Search results for ""Author Rath"

Discover how to create over 20 more awesome builds! Learn how to design, build and customise 20 mini-projects in Minecraft, from pig hot-air balloons and wishing wells to giant grandfather clocks and horse-racing circuits. There's even an underwater aquarium hidden beneath an island and a skull cove filled with pirate treasure! With detailed instructions, block hacks and build tips, this book will encourage you to polish old skills and learn new tricks as you create a wide range of fun, bite-sized builds to impress your friends in Minecraft. Each build is accompanied by exploded views, step-by-step guides and detailed instructions to show you how to complete each build from start to finish. Informative text will help you with your construction understanding, and encourage you to use your new knowledge to create your very own builds. Try our indispensable handbooks for your Minecraft journey:Minecraft Redstone Handbook 978 0008495992Minecraft Survival Handbook 978 0755503452Minecraft Creative Handbook 978 0755500413Minecraft Combat Handbook 978 0755500420Minecraft Explorers Handbook 9780008608507Minecraft Legends Handbook 978 0008595012 Brilliant books full of inspiration:Minecraft Bite Size Builds: 978 0755500406Minecraft Amazing Bite Size Builds: 978 0008495954Minecraft Epic Inventions 978 0008496012Minecraft Epic Bases: 978 1405296472 Perfect Gifts:Minecraft Maps 978 1405294546Minecraft Blockopedia 978 0755500390 Sticker, humour and activity:Minecraft Survival Sticker Book 978 1405288552Minecraft Sticker Adventure Treasure Hunt 978 0755503582Minecraft Sticker Adventure Mobs Attack 978 0008533953Minecraft Joke Book 978 1405295253Minecraft How to Draw 978 0008534028Minecraft Would You Rather 978 0008534028Minecraft Catch the Creeper 978 0755503575

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For conscious consumers, buying clothes has never been more complicated. Even as fashion brands tout their sustainability, the industry is plagued by pollution, waste, and poor working conditions. If our clothes reflect our values, is it possible to be truly well-dressed? Sustainable fashion consultant Lucianne Tonti answers with a resounding yes. Beautiful clothes made from natural fabrics including cotton, wool, flax, and cashmere can support rural communities and regenerate landscapes. They can also reduce waste-but only if we invest in garments that stand the test of time rather than chasing fast fashion trends. In Sundressed, Tonti travels the world to showcase producers who are reforming the industry, from Mongolian goatherders, to Mulberry groves in China, and American hemp farms. Many of these innovations begin in the fields, with the cotton crops that will ultimately be spun into a soft T-shirt or the sheep's wool than will be knitted into a cozy sweater. Fiber farmers are taking a page from the regenerative agriculture movement, giving back to the land as they tend it. Meanwhile, further down the supply chain, top designers are working with Indigenous communities to relearn the artistry of sewing-and reward them financially. And global brands, including Levi's, are working to produce a pair of jeans that can withstand dozens of washes without any sign of wear. Tonti also shows readers how accessible sustainable fashion can be. Not everyone can afford a designer shirt that was lovingly hand-sewn. But most of us can buy less, choose natural fabrics over polyester, thrift shop, and wear our clothes longer. Sundressed is an exploration of a revolution taking place in fashion. And it is a love letter to clothing that embodies beauty and value, from farm to closet.

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When keeping up with massive amounts of information is part of your job and daily life, how do you transform a feeling of overwhelm to a sense of abundance and empowerment? Discover practical insights and strategies to build a positive relationship with information and excel at work and all your ventures.In Thriving on Overload, Ross Dawson provides simple actionable techniques for staying ahead in an accelerating world. It’s all about choosing to thrive on overload—rather than being overwhelmed by it. He draws on his work as a leading futurist and 25 years of research into the practices that transform a surplus of information into compelling value. Develop the five intertwined powers that, together, enable extraordinary performance: Purpose: understanding why you engage with information enables a healthier relationship that generates success and balance in your life Framing: creating frameworks that connect information into meaningful patterns builds deep knowledge, insight, and world-class expertise Filtering: discerning what information serves us, using an intelligent portfolio of information sources, helps surface valuable signals above the pervasive noise Attention: allocating your awareness with intent, including laser-like focus and serendipitous discovery, maximizes productivity and outcomes Synthesis: expanding our unique capacity to integrate a universe of ideas yields powerful insight, the ability to see opportunities first, and better decisions Discover valuable lessons from some of the world’s most extraordinary “information masters”: entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and researchers who are completely at home in a world awash with information, capable of transforming vast mines of data into the solid gold of insight and effective action. Packed with clear guidance, useful exercises, engaging stories, and handy resources, Thriving on Overload will help you build the capabilities that enable you to outperform your peers and prosper as never before in a world defined by excessive information.

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Inspiration Led By PoetryStop cutting yourself short: You must wear your crown at all times. If you were waiting on someone to give it to you, Dear Woman is here to inform you that you can give it to yourself. Every woman is a queen, especially you. Put your crown on and get ready to rule. Take a journey: No one has just one page in their life story. That’s why Dear Woman has everything—quotes, letters, short stories, and poems to educate, motivate, encourage, and provide a little tough love. This open letter is just as multi-faceted and inspirational as you are. Want the best for yourself: Michael E. Read wrote this book because he wants nothing more than for you to be the best woman possible, regardless of circumstance. In Dear Woman, he encourages you to feel the same way. This is more than a self-help book, more than just relationship advice for women—though it does include both of those things. No, this inspirational open letter, full of poetry and wisdom, is life advice just for you. Do it for you: You are an amazing woman. Deep down, you know that. Dear Woman isn’t here to tell you that you need to improve. Rather, it’s here to tell you that you can be your true self—for yourself. This is the life advice you need, because you deserve to thrive for no other reason than the fact that you are a woman. Dear Woman was written in hopes of shedding a little light and love. Let it add some brightness to your life. After reading this book, you will: Love yourself whole-heartedly Know that you deserve the best Be confident regardless of what life throws at you

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Make AI technology the backbone of your organization to compete in the Fintech era The rise of artificial intelligence is nothing short of a technological revolution. AI is poised to completely transform asset management and investment banking, yet its current application within the financial sector is limited and fragmented. Existing AI implementations tend to solve very narrow business issues, rather than serving as a powerful tech framework for next-generation finance. Artificial Intelligence for Asset Management and Investment provides a strategic viewpoint on how AI can be comprehensively integrated within investment finance, leading to evolved performance in compliance, management, customer service, and beyond. No other book on the market takes such a wide-ranging approach to using AI in asset management. With this guide, you’ll be able to build an asset management firm from the ground up—or revolutionize your existing firm—using artificial intelligence as the cornerstone and foundation. This is a must, because AI is quickly growing to be the single competitive factor for financial firms. With better AI comes better results. If you aren’t integrating AI in the strategic DNA of your firm, you’re at risk of being left behind. See how artificial intelligence can form the cornerstone of an integrated, strategic asset management framework Learn how to build AI into your organization to remain competitive in the world of Fintech Go beyond siloed AI implementations to reap even greater benefits Understand and overcome the governance and leadership challenges inherent in AI strategy Until now, it has been prohibitively difficult to map the high-tech world of AI onto complex and ever-changing financial markets. Artificial Intelligence for Asset Management and Investment makes this difficulty a thing of the past, providing you with a professional and accessible framework for setting up and running artificial intelligence in your financial operations.

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Can ballet ever be reconciled with feminist ideals? 'Beautiful, difficult, and compelling.' VANITY FAIR 'Don’t think, dear,' said Balanchine. 'Just do.' For centuries, being a ballerina has been synonymous with being beautiful, thin, obedient and feminine. It is the crucible of womanhood, together with the harassment, physical abuse and eating disorders endemic at top schools. Can we abide this in a post #MeToo world? Weaving together her own time at America’s most elite ballet school with the lives of renowned ballerinas throughout history, Alice Robb interrogates what it means to perform ballet today. She confronts the all-consuming nature of the form: the obsessive and dangerous practices to perfect the body, the embrace of submission and the idealisation of suffering. Yet ballet also gifts its dancers ‘brains in their toes’, a way to fully inhabit their bodies and a sanctuary of control away from the pressures of the outside world. Perhaps it is time to reimagine its liberating potential. *** 'Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the book weaves [Robb’s] early experiences as a dancer with those of her contemporaries, and of famous ballerinas… Don’t Think, Dear is powered by a fundamental love of the art form while exposing the toxic culture that runs through it.' GUARDIAN '[Robb’s] timely book is a critical yet personal examination of classical ballet – a performing art highly dependent on the talent of women – filtered through the lens of 21st-century feminism… she brings a welcome academic rigour to a subject clearly born of deeply held emotions.' THE TIMES 'A study of an obsession remarkable for its nuance and insight… It might be easy… to assume that Don’t Think, Dear is Robb’s litany of grievances about a demanding art form in which she failed to flourish. Rather, it is a book about love, even if that love is ultimately unrequited… fascinating.' TLS

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Edited by Richard Grusin of the Center for 21st Century Studies, this is the first book to name and characterize—and therefore consolidate—a wide array of current critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches to the humanities and social sciences under the concept of the nonhuman turn. Each of these approaches is engaged in decentering the human in favor of a concern for the nonhuman, understood by contributors in a variety of ways—in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, materiality, technologies, and organic and geophysical systems.The nonhuman turn in twenty-first-century studies can be traced to multiple intellectual and theoretical developments from the last decades of the twentieth century: actor-network theory, affect theory, animal studies, assemblage theory, cognitive sciences, new materialism, new media theory, speculative realism, and systems theory. Such varied analytical and theoretical formations obviously diverge and disagree in many of their assumptions, objects, and methodologies. However, they all take up aspects of the nonhuman as critical to the future of twenty-first-century studies in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.Unlike the posthuman turn, the nonhuman turn does not make a claim about teleology or progress in which we begin with the human and see a transformation from the human to the posthuman. Rather, the nonhuman turn insists (paraphrasing Bruno Latour) that “we have never been human,” that the human has always coevolved, coexisted, or collaborated with the nonhuman—and that the human is identified precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman. Contributors: Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins U; Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown U; Mark B. N. Hansen, Duke U; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Brian Massumi, U of Montreal; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Rebekah Sheldon, Indiana U.

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A radical new approach to economic policy that addresses the symptoms and causes of inequality in Western society todayFueled by populism and the frustrations of the disenfranchised, the past few years have witnessed the widespread rejection of the economic and political order that Western countries built up after 1945. Political debates have turned into violent clashes between those who want to “take their country back” and those viewed as defending an elitist, broken, and unpatriotic social contract. There seems to be an increasing polarization of values. The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong.Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far. Rather, technological change and flawed but avoidable domestic policies have eroded the foundations of an economy in which everyone can participate—and would have done so even with a much less globalized economy. Sandbu contends that we have to double down on economic openness while pursuing dramatic reforms involving productivity, regional development, support for small- and medium-sized businesses, and increased worker representation. He discusses how a more active macroeconomic policy, education for all, universal basic income, and better taxation of capital could work together for society’s benefit.Offering real answers, not invective, for facing our most serious political issues, The Economics of Belonging shows how a better economic system can work for all.

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A powerful case that the economic shocks of the 1970s hastened both the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism by forcing governments to impose austerity on their own people.Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaking study, Fritz Bartel argues that the answer to these questions is one and the same. The Cold War began as a competition between capitalist and communist governments to expand their social contracts as they raced to deliver their people a better life. But the economic shocks of the 1970s made promises of better living untenable on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Energy and financial markets placed immense pressure on governments to discipline their social contracts. Rather than make promises, political leaders were forced to break them.In a sweeping narrative, The Triumph of Broken Promises tells the story of how the pressure to break promises spurred the end of the Cold War. In the West, neoliberalism provided Western leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher with the political and ideological tools to shut down industries, impose austerity, and favor the interests of capital over labor. But in Eastern Europe, revolutionaries like Lech Walesa in Poland resisted any attempt at imposing market discipline. Mikhail Gorbachev tried in vain to reform the Soviet system, but the necessary changes ultimately presented too great a challenge.Faced with imposing economic discipline antithetical to communist ideals, Soviet-style governments found their legitimacy irreparably damaged. But in the West, politicians could promote austerity as an antidote to the excesses of ideological opponents, setting the stage for the rise of the neoliberal global economy.

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Whatever life throws at you, learn to deal with it in a healthier and more rational way. When it comes to destructive emotions and unhelpful behaviours, you are your own worst enemy. Rather than people or situations driving you to depression, distraction or doughnuts, all too often it’s your own unhealthy beliefs and thought habits that hold you back and f**k everything up. But, what can you do about it?Highly Experienced REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy) psychotherapist Daniel Fryer can stop these thoughts from messing up your life using a simple but effective model. In The Four Thoughts that F**k You Up … And How to Fix Them he reveals the four unhealthy beliefs that hold you back (Dogmatic Demands, Dramas, I Can’t Copes and Pejorative Put-Downs) and shows you how to replace them with four healthy beliefs (Flexible Preferences, Perspectives, I Can Copes and Unconditional Acceptance) – in as little as six weeks. Yes, you read that right: Just six weeks to a new you.Developed in the mid-fifties by psychotherapist Albert Ellis, REBT is known as the first form of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). Not only is it an effective therapy, but it’s also an excellent philosophy for every day life. With this model, Daniel will help you identify a specific personal challenge and then reframe how you react to it, leading to a calmer, happier you. This approach is especially helpful if you struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, anger or self-doubt, or if you want to improve your relationships with family, colleagues and peers or, simply, yourself.When you free your mind from the thoughts that f**k you up, you’ll never look at anything the same way again. Want to get started?

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DESCRIPTION In today's world, user interfaces have to be highly dynamic, asynchronous, and reliable. To meet these demands, the programming world is undergoing a radical shift towards something called Functional Reactive Programming (FRP), or just Reactive Programming. FRP offers programmers a new way to construct their applications so that they respond directly to change. And developers spend less time tracing obscure problems and more time focusing on what their code should be doing. Grokking Reactive User Interfaces teaches programmers a new way of thinking about programs and data as well as how to build robust and extensible user interfaces. This well-illustrated book presents lots of concrete, real-world problems and then shows how FRP helps to solve them. It begins by looking at examples that get readers into the mindset of data flows and goes on to introduce the concept of a View Model. Readers also learn how FRP enables them to better manage change and introduce new features. The final part of this book focuses on higherlevel application design concerns and strategies as you look at architectural approaches and frameworks that work well with FRP thinking. KEY FEATURES • Provides lots of illustrations and real-life app examples • Teaches a new way of thinking about programs and data • Using FRP in day-to-day programming • Teaches how to handle increasing complexity in UIs AUDIENCE Readers should have a basic understanding of mobile UI development and be familiar with traditional object-oriented programming paradigms. ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY FRP offers a new way to construct applications so that they respond directly to change. FRP is not a typical technology B that obviously and immediately replaces an inferior technology A. It’s more of a way of thinking rather than a mechanical solution.

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'A serious - and seriously readable - book about the deep issues that our shallow age has foolishly tried to dodge' - Douglas Murray 'A crystal-clear analysis of the multiple failures of "me-first" contemporary liberalism' - Giles FraserFor millennia, philosophical, ethical and theological reflection was commonplace among the intellectually curious. But the wisdom that some of the greatest minds across the centuries continue to offer us remains routinely ignored in our modern pursuit of self-fulfilment, economic growth and technological advancement. Sohrab Ahmari, the influential Op-Ed editor at the New York Post, offers a brilliant examination of our postmodern Western culture, and an analysis of the paradox at its heart: that the 'freedoms' we enjoy - to be or do whatever we want, subject only to consent, with everything morally neutral or relative - are at odds with the true freedom that comes from the pursuit of the collective good. Rather than the insatiable drive to satisfy our individual appetites, this collective good involves self-sacrifice and self-control. It requires us to diminish so that others may grow. What responsibility do we have to our parents? Should we think for ourselves? Are sexual ethics purely a private matter? How do we justify our lives? These, and other questions - explored in the company of a surprising range of ancient and contemporary thinkers - reveal how some of the most ancient moral problems are as fresh and relevant to our age as they were to our ancestors.By plumbing the depths of each question, the book underscores the poverty of our contemporary narratives around race, gender, privilege (and much else), exposing them as symptoms of a deep cultural crisis in which we claim a false superiority over the past, and helps us work our way back to tradition, to grasp at the thin, bare threads in our hands, while we still can.

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'A serious - and seriously readable - book about the deep issues that our shallow age has foolishly tried to dodge' - Douglas Murray'A crystal-clear analysis of the multiple failures of "me-first" contemporary liberalism' - Giles FraserFor millennia, philosophical, ethical and theological reflection was commonplace among the intellectually curious. But the wisdom that some of the greatest minds across the centuries continue to offer us remains routinely ignored in our modern pursuit of self-fulfilment, economic growth and technological advancement.Sohrab Ahmari, the influential Op-Ed editor at the New York Post, offers a brilliant examination of our postmodern Western culture, and an analysis of the paradox at its heart: that the 'freedoms' we enjoy - to be or do whatever we want, subject only to consent, with everything morally neutral or relative - are at odds with the true freedom that comes from the pursuit of the collective good.Rather than the insatiable drive to satisfy our individual appetites, this collective good involves self-sacrifice and self-control. It requires us to diminish so that others may grow. What responsibility do we have to our parents? Should we think for ourselves? Are sexual ethics purely a private matter? How do we justify our lives? These, and other questions - explored in the company of a surprising range of ancient and contemporary thinkers - reveal how some of the most ancient moral problems are as fresh and relevant to our age as they were to our ancestors.By plumbing the depths of each question, the book underscores the poverty of our contemporary narratives around race, gender, privilege (and much else), exposing them as symptoms of a deep cultural crisis in which we claim a false superiority over the past, and helps us work our way back to tradition, to grasp at the thin, bare threads in our hands, while we still can.

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'One of British crime's most assured craftsmen . . . perfect entertainment' GuardianOnce again, the plumbing at Tawcester Towers is causing consternation for the Dowager Duchess, so - unusually for her - she gives her blessing for Blotto to take part in the 'Great Road Race' in his beloved Lagonda ... so long as he wins. The first prize of 10,000 pre-War sovereigns will help towards repairing the leaky ancestral home.Blotto elects to take chauffeur Corky Froggett as his spare mechanic, while Twinks is despatched by her mother to the Highlands, to paint water colours and bag herself a wealthy husband. But, on the morning of the race's start, enfeebled by food poisoning, Blotto and Corky are forced to employ an extra mechanic on their team - a slender, blonde and rather attractive young American... named Ronald.So Blotto and his team are pitted against Europe's finest, in a race which takes them through France, across the Alps, to a finish line at the Colosseum in Rome. Among the competitors are Florian Carré-Dagneau, indulged son of the race sponsors, Count Daspoontz from Germany, and the Italian Enrico Parmigiano-Reggiano. All want to win the race, and all want the prize money and all - with the exception of Blotto and his team - will resort to dastardly deception and fiendish sabotage to ensure Blotto's Lagonda is not the first car over the finishing line...The ninth hair-raising adventure featuring the aristocratic brother and sister sleuthing duo!Praise for Simon Brett:'A new Simon Brett is an event for mystery fans' P. D. James'Murder most enjoyable' Colin Dexter'Few crime writers are so enchantingly gifted' Sunday Times'Simon Brett writes stunning detective stories. I would recommend them to anyone' Jilly Cooper

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Wife, widow, mother, survivor, the story of the last queen of Henry VIII. Catherine Parr was enjoying her freedom after her first two arranged marriages when she caught the attention of the elderly Henry VIII. The most reluctant of all Henry's wives, she offered to become his mistress rather than submit herself to the dangers of becoming Henry's queen. This only increased Henry's enthusiasm for the vibrant, intelligent young widow and Catherine was forced to abandon her handsome lover, Thomas Seymour, for the decrepit king. She quickly made her role as queen a success, providing Henry VIII with a domestic tranquillity that he had not known since the early days of his first marriage. For Henry, Catherine was a satisfactory choice but he never stopped considering a new marriage, much to Catherine's terror. Catherine is remembered as the wife who survived but, without her strength of character it could have been very different. It was a relief for Catherine when Henry finally died and she could secretly marry Thomas Seymour. Left with no role in government affairs in her widowhood, she retired to the country, spending time at her manors at Chelsea and Sudeley. It was here that her heart was broken by her discovery of a love affair between her stepdaughter, the future Elizabeth I, and her husband. She died in childbirth accusing her husband of plotting her death. Traditionally portrayed as a matronly and dutiful figure, Elizabeth Norton's new biography shows another side to Catherine. Her life was indeed one of duty but, throughout, she attempted to escape her destiny and find happiness for herself. Ultimately, Catherine was betrayed and her great love affair with Thomas Seymour turned sour.

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Perfect for fans of The Salt Path and The Outrun, this book is a life-affirming exploration of wild landscapes, what it means to be different and, above all, how we can all learn to make peace within our own unquiet minds.'A windswept tale, beautifully told' Raynor Winn - The Salt Path 'A manifesto for the value of difficult people. I loved it' Amy Liptrot - The OutrunIn August 2015, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. She wanted to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating, and why the world felt full of inundation and expectations she can't meet. Setting her feet down on the rugged and difficult path by the sea, the answer begins to unfold. It's a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparks a realisation that she has Asperger's Syndrome. The Electricity of Every Living Thing tells the story of the year in which Katherine comes to terms with her diagnosis. It leads to a re-evaluation of her life so far - a kinder one, which finally allows her to be different rather than simply awkward, arrogant or unfeeling. The physical and psychological journeys become inextricably entwined, and as Katherine finds her way across the untameable coast, she also finds the way to herself.What readers are saying about The Electricity of Every Living Thing:'This book showed a realistic view of how autism feels to some people, and it's explained so well''The astonishing sensitivity and awareness in her writing, both about the beautiful landscapes and nature around on her walks, and in relation to her family, friends and self put paid to many outdated myths about what it is like to be autistic''Compelling and transformative'

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Illuminates the unwritten ideas that underlie our deepest debates about the written Constitution. The late Justice Scalia relished pointing to departures from the written text of the Constitution as a departure from Constitutional law itself, but in fact his own jurisprudence relied on unwritten ideas. Given that Scalia's "textualist" approach to constitutional interpretation has become even more prominent in recent years with the elevation of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett--all jurists in the mold of Scalia--to the Supreme Court, it is crucial that the public understands that these textualists all rely on unwritten ideas when they interpret the Constitution. Indeed, our most intense debates about America's written Constitution are not about constitutional text, but about the unwritten ideas and understandings that guide our reading of the text. In The (Un)Written Constitution, George Thomas makes these ideas visible by turning to the practices of Supreme Court justices and political actors in interpreting the Constitution over more than two centuries. From founding debates about freedom of speech and religion to contemporary arguments about judicial review, the separation of powers, same--sex marriage, and partisan gerrymandering, he highlights the too--often unacknowledged ideas that animate our debates about the written Constitution. Contrary to the self-identified textualists, Thomas argues, these recurrent debates are not about whether to follow the text. Rather, they are disputes about what fidelity to the text requires. Illuminating how moving beyond the text is an inescapable feature of interpreting the written Constitution, this concise primer on constitutional interpretation forces us to consider the text--and the unstated principles that lie beneath it-in a new light.

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The continuities between human and animal minds are increasingly well understood. This has led many people to make claims about consciousness in animals, which has often been taken to be crucial for their moral standing. Peter Carruthers argues compellingly that there is no fact of the matter to be discovered, and that the question of animal consciousness is of no scientific or ethical significance. Carruthers offers solutions to two related puzzles. The first is about the place of phenomenal--or felt--consciousness in the natural order. Consciousness is shown to comprise fine-grained nonconceptual contents that are "globally broadcast" to a wide range of cognitive systems for reasoning, decision-making, and verbal report. Moreover, the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness results merely from the distinctive first-person concepts we can use when thinking about such contents. No special non-physical properties--no so-called "qualia"--are involved. The second puzzle concerns the distribution of phenomenal consciousness across the animal kingdom. Carruthers shows that there is actually no fact of the matter, because thoughts about consciousness in other creatures require us to project our first-person concepts into their minds; but such projections fail to result in determinate truth-conditions when those minds are significantly unlike our own. This upshot, however, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for science, because no additional property enters the world as one transitions from creatures that are definitely incapable of phenomenal consciousness to those that definitely are (namely, ourselves). And on many views it doesn't matter for ethics, either, since concern for animals can be grounded in sympathy, which requires only third-person understanding of the desires and emotions of the animals in question, rather than in first-person empathy.

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Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs. Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 US presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget regarding Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.

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2015 Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award presented by the Stonewall Books Awards of the American Library Association Muhsin is one of the organizers of Al-Fitra Foundation, a South African support group for lesbian, transgender, and gay Muslims. Islam and homosexuality are seen by many as deeply incompatible. This, according to Muhsin, is why he had to act. “I realized that I’m not alone—these people are going through the very same things that I’m going through. But I’ve managed, because of my in-depth relationship with God, to reconcile the two. I was completely comfortable saying to the world that I’m gay and I’m Muslim. I wanted to help other people to get there. So that’s how I became an activist.” Living Out Islam documents the rarely-heard voices of Muslims who live in secular democratic countries and who are gay, lesbian, and transgender. It weaves original interviews with Muslim activists into a compelling composite picture which showcases the importance of the solidarity of support groups in the effort to change social relationships and achieve justice. This nascent movement is not about being “out” as opposed to being “in the closet.” Rather, as the voices of these activists demonstrate, it is about finding ways to live out Islam with dignity and integrity, reconciling their sexuality and gender with their faith and reclaiming Islam as their own.

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2015 Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award presented by the Stonewall Books Awards of the American Library Association Muhsin is one of the organizers of Al-Fitra Foundation, a South African support group for lesbian, transgender, and gay Muslims. Islam and homosexuality are seen by many as deeply incompatible. This, according to Muhsin, is why he had to act. “I realized that I’m not alone—these people are going through the very same things that I’m going through. But I’ve managed, because of my in-depth relationship with God, to reconcile the two. I was completely comfortable saying to the world that I’m gay and I’m Muslim. I wanted to help other people to get there. So that’s how I became an activist.” Living Out Islam documents the rarely-heard voices of Muslims who live in secular democratic countries and who are gay, lesbian, and transgender. It weaves original interviews with Muslim activists into a compelling composite picture which showcases the importance of the solidarity of support groups in the effort to change social relationships and achieve justice. This nascent movement is not about being “out” as opposed to being “in the closet.” Rather, as the voices of these activists demonstrate, it is about finding ways to live out Islam with dignity and integrity, reconciling their sexuality and gender with their faith and reclaiming Islam as their own.

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Contained herein are 25 articles (20 in English, 5 in Hebrew) that, like the academic oeuvre of volume's honoree, span a broad array of topics within the fields of Hebraica, Judaica, and Biblica. The specific categories represented and the contributions they contain are: biography (Joel L. Kraemer presents a portrait of the honoree; Walter E. Kaegi shares personal reminiscences of Carl Herman Kraeling); text editions and translations, with analysis (Haggai Ben-Shammai analyzes and publishes a partial editio princeps of one of the early Judeao-Arabic endeavors to achieve a rapprochement between biblical and Graeco-Arab philosophy; Paul B. Fenton analyzes and publishes the editio princeps of a newly identified esoteric epistle from the hand of David II Maimondies; Mordechai A. Friedman analyzes and offers some new insights on four Geniza letters concerning the transfer of money to the well-known litterateur Judah ha-Levi; Israel M. Sandman analyzes and presents a critical edition of four fragments from Abraham Bar Hayya's Book of Intercalation that represent his harmonization of science and biblical exegesis; Michael G. Wechsler presents an editio princeps of 10 newly identified fragments of Saadia Gaon's commentary on the book of Esther as well an analysis and translation of those fragments, accompanied by an inventory of all known fragments of Saadia's commentary on that book); grammar/lexicography (Joshua Blau surveys certain vocables in Classical Arabic that sometimes have a different meaning in Judaeo-Arabic), exegesis, philosophy, theology, and polemics (Elinoar Bareket surveys the factors underlying the tendency of medieval Jewish writers to identify the names of biblical people and places with contemporary equivalents; Rachel Elior examines the Jewish realm of memory surrounding the Day of Atonement; Nahem Ilan analyzes Saadia Gaon's interpretation of Proverbs 30:10-17 with a view to his anti-Karaite polemical tendency, providing as well a structural outline of Saadia's introduction to Proverbs; Eve Krakowski considers the Karaite view of the history of the biblical text and the relevance of this view to their own collective self-conception, including a critical reassessment of the view that the Karaites were influenced by certain Dead Sea Scroll texts; Abraham Lipshitz critically assesses the notion that Abraham ibn Ezra held to a Philonic view of an infinitely durative rather than completed act of creation; Meira Polliack analyzes the relationship between Yefet b. Eli and Daniel al-Q?mis? in their exegetical approaches to biblical prophecy); history of modern scholarship (María Angeles Gallego presents an overview of the stages of modern European research -- beginning in the 18th century -- on medieval Judaeo-Arabic, with specific emphasis on Iberian Spanish scholarship), Jewish socio-cultural history (Moshe Gil provides a glimpse into the state of food commerce in the Geniza community from the evidence of merchants' letters; Joshua Holo considers the evidence for Gershom b. Judah's Italian extraction and its relevance for understanding the origin of Ashkenazic Jewish culture; Benjamin Z. Kedar evaluates the evidence for the timing of the relocation of the Tiberian Yeshiva first to Ramla and then to Jerusalem; Norman A. Stillman provides a comparative survey of the Islamic and Jewish perspectives on corporal modesty); textual criticism (Daniel J. Lasker surveys and assesses the history of a specific textual variation in Judah ha-Levi's Book of the Kuzari); codicological-textual history (Paul Saenger analyzes the relationship between chapter divisions of the Pentateuch in Christian -- especially Latin -- Bibles and those in Jewish tradition); Dead Sea Scrolls (Anthony J. Tomasino critically evaluates the formation and support data for the current consensus regarding the messianic nature of 4Q246; Michael O. Wise analyzes the content and dating of the manuscripts from Murabba'at and considers their contribution to our knowledge of various personalities both living during and involved in the First and Second Jewish Revolts); and historiography (Isaac Kalimi assesses the historiographical method of the writer of the book of Chronicles in light of both inner-canonical and extra-biblical considerations). Also included is a comprehensive bibliography of the honoree's works as well as discrete indexes of manuscripts, biblical references, classical and medieval works, and general items.

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The media today is filled with powerful men in trouble for their sexual behaviors, and invariably, they are diagnosed as sexual addicts. Since Adam first hid his nakedness from God and pointed the finger at Eve, men have struggled to take responsibility for their sexuality. Over the past three decades, these behaviors have come to reflect not a moral failing, but instead, evidence of an ill-defined disease, that of “sexual addiction.” The concept of sexual addiction is a controversial one because it is based on questionable research and subjective moral judgments. Labeling these behaviors as sex addiction asserts a false, dangerous myth that undermines personal responsibility. Not only does this epidemic of sex addiction excuses mislabel male sexuality as dangerous and unhealthy, but it destroys our ability to hold people accountable for their behaviors. By labeling males as weak and powerless before the onslaught and churning tide of lust, we take away those things that men should live up to: personal responsibility; integrity; self-control; independence; accountability; self-motivation; honor; respect for self and others. In The Myth of Sex Addiction, Ley presents the history and questionable science underlying this alleged disorder, exposing the moral and cultural judgments that are embedded in the concept, as well as the significant economic factors that drive the label of sex addiction in clinical practice and the popular media. Ley outlines how this label represents a social attack on many forms of sexuality—male sexuality in particular—as well as presenting the difficulty this label creates in holding people responsible for their sexual behaviors. Going against current assumptions and trends, Ley debunks the idea that sex addiction is real, or at least that it is as widespread as it appears to be. Instead, he suggests that the high-sex behaviors of some men is something that has been tacitly condoned for countless years and is only now labeled as a disorder as men are being held accountable to the same rules that have been applied to women. He suggests we should expect men to take responsibility for sexual choices, rather than supporting an approach that labels male sexual desire as a "demonic force" that must be resisted, feared, treated, and exorcised.

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Farmers face ever-changing production systems, markets and regulations. This means they must constantly review their long-term plans to ensure continuing economic and environmental sustainability. The challenge for the future is for farmers to assess opportunities strategically as they appear and overcome the temptation of just meeting the demand of day-to-day tactical decision-making. This long-term view is the world of strategic planning. Farm owners and managers must constantly review the future and systematically assess likely future scenarios in order to make adjustments to suit prevailing needs. Any manager or owner thinking about purchasing a new farm business either to expand, or replace, an existing property must conduct similar assessments. This book addresses these issues and provides methods and procedures that enable the development and assessment of future strategies. This book explains how to be a "strategic farmer" in an unusual way. Rather like a novel, it tells the story of a newly reconstituted farming couple who are searching for a new property on which to carry out their primary production plans following their departure from a family farm which was being assigned to the next generation. In a previous book in this series (Farm Business Management: The Decisive Farmer), this same couple were involved in a team approach to improving decision-making. This book covers the couple's efforts to find a suitable property meeting all their strategic needs having analysed the expected future scenarios. In this process the couple interacts with many of their farmer friends and advisors who also featured as characters in the previous books. Each chapter is devoted to one of the common issues facing the modern farmer when trying to create a long-term strategic plan. To assess each issue, tried-and-tested strategic planning procedures are demonstrated with full explanations of their logic and methods. Each topic is fully referenced to provide further reading and discussion. Lecture guides, case studies and exercises are also provided online on the CABI Digital Library. This book is a valuable resource for all farmers and students of farm management and agribusiness.

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Deliver increased value by embedding quality into internal audit activities Internal Audit Quality: Developing a Quality Assurance and Improvement Program is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to better practice internal auditing. Written by a global expert in audit quality, this guide is the first to provide complete coverage of the elements that comprise an effective internal audit quality assurance and improvement program. Readers will find practical solutions for monitoring and measuring internal audit performance drawn from The IIA's International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, and complemented by advice and case studies from leading audit practitioners from five different continents. Major corporate and financial collapses over the past decade have challenged the value of internal audit. With an increased focus on internal audit's role in good governance, management is increasingly demanding that internal audit provides assurance of the quality of its own activities. The IIA standards provide a framework for audit quality in the form of mandatory guidance . Recent research indicates that the majority of internal audit functions do not fully comply with the standards and, as a result, are not servicing the needs of their organizations as well as they might. Internal Audit Quality offers a roadmap to internal audit quality, providing readers the guidance they need to: Embed quality into all elements of internal audit from strategic and operational planning down to day-to-day tasks Create well-defined internal audit programs and procedures Independently self-assess internal audit quality and performance Conform with the IIA standards and better practice Provide assurance over internal audit efficiency and effectiveness Deliver value by meeting stakeholder expectations As a key component of good governance, internal audit is on the rise. The days of retrospective, compliance-focused auditing is a thing of the past. Organizations expect more of internal audit, and many internal audit activities are accepting the challenge. Rather than relying on audit supervision and external assessments, modern auditors are embedding quality into audit activities to create effective programs. For the auditor looking to distinguish themselves as leading edge, Internal Audit Quality provides the guidance that enables the right work, at the right time, in the right way.

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This pioneering new study of the Black megachurch phenomenon brings nuance and depth to the question, Are Black megachurches more focused on prosperity than on people? Black megachurches and their pastors are often accused of failing to use their considerable resources to help the poor; focusing on prosperity theology rather than on social justice; requiring excessive monetary and time commitments of members; and pilfering church coffers for the their personal use. The debate rages on about whether these congregations are doing all they can to address specific challenges facing African American communities. Live Long and Prosper is a refreshing, innovative study that reaches beyond superficial understandings of the Black megachurch phenomenon in a piercing interrogation of how powerful megachurches address (or fail to address) two social crises in the Black community: HIV/AIDS and poverty. Live Long and Prosper offers an intriguing examination of sixteen representative Black megachurches and explores some of their motivations and subsequent programmatic efforts in light of prosperity or “health and wealth” theology. Professor Barnes makes the case that the Black megachurch is a complex, contemporary model of the historic Black church in response to globalism, consumerism, secularism, religious syncretism, and the realities of race. She contends that many of these megachurches hold unique characteristics of adaptability and innovation that position them well to tackle difficult social issues. Prosperity theology emphasizes two characteristics—physical health and economic wealth—as examples of godly living and faith. This book considers whether and how efforts to address HIV/AIDS (a “health” issue) and poverty (a “wealth” issue) are influenced by church and clergy profiles; theology, in general; and prosperity theology, in particular. Frame analysis informs this mixed-methodological study to compare and contrast experiences, theological beliefs, pastoral profiles, and programs. Live Long and Prosper is a must-read for general readers, academics, and students alike—indeed, anyone interested in the contemporary Black megachurch’s response to social problems and the link between theology and social action. It is at once a fascinating, readable narrative and a rich piece of scholarship complete with extensively documented endnotes, statistics, informative charts and tables, and an exhaustive bibliography.

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Although this book derives its inspiration and model from Descartes' Meditations and Husserl's Cartesian Meditations, it attempts to overcome Cartesianism conceived as individualistic, reflective, apodictic, presuppositionless self-recovery. Instead, contends Professor Marsh, the isolated, individualistic, brougeois ego gives way to the social, communal, post-bourgeois self: wordly, linguistic, historical, practical, and critical. The book attempts to overcome Cartesianism both in content and in form. In content, Marsh argues, the social self replaces the isolated ego; this he attempts to establish through a series of chapters progressively expanding their scope and social context. Beginning with an emphasis on individual perception, thought, and freedom, and moving through reflections on knowledge of the other, practical engagments with the other, and hermeneutics, he concludes with critiques of the psychological and social unconscious. The result is not a rejection of individual perception, reflection, and freedom, but their sublation within community, tradition, and history. For Marsh the authentic individual is the social individual, the individual-in-community. This book not only inscribes a progressively expanding circle, but also moves in a circle. It begins with a reflection on the contemporary experience of alientation and history of philosophy, ascends in the next several chapters to considering the perceptual, cognitive, free, social self, and then descends in the last chapter to further discussion of this historical starting points in this practical and philosophical aspects. Dialectical phenomenology as method bends back on itself to reflect in a manner both critical and redemptive on its own starting point and genesis. Post-Cartesian Meditations obviously situates itself withing the modernism/post-modernism debate being carried on by Ricoeur and Derrida, Habermas and Foucault, Searle and Rorty, Bernstein and Caputo. Like post-modernism, the book is critical of naive Cartesian presence, the excesses of technological rationality, the pathology of modernity, the irrationality of bourgeois society. Unlike post-modernism, however, the book argues for a socially mediated self, the legitimacy of technology in contrast to technocracy, the critical redemption of modernity, a dialectical rather than a rejectionistic overcoming of capitalism. Rich in insight, suggestion, and argumentation, this book has much to offer students and instructors of philosophy generally, but will be particularly useful to those interested in phenomenological developments, or a Marxist critique of capitalism as a way of life influencing modern philosophical thought.

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This intellectual history of Standard Swahili explores the long-term, intertwined processes of standard making and community creation in the historical, political, and cultural contexts of East Africa and beyond. Morgan J. Robinson argues that the portability of Standard Swahili has contributed to its wide use not only across the African continent but also around the globe. The book pivots on the question of whether standardized versions of African languages have empowered or oppressed. It is inevitable that the selection and promotion of one version of a language as standard—a move typically associated with missionaries and colonial regimes—negatively affected those whose language was suddenly deemed nonstandard. Before reconciling the consequences of codification, however, Robinson argues that one must seek to understand the process itself. The history of Standard Swahili demonstrates how events, people, and ideas move rapidly and sometimes surprisingly between linguistic, political, social, or temporal categories. Robinson conducted her research in Zanzibar, mainland Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Organized around periods of conversation, translation, and codification from 1864 to 1964, the book focuses on the intellectual history of Swahili’s standardization. The story begins in mid-nineteenth-century Zanzibar, home of missionaries, formerly enslaved students, and a printing press, and concludes on the mainland in the mid-twentieth century, as nationalist movements added Standard Swahili to their anticolonial and nation-building toolkits. This outcome was not predetermined, however, and Robinson offers a new context for the strong emotions that the language continues to evoke in East Africa. The history of Standard Swahili is not one story, but rather the connected stories of multiple communities contributing to the production of knowledge. The book reflects this multiplicity by including the narratives of colonial officials and anticolonial nationalists; East African clerks, students, newspaper editors, editorialists, and their readers; and library patrons, academic linguists, formerly enslaved children, and missionary preachers. The book reconstructs these stories on their own terms and reintegrates them into a new composite that demonstrates the central place of language in the history of East Africa and beyond.

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A gripping explanation of the biases that lead to the blaming of pregnant women and mothers. Are mothers truly a danger to their children’s health? In 2004, a mentally disabled young woman in Utah was charged by prosecutors with murder after she declined to have a Caesarian section and subsequently delivered a stillborn child. In 2010, a pregnant woman who attempted suicide when the baby’s father abandoned her was charged with murder and attempted feticide after the daughter she delivered prematurely died. These are just two of the many cases that portray mothers as the major source of health risk for their children. The American legal system is deeply shaped by unconscious risk perception that distorts core legal principles to punish mothers who “fail to protect” their children. In Blaming Mothers, Professor Fentiman explores how mothers became legal targets. She explains the psychological processes we use to confront tragic events and the unconscious race, class, and gender biases that affect our perceptions and influence the decisions of prosecutors, judges, and jurors. Fentiman examines legal actions taken against pregnant women in the name of “fetal protection” including court ordered C-sections and maintaining brain-dead pregnant women on life support to gestate a fetus, as well as charges brought against mothers who fail to protect their children from an abusive male partner. She considers the claims of physicians and policymakers that refusing to breastfeed is risky to children’s health. And she explores the legal treatment of lead-poisoned children, in which landlords and lead paint manufacturers are not held responsible for exposing children to high levels of lead, while mothers are blamed for their children’s injuries. Blaming Mothers is a powerful call to reexamine who - and what - we consider risky to children’s health. Fentiman offers an important framework for evaluating childhood risk that, rather than scapegoating mothers, provides concrete solutions that promote the health of all of America’s children. Read a piece by Linda Fentiman on shaming and blaming mothers under the law on The Gender Policy Report.

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More than merely a writing text, The Imaginative Argument offers writers instruction on how to use their imaginations to improve their prose. Cioffi shows writers how they can enliven argument--the organizing rubric of all persuasive writing--by drawing on emotion, soul, and creativity, the wellsprings of imagination. While Cioffi suggests that argument should become a natural habit of mind for writers, he goes still further, inspiring writers to adopt as their gold standard the imaginative argument: the surprising yet strikingly apt insight that organizes disparate noises into music, that makes out of chaos, chaos theory. Rather than offering a model of writing based on established formulas or templates, Cioffi urges writers to envision argument as an active parsing of experience that imaginatively reinvents the world. Cioffi's manifesto asserts that successful argument also requires writers to explore their own deep-seated feelings, to exploit the fuzzy but often profoundly insightful logic of the imagination. But expression is not all that matters: Cioffi's work anchors itself in the actual. Drawing on Louis Kahn's notion that a good architect never has all the answers to a building's problems before its physical construction, Cioffi maintains that in argument, too, answers must be forged along the way, as the writer inventively deals with emergent problems and unforeseen complexities. Indeed, discovery, imagination, and invention suffuse all stages of the process. The Imaginative Argument offers all the intellectual kindling that writers need to ignite this creativity, from insights on developing ideas to avoiding bland assertions or logical leaps. It cites exemplary nonfiction prose stylists, including William James, Ruth Benedict, and Erving Goffman, as well as literary sources to demonstrate the dynamic of persuasive writing. Provocative and lively, it will prove not only essential reading but also inspiration for all those interested in arguing more imaginatively more successfully. This edition features new chapters that cover the revision process in greater depth, as well as the particular challenges of researching and writing in the digital age, such as working with technology and avoiding plagiarism. The book also includes new sample essays, an appendix to help instructors use the book in the classroom, and much more.

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Repentant Monk: Illusion and Disillusion in the Art of Chen Hongshou is the first U.S. exhibition focusing solely on Chen Hongshou (1599-1652), a major figure in Chinese painting. Chen has long been regarded as one of the most visually exciting artists of his time as evidenced in this exhibition by a careful selection of his best extant work including figure, landscape, and bird and flower paintings drawn from collections world-wide. Chen's iconic manner of painting figures in the styles of ancient masters lends an aura of antiquity to his work which is equally charged by distinct expressions of irony, humor, and pathos. In his landscape paintings we recognize his vast knowledge of past traditions while in his bird and flower paintings we see a remarkable freshness and modernity that has tremendous popular appeal. Repentant Monk addresses the need for a greater historical understanding of this artist's work and breadth of paintings made during the transitional period of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties (early to mid- seventeenth century). The title refers to the sobriquet that Chen adopted in 1646, and goes to the heart of the exhibition content. Chen used "Repentant Monk" (Hui Seng) in seals and signature for a short period of time but his paintings reflected his personal state of mind throughout his later period. His withdrawal from society and adoption of this name make public both his disappointment with the Ming as well as his own regret at surviving and carrying on into the new Qing dynasty rather than following other loyalists to death by their own hands. The exhibition will include work from major museums worldwide and includes strategic loans such as Elegant Gathering (1646-47) from the Shanghai Museum, Scenes from the Life of Tao Yuanming (1650) from the Honolulu Museum of Art, and The Mountain of Five Cataracts (1624) from The Cleveland Museum of Art. The catalogue includes an introduction by exhibition curator Julia M. White with essays by Tamara Bentley, Shi-yee Liu, Richard Vinograd, Hiromitsu Kobayashi, and Patricia Berger. Transcriptions and translations are compiled by Julia Jaw. Published in association with The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Exhibition dates: October 25, 2017-January 28, 2018

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"Sony vs. Samsung is business history at its best! It explores the divergent fortunes of these two electronics giants in the last decade and identifies the true reasons behind Sony's decline and Samsung's rise. Contrary to popular belief, Chang shows that success (or failure) does not simply arise from different strategies. Rather, it emerges from major decisions that are deeply rooted in the companies' organizational processes and their executives' political behavior. This book is a must-read for any senior executive." —Constantinos Markides, Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership and Chairman, Strategy Department, London Business School "Sea-Jin Chang has produced that rarity in a business book--one that is as valuable to practicing managers as it is insightful to academic researchers. In this fascinating comparison of two modern global giants, he applies his high resolution research microscope to their changing fortunes by dissecting their contrasting strategies, and providing interesting insights into their divergent organizational processes and management practices. This is a very valuable contribution to the international business literature. It will end up in as many corporate boardrooms as faculty seminars." —Christopher A. Bartlett, Thomas D. Casserly Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School "Sea-Jin Chang has written a fascinating comparison of Sony and Samsung that will be valuable to anyone interested in strategy, organizations or international business. The interwoven and very detailed case studies of two very different companies in overlapping industries illuminate problems such as adaptation to technological change (analog to digital), organizational flexibility and globalization. His attempt to analyze both strategic development and implementation is successful and very useful. Both academics and practitioners will learn a lot from this book." —Stephen J. Kobrin, William Wurster Professor of Multinational Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania "Refreshingly original and entertaining, this book analyzes major strategic decisions of Samsung and Sony and highlights organizational processes and top management leadership that have shaped their performances. This is a must-read for all executives who want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Asian competitors. It also provides penetrating insights to other Asian companies with global ambitions." —Myoung Woo Lee, President and CEO, iriver

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Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal--that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It's because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing--it's just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform--battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by--our public school system.

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The 5th and final volume in a masterwork for students of herbalism and practicing herbalists Herbal Formularies for Health Professionals is a five-volume set that serves as a comprehensive, practical reference manual for herbalists, physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals. Dr. Jill Stansbury draws on her decades of clinical experience and her extensive research to provide an unparalleled range of herbal formulas. Organized by body system, each volume includes hundreds of formulas to treat common health conditions, as well as formulas that address specific energetic or symptomatic presentations. For each formula, Dr. Stansbury briefly explains how the selected herbs address the specific condition. Sidebars and user-friendly lists help readers quickly choose which herbs are best for specific presentations and detail traditional uses of both Western and traditional Asian formulas and herbs that are readily available in the United States. Volume 5 focuses on autoimmune and allergic conditions including allergic rhinitis (hay fever), asthma, hives, and food sensitivities. A chapter on ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and throat includes herbal therapies for eye infections, glaucoma, and other eye conditions; sinus infections, colds, and sore throats; and tooth decay and oral infections. A chapter on the musculoskeletal system covers common conditions such as sore muscles and bruising as well as chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia, arthritis, and osteoporosis. Each chapter includes a materia medica section that describes individual herbs with tips on their properties, modes of action, and the specific symptoms each plant best addresses. These formularies are also a tutorial for budding herbalists on the sophisticated art of fine-tuning an herbal formula for the constitution and overall health condition of an individual patient, rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all treatment for a basic diagnosis. The text aims to teach by example, helping clinicians develop their own intuition and ability to create effective herbal formulas. Previous volumes include Digestion and Elimination (Volume 1), Circulation and Respiration (Volume 2), Endocrinology (Volume 3), and Neurology, Psychiatry, and Pain Management (Volume 4).

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A dizzying array of meditation practices have emerged in the long and culturally diverse history of Buddhism. Yet if you are seeking out meditation today in North America and Europe-and, increasingly, in the rest of the world as well-you will likely encounter one particular type, often under the label "mindfulness." You will find it taught in Zen monasteries, Insight Meditation centers, health clubs, colleges, psychologists' offices, corporations, liberal Christian churches, prisons, and the US military. Countless articles in popular magazines promote its benefits, often depicting it as a panacea for problems as wide-ranging as anxiety, depression, heart disease, eating disorders, and psoriasis. There are books on mindfulness and meditation not only by Buddhist monks but also by medical doctors, psychologists, computer engineers, business consultants, and a US congressman. Meditation teachers will sometimes say that this is the same meditative practice that the Buddha taught over 2500 years ago, and which has been transmitted virtually unchanged down through the centuries to us today. The "cultural baggage" surrounding the practices has changed, but the essence is intact, and what it does for people, whether you're a Buddhist monk or a corporate executive, remains the same. Rethinking Meditation shows that the standard articulation of mindfulness did not come down to us unchanged from the time of the Buddha. Rather, it is a distillation of particular strands of Buddhist thought that have combined with western ideas to create a unique practice tailored to modern life. Rethinking Meditation argues that the relationship between meditative practices and cultural context is much more crucial than is suggested in typical contemporary articulations. David McMahan shows that most of the vast array of meditative practices that have emerged in Buddhist traditions have been filtered out of typical contemporary practice, allowing only a trickle of meditative practices through. This book presents a genealogy of some specific elements in classical Buddhist traditions that have fed into contemporary meditative practices-those that have made it through the filters of modernity. It asks: out of the many forms of Buddhist meditation that have developed over two-and-a-half millennia, how and why were particular practices selected to coalesce into the Standard Version today?

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¡Edición en español y rimada del clásico de Dr. Seuss en el que se nos presenta por primera vez a Horton el elefante! Querido durante generaciones por su bondad y lealtad, Horton el elefante es uno de los personajes más icónicos y respetados de la literatura infantil. En este libro, en el que Horton pronuncia las palabras «Va en serio lo que dije, y lo que dije así lo siento… Un elefante es leal, ¡y es leal al cien por ciento!», vemos recompensada su integridad con una sorpresa final que encantará a los lectores de todas las edades. Las ediciones rimadas en español de los clásicos de Dr. Seuss, publicadas por Random House, brindan la maravillosa oportunidad de disfrutar de sus historias a más de treinta y ocho millones de personas hispanohablantes en Estados Unidos. Los lectores podrán divertirse con las ediciones en español de The Cat in the Hat (El Gato Ensombrerado); Green Eggs and Ham (Huevos verdes con jamón); One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (Un pez, dos peces, pez rojo, pez azul); The Lorax (El Lórax); Oh, the Places You'll Go! (¡Oh, cuán lejos llegarás!); How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (¡Cómo el Grinch robó la Navidad!); The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (El Gato Ensombrerado ha regresado); I Can Read Wwth My Eyes Shut! (¡Yo puedo leer con los ojos cerrados!); Horton Hears a Who! (¡Horton escucha a Quién!); The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (Los 500 sombreros de Bartolomé Cubbins); There's a Wocket in My Pocket! (¡Hay un Molillo en mi Bolsillo!); Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? (¡El Sr. Brown hace Muuu! ¿Podrías hacerlo tú?); Ten Apples Up on Top! (¡Diez manzanas en la cabeza!); What Pet Should I Get? (¿Cómo podré decidir qué mascota elegir?); Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (Yoruga la Tortuga y otros cuentos); Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! (¡Oh, piensa en todo lo que puedes pensar!); The Foot Book! (¡Cuántos, cuántos pies!); Happy Birthday to You! (¡Feliz cumpleaños!); Come Over to My House (Ven a mi casa); Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book (¡Dormilones!); Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog? (¿Preferirías ser una rana?); Horton Hatches the Egg (Horton cuida un nido); y Dr. Seuss's 1 2 3 (Cuenta con Dr. Seuss 1 2 3). A rhymed, Spanish edition of the Dr. Seuss classic that first introduced Horton the Elephant! Beloved by generations for his kindness and loyalty, Horton the Elephant is one of the most iconic and honorable characters in children's literature. In this book—the comic classic in which Horton utters the line "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. . . . An elephant's faithful, one hundred per cent!"—we see his integrity rewarded with a surprise ending that will delight readers of all ages.

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Athenian governance and culture are reconstructed from the Bronze Age into the historical era based on traditions, archaeological contexts and remains, foremost the formal commensal and libation krater. Following Mycenaean immigration from the Peloponnesos during the transitional years, changes in governance are observable. Groups under aristocratic leadership, local and immigrant, aspired to coexist under a surprisingly formal set of stipulations that should be recognized as Athens’ first constitution. Synoikismos did not refer to a political union of Attica, sometimes attributed to Theseus, but to a union of aristocratic houses (oikoi). The union replaced absolute monarchy with a new oligarchical-monarchy system, each king selected from one of the favoured aristocratic houses and ruling for life without inheritance. The system prevailed through the late eleventh to the mid-eighth c. and is corroborated by Athenian traditions cross-referenced with archaeological data from the burial grounds, and a formerly discredited list of Athenian Iron Age kings. Some burial grounds have been tentatively identified as those of the Melanthids, Alcmeonids, Philaids and Medontids, who settled the outskirts of Athens along with other migrant groups following the decline of the elite in the Peloponnesos. While the Melanthids left during the 11th c. Ionian Migration other aristocratic houses remained and contributed to the evolution of the historical era polis of Athens. One noble family, the Alcmeonids preserved their cemetery into the Archaic period in a burial record of 600 years’ duration. Incorporated into this work is a monograph on the Athenian formal krater used by these primarily Neleid aristocratic houses in assembly and ritual. Some Homeric practices parallel those found in Athens, so the Ionic poets may have documented customs that had existed on the Mainland and were transferred to Ionia during the Ionian Migration. The demise of both the constitution and the standard, ancestral krater in Athens following a mid-eighth c. watershed is testimony to an interval of political change, as noted by Ian Morris, before the systematized establishment of annual archonship in the following century. The support this research has given to the validity of the King List has resulted in a proposed new chronology, with an earlier onset for the Geometric period at 922 BC, rather than the currently accepted 900 BC. The relative chronology of Coldstream based on style is generally accepted here, but some intermediate stages are revised based on perceptible break data, such as the onset of a new kingship, a reported war, or the demise of a governance system.

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Experience more joy and meaning each day—and have greater resilience when times get tough What if you could be happier, right now, without radically changing your life? As nationally recognized happiness expert Nataly Kogan teaches, happiness is not a nice feeling or a frivolous extra. It’s a critical, non-negotiable ingredient for living a fulfilling, meaningful, and healthy life—and it’s a skill that we can all learn and improve through practice. In Happier Now, Nataly shares an illuminating, inspiring, and science-based guide to help you build your happier skills and live with more joy, starting now. Nataly’s own journey from Russian refugee to successful investor, tech executive, and founder and CEO of Happier taught her an important lesson: no matter how much you accomplish, how much you live the "right" way, or even how much gratitude you practice, life won’t always be smooth. "We experience genuine and lasting happiness when we stop trying to turn the negative into the positive," Nataly writes, "and when we embrace the full range of our human emotions with compassion and strength." Throughout this engaging guide, Nataly describes how she went from being cynical and resistant to the ideas behind self-improvement and spirituality, to studying everything she could on the science of happiness, to completely shifting her mind-set. You’ll learn five core practices for building your happier skills—acceptance, gratitude, intentional kindness, knowing your bigger why, and self-care—along with the scientific research that supports each one. Highlights include: Daily Anchors—Cultivate a custom set of simple daily practices, fine-tuned for your emotional health needs • Bring more joy and meaning into your life as it is—without needing to make difficult or time-consuming changes • How happiness leads to many of the things you want in life, rather than results from them • Learn an effective five-minute happier workout for whenever you need a boost • Strengthen your "emotional immune system" so you can be okay when times are tough—and bounce back to happy sooner • Specific instructions for tools and techniques that work—based on what’s actually happening in your brain • Effective exercises, journaling prompts, and key insights for developing each core happier skill As Nataly says: "It’s time to stop saying `I’ll be happy when . . .’ and start saying `I’m happier now because . . .’"

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PUBLISHED BY EUREKA PRESS, TOKYO, AND DISTRIBUTED BY ROUTLEDGE OUTSIDE JAPAN.The scholar and diplomat Sir Ernest Satow was the best-known Westerner who lived in Meiji Japan. Although he rose to become British Minister to Japan, the most interesting part of his career was the start of it, when he witnessed, and in a small way influenced, the fall of the bakufu and the Meiji Restoration. He wrote an account of this in a memoir called A Diplomat in Japan in 1921, which was based on the diaries transcribed in this volume. These diaries, hitherto unpublished, reveal the original material from which he crafted his memoir, as well as the material (about one-third of the diaries in total) he omitted. In various respects, the memoir is a sanitized account, written partly in Bangkok in the 1880s, and completed in retirement at the urging of younger relatives. In A Diplomat in Japan, Satow comes across as an assured young statesman, who, with his excellent Japanese and ability to make contact with the key players, was able to perceive the direction that the turbulent and confused events he witnessed was taking. In the diaries, he is a little less assured and not quite so percipient and interspersed with tales of meeting the likes of Saigō Takamori and Sakamoto Ryōma, are stories such as that of the paternity claim against him by a Japanese woman in Nagasaki. The part of the diaries relating to Satow’s stay in China (Shanghai and Peking from January to August 1862) has never before been transcribed or published, and is the most interesting part on a human level. It was an environment in which Satow, aged just 18, was forced to grow up fast, and we see him and his fellow student interpreters behaving badly on numerous occasions. Yet we also see the breadth of his intellect in the books he was reading and his informed interest in everything he saw around him. The editors have added extensive annotations and explanations to these diaries, making this book an indispensable reference work for students of bakumatsu Japan, and indeed anybody who wants to understand the story of how a very young, very clever, but rather awkward Englishman could have penetrated the very highest levels of the Japanese hierarchy to witness the transformation of the country from a feudal, inward-looking society to one that would become a major industrialized power to shock the world.

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(1) Science, (2) philosophy, and (3) poetry, myth, and mysticism are three modes of consciousness that are radically different today. We are usually very good at carefully distinguishing them so as not to corrupt them, reduce them, or to confuse them with each other. But almost no one tries to connect them in a synthesis in which each maintains its own identity yet each contributes to a greater whole that no one of them could attain alone – like a happy marriage. If we bring them together at all, it is only to focus in three different ways on a specific issue (like health care, or children’s literature, or gender roles). If Einstein Had Been a Surfer dares to do it for Everything, or rather for a “Theory of Everything” that only scientists today dare to talk about. But how can a “theory of the whole” be discovered by a brain that is less than a whole brain? In this book all three dimensions of consciousness not only speak about a “theory of everything” but speak to each other in dialog. The three voices are incarnated in three characters from an upcoming novel, An Ocean Full of Angels: Evan Jellema is a theoretical physicist (and a clumsy Dutchman), ’Isa Ben Adam is a philosophical Muslim (and cantankerously clear), and Libby Rawls is a poet, mystic, and surfer (and a sassy, classy Black feminist). Isn’t “surfer” a bit of a stretch? Not at all. Actually, the papers reported last year that an amateur scientist has in fact finally discovered, or claimed to have discovered, the “theory of everything” that Einstein failed to find and that scientists have been searching for ever since – and he is a surfer! Perhaps this is no accident, but a natural connection: the mind of the “soul surfer,” having become one with the sea, has awakened its “third eye” which alone gives the scientist the binocular vision, the synoptic perspective, that he lacks. And perhaps only a philosopher can mediate the two other modes of vision, as Aquinas mediated and synthesized the science of Albert the Great and Aristotle with the poetry and symbolism of mystics like Augustine. This lively trialog, full of irony, intellectual surprise, and humor, is a serious call for a post-medieval synthesis. It does not claim to have arrived anywhere near the end of a journey to a “Theory of Everything,” only to have begun it. Even that modest ambition will certainly be criticized a priori as impossibly ambitious. Does that tell you anything about the book, or does it tell you something about the critic?

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Sad songs and love songs. For Vietnamese refugees who fled Vietnam after the 1975 takeover by the Viet Cong, the predominant music of choice falls into these two general categories rather than any particular musical genre. In fact, Adelaida Reyes discovers, music that exiles call \u0022Vietnamese music\u0022 -- that is, music sung in Vietnamese and almost exclusively written before 1975 -- includes such varied influences as Western rock, French-derived valse, Latin chacha, tango, bolero, an d paso doble. The Vietnamese refugee experience calls attention to issues commonly raised by migration: the redefinition of group relations, the reformulation of identity, and the reconstruction of social and musical life in resettlement. Fifteen years ago, Adelaida Reyes began doing fieldwork on the musical activities of Vietnamese refugees. She entered the emotion-driven world of forced migrants through expressive culture; learned to see the lives of refugee-resettlers through the music they made and enjoyed; and, in turn, gained a deeper understanding of their music through knowledge of their lives. In Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free, Reyes brings history, politics, and decades of research to her study of four resettlement communities, including refugee centers in Palawan and Bataan; the early refugee community in New Jersey; and the largest of all Vietnamese communities -- Little Saigon, in southern California's Orange County. Looking closely at diasporic Vietnamese in each location, Reyes demonstrates that expressive culture provides a valuable window into the refugee experience. Showing that Vietnamese immigrants deal with more than simply a new country and culture in these communities, Reyes considers such issues as ethnicity, socio-economic class, and differing generations. She considers in her study music of all kinds -- performed and recorded, public and private -- and looks at music as listened to and performed by all age groups, including church music, club music, and music used in cultural festivals. Moving from traditional folk music to elite and modern music and from the recording industry to pirated tapes. Reyes looks at how Vietnamese in exile struggled, in different ways, to hold onto a part of their home culture and to assimilate into their new, most frequently American, culture. Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free will attract the attention of readers in Asian American studies, Asian studies, music, and ethnomusicology.

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The definitive book on judicial review in Athens from the 5th through the 4th centuries BCE.The power of the court to overturn a law or decree—called judicial review—is a critical feature of modern democracies. Contemporary American judges, for example, determine what is consistent with the Constitution, though this practice is often criticized for giving unelected officials the power to strike down laws enacted by the people's representatives. This principle was actually developed more than two thousand years ago in the ancient democracy at Athens. In Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens, Edwin Carawan reassesses the accumulated evidence to construct a new model of how Athenians made law in the time of Plato and Aristotle, while examining how the courts controlled that process. Athenian juries, Carawan explains, were manned by many hundreds of ordinary citizens rather than a judicial elite. Nonetheless, in the 1890s, American apologists found vindication for judicial review in the ancient precedent. They believed that Athenian judges decided the fate of laws and decrees legalistically, focusing on fundamental text, because the speeches that survive from antiquity often involve close scrutiny of statutes attributed to lawgivers such as Solon, much as a modern appellate judge might resort to the wording of the Framers. Carawan argues that inscriptions, speeches, and fragments of lost histories make clear that text-based constitutionalism was not so compelling as the ethos of the community. Carawan explores how the judicial review process changed over time. From the restoration of democracy down to its last decades, the Athenians made significant reforms in their method of legislation, first to expedite a cumbersome process, then to revive the more rigorous safeguards. Jury selection adapted accordingly: the procedure was recast to better represent the polis, and packing the court was thwarted by a complicated lottery. But even as the system evolved, the debate remained much the same: laws and decrees were measured by a standard crafted in the image of the people. Offering a comprehensive account of the ancient origins of an important political institution through philological methods, rhetorical analysis of ancient arguments, and comparisons between models of judicial review in ancient Greece and the modern United States, Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens is an innovative study of ancient Greek law and democracy.

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“What makes the modern university different from any other corporation?” asked Columbia’s Andrew Delbanco recently in the New York Times. “There is more and more reason to think: less and less,” he answered. In this provocative book, Frank Donoghue shows how this growing corporate culture of higher education threatens its most fundamental values by erasing one of its defining features: the tenured professor. Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years, Donoghue outlines a web of forces—social, political, and institutional—dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future where professors will disappear. Why? What will universities look like without professors? Who will teach? Why should it matter? The fate of the professor, Donoghue shows, has always been tied to that of the liberal arts —with the humanities at its core. The rise to prominence of the American university has been defined by the strength of the humanities and by the central role of the autonomous, tenured professor who can be both scholar and teacher. Yet in today’s market-driven, rank- and ratings-obsessed world of higher education, corporate logic prevails: faculties are to be managed for optimal efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage; casual armies of adjuncts and graduate students now fill the demand for teachers. Bypassing the distractions of the culture wars and other “crises,” Donoghue sheds light on the structural changes in higher education—the rise of community colleges and for-profit universities, the frenzied pursuit of prestige everywhere, the brutally competitive realities facing new Ph.D.s —that threaten the survival of professors as we’ve known them. There are no quick fixes in The Last Professors; rather, Donoghue offers his fellow teachers and scholars an essential field guide to making their way in a world that no longer has room for their dreams. First published in 2008, "The Last Professors" have largely had its arguments borne out in the interim, as the percentage of courses taught by tenured professors continues to dwindle. This new edition includes a substantial Preface that elaborates on recent developments and offers tough but productive analysis that will be crucial for today's academics to heed.

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“What makes the modern university different from any other corporation?” asked Columbia’s Andrew Delbanco recently in the New York Times. “There is more and more reason to think: less and less,” he answered. In this provocative book, Frank Donoghue shows how this growing corporate culture of higher education threatens its most fundamental values by erasing one of its defining features: the tenured professor. Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years, Donoghue outlines a web of forces—social, political, and institutional—dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future where professors will disappear. Why? What will universities look like without professors? Who will teach? Why should it matter? The fate of the professor, Donoghue shows, has always been tied to that of the liberal arts —with the humanities at its core. The rise to prominence of the American university has been defined by the strength of the humanities and by the central role of the autonomous, tenured professor who can be both scholar and teacher. Yet in today’s market-driven, rank- and ratings-obsessed world of higher education, corporate logic prevails: faculties are to be managed for optimal efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage; casual armies of adjuncts and graduate students now fill the demand for teachers. Bypassing the distractions of the culture wars and other “crises,” Donoghue sheds light on the structural changes in higher education—the rise of community colleges and for-profit universities, the frenzied pursuit of prestige everywhere, the brutally competitive realities facing new Ph.D.s —that threaten the survival of professors as we’ve known them. There are no quick fixes in The Last Professors; rather, Donoghue offers his fellow teachers and scholars an essential field guide to making their way in a world that no longer has room for their dreams. First published in 2008, "The Last Professors" have largely had its arguments borne out in the interim, as the percentage of courses taught by tenured professors continues to dwindle. This new edition includes a substantial Preface that elaborates on recent developments and offers tough but productive analysis that will be crucial for today's academics to heed.

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Luc Chevalier is a satisfied man - or so he thinks. His businesses are thriving, he has all the excitement, money and beautiful women any man could want. He dines at the best restaurants and stays at the most luxurious hotels as he makes his way around the globe. So why does he suddenly find himself so restless?Megan Sullivan is a single mom with a rather ordinary life. She is comfortable with things just the way they are. She has a six-year-old son, Elliott, a cozy house in Boulder, Colorado, and a photography business to put food on the table. Megan is on her own and she intends to keep it that way.But when Megan is convinced by her best friend to take a trip to Paris, she's thrust into the arms of Luc Chevalier, the sexiest man to ever set foot on the Eiffel Tower. They agree to one night together and no more. In those few short hours he manages to draw out the passionate woman that Megan has carefully hidden away for years. Once she has a taste of what she's been missing, she finds it almost impossible to go back to her life as it was.Will two people who don't believe in happily-ever-after manage to put aside their doubts and find their forever? Reviews for Breaking Love:'Your book was a refreshing change to all the others in the genre, which are so similar that I forget which character was which book when I think back. Yours was so set apart with its clearly individual story, I won't forget it. Thank you!''Let me tell you how much I loved this book! OMG! I stayed up ALL night finishing it. I could not put it down! This book had just the right amount of anguish and jealousy for me. I left a 5 star review on Amazon and would have given 10 stars if I could. I'm not sure I enjoyed a book this much since Taking Chances by Molly McAdams and that's saying something!' 'Loved it! So happy I have discovered your writing. Sexiness [and] realism - just what today's real women need, crave and understand. Great writing. Looking for more in the near future. BRAVO!!"'Trust me, if you want a HOT story that will not only make you laugh out loud and pull your heart strings at the same time, BUY THIS BOOK'

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'Magisterial - an outstanding book that shines a bright light one of the most important, interesting and under-studied cities in European history. A masterpiece.' Peter Frankopan'A wonderful new history of the Mediterranean from the fifth to eighth centuries through a lens focussed on Ravenna, gracefully and clearly written, which reconceptualises what was 'East' and what was 'West'.' Caroline Goodson'A masterwork by one of our greatest historians of Byzantium and early Christianity. Judith Herrin tells a story that is at once gripping and authoritative and full of wonderful detail about every element in the life of Ravenna. Impossible to put down.' David FreedbergIn 402 AD, after invading tribes broke through the Alpine frontiers of Italy and threatened the imperial government in Milan, the young Emperor Honorius made the momentous decision to move his capital to a small, easy defendable city in the Po estuary - Ravenna. From then until 751 AD, Ravenna was first the capital of the Western Roman Empire, then that of the immense kingdom of Theoderic the Goth and finally the centre of Byzantine power in Italy.In this engrossing account Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the pivot between East and West; and the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures. The book offers a fresh account of the waning of Rome, the Gothic and Lombard invasions, the rise of Islam and the devastating divisions within Christianity. It argues that the fifth to eighth centuries should not be perceived as a time of decline from antiquity but rather, thanks to Byzantium, as one of great creativity - the period of 'Early Christendom'. These were the formative centuries of Europe.While Ravenna's palaces have crumbled, its churches have survived. In them, Catholic Romans and Arian Goths competed to produce an unrivalled concentration of spectacular mosaics, many of which still astonish visitors today. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned photographs, and drawing on the latest archaeological and documentary discoveries, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe brings the early Middle Ages to life through the history of this dazzling city.

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The Book of Sand: the first novel in an epic series created by one of the most gifted and invented storytellers of the twenty-first century.'Shocking and satisfying ...a compelling, absorbingly different quest fantasy' Guardian'An utterly original novel from an extraordinarily creative mind' Karin Slaughter'Unique and fearless' Mark Billingham'I inhaled it! It's beautifully written and utterly compelling' Harriet Tyce'Fearless and compelling, lyrical and devastating by turns, the story never slackens pace.' Jane Corry______________SAND. A hostile world of burning sun.Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. Now empty of inhabitants, their buildings lie in ruins.In the distance a group of people - a family - walk towards us.Ahead lies shelter: a 'shuck' the family call home and which they know they must reach before the light fails, as to be out after dark is to invite danger and almost certain death.To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find an object hidden in or near water. But other families want it too. And they are willing to fight to the death to make it theirs.It is beginning to rain in Fairfax County, Virginia when McKenzie Strathie wakes up. An ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life - except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she's beginning to question everything around her, especially who she really is ...Two very different worlds featuring a group of extraordinary characters driven to the very limit of their endurance in a place where only the strongest will survive.______________More praise for The Book of Sand ...'Audacious, extraordinary and absolutely awesome' Alex North'A future classic that exists between darkness and light. I was completely entranced by it' Christopher Fowler'A huge and brilliant and engaging read. It feels like a place I have been to rather than words on a page' Alice Jolly'A remarkable achievement' Shots Magazine'What we have here is a fantasy about faith and the search for spiritual certainty... [an] ambitious religious parable.' FT______________Readers love The Book of Sand ...'This was the best reading experience of a lifetime. I fear the words haven't yet been invented to describe how good the book is. It deserves to be a huge bestseller.''I would absolutely die for a movie adaptation of this one in the future!' 'The Book of Sand is dazzling, lyrical, surreal and a beautiful legacy.''An absolute must read!''I did not want to put it down at any point.''A gripping read.''Couldn't put it down. 5*.''This was a page turner that was totally original in concept.'

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We live in an age of serial asset bubbles and spectacular busts. Economists, policymakers, central bankers and most people in the financial world have been blindsided by these busts, while investors have lost trillions. Economists argue that bubbles can only be spotted after they burst and that market moves are unpredictable. Yet Marathon Asset Management, a London-based investment firm managing over $50 billion of assets has developed a relatively simple method for identifying and potentially avoiding them: follow the money, or rather the trail of investment. Bubbles whether they affect a whole economy or merely a single industry, tend to attract a splurge of capital spending. Excessive investment drives down returns and leads inexorably to a bust. This was the case with both the technology bubble at the turn of the century and the US housing bubble which followed shortly after. More recently, vast sums have been invested in mining and energy. From an investor's perspective, the trick is to avoid investing in sectors, or markets, where investment spending is unduly elevated and competition is fierce, and to put one's money to work where capital expenditure is depressed, competitive conditions are more favourable and, as a result, prospective investment returns are higher. This capital cycle strategy encourages investors to eschew the simple 'growth' and 'value' dichotomy and identify firms that can deliver superior returns either because capital has been taken out of an industry, or because the business has strong barriers to entry (what Warren Buffett refers to as a 'moat'). Some of Marathon's most successful investments have come from obscure, sometimes niche operations whose businesses are protected from the destructive forces of the capital cycle. Capital Returns is a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practical implementation of the capital cycle approach to investment. Edited and with an introduction by Edward Chancellor, the book brings together 60 of the most insightful reports written between 2002 and 2014 by Marathon portfolio managers. Capital Returns provides key insights into the capital cycle strategy, all supported with real life examples from global brewers to the semiconductor industry - showing how this approach can be usefully applied to different industry conditions and how, prior to 2008, it helped protect assets from financial catastrophe. This book will be a welcome reference for serious investors who looking to maximise portfolio returns over the long run.

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