Search results for ""Author Dom"

A groundbreaking analysis of how the genomic revolution is transforming American society and creating new social divisions-some along racial lines-that promise to fundamentally shape American politics for years to come. The emergence of genomic science in the last quarter century has revolutionized medicine, the justice system, and our understanding of who we are. We use genomics to determine guilt and exonerate the falsely convicted; devise new medicines; test embryos; and discover our ethnic and national roots. One might think that, given these advances, most would favor the availability of genomic tools. Yet as Jennifer Hochschild explains in Genomic Politics, the uses of genomic science are both politically charged and hotly contested. After all, genomics might result in bioterrorism, a demand for "designer babies," or a revival of racial biology. Political divisions around genomics do not follow the usual left-right ideological divides that dominate most of American politics. Through four controversial innovations resulting from genomic science—medicines for heart disease approved for use by only African-Americans, on the grounds of genetic distinctiveness; use of DNA evidence in the criminal justice system; the search for one's roots through genetic ancestry; and the use of genetic tests in prenatal exams—Hochschild reveals how the phenomenon is polarizing America in novel ways. Advocates of genomic science argue that these applications will make life better, while opponents point out the potential for misuse—from racial profiling to "selecting out" fetuses that gene tests show to have conditions like Down syndrome. Hochschild's central message is that the divide hinges on answers to two questions: How significant are genetic factors in explaining human traits and behaviors? And what is the right balance between risk acceptance and risk avoidance for a society grappling with innovations arising from genomic science? Experts differ among themselves about who should make decisions about governing genomics' uses, and Americans as a whole trust almost no one to do so. A deeply researched and original analysis of the politics surrounding one of the signal issues of our times, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how the genetics revolution is shaping society.

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Since World War II, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight--they have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern. Reliance on Soviet military methods, the poor civil-military relations of the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and patterns of behavior derived from the wider Arab culture, have all been suggested as the ultimate source of Arab military difficulties. Armies of Sand, powerful and riveting history of Arab armies from the end of World War Two to the present, assesses these differing explanations and isolates the most important causes. Over the course of the book, he examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS in 2014-2017. He then compares these experiences to the performance of the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own combat operations during the twentieth century. The book ultimately concludes that reliance on Soviet doctrine was more of a help than a hindrance to the Arabs. In contrast, politicization and underdevelopment were both important factors limiting Arab military effectiveness, but patterns of behavior derived from the dominant Arab culture was the most important factor of all. Pollack closes with a discussion of the rapid changes occurring across the Arab world-political, economic, and cultural-as well as the rapid evolution in war making as a result of the information revolution. He suggests that because both Arab society and warfare are changing, the problems that have bedeviled Arab armed forces in the past could dissipate or even vanish in the future, with potentially dramatic consequences for the Middle East military balance. Sweeping in its historical coverage and highly accessible, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945.

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The Avon Lady acquired iconic status in twentieth century American culture. This first history of Avon tells the story of a direct sales company that was both a giant in its industry and a kitchen-table entrepreneurial venture. With their distinctive greeting at the homes across the country--Ding Dong! Avon Calling!--sales ladies brought door-to-door sales of makeup, perfume, and other products to American women beginning in 1886. Working for the company enabled women to earn money on the side and even become financially independent in a respectable profession while selling Avon's wares to friends, family, and neighborhood networks. Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is the story of women and entrepreneurship, and of an innovative corporation largely managed by men that empowered women to exploit networks of other women and their community for profit. Founded in the late nineteenth century, Avon grew into a massive international direct sales company in which millions of "ambassadors of beauty" sat in their customers' living rooms with a sample case, catalogue, and a conversational sales pitch. Avon was unique in American business history for its reliance on women as representatives, promising them not just sales positions, but a chance to have a business of their own. Being an Avon Lady avoided the stigma that was often attached to middle-class women's work outside the home and enabled women to maintain the delicate balance of work and family. Drawing for the first time on company records she helped acquire for archives, Katina Manko illuminates Avon's inner workings, uncovers the lives of its representatives, and shows how women slowly rose into the company's middle and upper management. Avon called itself "The Company for Women" and championed its high flyers, but its higher echelons remained dominated by men well into the 1990s. Avon is more than perfumes and toiletries, but a brand built on women knocking on doors and chatting up neighbors. It thrived for more than a century through the deceptively simple technique of women directly selling beauty to women at home.

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What have a deaf nun, the mother of the first baby born to Europeans in North America, and a condemned heretic to do with one another? They are among the virtuous virgins, marvellous maidens, and fierce feminists of the Middle Ages who trail-blazed paths for women today. Without those first courageous souls who worked in fields dominated by men, women might not have the presence they currently do in professions such as education, the law, and literature. Focusing on women from Western Europe between c. 300 and 1500 CE in the medieval period and richly carpeted with detail, A Medieval Woman’s Companion offers a wealth of information about real medieval women who are now considered vital for understanding the Middle Ages in a full and nuanced way. Short biographies of 20 medieval women illustrate how they have anticipated and shaped current concerns, including access to education; creative emotional outlets such as art, theatre, romantic fiction, and music; marriage and marital rights; fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, contraception and gynecology; sex trafficing and sexual violence; the balance of work and family; faith; and disability. Their legacy abides until today in attitudes to contemporary women that have their roots in the medieval period. The final chapter suggests how 20th and 21st century feminist and gender theories can be applied to and complicated by medieval women's lives and writings. Doubly marginalised due to gender and the remoteness of the time period, medieval women’s accomplishments are acknowledged and presented in a way that readers can appreciate and find inspiring. Ideal for high school and college classroom use in courses ranging from history and literature to women's and gender studies, an accompanying website with educational links, images, downloadable curriculum guide, and interactive blog will be made available at the time of publication.

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Once a colossus dominating the globe, Europe today is a doddering convalescent. Sluggish economic growth, high unemployment, an addiction to expensive social welfare entitlements, a dwindling birth-rate among native Europeans, and most important, an increasing Islamic immigrant population chronically underemployed yet demographically prolific--all point to a future in which Europe will be transformed beyond recognition, a shrinking museum culture riddled with ever-expanding Islamist enclaves. Decline and Fall tells the story of this decline by focusing on the larger cultural dysfunctions behind the statistics. The abandonment of the Christian tradition that created the West's most cherished ideals--a radical secularism evident in Europe's indifference to God and church--created a vacuum of belief into which many pseudo-religions have poured. Scientism, fascism, communism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, sheer hedonism-- all have attempted and failed, sometimes bloodily, to provide Europeans with an alternative to Christianity that can show them what is worth living and dying for. Meanwhile a resurgent Islam, feeding off the economic and cultural marginalization of European Muslims, knows all too well not just what is worth dying for, but what is worth killing for. Crippled by fashionable self-loathing and fantasies of multicultural inclusiveness, Europeans have met this threat with capitulation instead of strength, appeasement and apologies instead of the demand that immigrants assimilate. As Decline and Fall shows, Europe's solution to these ills--a larger and more powerful European Union--simply exacerbates the problems, for the EU cannot address the absence of a unifying belief that can spur Europe even to defend itself, let alone to recover its lost grandeur. As these problems worsen, Europe will face an unappetizing choice between two somber destinies: a violent nationalistic or nativist reaction, or, more likely, a long descent into cultural senescence and slow-motion suicide.

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The current frenzy over global warming has galvanized the public and cost taxpayers billons of dollars in federal expenditures for climate research. It has spawned Hollywood blockbusters and inspired major political movements. It has given a higher calling to celebrities and built a lucrative industry for scores of eager scientists. In short, ending climate change has become a national crusade. And yet, despite this dominant and sprawling campaign, the facts behind global warming remain as confounding as ever. In Climate Confusion, distinguished climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer observes that our obsession with global warming has only clouded the issue. Forsaking blindingly technical statistics and doomsday scenarios, Dr. Spencer explains in simple terms how the climate system really works, why man's role in global warming is more myth than science, and how the global warming hype has corrupted Washington and the scientific community. The reasons, Spencer explains, are numerous: biases in governmental funding of scientific research, our misconceptions about science and basic economics, even our religious beliefs and worldviews. From Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio, the climate change industry has given a platform to leading figures from all walks of life, as pandering politicians, demagogues and biased scientists forge a self-interested movement whose proposed policy initiatives could ultimately devastate the economies of those developing countries they purport to aid. Climate Confusion is a much needed wake up call for all of us on planet earth. Dr. Spencer's clear-eyed approach, combined with his sharp wit and intellect, brings transparency and levity to the issue of global warming as he takes on wrong-headed attitudes and misguided beliefs that have led to our state of panic. Climate Confusion lifts the shroud of mystery that has hovered here for far too long and offers an end to this frenzy of misinformation in our lives. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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The League That Failed cuts through the haze that surrounds 19th-century baseball history, and portrays a classic, colorful era when baseball was chaotic, struggled over by players, coaches, sportswriters, fans, and owners. It recounts the stormy atmosphere after the Inter-League Wars of 1890 and 1891, when the victorious National League made a bald-faced bid to monopolize major league baseball in the United States, succeeding for eight years with the self-styled "Big League," which dominated the game while simultaneously gaining infamous notoriety for such high-handed acts as unilaterally capping players' salaries, failing to protect umpires from physical abuse, and threatening city governments if ballpark attendance dipped. By the turn of the century, weakening financial returns and internecine squabbles allowed an interloping upstart, the American League, to gain a toehold, forcing the National League to abandon its fantasies of monopolizing American baseball. An agreement between the two leagues in 1903 ushered in a long era of prosperity and stability under the umbrella of a familiar dual major league system. Voigt explores the historical origins of baseball from stick-and-ball games, through the popular players, significant rules changes, and seedy business practices of the final years of the 19th century, years that were crucial to the formation of baseball as it is played today. The League That Failed scrutinizes the active promotion of a new, grandiose baseball atmosphere of the "Big League," that included improved stadiums and the increasing importance of until then unknown sports figures: the concessionaire and the sportswriter. The League That Failed convincingly insists that many of the vexing problems of contemporary baseball (falling attendance, embattled club owners, bitter player strikes, and tension between franchises over profitability) originate with the practices of the "Big League" years. Gloomy scenarios touted by many sportswriters today eerily resemble sentim

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Does free will exist? The question has fueled heated debates spanning from philosophy to psychology and religion. The answer has major implications, and the stakes are high. To put it in the simple terms that have come to dominate these debates, if we are free to make our own decisions, we are accountable for what we do, and if we aren't free, we're off the hook. There are neuroscientists who claim that our decisions are made unconsciously and are therefore outside of our control and social psychologists who argue that myriad imperceptible factors influence even our minor decisions to the extent that there is no room for free will. According to philosopher Alfred R. Mele, what they point to as hard and fast evidence that free will cannot exist actually leaves much room for doubt. If we look more closely at the major experiments that free will deniers cite, we can see large gaps where the light of possibility shines through. In Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free Will, Mele lays out his opponents' experiments simply and clearly, and proceeds to debunk their supposed findings, one by one, explaining how the experiments don't provide the solid evidence for which they have been touted. There is powerful evidence that conscious decisions play an important role in our lives, and knowledge about situational influences can allow people to respond to those influences rationally rather than with blind obedience. Mele also explores the meaning and ramifications of free will. What, exactly, does it mean to have free will -- is it a state of our soul, or an undefinable openness to alternative decisions? Is it something natural and practical that is closely tied to moral responsibility? Since evidence suggests that denying the existence of free will actually encourages bad behavior, we have a duty to give it a fair chance.

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‘The cold reality of my gender was dawning on me. It was motherhood that forced me to understand the timeless horror of our position. The reason women had not written novels or commanded armies or banked or doctored or explored or painted at the same rate as men. The cause was not, as I had been led to believe, that women had been prevented from working. Quite the opposite: We had been doing all of the work, around the clock, for centuries.’ After her first book was published to acclaim, journalist Megan K. Stack got pregnant and quit her job to write. She pictured herself pen in hand while the baby napped, but instead found herself traumatised by a difficult birth and shell-shocked by the start of motherhood. Living abroad provided her with access to affordable domestic labour, and, sure enough, hiring a nanny gave her back the ability to work. At first, Megan thought she had little in common with the women she hired. They were important to her because they made her free. She wanted them to be happy, but she didn’t want to know the details of their lives. That didn’t work for long. When Pooja, an Indian nanny who had been absorbed into the family, disappeared one night with no explanation, Megan was forced to confront the truth: these women were not replaceable, and her life had become inextricably intertwined with theirs. She set off on a journey to find out where they really came from and to understand the global and personal implications of wages paid, services received, and emotional boundaries drawn in the home. As she writes herself: ‘Somebody should investigate. Somebody should write about all of this. But this is my life. If I investigate, I must stand for examination. If I interrogate, I’ll be the one who has to answer.’

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It’s been said Janis Joplin was second only to Bob Dylan as the ‘creator-recorder-embodiment of her generation’s mythology’. But how did a middle-class girl from Texas become a ’60s countercultural icon? Janis’ parents doted on her and promoted her early talent for art. But the arrival of a brother shattered the bond she had with her intellectual maverick of a father, an oil engineer. And her own maverick instincts alienated her from her socially conformist mother. That break with her parents, along with the rejection of her high school peers, who disapproved of her beatnik look and racially progressive views, and wrongly assumed she was sexually promiscuous, cemented her sense of herself as an outcast. She found her tribe with a group of offbeat young men a year ahead of her, who loved her intellectual curiosity, her passion for conversation, and her adventurous search for the blues. Although she never stopped craving the approval of her parents and hometown, she left Port Arthur at seventeen determined to prove she could be loved. She tried college twice, and dropped out both times. She ran off to California, but came back when her heavy drug use scared her into it. She almost signed up for a life as a domesticated, hang-the-curtains wife. But instead, during a second stint on the West Coast, she launched a career that would see her crowned the queen of rock and roll. What no one besides Holly George-Warren has captured in such intimate detail is the way Janis Joplin teetered between the powerful woman you hear in her songs and the little girl who just wanted to go home and feel emotionally safe there. The pain of that dichotomy fuelled her music – and ultimately killed her.

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Paula A. Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV and AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural analysis. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a comprehensive collection of Treichler’s related writings, including revised and updated essays from the 1980s and 1990s that present a sustained argument about the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely knowledgeable and interdisciplinary standpoint. “AIDS is more than an epidemic disease,” Treichler writes, “it is an epidemic of meanings.” Exploring how such meanings originate, proliferate, and take hold, her essays investigate how certain interpretations of the epidemic dominate while others are obscured. They also suggest ways to understand and choose between overlapping or competing discourses. In her coverage of roughly fifteen years of the AIDS epidemic, Treichler addresses a range of key issues, from biomedical discourse and theories of pathogenesis to the mainstream media’s depictions of the crisis in both developed and developing countries. She also examines representations of women and AIDS, treatment issues, and the role of activism in shaping the politics of the epidemic. Linking the AIDS tragedy to a uniquely broad spectrum of contemporary theory and culture, this collection concludes with an essay on the continued importance of theoretical thought for untangling the sociocultural phenomena of AIDS—and for tackling the disease itself. With an exhaustive bibliography of critical and theoretical writings on HIV and AIDS, this long-awaited volume will be essential to all those invested in studying the course of AIDS, its devastating medical effects, and its massive impact on contemporary culture. It should become a standard text in university courses dealing with AIDS in biomedicine, sociology, anthropology, gay and lesbian studies, women’s studies, and cultural and media studies.

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The first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music In her first book since the critically acclaimed Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam examines the significance of the transgender body in a provocative collection of essays on queer time and space. She presents a series of case studies focused on the meanings of masculinity in its dominant and alternative forms’ especially female and trans-masculinities as they exist within subcultures, and are appropriated within mainstream culture. In a Queer Time and Place opens with a probing analysis of the life and death of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who was brutally murdered in small-town Nebraska. After looking at mainstream representations of the transgender body as exhibited in the media frenzy surrounding this highly visible case and the Oscar-winning film based on Brandon's story, Boys Don’t Cry, Halberstam turns her attention to the cultural and artistic production of queers themselves. She examines the “transgender gaze,” as rendered in small art-house films like By Hook or By Crook, as well as figurations of ambiguous embodiment in the art of Del LaGrace Volcano, Jenny Saville, Eva Hesse, Shirin Neshat, and others. She then exposes the influence of lesbian drag king cultures upon hetero-male comic films, such as Austin Powers and The Full Monty, and, finally, points to dyke subcultures as one site for the development of queer counterpublics and queer temporalities. Considering the sudden visibility of the transgender body in the early twenty-first century against the backdrop of changing conceptions of space and time, In a Queer Time and Place is the first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music. This pioneering book offers both a jumping off point for future analysis of transgenderism and an important new way to understand cultural constructions of time and place.

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The New Deal left a host of political, institutional, and economic legacies. Among them was the restructuring of the government into an administrative state with a powerful executive leader and a large class of unelected officials. This "leviathan" state was championed by the political left, and its continued growth and dominance in American politics is seen as a product of liberal thought—to the extent that "Big Government" is now nearly synonymous with liberalism. Yet there were tensions among liberal statists even as the leviathan first arose. Born in crisis and raised by technocrats, the bureaucratic state always rested on shaky foundations, and the liberals who built and supported it disagreed about whether and how to temper the excesses of the state while retaining its basic structure and function. Debating the American State traces the encounter between liberal thought and the rise of the administrative state and the resulting legitimacy issues that arose for democracy, the rule of law, and individual autonomy. Anne Kornhauser examines a broad and unusual cast of characters, including American social scientists and legal academics, the philosopher John Rawls, and German refugee intellectuals who had witnessed the destruction of democracy in the face of a totalitarian administrative state. In particular, she uncovers the sympathetic but concerned voices—commonly drowned out in the increasingly partisan political discourse—of critics who struggled to reconcile the positive aspects of the administrative state with the negative pressure such a contrivance brought on other liberal values such as individual autonomy, popular sovereignty, and social justice. By showing that the leviathan state was never given a principled and scrupulous justification by its proponents, Debating the American State reveals why the liberal state today remains haunted by programmatic dysfunctions and relentless political attacks.

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Nuclear-armed adversaries India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their creation as sovereign states in 1947. They went to the brink of a fourth in 2001 following an attack on the Indian parliament, which the Indian government blamed on the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist organizations. Despite some attempts at rapprochement in the intervening years, a new standoff between the two countries was precipitated when India accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of being behind the Mumbai attacks late last year. The relentlessness of the confrontations between these two nations makes Inside Nuclear South Asia a must read for anyone wishing to gain a thorough understanding of the spread of nuclear weapons in South Asia and the potential consequences of nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent. The book begins with an analysis of the factors that led to India's decision to cross the nuclear threshold in 1998, with Pakistan close behind: factors such as the broad political support for a nuclear weapons program within India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the intense rivalry between the two countries, the normative and prestige factors that influenced their behaviors, and ultimately the perceived threat to their respective national security. The second half of the book analyzes the consequences of nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent. These chapters show that the presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia has increased the frequency and propensity of low-level violence, further destabilizing the region. Additionally, nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan have led to serious political changes that also challenge the ability of the two states to produce stable nuclear détente. Thus, this book provides both new insights into the domestic politics behind specific nuclear policy choices in South Asia, a critique of narrow realist views of nuclear proliferation, and the dangers of nuclear proliferation in South Asia.

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Why has the United States assumed so extensive and costly a role in world affairs over the last hundred years? The two most common answers to this question are "because it could" and "because it had to." Neither answer will do, according to this challenging re-assessment of the way that America came to assume its global role. The country’s vast economic resources gave it the capacity to exercise great influence abroad, but Americans were long reluctant to meet the costs of wielding that power. Neither the country’s safety from foreign attack nor its economic well-being required the achievement of ambitious foreign policy objectives. In A Sense of Power, John A. Thompson takes a long view of America’s dramatic rise as a world power, from the late nineteenth century into the post–World War II era. How, and more importantly why, has America come to play such a dominant role in world affairs? There is, he argues, no simple answer. Thompson challenges conventional explanations of America’s involvement in World War I and World War II, seeing neither the requirements of national security nor economic interests as determining. He shows how American leaders from Wilson to Truman developed an ever more capacious understanding of the national interest, and why by the 1940s most Americans came to support the price tag, in blood and treasure, attached to strenuous efforts to shape the world. The beliefs and emotions that led them to do so reflected distinctive aspects of U.S. culture, not least the strength of ties to Europe. Consciousness of the nation’s unique power fostered feelings of responsibility, entitlement, and aspiration among the people and leaders of the United States. This original analysis challenges some widely held beliefs about the determinants of United States foreign policy and will bring new insight to contemporary debates about whether the nation should—or must—play so active a part in world politics.

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An urban history of modern Britain, and how the built environment shaped the nation’s politicsFoundations is a history of twentieth-century Britain told through the rise, fall, and reinvention of six different types of urban space: the industrial estate, shopping precinct, council estate, private flats, shopping mall, and suburban office park. Sam Wetherell shows how these spaces transformed Britain’s politics, economy, and society, helping forge a midcentury developmental state and shaping the rise of neoliberalism after 1980.From the mid-twentieth century, spectacular new types of urban space were created in order to help remake Britain’s economy and society. Government-financed industrial estates laid down infrastructure to entice footloose capitalists to move to depressed regions of the country. Shopping precincts allowed politicians to plan precisely for postwar consumer demand. Public housing modernized domestic life and attempted to create new communities out of erstwhile strangers. In the latter part of the twentieth century many of these spaces were privatized and reimagined as their developmental aims were abandoned. Industrial estates became suburban business parks. State-owned shopping precincts became private shopping malls. The council estate was securitized and enclosed. New types of urban space were imported from American suburbia, and planners and politicians became increasingly skeptical that the built environment could remake society. With the midcentury built environment becoming obsolete, British neoliberalism emerged in tense negotiation with the awkward remains of built spaces that had to be navigated and remade.Taking readers to almost every major British city as well as to places in the United States and Britain’s empire, Foundations highlights how some of the major transformations of twentieth-century British history were forged in the everyday spaces where people lived, worked, and shopped.

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Exploit the advantages of Geographic Information Systems in your business Once the domain of cartographers and other specialists, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are increasingly being employed by the business community. Location-based services, supply chain management, management of field-distributed equipment, geographical marketing and promotion, and the spatial web are some of the current business applications which make use of GIS principles. Written specifically for the businessperson, Geo-Business: GIS in the Digital Organization is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of GIS applications in the business and organizational environment. Going beyond a strictly geographical focus, this book sets GIS in the context of business information systems and other business sub-disciplines such as logistics, marketing, finance, and strategic management. It presents from an organizational perspective the advantages of spatially enabling existing enterprise systems and illustrates how GIS is applied in the real world through rigorous case study analyses of twenty companies, including Baystate Health, Chico’s, Kaiser Permanente, Lamar Advertising Company, Rand McNally, Southern Company, Sears Roebuck, and Sperry Van Ness. In this book, you’ll find out: What GIS is and how it can be integrated into your organization’s existing information infrastructure. How GIS is currently making businesses better, and how you can apply the same techniques to your industry or organization. The expanding roles of GIS and spatial technologies in the web and mobile environments. The ethical, legal, and security issues of special technologies How to conduct a cost/benefit and ROI analyses for GIS. Grounded in the real world of business and IT, Geo-Business will show you how spatially enabling your IT systems can give you a unique advantage to beat your competitors in the market, win and retain customers, grow your business, make better decisions, develop new products and services, and optimize your workflow.

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In the wake of Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, various protagonists grappled to become his successor, but it was not until 1928 that Joseph Stalin emerged as leader of the Russian Marxists’ Bolshevik wing. Surrounded by an increasingly hostile capitalist world, Stalin reasoned that Soviet Russia had to industrialize in order to survive and prosper. But domestic capital was scarce, so the country’s minerals, timber, and grain were sold abroad for hard currency for funding the development of heavy industry.Claiming total control of agricultural management and production, Stalin implemented the collectivization of farming, consolidating small peasant holdings into large collective farms and controlling their output. The program was economically successful, but it came at a high social cost as the state encountered intense resistance, and between 1928 and 1934 collectivization led to the deaths of at least ten million people from starvation and associated diseases. Hungry and Starving elicits the voices of both the culprits and the victims at the centre of this horrific process. Through primary accounts of collectivization as well as the eyewitness observations of ambassadors, reporters, tourists, fellow travellers, Russian emigrés, tsarist officials, aristocrats, scientists, and technical specialists, James Gibson engages the crucial notions and actors in the academic discourse of the period. He finds that the famine lasted longer than is commonly supposed, that it took place on a national rather than a regional scale, and that while the famine was entirely man-made – the result of the ruthless manner in which collectivization was executed and enforced – it was neither deliberate nor ethnically motivated, given that it was not in the Soviet state’s economic or political interest to engage in genocide.Highlighting the experiences of life and death under Stalin’s ruthless regime, Hungry and Starving offers a broader understanding of the Great Soviet Famine.

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER‘Stands out for its judicious and unsparing look at events from a British perspective’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday TimesBetween January and August 1947 the conflicting political, religious and social tensions in India culminated in independence from Britain and the creation of Pakistan; in Partition, Barney White-Spunner shines a light on those turbulent months. This period saw the end of ninety years of the British Raj, and the effective power of the Maharajahs, as the Congress Party established itself, commanding a democratic government in Delhi. It also witnessed the rushed creation of Pakistan as a country in two halves whose capitals were 2000 kilometres apart. From September to December 1947 the euphoria surrounding independence dissipated into shame and incrimination; nearly one million people died and countless more lost their homes and their livelihoods as partition was realised. The events of those months would dictate the history of South Asia for the next seventy years, leading to three wars, countless acts of terrorism, polarisation around the Cold War powers and to two nations with millions living in poverty spending disproportionate amounts on their military. The legacy of decisions taken that year still continues. Those at the centre became some of the most enduring characters of the twentieth century. Gandhi and Nehru enjoyed almost saint-like status in India, and still do, while Jinnah is lionised in Pakistan. The British cast, from Churchill to Attlee and Mountbatten, find their contribution praised and damned in equal measure. Yet it is not only the national players whose stories fascinate. Many ordinary people who witnessed the events of that year are still alive and have a clear recollection of the excitement and the horror.Illustrating the story of 1947 with their experiences, Partition brings this terrible era for the Indian subcontinent vividly to life.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERReady your blade. Defeat the undead.Gideon the Ninth meets the Game of Thrones White Walkers in this dark young adult fantasy about a disgraced ghost-fighting warrior who must journey into a haunted wasteland to rescue a kidnapped prince.In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr - a ghost-fighting warrior - is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defence against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked.Determined to reclaim her family's respect, Wren gets her chance when a House of Gold prince is kidnapped and taken beyond the Wall. To prove she has what it takes to be a valkyr, Wren vows to cross the Breach and rescue the prince. But to do so, she's forced into an uneasy alliance with one of the kidnappers - a fierce ironsmith called Julian from the exiled House of Iron, the very people who caused the Breach in the first place...and the House of Bone's sworn enemy.As they travel, Wren and Julian spend as much time fighting each other as they do the undead, but when they discover there's more behind the kidnapping than either of them knew, they'll need to work together to combat the real danger: a dark alliance that is brewing between the living and the undead.'Filled with magic, betrayal, and undead horrors' Jodi Meadows'I've been dying for a YA novel with unique magic, and Bonesmith delivered it on a ghostly-green platter' Tricia Levenseller'Packed with action and betrayal' Rebecca Schaeffer'A dark fantasy thrillride' Amélie Wen Zhao

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Every literary household in nineteenth-century Britain had a commonplace book, scrapbook, or album. Coleridge called his collection "Fly-Catchers", while George Eliot referred to one of her commonplace books as a "Quarry," and Michael Faraday kept quotations in his "Philosophical Miscellany." Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century commonplace book, along with associated traditions like the scrapbook and album, remain under-studied. This book tells the story of how technological and social changes altered methods for gathering, storing, and organizing information in nineteenth-century Britain. As the commonplace book moved out of the schoolroom and into the home, it took on elements of the friendship album. At the same time, the explosion of print allowed readers to cheaply cut-and-paste extractions rather than copying out quotations by hand. Built on the evidence of over 300 manuscripts, this volume unearths the composition practices of well-known writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, and their less well-known contemporaries. Divided into two sections, the first half of the book contends that methods for organizing knowledge developed in line with the period's dominant epistemic frameworks, while the second half argues that commonplace books helped Romantics and Victorians organize people. Chapters focus on prominent organizational methods in nineteenth-century commonplacing, often attached to an associated epistemic virtue: diaristic forms and the imagination (Chapter Two); "real time" entries signalling objectivity (Chapter Three); antiquarian remnants, serving as empirical evidence for historical arguments (Chapter Four); communally produced commonplace books that attest to socially constructed knowledge (Chapter Five); and blank spaces in commonplace books of mourning (Chapter Six). Richly illustrated, this book brings an archive of commonplace books, scrapbooks, and albums to the reader.

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A sequel to Atlas of Extinct Animals and Atlas of Endangered Animals, this large-format encyclopedia focuses on the world’s largest group of animals—insects. Insects are the most diverse and abundant creatures on Earth, yet we often overlook their critical role in our ecosystem. Insectopia, the third book in the Large Encyclopedias series, invites young readers to explore the fascinating world of insects with expert entomologist Jiří Kolibac and the stunning illustrations of Pavel Dvorsky and his wife Pavla Dvorsky. With 96 pages of engaging content and lifelike full-page illustrations, Insectopia provides an immersive journey into the realm of these tiny creatures, whose behavior, shapes, and colors surprise us with their complexity. Kids will learn about the full range of topics related to insects, including complex rituals of courtship, tender care for offspring, organization of insect states, wars over food sources, and various insect features (scents, colorful wings, sharp mandibles, etc.). Sections include: Anatomy and Body Structure of Insects: How insects have a segmented body with a hard exoskeleton. Orders of Insects: The best-known groups of winged insects and their common and scientific names. Biology and Development of Insects: How insects undergo various metamorphoses. Evolution of Insects: The evolutionary relationships of insects. Evolutionary Tree of Insects: A tree graph showing the evolutionary relationships among different insect groups. Dawn of the Insects: The evolution and diversification of insects during various periods, including the emergence of flight and the extinction of certain insect orders. Diversification of Insects: The development of insect life through different geological periods, including their coevolution with plants and their rise to dominance. Courtship and Nuptial Gifts: How male insects often present a nuptial gift to the female, who chooses the suitor with the largest or most alluring gift. Adapting to Island Life: How isolated islands are home to unique plants and animals, some of which undergo insular gigantism, and are threatened by introduced predators. Fighting for the Female: Insects often engage in contests to produce offspring with a female, with the best-performing male often winning. Flying Acrobats: Dragonflies are ancient predators with exceptional flying abilities. The Short Life of the Mayfly: Mayflies have a brief lifespan of just a few hours to a few days, during which they mate, lay eggs, and die. Insect States: Termites live in large colonies with specialized castes, with worker termites providing food and defense and soldier termites fighting spraying predators. Slave-Makers, Slaves, and Warriors: Ants engage in aggressive behavior and interspecies wars. Courtship in the Hills: Insects gather on the tops of hills to find a mate, with males competing for the most visible spots, and this also attracts insectivorous birds and predators. Life in Darkness: Caves are home to uniquely adapted insects that are fairly different than those that live in the daylight. Farmer Ants: How large ant colonies are complex “state” organizations comprised of workers, soldiers, a queen and her entourage, nurses, foragers, and other occupations. Coexistence: How anthills are places where ants and other insects form complex relationships of mutual benefit or parasitism. In addition to exploring this complex world of insects, young readers will also discover the importance of insects to humankind and all life on our planet. They will learn about how insects are found everywhere, from arid deserts to freshwater pools, and how they play a crucial role in pollination, decomposition, and pest control. Written for children aged 12–15 who are nature lovers, biology enthusiasts, or just curious about the world around us, Insectopia is an essential addition to any young reader’s library. This informative and beautifully illustrated encyclopedia highlights the importance of insects and their contribution to our world. Whether used as a reference for school or as a fun read at home, Insectopia is a must-have resource for any young nature lover.

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Excavations at Dryslwyn between 1980 and 1995 uncovered a masonry castle, founded in the late 1220s by Rhys Gryg for his son Maredudd ap Rhys, the first Lord of Dryslwyn. The first castle was a simple round tower and polygonal walled enclosure, within which were constructed a kitchen, prison and wood-framed, clay-floored great chamber beside a great hall. In the mid 13th century a second ward was added and the great chamber rebuilt in stone. This castle was greatly expanded in the period 1283-87 by Rhys ap Maredudd, the second and final Lord of Dryslwyn, who built an Outer Ward and gatehouse. He also rebuilt much of the Inner Ward, adding an extra storey to the great hall and great chamber, apartments and a chapel. At the end of the 13th century a large three-ward castle stretched along the eastern and southern edge of the hill while the rest of the hilltop was occupied by a settlement defended by a wall and substantial ditch with access through a gatehouse. This castle and its associated settlement were besieged and captured in 1287 by an English royal army of over 11,000 men following damage inflicted by a trebuchet and mining of the walls. Throughout the 14th century the English Crown garrisoned and repaired the castle, supervised by an appointed constable, before it was surrendered to Owain Glyn Dwr in 1403. During the early to mid 15th century the castle was deliberately walled up to deny its use to a potential enemy and it was subsequently looted and demolished. By the late 13th century, the castle had a white rendered and lime-washed appearance, creating a very dramatic and highly visible symbol of lordship. Internally, the lord's and guest apartments had decorative wall paintings and glazed windows. Evidence from charred beams still in situ, the sizes, shapes and distribution of nails, sheet lead, slates and postholes recovered during excavation has enabled some of the wooden as well as masonry buildings to be reconstructed. Waterlogged deposits had preserAt just 132 hectares (325 acres) the parish of Caldecote is one of the smallest parishes in Hertfordshire. Today the settlement comprises the manor house, until recently surrounded by a range of traditional farm buildings, together with six labourer's cottages and the church. To the north lies the site of the old rectory and the earthworks of a medieval settlement. In 1973 the Department of Environment and the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group arranged a rescue excavation to examine the earthworks of the medieval village before they were levelled and ploughed. Five crofts, the old rectory site and much of the moated enclosure were investigated in one of the largest excavations ever conducted on a later medieval rural site in Britain. Though the excavations did recover a Bronze Age beaker burial and small quantities of Roman and Iron Age pottery, the medieval settlement at Caldecote was probably founded in the 10th century, and by the time of the Domesday Survey there was a church, a priest and nine villeins. A moated site was added in the 13th century. A century later, Caldecote was granted to the abbots of the Benedictine monastery in St Albans, at a time when there were seventeen householders. Early in the second half of the 14th century, the estate and demesne were subdivided into six farms, each complete with a hall-house and two or more barns. Following the dissolution of the monastery in 1539, the manor was again held by an absentee lord and the farms continued to prosper. However, the late 16th and early 17th centuries, for which there are several surviving wills and inventories, saw their gradual abandonment.After the desertion of Caldecote Marish in 1698, Caldecote was farmed as a single unit until 1970, when the estate was attached to that adjoining the manor of Newnham. Of particular importance from Caldecote is the archaeological evidence for medieval peasant structures, the development of the later medieval domestic plan and the structural tra

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Examines Pentecostal conversion as a force of change, revealing new insights into its dominant role in global Christianity today. There has been an extraordinary growth in Pentecostalism in Africa, with Brazilian Pentecostals establishing new transnational Christian connections, initiating widespread changes not only in religious practice but in society. This book describes its rise in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and the sometimes dramatic impact of Pentecostalism on women. Here large numbers of urban women are taking advantage of the opportunities Pentecostalism offers to overcome restrictions at home, pioneer new life spaces and change their lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet, conversion can also mean a violent rupturing with tradition, with family and with social networks. As the pastors encourage women to cut their ties with the past, including ancestral spirits, they come to see their kin and husbands as imbued with evil powers, and many leave their families. Conquering spheres that used to be forbidden to them, they often live alone as unmarried women, sometimes earning more than men of a similar age. They are also expected to donate huge sums to the churches, often money that they can ill afford, bringing new hardships. Linda van de Kamp is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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The coup d'etat of July 1936 split Spain in two, shaping a chessboard of terror, misery and death that would put an end to the Republic and give sustenance to dictatorship. In the rebel territory, Franco's soldiers were often not convinced followers, but mere pawns forced to fight for the future of a Spain in which the only element of cohesion would be fear. The experience of the Spanish Civil War is defined by how the dictator placed citizens before a terrible dilemma: become executioners or die. This experience was not confined to Spain alone. A transnational analysis, hitherto never undertaken, puts the Spanish war experience in the context of the political and military dramas of the first half of the 20th century. Issues of recruitment, terror, and propaganda dominate analysis. But deeper social and indeed psychological issues are equally important in understanding how dictatorship can shape society for the worse, and indeed come to be regarded by the majority as the norm. Special attention is paid to military ethos at all levels of the armed forces. Francos Soldiers, originally published to acclaim in Spain, provides a unique literary platform that better allows the Spanish Civil War experience to be understood in a wide historical context, thus furthering and encouraging international debate. Published in collaboration with the Department of International History, London School of Economics.

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Who was the “Mysterious Sofía,” whose letter in November 1934 was sent from Washington DC to Mexico City and intercepted by the Mexican Secret Service? In The Mysterious Sofía Stephen J. C. Andes uses the remarkable story of Sofía del Valle to tell the history of Catholicism’s global shift from north to south and the importance of women to Catholic survival and change over the course of the twentieth century. As a devout Catholic single woman, neither nun nor mother, del Valle resisted religious persecution in an era of Mexican revolutionary upheaval, became a labor activist in a time of class conflict, founded an educational movement, toured the United States as a public lecturer, and raised money for Catholic ministries—all in an age dominated by economic depression, gender prejudice, and racial discrimination. The rise of the Global South marked a new power dynamic within the Church as Latin America moved from the margins of activism to the vanguard. Del Valle’s life and the stories of those she met along the way illustrate the shared pious practices, gender norms, and organizational networks that linked activists across national borders. Told through the eyes of a little-known laywoman from Mexico, Andes shows how women journeyed from the pews into the heart of the modern world.

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Tellurite Glasses Handbook: Physical Properties and Data, Second Edition covers the current dominant physical properties of this prototype glass system. Focusing on thermal, elastic, acoustic, electrical, and optical properties, this second edition incorporates the latest scientific data and up-to-date applications of tellurite glass. New Topics in the Second Edition Nanocomposites Three-dimensional structural models Novel glass-forming systems Innovative ways to combine all physical properties simultaneously, creating new points for research Addressing the knowledge gap among physicists, chemists, and material scientists in their understanding of tellurite glasses’ properties, this edition gathers essential thermal, mechanical, electrical, and optical data in one source. It emphasizes the physics and technology of twenty-first century processing, fabrication, and behavior of tellurite glass and glass-ceramic materials. It is the first and only comprehensive source of physical constants and properties of these unique noncrystalline solids.After an introductory chapter on the composition of tellurite glasses, the book explores elastic, acoustic, thermal, electrical, and optical properties. Each chapter includes basic theories on a particular physical property, related experimental techniques, and representative data. The book uniquely presents a compilation of scientific data from the last 60 years as well as practical and strategic applications based on the properties of tellurite glasses.

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Unlike the 1930s, when the United States tragically failed to open its doors to Europeans fleeing Nazism, the country admitted over three million refugees during the Cold War. This dramatic reversal gave rise to intense political and cultural battles, pitting refugee advocates against determined opponents who at times successfully slowed admissions. The first comprehensive historical exploration of American refugee affairs from the midcentury to the present, Americans at the Gate explores the reasons behind the remarkable changes to American refugee policy, laws, and programs. Carl Bon Tempo looks at the Hungarian, Cuban, and Indochinese refugee crises, and he examines major pieces of legislation, including the Refugee Relief Act and the 1980 Refugee Act. He argues that the American commitment to refugees in the post-1945 era occurred not just because of foreign policy imperatives during the Cold War, but also because of particular domestic developments within the United States such as the Red Scare, the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of the Right, and partisan electoral politics. Using a wide variety of sources and documents, Americans at the Gate considers policy and law developments in connection with the organization and administration of refugee programs.

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Globalization has become an inescapable fact of contemporary life. Some leaders, in both the East and the West, believe that human rights are culture-bound and that liberal democracy is essentially Western, inapplicable to the non-Western world. How can civilized life be preserved and issues of human rights and civil society be addressed if the material forces dominating world affairs are allowed to run blindly, uncontrolled by any cross-cultural consensus on how human values can be given effective expression and direction?In a thoughtful meditation ranging widely over several civilizations and historical eras, Wm. Theodore de Bary argues that the concepts of leadership and public morality in the major Asian traditions offer a valuable perspective on humanizing the globalization process. Turning to the classic ideals of the Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, and Japanese traditions, he investigates the nature of true leadership and its relation to learning, virtue, and education in human governance; the role in society of the public intellectual; and the responsibilities of those in power in creating and maintaining civil society. De Bary recognizes that throughout history ideals have always come up against messy human complications. Still, he finds in the exploration and affirmation of common values a worthy attempt to grapple with persistent human dilemmas across the globe.

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The teacher and gerontological social work scholar Mercedes Bern-Klug joins experts on nursing, law, medicine, sociology, and social work to provide a thorough understanding of nursing home palliative care. Their broad definition of palliative care treats comfort care as appropriate across the illness experience, not just at the end of life. Because a majority of nursing home residents are older adults facing multiple, advanced chronic conditions, this book is grounded in the provision of palliative care-especially palliative psychosocial care. Yet its practice recommendations can also be applied to other long-term care settings, such as assisted living. The contributors combine scholarship with practical wisdom in each chapter, mixing reviews of scholarly literature with insights gleaned from clinical practice. Chapter topics comply with the eight domains of palliative care developed by the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care. Some focus on care of the resident, while others concern the resident's family. A special section addresses self-care for nursing home staff members, and another discusses nursing home rituals to mark the death of a resident. Bern-Klug concludes with an overview of the factors that will shape the future of palliative care for advanced chronic illness.

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After World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the focus of Cold War anxiety, radioisotopes represented the government's efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations. In Life Atomic, Angela N. H. Creager tells the story of how these radioisotopes, which were simultaneously scientific tools and political icons, transformed biomedicine and ecology. Government-produced radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools for diagnosis and therapy, specifically cancer therapy, and enabled biologists to trace molecular transformations. Yet the government's attempt to present radioisotopes as marvelous dividends of the atomic age was undercut in the 1950s by the fallout debates, as scientists and citizens recognized the hazards of low-level radiation. Creager reveals that growing consciousness of the danger of radioactivity did not reduce the demand for radioisotopes at hospitals and laboratories, but it did change their popular representation from a therapeutic agent to an environmental poison. She then demonstrates how, by the late twentieth century, public fear of radioactivity overshadowed any appreciation of the positive consequences of the AEC's provision of radioisotopes for research and medicine.

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Søren Kirkegaard and Maurice Blondel are positioned together in a dialogue regarding the vision of the supernatural. Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai draws from this a sharper image of the preeminent place religious experience possesses in human life and thought. Kirkegaard's lament of Christian lack of fervor and Blondel's concern that religion and philosophy no longer interact are both examined and Agbaw-Ebai concludes that they both indicate the same outcome: a "dominant leveling of society" that robs religion of its particularity. This devastates the individual because he is no longer challenged to seek a relationship with God and expose himself to the supernatural. The boundlessness of man must be acknowledged or else his actions will never be understood, and religious experience and philosophy must coexist with mutual reference or self-knowledge will never amount to the discovery of supernatural destiny. And this, asserts Agbaw-Ebai, is the shared urgency of both Kirkegaard and Blondel. Like these philosophers who have preceded him, Agbaw-Ebai exhorts us to never allow the sense of our relation to the supernatural as a settled matter. The philosophy of religion we have inherited does not protect us from having to confront our own subjectivity with autonomy: to be God without God and against God, or to be God with and through God.

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The finds from the cave at Hagios Charalambos in the Lasithi Plain illustrate secondary burial practices in Early and Middle Bronze Age Crete. The cavern adds to our knowledge of Early and Middle Minoan Lasithi and illuminates the function of the cave at Trapeza, which has close parallels for most classes of objects found at Hagios Charalambos. Most of the pottery from the site is made locally, but a selection of imports from elsewhere in Crete ranges in date from EM I or earlier to MM IIB. The pottery shows a shift in the use of imports during the site's history, reflecting a change in economic and/or political dominance and influence in Lasithi. Typical of pottery associated with burials, the types of vessels were mostly used for pouring and drinking liquids. Other small vessels probably contained precious oils, liquids, and unguents. The local offering tables would have been carried by a short stem and could hold a liquid or solid offering. The pottery shows that the people who deposited their dead in the secondary burial cave at Hagios Charalambos were in contact with ceramic production centers in East Crete, the Mesara, Knossos, the Pediada, and Malia. This range of influences speaks not only of trade relations and political spheres of influence but also of tastes in pottery production and consumption.

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Over the course of a long and very successful career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Lucy Kemp-Welch established herself as one of the leading equestrian painters at work in the UK and one of the country’s best-known women artists. David Boyd Haycock’s new, extensively illustrated biography of Kemp-Welch brings this remarkable artist and her work back into sharp focus. Born in 1869, Kemp-Welch first came to the art establishment’s attention in 1897 when her immense painting, Colt Hunting in the New Forest, caused a sensation at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition; the work was bought for the Nation by the Chantry Bequest in the year of exhibition. In 1915, she illustrated Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, and was commissioned to paint images for the Government during the First World War. Later, the mural Women’s Work in the Great War, was placed in the Royal Exchange in London, where it remains to this day. Respected art writer and curator Boyd-Haycock shines new light on Kemp-Welch’s life, writing from a 21st-century perspective and reflecting on her as a female painter in a male-dominated environment. Alongside Kemp-Welch’s paintings, the book will feature exclusive period photographs of the artist herself, shown at work and in her studio.

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Before the age of the lighthouse Scotland’s untamed seas and perilous rocky coast too often witnessed the watery end to the mariner’s voyage. From its establishment in 1786, it was the remit of the Northern Lighthouse Board to tame these harsh seas with the building of guiding lights around Scotland’s rugged coast ‘For the Safety of All’. The history of Scotland’s lighthouses would be dominated by one family of engineers. For its first 150 years, the NLB would be shaped by four generations of the Stevenson family as lighthouse builders, innovators and inventors. From humble beginnings at Kinnaird Head, this family would perfect the engineering marvels of the Bell Rock and Skerryvore, and pioneer wireless technologies into the modern age. The lighthouse story is also one of habitation on the Stevensons’ creations on the extremities of civilisation as the light-keepers, and their families, lived and served on the wind-battered terrain of Scotland’s edge. It was a story of survival, a unique way of life, which came and went within the pages of this history. The technological breakthroughs which began with the Stevensons advanced to automation and the end of the light-keeper. Nowadays the lights still flash, but there’s nobody there.

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“A thick, tangled and deliciously idiosyncratic history of hair.” Times Literary Supplement Over the last century, there has been a revolution in self-presentation and social attitudes towards hair. Developments in mass manufacturing, advances in chemical science and new understandings of bodies and minds have been embraced by new kinds of hairdressers and their clientele and embodied in styles that reflect shifting ideals of what it is to be and to look modern. The emergence of the ladies hairdressing salon, the rise of the celebrity stylist, the impact of Hollywood, an expanding mass media, and a new synergy between fashions in clothing and hairstyles have rippled out globally. Fashions in hair styles and their representation have taken on new meanings as a way of resisting dominant social structures, experimenting with social taboos, and expressing a modern sense of self. From the 1920s bob to the punk cut, hair has continued to be deeply involved in society’s larger issues. Drawing on a wealth of visual, textual and object sources, and illustrated with 75 images, A Cultural History of Hair in the Modern Age presents essays that explore how politics, science, religion, fashion, beauty, the visual arts, and popular culture have reshaped modern hair and its significance as an agent of social change.

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Continuing the story begun in The Hobbit, this is the first part of Tolkien’s epic masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, featuring a striking black cover based on Tolkien’s own design, the definitive text, and a detailed map of Middle-earth. Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power – the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring – the ring that rules them all – which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose. Now published again in B format, J.R.R. Tolkien’s great work of imaginative fiction has been labelled both a heroic romance and a classic fantasy fiction. By turns comic and homely, epic and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scene and character in an imaginary world which is totally convincing in its detail.

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Why are prisoners horribly abused in some wars but humanely cared for in others? In Life and Death in Captivity, Geoffrey P. R. Wallace explores the profound differences in the ways captives are treated during armed conflict. Wallace focuses on the dual role played by regime type and the nature of the conflict in determining whether captor states opt for brutality or mercy. Integrating original data on prisoner treatment during the last century of interstate warfare with in-depth historical cases, Wallace demonstrates how domestic constraints and external incentives shape the fate of captured enemy combatants. Both Russia and Japan, for example, treated prisoners very differently in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 and in World War II; the behavior of any given country is liable to vary from conflict to conflict and even within the same war. Democracies may be more likely to treat their captives humanely, yet this benevolence is rooted less in liberal norms of nonviolence than in concerns over public accountability. When such concerns are weak or absent, democracies are equally capable of brutal conduct toward captives. In conflicts that devolve into protracted fighting, belligerents may inflict violence against captives as part of a strategy of exploitation and to coerce the adversary into submission. When territory is at stake, prisoners are further at risk of cruel treatment as their captors seek to permanently remove the most threatening sources of opposition within newly conquered lands. By combining a rigorous strategic approach with a wide-ranging body of evidence, Wallace offers a vital contribution to the study of political violence and wartime conduct.

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The A"International Code on Religious FreedomA" encompasses the widest possible collection of international texts on the matter. They are grouped under three indexes, namely: a) index by GO's (United Nations, International Labour Organization, UNESCO, Council of Europe, European Union, Organization of American States, OSCE, African Union); b) index by "juridical source" (binding and non-binding international instruments); and c) chronological index. It also includes, as far as Islam is concerned, the "Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam" and "The Arab Charter on Human Rights", as well as, insofar as Asia is concerned, "The Seoul Recommendation on Democracy and Tolerance" and "The Asian Human Rights Charter". Besides international instruments, the A"CodeA" also presents the relevant elements of the case-law of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights, with a direct bearing on the matter at issue, in such a way that the practical problems raised, and the solutions thereto, may be known by both specialists and non-legal readers. The A"CodeA" thus becomes a source of useful and indispensable consultation for all those interested in studying the theme, and of recurrent importance. The ultimate purpose of the A"International Code on Religious FreedomA" by Professor Michelangela Scalabrino is to foster a better understanding of what is meant by "religious freedom" in the domain of the International Law of Human Rights. It is hoped that the aforementioned A"CodeA" may also serve as a source of inspiration for representatives of States and entities of the civil society, as well as for leaders of religious faiths, in devising and assessing what they could or should do, in order to favour mutual respect for, and a spirit of tolerance and a better understanding of, each other's beliefs, to the ultimate benefit of all human beings and their religious faiths.

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Type documentaire familier aux papyrologues, épigraphistes, juristes et historiens du Haut-Empire romain, la pétition et l'apostille qu'y portait l'autorité caractérisent un modèle de relation entre sujets et instances dirigeantes. De Rome à Byzance, qu'est devenue la pétition? Y a-t-il une pétition proprement byzantine? Ces questions, soulevées par différents travaux, n'avaient été traités qu'en ordre dispersé. Rassemblant des historiens d'horizons variés, antiquisants et médiévistes, la table-ronde "La pétition à Byzance" a voulu confronter les recherches particulières et mettre en commun des perspectives. Deux grands domaines ordonnent l'ensemble: au niveau du pouvoir central, la pétition à l'empereur et, correlativement, le rescrit impérial; à l'échelon local, la masse des documents papyrologiques, seuls originaux conservés, dont l'inventaire critique complète le volume. Pétitions et rescrits impériaux font l'objet de six études, des origines romaines (T. Hauken) au début du XIVe siècle (M. Nystazopoulou-Pélékidou), centrées à la haute époque sur les données des Codes (R.W. Mathisen), des Actes conciliaires et des Novelles (D. Feissel), des papyrus (C. Zuckerman) ou, pour l'époque médiobyzantine, sur le rôle du maître des requêtes (R. Morris). Un ensemble de trois communications traite des pétitions sur papyrus de l'Égypte byzantine (jusqu'au début du VIIe siècle). Du point de vue de l'histoire sociale, les pétitions soumises par des femmes apparaissent plus rares qu'à l'époque romaine (R.S. Bagnall), tandis que la disparition progressive des pétitions aux magistrats municipaux est compensée par l'émergence de "pétitions privées" aux grands propriétaires (J. Gascou). En termes d'histoire culturelle, la pétition s'avère le plus "littéraire" des genres documentaires de l'époque (J.-L. Fournet). Au total s'ébauche, implicitement, une diplomatique de la pétition byzantine qui encourage d'une époque à l'autre, avec les précautions requises, la démarche comparative.

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Charles-Martin Kieffer s'est éteint le 4 février 2015. Homme de terrain hors pair, sa contribution essentielle aux études iraniennes dans le domaine de linguistique fut la description de deux langues en voie de disparition: l'ormuri de Baraki-Barak et le paraci. Dialectologue - sa participation à l'Atlas Linguistique de l'Afghanistan fut primordiale - mais avant tout ethnologiste, il a toujours été soucieux tant des faits linguistiques que des réalités sociologiques. En témoignent tout particulièrement les données recueillies pendant plus de vingt ans (1957-1980) sur les tabous et obligations de langage tels qu'ils existaient en milieu villageois. Après avoir quitté - mais pas abandonné - le terrain afghan, sa curiosité demeura la même à l'égard de la situation linguistique (langues résiduelles) en Alsace. Les 16 articles ici réunis en son hommage portent sur des recherches tant linguistiques qu'anthropologiques, et concernent la sphère (indo-)iranienne - élargie, pour l'un d'eux, au voisinage turcophone. Charles-Martin Kieffer died the 4th of February, 2015. Exceptional man of fieldwork, his fundamental contribution to Iranian studies in the linguistic field was the description of two dying languages: the Omuri of Baraki Barak and Paraci. Dialectologist - his participation to the Atlas Linguistique de l'Afghanistan was capital - but overall ethnologist, he was always careful to linguistic facts as well as to the sociolinguistic realities. It is attested mainly by the data collected in more than twenty years (1957-1980) on the taboes and language obligations existing in the countryside. After leaving - but not abandoning - the Afghan field, his curiosity remained unchanged towards the linguistic situation (residual languages) in Alsace. The 16 articles here collected in his homage deal with linguistic and anthropologic researches and cover the (Indo-)Iranian area - extended for one of them to the Turkophone sphere.

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Welfare states have spread across the globe, transforming modern civilization. But the take-over is often going badly. In Marseilles, armed drug gangs dominate the social housing estates. In America, an outstandingly wealthy country, 45 million people are dependent on food stamps. In Britain, the NHS has one of the worst records for cancer care in the advanced world. Many countries are collecting more than ever in taxes but managing to get deeper into debt because of their burgeoning welfare states. All around the world, culture is being damaged by welfare state dependency while governments become more and more like Big Brother, telling us what we must do. The twentieth century experienced an epochal war between capitalism and communism. Bartholomew argues that, out of the ashes of that conflict, the real winner has been neither communism nor capitalism. It has been welfare statism-the new, defining form of government of our age that has swept across the advanced world. Without any revolution or great theorist, welfare states are changing the nature of modern civilization. But in what ways? And what lessons can be learned before it is too late? James Bartholomew traveled around the world seeing how cultures and lives are being changed-seeing what is going wrong but also looking for countries where they are making better policy decisions. His book is an unparalleled investigation in which he tells the story of the people and places he visited. He takes the reader on a journey, which includes burnt-out cars in France, a tough-minded benefits office in Singapore and innovative hospitals in Spain.

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The first metropolis to be depicted in Australian literature was Hell: before cities existed in Australia, Francis McNamara, the convict poet, described the infernal one populated by those who tormented him and his fellow prisoners. Sentenced in 1832 to seven years' transportation to Australia for stealing a plaid, he survived the brutality of the penal system: his witty, rebellious poems laid the foundations for a new Australian poetry. Les Murray's anthology of poets from the early years of European settlement in Australia reaches back in time from his fivefathers, which collected significant voices from the early twentieth century (Kenneth Slessor, Roland Robinson, David Campbell, James McAuley, Francis Webb). "Hell and After" contains extended selections from the work of four writers. Francis McNamara (1811-1880) is the only poet whose work has survived from the convict era. Mary Gilmore (1865-1962) was born to a pioneering life in the bush; she became a social reformer and renowned figure in the Australian Labor Party, and her poems are much loved by Australians for their vivid evocations of colonial life. John Shaw Neilson (1872-1942), who spent most of his life as a manual labourer, wrote poems of great lyricism and humour under conditions of poverty and ill-health. Lesbia Harford (1891-1927), a radical activist who was one of the first women to graduate with a law degree from the University of Melbourne, worked as a factory machinist and domestic servant. Her poems give voice to a woman's experience of working life and private desire. Reading these poets is to experience a culture in the process of creating itself.

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This is the second volume arising from the 1994–2003 excavations of the Triconch Palace at Butrint (Albania), which charted the history of a major Mediterranean waterfront site from the 2nd to the 15th centuries AD. The sequence (Butrint 3: Excavations at the Triconch Palace: Oxbow, 2011) included the development of a palatial late Roman house, followed by intensive activity between the 5th and 7th centuries involving domestic occupation, metal-working, fishing and burial. The site saw renewed activity from the 10th century, coinciding with the revival of the town of Butrint, and for the following 300 years continued in intermittent use associated with its channel-side location.This volume reports on the finds from the site (excluding the pottery), which demonstrate the ways in which the lives, diet and material culture of a Mediterranean population changed across the arc of the late Roman and Medieval periods. It includes discussion of the environmental evidence, the human and faunal remains, metal-working evidence, and the major assemblages of glass, coins and small finds, giving an insight into the health, subsistence base and material culture of the population of a Mediterranean site across more than 1000 years. The findings raise important questions regarding the ways in which changes in the circumstances of the town affected the population between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They illustrate in particular how an urban Roman centre became more rural during the 6th century with a population that faced major challenges in their health and living conditions.

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After her beloved dad got addicted to right-wing talk radio and Fox News, Jen Senko feared he would never be the same again…Frank Senko had always known how to have a good time. Despite growing up in a poverty-stricken family during the Depression and having to fight his way to middle-class status as an adult, he tended to look on the bright side. But after a job change forced Frank to begin a long car commute every day, his daughter Jen noticed changes in his personality and beliefs. Long hours on the road listening to talk radio commentators like Rush Limbaugh sucked her father into a suspicion-laden worldview dominated by conspiracy theories, fake news, and rants about the "coastal elite" and "libtards" trying to destroy America.Over the course of a few years, Jen's dad went from a nonpolitical, open-minded Democrat to a radical, angry, and intolerant right-wing devotee who became a stranger to those closest to him. As politics began to take precedence over everything else in her father's life, Jen was mystified. What happened to her dad? Was there anything she could do to help? And, most importantly, would he ever be his lovable self again? Jen began the search for answers, and found them... as well stories from countless other families like her own.Based on the award-winning documentary, The Brainwashing of My Dad uncovers the alarming right-wing strategy to wield the media as a weapon against our very democracy. Jen's story shows us how Fox News and other ultra-conservative media outlets are reshaping the way millions of Americans view the world, and encourages us to fight back.

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While the flames of World War II still raged, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin issued a warning to the Nazi leaders. Those responsible for the torture and murder of millions of innocent and defenseless civilians were promised that "... the three Allied Powers will pursue them to the furthest corners of the earth and deliver them to their judges so that justice may be done." That promise was not kept. Justice was not done. In 1945, twelve of the most notorious Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal convened at Nuremberg. (Martin Bormann, his whereabouts unknown, had been tried and convicted in absentia.) Subsequent war-crimes trials ended in the conviction of other offenders. But the majority of the torturers and murderers escaped, found sanctuary, and continued to work effectively toward the concept of eventual world domination. Nazism did not die at Nuremberg. This survival and resurgence was the result of a plan for the creation of a "brotherhood" initiated long before the end of the war by the least visible and most powerful of the Nazi war lords--Martin Bormann. The Brotherhood, backed by virtually unlimited funds, established "safe" houses inside Germany, escape routes to other countries and continents, and an extensive international group of industrial firms as financial reservoirs and as "fronts" for escaped Nazis. This chronicle, based upon independent investigation, including numerous exclusive interviews and the examination of declassified and revealing documents, casts a new light upon Bormann, his strange role in the Third Reich, and his devastating influence, which cuts mercilessly into our present. This is essential reading, as fascinating as it is meaningful.

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One of the singular talents in landscape design, Chip Sullivan has shared his expertise through a seemingly unusual medium that, at second glance, makes perfect sense--the comic strip. For years Sullivan entertained readers of Landscape Architecture Magazine with comic strips that ingeniously illustrated significant concepts and milestones in the creation of our landscapes. These strips gained a large following among architects and illustrators, and now those original works, as well as additional strips created just for this book, are collected in Cartooning the Landscape.Framed by a loose narrative in which a young man’s search for wisdom is fulfilled by a comics shop owner who instructs him not only in the essentials of illustrating but in how to see, the book takes us on a whirlwind series of journeys. We visit the living sculptures of the Tree Circus on California’s Highway 17, the vast network of tunnels and fortifications--almost an underground city--of France’s Maginot Line, and take a trip through time that reveals undeniable parallels between the Emperor Hadrian’s re-creation of the Elysian Fields and, of all things, the iconic theme parks of Walt Disney. Sullivan immerses us in the artist’s concepts and tools, from the Claude mirror and the camera obscura to the role of optical illusion in art. He shows us how hot air balloons introduced aerial perspective and reveals exhibition effects that portended everything from Cinerama to Smell-O-Vision.Sullivan’s book is also a plea, in an era increasingly dominated by digitally rendered images, for a new appreciation of the art of hand drawing. The proof of this craft’s value lies in the hundreds of Sullivan’s panels collected in this passionate, humorous, always illuminating tour of the rich landscape surrounding us.

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Interpretations is a collection of essays produced by the distinguished philosopher Jude Dougherty over the past decade, written to inform or to provide commentary on contemporary issues. In probing the past to interpret the present they draw upon a perspective that one may call classical, the perspective of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and their followers across the ages, notably Thomas Aquinas, and his modern disciples, such as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. The first part of Interpretations is an attempt to understand modernity’s break with the past, the repudiation of Scholasticism and the classical tradition. Dougherty does this by referencing the dominant preoccupations of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, of eighteenth-century British empiricism, and of nineteenth-century German philosophy, drawing upon the readings of Remi Brague, Pierre Manent, and others. What unifies these reflections is the role of religion (both in Christianity and Islam) in society and its impact on the culture, as well as looking at what is called “modernity” where this role becomes reduced or absent. The second part of the volume examines selected addresses by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI from a philosophical point of view. Benedict, like others through the course of history, has recognized the role of religion in producing cultural unity. These essays are an appreciation primarily of the subtlety of the former pontiff’s thought. The third part of Interpretations collects essays and addresses on the practice and nature of philosophy that Dean Dougherty has given throughout his career at The Catholic University of America, and reflects the trajectory of his career and the development of his thought.

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