Search results for ""author jan"

* A TIMES HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR * * SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTH * * LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN * 'One of the best debuts of the year' - THE TIMES 'As nimbly realised as by the genre's master, Andrew Taylor' - FINANCIAL TIMES 'Black Drop is a joy from start to finish' - ANDREW TAYLOR This is the confession of Laurence Jago. Clerk. Gentleman. Spy. July 1794, and London is filled with rumours of revolution. The war against the French is not going in Britain's favour, and negotiations with America are on a knife edge. Laurence Jago, Foreign Office clerk, is ever more reliant on opium - the Black Drop - to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter, whose contents could lead to the destruction of the British Army, has been leaked to the press and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk - a supposed suicide - and it seems clear where the blame truly lies. But Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence, and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, can Laurence find the true culprit without ending up on the gallows himself? A thrilling historical mystery, perfect for readers of C.J. Sansom, Andrew Taylor, Antonia Hodgson and Laura Shepherd-Robinson. 'This opium-fuelled gem is a murderous romp' - JANICE HALLETT 'A thrilling slice of pitch-dark historical fiction' - EMMA STONEX 'A gripping, intricate story of Georgian high politics' - W.C. RYAN

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"In this state of mind, which excludes any falsehood, I declare that not a single word of what I have written in my diaries is false or exaggerated or dictated by selfish resentment. It is all just what I have seen and heard. And if, when making ready to take leave of life, I consider allowing the publication of my hurried notes, it is not because I expect posthumous revaluation or vindication, but because I believe that honest testimonial of the truth in this sad world may still be useful in bringing relief to the innocent and striking at those who are responsible."Count Galeazzo Ciano was foreign minister in Fascist Italy from 1936 until 1943. He was also Mussolini's son-in-law. This fascinating diary gives a day to day account of this passage through the war, his meetings with the Duce and other key figures of the conflict including Hitler and Von Ribbentrop. It becomes, in effect, a history of Italy under Mussolini. But the story does not end happily. Ciano was dismissed as Foreign Minister in 1943 after his involvement in a plot to depose Mussolini, as the Italian war effort began to crumble in the wake of allied invasion from the South.Under pressure from the Nazi's he was executed by firing squad in Verona in January 1944. Nonetheless, his diaries provide an unique and perceptive insight into this remarkable period of history, from a man that did not embrace war as many of his colleagues did.

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Explores how contemporary novels dealing with flight and expulsion after the Second World War unsettle traditional notions of Heimat without abandoning place-based notions of belonging. At the end of the Second World War, millions of Germans and Poles fled or were expelled from the border regions of what had been their countries. This monograph examines how, in Cold War and post-Cold War Europe since the 1970s, writers have responded to memories or postmemories of this traumatic displacement. Friederike Eigler engages with important currents in scholarship -- on "Heimat," the much-debated German concept of "homeland"; on the spatial turnin literary studies; and on German-Polish relations -- arguing for a transnational approach to the legacies of flight and expulsion and for a spatial approach to Heimat. She explores notions of belonging in selected postwar and contemporary German novels, with a comparative look at a Polish novel, Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night (1998). Eigler finds dynamic manifestations of place in Tokarczuk's novel, in Horst Bienek's 1972-82 Gleiwitz tetralogy about the historical border region of Upper Silesia, and in contemporary novels by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, Kathrin Schmidt, Tanja Dückers, Olaf Müller, and Sabrina Janesch. In a decisive departure from earlierapproaches, Eigler explores how these novels foster an awareness of the regions' multiethnic and multinational histories, unsettling traditional notions of Heimat without altogether abandoning place-based notions of belonging. Friederike Eigler is Professor of German at Georgetown University.

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Winner of the Ramnath Goenka Award 2020 On 26th January 1950 India became a republic, shedding its last links with its colonial past and inaugurating a new era of liberty and freedom. With fundamental rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the state, the new constitution was universally acclaimed as the ‘world’s greatest experiment in liberal government’. This idealistic birth of a new republic meant a clean break with a repressive past. And yet, barely twelve months later, the very makers of the constitution were denouncing their own creation. Passed in June 1951, the First Amendment to the Constitution was a pivotal moment in Indian constitutional history. Sixteen Stormy Days explores the contentious legacy of this First Amendment which drastically curbed freedom of speech, restricted freedom against discrimination and circumscribed the right to property. It follows the sixteen days of debate that led up to it, the people that created it, the great battle waged against it and the immense consequences it has had for Indian democracy. It is a cautionary tale about an almost forgotten but hugely consequential piece of history that holds the key to understanding the position of civil liberties and individual freedoms in India today. It challenges conventional wisdom on iconic figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel and Shyama Prasad Mookerji, and lays bare the vast gulf between the liberal promise of India’s Constitution and the authoritarian impulses of her first government.

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This collection brings together the work of both film scholars and queer theorists to advance a more sophisticated notion of queer film criticism. While the “politics of representation” has been the focus of much previous gay and lesbian film criticism, the contributors to Out Takes employ the approaches of queer theory to move beyond conventional readings and to reexamine aspects of the cinematic gaze in relation to queer desire and spectatorship.The essays examine a wide array of films, including Calamity Jane, Rear Window, The Hunger, Heavenly Creatures, and Bound , and discuss such figures as Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, and Alfred Hitchcock. Divided into three sections, the first part reconsiders the construction of masculinity and male homoerotic desire—especially with respect to the role of women—in classic cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. The second section offers a deconstructive consideration of lesbian film spectatorship and lesbian representation. Part three looks at the historical trajectory of independent queer cinema, including works by H.D., Kenneth Anger, and Derek Jarman.By exploring new approaches to the study of sexuality in film, Out Takes will be useful to scholars in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and cinema studies.Contributors. Bonnie Burns, Steven Cohan, Alexander Doty, Lee Edelman, Michelle Elleray, Jim Ellis, Ellis Hanson, D. A. Miller, Eric Savoy, Matthew Tinkcom, Amy Villarejo, Jean Walton

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It is commonly assumed that Caribbean culture is split into elite highbrow culture—which is considered derivative of Europe and not rooted in the Caribbean—and authentic working-class culture, which is often identified with such iconic island activities as salsa, carnival, calypso, and reggae. In Caribbean Middlebrow, Belinda Edmondson recovers a middle ground, a genuine popular culture in the English-speaking Caribbean that stretches back into the nineteenth century. Edmondson shows that popular novels, beauty pageants, and music festivals are examples of Caribbean culture that are mostly created, maintained, and consumed by the Anglophone middle class. Much of middle-class culture, she finds, is further gendered as "female": women are more apt to be considered recreational readers of fiction, for example, and women's behavior outside the home is often taken as a measure of their community's respectability. Edmondson also highlights the influence of American popular culture, especially African American popular culture, as early as the nineteenth century. This is counter to the notion that the islands were exclusively under the sway of British tastes and trends. She finds the origins of today's "dub" or spoken-word Jamaican poetry in earlier traditions of genteel dialect poetry—as exemplified by the work of the Jamaican folklorist, actress, and poet Louise "Miss Lou" Bennett Coverley-and considers the impact of early Caribbean novels including Emmanuel Appadocca (1853) and Jane's Career (1913).

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On January 11, 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan--a Republican on record as saying that "some crimes are so horrendous ...that society has a right to demand the ultimate penalty"--commuted the capital sentences of all 167 prisoners on his state's death row. Critics demonized Ryan. For opponents of capital punishment, however, Ryan became an instant hero whose decision was seen as a signal moment in the "new abolitionist" politics to end killing by the state. In this compelling and timely work, Austin Sarat provides the first book-length work on executive clemency. He turns our focus from questions of guilt and innocence to the very meaning of mercy. Starting from Ryan's controversial decision, Mercy on Trial uses the lens of executive clemency in capital cases to discuss the fraught condition of mercy in American political life. Most pointedly, Sarat argues that mercy itself is on trial. Although it has always had a problematic position as a form of "lawful lawlessness," it has come under much more intense popular pressure and criticism in recent decades. This has yielded a radical decline in the use of the power of chief executives to stop executions. From the history of capital clemency in the twentieth century to surrounding legal controversies and philosophical debates about when (if ever) mercy should be extended, Sarat examines the issue comprehensively. In the end, he acknowledges the risks associated with mercy--but, he argues, those risks are worth taking.

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To continue doing business in Germany after Hitler's ascent to power, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films that attacked the Nazis or condemned Germany's persecution of Jews. Ben Urwand reveals this bargain for the first time—a "collaboration" (Zusammenarbeit) that drew in a cast of characters ranging from notorious German political leaders such as Goebbels to Hollywood icons such as Louis B. Mayer.At the center of Urwand's story is Hitler himself, who was obsessed with movies and recognized their power to shape public opinion. In December 1930, his Party rioted against the Berlin screening of All Quiet on the Western Front, which led to a chain of unfortunate events and decisions. Fearful of losing access to the German market, all of the Hollywood studios started making concessions to the German government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, the studios—many of which were headed by Jews—began dealing with his representatives directly.Urwand shows that the arrangement remained in place through the 1930s, as Hollywood studios met regularly with the German consul in Los Angeles and changed or canceled movies according to his wishes. Paramount and Fox invested profits made from the German market in German newsreels, while MGM financed the production of German armaments. Painstakingly marshaling previously unexamined archival evidence, The Collaboration raises the curtain on a hidden episode in Hollywood—and American—history.

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In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett, "among the country's most distinguished thinkers . . . has concentrated into 176 pages a profoundly affecting argument" (Business Week) that draws on interviews with dismissed IBM executives, bakers, a bartender turned advertising executive, and many others to call into question the terms of our new economy. In his 1972 classic, The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb), Sennett interviewed a man he called Enrico, a hardworking janitor whose life was structured by a union pay schedule and given meaning by his sacrifices for the future. In this new book-a #1 bestseller in Germany-Sennett explores the contemporary scene characterized by Enrico's son, Rico, whose life is more materially successful, yet whose work lacks long-term commitments or loyalties. Distinguished by Sennett's "combination of broad historical and literary learning and a reporter's willingness to walk into a store or factory [and] strike up a conversation" (New York Times Book Review), this book "challenges the reader to decide whether the flexibility of modern capitalism . . . is merely a fresh form of oppression" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Praise for The Corrosion of Character: "A benchmark for our time."—Daniel Bell "[A]n incredibly insightful book."—William Julius Wilson "[A] remarkable synthesis of acute empirical observation and serious moral reflection."—Richard Rorty "[Sennett] offers abundant fresh insights . . . illuminated by his concern with people's struggle to give meaning to their lives."—[Memphis] Commercial Appeal

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Twenty-first-century culture is obsessed with books. In a time when many voices have joined to predict the death of print, books continue to resurface in new and unexpected ways. From the proliferation of “shelfies” to Jane Austen–themed leggings and from decorative pillows printed with beloved book covers to bookwork sculptures exhibited in prestigious collections, books are everywhere and are not just for reading. Writers have caught up with this trend: many contemporary novels depict books as central characters or fetishize paper and print thematically and formally.In Bookishness, Jessica Pressman examines the new status of the book as object and symbol. She explores the rise of “bookishness” as an identity and an aesthetic strategy that proliferates from store-window décor to experimental writing. Ranging from literature to kitsch objects, stop-motion animation films to book design, Pressman considers the multivalent meanings of books in contemporary culture. Books can represent shelter from—or a weapon against—the dangers of the digital; they can act as memorials and express a sense of loss. Examining the works of writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Jennifer Egan, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Leanne Shapton, Pressman illuminates the status of the book as a fetish object and its significance for understanding contemporary fakery. Bringing together media studies, book history, and literary criticism, Bookishness explains how books still give meaning to our lives in a digital age.

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On January 8, 1982, the AT&T divestiture consent decree was announced. A company with $150 billion in assets--more than General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Eastman Kodak, and Xerox combined--the country's second largest employer with over a million employees, and the nations most widely held security with over three million shareholders, was to be broken up on the first day of 1984. Many economists, government officials, people in the telecommunications industry, and media observers predicted dire consequences for "the best telephone system in the world." Years later, some experts claim the divestiture has been a great success. According to present AT&T Chairman and CEO, Robert Allen, long-distance rates have dropped, local rates have not increased as dramatically as predicted, more households are on the network, other long-distance and equipment companies now effectively compete wit hAT&T, and consumers have received more choices in products, better values, and lower prices. Others are far less positive in their evaluation of divestiture's effects. After the Breakup: Assessing the New Post-AT&T Divestiture Era describes the current state of telecommunications and how the industry has changed in the first decade of divestiture. Drawn from a major project organized by the Center for Telecommunications and Information Studies at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, this volume offers an objective account of divestiture.

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From ancient philosophy to Tristram Shandy and Buster Keaton movies, this book tells the engaging history of accident as an idea. An accidental glance at a newspaper notice causes Rousseau to collapse under the force of a vision. A car accidentally hits Giacometti, and he experiences an epiphany. Darwin introduces accident to the basic process of life, and Freud looks to accident as the expression of unconscious desire. Accident, Ross Hamilton claims, is the force that makes us modern. Tracing the story of accident from Aristotle to Buster Keaton and beyond, Hamilton’s daring book revives the tradition of the grand history of ideas.Accident tells an original history of Western thought from the perspective of Aristotle’s remarkably durable categories of accident and substance. Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s distinction underwrote an insistence on order and subordination of the inessential. In a groundbreaking innovation, Hamilton argues that after the Reformation, the concept of accident began to change places with that of substance: accident became a life-transforming event and effectively a person’s essence. For moderns, it is the accidental, seemingly trivial moments of consciousness that, like Wordsworth’s “spots of time,” create constellations of meaning in our lives. Touching on a broad array of images and texts—Augustine, Dante, the frescoes of Raphael, Descartes, Jane Austen, the work of the surrealists, and twentieth-century cinema—Hamilton provides a new way to map the mutations of personal identity and subjectivity.

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Panipat has been the cockpit of Indian history for nearly four centuries. The fate of India was decided three times in fiercely contested battles in the area around Panipat. However, an objective study of the battles- from a military standpoint- is conspicuous by its absence. It has been downplayed by the historical context of the battles, which have gained significance. In this book, the three battles fought at Panipat will be analyzed from a military perspective. 14 January 2011 will be the 250th anniversary of the Third Battle of Panipat. The word Panipat has entered the Indian strategic lexicon as a failure to do anything until the enemy has reached your doorstep. The Indian leadership ostensibly suffers from the Panipat Syndrome even today. Even in this age of rapid technological change, the history of previous combat is relevant. It serves to provide a platform to judge effects of new weapons or methodologies, and affords an insight into the performance of leaders. This book explains that, while modern warfare has changed, the nature of war fighting and the principles according to which all wars are fought, are enduring. It also analyzes the reasons why Panipat had been a battleground through the course of Indian history. The Battles are graphically represented, through maps and sketches, in order to afford the reader a more dynamic picture of their conduct. The book also includes three disquisitions on Elephants in Battle ; Cannons in the Indian Medieval Period ; and The Theory of Battle .

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A collection of uncompromising poetry observing the negativity and self-fulfilling futility of division counterpoised with the importance of care and empathy to explore what really matters. Includes a Foreword by Professor Mike Thomas, Vice Chancellor UCLAN. Fault Lines is Laura’s second collection of poetry from Flapjack Press. “One of the country’s finest poets, both on the page and on the stage. A spirit at once empathetic and revolutionary. Real words for heart-breaking times, a call to action!” - Attila the Stockbroker, poet & musician “A poetic battle cry. I’d like my teenage daughter to read these poems because, as women, we shouldn’t have to wait for middle-age to claim the right to be ourselves.” - Alice Nutter, ex-Chumbawamba, screenwriter & playwright “Defiant, furious, vulnerable, bloody-minded and wonderfully joyous, this volume encourages us all to hang on in there. Fill your heart. Read this book.” - Steve Pottinger, poet & performer “This is poetry that does not just describe our world: it challenges you to change it. And it does so with such class.” - Janine Booth, writer, poet & activist “Laura has the key quality to be a true poet: something to say. This book is of and for the times we are living through and ought to be on school curricula.” - Julian Jordon, Director of Write Out Loud “Personal, political, social and relational. Her strength and consistency as a poet is raising sometimes difficult but often comic issues to our attention.” - Professor Mike Thomas, V-C of UCLAN

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In January 1981, just days before Jimmy Carter left the White House, many of the president’s officials were well satisfied with the administration’s campaign to promote human rights. But as commentators, scholars, and the incoming president began to critique Carter’s bipolar policy, it became clear that Carter had not only failed to persuade the American public that he had a clear grasp on the international role of the US, but he failed to build a lasting domestic consensus on foreign policy.The Carter administration aimed to renew its ideological challenge to the USSR through human rights and to persuade the Soviets to ease internal repression in order to strengthen Congressional support for détente and arms control. Contrary to what he envisioned, the more vigorously the White House pursued a pro-human rights agenda, the more the Soviets lost interest in détente; the more the administration relegated human rights to quiet diplomacy, the more critics within the United States accused the President of abandoning his commitment to human rights. In the end, the White House lost the opportunity to stabilise bipolar relations and the domestic support Carter had managed to garner in 1976. Critics of détente, helped by the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, defeated him.Based on recently declassified archival documents, A precarious equilibrium offers a fresh interpretation of President Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy and its contradictory impact on US–Soviet affairs.

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full of wisdom and entertaining anecdotes' The Economist'fascinating' Financial TimesSocial Chemistry will utterly transform the way you think about 'networking.' Understanding the contours of your social network can dramatically enhance personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think. . . .One of 2021's Most Highly Anticipated New Books--NewsweekOne of The 20 New Leadership Books--Adam GrantOne The Best New Wellness Books Hitting Shelves In January--Shape.comA Next Big Idea Club Nominee__________Conventional wisdom would have us believe that it is the size of your network that matters: how many people do you know? We're told to mix, mingle, and connect.But social science research suggests otherwise.The quality and structure of our relationships have far greater impact on our personal and professional lives. our relationships with friends, family, co-workers, neighbours, and collaborators are by far our greatest asset. Yet, most people leave them to chance.In this ground-breaking study, Marissa King, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale, argues that there are strategic ways in which we can alter our relationships for a happier and more fulfilling life. With new understanding, this book can help readers to see how they can harness the power of their networks in their personal relationships, at work, and to create a better world.

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Skies is Alison Brackenbury's ninth Carcanet collection. In these poems, Brackenbury sustains delicate proximities between war and love, joy and sadness, summer and winter. Starting out as the first trees 'chatter into leaf', the poems cross through July's 'dripping amber' to January's 'false thaw'. The seasonal shift is reflected in the poet's larder, its variegating hues and tastes: honeycomb, parsnips, apples, broad beans, sprouts, jams and spices summon an air of harvest. But it is also the seasons of life that concern Brackenbury here: the poet's irrecoverable past, her youth 'which I can never visit, like a star', is at the same time the thing that never stops revisiting: in an unexpected letter from an old lover, in a half-remembered playground song. The poems in Skies are attuned to this musicality, to time's echoes and refrains, the old errors that still 'flower and flower'.Finally, it is the poet's quiet conviction to savour life, to take seriously its succulent variety, that defines this collection: the poems attest to the special privileges of age: wisdom, self-sufficiency, a deepening patience with the world; the ability to be, as the poet says of an apple, 'self-sweet'. The communal warmth of the kitchen finds its double in the exquisite loneliness of rising early, of hearing the barking of town foxes at dawn, or in the contemplation of a garden in autumn, its rows of hips swelled by rain, a rose 'whose name I think means happiness'.

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The hand of friendship can span a thousand miles… PakistanAmong the almond orchards of the Swat Valley, Zamir tends goats with his son, Raza. He must make a heartbreaking decision if he is to protect his youngest child from the Taliban. AfghanistanOn a military base in Lashkar Gah, Ben lives on edge, wondering if his family will be the next to receive life-changing news from the front line. CornwallAnd in a ramshackle house on the Cornish coast, Ben’s mother Delphi, an artist, offers a refuge to her grandson Finn, as he retreats from the changes he senses in his family. When Raza and Finn, two boys from impossibly different worlds, meet, they are united by their loneliness. But will their unexpected bond be enough to save not just each other, but also their families, just as all their lives are about to change forever? ’At once heartbreaking and uplifting, and its focus on the themes of war and loss, love and friendship across cultures is both topical and timeless: a powerful story from a writer operating at the height of her powers’ JANE JOHNSON, The Tenth Gift ‘Interweave[ing] the devastation exacted by war on the lives of two boys… [this] blistering story shows how no one is remote, connecting rural Cornwall with the Swat Valley of Pakistan’ GEORGIA KAUFMANN, The Dressmaker of Paris ‘Sara MacDonald writes with a lyrical quality that captivated me from the start’ AMANDA JENNINGS, The Storm

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Real, compulsive and intense: Cat Clarke is the queen of emotional suspense. For fans of Jandy Nelson, Paula Hawkins, and Megan Abbott.'Emotive, creepy AND funny. A quality page-turner' SARAH CROSSAN'A new Cat Clarke novel is always something to celebrate and Girlhood could be her best yet' JUNO DAWSONHarper has tried to forget the past and fit in at expensive boarding school Duncraggan Academy. Her new group of friends are tight; the kind of girls who Harper knows have her back. But Harper can't escape the guilt of her twin sister's Jenna's death, and her own part in it - and she knows noone else will ever really understand. But new girl Kirsty seems to get Harper in ways she never expected. She has lost a sister too. Harper finally feels secure. She finally feels...loved. As if she can grow beyond the person she was when Jenna died. Then Kirsty's behaviour becomes more erratic. Why is her life a perfect mirror of Harper's? And why is she so obsessed with Harper's lost sister? Soon, Harper's closeness with Kirsty begins to threaten her other relationships, and her own sense of identity. How can Harper get back to the person she wants to be, and to the girls who mean the most to her?A darkly compulsive story about love, death, and growing up under the shadow of grief.

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Thirty bold steps. One year. Is Nina ready? --------'Fresh, touching... So good!' JANE FALLON'Feelgood, uplifting storytelling at its best' SHEILA O'FLANAGAN'A treat!' LAUREN BRAVO--------Nina Mistry is at rock bottom. She's just broken up with the love of her life. Her friends are moving on. Her career is tanking. Oh, and she just turned thirty in a prison cell. But her night in prison might change everything. It's there that she comes across a tatty little self-help book promising to change her life. The book presents her with a question: can she find thirty things she loves about herself? Sceptical but curious, the journalist in Nina can't resist a challenge. And so begins a radical journey: to accept her flaws and find love.Thirty bold steps. One year. Are you ready? Discover THE novel that your best friend wants you to read, and radically rethink everything you think you know about love . . . Readers have FALLEN IN LOVE with #30Things:'Funny and charming' - PANDORA SYKES'Heart-warming and uplifting . . . exactly what we all need right now' - NIKKI MAY'Great fun!' - JILL MANSELL'Funny, heartwarming and empowering' - ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ REAL READER REVIEW'Beautifully and thoughtfully written' - ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ REAL READER REVIEW'I could not love this book more; hilarious, sensitive [and] witty' - ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ REAL READER REVIEW

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St. Andrews, Scotland: Renovation works on the famous Old Course golf course uncovers the remains of a body in a shallow grave - two bullet holes in the skull. DNA confirms the victim as Rab Shepherd, the missing brother of Scotland's late crime patriarch, Jock Shepherd. But Rab pulled out of the family business over twenty years ago, and moved to Australia where he allegedly lived an honest and wealthy life. This body confirms otherwise.Why was Rab killed? And who would risk killing him, knowing he was big Jock's brother?DCI Andy Gilchrist and his associate, DS Jessie Janes, are assigned the murder investigation, and soon uncover a trail of executions and torture, treachery and betrayal, and ultimately a gangland secret so powerful it could shake the UK government to its core...PRAISE FOR T.F. MUIR:'Rebus did it for Edinburgh. Laidlaw did it for Glasgow. Gilchrist might just be the bloke to put St Andrews on the crime fiction map.' Daily Record'A truly gripping read, with all the makings of a classic series.' Mick Herron'Gripping and grisly, with plenty of twists and turns that race along with black humour.' Craig Robertson'DCI Gilchrist gets under your skin. Though, determined, and a bit vulnerable, this character will stay with you long after the last page.' Anna Smith'Gripping!' Peterborough Telegraph

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'A sheer delight from start to finish' Sophie Kinsella ***WINNER OF THE RNA ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2013***Can you hear the jangle of pocket money, the rustle of striped paper bags . . ? 'An evocative, sweet treat' Jojo Moyes 'Gorgeous, glorious, uplifting' Marian Keyes 'Irresistible' Jill Mansell 'Just lovely' Katie Fforde 'Naturally funny, warm-hearted' Lisa Jewell 'A gobble-it-all-up-in-one-sitting kind of book' Mike Gayle ___________________________________Rosie Hopkins thinks leaving her busy London life, and her boyfriend Gerard, to sort out her elderly Aunt Lilian's sweetshop in a small country village is going to be dull. Boy, is she wrong. Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton's sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to settle up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets.Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams - a novel - with recipes.___________________________________Why readers ADORE Jenny Colgan 'Jenny Colgan has a way of writing that makes me melt inside' 'Her books are so good I want to start over as soon as I have finished' 'There's something so engaging about her characters and plots' 'Her books are like a big, warm blanket' 'Her stories are just so fabulous' 'She brings her settings and characters so vividly to life' 'The woman is just magic'

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When Abraham Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he not only freed the slaves in the Confederate states but also invited freed slaves and free persons of colour to join the U.S. Army as part of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), the first systematic, large-scale effort by the U.S. government to arm African Americans to aid in the nation’s defense. By the end of the war in 1865, nearly 180,000 black soldiers had fought for the Union. Lincoln’s role in the arming of African Americans remains a central but unfortunately obscure part of one of the most compelling periods in American history. In Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops John David Smith offers a concise, enlightening exploration of the development of Lincoln’s military emancipation project, its implementation, and the recruitment and deployment of black troops.Though scholars have written much on emancipation and the USCT, Smith’s work frames the evolution of Lincoln’s ideas on emancipation and arming blacks within congressional actions, explaining how, when, and why the president seemed to be so halting in his progression to military emancipation. After tracing Lincoln’s evolution from opposing to supporting emancipation as a necessary war measure and to championing the recruitment of black troops for the Union Army, Smith details the creation, mobilization, and diverse military service of the USCT. He assesses the hardships under which the men of the USCT served, including the multiple forms of discrimination from so-called friends and foes alike, and examines the broad meaning of Lincoln’s military emancipation project and its place in African American historical memory.

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The Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, are the world's targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015 income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. These bold goals can be met in all parts of the world if nations follow through on their commitments to work together to meet them. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals offers the prospect of a more secure, just, and prosperous world for all. The UN Millennium Project was commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a practical plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As an independent advisory body directed by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the UN Millennium Project submitted its recommendations to the UN Secretary General in January 2005. The core of the UN Millennium Project's work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising more than 250 experts from around the world, including scientists, development practitioners, parliamentarians, policymakers, and representatives from civil society, UN agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private sector. Coming to Grips with Malaria in the New Millennium presents an innovative strategic framework for relieving the burden that malaria imposes on society through the implementation of tried and tested anti-malarial interventions designed to improve health nationally and to promote economic development locally. Recommendations include early diagnosis, treatment with effective anti-malarial medicines, the use of insecticide treated nets, indoor residual spraying, managing the environment, improving housing, extending health education and improving monitoring and evaluation systems.

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This volume of Research in Economic Anthropology, which presents ten peer-reviewed anthropological papers, celebrates the 40th anniversary of the series by taking a close look at human vulnerability: the ways in which people attempt to cope with it and barriers to successfully overcoming it. The two leading articles both take up the issue of microfinance; Daniel Murphy examines the influences of this in the lives of pastoralists in Mongolia, and Megan Hinrichsen explores related processes among vendors in Quito, Ecuador. Next, Elena Sischarenco looks at ways of dealing with vulnerability in the northern Italian construction industry. Sarah Lyon investigates smallholders’ experiences with, and adaptations to, the coffee rust disaster in Oaxaca, Mexico, as well as the functions of fair trade organizations. Rounding out the first half of the volume is Raja Swamy’s analysis of post-tsunami reconstruction in Tamil Nadu, India. The second half starts with Janneke Verheijen’s investigation of women’s survival strategies in rural Malawi, southeast Africa, and Lai Wo’s study of intimate relationships and transactions between Western men and Southeast Asian women in Hong Kong. Courtney Lewis explores political and economic sovereignty among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, USA. Finally, the volume turns to the past with Kari Henquinet’s examination of the evolution of American faith-based overseas development aid projects in the 20th century, and with Serge Svizzero’s and Clement Tisdell’s analysis of Early Bronze Age desert kite use for trapping gazelles in parts of Southwest Asia. Ultimately, it is hoped that this and other scholarly investigations into human vulnerability will lead to better preventive and curative measures, for an imperfect world.

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In one of the first English-language studies of Korean cinema to date, Kyung Hyun Kim shows how the New Korean Cinema of the past quarter century has used the trope of masculinity to mirror the profound sociopolitical changes in the country. Since 1980, South Korea has transformed from an insular, authoritarian culture into a democratic and cosmopolitan society. The transition has fueled anxiety about male identity, and amid this tension, empowerment has been imagined as remasculinization. Kim argues that the brutality and violence ubiquitous in many Korean films is symptomatic of Korea’s on-going quest for modernity and a post-authoritarian identity.Kim offers in-depth examinations of more than a dozen of the most representative films produced in Korea since 1980. In the process, he draws on the theories of Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze, Rey Chow, and Kaja Silverman to follow the historical trajectory of screen representations of Korean men from self-loathing beings who desire to be controlled to subjects who are not only self-sufficient but also capable of destroying others. He discusses a range of movies from art-house films including To the Starry Island (1993) and The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996) to higher-grossing, popular films like Whale Hunting (1984) and Shiri (1999). He considers the work of several Korean auteurs—Park Kwang-su, Jang Sun-woo, and Hong Sang-su. Kim argues that Korean cinema must begin to imagine gender relations that defy the contradictions of sexual repression in order to move beyond such binary struggles as those between the traditional and the modern, or the traumatic and the post-traumatic.

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The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America's worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame--from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam's surrender on 30 April 1975--has eluded us. Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam's conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview. Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi's leadership against such action. Hanoi's momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.

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When John Charles Chasteen learned that Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, danced on a banquet table to celebrate Latin American independence in 1824, he tried to visualise the scene. How, he wondered, did the Liberator dance? Did he bounce stiffly in his dress uniform? Or did he move his hips? In other words, how high had African dance influences reached in Latin American societies? A vast social gap separated Bolivar from people of African descent; however, Chasteen's research shows that popular culture could bridge the gap. Fast-paced and often funny, this book explores the history of Latin American popular dance before the twentieth century. Chasteen first focuses on Havana, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro, where dances featuring a 'transgressive close embrace' (forerunners of today's salsa, tango, and samba) emerged by 1900. Then, digging deeper in time, Chasteen uncovers the historical experiences that moulded Latin American popular dance, including carnival celebrations, the social lives of slaves, European fashions, and, oddly enough, religious processions. The relationship between Latin American dance and nationalism, it turns out, is very deep, indeed.

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The Greening of Central Europe evaluates the environmental policies of Central Europe, using Poland and the Czech Republic as examples. John W. Sutherlin recognizes that since the Earth Summit II meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, most states have attempted to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into their national environmental and economic management policies, in turn leading to less pollution and more favorable economic conditions in the long term. However, achieving this goal in the states that emerged from Soviet domination would seem nearly impossible. So Sutherlin portrays the political changes in Poland and the Czech Republic as a foundation for understanding the formation of environmental policy. He then summarizes how well each state has incorporated the principles of sustainable development into their policy-making systems. Finally, he evaluates various environmental measurements, including air quality, deforestation, and public health, to assess the successes and failures of each state. His conclusions provide a mixed result for sustainable development, especially for the transitional states in Central Europe, yet the evidence shows that the "greening" of central Europe has begun.

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How interracial couples in Brazil and the US navigate racial boundaries How do people understand and navigate being married to a person of a different race? Based on individual interviews with forty-seven black-white couples in two large, multicultural cities—Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro—Boundaries of Love explores how partners in these relationships ultimately reproduce, negotiate, and challenge the “us” versus “them” mentality of ethno-racial boundaries. By centering marriage, Chinyere Osuji reveals the family as a primary site for understanding the social construction of race. She challenges the naive but widespread belief that interracial couples and their children provide an antidote to racism in the twenty-first century, instead highlighting the complexities and contradictions of these relationships. Featuring black husbands with white wives as well as black wives with white husbands, Boundaries of Love sheds light on the role of gender in navigating life married to a person of a different color. Osuji compares black-white couples in Brazil and the United States, the two most populous post–slavery societies in the Western hemisphere. These settings, she argues, reveal the impact of contemporary race mixture on racial hierarchies and racial ideologies, both old and new.

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Rethinking the significance of films including Pillow Talk, Rear Window, and The Seven Year Itch, Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines the popularity of the “apartment plot,” her term for stories in which the apartment functions as a central narrative device. From the baby boom years into the 1970s, the apartment plot was not only key to films; it also surfaced in TV shows, Broadway plays, literature, and comic strips, from The Honeymooners and The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Subways are for Sleeping and Apartment 3-G. By identifying the apartment plot as a film genre, Wojcik reveals affinities between movies generally viewed as belonging to such distinct genres as film noir, romantic comedy, and melodrama. She analyzes the apartment plot as part of a mid-twentieth-century urban discourse, showing how it offers a vision of home centered on values of community, visibility, contact, mobility, impermanence, and porousness that contrasts with views of home as private, stable, and family-based. Wojcik suggests that the apartment plot presents a philosophy of urbanism related to the theories of Jane Jacobs and Henri Lefebvre. Urban apartments were important spaces for negotiating gender, sexuality, race, and class in mid-twentieth-century America.

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Featuring interviews with nineteen leading U.S. literary and cultural critics, Critics at Work offers a unique picture of recent developments in literary studies, critical theory, American studies, gay and lesbian studies, philosophy, and other fields. It provides informative, timely, and often provocative commentary on a broad range of topics, from the state of theory today and the prospects for cultural studies to the role of public intellectuals and the place of political activism. These conversations also elicit illuminating and sometimes surprising insights into the personal and professional lives of its contributors. Individually, each interview gives a significant overview of a critic's work. Taken together, they provide an assessment of literary and cultural studies from the establishment of theory and its diffusion, in recent years, into various cultural and identity studies. In addition to the interviews themselves, the volume includes useful short introductions to each critic's work and biography. Interviewees: K. Anthony Appiah, Lauren Berlant, Cathy Davidson, Morris Dickstein, Stanley Fish, Barbara Foley, Nancy Fraser, Gerald Graff, Alice Kaplan, E. Ann Kaplan, Robin D.G. Kelley, Paul Lauter, Louis Menand, Richard Ohmann, Andrew Ross, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jane Tompkins, Marianna Torgovnick, and Alan Wald.

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New trends in solid-phase extraction for analytical use-a practical introduction. Owing to its low cost, ease of use, and nonpolluting means of preparing samples for analysis, solid-phase extraction (SPE) is fast overtaking traditional liquid-liquid methods in clinical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial applications. This book describes what analytical scientists and technicians need to know about this emerging procedure: how it works, how to choose from available techniques, how to utilize it effectively in the laboratory. Along with the historical perspective and fundamental principles, this practical book reviews the latest literature on solid-phase materials, equipment, and applications-including EPA-endorsed techniques. Special features include: * Coverage of separation and uptake methods. * Promising developments in the use of membrane disks. * The advantages of using polymeric resins over silica materials. * Mechanism and use of ion-exchange materials for SPE. * A remarkably complete chapter on the extraction of metal ions. * Groundbreaking research in the miniaturized SPE technique. Readers seeking additional information on SPE procedures may wish to consult: SOLID-PHASE EXTRACTION, Principles and Practice, E. M. Thurman and M. S. Mills 1998 (0-471-61422-X) 384 pp. SOLID-PHASE MICROEXTRACTION Theory and Practice Janusz Pawliszyn 1997 (0-471-19034-9) 264 pp.

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Bette Davis was not only one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but also one of its most outspoken advocates on matters of race. In Bette Davis Black and White, Julia A. Stern explores this largely untold facet of Davis’s brilliant career. Bette Davis Black and White analyzes four of Davis’s best-known pictures—Jezebel (1938), The Little Foxes (1941), In This Our Life (1942), and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)—against the history of American race relations. Stern also weaves in memories of her own experiences as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis’s films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago. Davis’s egalitarian politics and unique collaborations with her Black costars offer Stern a window into midcentury American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. This book incorporates testimony from Davis’s Black contemporaries, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, as well as the African American fans who penned letters to Warner Brothers praising Davis’s work. A unique combination of history, star study, and memoir, Bette Davis Black and White allows us to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.

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At home, incipient spring had been in evidence. Late January was mild and in London the trees showed buds. But after he began to travel East, it became colder. By the time the Elbe was crossed, the ground was fast with snow in all directions, and the river moved under grinding floes of ice. As the train stopped, the cook announced with an ironic smile he would grow used to, that Mitroba smile, 'Berlin Haupstadt der DDR. Wilkommen!'. Two decades after the Wall tumbled down, Winter in Berlin evokes everyday life in the shadowy world of the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic. Throughout this atmospheric novella 'the scholar' remains anonymous. Who is he and what is his motivation for being in the GDR, a police state where freedom means something different to everyone and trust is the scarcest commodity?Fearing that intimacy may be no more than a trap, he nevertheless slides into a relationship with a young Bulgarian woman. Behind the Wall many eyes are watching, but can he see himself clearly any more? Forced to interrogate the usefulness of his own idealism, the scholar finally comes up against the walls that limit an individual's influence on history.

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An award-winning beer worth killing for. Can DCI Oldroyd find the killer before last orders? Steeped in a history of award-winning Yorkshire ale, the town of Markham boasts not one but two breweries. Richard Foster runs one; his sister, Emily, along with her partner, Janice, runs the other. And not without some resentment. The unwelcome return of the town’s former bad boy, Brendan Scholes, threatens to ignite the sibling rivalry further. Scholes claims to have found the long-lost secret recipe to the beer that made Richard and Emily’s father famous, and he wants money. But it isn’t long before Scholes’ body is found floating in a fermentation tank at one of the breweries, his head caved in by a hammer. DCI Oldroyd and Andy Carter are called in to investigate the murder, and there’s no shortage of suspects. As rumours of the possible existence of a recipe for the famous beer spread against a backdrop of growing homophobia and misogyny, tempers run high. With Markham’s beer industry at stake, a killer on the loose and the town’s residents out for blood, Oldroyd needs to solve the murder before someone else is killed…

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Mary E. Richmond (1861-1928) was a contemporary of Jane Addams and an influential leader in the American charity organization movement. In this biography--the first in-depth study of Richmond's life and work--Elizabeth N. Agnew examines the contributions of this important, if hitherto under-valued, woman to the field of charity and to its development into professional social work. Orphaned at a young age and largely self-educated, Richmond initially entered charity work as a means of self-support, but came to play a vital role in transforming philanthropy--previously seen as a voluntary expression of individual altruism--into a valid, organized profession. Her career took her from charity organization leadership in Baltimore and Philadelphia to an executive position with the prestigious Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. Richmond's progressive civic philosophy of social work was largely informed by the social gospel movement. She strove to find practical applications of the teachings of Christianity in response to the social problems that accompanied rapid industrialization, urbanization, and poverty. At the same time, her tireless efforts and personal example as a woman created an appealing, if ambiguous, path for other professional women. A century later her legacy continues to echo in social work and welfare reform.

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Portugal was the first European country to colonise Africa. It was also the last to leave, almost five centuries later. During the course of what Lisbon called its civilizing mission in Africa the Portuguese weathered numerous insurrections, but none as severe as the guerrilla war first launched in Angola in 1961 and two years later in Portuguese Guinea. While Angola had a solid economic infrastructure, that did not hold for the tiny West African enclave that was to become Guine-Bissau. Both Soviets and Cubans believed that because that tiny colony- roughly the size of Belgium - had no resources and a small population, that Lisbon would soon capitulate. They were wrong, because hostilities lasted more than a decade and the 11-year struggle turned into the most intense of Lisbon's three African colonies. It was a classic African guerrilla campaign that kicked off in January 1963, but nobody noticed because what was taking place in Vietnam grabbed all the headlines. The Soviet-led guerrilla campaign in Portuguese Guinea was to go on and set the scene for the wars that followed in Rhodesia and present-day Namibia.

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Bette Davis was not only one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but also one of its most outspoken advocates on matters of race. In Bette Davis Black and White, Julia A. Stern explores this largely untold facet of Davis’s brilliant career. Bette Davis Black and White analyzes four of Davis’s best-known pictures—Jezebel (1938), The Little Foxes (1941), In This Our Life (1942), and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)—against the history of American race relations. Stern also weaves in memories of her own experiences as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis’s films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago. Davis’s egalitarian politics and unique collaborations with her Black costars offer Stern a window into midcentury American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. This book incorporates testimony from Davis’s Black contemporaries, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, as well as the African American fans who penned letters to Warner Brothers praising Davis’s work. A unique combination of history, star study, and memoir, Bette Davis Black and White allows us to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.

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Between 1890 and 1920, the forces accompanying industrialization sent the familiar nineteenth-century world plummeting toward extinction. The traditional countryside with its villages and family farms was eclipsed by giant corporations and sprawling cities. America appeared headed into an unknown future.In lively, accessible prose, John Chambers incorporates the latest scholarship about the social, cultural, political, and economic changes which produced modern America. He illuminates the experiences of blacks, Asians, Latinos, as well as other working men and women in the cities and countryside as they struggled to improve their lives in a transformed economy. He explores the dimensions of the new consumer society and the new information and entertainment industries: newspapers, magazines, the movies. Striding these pages are many of the prominent individuals who shaped the attitudes and institutions of modern America: J. P. Morgan and corporate reorganization; Jane Addams and the origin of modern social work; Mary Pickford and the new star-oriented motion picture industry; and the radical labor challenge of “Big Bill” Haywood and the “Wobblies.”While recognizing a “progressive ethos”—a mixture of idealistic vision and pragmatic reforms—which dominated the mainstream reforms that characterized the period, Chambers elaborates the role of civic volunteerism as well as the state in achieving directed social change. He also emphasizes the importance of radical and conservative political forces in shaping the so-called “Progressive Era.”The revised edition in this classic work has an updated bibliography and a new preface, both of which incorporate particularly the new social and cultural research of the past decade.

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One of our great essayists and journalists-the Dean of American Rock Critics, Robert Christgau-takes us on a heady tour through his life and times in this vividly atmospheric and visceral memoir that is both a love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the transformative power of art. Lifelong New Yorker Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at the Village Voice for over three decades. Christgau listened to Alan Freed howl about rock 'n' roll before Elvis, settled east of Manhattan's Avenue B forty years before it was cool, witnessed Monterey and Woodstock and Chicago '68, and the first abortion speak-out. He's caught Coltrane in the East Village, Muddy Waters in Chicago, Otis Redding at the Apollo, the Dead in the Haight, Janis Joplin at the Fillmore, the Rolling Stones at the Garden, the Clash in Leeds, Grandmaster Flash in Times Square, and every punk band you can think of at CBGB. Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going Into the City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. Like Alfred Kazin's A Walker in the City, E. B. White's Here Is New York, Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, and Patti Smith's Just Kids, it is a loving portrait of a lost New York. It's an homage to the city of Christgau's youth from Queens to the Lower East Side-a city that exists mostly in memory today. And it's a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.

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'It's not a high concept movie, there's actually no story there really. It’s what happens in between the story that’s important' – Bill Forsyth The story of an American businessman sent to buy the Scottish village of Ferness with the aim of turning it into an oil refinery, Local Hero is one of Scotland’s most beloved, and most misunderstood, films. When Bill Forsyth’s incredible success with the low-budget That Sinking Feeling and Gregory’s Girl found him collaborating with Britain’s best-known film producer, David Puttnam, he soon found his independent ethos clashing with Hollywood’s desire for superstar actors and a happy ending. Jonathan Melville checks into the MacAskill Arms and looks back at Bill Forsyth’s career with the help of new and archive interviews, before spending time with the cast and crew, including stars Peter Riegert and Denis Lawson, who made Local Hero on location in Houston and Scotland in 1982. With access to early drafts of the Local Hero script (including hand-written notes) that reveal more about Mac and mermaids, excerpts from a previously unpublished interview in which Bill Forsyth explains why he refuses to call his film 'feel-good', and a look at long-lost deleted scenes with exclusive commentary from those involved, this is the definitive history of the Scottish classic. ‘Genuine fairy tales are rare; so is film-making that is thoroughly original in an unobtrusive way. Bill Forsyth's quirky disarming Local Hero is both . . . it demonstrates Mr. Forsyth's uncanny ability for making an audience sense that something magical is going on, even if that something isn't easily explained’ – Janet Maslin, The New York Times 'Local Hero is kind of transcendent. It's poetic in a way that most films can't hope to be' – Frank Cottrell-Boyce 'Local Hero is one my favourite films of all time . . . A timeless masterpiece' – Mark Kermode

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On 14 January 1930, Horst Wessel, a young and ambitious member of the SA was shot at close range at his home in Berlin. Although the crime was never completely solved, the murder was most likely committed by a group of communists with close ties to the city's gangland. Wessel later died from his injuries. Joseph Goebbels, whose attention had already been drawn to Wessel as a possible future Nazi leader, was the first to recognize the propaganda potential of the case. 'A young martyr for the Third Reich' he wrote in his diary on 23 February 1930 immediately after receiving the news of Wessel's death. This was the beginning of the myth-making that transformed an ordinary individual into a masculine role model for an entire generation. Two months later, thousands of people lined the streets for Wessel's funeral parade and Goebbels delivered a graveside eulogy. In the years that followed - and as Nazi power increased - Horst Wessel became the hero of the Nazi movement - with his elaborate memorial quickly becoming a site of pilgrimage. The song Die Fahne Hoch for which Wessel had written the lyrics (and which subsequently became popularly known as the Horst Wessel Song) became the official Nazi party anthem and the Berlin district of Friedrichshain, where Wessel was murdered was renamed Horst-Wessel-Stadt in his honour. Numerous biographies and films followed. Using previously unseen material, Daniel Siemens provides a fascinating and gripping account of the background to Horst Wessel's murder and uncovers how and why the Nazis made him a political hero. He examines the Horst Wessel 'cult' which emerged in the aftermath of Wessel's death and the murders of revenge, particularly against Communists, committed by the SA and Gestapo after 1933. At the same time, the story of Horst Wessel provides a portrait of the Nazi propaganda machine at its most effective and most chilling.

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A vital contribution to environmental humanities that explores artistic responses to the plastic age Since at least the 1960s, plastics have been a defining feature of contemporary life. They are undeniably utopian—wondrously innovative, cheap, malleable, durable, and convenient. Yet our proliferating use of plastics has also triggered catastrophic environmental consequences. Plastics are piling up in landfills, floating in oceans, and contributing to climate change and cancer clusters. They are derived from petrochemicals and enmeshed with the global oil economy, and they permeate our consumer goods and their packaging, our clothing and buildings, our bodies and minds. Plastic reshapes our cultural and social imaginaries. With impressive breadth and compelling urgency, the essays in Life in Plastic examine the arts and literature of the plastic age. Focusing mainly on post-1960s North America, the collection spans a wide variety of genres, including graphic novels, superhero comics, utopic and dystopic science fiction, poetry, and satirical prose, as well as vinyl records and visual arts. Essays by a remarkable lineup of cultural theorists interrogate how plastic—as material and concept—has affected human sensibilities and expression. The collection reveals the place of plastic in reshaping how we perceive, relate to, represent, and re-imagine bodies, senses, environment, scale, mortality, and collective well-being.Ultimately, the contributors to Life in Plastic think through plastic with an eye to imagining our way out of plastic, moving toward a postplastic future.Contributors: Crystal Bartolovich, Syracuse U; Maurizia Boscagli, U of California, Santa Barbara; Christopher Breu, Illinois State U; Loren Glass, U of Iowa; Sean Grattan, U of Kent; Nayoung Kim, Brandeis U; Jane Kuenz, U of Southern Maine; Paul Morrison, Brandeis U; W. Dana Phillips, Towson U in Maryland and Rhodes U in Grahamstown, South Africa; Margaret Ronda, UC-Davis; Lisa Swanstrom, U of Utah; Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Pennsylvania State U; Phillip E. Wegner, U of Florida; Daniel Worden, Rochester Institute of Technology.

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WOOD DETERIORATION, PROTECTION AND MAINTENANCE Wood has low embodied energy, is a renewable resource and can perform extremely well in a range of construction applications, so it is not surprising that there is growing interest in the use of wood in new buildings. As a natural material, wood can be subject to degradation by a range of environmental factors, insects, bacteria or fungi. Advances in the understanding of the degradation processes caused by these factors, as well as increased knowledge about boundary environmental conditions and the extractives that suppress the development of timber pests, have led to new methods of structural, physical and chemical protection of wood and wooden composites. The result is that wood can deliver high-performance, long-life buildings and structures with low environmental impact at relatively modest cost. Wood Deterioration, Protection and Maintenance provides an up-to-date discussion of the natural durability of wood, wood degradation processes, and methods of structural, physical and chemical protection of wood. The important information relating to wood degradation by abiotic and biotic agents in the context of the basic structure of wood is fully discussed, showing how structural changes in damaged wood relate to physical and mechanical properties. Modern active substances in wood protection and the relationships between preservative properties, the anatomical structure and moisture content of wood, and protective processes involving pressure and/or diffusion driving forces are fully illustrated. Mentioned also are principles of wood maintenance, together with modes of damaged wood identification, sterilization and reconstruction. OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST Wood Modification: Chemical, Thermal and Other Processes Callum A. S. Hill Hardback ISBN 9780470021729 January 2006, Wiley Wood in Construction: How to Avoid Costly Mistakes Jim Coulson Paperback ISBN 9780470657775 March 2012, Wiley Blackwell Structural Timber Design to Eurocode 5, 2nd Edition Jack Porteous, Abdy Kermani Paperback ISBN 9780470675007 May 2013, Wiley Blackwell

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When we think of literature and film about farm workers, The Grapes of Wrath may come to mind, but Farm Worker Futurism reveals that the historical role of technology, especially new media, has in fact had much more to do with depicting the lives of farm laborers—Mexican migrants in particular—in the United States. From the late 1940s, when Ernesto Galarza led a strike in the San Joaquin Valley, to the early 1990s, when the United Farm Workers (UFW) helped organize a fast in solidarity with janitors at Apple Computers in the Santa Clara Valley, this book explores the friction between agribusiness and farm workers through the lens of visual culture.Marez looks at how the appropriation of photography, film, video, and other media technologies expressed a “farm worker futurism,” a set of farm worker social formations that faced off against corporate capitalism and government policies. In addition to drawing fascinating links between the worlds envisioned in UFW videos on the one hand and visions of Cold War geopolitics on the other, he demonstrates how union cameras and computer screens put the farm worker movement in dialogue with futurist thinking and speculative fictions of all sorts, including the films of George Lucas and the art of Ester Hernandez. Finally Marez examines the legacy of farm worker futurism in recent cinema and literature, contemporary struggles for immigrant rights, management–labor conflicts in computer hardware production, and the antiprison movement.In contrast with cultural histories of technology that take a top-down perspective, Farm Worker Futurism tells the story from below, showing how working-class people of color have often been early adopters and imaginative users of new media. In doing so, it presents a completely novel analysis of speculative fiction’s engagements with the farm worker movement in ways that illuminate both.

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Liberals and leftists in the United States have not always been estranged from one another as they are today. Historian Doug Rossinow examines how the cooperation and the creative tension between left-wing radicals and liberal reformers advanced many of the most important political values of the twentieth century, including free speech, freedom of conscience, and racial equality. Visions of Progress chronicles the broad alliances of radical and liberal figures who were driven by a particular concept of social progress—a transformative vision in which the country would become not simply wealthier or a bit fairer but fundamentally more democratic, just, and united. Believers in this vision—from the settlement-house pioneer Jane Addams and the civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois in the 1890s and after, to the founders of the ACLU in the 1920s, to Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson and assorted labor-union radicals in the 1930s, to New Dealer Henry Wallace in the 1940s—belonged to a left-liberal tradition in America. They helped push political leaders, including Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, toward reforms that made the goals of opportunity and security real for ever more Americans. Yet, during the Cold War era of the 1950s and '60s, leftists and liberals came to view one another as enemies, and their influential alliance all but vanished. Visions of Progress revisits the period between the 1880s and the 1940s, when reformers and radicals worked together along a middle path between the revolutionary left and establishment liberalism. Rossinow takes the story up to the present, showing how the progressive connection was lost and explaining the consequences that followed. This book introduces today's progressives to their historical predecessors, while offering an ambitious reinterpretation of issues in American political history.

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In May of 1919, women from around the world gathered in Zurich, Switzerland, and proclaimed, "We dedicate ourselves to peace!" Just months after the end of World War I, the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom--a group led by American progressive Jane Addams and comprising veteran campaigners for social reform--knew that a peaceful world was essential to their ongoing quest for social and economic justice. Alan Dawley tells the story of American progressives during the decade spanning World War I and its aftermath. He shows how they laid the foundation for progressive internationalism in their efforts to improve the world both at home and abroad. Unlike other accounts of the progressive movement--and of American politics in general--this book fuses social and international history. Dawley shows how interventions in Latin America and Europe affected domestic plans for social reform and civic engagement, and he depicts internal battles among progressives between unabashed imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt and their implacable opponents like Robert La Follette. He draws a contrast between Woodrow Wilson's use of force in exporting American ideals and Addams's more cosmopolitan pursuit of economic justice and world peace. In discussing the debate over the League of Nations within the context of turbulent domestic affairs, Dawley brings keen insight into that complicated moment in American history. In striking and original ways, Dawley brings together domestic and world affairs to argue that American progressivism cannot be understood apart from its international context. Focusing on world-historical events of empire, revolution, war, and peace, he shows how American reformers invented a new politics built around progressive internationalism. Changing the World retrieves the progressive tradition in American politics and makes it available to contemporary debates. The book speaks to anyone seeking to be both a good citizen within the nation and a good citizen of today's troubled world.

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