Search results for ""author "demi"""

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal democracy had triumphed decisively on the world stage. Having banished fascism in World War II, liberalism had now buried communism, and the result would be an end of major ideological conflicts, as liberal norms and institutions spread to every corner of the globe. With the Brexit vote in Great Britain, the resurgence of right-wing populist parties across the European continent, and the surprising ascent of Donald Trump to the American presidency, such hopes have begun to seem hopelessly naïve. The far right is back, and serious rethinking is in order. In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deepest philosophical roots of such right-wing ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life. Beiner contends that Nietzsche's hatred and critique of bourgeois, egalitarian societies has engendered new disciples on the populist right who threaten to overturn the modern liberal consensus. Heidegger, no less than Nietzsche, thoroughly rejected the moral and political values that arose during the Enlightenment and came to power in the wake of the French Revolution. Understanding Heideggerian dissatisfaction with modernity, and how it functions as a philosophical magnet for those most profoundly alienated from the reigning liberal-democratic order, Beiner argues, will give us insight into the recent and unexpected return of the far right. Beiner does not deny that Nietzsche and Heidegger are important thinkers; nor does he seek to expel them from the history of philosophy. But he does advocate that we rigorously engage with their influential thought in light of current events—and he suggests that we place their severe critique of modern liberal ideals at the center of this engagement.

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Dennis Hale reached the dock just in time to see the Daniel J. Morrell heading out to open waters, a 600-foot freighter that had plied the waters for sixty years, carrying ore from Minnesota’s Iron Range to steel firms around the Great Lakes. The twenty-six-year-old watchman had, quite literally, missed the boat—which meant scrambling to rejoin the Morrell at its next stop or forfeiting a good chunk of his pay package. Seventy-two hours later, Hale would find himself clinging to a life raft alongside the frozen bodies of his crewmates in the violent waves of Lake Huron. The boat would not be reported missing for another twenty-seven hours and by the time the life raft was found, Dennis Hale would remain as the sole survivor of the wreck of the Daniel J. Morrell.This is life-and-death drama on the inland sea as only Michael Schumacher can tell it. In Torn in Two the great Lakes historian recreates the circumstances surrounding the terrible storm of November 29, 1966, that broke the mighty freighter in half, sending twenty-five of the Morrell’s twenty-nine-man crew to their deaths and consigning the surviving four to the freezing raft where all but Hale would perish. At the heart of Torn in Two are the terrible hours spent by Hale on the life raft with his crewmen, clinging to life for thirty-eight hours in freezing temperatures and wearing only a peacoat, life jacket, and boxer shorts. The fight to save Hale and find the others, the Coast Guard hearings into what happened, the discovery of the wreckage—Schumacher’s vivid narrative captures every harrowing detail and curious fact of the Morrell’s demise, finally doing justice to this epic shipwreck fifty years past.

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A Romantic Comedy about Death and Second Chances 30-year-old Nashvillian, Julia Holmes is just weeks away from becoming Mrs. Aaron DeMinthe. For as long as she can remember she’s dreamed of getting married at Whitfield Chapel and now her dreams are about to be realized. Julia has meticulously planned every detail of her big day from the flowers to her gown but the one thing she didn’t plan for is Aaron’s announcement: he needs to tick something off his bucket list before they tie the knot and that something is to hike the last leg of the Appalachian Trail; a project several years in the making. Julia is appalled by this idea and tries to dissuade him from going but his mind is made up and so, she reluctantly gives him her blessing. Less than 48 hours later, as he summits Mt, Katahdin, the last mountain of the trek, he’s struck by lightning and killed, effectively kicking the bucket while ticking something off his bucket list. Julia is grief stricken and inconsolable and despite the fact that she’s surrounded by her best gal pals, her parents and Lincoln Douglas, who was on Mt, Katahdin with Aaron when he died, she loses her grip on reality and quickly starts unravelling at the seams. Returning to Whitfield in search of closure she happens upon the Chapel’s Wedding Director who offhandedly mentions that they’re looking for a Weekend Wedding Assistant and before she can even think about it she takes the job. As she ushers four brides a weekend down the aisle she was supposed to walk down herself, Julia tries to understand why she said “I Do” to a job she never set out to get, in a place she’d only meant to occupy for an afternoon and wonders if she’ll ever find true love again.

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Written from the perspective of a Technical Project Manager, this study presents a scenario for a complete “shift left” software development effort. It brings considerations for Test and Support as early as the Inception Stage. Based on an innovative model - Development Process Activity Cycles (DPAC) - this representation allows visualization of progress including recursive activities. The model is based on an interpretation of the Deming quality cycle of Plan Do, Check Act (PDCA). Periodic Management reports are generated using configuration management data generated during the Act phase of each iteration. There is no Test stage in the DPAC model; Test is represented in the back swing Check Phase of each iteration.This approach allows the user or Subject Mater Expert (SME) to contemplate the face of the system through several iterations of design and development, using the triad principle (“Power of Three”) matching a programmer, tester and member of the user community This approach incrementally reveals the best fit to the intent of the vision statement and iteratively uncovers the needs of the user while maintaining conceptual integrity. This book provides a holistic and comprehensible view of the entire development process including ongoing evolution and support, staffing, and establishment of a comprehensive quality engineering program. It describes activity inside the “belly of the beast.” By including support services as a part of the development model a complete return on investment (ROI) can be calculated and a value stream can be measured over the entire Application Life Cycle.You will· See how the various disciplines constituting the software development process come together· Understand where in the iterative development process progress can be measured and control exercised· Review how a quality engineering program will positively affect the quality of the development process· Examine how the quality of the development process profoundly affects the quality of the software systemWho this book is forIntended for a technical audience, this work should be of interest to all technical personnel including analysts, programmers, test and production, especially mid level managers and anyone familiar with the principles of a Lean, Agile approach to development.

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Exploring the intersections of digital humanities and African diaspora studies How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These questions are at the heart of this timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies, offering critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production.The Digital Black Atlantic spans the African diaspora’s range—from Africa to North America, Europe, and the Caribbean—while its essayists span academic fields—from history and literary studies to musicology, game studies, and library and information studies. This transnational and interdisciplinary breadth is complemented by essays that focus on specific sites and digital humanities projects throughout the Black Atlantic. Covering key debates, The Digital Black Atlantic asks theoretical and practical questions about the ways that researchers and teachers of the African diaspora negotiate digital methods to explore a broad range of cultural forms including social media, open access libraries, digital music production, and video games. The volume further highlights contributions of African diaspora studies to digital humanities, such as politics and representation, power and authorship, the ephemerality of memory, and the vestiges of colonialist ideologies. Grounded in contemporary theory and praxis, The Digital Black Atlantic puts the digital humanities into conversation with African diaspora studies in crucial ways that advance both. Contributors: Alexandrina Agloro, Arizona State U; Abdul Alkalimat; Suzan Alteri, U of Florida; Paul Barrett, U of Guelph; Sayan Bhattacharyya, Singapore U of Technology and Design; Agata Błoch, Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences; Michał Bojanowski, Kozminski U; Sonya Donaldson, New Jersey City U; Anne Donlon; Laurent Dubois, Duke U; Amy E. Earhart, Texas A&M U; Schuyler Esprit, U of the West Indies; Demival Vasques Filho, U of Auckland, New Zealand; David Kirkland Garner; Alex Gil, Columbia U; Kaiama L. Glover, Barnard College, Columbia U; D. Fox Harrell, MIT; Hélène Huet, U of Florida; Mary Caton Lingold, Virginia Commonwealth U; Angel David Nieves, San Diego State U; Danielle Olson, MIT; Tunde Opeibi (Ope-Davies), U of Lagos, Nigeria; Jamila Moore Pewu, California State U, Fullerton; Anne Rice, Lehman College, CUNY; Sercan Şengün, Northeastern U; Janneken Smucker, West Chester U; Laurie N.Taylor, U of Florida; Toniesha L. Taylor, Texas Southern U.

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From the early twentieth century until the 1960s, Maine led the nation in paper production. The state could have earned a reputation as the Detroit of paper production, however, the industry eventually slid toward failure. What happened? Shredding Paper unwraps the changing US political economy since 1960, uncovers how the paper industry defined and interacted with labor relations, and peels away the layers of history that encompassed the rise and fall of Maine's mighty paper industry. Michael G. Hillard deconstructs the paper industry's unusual technological and economic histories. For a century, the story of the nation's most widely read glossy magazines and card stock was one of capitalism, work, accommodation, and struggle. Local paper companies in Maine dominated the political landscape, controlling economic, workplace, land use, and water use policies. Hillard examines the many contributing factors surrounding how Maine became a paper powerhouse and then shows how it lost that position to changing times and foreign interests. Through a retelling of labor relations and worker experiences from the late nineteenth century up until the late 1990s, Hillard highlights how national conglomerates began absorbing family-owned companies over time, which were subject to Wall Street demands for greater short-term profits after 1980. This new political economy impacted the economy of the entire state and destroyed Maine's once-vaunted paper industry. Shredding Paper truthfully and transparently tells the great and grim story of blue-collar workers and their families and analyzes how paper workers formulated a "folk" version of capitalism's history in their industry. Ultimately, Hillard offers a telling example of the demise of big industry in the United States.

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Is Russian history one big inevitable failure? The Soviet Union's demise and Russia's ensuing troubles have led many to wonder. But this is to look through a skewed prism indeed. In this provocative and elegantly written short history of Russia, Marshall Poe takes us well beyond the Soviet haze deep into the nation's fascinating--not at all inevitable, and in key respects remarkably successful--past. Tracing Russia's course from its beginnings to the present day, Poe shows that Russia was the only non-Western power to defend itself against Western imperialism for centuries. It did so by building a powerful state that molded society to its military needs. Thus arose the only non-Western path to modern society--a unique path neither "European" nor "Asian" but, most aptly, "Russian." From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Russia prevailed despite unparalleled onslaughts by powerful Western armies. However, while Europe nurtured limited government, capitalism, and scientific and cultural revolution, early Russian society cultivated autocracy and command economics. Both Europe and Russia eventually created modern infrastructures, but the European model proved more productive and powerful. The post-World War I communist era can be seen as a natural continuation of Russia's autocratic past that, despite its tragic turns, kept Russia globally competitive for decades. The Russian moment in world history thus began with its first confrontations with Europe in the fifteenth century, and ended in 1991 with the Soviet collapse. Written with verve and great insight, The Russian Moment in World History will be widely read and vigorously debated by those who seek a clear and unequivocal understanding of the complex history that has made Russia what it is today.

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On a dark night in February of 1864, the H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat, torpedoed the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic, a feat that would not be repeated for another 50 years. But fate was not kind to the Hunley that night as it sank with all of its crew on board before it could return to shore. Considered by many to be the Civil War's greatest mystery, the Hunley's demise and its resting place have been a topic of discussion for historians and Civil War buffs alike for more than a hundred years. Adding still more to the intrigue, the vessel was discovered in 1995 by a dive team led by famed novelist and shipwreck hunter Clive Cussler, sparking an underwater investigation that resulted in the raising of the Hunley on August 8, 2000. Since that time, the extensive research and restorative efforts underway have unraveled the incredible secrets that were locked within the submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Join Civil War expert Brian Hicks as Sea of Darkness recounts the most historically accurate narrative of the sinking and eventual recovery ever written. Hicks has been given unprecedented access to all the main characters involved in the discovery, raising, and restoration of the Hunley. Complete with a foreword and additional commentary by Clive Cussler, Sea of Darkness offers new, never-before-published evidence on the cause of the Hunley's sinking, providing readers a tantalizing behind-the-scenes look inside the historic submarine.

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THEY ARE ALIENS, DEMIGODS, METAHUMANS, AND MORTALS DRIVEN BY SHEER WILL...THEY ARE THE WORLD'S GREATEST HEROES...THEY ARE THE JLA. The classic Justice League of America lineup of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter returns, but while the team members may be familiar, the stakes aren't. This is a dark new era where aliens from another world, evil masterminds, and even the old gods themselves are waiting to test the JLA's mettle. Battles will be fought, allies will be gained and lost, and the League will be pushed to its limits like never before. THE GODS WALK AMONG US. In a world where superhumans live side-by-side with mortals, the people of Earth can take comfort that some of these powerful beings are on the side of good. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter are the world's first line of defense against alien invaders and supernatural entities. Time and again the JLA has rallied to save humankind from the brink of extinction. These are the adventures that have made them living legends. The JLA by Grant Morrison Omnibus collects acclaimed writer GRANT MORRISON's prolific JLA run, accompanied by artists HOWARD PORTER, JOHN DELL, and PAT GARRAHY. This deluxe volume also includes the groundbreaking JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel illustrated by FRANK QUITELY, plus bonus material from the DC One Million event and more.

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'What can be done about the state of classical music?' Lawrence Kramer asks in this elegant, sharply observed, and beautifully written extended essay. Classical music, whose demise has been predicted for at least a decade, has always had its staunch advocates, but in today's media-saturated world there are real concerns about its viability. "Why Classical Music Still Matters" takes a forthright approach by engaging both skeptics and music lovers alike. In seven highly original chapters, "Why Classical Music Still Matters" affirms the value of classical music - defined as a body of nontheatrical music produced since the eighteenth century with the single aim of being listened to - by revealing what its values are: the specific beliefs, attitudes, and meanings that the music has supported in the past and which, Kramer believes, it can support in the future. "Why Classical Music Still Matters" also clears the air of old prejudices. Unlike other apologists, whose defense of the music often depends on arguments about the corrupting influence of popular culture, Kramer admits that classical music needs a broader, more up-to-date rationale. He succeeds in engaging the reader by putting into words music's complex relationship with individual human drives and larger social needs. In prose that is fresh, stimulating, and conversational, he explores the nature of subjectivity, the conquest of time and mortality, the harmonization of humanity and technology, the cultivation of attention, and the liberation of human energy.

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'All those interested in South Asia and its complex politics and culture should read this book' - Pankaj MishraThe demise of Pakistan - a country with a reputation for volatility, brutality and radical Islam - is regularly predicted. But things rarely turn out as expected, as renowned journalist Declan Walsh knows well. Over a decade covering the country, his travels took him from the raucous port of Karachi to the gilded salons of Lahore to the lawless frontier of Waziristan, encountering Pakistanis whose lives offer a compelling portrait of this land of contradictions.He meets a crusading lawyer who risks her life to fight for society's most marginalised, taking on everyone including the powerful military establishment; an imperious chieftain spouting poetry at his desert fort; a roguish politician waging a mini-war against the Taliban; and a charismatic business tycoon who moves into politics and seems to be riding high - till he takes up the wrong cause. Lastly, Walsh meets a spy whose orders once involved following him, and who might finally be able to answer the question that haunts him: why the Pakistanis suddenly expelled him from their country.Intimate and complex, unravelling the many mysteries of state and religion, this formidable book offers an arresting account of life in a country that, often as not, seems to be at war with itself.'Thrilling, big-hearted' - Memphis Barker, Daily Telegraph'Sets a new benchmark for non-fiction about the complex palace of mirrors that is Pakistan' - William DalrympleRead more

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Ira Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its fiery demise nearly three hundred years later.Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one fixed in the mid-nineteenth century when most American slaves grew cotton, resided in the deep South, and subscribed to Christianity. Here, however, Berlin offers a dynamic vision, a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. Slavery was thus made and remade by successive generations of Africans and African Americans who lived through settlement and adaptation, plantation life, economic transformations, revolution, forced migration, war, and ultimately, emancipation.Berlin's understanding of the processes that continually transformed the lives of slaves makes Generations of Captivity essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of antebellum America. Connecting the "Charter Generation" to the development of Atlantic society in the seventeenth century, the "Plantation Generation" to the reconstruction of colonial society in the eighteenth century, the "Revolutionary Generation" to the Age of Revolutions, and the "Migration Generation" to American expansionism in the nineteenth century, Berlin integrates the history of slavery into the larger story of American life. He demonstrates how enslaved black people, by adapting to changing circumstances, prepared for the moment when they could seize liberty and declare themselves the "Freedom Generation."This epic story, told by a master historian, provides a rich understanding of the experience of African-American slaves, an experience that continues to mobilize American thought and passions today.

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It may be hard to imagine in 2012, but Great Britain was once filled with a plethora of aircraft manufacturers. One hundred years ago, the seeds of many of them were being sown, as the demand for aircraft gained pace following the outbreak of the First World War. Not all survived following the armistice and the subject of this book, Supermarine, only kept going by the skin of its teeth and certainly did not settle into a profitable aircraft manufacturing business until the mid to late 1920s. However, with the genius mind of Reginald Joseph Mitchell on board, the company could do no wrong and without doubt, the company's most famous and well-known product was the Spitfire. The colossal orders received for the fighter set the company on a steady post-war course which, once again, was a period that saw other companies fall by the wayside. Following Mitchell's demise, we must not forget the man who carried the baton, Joe Smith, who developed the Spitfire and Seafire into a machine that remained in production for ten years, ultimately ending its service career in Korea. Smith did not just ride on that back of Mitchell's designs and was responsible for the Spiteful, Seafang and the Attacker to name but a few. This book gives readers an insight into the aircraft produced by Supermarine, and those that did not quite make it, as well as a history of the aircraft company itself.

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'Just the thing to chase the blues away' M. C. BeatonWhen a body found on the Honeychurch Hall estate proves to be that of a villager who had supposedly moved to Ireland years earlier, tongues start wagging and theories abound. Charlie Green had always been a rogue.Although Charlie's demise happened well before Kat's arrival, Kat is drawn into the mystery when she finds two rare miniature portraits hidden inside a custom-made dollhouse of Honeychurch Hall. And then Charlie's aunt suffers a mysterious fatal fall and suspicion lands on a stranger who is holidaying in the newly installed shepherd's hut in the walled garden -- one of Lady Lavinia's latest hare-brained moneymaking schemes. Although there is something off about the tourist, Kat believes the culprit is fellow antique dealer.With tales of blackmail, infidelity and greed gripping the small community, past and present collide and Kat realises that the miniatures harbour a vital secret that one particular person is willing to kill for.Praise for Hannah Dennison:'The perfect classic English village mystery but with the addition of charm, wit and a thoroughly modern touch' Rhys Bowen'Downton Abbey was yesterday. Murder at Honeychurch Hall lifts the lid on today's grand country estate in all its tarnished, scheming, inbred, deranged glory' Catriona McPherson'Will delight fans and new readers alike' People's Friend'A fun read' Carola Dunn'Sparkles like a glass of Devon cider on a summer afternoon' Elizabeth Duncan

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This is the first comprehensive biography in any language of Russia’s leading statesman in the period following the Revolution of 1905. Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs from 1906 to 1911 (when he was assassinated), P. A. Stolypin aroused deep passions among his contemporaries as well as subsequent historians. In the twilight of Nicholas II’s reign he was virtually the only man who seemed to have a clear notion of how to reform the socioeconomic and political system of the empire. His efforts in that direction—in agriculture, local administration, religious freedom, social legislation, the legal system—were radically new departures for the Russian state. His detractors disdained him as a power-hungry, coldhearted politician who was unscrupulous in pursuing his own career and would use any means to restore the tsarist autocracy following the frightening turbulence of 1905. Stolypin’s admirers, however, argued that he was a man of vision who pursued policies that would have transformed the country into a modern state with social and political institutions comparable to those of the West. Lenin’s celebrated denunciation of Stolypin as “hangman-in-chief” set the tone for official Soviet work on his career. In the West, some historians and émigré writers, most notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, erred in the opposite direction. By contrast, this book—on the basis of extensive Russian archival documentation only recently available to historians—seeks to provide a balanced portrait of Stolypin that encompasses the complex, even divergent, impulses that motivated him. Although Stolypin did not shrink from the use of force to stamp out unrest, he lamented the shedding of blood and much preferred nonviolent means to curb the opposition. In foreign affairs, he was uncompromising in his insistence that Russia should avoid entanglements that could lead to military conflict. To be sure, he was deeply committed to monarchical rule, but he did not consider it advisable to abolish the elected legislature or to deprive it of its authority. Stolypin’s program, a blend of reformism, authoritarianism, and nationalism, was more likely than any other to lead Russia toward social and political stability. But Tsar Nicholas II, his entourage, and ultra-conservatives could not bring themselves to yield a portion of their privileges and prerogatives in return for a reduced, though still significant, role in a changed Russia. They succeeded in undermining the Prime Minister’s attempts at fundamental reform and thus scuttled Imperial Russia’s last such attempt before its demise.

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Bow down in Fear!Monsters have long stalked us in the darkness. Within this book, you'll find a host of these creatures for use in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Face off against archdevils and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, planar dragons and the legendary wild hunt, proteans and psychopomps, and hundreds more! Some creatures, such as the capricious taniwha, the mysterious green man, or the powerful empyreal lords, might even be willing to provide your heroes aid-if they deserve it! Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 6 is the sixth must-have volume of monsters for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and serves as a companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an open playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era. Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 6 includes:►More than 200 different monsters. ►New player-friendly races, like the crazed monkey goblins, the telepathic albino munavris, the river-dwelling fey naiads, the wolflike rougarou, and the yaddithians of the Elder Mythos. ►Numerous powerful demigods, from archdevils and Great Old Ones to empyreal lords and qlippoth lords.►New animal companions and other allies, such as fierce devil monkeys and loyal clockwork hounds.►New templates, including the entothrope and the mongrel giant, to help you get more life out of classic monsters.►Appendices to help you find the right monster, including lists by Challenge Rating, monster type, and habitat.►Expanded universal monster rules to simplify combat.►Challenges for every adventure and every level of play.►AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!

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Japanese antiques dealer and PI Jim Brodie goes up against a killer operating on both sides of the Pacific in Barry Lancet’s Pacific Burn—“a page-turning, globe-spanning tale of murder, suspense, and intrigue that grabs and holds your attention from beginning to end” (Nelson DeMille).In recognition for his role in solving the Japantown murders in San Francisco, antiques dealer and sometime-PI Jim Brodie has just been brought on as the liaison for the mayor’s new Pacific Rim Friendship Program. Brodie in turn recruits his friend, the renowned Japanese artist Ken Nobuki, and after a promising meeting with city officials and a picture-perfect photo op, Brodie and Nobuki leave City Hall for a waiting limo. But as soon as they exit the building, a sniper attacks them from the roof of the Asian Art Museum. Brodie soon realizes that, with the suspicious and untimely death of Nobuki’s oldest son a week earlier in Napa Valley, someone may be targeting his friend’s family—and killing them off one by one. Suspects are nearly too numerous to name—and could be in the United States or anywhere along the Pacific Rim. The quest for answers takes Brodie from his beloved San Francisco to Washington, DC, in a confrontation with the DHS, the CIA, and the FBI; then on to Tokyo, Kyoto, and beyond, in search of what his Japanese sources tell him is a legendary killer in both senses of the word—said to be more rumor than real, but deadlier than anything else they’ve ever encountered if the whispers are true. In the third book in “what will likely be a long and successful series” (San Francisco Magazine), Barry Lancet delivers his most exciting Jim Brodie novel yet.

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When Reynold Levy became the new president of Lincoln centre in 2002, New York Magazine described the situation he walked in to as a community in deep distress, riven by conflict." Ideas for the redevelopment of Lincoln centre's artistic facilities and public spaces required spending more than 1.2 billion, but there was no clear pathway for how to raise that kind of unprecedented sum. The individual resident organizations that were the key constituents of Lincoln centre,the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School, and eight others,could not agree on a common capital plan or fundraising course of action. Instead, intramural rivalries and disputes filled the vacuum.Besides, some of those organizations had daunting problems of their own. Levy tells the inside story of the demise of the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera's need to use as collateral its iconic Chagall tapestries in the face of mounting operating losses, and the New York Philharmonic's dalliance with Carnegie Hall.Yet despite these and other challenges, Levy and the extraordinary civic leaders at his side were able to shape a consensus for the physical modernization of the sixteen-acre campus and raise the money necessary to maintain Lincoln centre as the country's most vibrant performing arts destination. By the time he left, Lincoln centre had prepared itself fully for the next generation of artists and audiences. They Told Me Not to Take That Job is more than a memoir of life at the heart of one of the world's most prominent cultural institutions. It is also a case study of leadership and management in action. How Levy and his colleagues triumphantly steered Lincoln centre,through perhaps the most tumultuous decade of its history to a startling transformation,is fully captured in his riveting account.

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Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform reveals the human drama behind the radical agrarian reform that unfolded in Peru during the final three decades of the twentieth century. That process began in 1969, when the left-leaning military government implemented a drastic program of land expropriation. Seized lands were turned into worker-managed cooperatives. After those cooperatives began to falter and the country returned to civilian rule in the 1980s, members distributed the land among themselves. In 1995–96, as the agrarian reform process was winding down and neoliberal policies were undoing leftist reforms, the Peruvian anthropologist Enrique Mayer traveled throughout the country, interviewing people who had lived through the most tumultuous years of agrarian reform, recording their memories and their stories. While agrarian reform caused enormous upheaval, controversy, and disappointment, it did succeed in breaking up the unjust and oppressive hacienda system. Mayer contends that the demise of that system is as important as the liberation of slaves in the Americas.Mayer interviewed ex-landlords, land expropriators, politicians, government bureaucrats, intellectuals, peasant leaders, activists, ranchers, members of farming families, and others. Weaving their impassioned recollections with his own commentary, he offers a series of dramatic narratives, each one centered around a specific instance of land expropriation, collective enterprise, and disillusion. Although the reform began with high hopes, it was quickly complicated by difficulties including corruption, rural and urban unrest, fights over land, and delays in modernization. As he provides insight into how important historical events are remembered, Mayer re-evaluates Peru’s military government (1969–79), its audacious agrarian reform program, and what that reform meant to Peruvians from all walks of life.

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Purposefully written for those coming to politics for the first time, this textbook provides an exploration and analysis of the most important political issues affecting the developing world. Offering a different perspective from standard texts in this field, Politics in the Developing World encourages an understanding of the breadth and nature of a range of pressing – and previously understated – issues: the striving for democracy; the political consequences of economic growth and development; the struggle of religious and ethnic minorities; human rights, particularly women's rights ; the impact of globalization; and the politics of the natural environment. In doing so, the interaction of domestic and global factors affecting many of the developing world countries is highlighted and a new, qualitatively different set of concerns is identified. Some have resulted from recent international changes following the demise of the Soviet bloc, including the shift to democracy in South Africa, and the ramifications of the late 1990s Southeast Asian financial crisis. To illustrate the importance of these themes and issues, five developing world regions are examined in detail: Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. While based on Haynes's previous publication, Third World Politics: A Concise Introduction (1996), this is a new book, completely rewritten, with updated regional analyses and data throughout. It concentrates on changes in the developing world in the last decade, with an increased focus on its international relations, complementing those chapters concerned with domestic issues. An ideal introduction as well as an invitation to further study, this text is essential reading for introductory students studying a range of courses including development studies, global politics, world politics, developing world politics, comparative politics, and international relations.

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The early nineteenth century witnessed the mass movement of people from Britain's countryside into its burgeoning towns and cities; people came to the city in search of work. This prompted many dairy farmers to follow suit and move themselves, their family and their cows into the country's growing metropolises, where they opened the first generation of city dairies. In the 1830s, transportation in Britain was revolutionised by the coming of the railways, enabling foodstuffs, including milk, to be transported in bulk from countryside to city. Large dairy companies took advantage of this opportunity, opening a new generation of retail dairies. The demand for milk was so great that some cities boasted a dairy at the end of every street. For the next hundred years the cowkeepers fought a rear-guard action against the mighty corporate dairies and their attempts to monopolise the liquid milk market. The cowkeepers continued to produce their own milk, selling it - 'fresh from the cow' - over the dairy counter and out on the milk round. These dairies were kept in the family, handed down through successive generations. Despite surviving two World Wars, the rapid technological, social and economic changes that followed, brought about the demise of the traditional cowkeeper. But the city dairy continued as a family business, working as part of a national distribution network, overseen by the Milk Marketing Board. Out on the round, the family dairyman was almost indistinguishable from the corporate milkman. The sixties and seventies saw the arrival of the Supermarket, a game-changer in retailing. To survive, the city dairy had to change once more. It expanded its offer and seamlessly joined the ranks of those other most British of institutions: the Corner Shop and the Convenience Store.

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Even though the demise of the Minoan and Mycenaean palaces happened more than three millennia ago, opinions on the political geography of the Aegean during the Bronze Age (2500-1100 BC) have seen remarkable changes over the last century and discussions continue. Since the Early Bronze Age, both Crete and the Helladic Mainland witnessed the development of complex societies. The ways in which these were structured and how power was executed, however, remain debated. In this volume, which represents the proceedings of a three-day workshop that took place in Athens from May 29 to 31, 2018, leading scholars in the field of Aegean Archaeology continue these debates on the basis of theoretically informed views that incorporate the latest archaeological developments, derived from both surveys and excavations. The volume is structured around three themes: 1. Territories. Can political or other meaningful spatial organisations be recognised in our data? And how did territories relate to one another? What about boundaries? How can we integrate our data into a discussion of intra-and inter-territorial relationships. 2. Authority display. Can we recognise different levels or scales in visual representation of authority? Were Aegean societies faceless? 3. Forms of power. How was power exercised and how can we recognise this? What types of control (military, economic, religious, social, technological….) can be distinguished and to what extent was power individualised, concentrated, hereditary, institutionalised, corporate…..?

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Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the country’s first democratically elected prime minister. After a meteoric rise in the colonial civil service and the African political elite, he became a major figure in the decolonization movement of the 1950s. Lumumba’s short tenure as prime minister (1960–1961) was marked by an uncompromising defense of Congolese national interests against pressure from international mining companies and the Western governments that orchestrated his eventual demise. Cold war geopolitical maneuvering and well-coordinated efforts by Lumumba’s domestic adversaries culminated in his assassination at the age of thirty-five, with the support or at least the tacit complicity of the U.S. and Belgian governments, the CIA, and the UN Secretariat. Even decades after Lumumba’s death, his personal integrity and unyielding dedication to the ideals of self-determination, self-reliance, and pan-African solidarity assure him a prominent place among the heroes of the twentieth-century African independence movement and the worldwide African diaspora. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja’s short and concise book provides a contemporary analysis of Lumumba’s life and work, examining both his strengths and his weaknesses as a political leader. It also surveys the national, continental, and international contexts of Lumumba’s political ascent and his swift elimination by the interests threatened by his ideas and practical reforms.

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Perfect for fans of Mark Lawrence and R Scott Bakker, The Court of Broken Knives is the explosive debut by one of grimdark fantasy’s most exciting new voices. They’ve finally looked at the graveyard of our Empire with open eyes. They’re fools and madmen and like the art of war. And their children go hungry while we piss gold and jewels into the dust. In the richest empire the world has ever known, the city of Sorlost has always stood, eternal and unconquered. But in a city of dreams governed by an imposturous Emperor, decadence has become the true ruler, and has blinded its inhabitants to their vulnerability. The empire is on the verge of invasion – and only one man can see it. Haunted by dreams of the empire’s demise, Orhan Emmereth has decided to act. On his orders, a company of soldiers cross the desert to reach the city. Once they enter the Palace, they have one mission: kill the Emperor, then all those who remain. Only from ashes can a new empire be built. The company is a group of good, ordinary soldiers, for whom this is a mission like any other. But the strange boy Marith who walks among them is no ordinary soldier. Marching on Sorlost, Marith thinks he is running away from the past which haunts him. But in the Golden City, his destiny awaits him – beautiful, bloody, and more terrible than anyone could have foreseen.

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Most people are familiar with the dodo and the dinosaur, but extinction has occurred throughout the history of life, with the result that nearly all the species that have ever existed are now extinct. Today, species are disappearing at an ever increasing rate, whilst past losses have occurred during several great crises. Issues such as habitat destruction, conservation, climate change, and, during major crises, volacanism and meteorite impact, can all contribute towards the demise of a group. In this Very Short Introduction, Paul B. Wignall looks at the causes and nature of extinctions, past and present, and the factors that can make a species vulnerable. Summarising what we know about all of the major and minor exctinction events, he examines some of the greatest debates in modern science, such as the relative role of climate and humans in the death of the Pleistocene megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths, and the roles that global warming, ocean acidification, and deforestation are playing in present-day extinctions ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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In a near future Tokyo, every action—from blinking to sexual intercourse—is intellectual property owned by corporations that charge licensing fees… Risen from the ashes of bankdeath, Amon Kenzaki, fallen Liquidator and Xenocyst survivor, arrives at the forest from his dreams. He has fulfilled his promise to the PhisherKing to seek truth without relent and can look upon the wonders of those green slopes with clear eyes at last. Yet now, just when his deepest aspiration can finally be fulfilled, he must balance it against the aspirations of all humanity. And he despairs to discover that his love, Mayuko Takamatsu, is still nowhere to be found. MegaGlom demigoddess, Rashana Birla, and her faithful servant, Ono X, seek Amon’s help in reviving a single dream of liberation with enough facets to accommodate the dreams of all. Meanwhile, the lost secrets of financial life and death promise a kind of digital reincarnation to transcend the twin markets of the Free World, if only he can hold together a miraculous fellowship. In A Diamond Dream, final book of the Jubilee Cycle trilogy, Amon arrives at the very limits of capitalism, where he and his friends must choose which future to stake out on the other side and accept the consequences. A thought-provoking battle between corporate domination and the individual spirit to decide the meaning of freedom.

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Winner of the J. B. Jackson Prize from the Association of American GeographersOriginally published in 1998. "The plantation," writes Charles Aiken, "is among the most misunderstood institutions of American history. The demise of the plantation has been pronounced many times, but the large industrial farms survive as significant parts of, not just the South's, but the nation's agriculture."In this sweeping historical and geographical account, Aiken traces the development of the Southern cotton plantation since the Civil War—from the emergence of tenancy after 1865, through its decline during the Depression, to the post-World War Two development of the large industrial farm.Tracing the geographical changes in plantation agriculture and the plantation regions after 1865, Aiken shows how the altered landscape of the South has led many to the false conclusion that the plantation has vanished. In fact, he explains, while certain regions of the South have reverted to other uses, the cotton plantation survives in a form that is, in many ways, remarkably similar to that of its antebellum predecessors.Aiken also describes the evolving relationship of African-Americans to the cotton plantation during the thirteen decades of economic, social, and political changes from Reconstruction through the War on Poverty—including the impact of alterations in plantation agriculture and the mass migration of Southern blacks to the urban North during the twentieth century.Richly illustrated with more than 130 maps and photographs (many original and many from FSA photographers), The Cotton Plantation South is a vivid and colorful account of landscape, geography, race, politics, and civil rights as they relate to one of America's most enduring and familiar institutions.

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Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer combines extensive field research with historical inquiry to produce a dramatic study of a minority people in Russia, the Khanty (Ostiak) of Northwest Siberia. Although First Nations, indigenous peoples, have often been victims of expansionist state-building, Balzer shows that processes of acquiring ethnic identity can involve transcending victimhood. She brings Khanty views of their history and current life into focus, revealing multiple levels of cultural activism. She argues that anthropological theory and practice can derive from indigenous insights, and should help indigenous peoples. Balzer brings to life the saga of the Khanty over several centuries. She analyzes trends in Siberian ethnic interaction that strongly affected minority lives: colonization, Christianization, revitalization, Sovietization, and regionalization. These processes incorporate suprastate and state politics, including recent devastations stemming from the energy industry's land thefts. Balzer documents changes that might seem to foreshadow the demise of indigenous ethnicity. Yet the final chapters reveal ways some Khanty have preserved cultural values and dignity in crisis. Khanty identity has varied with the politics of individuals, groups, and generations. It has been shaped by recent grass-roots mobilization, ecological activism, and religious revival, as well as older historical memory, language-based solidarity, and loyalty to a homeland. The Tenacity of Ethnicity demonstrates how at each historical turn, Siberian experiences shed new light on old debates concerning colonialism, conversion, revitalization, ethnicity, and nationalism. This volume will be important for political scientists, historians, and regional specialists, as well as anthropologists and sociologists.

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When viewed from space, the Korean Peninsula is crossed by a thin green ribbon. On the ground, its mix of dense vegetation and cleared borderlands serves as home to dozens of species that are extinct or endangered elsewhere on the peninsula. This is Korea’s demilitarized zone—one of the most dangerous places on earth for humans, and paradoxically one of the safest for wildlife. Although this zone was not intentionally created for conservation, across the globe hundreds of millions of acres of former military zones and bases are being converted to restoration areas, refuges, and conservation lands. David G. Havlick has traveled the world visiting these spaces of military-to-wildlife transition, and in Bombs Away he explores both the challenges—physical, historical, and cultural—and fascinating ecological possibilities of military site conversions. Looking at particular international sites of transition—from Indiana’s Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge to Cold War remnants along the former Iron Curtain—Havlick argues that these new frontiers of conservation must accomplish seemingly antithetical aims: rebuilding and protecting ecosystems, or restoring life, while also commemorating the historical and cultural legacies of warfare and militarization. Developing these ideas further, he shows that despite the ecological devastation often wrought by military testing and training, these activities need not be inconsistent with environmental goals, and in some cases can even complement them—a concept he calls ecological militarization. A profound, clear explication of landscapes both fraught and fecund, marked by death but also reservoirs of life, Bombs Away shows us how “military activities, conservation goals, and ecological restoration efforts are made to work together to create new kinds of places and new conceptions of place.”

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For well over a century, those who create motion pictures have touched our hearts and souls; they have transported and transformed our minds, intoxicated and entranced our senses. One artist's vision is the single most prominent force behind the scenes: the director. The Essential Directors illuminates the unseen forces behind some of the most notable screen triumphs from the aesthetic peak of silent cinema through the New Hollywood of the 1970s. Considering each artist's influence on the medium, cultural impact, and degree of achievement, Turner Classic Movies presents a compendium of Hollywood's most influential filmmakers, with profiles offering history and insight on the filmmaker's narrative style, unique touches, contributions to the medium, key films, and distinctive movie moments to watch for. The work of these game-changing artists is illustrated throughout by more than 200 full-color and black-and-white photographs.In The Essential Directors you'll read how Cecil B. DeMille revamped religion to define an era, and how Oscar Micheaux broke barriers to become the most influential Black filmmaker of the 1920s. You'll marvel at the efficient artistry of "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke and fall in love again with the sophisticated studio-era classicsof George Cukor. You'll gain insight into how women like Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino built thriving careers in an industry ruled by men and discover what drove Mike Nichols to mix comedy with tragedy, becoming the highest-paid director of his day in the the process. The Essential Directors presents the work of these game-changing artists and dozens more in this stunning volume.

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Finalist for the 2023 CASEY AwardBaseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years explores the history of organized baseball during the middle of the twentieth century, examining the sport on and off the field and contextualizing its development as both sport and business within the broader contours of American history. Steven P. Gietschier begins with the Great Depression, looking at how those years of economic turmoil shaped the sport and how baseball responded. Gietschier covers a then-burgeoning group of owners, players, and key figures—among them Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Hank Greenberg, Ford Frick, and several others—whose stories figure prominently in baseball’s past and some of whom are still prominent in its collective consciousness. Combining narrative and analysis, Gietschier tells the game’s history across more than three decades while simultaneously exploring its politics and economics, including, for example, how the game confronted and barely survived the United States’ entry into World War II; how owners controlled their labor supply—the players; and how the business of baseball interacted with the federal government. He reveals how baseball handled the return to peacetime and the defining postwar decade, including the integration of the game, the demise of the Negro Leagues, the emergence of television, and the first efforts to move franchises and expand into new markets. Gietschier considers much of the work done by biographers, scholars, and baseball researchers to inform a new and current history of baseball in one of its more important and transformational periods.

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Art Nouveau thrived from the late 1890s through the First World War. The international design movement reveled in curvilinear forms and both playful and macabre visions and had a deep impact on cinematic art direction, costuming, gender representation, genre, and theme. Though historians have long dismissed Art Nouveau as a decadent cultural mode, its tremendous afterlife in cinema proves otherwise. In Cinema by Design, Lucy Fischer traces Art Nouveau's long history in films from various decades and global locales, appreciating the movement's enduring avant-garde aesthetics and dynamic ideology. Fischer begins with the portrayal of women and nature in the magical "trick films" of the Spanish director Segundo de Chomon; the elite dress and decor design choices in Cecil B. DeMille's The Affairs of Anatol (1921); and the mise-en-scene of fantasy in Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Reading Salome (1923), Fischer shows how the cinema offered an engaging frame for adapting the risque works of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. Moving to the modern era, Fischer focuses on a series of dramatic films, including Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), that make creative use of the architecture of Antoni Gaudi; and several European works of horror-The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Deep Red (1975), and The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (2013)-in which Art Nouveau architecture and narrative supply unique resonances in scenes of terror. In later chapters, she examines films like Klimt (2006) that portray the style in relation to the art world and ends by discussing the Art Nouveau revival in 1960s cinema. Fischer's analysis brings into focus the partnership between Art Nouveau's fascination with the illogical and the unconventional and filmmakers' desire to upend viewers' perception of the world. Her work explains why an art movement embedded in modernist sensibilities can flourish in contemporary film through its visions of nature, gender, sexuality, and the exotic.

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

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We hear about pieces of ice the size of continents breaking off of Antarctica, rapidly melting glaciers in the Himalayas, and ice sheets in the Arctic crumbling to the sea, but does it really matter? Will melting glaciers change our lives? Absolutely. Glaciers are built and destroyed during ice ages and interglacial periods. These massive ice bodies hold three quarters of our freshwater, yet we don't have laws to protect them from climate change. When they melt, they increase sea levels, alter the Earth's reflectivity, wreak havoc for ocean and air currents, destabilize global ecosystems, warm our climate, and bring on floods that swamp millions of acres of coastal land. The critical ecological role they play to keep our global climate stable, and the environmental functions they provide, wither. And, as climate change warms glacier cores, collapsing glacier ice triggers tsunamis that send deadly massive ice blocks, rocks, earth, and billions of liters of water rushing down mountain valleys. It has happened before in the Himalayas, the Central Andes, the Rockies and Western Cascades, and the European Alps, and it will happen again. In his new book Meltdown, Jorge Daniel Taillant takes readers deeper into the cryosphere, connecting the dots between climate change, glacier melt, and the impacts that receding glacier ice brings to livability on Earth, to our environments, and to our communities. Taillant walks us through the little-known realm of the periglacial environment, a world of invisible subsurface rock glaciers that will outlive exposed glaciers as climate change destroys surface ice. He also looks at actions that can help stop climate change and save glaciers, exploring how society, politics, and our leaders have responded to address the global COVID-19 pandemic and yet largely continue to fail to address the even larger—looming and escalating—crisis of climate change. Our climate is deteriorating at a drastic rate, and it's happening right in front of us. Meltdown is about glaciers and their unfolding demise during one of the most critical moments of our planet's geological history. If we can reconsider glaciers in a whole new light and understand the critical role they play in our own sustainability, we may be able to save the cryosphere.

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Esta obra, publicada originalmente en 1936, constituye uno de los trabajos académicos más influyentes de C. S. Lewis en el campo de la literatura medieval. En ella se desarrolla un profundo estudio sobre la poesía amorosa alegórica de la Edad Media, cuyo origen se sitúa en los poemas de «amor cortés» de los trovadores del Languedoc desde el siglo XI, a través de su transformación y fin a finales del siglo XVI.Esta poesía de los trovadores, que constituiría el primer modo de expresión del amor «romántico», supuso tal cambio respecto de la literatura precedente que, como el propio Lewis señala, «no dejó intocado rincón alguno en nuestra ética, nuestra imaginación y nuestra vida diaria, erigiendo barreras infranqueables entre nosotros y el pasado clásico o el presente oriental. Comparado con esta revolución, el Renacimiento es un simple remolino en la superficie de la literatura».Resulta particularmente relevante dentro del presente ensayo el estudio que Lewis realiza de El libro de la rosa, obra cumbre del género dentro de la literatura tardo medieval.The Allegory of LoveThis work, originally published in 1936, constitutes one of the most influential academic works of C.S. Lewis in the field of medieval literature. It develops an in-depth study of the allegorical love poetry of the Middle Ages, whose origins lie in the "courtly love" poems of the Languedoc troubadours in eleventh century, through its transformation and gradual demise at the end of the sixteenth century.This poetry of the troubadours, which would constitute the first mode of expression of «romantic» love, supposed such a change with respect to the preceding literature that, as Lewis himself points out, "it left no corner untouched in our ethics, our imagination and our lives. daily, erecting insurmountable barriers between us and the classical past or the Eastern present. Compared with this revolution, the Renaissance is a mere whirlpool on the surface of literature."Lewis's study of The Book of the Rose, the masterpiece of the genre within late medieval literature, is particularly relevant in this essay.

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A unique burden was inherited by the children of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his celebrated siblings, Senators Robert and Ted Kennedy. Raised in a world of enormous privilege against the backdrop of American history, this third generation of Kennedys often veered between towering accomplishment and devastating defeat. In his revelatory new book, acclaimed Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli draws back the curtain on the next generation of America’s most famous family. John Kennedy, Jr.’s life in the public eye is explored, following the Kennedy scion as he faced the challenges posed by marrying his great love, Carolyn Bessette. Riveting new details are shared about the couple’s tragic demise - and why Ethel Kennedy advised Carolyn not to take the trip that would ultimately end her life. John’s sister, Caroline Kennedy, had her own complicated relationships, including a marriage to Ed Schlossberg that surprised her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and an unexpected bond with her mother-in-law, Mae Schlossberg. Additional stories, many shared here for the first time, illuminate the rest of the Kennedy dynasty: Kara Kennedy, Ted’s daughter, and her valiant battle against lung cancer; how Ted’s wife, Vicki, introduced a new era of feminism to the Kennedy family; the lifelong struggles with addiction faced by Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Patrick Kennedy; the unexpected way pop star Taylor Swift helped Conor Kennedy heal after the death of his mother, Bobby’s wife Mary; and Congressman Joe Kennedy III’s rise to prominence. At the center of it all is the family’s indomitable matriarch, Ethel Kennedy - a formidable presence with her maddening eccentricities and inspiring courage. Based on hundreds of exclusive first-hand interviews and cultivated over twenty years of research - including numerous oral histories from the JFK Library and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute - The Kennedy Heirs is an epic drama of ambition, scandal, pride and power.

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The story of a small healthcare startup and its fight for survival against the very federal agencies responsible for its launch as part of the ACA.In the contentious run-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Congress passed a law to make nonprofit health insurance CO-OPs (formally known as Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans) a viable alternative to the public option. The idea was to create new competition in order to lower health insurance premiums and encourage innovation. Nearly two dozen such low-cost CO-OPs were launched in the wake of the ACA's passage; only four are in operation today.In Death by Regulation, Dr. Peter L. Beilenson tells the story of a group of Maryland-based public health professionals who launched the Evergreen Health Cooperative, only to discover that the ACA law encouraging CO-OPs was a "plastic plant"—a piece of legislation created for optics but never intended to be functional. Over most of its four years of existence, Evergreen succeeded against all odds, prevailing over naysayers, big insurance companies, Congress, and its founders' naïveté. But in an ironic twist, it was bureaucratic hostility from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the very Obama administration agency responsible for the CO-OPs—that led to their collective demise.Beilenson traces the huge impact of seemingly small policy decisions on the work of his team and the people their CO-OP was built to serve. He recounts the excitement and satisfaction of launching such a valuable healthcare company, as well as the damage done to scores of employees and tens of thousands of satisfied healthcare customers when bureaucrats ran amok. The only book about these idealistic Obamacare CO-OPs and the obstacles they all faced, Death by Regulation offers an insider view of health policy and the reality of starting an insurance company from scratch.

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Throughout the centuries, ballet has had a rich and ever-evolving role in the humanities. Renowned choreographers, composers, and performers have contributed to this unique art form, staging enduring works of beauty. Significant productions by major companies embrace innovations and adaptations, enabling ballet to thrive and delight audiences all over the globe. In The Encyclopedia of World Ballet, Mary Ellen Snodgrass surveys the emergence of ballet from ancient Asian models to the present, providing overviews of rhythmic movement as a subject of art, photography, and cinema. Entries in this volume reveal the nature and purpose of ballet, detailing specifics about leaders in classic design and style, influential costumers and companies, and trends in technique, partnering, variation, and liturgical execution. This reference covers: ·Choreographers ·Composers ·Costumers ·Dance companies ·Dancers ·Productions ·Set designers ·Techniques ·Terminology Among the principal figures included here are Alvin Ailey, Afrasiyab Badalbeyli, George Balanchine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pierre Beauchamp, Sergei Diaghilev, Agnes DeMille, Nacho Duato, Isadora Duncan, Boris Eifman, Mats Ek, Erté, Martha Graham, Inigo Jones, Louis XIV, Amalia Hernández Navarro, Rudolf Nureyev, Marius Petipa, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, and Agrippina Vaganova. This work also features dance companies from the Americas, Australia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Korea, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, and Vietnam. Productions include such universal narrative favorites as Coppélia, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Scheherazade, Firebird, and Swan Lake. Featuring a chronology that identifies key events and figures, this volume highlights significant developments in stage presentations over the centuries. The Encyclopedia of World Ballet will serve general readers, dance instructors, and enthusiasts from middle school through college as well as professional coaches and performers, troupe directors, journalists, and historians of the arts.

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At its peak, the British Empire spanned the world and linked diverse populations in a vast network of exchange that spread people, wealth, commodities, cultures, and ideas around the globe. By the turn of the twentieth century, this empire, which made Britain one of the premier global superpowers, appeared invincible and eternal. This compelling book reveals, however, that it was actually remarkably fragile. Reconciling the humanitarian ideals of liberal British democracy with the inherent authoritarianism of imperial rule required the men and women who ran the empire to portray their non-Western subjects as backward and in need of the civilizing benefits of British rule. However, their lack of administrative manpower and financial resources meant that they had to recruit cooperative local allies to actually govern their colonies. Noted historian Timothy H. Parsons provides vivid detail of the experiences of subject peoples to explain how this became increasingly difficult and finally impossible after World War II as Africans, Asians, Arabs, and West Indians rejected the imperial notion that they were inferior and refused to be ruled by foreigners. Yet he also shows that the transformation of the British colonies into nation-states was not just a transfer of political power. The new postcolonial societies blended British political, economic, and social institutions with local norms and values in the new nations, while mass migration to Britain from the non-Western parts of the Commonwealth created a much more diverse and plural metropolitan society. This book tells the dramatic story of how the British Empire and its demise accelerated and strengthened globalization by creating webs of commerce, migration, and cultural exchange that linked Britons and their former subjects in new ways and produced blended transnational cultures that were British in origin but no longer British in character or style.

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“Three hundred years ago, Lord Carpenter, I’d have had your head on a spike on Tower Hill..” It is 1938 and newspaper chief Lord Carpenter is about to publish a front-page story that will guarantee war with Russia. But before the paper can go to print, he is found stabbed in his office, and circumstances suggest the killer is one of his staff. Everyone from the editor-in-chief to the staff librarian had the opportunity. But was the motivation for the murder political or personal? Crime reporter Charles Venables finds himself both suspect and sleuth as he tries to disentangle the clues and determine which of his colleagues is the guilty party. Red herrings abound, but it soon becomes apparent that more than one person had a reason to want Carpenter dead…. Fatality in Fleet Street displays the author’s trademark wit and a plot with plenty of twists and ingenuity to please the reader. Equally interesting are the political overtones and the militaristic pretensions of the deceased newspaper baron. The novel is set in 1938 – five years later than its real publication date – and presents a Russia whose economy is growing, which makes the country ‘a real menace to the established order of things’ in Carpenter’s worldview. Although the imperious newspaper baron meets his demise early on, his outsized personality and ambition are the bedrock that propels the story. Sprigg makes his satire clear; there is more than a passing resemblance between the fictional Lord Carpenter and the real world Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Evening Standard and Daily Express. Sprigg started his career as a cub reporter and the book’s setting of a busy newspaper is well realised. Fatality also takes a sardonic view of socialist activity in Britain. When Venables goes to investigate a local chapter of the Communist Party, the situation is alternately threatening and farcical, with members parading their revolutionary credentials and loudly denouncing the ‘bourgeois’. Sprigg later became an active member of the Communist Party and published Marxist literary criticism, but his gently mocking tone in Fatality suggests this conversion was some way off in 1933.

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For fans of World War Z and the Southern Reach Trilogy, a suspenseful oral history commemorating the five-year anniversary of the Pulse—the alien code that hacked the DNA of Earth’s population—and the response team who faced the world-changing phenomenon. Voyager 1 was a message in a bottle. Our way of letting the galaxy know we existed. That we were out here if anyone wanted to find us. Over the next forty years, the probe flew past Jupiter and Saturn before it drifted into the void, swallowed up by a silent universe. Or so we thought… Truth is, our message didn’t go unheard. Discovered by Dr. Dahlia Black, the mysterious Pulse was sent by a highly intelligent intergalactic species that called themselves the Ascendants. It soon becomes clear this alien race isn’t just interested in communication—they are capable of rewriting human DNA, in an astonishing process they call the Elevation. Five years after the Pulse, acclaimed journalist Keith Thomas sets out to make sense of the event that altered the world. Thomas travels across the country to interview members of the task force who grappled to decode the Pulse and later disseminated its exact nature to worried citizens. He interviews the astronomers who initially doubted Black’s discovery of the Pulse—an error that critics say led to the world’s quick demise. Thomas also hears from witnesses of the Elevation and people whose loved ones vanished in the Finality, an event that, to this day, continues to puzzle Pulse researchers, even though theories abound about the Ascendants’ motivation. Including never-before-published transcripts from task force meetings, diary entries from Black, and candid interviews with Ballard, Thomas also shows in Dahlia Black how a select few led their country in its darkest hours, toward a new level of humanity.

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As a phenomenon of history with social, political, cultural implications, the entire 'negotiated' experience makes the South African situation unique in both the African and global context. As this phenomenon unfolds, many fascinating new artistic influences are being explored to capture the diverse cultural depths and questions of identity unleashed by the demise of apartheid. This collection of plays reflects certain key trends in both subject matter and aesthetics prevalent in South Africa at this crucial moment in history. An introductory essay for the anthology will provide the reader with the artistic, cultural, and political background to the plays. Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom and Presley Chweneyagae's "Relativity: Township Stories" is about a serial killer on the loose and has been widely performed in South Africa and the UK. Martin Koboekae's "The Bush Tale" exposes the mistrust between two people from extremely different cultural backgrounds who meet through circumstance.Yael Farber's "Molora" explores the rage and pain of generations shattered by the Apartheid [A world tour of Molora will begin at the Barbican Theatre, London in April 2008]. Norman Mxosolisa's "Hallelujah!" is about the murderous, random violence engulfing the country. David Peimer's "Armed Response" is about a young German photographer who arrives to do her first assignment in Johannesburg. Presley Chweneyagae achieved international recognition for his title role in the Oscar-winning film "Tsotsi" and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom received the National Standard Bank 'Young Artist Award' for theatre in 2005. Martin Koboekae is an award-winning playwright, novelist and director.Yael Farber is an acclaimed writer and director. Norman Mxosolisa is a playwright, composer, TV writer and director and teaches at Wits University, Johannesburg and won the Schreiner South African Young Artist Award in 2002 for "Hallelujah!". David Peimer is an award-winning playwright and director and a Professor of Theatre at New York University (Prague Division).

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This book is a profoundly moving and analytically incisive attempt to shift the terms of discussion in American politics. It speaks to the intellectual and political weaknesses within the liberal tradition that have put the United States at the mercy of libertarian, authoritarian populist, nakedly racist, and traditionalist elitist versions of the right-wing; and it seeks to identify resources that can move the left away from the stunned intellectual incoherence with which it has met the death of Bolshevism. In Ira Katznelson's view, Americans are squandering a tremendous ethical and political opportunity to redefine and reorient the liberal tradition. In an opening essay and two remarkable letters addressed to Adam Michnik, who is arguably East Europe's emblematic democratic intellectual, Katznelson seeks to recover this possibility. By examining issues that once occupied Michnik's fellow dissidents in the Warsaw group known as the Crooked Circle, Katznelson brings a fresh realism to old ideals and posits a liberalism that "stares hard" at cruelty, suffering, coercion, and tyrannical abuses of state power. Like the members of Michnik's club, he recognizes that the circumference of liberalism's circle never runs smooth and that tolerance requires extremely difficult judgments. Katznelson's first letter explores how the virtues of socialism, including its moral stand on social justice, can be related to liberalism while overcoming debilitating aspects of the socialist inheritance. The second asks whether liberalism can recognize, appreciate, and manage human difference. Situated in the lineage of efforts by Richard Hofstadter, C. Wright Mills, and Lionel Trilling to "thicken" liberalism, these letters also draw on personal experience in the radical politics of the 1960s and in the dissident culture of East and Central Europe in the years immediately preceding communism's demise. Liberalism's Crooked Circle could help foster a substantive debate in the American elections of 1996 and determine the contents of that desperately needed discussion.

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Rose Hartman is a legend. An omnipresent force on the New York City social scene, Rose stands as one of the most prolific photographers of our age. As a woman photographer, Rose has jumped over every hurdle in a male-dominated world to create a huge body of work, documenting the demimonde of fame and glamour in the centre of world culture. If you are famous, she has most likely photographed you, whether you know her well or not at all. Her groundbreaking photography straddles the boundaries between street photography, portraiture and documentary photography. The images included in this book are prime selections of couples - artists and muses; designers and muses; family; mothers and children; pets; friendships; models and friends; lovers; marriages - photographed by Rose over the years, and yet they are far more than pictures of two people. In each and every photograph, Rose is the third and most critical component. She is the director of the final cut. Thanks to her impeccable timing and placement, Rose opts to trip the shutter at just the right moment, capturing a critical instant in a conversation - a pose, a gesture - so as to present a story about two people from the world of popular culture. Couples featured include: Jerry Hall and Annie Leibovitz, Bob Mackie and Cher, Claudia Schiffer and Valentino, Jean Paul Gautier and Lauren Bacall, Donatella Versace and Naomi Campbell, Peter and Jane Fonda, Bianca and Jade Jagger, Lily and Kate Moss, Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono, Liz Taylor and her dog, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed, Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley, Robert Wolders and Audrey Hepburn, Iman and David Bowie, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, Kelly and Calvin Klein, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown.

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

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Just 28,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in geological time, the last of Neanderthals died out in their last outpost, in caves near Gibraltar. Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they were. We think of them as crude and clumsy and not very bright, easily driven to extinction by the lithe, smart modern humans that came out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. But was it really as simple as that? Clive Finlayson reminds us that the Neanderthals were another kind of human, and their culture was not so very different from that of our own ancestors. In this book, he presents a wider view of the events that led to the migration of the moderns into Europe, what might have happened during the contact of the two populations, and what finally drove the Neanderthals to extinction. It is a view that considers climate, ecology, and migrations of populations, as well as culture and interaction. His conclusion is that the destiny of the Neanderthals and the Moderns was sealed by ecological factors and contingencies. It was a matter of luck that we survived and spread while the Neanderthals dwindled and perished. Had the climate not changed in our favour some 50 million years ago, things would have been very different. There is much current research interest in Neanderthals, much of it driven by attempts to map some of their DNA. But it's not just a question of studying the DNA. The rise and fall of populations is profoundly moulded by the larger scale forces of climate and ecology. And it is only by taking this wider view that we can fully understand the course of events that led to our survival and their demise. The fact that Neanderthals survived until virtually yesterday makes our relationship with them and their tragedy even more poignant. They almost made it, after all.

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A new global history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - an invasion whose consequences are still felt in Afghanistan and across the wider world. On 24 December 1979, Soviet armed forces entered Afghanistan, beginning an occupation that would last almost a decade and creating a political crisis that shook the world. To many observers, the Soviet invasion showed the lengths to which one of the world's superpowers would go to vie for supremacy in the global Cold War. The Soviet war, and parallel covert American aid to Afghan resistance fighters, would come to be a defining event of international politics in the final years of the Cold War, lingering far beyond the Soviet Union's own demise. Yet Cold War competition is only a small part of the story. Soviet troops entered a country already at war with itself. A century of debates within Afghanistan over the nature of modern nationhood culminated in a 1978 coup in which self-described Afghan communists pledged to fundamentally reshape Afghanistan. Instead what broke out was a civil war in which Afghans asserted competing models of Afghan statehood. Afghan socialists and Islamists came to the fore of this conflict in the 1980s, thanks in part to Soviet and American involvement, but they represented a broader movement for local articulations of social and political modernity that did not derive from foreign models. Afghans, in conversation with foreigners, set many of the parameters of the conflict. This sweeping history moves between centres of state in Kabul, Moscow, Islamabad, and Washington, the halls of global governance in Geneva and New York, resistance hubs in Peshawar and Panjshir, and refugee camps scattered across Pakistan's borderlands to tell a story that is much more expansive than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - a global history of a moment of crisis not just for Afghanistan or the Cold War but international relations and the postcolonial state.

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'Daniel Rachel imagines what the next Beatles album might have been like, with painstaking detail and great stories' - David Hepworth, The Guardian'A fantastical journey through what might have been... Exciting and compelling.' - Chris Hawkins, BBC 6 Music'Daniel Rachel's forensic investigation makes a strong case for looking afresh at the evidence... a fascinating detailed read' - Mojo'In this meticulously crafted book, Rachel offers an extraordinary peek behind the curtain of one of the most celebrated music groups in history...a must-read for any music aficionado' - Music Devotee'A detailed researcher and writer... Ingenious.' - Record Collector'Full of enthralling details about the highs and lows of the band's last year... it's like the DNA in a crime scene.' - David Hepworth, Word in Your Ear'A book that is religiously detailed and yet manages to create tantalising glimpses of what might have been' - Louder Than War***This is the story of the great lost Beatles album.The end of the Beatles wasn't inevitable. It came through miscommunication, misunderstandings and missed opportunities to reconcile.But what if it didn't end? What if just one of those chances was taken, and the Beatles carried on? What if they made one last, great album?In The Lost Album of The Beatles, Daniel Rachel - winner of the prestigious Penderyn Music Book Prize - looks at what could have been. Drawing on impeccable research, Rachel examines the the Fab Four's untimely demise - and from the ashes compiles a track list for an imagined final album, pulling together unfinished demos, forgotten B-sides, hit solo songs, and arguing that together they form the basis of a lost Beatles masterpiece.Compelling and convincing, The Lost Album of The Beatles is a daring re-write of the group's history, and a tantalising glimpse of what might have been.

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