Search results for ""Author Rath"

The go-to guide for millennials who are confused about growing up—and need advice on how to do so in a mindful, happy way. If you feel like the moment you entered adulthood your entire life has become a negotiation rather than a choice, you're not alone. Millions of adults around the world feel like they're not living up to their potential. But, mindset coach and creative entrepreneur Katina Mountanos has a secret: it's possible to get off the work-gym-sleep hamster wheel—and never look back. In On Adulting: A Guide To Growing Up In A Mindful, Happy Way, Mountanos shares her exact formula for crafting an adult life that's full of choices. Through her wildly popular blog and community, she's helped thousands of millennials start telling the truth about what they actually want their life to look like. And now, she's helping readers everywhere escape the rat race, make bill-paying and laundry more fun, and live a life they're passionate about. You'll learn Mountanos's blueprint for being a mindful and happy grown-up, which includes: Why you're addicted to collecting praise and trophies from a scientific perspective - and how to put an end to it How to stop following "the rules" even when it feels impossible because you're chained to your paycheck How to figure out what your passion is in less than 24-hours using a little known creative exercise Learning a mindset shift that you can apply to boring adulthood tasks such as paying off your loans or meal prepping on Sunday evenings How to navigate the shift in relationships—friendships, familial, romantic—as you grow, through advice from experts Developing a clear personal mission statement that guides who you want to be when you grow up, not only what. On Adulting is packed with tactical tips, real-life stories, and expert advice in order to live a mindful, happy, and conscious life.

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As the only daughter of Roman Triumvir Marc Antony and Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII, Cleopatra Selene was expected to uphold traditional feminine virtues; to marry well and bear sons; and to legitimize and strengthen her parents’ rule. Yet with their parents’ deaths by suicide, the princess and her brothers found themselves the inheritors of Egypt, a claim that placed them squarely in the warpath of the Roman emperor. “Supported by a feast of visual and literary references” (Caroline Lawrence), Cleopatra’s Daughter reimagines the life of Cleopatra Selene, a woman who, although born into Egyptian royalty and raised in her mother’s court, was cruelly abandoned and held captive by Augustus Caesar. Creating a narrative from frescos and coinage, ivory dolls and bronzes, historian and archaeologist Jane Draycott shows how Cleopatra Selene navigated years of imprisonment on Palatine Hill—where Octavia, the emperor’s sister and Antony’s fourth wife, housed royal children orphaned in the wake of Roman expansion—and emerged a queen. Despite the disrepute of her family, Cleopatra Selene in time endeared herself to her captors through her remarkable intellect and political acumen. Rather than put her to death, Augustus wed her to the Numidian prince Juba, son of the deposed regent Juba I, and installed them both as client rulers of Mauretania in Africa. There, Cleopatra Selene ruled successfully for nearly twenty years, promoting trade, fostering the arts, and reclaiming her mother’s legacy—all at a time, Draycott reminds us, when kingship was an inherently male activity. A princess who became a prisoner and a prisoner who became a queen, Cleopatra Selene here “finally attains her rightful place in history” (Barry Strauss). A much-needed corrective, Cleopatra’s Daughter sheds new and revelatory light on Egyptian and Roman politics, society, and culture in the early days of the Roman Empire.

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Mardi Gras festivities don't end after the parades roll through the streets; rather, a large part of the celebration continues unseen by the general public. Retreating to theaters, convention centers, and banquet halls, krewes spend the post-parade evening at lavish balls, where members cultivate a sense of fraternity and reinforce the organization's shared values through pageantry and dance. In New Orleans Carnival Balls, Jennifer Atkins draws back the curtain on the origin of these exclusive soirees, bringing to light unique traditions unseen by outsiders.The oldest Carnival organizations- the Mistick Krewe of Comus, Twelfth Night Revelers, Krewe of Proteus, Knights of Momus, and Rex- emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. These old-line krewes ruled Mardi Gras from the Civil War until World War I, and the traditions of their private balls reflected a need for group solidarity amidst a world in flux. For these organizations, Carnival balls became magical realms where krewesmen reinforced their elite identity through sculpted tableaux vivants performances, mock coronations, and romantic ballroom dancing. This world was full of possibilities: krewesmen became gods, kings, and knights, while their daughters became queens and maids. As the old-line krewes cultivated a sense of brotherhood, they used costume and movement to reaffirm their group identity, and the crux of these performances relied on a specific mode of expression- dancing.Using the concept of dance as a lens for examining Carnival balls, Atkins delves deeper into the historical context and distinctive rituals of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Beyond presenting readers with a new means of thinking about Carnival traditions, Atkins's work situates dance as a vital piece of historical inquiry and a mode of study that sheds new light on the hidden practices of some of the best-known krewes in the Big Easy.

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Michelle Goldberg, a senior political reporter for Salon.com, has been covering the intersection of politics and ideology for years. Before the 2004 election, and during the ensuing months when many Americans were trying to understand how an administration marked by cronyism, disregard for the national budget, and poorly disguised self-interest had been reinstated, Goldberg traveled through the heartland of a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism: the America of our time. From the classroom to the mega-church to the federal court, she saw how the growing influence of dominionism-the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers-is threatening the foundations of democracy. In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military retirees pledging to seize the nation in Christ's name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country's social problems. With her trenchant interviews and the telling testimonies of the people behind this movement, Goldberg gains access into the hearts and minds of citizens who are striving to remake the secular Republic bequeathed by our founders into a Christian nation run according to their interpretation of scripture. In her examination of the ever-widening divide between believers and nonbelievers, Goldberg illustrates the subversive effect of this conservative stranglehold nationwide. In an age when faith rather than reason is heralded and the values of the Enlightenment are threatened by a mystical nationalism claiming divine sanction, Kingdom Coming brings us face to face with the irrational forces that are remaking much of America.

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Following the success of the bestselling Clean Gut and Wheat Belly comes this essential guide to improving digestive health from an expert in functional medicine—who reveals why everything that ails us, from fatigue to weight gain to bloating and bad skin, can be traced back to the gut, and shares his cleansing plan to help us reclaim our health.Dr. Vincent Pedre understands gut problems firsthand. He suffered from IBS for years before becoming an expert in functional medicine and learning how to heal his body from the inside. Dr. Pedre used his own experience to develop The Gut C.A.R.E. Program—an approach that draws from both Western and Eastern methodologies, combining integrative and functional medicine—that has a proven success record in his private practice in New York. Now, for the first time, Dr. Pedre makes his revolutionary plan for health and wellness available to everyone.Happy Gut takes readers step-by-step through Gut C.A.R.E.—Cleanse, Activate, Restore, and Enhance—which eliminates food triggers, clears the gut of unfriendly pathogens, and replaces them with healthy probiotics and nutrients that repair and heal the gut. Rather than masking symptoms with medication, he shows us how to address the problem at its core to restore the gastrointestinal system to its proper functioning state. By fixing problems in the gut, followers of Dr. Pedre’s program have found that their other health woes are also cured and have lost weight, gained energy, and improved seemingly unrelated issues, such as seasonal allergies, in addition to eliminating their chronic muscle and abdominal pain.Complete with recipes and meal plans including gluten-free, low-fat, and vegetarian options, a 28-day gut cleanse, yoga postures to help digestion, and testimonials from many of his patients, Happy Gut will help you feel better and eliminate gut issues for life.

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With the advent of HTML5, front-end MVC, and Node.js, JavaScript is ubiquitous--and still messy. This book will give you a solid foundation for managing async tasks without losing your sanity in a tangle of callbacks. It's a fast-paced guide to the most essential techniques for dealing with async behavior, including PubSub, evented models, and Promises. With these tricks up your sleeve, you'll be better prepared to manage the complexity of large web apps and deliver responsive code. With Async JavaScript, you'll develop a deeper understanding of the JavaScript language. You'll start with a ground-up primer on the JavaScript event model--key to avoiding many of the most common mistakes JavaScripters make. From there you'll see tools and design patterns for turning that conceptual understanding into practical code. The concepts in the book are illustrated with runnable examples drawn from both the browser and the Node.js server framework, incorporating complementary libraries including jQuery, Backbone.js, and Async.js. You'll learn how to create dynamic web pages and highly concurrent servers by mastering the art of distributing events to where they need to be handled, rather than nesting callbacks within callbacks within callbacks. Async JavaScript will get you up and running with real web development quickly. By the time you've finished the Promises chapter, you'll be parallelizing Ajax requests or running animations in sequence. By the end of the book, you'll even know how to leverage Web Workers and AMD for JavaScript applications with cutting-edge performance. Most importantly, you'll have the knowledge you need to write async code with confidence. What You Need: Basic knowledge of JavaScript is recommended. If you feel that you're not up to speed, see the "Resources for Learning JavaScript" section in the preface.

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Collisions are expensive! Learning, understanding and remembering the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) is essential for anyone venturing onto the water. Leisure boaters, as much as professional mariners, need to know the rules, and a firm understanding is required to pass many nautical exams. But with the COLREGs stretching to over 12,000 words, this is no small task. This is where Paul Boissier’s excellent book comes in. Paul knows the COLREGs backwards having used them extensively in his career with the Royal Navy – from the bridges of submarines and warships which he has commanded, with each giving a rather different perspective on other shipping! He also knows the other side well with his extensive cruising experience, from his early years with his father to now, sailing his own yacht. These experiences mean that he knows and understands the COLREGs from both sides and this gives him the ability to take you through the COLREGs from a mariners’ and sailors’ perspective. He brings the vital, but dry, document to life, going through it not in order, but by topics which are relevant to the mariner and sailor. Paul explains the intention of each rule and how it should be applied when at sea. He includes personal anecdotes (not all favourable to him!) which make everything real and tells us how he remembers different aspects of the Regulations through mnemonics and other devices. Finally, each chapter ends with a self-test to reinforce what has been learnt – other tests are also available online on the Fernhurst Books’ website. This new edition has been updated with the 2016 changes to the CLOREGS. Whether you want to increase your confidence, pass an exam, require an on-board reference, or wish to improve your understanding of the nautical rules of the road, this is the ideal book for you.

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The Scottish Highlands form the highest mountains in the British Isles, a broad arc of rocky peaks and deep glens stretching from the outskirts of Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen to the remote and storm-lashed Cape Wrath in Scotland's far northwest. The Romans never conquered the region - according to the historian Tacitus, the Highland warrior chieftain Calgacus dubbed his people 'the last of the free' - and in the Dark Ages the island of Iona became home to a Celtic Church that was able to pose a serious challenge to the Church of Rome. Few travellers ever ventured there, however, disturbed by the tales of wild beasts, harsh geography and the bloody conflicts of warring families known as the clans. But after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden the influence of the clans was curbed and the Scottish Highlands became celebrated by poets, writers and artists for their beauty rather than their savagery. In the nineteenth century, inspired by the travel reportage of Samuel Johnson, the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of William Wordsworth and the very public love of the Highlands espoused by Queen Victoria, tourists began flocking to the mountains - even as Highlanders were being removed from their land by the brutal agricultural reforms known as the Clearances. With the popularity of hiking and the construction of railways, including the famed West Highland line across Rannoch Moor, the fate of the Highlands as one of the great tourist playgrounds of the world was sealed. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where the legacy of events from the first Celtic settlements to the Second World War and from the construction of military roads to mining for lead, slate and gold have all left their mark.

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Jeet Thayil's definitive selection covers 55 years of Indian poetry in English. It is the first anthology to represent not just the major poets of the past half-century - the canonical writers who have dominated Indian poetry and publishing since the 1950s - but also the different kinds of poetry written by an extraordinary range of younger poets who live in many countries as well as in India. It is a groundbreaking global anthology of 70 poets writing in a common language responding to shared traditions, different cultures and contrasting lives in the changing modern world.Thayil's starting-point is Nissim Ezekiel, the first important modern Indian poet after Tagore, who published his first collection in London in 1952. Aiming for "verticality" rather than chronology, Thayil's anthology charts a poetry of astonishing volume and quality. It pays homage to major influences, including Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar, who died within months of each other in 2004. It rediscovers forgotten figures such as Lawrence Bantleman and Gopal Honnalgere, and it serves as an introduction to the poets of the future.The book also shows that many Indian poets were mining the rich vein of 'chutnified' (Salman Rushdie's word) Indian English long before novelists like Rushdie and Upamanyu Chatterjee started using it in their fiction. It explains why Pankaj Mishra and Amit Chaudhuri have said that Indian poetry in English has a longer, more distinguished tradition than Indian fiction in English. The Indian poet now lives and works in New York, New Delhi, London, Itanagar, Bangalore, Berkeley, Goa, Sheffield, Lonavala, Montana, Aarhus, Allahabad, Hongkong, Montreal, Melbourne, Calcutta, Connecticut, Cuttack and various other global corridors. While some may have little in common in terms of culture (a number of the poets have never lived in India), this anthology shows how they are all bound by the intimate histories of a shared English language.

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February 1941 The world is at war and Joyce Cooper is doing her bit for the war effort. A proud member of the Civil Defence, it is her job to assist the people of Notting Hill when the bombs begin to fall. But as the Blitz takes hold of London, Joyce is called upon to plot the devastation that follows in its wake. Night after night she must stand before her map and mark the trail of loss and suffering inflicted upon the homes, families and businesses she knows so well. February 1974 Decades later from her basement flat Joyce watches the world go by above her head. This is her haven; the home she has created for herself having had so much taken from her in the war. But now the council is tearing down her block of flats and she's being forced to move. Could this chance to start over allow Joyce to let go of the past and step back into her life? An emotional and compelling historical fiction novel perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy, Mandy Robotham and Catherine Hokin. Readers love Jan Casey: 'Captivating, heart-wrenching'saga... I adamantly recommend' NetGalley 5* Review 'A story of courage and hope' NetGalley 5* Review 'Drew me in straight away and I just wanted to keep on reading until I finished it' NetGalley 5* Review 'Gut-wrenching and hopeful, this book is just beautiful. I stayed riveted the entire time and could not put it down' Goodreads 5* Review 'Full of fervour and the characters grow from beginning to end! I could not put the book down!' NetGalley 5* Review 'A book that you won't want to put down. I loved all the characters and where this book took me. A lovely read' NetGalley 5* Review 'Was desperate to see how it panned out... Very interesting reading it from both sides rather than just your own country. Recommend it' NetGalley 5* Review

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Almost seventy-five years ago, MI9 dreamt up the most audacious escape and evasion plan of World War Two. Formulated by Airey Neave, one of the first men ever to escape from Colditz, this plan was one of subterfuge, concealment and deception on a scale never seen before. With numerous downed RAF and Allied pilots on the run in Europe and with the fabled Comete Escape Line having been infiltrated by double agents, Neave's plan was to hide these men right under the very noses of the Nazis rather than risk repatriation. Choosing a forest in the heart of France, right next to one of the German Army's largest ammunition bases, Neave, Belgian agents and the French Resistance would secretly transport and hide Allied pilots and soldiers within feet of the enemy. Nobody thought it would work, but such was the success of the secret camp that a whole community of over one hundred and fifty Allied escapers lived within the forest for three months in the run-up to D-Day. Despite numerous close shaves, they were never discovered and this outrageous plan, brilliant in its simplicity, saw the Allied evaders make their home in the forest, cooking and hunting to survive - and even setting up a golf course in the forest using branches for clubs - without discovery. This operation remained absolutely secret, to the point that the inhabitants of the villages surrounding the forest were unaware, until the end, of the existence of that allied force so close to them.Told through interviews with evaders, members of the Resistance and the children charged with smuggling food into the forest, this book tells the compelling story of one of the most audacious operations in World War Two. A story that has, until today, remained as secret as the Hidden Army of Freteval.

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An influential thinker on the concept of singularity and its implications on politics, theology, economics, psychoanalysis, and literature For readers versed in critical theory, German and comparative literature, or media studies, a new book by Samuel Weber is essential reading. Singularity is no exception. Bringing together two decades of his essays, it hones in on the surprising implications of the singular and its historical relation to the individual in politics, theology, economics, psychoanalysis, and literature. Although singularity has long been a keyword in literary studies and philosophy, never has it been explored as in this book, which distinguishes singularity as an “aporetic” notion from individuality, with which it remains historically closely tied.To speak or write of the singular is problematic, Weber argues, since once it is spoken of it is no longer strictly singular. Walter Benjamin observed that singularity and repetition imply each other. This approach informs the essays in Singularity. Weber notes that what distinguishes the singular from the individual is that it cannot be perceived directly, but rather experienced through feelings that depend on but also exceed cognition. This interdependence of cognition and affect plays itself out in politics, economics, and theology as well as in poetics. Political practice as well as its theory have been dominated by the attempt to domesticate singularity by subordinating it to the notion of individuality. Weber suggests that this political tendency draws support from what he calls “the monotheological identity paradigm” deriving from the idea of a unique and exclusive Creator-God. Despite the “secular” tendencies usually associated with Western modernity, this paradigm continues today to inform and influence political and economic practices, often displaying self-destructive tendencies. By contrast, Weber reads the literary writings of Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Kafka as exemplary practices that put singularity into play, not as fiction but as friction, exposing the self-evidence of established conventions to be responses to challenges and problems that they often prefer to obscure or ignore.

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An influential thinker on the concept of singularity and its implications on politics, theology, economics, psychoanalysis, and literature For readers versed in critical theory, German and comparative literature, or media studies, a new book by Samuel Weber is essential reading. Singularity is no exception. Bringing together two decades of his essays, it hones in on the surprising implications of the singular and its historical relation to the individual in politics, theology, economics, psychoanalysis, and literature. Although singularity has long been a keyword in literary studies and philosophy, never has it been explored as in this book, which distinguishes singularity as an “aporetic” notion from individuality, with which it remains historically closely tied.To speak or write of the singular is problematic, Weber argues, since once it is spoken of it is no longer strictly singular. Walter Benjamin observed that singularity and repetition imply each other. This approach informs the essays in Singularity. Weber notes that what distinguishes the singular from the individual is that it cannot be perceived directly, but rather experienced through feelings that depend on but also exceed cognition. This interdependence of cognition and affect plays itself out in politics, economics, and theology as well as in poetics. Political practice as well as its theory have been dominated by the attempt to domesticate singularity by subordinating it to the notion of individuality. Weber suggests that this political tendency draws support from what he calls “the monotheological identity paradigm” deriving from the idea of a unique and exclusive Creator-God. Despite the “secular” tendencies usually associated with Western modernity, this paradigm continues today to inform and influence political and economic practices, often displaying self-destructive tendencies. By contrast, Weber reads the literary writings of Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Kafka as exemplary practices that put singularity into play, not as fiction but as friction, exposing the self-evidence of established conventions to be responses to challenges and problems that they often prefer to obscure or ignore.

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In 1949, as Cold War tensions in Europe mounted, French intellectual and former Buchenwald inmate David Rousset called upon fellow concentration camp survivors to denounce the Soviet Gulag as a "hallucinatory repetition" of Nazi Germany's most terrible crime. In Political Survivors, Emma Kuby tells the riveting story of what followed his appeal, as prominent members of the wartime Resistance from throughout Western Europe united to campaign against the continued existence of inhumane internment systems around the world. The International Commission against the Concentration Camp Regime brought together those originally deported for acts of anti-Nazi political activity who believed that their unlikely survival incurred a duty to bear witness for other victims. Over the course of the next decade, these pioneering activists crusaded to expose political imprisonment, forced labor, and other crimes against humanity in Franco's Spain, Maoist China, French Algeria, and beyond. Until now, the CIA's secret funding of Rousset's movement has remained in the shadows. Kuby reveals this clandestine arrangement between European camp survivors and American intelligence agents. She also brings to light how Jewish Holocaust victims were systematically excluded from Commission membership – a choice that fueled the group's rise, but also helped lead to its premature downfall. The history that she unearths provides a striking new vision of how wartime memory shaped European intellectual life and ideological struggle after 1945, showing that the key lessons Western Europeans drew from the war centered on "the camp," imagined first and foremost as a site of political repression rather than ethnic genocide. Political Survivors argues that Cold War dogma and acrimony, tied to a distorted understanding of WWII's chief atrocities, overshadowed the humanitarian possibilities of the nascent anti-concentration camp movement as Europe confronted the violent decolonizing struggles of the 1950s.

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"It’s not easy to find such a generous book on big data and databases. Fortunately, this book is the one." Feng Yu. Computing Reviews. June 28, 2016. This is a book for enterprise architects, database administrators, and developers who need to understand the latest developments in database technologies. It is the book to help you choose the correct database technology at a time when concepts such as Big Data, NoSQL and NewSQL are making what used to be an easy choice into a complex decision with significant implications. The relational database (RDBMS) model completely dominated database technology for over 20 years. Today this "one size fits all" stability has been disrupted by a relatively recent explosion of new database technologies. These paradigm-busting technologies are powering the "Big Data" and "NoSQL" revolutions, as well as forcing fundamental changes in databases across the board. Deciding to use a relational database was once truly a no-brainer, and the various commercial relational databases competed on price, performance, reliability, and ease of use rather than on fundamental architectures. Today we are faced with choices between radically different database technologies. Choosing the right database today is a complex undertaking, with serious economic and technological consequences. Next Generation Databases demystifies today’s new database technologies. The book describes what each technology was designed to solve. It shows how each technology can be used to solve real word application and business problems. Most importantly, this book highlights the architectural differences between technologies that are the critical factors to consider when choosing a database platform for new and upcoming projects. Introduces the new technologies that have revolutionized the database landscape Describes how each technology can be used to solve specific application or business challenges Reviews the most popular new wave databases and how they use these new database technologies

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A critical examination of the weaknesses inherent in international gender policy 2018 Victoria Schuck Award from the American Political Science Association Gender equality has become a central aspect of global governance and development in the 21st century. States increasingly promote women in government, ensure women’s economic rights and protect women from violence, all in the name of creating a more gender equitable world. No Shortcut to Change is a historical, theoretical, and political overview of why the common, liberal-feminist-driven ‘shortcut’ approach has not actually improved the status of women throughout the world—and why a new approach taking social, racial, and political hierarchies into account alongside gender is sorely needed. This innovative book unites several streams of international relations and feminist theory in pursuit of a practical solution to global gender inequality. She gives an overview of what ‘add-women’ policymaking looks like and has (or has not) accomplished, examining three key policy areas: · Women’s representation- including policies and practices to include more women in all branches of government, such as legislative quotas, which in many countries have been established to ensure enough women are represented in legislative bodies; · The recognition of women’s economic rights, like the right for a woman to own property and gainful employment · Combating violence against women, through domestic violence and rape laws, which remains a major problem throughout the world. Ellerby explores how poor implementation, informal practices, gender binaries, and intersectionality remain key issues in addressing women’s inclusion policy around the world. Ultimately, she concludes that all of these efforts have been co-opted by global neoliberal institutions, often reinforcing gender differences rather than challenging them. A much-needed critical text on the weaknesses inherent in international gender policy, No Shortcut to Change is an eye-opening overview for anyone interested in gender equality.

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An inside look into why Millennials are rejecting careers in politics, and what this means for the future of America's political system Millennials are often publically criticized for being apathetic about the American political process and their lack of interest in political careers. But what do millennials themselves have to say about the prospect of holding political office? Are they as uninterested in political issues and the future of the American political system as the media suggests? Out of the Running goes directly to the source and draws from extensive research, including over 50 interviews, with graduate students in elite institutions that have historically been a direct link for their graduates into state or federal elected office: Harvard Law, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Boston’s Suffolk University Law School. Shauna Shames, herself a young graduate of Harvard University, suggests that millennials are not uninterested; rather, they don’t believe that a career in politics is the best way to create change. Millennials view the system as corrupt or inefficient and are particularly skeptical about the fundraising, frenzied media attention, and loss of privacy that have become staples of the American electoral process. They are clear about their desire to make a difference in the world but feel that the “broken” political system is not the best way to do so—a belief held particularly by millennial women and women of color. The implications of Shames’ argument are crucial for the future of the American political system—how can a system adapt and grow if qualified, intelligent leaders are not involved? An engaging and accessible resource for anyone who follows American politics, Out of the Running highlights the urgent need to fix the American political system, as an absence of diverse millennial candidates leaves its future in a truly precarious position.

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A woman hiding a deadly secret. And the man who went in search of adventure, but found himself in danger ...'The Girl on the Train with a dash of Russian poisoning and a classic femme fatale' Sunday Telegragh'A fast-moving plot ... expertly told.' Alastair Campbell'A cracking crime thriller.' The Sun'Really gripping, so many twists and turns' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW'I couldn't put this book down.' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW'Action from start to finish' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEWGary Nelson has a routine for the commute to his rather dull job in the city. Each day, he watches as a woman on the train applies her make up in a ritual he now knows by heart. He's never dared to strike up a conversation . . . but maybe one day. Then one evening, on the late train to Gipsy Hill, the woman invites him to take the empty seat beside her. Fiddling with her mascara, she holds up her mirror and Gary reads the words 'HELP ME' scrawled in sticky black letters on the glass. From that moment, Gary's life is turned on its head. He finds himself on the run from the Russian mafia, the FSB and even the Metropolitan Police - all because of what this mysterious young woman may have witnessed. In the race to find out the truth, Gary discovers that there is a lot more to her than meets the eye . . .Readers love Alan Johnson and The Late Train to Gipsy HIll'A fast-moving plot ... expertly told. The fact it comes from the pen of a former Home Secretary makes the rich security detail all the more powerful' Alastair Campbell'Espionage, the Russian Mafia and a gorgeous female on a train with a deadly secret' Fiona Phillips'Johnson's writing style is easy, relaxed, self-deprecating . . . impressive' Observer'Johnson writes wonderfully' Telegraph'This boy can write . . .' The Spectator

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Gain deeper insight into the principles and theory of Islamic economics Introduction to Islamic Economics: Theory and Application provides an overview of the organizing principles and fundamentals of an Islamic economy. With deep discussion of the characteristics, rationale, key institutions, objectives, and instruments at work, the book addresses the core economic principles underlying a system based on the foundational teachings of Islam, and examines the implications for economic policies. Social welfare, economic justice, market functionality, efficiency, and equity are explored from an Islamic perspective, and the role and instruments of fiscal and monetary policy in Islamic systems are used to illustrate contemporary applications. Universities around the globe are offering courses on Islamic economics and finance, but despite the industry's rapid growth, most research has been focused on the financial principles rather than underlying economic principles. The first book of its kind, Introduction to Islamic Economics brings all the key concepts together into one reference volume. By outlining the ways in which Islamic finance and Islamic economics interrelate, this book can help readers to: * Develop an understanding of the Islamic economic system and its institutional scaffolding * Differentiate between the major characteristics of the dominant conventional economy and one based on the fundamental sources of Islam * Understand the conditions that must be met for a just, well-balanced, stable, and growing economy * Clarify the role of State, public policy, and risk-sharing in the Islamic financial system The Islamic financial system is expanding quickly, and those looking to increase their relevance in a changing economic landscape must get up to speed. Introduction to Islamic Economics provides a comprehensive overview of underlying economic system offering a deeper understanding of the feature of the system. This book is an excellent complement to Introduction to Islamic Finance, 2E by Iqbal and Mirakhor.

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Winner, 2023 Bernard S. Cohn Prize, Association for Asian Studies Winner, 2021 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences Winner, 2021 Ruth Benedict Prize, Association for Queer Anthropology Honorable Mention, 2023 Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize, Human Sexuality & Anthropology Interest Group Hijras, one of India’s third gendered or trans populations, have been an enduring presence in the South Asian imagination—in myth, in ritual, and in everyday life, often associated in stigmatized forms with begging and sex work. In more recent years hijras have seen a degree of political emergence as a moral presence in Indian electoral politics, and with heightened vulnerability within global health terms as a high-risk population caught within the AIDS epidemic. Hijras, Lovers, Brothers recounts two years living with a group of hijras in rural India. In this riveting ethnography, Vaibhav Saria reveals not just a group of stigmatized or marginalized others but a way of life composed of laughter, struggles, and desires that trouble how we read queerness, kinship, and the psyche. Against easy framings of hijras that render them marginalized, Saria shows how hijras makes the normative Indian family possible. The book also shows that particular practices of hijras, such as refusing to use condoms or comply with retroviral regimes, reflect not ignorance, irresponsibility, or illiteracy but rather a specific idiom of erotic asceticism arising in both Hindu and Islamic traditions. This idiom suffuses the densely intertwined registers of erotics, economics, and kinship that inform the everyday lives of hijras and offer a repertoire of self-fashioning beyond the secular horizons of public health or queer theory. Engrossingly written and full of keen insights, the book moves from the small pleasures of the everyday—laughter, flirting, teasing—to impossible longings, kinship, and economies of property and substance in order to give a fuller account of trans lives and of Indian society today.

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After emerging victorious from their revolution against the British Empire, many North Americans associated commercial freedom with independence and republicanism. Optimistic about the liberation movements sweeping Latin America, they were particularly eager to disrupt the Portuguese Empire. Anticipating the establishment of a Brazilian republic that they assumed would give them commercial preference, they aimed to aid Brazilian independence through contraband, plunder, and revolution. In contrast to the British Empire's reaction to the American Revolution, Lisbon officials liberalized imperial trade when revolutionary fervor threatened the Portuguese Empire in the 1780s and 1790s. In 1808, to save the empire from Napoleon's army, the Portuguese court relocated to Rio de Janeiro and opened Brazilian ports to foreign commerce. By 1822, the year Brazil declared independence, it had become the undisputed center of U.S. trade with the Portuguese Empire. However, by that point, Brazilians tended to associate freer trade with the consolidation of monarchical power and imperial strength, and, by the end of the 1820s, it was clear that Brazilians would retain a monarchy despite their independence. Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult. It reveals how those differences led to turbulent transnational exchanges between the United States and Brazil as merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates sought to trade outside legal confines. Tyson Reeder argues that although U.S. traders had forged their commerce with Brazil convinced that they could secure republican trade partners there, they were instead forced to reconcile their vision of the Americas as a haven for republics with the reality of a monarchy residing in the hemisphere. He shows that as twilight fell on the Age of Revolution, Brazil and the United States became fellow slave powers rather than fellow republics.

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New, sparkling translations of the Letters of Two Lovers, the Tegernesee Letters, and selections from the Regensburg Songs Nine hundred years ago in Paris, a teacher and his brilliant female student fell in love and chronicled their affair in a passionate correspondence. Their 116 surviving letters, some whole and some fragmentary, are composed in eloquent, highly rhetorical Latin. Since their discovery in the late twentieth century, the Letters of Two Lovers have aroused much attention because of their extreme rarity. They constitute the longest correspondence by far between any two persons from the entire Middle Ages, and they are private rather than institutional—which means that, according to all we know about the transmission of medieval letters, they should not have survived at all. Adding to their mystery, the letters are copied anonymously in a single late fifteenth-century manuscript, although their style and range of reference place them squarely in the early twelfth century. Can this collection of correspondence be the previously lost love letters of Abelard and Heloise? And even if not, what does it tell us about the lived experience of love in the twelfth century? Barbara Newman contends that these teacher-student exchanges bear witness to a culture that linked Latin pedagogy with the practice of ennobling love and the cult of friendship during a relatively brief period when women played an active part in that world. Newman presents a new translation of these extraordinary letters, along with a full commentary and two extended essays that parse their literary and intellectual contexts and chart the course of the doomed affair. Included, too, are two other sets of twelfth-century love epistles, the Tegernsee Letters and selections from the Regensburg Songs. Taken together, they constitute a stunning contribution to the study of the history of emotions by one of our most prominent medievalists.

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Spanning forty years, this collection of essays represents the work of a renowned teacher and scholar of the ancient Greek world. Martin Ostwald's contribution is both philological and historical: the thread that runs through all of the essays is his precise explanation, for a modern audience, of some crucial terms by which the ancient Greeks saw and lived their lives—and influenced ours. Chosen and sequenced by Ostwald, the essays demonstrate his methodology and elucidate essential aspects of ancient Greek society. The first section plumbs the social and political terms in which the Greeks understood their lives. It examines their notion of the relation of the citizen to his community; how they conceived different kinds of political structure; what role ideology played in public life; and how differently their most powerful thinkers viewed issues of war and peace. The second section is devoted to the problem, first articulated by the Greeks, of the extent to which human life is dominated by nature (physis) and human convention (nomos), a question that remains a central concern in modern societies, even if in different guises. The third section focuses on democracy in Athens. It confronts questions of the nature of democratic rule, of financing public enterprises, of the accountability of public officials, of the conflict raised by imperial control and democratic rule, of the coexistence of "conservative" and "liberal" trends in a democratic regime, and of the relation between rhetoric and power in a democracy. The final section is a sketch of the principles on which the two greatest Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, constructed their outlooks on human affairs. Ultimately, the collection intends to make selected key concepts in ancient Greek social and political culture accessible to a lay audience. It also shows how the differences—rather than the similarities—between the ancient Greeks and us can contribute to a deeper understanding of our own time.

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Democracies often go to war but almost never against each other. Indeed, "the democratic peace" has become a catchphrase among scholars and even U.S. Presidents. But why do democracies avoid fighting each other? Reliable Partners offers the first systematic and definitive explanation. Examining decades of research and speculation on the subject and testing this against the history of relations between democracies over the last two centuries, Charles Lipson concludes that constitutional democracies have a "contracting advantage"--a unique ability to settle conflicts with each other by durable agreements. In so doing he forcefully counters realist claims that a regime's character is irrelevant to war and peace. Lipson argues that because democracies are confident their bargains will stick, they can negotiate effective settlements with each other rather than incur the great costs of war. Why are democracies more reliable partners? Because their politics are uniquely open to outside scrutiny and facilitate long-term commitments. They cannot easily bluff, deceive, or launch surprise attacks. While this transparency weakens their bargaining position, it also makes their promises more credible--and more durable, for democracies are generally stable. Their leaders are constrained by constitutional rules, independent officials, and the political costs of abandoning public commitments. All this allows for solid bargains between democracies. When democracies contemplate breaking their agreements, their open debate gives partners advance notice and a chance to protect themselves. Hence agreements among democracies are less risky than those with nondemocratic states. Setting rigorous analysis in friendly, vigorous prose, Reliable Partners resolves longstanding questions about the democratic peace and highlights important new findings about democracies in world politics, from rivalries to alliances. Above all, it shows conclusively that democracies are uniquely adapted to seal enduring bargains with each other and thus avoid the blight of war.

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Why are living things alive? As a theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen saw this as the most fundamental of all questions-and yet it had never been answered satisfactorily by science. The answers to this question would allow humanity to make an enormous leap forward in our understanding of the principles at work in our world. For centuries, it was believed that the only scientific approach to the question "What is life?" must proceed from the Cartesian metaphor (organism as machine). Classical approaches in science, which also borrow heavily from Newtonian mechanics, are based on a process called "reductionism." The thinking was that we can better learn about an intricate, complicated system (like an organism) if we take it apart, study the components, and then reconstruct the system-thereby gaining an understanding of the whole. However, Rosen argues that reductionism does not work in biology and ignores the complexity of organisms. Life Itself, a landmark work, represents the scientific and intellectual journey that led Rosen to question reductionism and develop new scientific approaches to understanding the nature of life. Ultimately, Rosen proposes an answer to the original question about the causal basis of life in organisms. He asserts that renouncing the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm does not mean abandoning science. Instead, Rosen offers an alternate paradigm for science that takes into account the relational impacts of organization in natural systems and is based on organized matter rather than on particulate matter alone. Central to Rosen's work is the idea of a "complex system," defined as any system that cannot be fully understood by reducing it to its parts. In this sense, complexity refers to the causal impact of organization on the system as a whole. Since both the atom and the organism can be seen to fit that description, Rosen asserts that complex organization is a general feature not just of the biosphere on Earth-but of the universe itself.

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‘Spooky and absorbing. I was gripped from the first page!’ CASS GREEN There’s a stranger in your house… When her stepmother dies unexpectedly, Caro returns to her childhood home in Derbyshire. She hadn’t seen Elizabeth in years, but the remote farmhouse offers refuge from a bad relationship, and a chance to start again. But going through Elizabeth’s belongings unearths memories Caro would rather stay buried. In particular, the story her stepmother would tell her, about two little girls and the terrible thing they do. As heavy snow traps Caro in the village, where her neighbours stare and whisper, Caro is forced to question why Elizabeth hated her so much, and what she was hiding. But does she really want to uncover the truth? A haunting and twisty story about the lies we tell those closest to us, perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Cass Green. If you love CUCKOO, don’t miss Sophie Draper’s brand-new mystery MAGPIE, available to order now! Readers love CUCKOO: ‘A remarkably, taut and chilling debut. I absolutely loved it. Brilliant writing. All the creepiness. A heart-stopping ending’ CLAIRE ALLAN ‘Sophie Draper is a remarkable new voice, combining beautiful writing with a gothic creepiness and a level of suspense which will keep the reader gripped to the end’ STEPHEN BOOTH 'A brilliant, sinister debut that creeps under your skin and keeps you hooked until the shocking ending' ROZ WATKINS ‘Wow! This is what a horror story is supposed to be! Super spooky and absolutely wonderful in all its gothic glory’ NETGALLEY REVIEWER ‘The ending was amazing. Psychological fiction at its best. Five Stars’ NETGALLEY REVIEWER ‘I never use the term "jaw-dropping" but it best describes the rest of this spectacular read!’ NETGALLEY REVIEWER ‘The ending BLEW. ME. AWAY. I feel like I’m going to have a book hangover now. SO, SO GOOD’ NETGALLEY REVIEWER

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This book is an invaluable ‘tool of the trade’ for anyone trying to identify or interpret photos. – Peter Hart, Military Historian This fascinating and impressively-researched volume will become an invaluable resource for all on a quest to find out about family members who served as well as those who have a fascination with the details of British military history. - Col. Richard Kemp CBE former military head of COBR and commander British Forces, Afghanistan Identifying Cap Badges is the book that has been missing from the bookshelves of family historians, military enthusiasts, and badge collectors alike. It is quite easy to find an erudite book on military cap badges, but you could spend hours, if not days, plodding through hundreds of pictures to find a match for the one you hold. Sometimes you may not find it at all! These learned badge collector's books have one major flaw; they are pictured and discussed in 'order of precedence', that is to say, from the earliest formed regiments to the latest, with separate sections on medical, engineers, cavalry, infantry, etc. This can be most confusing to those uninitiated into the 'dark arts' of military badges. Thus, if you do not know the name or 'original number' of your regiment in this order of precedence, you can be flummoxed! This, combined with all the different crowns, laurels, animals, mythological beasts and castles, can prove more than a little daunting, even to ex soldiers themselves! In this book you will find badges ordered by what is on the badge itself; be it a dragon, sphinx or castle, horse, lion or tiger. This is badge identification in minutes, rather than hours, with added information on dating badges and many comparison photographs alongside all the pictures of the badges. Added to these pictures are short histories of the regiments and 'family trees' plotting the antecedents of today's units.

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THE TRUE STORY OF THE 41,000 BRITISH SOLDIERS WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND AFTER THE EVACUATION OF DUNKIRK, MAY 1940'Meticulously researched, very well written and deeply moving' Andrew Roberts'Few readers will be unmoved by Sean Longden's account' Dominic SandbrookAt 2am on the morning of the 3rd of June 1940, General Harold Alexander searched along the quayside, holding onto his megaphone and called "Is anyone there? Is anyone there?" before turning his boat back towards England. Tradition tells us that the dramatic events of the evacuation of Dunkirk, in which 300,000 BEF servicemen escaped the Nazis, was a victory gained from the jaws of defeat. For the first time, rather than telling the tale of the 300,000 who escaped, Sean Longden reveals the story of the 40,000 men sacrificed in the rearguard battles.On the beaches and sand dunes, besides the roads and amidst the ruins lay the corpses of hundreds who had not reached the boats. Elsewhere, hospitals full of the sick and wounded who had been left behind to receive treatment from the enemy's doctors. And further afield - still fighting hard alongside their French allies - was the entire 51st Highland Division, whose war had not finished as the last boats slipped away. Also scattered across the countryside were hundreds of lost and lonely soldiers. These 'evaders' had also missed the boats and were now desperately trying to make their own way home, either by walking across France or rowing across the channel. The majority, however, were now prisoners of war who were forced to walk on the death marches all the way to the camps in Germany and Poland, where they were forgotten until 1945.'Sean Longden is a rising name in military history, and is able to uncover the missing stories of the Second World War' Guardian

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A woman hiding a deadly secret. And the man who went in search of adventure, but found himself in danger ...'The Girl on the Train with a dash of Russian poisoning and a classic femme fatale' Sunday Telegragh'A fast-moving plot ... expertly told.' Alastair Campbell'A cracking crime thriller.' The Sun'Really gripping, so many twists and turns' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW'I couldn't put this book down.' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW'Action from start to finish' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEWGary Nelson has a routine for the commute to his rather dull job in the city. Each day, he watches as a woman on the train applies her make up in a ritual he now knows by heart. He's never dared to strike up a conversation . . . but maybe one day.Then one evening, on the late train to Gipsy Hill, the woman invites him to take the empty seat beside her. Fiddling with her mascara, she holds up her mirror and Gary reads the words 'HELP ME' scrawled in sticky black letters on the glass.From that moment, Gary's life is turned on its head. He finds himself on the run from the Russian mafia, the FSB and even the Metropolitan Police - all because of what this mysterious young woman may have witnessed. In the race to find out the truth, Gary discovers that there is a lot more to her than meets the eye . . .Readers love Alan Johnson and The Late Train to Gipsy HIll'A fast-moving plot ... expertly told. The fact it comes from the pen of a former Home Secretary makes the rich security detail all the more powerful' Alastair Campbell'Espionage, the Russian Mafia and a gorgeous female on a train with a deadly secret' Fiona Phillips'Johnson's writing style is easy, relaxed, self-deprecating . . . impressive' Observer'Johnson writes wonderfully' Telegraph'This boy can write . . .' The Spectator

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Is stress preventing you from enjoying your daily life? Do you find that you're becoming more distracted or forgetful? Are 'the blues' sapping your spirits? Or do you simply feel not quite like yourself?If you want to reclaim your focus, memory and joy, you're not alone. There are millions of people fighting against the epidemic of brain fog that's sweeping the nation. The good news: it's not an irreparable condition - rather, it's a side effect of modern-day living.Many of the foods we eat and the habits we have do not support our brains. We no longer get what we need in order to produce essential brain chemicals that keep us energized, calm, focused, optimistic and inspired. And even worse, our choices could lead to long-term problems, like dementia, Alzheimer's disease, depression and anxiety. Sadly, if you look at the way most of us live, it seems almost as though we've chosen a lifestyle deliberately intended to undermine our brain chemistry and our health.Fortunately, there is a solution. The Brain Fog Fix is an easy-to-follow three-week programme designed to help naturally restore three of your brain's most crucial hormones: serotonin, dopamine and cortisol. Rebalancing these chemicals will in turn enable the rest of your brain's chemistry to reach optimal levels. Each week of the programme focuses on a different element of your life, including improving your mood by modifying your diet and using cognitive strategies, increasing your energy by focusing on sleep, exercise and memory-boosting games, and enhancing your spirit through practices that help you connect to something larger than yourself. By the end of this simple programme, you'll be thinking more clearly, remembering more accurately, learning more quickly and unleashing the floodgates of your creativity. And you'll simply feel better - for now and in the long term.

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Ruby is one of the most important programming languages in use for web development. It powers the Rails framework, which is the backing of some of the most important sites on the web. The Pickaxe Book, named for the tool on the cover, is the definitive reference on Ruby, a highly-regarded, fully object-oriented programming language. This updated edition is a comprehensive reference on the language itself, with a tutorial on the most important features of Ruby - including pattern matching and Ractors - and describes the language through Ruby 3.2. Would you like to go from first idea to working code much, much faster? Do you currently spend more time satisfying the compiler instead of your clients or end users? Are you frustrated with demanding languages that seem to get in your way instead of helping you get the work done? Are you using Rails and want to dig deeper into the underlying Ruby language? If so, then we've got a language and book for you! Ruby is a fully object-oriented language. The combination of the power of a pure object-oriented language with the convenience of a scripting language makes Ruby a favorite tool of programmers that want to get things done quickly and cleanly. This comprehensive reference manual for Ruby includes a description of the most important standard library modules, built-in classes, and modules. It also includes all the new and changed syntax and semantics introduced through Ruby 3.2, including pattern matching and Ractors, and describes the language through Ruby 3.2. What You Need: This book assumes you have a basic understanding of object-oriented programming. In general, Ruby programmers tend to favor the the command line for running their code, and they tend to use text editors rather than IDEs. Ruby runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

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The surprising alliance between Japan and pro-Tokyo African Americans during World War II In November 1942 in East St. Louis, Illinois a group of African Americans engaged in military drills were eagerly awaiting a Japanese invasion of the U.S.— an invasion that they planned to join. Since the rise of Japan as a superpower less than a century earlier, African Americans across class and ideological lines had saluted the Asian nation, not least because they thought its very existence undermined the pervasive notion of “white supremacy.” The list of supporters included Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and particularly W.E.B. Du Bois. Facing the Rising Sun tells the story of the widespread pro-Tokyo sentiment among African Americans during World War II, arguing that the solidarity between the two groups was significantly corrosive to the U.S. war effort. Gerald Horne demonstrates that Black Nationalists of various stripes were the vanguard of this trend—including followers of Garvey and the precursor of the Nation of Islam. Indeed, many of them called themselves “Asiatic”, not African. Following World War II, Japanese-influenced “Afro-Asian” solidarity did not die, but rather foreshadowed Dr. Martin Luther King’s tie to Gandhi’s India and Black Nationalists’ post-1970s fascination with Maoist China and Ho’s Vietnam. Based upon exhaustive research, including the trial transcripts of the pro-Tokyo African Americans who were tried during the war, congressional archives and records of the Negro press, this book also provides essential background for what many analysts consider the coming “Asian Century.” An insightful glimpse into the Black Nationalists’ struggle for global leverage and new allies, Facing the Rising Sun provides a complex, holistic perspective on a painful period in African American history, and a unique glimpse into the meaning of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

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An ambitious comparative introduction to Asian thought, expertly written for undergraduate courses in Asian Studies, Asian philosophy and neighboring disciplines Recent decades have witnessed a sharp increase of interest in the cultures and regions of South and East Asia, owing in part to the prominent role Asian economies have played in the era of globalization.  Asian Worldviews: Religions, Philosophies, Political Theories  is a unique, reader-friendly introduction to the intellectual heritage of the region. Assuming no previous background in Asian cultural history, Asian Worldviews moves beyond chronological and geographic boundaries to present an integrated treatment of the beliefs, teachings, and ideologies that have shaped the worldviews of approximately half of the global population. Rein Raud explores forms of knowledge in China, India, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, providing balanced coverage of all historical periods from antiquity to the modern day. Asian Worldviews embraces the connections rather than the divisions between the religious and philosophical dimensions of South and East Asian thought, and emphasizes a robust engagement with each culture's political, social, and economic contexts. Clear, accessible chapters discuss the development of religious, philosophical, and political thought in India, China, and Japan, and provide succinct overviews of the history of ideas in Korea, Tibet, and Southeast Asia. Throughout the book, Raud uses a comparative approach to examine the mutual influence and productive dialogue, past and present, between Asian cultures as well as with the West, and considers the impact of various worldviews on the development of modern Asian societies. Comprehensive and well-informed by recent developments in the scholarship, Asian Worldviews: Religions, Philosophies, Political Theories  is an unparalleled resource for a broad range of courses in Asian studies, philosophy, religious studies, and global politics, as well as an excellent introduction for non-specialist readers looking for a contextual foothold in the rich cultural and intellectual history of South and East Asia.

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New, sparkling translations of the Letters of Two Lovers, the Tegernesee Letters, and selections from the Regensburg Songs Nine hundred years ago in Paris, a teacher and his brilliant female student fell in love and chronicled their affair in a passionate correspondence. Their 116 surviving letters, some whole and some fragmentary, are composed in eloquent, highly rhetorical Latin. Since their discovery in the late twentieth century, the Letters of Two Lovers have aroused much attention because of their extreme rarity. They constitute the longest correspondence by far between any two persons from the entire Middle Ages, and they are private rather than institutional—which means that, according to all we know about the transmission of medieval letters, they should not have survived at all. Adding to their mystery, the letters are copied anonymously in a single late fifteenth-century manuscript, although their style and range of reference place them squarely in the early twelfth century. Can this collection of correspondence be the previously lost love letters of Abelard and Heloise? And even if not, what does it tell us about the lived experience of love in the twelfth century? Barbara Newman contends that these teacher-student exchanges bear witness to a culture that linked Latin pedagogy with the practice of ennobling love and the cult of friendship during a relatively brief period when women played an active part in that world. Newman presents a new translation of these extraordinary letters, along with a full commentary and two extended essays that parse their literary and intellectual contexts and chart the course of the doomed affair. Included, too, are two other sets of twelfth-century love epistles, the Tegernsee Letters and selections from the Regensburg Songs. Taken together, they constitute a stunning contribution to the study of the history of emotions by one of our most prominent medievalists.

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A New York Times Notable Book of the YearA Times Literary Supplement Book of the YearA Globe and Mail Best Book of the YearA Publishers Weekly Best Book of the YearA Tablet Best Book of the YearWinner of a Christianity Today Book Award“One finds big nuggets of insight, useful to almost anybody with an interest in the progress of human society.”—The EconomistWhat does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we—in the West, at least—largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in “Western Christendom” of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today’s secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion—although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined—but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.What this means for the world—including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence—is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.

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The gripping stories of the most colourful and formidable characters to challenge the might of Rome. Until recently, it was assumed that Rome carried the torch of civilization into the barbarian darkness, bringing law, architecture, and literature to conquered peoples. The alternative view now suggests that many of Rome's enemies - the Celts, Hebrews, and Phoenicians, for example - were developing civilizations in their own right before obliteration at the Roman sword. Indeed, as Philip Matyszak argues, had Rome not crushed rivals so completely, the drop into the Dark Ages might not have occurred; at Rome's collapse, no other powerful civilizations remained to absorb the impact. This engrossing book looks at the growth and eventual demise of Rome from the viewpoint of those vanquished by Rome. They varied from the highly cultivated Greeks and Egyptians to wild and rebellious Britons and Germans, to the Asiatic empires of the Persians and Parthians. Their leaders were driven by ambition, vindictive hatred, fear, political calculation, or naked greed. Some fought to preserve their heritage, some for personal survival, and others from a warrior's love of battle. Defying the might of Rome was a dangerous business, and few of the men and women described here died in their beds. Some, like Vercingetorix and Jugurtha, were captured, exhibited in triumph, and then, while their conquerors sat down to a festive dinner, killed in the dungeons below. Rather than face such an end, some of Rome's greatest adversaries, including Hannibal, Boudicca, and Cleopatra, killed themselves. Here is the reality behind legends such as Spartacus the gladiator, and the stories of Shapur the conqueror and Mithridates the connoisseur of poisons. Some enemies of Rome were noble heroes, others were murdering villains, but each has a unique and fascinating story.

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‘This book was so emotional and had me feeling all the feels. It was romantic and heartwarming and such a lovely story and I couldn’t get enough of it’ Reader review⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘This story is full of love, passion and romance’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Wonderful, funny, love story’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Just LOVE the Snow Crystal books! Those O' Neil brothers must really be something!! I was completely hooked’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘A fabulous read. I couldn't put it down. Sarah Morgan has a flair for painting a great picture in your mind’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ * * * There are some summers you’ll remember forever Fiery chef Élise is determined to make this summer one of them – but with the grand opening of her chic French café falling apart – it looks like it might for all the wrong reasons. Until Sean O’Neill comes back to town. Last Summer Élise and Sean shared one hazy whirlwind night together – and Elise is looking forward to repeating their last encounter. As long as she can stick to her one-night-only rule and listen to her head rather than her heart. After all, Sean hates life in his home town and is planning on leaving again soon as he can. But recapturing the magic of last summer could be about to change everything…. Tropes: ❤️Small town romance ❤️Second chance romance ❤️Friends to lovers * * * Snow Crystal Trilogy Book 1 – Sleigh Bells in the Snow Book 2 – Suddenly Last Summer Book 3 – Maybe This Christmas While the Snow Crystal novels can easily be read as standalone stories, you'll likely enjoy reading the earlier books in the series too! Praise for Sarah Morgan ‘Sarah Morgan just gets better and better’ Veronica Henry 'Full of romance and sparkle' Lovereading 'Morgan is a magician with words’ RT Book Reviews ‘Morgan excels in balancing the sweet and sexy to create the perfect blend’ Booklist

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THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERLet Dame Judi Dench take you behind the scenes of a life loving the Bard – as she shares her story with, and enduring affection for, William Shakespeare. 'A wonderful mixture of appreciation and anecdote' Financial Times, Books of the Year'A MAGICAL LOVE LETTER TO SHAKESPEARE' Sir Kenneth Branagh‘If you love Judi Dench or Shakespeare (and most of us do), look no further’ Guardian'Wonderfully inspiring, riveting. A delightful spell in the company of one of our greatest actresses’ Daily Mail, Books of the Year‘Gloriously entertaining’ ObserverTaking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...Cavorting naked through the countryside painted green...Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra.Here she reveals her behind the scenes secrets; inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour and striking honesty.Witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.‘An utterly delightful book… Shakespeare from a great actor’s perspective – that repeatedly strikes to the heart of the matter with a sharp instinctive intelligence that puts fancy-pants literary critics to shame’ Telegraph‘A wonderful ode to the bard’ I‘The book is pure enchantment. It swirls and dances with brilliance and mischief, so forget traditional Shakespearean criticism and analysis. Sack the Eng. Lit. professors. As never before, this book brings the subject to wild, authentic life.’ Daily Mail‘Riveting, revealing and witty’ Gazette and HeraldTop 10 Sunday Times bestseller, November 2023

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What happens in an old farmhouse when the farmers have left? Perhaps only a poet-historian-storyteller can say. These traditional work centres were established centuries ago, sometimes in the village street, often far away in their own fields. But the pattern of the toil was the same. This quietly vanished a few years ago. Ronald Blythe describes the going of it in his celebrated Akenfield. Some years before this his friend John Nash had rescued an already abandoned farmhouse in the Stour Valley from total dereliction. It was called Bottengoms. Nobody knows why. John Nash called himself an Artist-Plantsman. Behind both artist and writer there existed many generations of farmers and shepherds. Old houses will always have their say. For Ronald Blythe at Bottengoms Farm it was in the form of a meditation on past and present. He found that the ancient place asked more questions than it gave answers, and was challenging, and was energetic rather than spent. It must have been part of a prehistoric settlement in a stony valley and also a farm seen by the young John Constable, whose uncles ground its corn. For they were Bottengoms neighbours, and were known to the artist as the Wormingford folk. Ronald Blythe himself knows what the old farm is talking about. Its great days and routine days, its seasonal labour and play, its faith and despair. Its land was both poor and rich in snatches, flint fields and mossy pastures, vast trees and weeds and high skies. Once Queen Elizabeth arrived to hunt below where the Stone Age people lay in their circular graves. Inside Bottengoms there are telling handprints and footprints everywhere, and this is their tale. It is a tale told by a true countryman who has looked and listened all his life. And mostly in his native place.

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'A definite must for all fans of comic fantasy' - ENIGMA'Wacky humour bubbles through the polished narrative ... Holt doesn't skimp on the flashes of brilliance' - SFXEver been offered a promotion that seems too good to be true? You know - the sort they'd be insane to be offering to someone like you. The kind where you snap their arm off to accept, then wonder why all your long-serving colleagues look secretly relieved, as if they're off some strange and unpleasant hook ...It's the kind of trick that deeply sinister companies like J.W. Wells & Co. pull all the time. Especially with employees who are too busy mooning over the office intern to think about what they're getting into. And it's why, right about now, Paul Carpenter is wishing he'd paid much less attention to the gorgeous Melze, and rather more to a little bit of job description small-print referring to 'pest' control ...Books by Tom Holt: Walled Orchard Series Goatsong The Walled Orchard J.W. Wells & Co. Series The Portable Door In Your Dreams Earth, Air, Fire and Custard You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps The Better Mousetrap May Contain Traces of Magic Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages YouSpace Series Doughnut When It's A Jar The Outsorcerer's Apprentice The Good, the Bad and the Smug Novels Expecting Someone Taller Who's Afraid of Beowulf Flying Dutch Ye Gods! Overtime Here Comes the Sun Grailblazers Faust Among Equals Odds and Gods Djinn Rummy My Hero Paint your Dragon Open Sesame Wish you Were Here Alexander at World's End Only Human Snow White and the Seven Samurai Olympiad Valhalla Nothing But Blue Skies Falling SidewaysLittle PeopleSong for NeroMeadowlandBarkingBlonde BombshellThe Management Style of the Supreme BeingsAn Orc on the Wild Side

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Would you marry a stranger to live the life of your dreams?'A fun and refreshing read! I couldn't put it down!' HEIDI SWAIN'The best book I've read in 2021. I LOVED it, it made me smile so much. Fresh, funny and utterly wonderful' HOLLY MARTIN'Original, funny and so, so romantic, The Wedding Pact is a breath of fresh air that you should add to your summer reading list immediately' CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLINAugust Anderson needs somewhere to live. Dumped by her boyfriend who would rather be alone than move in with her, she has almost given up on happiness. Until she notices that the beautiful Georgian townhouse she's long admired (ahem, *obsessed over*) is looking for a new tenant, and suddenly it seems like things might be looking up . . .There's just one catch - the traditional, buttoned-up landlord is only willing to rent to a stable, married couple and August, quite frankly, is neither. Competition for the house is fierce and August knows she'll have to come up with a plan or risk losing her last shot at her happy ending.Enter Flynn, the handsome, charming and somewhat unsuspecting gentleman who August accidentally spills her coffee over. Flynn is new to the area and is looking for somewhere to live, and August thinks she knows just the place, but only if he's willing to tell a little white lie . . .The perfect feel-good summer read from reader favourite Lisa Dickenson, writing as Isla Gordon. Perfect for fans of Heidi Swain, Sarah Morgan and Anna Bell Don't miss the brand-new hilarious and heart-warming romcom from Isla Gordon, A New York Winter, available to pre-order now!Praise for ISLA GORDON:'Heart-warming and full of hope. I loved it' HEIDI SWAIN'The most beautiful, heart-warming story. Gorgeously cosy, uplifting . . . utterly lovely book' HOLLY MARTIN'Sunday afternoon bliss!' FABULOUS magazine

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No civilization has left such imposing and fascinating vestiges as that of Egypt, and yet so little trace of the "human." In ancient Egypt art was not an expression of the human world but a living and active representation of the act of creation. The extreme and forceful nature of the Nile Valley-where the fertile plain runs without a break into the desert, and the annual flooding erases the landscape in a relentless cycle as it brings new life-has shaped Egyptian art. It is in the first place a direct emanation of the divine, and as such proposes the order established by the gods with mathematical rigor and in strictly codified canons. Religion was everything and everything was religion in ancient Egypt. Art had no aesthetic value in this world. Art was a symbol of nature; it has to capture its essence rather than imitate it, and left no freedom or independence of expression to the individual. The works that adorn temples, palaces, and tombs always have a magical function: They are intended to protect. Thus they are not an imitation of nature. On the contrary, they are alive and potent. The magical and religious conception that inspired these artist-creators can still be perceived today, even when their works have been transported to lands faraway from the blazing sun of the African desert. Even inside the showcases of museums they still speak of a natural world inhabited by human beings, but one that has been created by a divinity that pervades it through and through-a world where humanity and its art represent the pinnacle of divine creation.

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A great innovator of our time, Leonard Lavin epitomises the American Dream. Forced to leave college to take care of family matters, Lavin entered the workforce early. He began his career as a salesman, but quickly discovered that he would rather own a company than work for one. Lavin purchased a tiny beauty supply company called Alberto Culver Corporation -- best known for its chief asset, a hairstyling product called VO5 (for "five vital oils") -- and built the regional company into a revered Fortune 500 corporation. Now, in "Winners Make It Happen", this self-made millionaire takes readers on a trip through his extraordinary life, and shares with new generations of entrepreneurs his blueprint for success. Lavin reveals how his instinct-driven vision led him to build a small family business into a corporate giant, without the help of any formal business education, start-up funds, or financial backing. He revisits his groundbreaking achievements -- and he looks outside his corporate triumphs to explore his international success as a breeder of thoroughbred horses, from his first stakes winner in 1967 to his filly One Dreamer, who won the prestigious Breeder's Cup Distaff in 1994. In addition, Lavin shares anecdotes involving the legendary businessmen, entertainers, and politicians he has met along the way -- including Richard Nixon, NBC founder General Sarnoff, CBS founder William Paley, and Abe Lastfogel, founder of the William Morris Agency. Leonard Lavin sums up his journey to achievement: "Winners make it happen; losers let it happen". As readers follow Lavin on his path to success, they too will discover what it takes to make things happen.

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Among the immortals-Leonardo, Rembrandt, Picasso-Michelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was not only the greatest artist in an age of giants, but a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own demanding muse and promoting the novel idea that it was the artist, rather than the lord who paid for it, who was creative force behind the work. Miles Unger narrates the astonishing life of this driven and difficult man through six of his greatest masterpieces. Each work expanded the expressive range of the medium, from the Pietà Michelangelo carved as a brash young man, to the apocalyptic Last Judgment, the work of an old man tested by personal trials. Throughout the course of his career he explored the full range of human possibility. In the gargantuan David he depicts Man in the glory of his youth, while in the tombs he carved for the Medici he offers a sustained meditation on death and the afterlife. In the Sistine Chapel ceiling he tells the epic story of Creation, from the perfection of God's initial procreative act to the corruption introduced by His imperfect children. In the final decades of his life, his hands too unsteady to wield the brush and chisel, he exercised his mind by raising the soaring vaults and dome of St. Peter's in a final tribute to his God. A work of deep artistic understanding, Miles Unger's Michelangelobrings to life the irascible, egotistical, and undeniably brilliant man whose artistry continues to amaze and inspire us after 500 years.

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Cybersecurity needs a change in communication. It is time to show the world that cybersecurity is an exciting and diverse field to work in. Cybersecurity is not only about hackers and technical gobbledygook. It is a diverse field of work with a lot of collaboration with other disciplines. Over the years, security professionals have tried different awareness strategies to promote their work and to improve the knowledge of their audience but without much success. Communication problems are holding back advances in in the field.Visual Communication for Cybersecurity explores the possibilities of visual communication as a tool to improve the communication about cybersecurity and to better connect with non-experts. Visual communication is useful to explain complex topics and to solve complex problems. Visual tools are easy to share through social media and have the possibility to reach a wide audience. When applied strategically, visual communication can contribute to a people-centric approach to security, where employees are encouraged to actively engage in security activities rather than simply complying with the policies.Cybersecurity education does not usually include communication theory or creative skills. Many experts think that it is not part of their job and is best left to the communication department or they think that they lack any creative talent. This book introduces communication theories and models, gives practical tips, and shows many examples. The book can support students in cybersecurity education and professionals searching for alternatives to bullet-point presentations and textual reports. On top of that, if this book succeeds in inspiring the reader to start creating visuals, it may also give the reader the pleasure of seeing new possibilities and improving their performance.

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An exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform. Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and his associates were some of the most radical monastic reformers in tenth-century Europe. In two generations, they took over most of the powerful churches in the kingdom of England and implemented a number of the policies found in their ambitious monastic manifestos. They also had a major impact on the early development of the kingdom itself, taking a role in the establishment of a shire system that lasted a thousand years, negotiations with invaders, and attempts to create a standardized English language. Æthelwold and his circle were also enthusiastic venerators of saints. This book examines a range of sources, from hagiographies to charters, from liturgy to archaeological remains, to argue that saints' cults helped these men and women secure their power, wealth, and relationships with groups outside their monasteries. The saints that Æthelwold's circle promoted most lavishly were not necessarily the ones that they studied or the ones that matched their ideological agenda. Rather, Æthelwold's monks and nuns connected themselves to a wide range of saints, including the Virgin Mary, St Swithun, Æthelthryth of Ely, Iudoc, Grimbald, Botulf, Cuthbert, and many others. Venerating these saints helped Æthelwold and his followers appeal to other groups in society, including unreformed ecclesiastics, lay nobles, and the workers on their estates. This book therefore not only has implications for the study of early English history and literature, but also for the history of western European monasticism and saints' cults more generally.

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In Understanding International Sign, Lori A. Whynot examines International Sign (IS) to determine the extent it is comprehended by signers from different countries. She focuses exclusively on expository lecture IS used in conference settings and presents the first empirical research on its effectiveness for communicating rich information to diverse audience members. International Sign is regarded as a lingua franca that is employed by deaf people to communicate with other deaf people who do not share the same conventionalized local sign language. Contrary to widely-held belief, sign languages are not composed of a unified system of universal gestures rather, they are distinctly different, and most are mutually unintelligible from one another. The phenomenon of IS has emerged through increased global interaction during recent decades, driven by a rise in the number of international conferences and events and by new technologies that allow for enhanced global communication. IS is gaining acceptance for providing communicative access to conference audience members who do not have knowledge of the designated conference languages, and it is being recruited for use due to the prohibitive expense of providing interpreting services in numerous different sign languages. However, it is not known how well audience members understand IS, and it may actually limit equal access to the interpreted information. Whynot compares IS to native sign languages and analyzes the distribution of linguistic elements in the IS lexicon and their combined effect on comprehension. Her findings indicate that audiences with diverse sign languages understand much less of IS presentations than has been previously assumed. Whynot's research has crucial implications for expository IS usage, training, and interpreting and sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses inherent in cross-linguistic, signed contact settings.

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Undoing Slavery excavates cultural, political, medical, and legal history to understand the abolitionist focus on the body on its own terms. Motivated by their conviction that the physical form of the human body was universal and faced with the growing racism of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science, abolitionists in North America and Britain focused on undoing slavery’s harm to the bodies of the enslaved. Their pragmatic focus on restoring the bodily integrity and wellbeing of enslaved people threw up many unexpected challenges. This book explores those challenges. Slavery exploited the bodies of men and women differently: enslaved women needed to be acknowledged as mothers rather than as reproducers of slave property, and enslaved men needed to claim full adult personhood without triggering white fears about their access to male privilege. Slavery’s undoing became more fraught by the 1850s, moreover, as federal Fugitive Slave Law and racist medicine converged. The reach of the federal government across the borders of free states and theories about innate racial difference collapsed the distinctions between enslaved and emancipated people of African descent, making militant action necessary. Escaping to so-called “free” jurisdictions, refugees from slavery demonstrated that a person could leave the life of slavery behind. But leaving behind the enslaved body, the fleshy archive of trauma and injury, proved impossible. Bodies damaged by slavery needed urgent physical care as well as access to medical knowledge untainted by racist science. As the campaign to end slavery revealed, legal rights alone, while necessary, were not sufficient either to protect or heal the bodies of African-descended people from the consequences of slavery and racism.

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