chapter follows the same geographical order with chapter maps showing every country covered. Each section covers a different way to travel the world and is broken down by continent. Whether you want to explore the Atlas Mountains or Torres del Paine on foot; drive the Pan American Highway or cross the Australian Outback; cycle from the top to the bottom of Africa or enjoy a leisurely ride across The Netherlands’ bulb fields; go interrailing around Europe or board the Orient Express; island hop in Greece or the Philippines: these journeys will stay with you forever!

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A compelling biography of Mark Weiser, a pioneering innovator whose legacy looms over the tech industry’s quest to connect everything—and who hoped for something better. When developers and critics trace the roots of today’s Internet of Things—our smart gadgets and smart cities—they may single out the same creative source: Mark Weiser (1952–99), the first chief technology officer at Xerox PARC and the so-called “father of ubiquitous computing.” But Weiser, who died young at age 46 in 1999, would be heartbroken if he had lived to see the ways we use technology today. As John Tinnell shows in this thought-provoking narrative, Weiser was an outlier in Silicon Valley. A computer scientist whose first love was philosophy, he relished debates about the machine’s ultimate purpose. Good technology, Weiser argued, should not mine our experiences for saleable data or demand our attention; rather, it should quietly boost our intuition as we move through the world. Informed by deep archival research and interviews with Weiser’s family and colleagues, The Philosopher of Palo Alto chronicles Weiser’s struggle to initiate a new era of computing. Working in the shadows of the dot-com boom, Weiser and his collaborators made Xerox PARC headquarters the site of a grand experiment. Throughout the building, they embedded software into all sorts of objects—coffeepots, pens, energy systems, ID badges—imbuing them with interactive features. Their push to integrate the digital and the physical soon caught on. Microsoft’s Bill Gates flagged Weiser’s Scientific American article “The Computer for the 21st Century” as a must-read. Yet, as more tech leaders warmed to his vision, Weiser grew alarmed about where they wished to take it. In this fascinating story of an innovator and a big idea, Tinnell crafts a poignant and critical history of today’s Internet of Things. At the heart of the narrative is Weiser’s desire for deeper connection, which animated his life and inspired his notion of what technology at its best could be.

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Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) teams in the US and around the world receive performance reports that locate their particular value for selected process and outcome measures within the range of values from all reporting NICUs. Understandably, many providers focus primarily, if not exclusively, on their particular value. When a value appears undesirable, providers often justify it in an apparent reflex response rather than critically analysing their data. Exceedingly few reflect on the width or implications of the range within which their performance lies. Standard medical education does not include these skills, yet unwarranted practice variation necessarily compromises a population’s overall quality of care. Researchers report wide variation in health care resource use with little connection to patient outcomes, challenging the belief that directing incrementally more resources at certain healthcare problems necessarily produces better results. This book provides requisite knowledge to enable readers without research expertise to understand the notion of unwarranted practice variation, how to recognize it, its ubiquity, and why it is generally undesirable – why narrowing is pervasiveness improves quality. The book begins by describing practice variation, its prevalence, and why it matters. Next, it examines alternative conceptualizations of NICU work. One view is task-oriented, while the other is aim-oriented. NICU teams rarely articulate their aims explicitly, so this book offers examples that guide thinking and action. Finally, this book asks, “Which rate is 'right'; what is the performance target?” The answer entails identifying the lowest resource use rate associated with desirable outcomes. This requires data describing efficient and predictably performing provision of current evidence-based care, along with relationships to a variety of outcomes. Provider conceptualization of healthcare quality also is often vague. The challenge lies in defining this notion operationally. This book does precisely that and gives readers tools to think critically about process, outcome, and quality measures, via some understanding of systems, risk-adjustment modelling, and discriminating signal from noise in process data.

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A different look at heterosexuality in the twenty-first century A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there’s fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other’s penises and stick fingers up their fellow members’ anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can—and do—have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward’s analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality—not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

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HONORABLE MENTION, HARRY SHAW AND KATRINA HAZZARD-DONALD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING WORK IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES, GIVEN BY THE POP CULTURE ASSOCIATION A view of transatlantic slavery’s afterlife and modern Blackness through the lens of age Although more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time and time again, excuses for police brutality and aggression—particularly against Black children— concern the victim “appearing” as a threat. But why and how is the perceived “appearance” of Black persons so completely separated from common perceptions of age and time? Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life posits age, life stages, and lifespans as a central lens through which to view Blackness, particularly with regard to the history of transatlantic slavery. Focusing on Black literary culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Habiba Ibrahim examines how the history of transatlantic slavery and the constitution of modern Blackness has been reimagined through the embodiment of age. She argues that Black age—through nearly four centuries of subjugation— has become contingent, malleable, and suited for the needs of enslavement. As a result, rather than the number of years lived or a developmental life stage, Black age came to signify exchange value, historical under-development, timelessness, and other fantasies borne out of Black exclusion from the human. Ibrahim asks: What constitutes a normative timeline of maturation for Black girls when “all the women”—all the canonically feminized adults—“are white”? How does a “slave” become a “man” when adulthood is foreclosed to Black subjects of any gender? Black Age tracks the struggle between the abuses of Black exclusion from Western humanism and the reclamation of non-normative Black life, arguing that, if some of us are brave, it is because we dare to live lives considered incomprehensible within a schema of “human time.”

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An all-encompassing, chronological guide to football's World Cup, one of the world's few truly international events, in good time for the June 2014 kick-off in Rio de Janeiro. From its beginnings in 1930 to the modern all-singing, all-dancing self-styled ‘greatest show on Earth’, every tournament is covered with features on major stars and great games, as well as stories about some less celebrated names and quirky stats and intriguing essays. Holt's focus is very much on what takes place on the field, rather than how football is a mirror for economic corruption, or how a nation's style of play represents a profound statement about its people, or how a passion for football can lift underpaid, socially marginalised people out of poverty. From the best World Cups, in 1958 and 1970, to the worst, in 1962 and 2010, he looks behind the facts and the technical observations to the stories: the mysterious sins of omission; critical injuries to key players; and coaching U-turns. He explains how England's World Cup achievements under Sven-Göran Eriksson, far from being a national disgrace, were actually quite impressive, and looks at why Alf Ramsey didn't take Bobby Charlton off in 1970, but this is no parochial, jingoistic account. The book also asks why Brazil did not contribute in 1966, despite having won the previous two tournaments and going on to win the next one? Why the greatest players of their day did not always shine at the World Cup – George Best and Alfredo Di Stefano, for example, never even made it to the Finals. Why did Johann Cruyff not go to the 1978 World Cup? And why did one of Germany's greatest players never play in the World Cup?There are lots of tables, some filled with obvious, but necessary information, but others with more quirky observations. Alongside accounts of epic games, there are also brief biographies of all the great heroes of the World Cup.

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Homelessness became a conspicuous facet of Russian cityscapes only in the 1990s, when the Soviet criminalization of vagrancy and similar offenses was abolished. In spite of the host of social and economic problems confronting Russia in the demise of Soviet power, the social dislocation endured by increasing numbers of people went largely unrecognized by the state. Being homeless carries a special burden in Russia, where a permanent address is the precondition for all civil rights and social benefits and where homelessness is often regarded as a result of laziness and drinking, rather than external factors. In Needed by Nobody, the anthropologist Tova Höjdestrand offers a nuanced portrait of homelessness in St. Petersburg. Based on ethnographic work at railway stations, soup kitchens, and other places where the homeless gather, Höjdestrand describes the material and mental world of this marginalized population. They are, she observes, "not needed" in two senses. The state considers them, in effect, as noncitizens. At the same time they stand outside the traditionally intimate social networks that are the real safety net of life in postsocialist Russia. As a result, they are deprived of the prerequisites for dealing with others in ways that they themselves value as "decent" and "human." Höjdestrand investigates processes of social exclusion as well as the remaining "world of waste": things, tasks, and places that are wanted by nobody else and on which "human leftovers" are forced to survive. In this bleak context, Höjdestrand takes up the intimate worlds of the homeless—their social relationships, dirt and cleanliness, and physical appearance. Her interviews with homeless people show that the indigent have a very good idea of what others think of them and that they are liable to reproduce the stigma that is attached to them even as they attempt to negotiate it. This unique and often moving portrait of life on the margins of society in the new Russia ultimately reveals how human dignity may be retained in the absence of its very preconditions.

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The end of the nineteenth century in France was marked by political scandals, social unrest, dissension, and “decadence.” Yet the fin de siècle was also an era of great social and scientific progress, a time when advantages previously reserved for the privileged began to be shared by the many. Public transportation, electrical illumination, standard time, and an improved water supply radically altered the life of the modest folk, who found time for travel and leisure activities—including sports such as cycling. Change became the nature of things, and people believed that further improvement was not only possible but inevitable.In this thoroughly engaging history, Eugen Weber describes ways of life, not as recorded by general history, but as contemporaries experienced them. He writes about political atmosphere and public prejudices rather than standard political history. Water and washing, bicycles and public transportation engage him more than great scientific discoveries. He discusses academic painting and poster art, the popular stage and music halls, at greater length than avant-garde and classic theater or opera. In this book the importance of telephones, plumbing, and central heating outranks such traditional subjects as international developments, the rise of organized labor, and the spread of socialism.Weber does not neglect the darker side of the fin de siècle. The discrepancy between material advance and spiritual dejection, characteristic of our own times, interests him as much as the idea of progress, and he reminds us that for most people the period was far from elegant. In the lurid context of military defeat, political instability, public scandal, and clamorous social criticism, one had also to contend with civic dirt, unsanitary food, mob violence, and the seeds of modern-day scourges: pollution, drugs, sensationalism, debased art, the erosion of moral character. Yet millions of fin de siècle French lived as only thousands had lived fifty years before; while their advance was slow, their right to improvement was conceded.

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We're all familiar with the image of a fierce and scowling Beethoven, struggling doggedly to overcome his rapidly progressing deafness. That Beethoven continued to play and compose for more than a decade after he lost his hearing is often seen as an act of superhuman heroism. But the truth is that Beethoven's response to his deafness was entirely human. And by demystifying what he did, we can learn a great deal about Beethoven's music. Perhaps no one is better positioned to help us do so than Robin Wallace, who not only has dedicated his life to the music of Beethoven but also has close personal experience with deafness. One day, at the age of forty-four, Wallace's late wife, Barbara, found she couldn't hear out of her right ear-the result of radiation administered to treat a brain tumor early in life. Three years later, she lost hearing in her left ear as well. Over the eight and a half years that remained of her life, despite receiving a cochlear implant, Barbara didn't overcome her deafness or ever function again like a hearing person. Wallace shows here that Beethoven didn't do those things, either. Rather than heroically overcoming his deafness, as we're commonly led to believe, Beethoven accomplished something even more difficult and challenging: he adapted to his hearing loss and changed the way he interacted with music, revealing important aspects of its very nature in the process. Creating music became for Beethoven became a visual and physical process, emanating from visual cues and from instruments that moved and vibrated. His deafness may have slowed him down, but it also led to works of unsurpassed profundity. Wallace tells the story of Beethoven's creative life from the inside out, interweaving it with his and Barbara's experience to reveal aspects that only living with deafness could open up. The resulting insights make Beethoven and his music more accessible, and help us see how a disability can enhance human wholeness and flourishing.

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Fans of Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han will feel right at home in this heartfelt coming-of-age story about a homesick girl who gives up her summer plans to help her distant family—only to find everything she was looking for, including love.Ocean breeze in her hair and sand between her toes, Anise can't wait to spend the summer before her senior year surfing and hanging out on the beach with friends. Santa Cruz is more than her home—it's her heart. But when her aunt, a single mother, is in a serious car accident, Anise must say goodbye to California to help care for her three young cousins.Landlocked Nebraska is the last place Anise wants to be. Sure, she loves her family, but living in her mother's childhood home—the same mother who disappeared out of her life when she was born—brings up memories and feelings she would rather forget. And with every photo and text, her friends back home feel further away.Then she meets Lincoln, a charismatic, one-armed skater who dares her to swap her surfboard for a skateboard. Anise isn't one to shy away from a challenge. Her days with Lincoln are the most fun she's had all summer and skating together makes her feel more alive and free than she ever has.Because sometimes the only way to find your footing is to let go.Perfect for readers who like:Teen romance booksTeen realistic fiction booksHeartfelt summer readsTell Me Three Things and Five Feet ApartPraise for Girl out of Water:A Junior Library Guild Selection!"Hand to fans of Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han."—Booklist"A novel that reads like a warm summer afternoon."—Paste Magazine"[A]n entertaining and well-done coming-of-age story."—RT Book Reviews"[W]orthy of a spot in any teen's beach bag."—School Library JournalAlso by Laura Silverman:You Asked for Perfect

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Inspiring and irreverent by turns, Brian Levison's new anthology has drawn on rugby's wealth of excellent writing. Frank Keating, P. G. Wodehouse, Alec Waugh, A. A. Thomson, John Reason and Mick Imlah are among the distinguished names who have written movingly, amusingly and entertainingly about the game they loved. Great players such as Brian O'Driscoll, Willie John McBride, J. P. R. Williams, Chester Williams, Colin Meads, Gavin Hastings and Brian Moore give us a fascinating insider's view, as does World Cup Final referee Derek Bevan, who reveals what it is like to try to control thirty powerful and often volatile men in a highly competitive situation. But some of the best writing and the wittiest insights come from those who played their rugby at a much less exalted level. The origins of the game - sometimes true, sometimes fanciful - are explored as are some of its rituals like the haka. There are amusing tales including that of the four Tibetan boys sent by the Dalai Lama to learn the game at Rugby School and an account of New Zealand scrum-half Chris Laidlaw's hostile reception at a village fete in Wales. Along with barely believable stories about the game's hardest men, including the French coach Jean 'le Sultan' Sebedio, who used to conduct training sessions wearing a sombrero and wielding a long whip, and 'Red' Conway who had his finger amputated rather than miss a game for South Africa. One section 'Double Vision' looks at the same incident from opposing viewpoints, such as when the then relatively inexperienced Irish immortal Willie John McBride took a swing at the mighty All Black Colin Meads in a line-out. Another, 'Giving it Everything', shows how exceptional courage was not restricted to the rugby field but extended to the battle grounds of the First World War. From the compiler of highly acclaimed All in a Day's Cricket, this selection covers the game from virtually every angle and is sure to delight any rugby fan.

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Worldwide, depression will be the single biggest cause of disability in the next 20 years. But treatment for it has not changed much in the last three decades. In the world of psychiatry, time has apparently stood still... until now. In this game-changing book, University of Cambridge Professor Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression.The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, representing a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into the story of Western medicine, how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future.'Suddenly an expert who wants to stop and question everything we thought we knew... This is a lesson in the workings of the brain far too important to ignore.' - Jeremy Vine, BBC 'Professor Bullmore explores how the current division between Psychiatry and the rest of medicine has developed and how we might change that. He puts forward a fascinating theory that attributes depression to inflammation rather than serotonin imbalance as has traditionally been thought. Whatever the truth, this book is a stimulating and interesting read.' - Wendy Burn, President Royal College of Psychiatrists'A great read, this thought provoking book presents inflammation as the major driver of depression. A real page turner that raises important questions for us all, including, how we should practise medicine going forwards and can we restart Research and Development using this paradigm? Highly recommended. - Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England

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FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDCHOSEN BY BARACK OBAMA AS ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCEA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'An informed, moving and kaleidoscopic portrait... Treuer's powerful book suggests the need for soul-searching about the meanings of American history and the stories we tell ourselves about this nation's past' New York Times Book Review, front pageThe received idea of Native American history has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U.S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear - and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence- the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

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A freezing cold winter. A dead body from the past. A tale of love - and murder. A human leg is discovered in a suburban freezer. The victim is a teenage girl killed some ten years earlier. But then other body parts start appearing. And these ones are male, dark-skinned, and very fresh...Is this a tangled tale of love gone wrong? Or are there more sinister lines connecting the dead bodies to a recent tragedy in a Cardiff prison, and an engineering company that's up to a whole lot more than is first apparent?Fiona Griffiths starts to investigate, in the midst of the coldest winter on record. Up in a remote cottage in the Welsh Black Mountains, she finds the data that contains the clue to the entire mystery. But, as the first snow starts to fall, she discovers that she's not alone...Praise for the Fiona Griffiths mystery series: 'Compelling...a new crime talent to treasure' Daily Mail 'A dark delight, and I look forward to Fiona's future struggles with criminals, her demons and the mysteries of her past' Washington Post 'With Detective Constable Fiona 'Fi' Griffiths, Harry Bingham...finds a sweet spot in crime fiction...think Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander...[or] Lee Child's Jack Reacher... The writing is terrific' The Boston Globe 'A police procedural with a twist. Quirky, gripping, and rather like its lead character, utterly unconventional. That's what makes it such a delight to read. Highly recommended' Crime Thriller Girl'A cracking read that is both fresh and compelling' Red HandedFans of Angela Marsons, Peter James and Ann Cleeves will be gripped by the other titles in the Fiona Griffiths mystery series: 1. Talking to the Dead2. Love Story, With Murders3. The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths4. This Thing of Darkness5. The Dead House 6. The Deepest Grave (coming soon!)If you're looking for a crime thriller series to keep you hooked, then go no further: you've just found it.** Each Fiona Griffiths thriller can be read as a standalone or in series order **

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Take to the rails and have a European adventure with this inspiring and practical guidebook.Thanks to Europe's ever-expanding and improving rail network, there's never been a better time to explore this diverse continent by train. But with so much ground to cover, it can be difficult to know where to start - and that's where Europe by Train comes in. Compiled by a team of travel experts, our 50 hand-picked itineraries will kickstart your plans, showing you how to join the dots between Europe's must-see destinations and introducing you to plenty of lesser-visited stops along the way. Featuring a mix of short trips and epic adventures, cross-continent and region-specific itineraries, this book provides endless inspiration, whether you're looking to hop between Europe's capitals, explore Scandinavia or experience the best of Italy.Packed inside Europe by Train you will find:- 50 inspiring and practical itineraries for exploring Europe by train.- Routes cover a variety of distances, from four-day trips to month-long adventures. - Each route covers either an epic cross-continent journey (eg from the North to the South, East to West) or a particular area, region or country (eg Beneluxe, Northern Italy, Finland), with the text describing the places you stop at rather than the journey between them.- Practical information details how to get between each stop, total distance travelled, trip duration and ticketing tips.- Some routes feature suggested detours and opportunities to extend your trip.Once your head is well and truly packed with rail trip ideas, you'll be ready to start planning out the details. This handy guidebook has all the route infographics, network maps and practical information - including advice on what tickets to buy, how to catch connections and tips for travelling on night trains - you need to get started. We've also included detours and opportunities to extend the route, so you can curate your own rail adventure.

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Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013 Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer. That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.

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Next, dive into TOM LAKE – the breath-taking newest novel from Ann Patchett Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times bestseller ‘Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature’ Guardian Nominated for the Women’s Prize 2020 A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN’T LET GO. Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside. In the economic boom following the Second World War, Cyril Conroy's real estate investments take his family from poverty to enormous wealth. With it he buys the Dutch House, a lavish mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Danny Conroy grows up in the opulence of the Dutch House. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house’s former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings. Then one day their father brings home Andrea, a new stepmother. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives: exiled from the house and tossed back into the poverty from which their family rose, Danny and Maeve have only each other to count on. ‘The best book I’ve read in years’ Rosamund Lupton ‘Her finest novel yet’ Sunday Times ‘The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something’ John Boyne ‘A masterpiece’ Cathy Rentzenbrink ‘Bliss’ Nigella Lawson

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Taking stock of emerging planet data and analysing policies during the global crisis, Earth Economics provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to basic macroeconomic concepts, methods and principles, and their application to real world data.Written principally for students seeking an introduction to macroeconomics, this book offers a completely new angle to policy, with a focus on the truly global level. Underpinned by empirical orientation of state-of-the-art data, it introduces earth economics as the study of the economy of our planet from the perspective of an autarkic system (a 'closed economy'), focussing on policymaking that improves global rather than national welfare.Key features include:- A discourse on issues fundamental to the understanding of macroeconomics.- An introduction to economists' tools and concepts. Non-economists will learn how to survive in a discussion with economists: where to ask questions, where to listen, where to skip and where to ignore.- Presentation of extensive and wide-ranging data in a consistent and comprehensive framework.- In-depth treatment of key concepts including: aggregates, autarky, closed economies, current accounts, earth economics, data, macroeconomics, microeconomics, development and global public goods.- Provision of a thorough, working understanding of the subject matter via exercises set throughout the book, including: questions on the text, calculations, formulating arguments and preparation, analysis and interpretation of data and figures.See the companion website - www dot eartheconomics dot info for updates and additional information.Contents: Preface 1. Introduction: It is the Only One We Have 2. Planet Accounts Part I: Short-term Fluctuations and Demand Management 3. Earth's Business Cycle 4. Why I = S and What That Means: The Building Blocks of Macroeconomic Analysis 5. Investment, the IS Curve, and Product Market Equilibrium 6. What About Government? 7. Money Matters! The LM Curve and Money Market Equilibrium 8. Eartheconomic Demand and Supply 9. Puzzling Disagreements Part II: Long Run 10. Long-Run Growth 11. Development and Change 12. Limits to Growth? Part III: Earth Governance and Global Public Goods 13. Global Public Goods 14. Global Peers: An Agenda References Index

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An easy-to-learn, easy-to-use tool for in-depth Bible studyBeloved and acclaimed for more than five generations, the Thompson® Chain-Reference® Bible is unparalleled in its ability to enrich personal devotions, topical study, and sermon preparation. This unique reference Bible enables you to search the breadth of Scripture's teachings on thousands of topics and allows you to follow those topics throughout the entire Bible. With over 100,000 references, covering over 8,000 topics, the chain-reference system is an ideal tool for comprehensive topical study. The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible also offers a library of additional study resources that allows readers to interpret the Bible using related scripture passages rather than consulting a commentary.Available for the first time in the beloved 1995 text of the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the Thompson Chain-Reference Bible is printed in Zondervan's Exclusive NASB Comfort Print® typeface for easy reading. Expertly designed specifically to be used for the New American Standard Bible text, Comfort Print offers an easier reading experience that complements the translation. This Bible also features a fresh, two-color design that preserves the original look of the chain-reference system, while making each page cleaner and easier to read. Features: Complete text of the New American Standard Bible (NASB), 1995 Text Easy-to-understand chain-reference system with over 100,000 references Alphabetical and numerical indexes highlight study materials for over 8,000 topics, each with its own topic number, for exhaustive topical study An extensive study resource section includes biographical sketches, illustrated studies of the Bible, a concordance, Bible harmonies, and many other helpful study tools Fresh, two-color page design 66 book introductions 16-page full-color map section with map index Line-matched text for enhanced readability Words of Jesus in red Two double-sided satin ribbon markers, each 3/8-inch wide Exclusive NASB Comfort Print typeface Print size: 9.5

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An easy-to-learn, easy-to-use tool for in-depth Bible studyBeloved and acclaimed for more than five generations, the Thompson® Chain-Reference® Bible is unparalleled in its ability to enrich personal devotions, topical study, and sermon preparation. This unique reference Bible enables you to search the breadth of Scripture's teachings on thousands of topics and allows you to follow those topics throughout the entire Bible. With over 100,000 references, covering over 8,000 topics, the chain-reference system is an ideal tool for comprehensive topical study. The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible also offers a library of additional study resources that allows readers to interpret the Bible using related scripture passages rather than consulting a commentary.The NKJV Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, Large Print is printed in the NKJV Comfort Print® typeface for easy reading. Expertly designed specifically to be used for the New King James Version (NKJV) text, Comfort Print offers an easier reading experience that complements the translation. This Bible also features a fresh, two-color design that preserves the original look of the chain-reference system, while making each page cleaner and easier to read.Features: Complete text of the King James Version (NKJV) Easy-to-understand chain-reference system with over 100,000 references Alphabetical and numerical indexes highlight study materials for over 8,000 topics, each with its own topic number, for exhaustive topical study An extensive study resource section includes biographical sketches, illustrated studies of the Bible, a concordance, Bible harmonies, and many other helpful study tools Fresh, two-color page design 66 book introductions 16-page full-color map section with map index Line-matched text for enhanced readability Words of Jesus in red Presentation page for gift-giving Gilded page edges Two double-sided satin ribbon markers, each 3/8-inch wide Leathersoft™ cover lies flat when open Exclusive NKJV Comfort Print typeface Print size: 10.5

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An easy-to-learn, easy-to-use tool for in-depth Bible studyBeloved and acclaimed for more than five generations, the Thompson® Chain-Reference® Bible is unparalleled in its ability to enrich personal devotions, topical study, and sermon preparation. This unique reference Bible enables you to search the breadth of Scripture’s teachings on thousands of topics and allows you to follow those topics throughout the entire Bible. With over 100,000 references, covering over 8,000 topics, the chain-reference system is an ideal tool for comprehensive topical study. The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible also offers a library of additional study resources that allows readers to interpret the Bible using related scripture passages rather than consulting a commentary.The KJV Thompson Chain-Reference Bible is printed in the KJV Comfort Print® typeface for easy reading. Expertly designed specifically to be used for the King James Version (KJV) text, Comfort Print offers an easier reading experience that complements the translation. This Bible also features a fresh, two-color design that preserves the original look of the chain-reference system, while making each page cleaner and easier to read. Features: Complete text of the King James Version (KJV) Easy-to-understand chain-reference system with over 100,000 references Alphabetical and numerical indexes highlight study materials for over 8,000 topics, each with its own topic number, for exhaustive topical study An extensive study resource section includes biographical sketches, illustrated studies of the Bible, a concordance, Bible harmonies, and many other helpful study tools Fresh, two-color page design 66 book introductions 16-page full-color map section with map index Line-matched text for enhanced readability Words of Jesus in red Presentation page for gift-giving Raised spine hubs Two double-sided satin ribbon markers, each 3/8-inch wide Genuine calfskin leather cover lies flat when open Exclusive KJV Comfort Print typeface Print size: 9.5

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Could an institution as sacred and traditional as marriage undergo a revolution? Some people living during the so-called Age of Enlightenment thought so. By marrying for that selfish, personal emotion of love rather than to serve religious or family interests, to serve political demands or the demands of the pocketbook, a few but growing number of people revolutionized matrimony around the end of the eighteenth century. Marriage went from being a sacred state, instituted by the Church and involving everyone to – for a few intrepid people – a secular contract, a deal struck between two individuals based entirely on their mutual love and affection. Few would claim today that love is not the cornerstone of modern marriage. The easiest argument in favor of any marriage today, no matter how star-crossed the individuals, is that the couple is deeply and hopelessly in love with one another. But that was not always so clear. Before the eighteenth century very few couples united simply because they shared a mutual attraction and affection for one another. Yet only a century later most people would come to believe that mutual love and even attraction were necessary for any marriage to succeed. A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Enlightenment explores the ways that new ideas, cultural ideals, and economic changes, big and small, reshaped matrimony into the institution that it is today, allowing love to become the ultimate essential ingredient for modern marriages. A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage.

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Based on a previously unexplored source, this book transforms the way we think about the formation of Jewish identity This book tells the story of the earliest Jewish diaspora in Egypt in a way it has never been told before. In the fifth century BCE there was a Jewish community on Elephantine Island. Why they spoke Aramaic, venerated Aramean gods besides Yaho, and identified as Arameans is a mystery, but a previously little explored papyrus from Egypt sheds new light on their history. The papyrus shows that the ancestors of the Elephantine Jews came originally from Samaria. Due to political circumstances, they left Israel and lived for a century in an Aramean environment. Around 600 BCE, they moved to Egypt. These migrants to Egypt did not claim a Jewish identity when they arrived, but after the destruction of their temple on the island they chose to deploy their Jewish identity to raise sympathy for their cause. Their story—a typical diaspora tale—is not about remaining Jews in the diaspora, but rather about becoming Jews through the diaspora.

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An accessible biography of one of the most influential figures of recent times based on new, original research.Che Guevara is something of a symbol in the West. But for the rest of the world he is different: a charismatic revolutionary who redrew the political map of Latin America and gave hope to those resisting colonialism everywhere. In The Story of Che Guevara Lucía Álvarez de Toledo follows Che from his birth in Rosario and his early years in his parent's maté plantation, to his immortal motorcycle journeys across South America, his role at the heart of Castro's new Cuban government, and through to the unforgiving jungle that formed the backdrop to his doomed campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia. Based on interviews with Che's family and those who knew him intimately, this is an accessible biography that concentrates on the man rather than the icon. With the political developments in Latin America in the twenty-first century, his influence can be seen to be even greater than it was during his lifetime and The Story of Che Guevara is a perfect introduction to an extraordinary man.

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