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Petroleum-based fuels are well-established products that have served industry and consumers for more than one hundred years. However petroleum, once considered inexhaustible, is now being depleted at a rapid rate. As the amount of available petroleum decreases, the need for alternative technologies to produce liquid fuels that could potentially help prolong the liquid fuels culture and mitigate the forthcoming effects of the shortage of transportation fuels is being sought. The dynamics are now coming into place for the establishment of a synthetic fuels industry; the processes for recovery of raw materials and processing options have to change to increase the efficiency of oil production and it is up to various levels of government not only to promote the establishment of such an industry but to recognise the need for available and variable technology. This timely handbook is written to assist the reader in understanding the options that available for the production of synthetic fuel from biological sources. Each chapter contains tables of the chemical and physical properties of the fuels and fuel sources. It is essential that the properties of such materials be presented in order to assist the researcher to understand the nature of the feedstocks as well as the nature of the products. If a product cannot be employed for its hope-for-use, it is not a desirable product and must be changed accordingly. Such plans can only be made when the properties of the original product are understood. The fuels considered include conventional and unconventional fuel sources; the production and properties of fuels from biomass, crops, wood, domestic and industrial waste and landfill gas.

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With Build Your Own Chain Reaction Machines, you’ll create 13 zany and awesome mechanical contraptions using stuff from around the house.Build Your Own Chain Reaction Machines invites you into the wonderful world of crazy contraptions inspired by the amazing artwork of renowned cartoonist, engineer, and inventor Rube Goldberg, whose wacky, imaginary machines accomplished a simple task by taking a hilariously complicated route. In this entertaining and instructive book, mechanical engineer and educator Paul Long gives step-by-step instructions for making low-tech devices using everyday objects in inspired and ingenious ways. Each of the 13 projects demonstrates how to build the machine's various elements and explains how they work together to make a mind-boggling mechanism that delivers hours of fun and fascination. Machines for Your Room. Be the master of your domain with the Door Knocker, Light Switcher, and Door Opener. Machines for Around the House. Get your chores done (and improve your personal hygiene) with the Plant Waterer, Toothpaste Squeezer, and Soap Dispenser. Machines for Fun and Nonsense.The Flag Raiser, Marble Launcher, Music Maker, and Balloon Popper are guaranteed to both amaze and amuse. Machines for Food. With the Vending Machine, Candy Dispenser, and Cookie Dunker, snacking has never been so fun! You'll also find interesting sidebars on the science behind each gadget, plus tips and tricks for success.Build Your Own Chain Reaction Machines gives you the know-how to create your own incredible chain reactions!

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How traumatic events can break our vital connections—and how to restore love, wholeness, and resiliency in your life. From our earliest years, we develop an attachment style that follows us through life, replaying in our daily emotional landscape, our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves. And in the wake of a traumatic event—such as a car accident, severe illness, loss of a loved one, or experience of abuse—that attachment style can deeply influence what happens next. In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections— with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others. The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past. Here, you’ll learn key insights and practices to help you: • Restore the broken connections caused by trauma • Get embodied and grounded in your body • Integrate the parts of yourself that feel wounded and fragmented • Emerge from grief, fear, and powerlessness to regain strength, joy, and resiliency • Reclaim access to your inner resources and spiritual nature "We are fundamentally designed to heal," teaches Dr. Heller. "Even if our childhood is less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to simply find out what’s interfering with it—and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant." With expertise drawn from Dr. Heller’s research, clinical work, and training programs, this book invites you to begin that journey back to wholeness.

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How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration.As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization.

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Why the dollar will remain the world's most powerful currencyMonetary rivalry is a fact of life in the world economy. Intense competition between international currencies like the US dollar, Europe's euro, and the Chinese yuan is profoundly political, going to the heart of the global balance of power. But what exactly is the relationship between currency and power, and what does it portend for the geopolitical standing of the United States, Europe, and China? Popular opinion holds that the days of the dollar, long the world’s dominant currency, are numbered. By contrast, Currency Power argues that the current monetary rivalry still greatly favors America’s greenback. Benjamin Cohen shows why neither the euro nor the yuan will supplant the dollar at the top of the global currency hierarchy.Cohen presents an innovative analysis of currency power and emphasizes the importance of separating out the various roles that international money might have. After systematically exploring the links between currency internationalization and state power, Cohen turns to the state of play among today’s top currencies. The greenback, he contends, is the "indispensable currency"—the one that the world can’t do without. Only the dollar is backed by all the economic and political resources that make a currency powerful. Meanwhile, the euro is severely handicapped by structural defects in the design of its governance mechanisms, and the yuan suffers from various practical limitations in both finance and politics.Contrary to today’s growing opinion, Currency Power demonstrates that the dollar will continue to be the leading global currency for some time to come.

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This two-volume work examines far-reaching debates on the concept of courage from Greek antiquity to the Christian and mediaeval periods, as well as the modern era. Volume 1 explains how competing accounts of epistêmê, rational wisdom, and truth dominated classical antiquity. Early Christian and mediaeval thinkers, in contrast, favoured fortitude founded on faith and fear of God over philosophical reasoning left to its own devices. Volume 2 turns to theories of courage from the early modern period to the present. It shows how the twin laws of polis and physis are at the heart of post-medieval thought. Courage is found at the crossroads of love and dread, freedom and fate, happiness and suffering, as well as power and submission to the ruling order. The later influence of evolutionism, existentialism, and the social and natural sciences on moral philosophy is also addressed at some length. The protection of people's best interests, the passions and powers of the human will, and the rule of active energy in all aspects of life supplant courage formerly viewed through the lens of reason or faith, or a combination of the two. These new ideas, paradoxically, herald the end of the ethics of courage. They also undermine the courage of ethical thinking. Courage is no longer an end in itself, nor is it a means to happiness "at the end." Regardless of what Gandhi, Tillich, and Foucault have to say about the topic, late modernity and the global age witness a marked loss of interest in courage as an idea worthy of conceptual investigation. Debates about the moral implications of courage give way to the value-free science of resilience, which studies how people can recover from past trauma and find wellness, primarily in the realm of physis.

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Packed with more than 1,000 multiple choice questions and answers on topics commonly found on ABFM board examinations, The Family Medicine Board Review Book, Second Edition, edited by Dr. Robert A. Baldor, helps you make the most of your study time and achieve exam success. It provides valuable background information on ABFM in-training, board certification, and recertification examinations and their formats before presenting questions that are weighted and structured to mimic the ABFM exam. This unique, cost-effective review tool is ideal for testing your knowledge in every area of family medicine and identifying areas that may require further study. Offers nearly 1,100 multiple choice questions that follow the ABFM Exam blueprint—the best question-to-cost ratio of any Q-bank available for Family Medicine Features dozens of new questions throughout, as well as more questions in the form of clinical vignettes, to mimic the evolving exam format Provides an interactive eBook quizzing platform to test your knowledge online Includes an atlas with clinical images and lab smears, reflecting the types of illustrations that are included on the exam Contains additional reading suggestions for each answer, a Study Grid to help diagnose areas for improvement, practical test-taking tips from Family Medicine Residency Program directors, and highlighted key points throughout Ideal for use with Dr. Frank J. Domino’s Fast Facts for the Family Medicine Board Review for a comprehensive board exam preparation experience Enrich Your eBook Reading Experience Read directly on your preferred device(s), such as computer, tablet, or smartphone. Easily convert to audiobook, powering your content with natural language text-to-speech.

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The ancient Egyptians presented themselves as superior to all other people in the world; on temple walls, the pharaoh is shown smiting foreign enemies - people from Nubia, Libya and the Levant - or crushing them beneath his chariot. Officially, foreigners represented disorder and chaos - the opposite of Egypt's perfect land of justice and order. But despite such imagery, from the beginning of their history, the Egyptians also enjoyed friendly relations with neighbouring cultures; both Egyptians and foreigners crossed the deserts and seas exchanging goods gathered from across the known world. They shared knowledge and technology, and sometimes settled abroad, marrying and acculturating. Through such interactions, the Egyptians influenced other cultures, and at the same time were themselves shaped by foreign contacts and external events.War & Trade with the Pharaohs explores Egypt's connections with the wider world over the course of 3,000 years, introducing readers to ancient diplomacy, travel, trade, warfare, domination, and immigration - both Egyptians living abroad and foreigners living in Egypt. It covers military campaigns and trade in periods of strength - including such important events as the Battle of Qadesh under Ramesses II and Hatshepsut's trading mission to the mysterious land of Punt - and Egypt's foreign relations during times of political weakness, when foreign dynasties ruled parts of the country. From early interactions with traders on desolate desert tracks, to sunken Mediterranean trading vessels, the Nubian Kingdom of Kerma, Nile fortresses, the Sea Peoples, and Persian satraps, there is always a rich story to tell behind Egypt's foreign relations.

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The Potsdam Conference (officially known as the "Berlin Conference"), was held from 17 July to 2 August 1945 at Cecilienhof Palace, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, in Brandenburg, and saw the leaders of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, gathered together to decide how to demilitarise, denazify, decentralise, and administer Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender on 8 May (VE Day). They determined that the remaining German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary - both the ethnic (Sudeten) and the more recent arrivals (as part of the long-term plan for the domination of Eastern Europe) - should to be transferred to Germany, but despite an undertaking that these would be effected in an orderly and humane manner, the expulsions were carried out in a ruthless and often brutal manner. Land was seized with farms and houses expropriated; the occupants placed into camps prior to mass expulsion from the country. Many of these were labour camps already occupied by Jews who had survived the concentration camps, where they were equally unwelcome. Further cleansing was carried out in Romania and Yugoslavia, and by 1950, an estimated 11.5 million German people had been removed from Eastern Europe with up to three million dead. The number of ethnic Germans killed during the 'cleansing' period is suggested at 500,000, but in 1958, Statistisches Bundesamt (the Federal Statistical Office of Germany) published a report which gave the figure of 1.6 million relating to expulsion-related population losses in Poland alone. Further investigation may in due course provide a more accurate figure to avoid the accusation of sensationalism.

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Overcoming the Oppressors traces southern Africa's long walk to freedom, the overturning of colonial rule in the northern territories, and the dissolution of backs-to-the-wall white settler suzerainty, first in what became Zimbabwe and then in South Africa. Chapters on the individual countries detail the stages along their sometimes complicated and tortuous struggle to attain the political New Zion. Rotberg explains how and why the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland failed, how and why apartheid eventually collapsed, and exactly how the various components of this heavily white conquered, and later white oppressed, domain transitioned via diverse fits and starts into today's assemblage of proud, politically charged, and still mostly fragmented nation-states. But what did the new republics make of their hard-won freedoms? Having liberated themselves successfully, several soon dismantled democratic safeguards, established effective single-party states, closed their economies, deprived citizens of human rights and civil liberties, and exchanged economic progress for varieties of central planning experiments and stunted forms of protected economic endeavors. Only Botswana, of the new entities, embraced full democracy and good governance. The others, even South Africa, at first tightly regimented their economies and attempted to severely limit the degrees of economic freedom and social progress that citizens could enjoy. Corruption prevailed everywhere except Botswana. Today, as the chapters on contemporary southern Africa reveal, most of the southern half of the African continent is returning, if sometimes struggling, to the patterns of probity and good governance that many countries abandoned in the decades after independence.

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The final book in his acclaimed trilogy on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster shows how Germany rushed headlong into destroying itself, shattering an entire continent. In 1939 Hitler mobilized Germany into all-out war. Richard Evans's astonishing, acclaimed history conjures up a whole society plunged into conflict - from generals and front-line soldiers to Hitler Youth activists and middle-class housewives - tracing events from the invasion of Poland and the Battle of Stalingrad to Hitler's plans for genocide and his eventual suicide. 'Masterly ... will surely be the standard history for many years to come ... This is a warning for the future, as much as a judgement on the past' Richard Overy, Daily Telegraph 'We all know how the story ends ... but Richard Evans brings it masterfully home ... magnificent' Peter Preston, Observer 'A chilling, brilliant read' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year 'It is hard to do justice to the humanity and scholarly range of The Third Reich at War ... triumphant ... a masterful historical narrative and the most comprehensive account of Nazi Germany' Nicholas Stargardt, The Times Literary Supplement 'It gives the reader persuasive answers to questions asked for so long, that will continue to be asked, about this most violent and inexplicable of regimes' Mark Mazower, Guardian Sir Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. His previous books include In Defence of History, Telling Lies about Hitler and the companions to this title, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power.

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The quantum mechanical properties of small molecules provide the basis for our quantitative understanding of chemistry and a testing ground for new theories of molecular structure and reactivity. With modern methods, small molecular systems can be investigated in extraordinary detail by high-resolution spectroscopic techniques in the frequency or the time domains, and by complementary theoretical and computational advances. This combination of cutting-edge approaches provides rigorous tests of our understanding of quantum phenomena in chemistry. The chemical properties of small molecules continue to present rich challenges at the chemistry/physics interface since these molecules exhibit properties in isolation, and interact with their environments, in ways that are not yet fully understood. The coupled electronic and nuclear motions may lead to complex structural or dynamical features that can now be observed experimentally. From a theoretical point of view, these features can only be explained if the quantum nature of the atomic nuclei is considered together with the possible couplings between nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom. New developments, from both the theoretical and experimental side, are urgently needed if the properties of small molecules are to be optimally exploited in future technological, engineering and biological applications of outstanding importance. This Faraday Discussion will address the quantum dynamical properties of small molecules, both in isolation where extraordinarily detailed and precise measurements and calculations are now emerging, and when embedded in complex media such as molecular clusters, quantum fluids and bulk liquids. The Discussion will appeal to researchers working on both isolated and confined molecular systems. This volume covers four main themes: Precise Characterisation of Isolated Molecules Quantum Dynamics of Isolated Molecules Molecules in Confinement in Liquid Solvents Molecules in Confinement in Clusters, Quantum Solvents and Matrices

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How we concieve of the movement of ancient phenomena through time and space has been undergoing reassessment over the last two decades, causing the grip to be loosened on the well-entrenched interpretative models that had dominated research up to that point. The 'Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity' conference, held in Vancouver on March 16-17, 2007, aimed to take stock of this situation and in particular to investigate in fresh ways how regional and global phenomena in the ancient Mediterranean, Near East and Eurasia shaped local life. Still today two models tend to guide explanations of intercultural and interregional contact and interaction: diffusionism from cores (or centres) to peripheries, involving 'superior' civilisations influencing other 'inferior' ones, and Mediterraneanism, the set of distinctive environmental, cultural and historical images that create a unified and unchanging view of the Mediterranean. These two models have come under increasing scrunity since the 1980s, as we have been living in a world of shifting perceptions of time and space and of greater interconnectedness that affects our everyday lives in numerous ways. The source of these shifts has been credited to globalisation, and with it has also come a greater historical appreciation of the phenomenon, including the recognition that the world has witnessed periods of globalisation since the end of the Ice Age. This volume contains 14 reworked and peer-reviewed essays from the original conference proceedings and provides a fair overview of the various chronological periods, methods and data, and perspectives encountered at the conference. The essays consist of case studies whose subjects range in date from the 10th millennium BC to the 4th century AD and draw in all the major regions of the ancient world. These essays and the original conference from which they derive have by no means exhausted all the potential topics raised by the framework within which they work. Much work remains to be done for antiquity and, given the framework's wide applicability, later periods of history.

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No part of the country was more contested during the American Revolution than New York City, the Hudson River, and the surrounding counties. Political and military leaders on both sides viewed the Hudson River Valley as the American jugular, which, if cut, would quickly bleed the rebellion to death. So in 1776, King George III sent the largest amphibious force ever assembled to seize Manhattan and use it as a base from which to push up the Hudson River Valley for a grand rendezvous at Albany with an impressive army driving down from Canada. George Washington and every other patriot leader shared the king’s fixation with the Hudson. Generations of American and British historians have held the same view. In fact, one of the few things that scholars have agreed upon is that the British strategy, though disastrously executed, should have been swift and effective. Until now, no one has argued that this plan of action was lunacy from the beginning. Revolution on the Hudson makes the bold new argument that Britain’s attempt to cut off New England never would have worked, and that doggedly pursuing dominance of the Hudson ultimately cost the crown her colonies. It unpacks intricate military maneuvers on land and sea, introduces the personalities presiding over each side’s strategy, and reinterprets the vagaries of colonial politics to offer a thrilling response to one of our most vexing historical questions: How could a fledgling nation have defeated the most powerful war machine of the era? George C. Daughan—winner of the prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Award for Naval Literature—integrates the war’s naval elements with its political, military, economic, and social dimensions to create a major new study of the American Revolution. Revolution on the Hudson offers a much clearer understanding of our founding conflict, and how it transformed a rebellion that Britain should have crushed into a war they could never win.

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Reexamining feminist sexual politics since the 1970s—the rivalries and the remarkable alliances Since the historic #MeToo movement materialized in 2017, innumerable survivors of sexual assault and misconduct have broken their silence and called out their abusers publicly—from well-known celebrities to politicians and high-profile business leaders. Not surprisingly, conservatives quickly opposed this new movement, but the fact that “sex positive” progressives joined in the opposition was unexpected and seldom discussed. Why We Lost the Sex Wars explores how a narrow set of political prospects for resisting the use of sex as a tool of domination came to be embraced across this broad swath of the political spectrum in the contemporary United States.To better understand today’s multilayered sexual politics, Lorna N. Bracewell offers a revisionist history of the “sex wars” of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Rather than focusing on what divided antipornography and sex-radical feminists, Bracewell highlights significant points of contact and overlap between these rivals, particularly the trenchant challenges they offered to the narrow and ambivalent sexual politics of postwar liberalism. Bracewell leverages this recovered history to illuminate in fresh and provocative ways a range of current phenomena, including recent controversies over trigger warnings, the unimaginative politics of “sex-positive” feminism, and the rise of carceral feminism. By foregrounding the role played by liberal concepts such as expressive freedom and the public/private divide as well as the long-neglected contributions of Black and “Third World” feminists, Bracewell upends much of what we think we know about the sex wars and makes a strong case for the continued relevance of these debates today. Why We Lost the Sex Wars provides a history of feminist thinking on topics such as pornography, commercial sex work, LGBTQ+ identities, and BDSM, as well as discussions of such notable figures as Patrick Califia, Alan Dershowitz, Andrea Dworkin, Elena Kagan, Audre Lorde, Catharine MacKinnon, Cherríe Moraga, Robin Morgan, Gayle Rubin, Nadine Strossen, Cass Sunstein, and Alice Walker.

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A milestone in U.S. historiography, Haunted by Empire brings postcolonial critiques to bear on North American history and draws on that history to question the analytic conventions of postcolonial studies. The contributors to this innovative collection examine the critical role of “domains of the intimate” in the consolidation of colonial power. They demonstrate how the categories of difference underlying colonialism—the distinctions advanced as the justification for the colonizer’s rule of the colonized—were enacted and reinforced in intimate realms from the bedroom to the classroom to the medical examining room. Together the essays focus attention on the politics of comparison—on how colonizers differentiated one group or set of behaviors from another—and on the circulation of knowledge and ideologies within and between imperial projects. Ultimately, this collection forces a rethinking of what historians choose to compare and of the epistemological grounds on which those choices are based.Haunted by Empire includes Ann Laura Stoler’s seminal essay “Tense and Tender Ties” as well as her bold introduction, which carves out the exciting new analytic and methodological ground animated by this comparative venture. The contributors engage in a lively cross-disciplinary conversation, drawing on history, anthropology, literature, philosophy, and public health. They address such topics as the regulation of Hindu marriages and gay sexuality in the early-twentieth-century United States; the framing of multiple-choice intelligence tests; the deeply entangled histories of Asian, African, and native peoples in the Americas; the racial categorizations used in the 1890 U.S. census; and the politics of race and space in French colonial New Orleans. Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, and Nancy F. Cott each provide a concluding essay reflecting on the innovations and implications of the arguments advanced in Haunted by Empire.Contributors. Warwick Anderson, Laura Briggs, Kathleen Brown, Nancy F. Cott, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, Martha Hodes, Paul A. Kramer, Lisa Lowe, Tiya Miles, Gwenn A. Miller, Emily S. Rosenberg, Damon Salesa, Nayan Shah, Alexandra Minna Stern, Ann Laura Stoler, Laura Wexler

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A study of three controversies that illuminate the changing cultural role of art exhibition in the nineteenth century From the antebellum era through the Gilded Age, New York City's leading art institutions were lightning rods for conflict. In the decades before the Civil War, art promoters believed that aesthetic taste could foster national unity and assuage urban conflicts; by the 1880s such hopes had faded, and the taste for art assumed more personal connotations associated with consumption and domestic decoration. Art Wars chronicles three protracted public battles that marked this transformation. The first battle began in 1849 and resulted in the downfall of the American Art-Union, the most popular and influential art institution in North America at mid-century. The second erupted in 1880 over the Metropolitan Museum's massive collection of Cypriot antiquities, which had been plundered and sold to its trustees by the man who became the museum's first paid director. The third escalated in the mid-1880s and forced the Metropolitan Museum to open its doors on Sunday—the only day when working people were able to attend. In chronicling these disputes, Rachel N. Klein considers cultural fissures that ran much deeper than the specific complaints that landed protagonists in court. New York's major nineteenth-century art institutions came under intense scrutiny not only because Americans invested them with moral and civic consequences but also because they were part and parcel of explosive processes associated with the rise of industrial capitalism. Elite New Yorkers spearheaded the creation of the Art-Union and the Metropolitan, but those institutions became enmeshed in popular struggles related to slavery, immigration, race, industrial production, and the rights of working people. Art Wars examines popular engagement with New York's art institutions and illuminates the changing cultural role of art exhibition over the course of the nineteenth century.

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Cottonwood and the River of Time looks at some of the approaches scientists have used to unravel the puzzles of the natural world. With a lifetime of work in forestry and genetics to guide him, Reinhard Stettler celebrates both what has been learned and what still remains a mystery as he examines not only cottonwoods but also trees more generally, their evolution, and their relationship to society. Cottonwoods flourish on the verge, near streams and rivers. Their life cycle is closely attuned to the river's natural dynamics. An ever-changing floodplain keeps generating new opportunities for these pioneers to settle and prepare the ground for new species. Perpetual change is the story of cottonwoods -- but in a broader sense, the story of all trees and all kinds of life. Through the long parade of generation after generation, as rivers meander and glaciers advance and retreat, trees have adapted and persisted, some for thousands of years. How do they do this? And more urgently, what lessons can we learn from the study of trees to preserve and manage our forests for an uncertain future? In his search for answers, Stettler moves from the floodplain of a West Cascade river, where seedlings compete for a foothold, to mountain slopes, where aspens reveal their genetic differences in colorful displays; from the workshops of Renaissance artists who painted their masterpieces on poplar to labs where geneticists have recently succeeded in sequencing a cottonwood's genome; from the intensively cultivated tree plantations along the Columbia to old-growth forests challenged by global warming. Natural selection and adaptation, the comparable advantages and disadvantages of sexual versus asexual reproduction, the history of plant domestication, and the purposes, risks, and potential benefits of genetic engineering are a few of the many chapters in this story. By offering lessons in how nature works, as well as how science can help us understand it, Cottonwood and the River of Time illuminates connections between the physical, biological, and social worlds.

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How is it we humans only arrived after 99.995% of the time there's been life on earth - and yet we're now so dominant? If mutations take generations to have an effect, how did we manage to change so completely in just a blink in time? And why were our rulers and societies always so horrible - yet we endlessly put up with them? Book One of The Secrets of Life quartet began the long narrative of existence by showing how the forces that Big Bang unleashed drove the Earth's evolutionary developments, and how after 3.8 billion years of life and the extinction of many billions of species, our obscure forest-dwelling ancestors emerged in East Africa. Yet what, Book Two asks, were the steps that led to us humans becoming so totally different to anything that had appeared before? If we really were just another kind of animal off the production line of life, then what were the revolutions that turbo-charged our unique abilities? How did we evolve so that we could alter ourselves in an instant, and avoid being stuck in an evolutionary niche like every other organism? How did we manage to create the intelligence and insights that allowed us to make our own decisions in life? And where did the free will come from that would let us override the drives of our animal pasts? We alone of all the world's species have ever been able to predict the future, and then change our behaviour so that it suited our ambitions. But how did we grow our brains and imaginations so greatly that we could achieve this? And only we have evolved the capacity to reject the genetic instructions that shaped us. But why do we think this helps - and how has it affected our lives? Now, using the same easy-going conversational style of the other books in the series, O'Connor answers these and other questions to explain how we evolved to break away from everything that had existed before us. And yet why the effects of our heritage so often still emerge in how we exist.

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‘I have always been drawn to ‘odd’ women. I feel an affinity, a resonance with women who don’t fit the norm – perhaps recognising aspects of myself – and this is reflected in my photographic work.’ Sheba Chhachhi is a photographer, women's rights activist and an installation artist. Based in New Delhi, she has exhibited her works widely in India and internationally, transforming pressing contemporary issues into compelling, evocative works of art. The powerful photographs reproduced here are selected from three major series, co-curated with her subjects . Seven Lives and a Dream spans decades of engagement with, and participation in, the feminist movement. Initiation Chronicle (from Ganga’s Daughters) reveals the lives of a group of women sadhus (religious renunciates): each woman in the series subverts conventional assumptions about gender, sexuality, domesticity and female piety. In the 1990s, Chhachhi was one of the first female photographers to photograph women in conflict-ridden Kashmir, resulting in The Green of the Valley is Khaki. Interweaving the mythic and the social, her work, as she puts it, ‘is really about opening up a conversation, in the process of creating as well as sharing, to invite people to think about personal, social and public concerns, primarily around feminism and ecology.’ The Tate Photography Series is a celebration of international photography in the Tate collection and an introduction to some of the greatest photographers at work today. With the direct involvement of living photographers in collaboration with photography curators, these books showcase the best and most notable images taken across the globe, from city streets to seashores, moving across landscapes and through subcultures, in a visual travelogue of our world. Each book contains a new conversation between curator and photographer and is prefaced with a short introduction. The theme for the first four titles is Community and Solidarity. Also available in this series are: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (978-1-84976-800-9) Sabelo Mlangeni (978-1-84976-802-3) Liz Johnson Artur (978-1-84976-801-6)

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Condensed-Phase Molecular Spectroscopy and Photophysics An introduction to one of the fundamental tools in chemical research—spectroscopy and photophysics in condensed-phase and extended systems Condensed-Phase Molecular Spectroscopy and Photophysics comprehensively covers radiation-matter interactions for molecules in condensed phases along with metallic and semiconductor nanostructures, examining optical processes in extended systems such as metals, semiconductors, and conducting polymers and addressing the unique optical properties of nanoscale systems. The text differs from others through its emphasis on the molecule-environment interactions that strongly influence spectra in condensed phases, including spectroscopy and photophysics of molecular aggregates, molecular solids, and metals and semiconductors, as well as more modern topics such as two-dimensional and single-molecule spectroscopy. To aid in reader comprehension, the text includes case studies and illustrated examples. An online manual with solutions to the problems in the book is available to all readers on a companion website. Condensed-Phase Molecular Spectroscopy and Photophysics begins with an introduction to quantum mechanics that sets a solid foundation for understanding the text’s subsequent topics, including: Electromagnetic radiation and radiation-matter interactions, molecular vibrations and infrared spectroscopy, and electronic spectroscopy Photophysical processes and light scattering, nonlinear and pump-probe spectroscopies, and electron transfer processes Basic rotational spectroscopy and statistical mechanics, Raman scattering, 2D and single-molecule spectroscopies, and time-domain pictures of steady-state spectroscopies Time-independent quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, group theory, radiation-matter interactions, and system-bath interactions Atomic spectroscopy, photophysical processes, light scattering, nonlinear and pump-probe spectroscopies, two-dimensional spectroscopies, and metals and plasmons Written for researchers and upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in physical and materials chemistry, Condensed-Phase Molecular Spectroscopy and Photophysics is a valuable learning resource that is uniquely designed to equip readers to solve a broad array of current problems and challenges in the vast field of chemistry.

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An epic murder mystery set on the crumbling streets of a Paris torn apart by a magical war . . .'Lyrical, sophisticated, lush, suspenseful' Ken LiuParis in the aftermath of the Great Magicians War. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black, thick with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France's once grand capital.House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires' salvation; or the architects of its last, irreversible fall . . .Readers can't put down The House of Shattered Wings:'An intense, beautiful, brutal journey written with an eye for the stunning, vivid detail and the cruel demands of duty, loyalty, and leadership' Kate Elliot'I was absolutely gripped by this novel the whole way. It is such a beautiful, powerful, genuinely haunting fantasy' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Incredibly atmospheric: you can almost see yourself walking the streets of Paris, seeing the polluted, black Seine for yourself, surrounding Notre Dame and Des Magasins' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'A fascinating take on fallen angels in 1930s Paris . . . I was quite taken by the prose and the world building in this as well as rich and complex characters' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'A suspenseful supernatural narrative focusing on fallen angels as they fight for power in a post-apocalyptic Paris that boasts brilliant worldbuilding, powerful prose and a cast of terrifically conflicted characters' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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A bold argument that tackles current trends, such as rising nationalism, arguing that they strengthen rather than undermine transatlantic ties. Is the West finished as a political idea? In recent years, observers have begun pointing to signs that this transatlantic community is eroding. When the European Union expanded, the classic European nation state was in decline. Now, nationalism is on the rise. Furthermore, nations within the EU are less willing to cooperate with the US on policies that require sacrifice and risks, such as using military force alongside the US. Today, following the twin shocks of Brexit and Trump's election, the concept of a unified Western transatlantic community seems to be a relic. But, in Pax Transatlantica, the international historian Jussi Hanhimäki explains why the West is far from over. Hanhimäki argues that-despite Trump's inflammatory, dismissive rhetoric-NATO continues to provide robust security for its member states. NATO has survived by expanding its remit and scope, and it is viewed favorably by member states overall. Moreover, the transatlantic relationship boasts the richest and most closely connected transcontinental economy in the world. Despite the potential fallout from current trade wars-especially between the US and China-and the rise of economic nationalism, the West still benefits from significant transatlantic trade and massive investment flows. Lastly, Hanhimäki traces the parallel evolution of domestic politics on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on the rise of populism. He contends that populism is not causing a rift between the US and Europe. Rather, the spread of populism evinces that their politics are in fact closely integrated. Shifts and even crises abound in the history of the transatlantic relationship. Still, the West endures. Conflicts, rather than undermining the relationship, illustrate its resilience. Hanhimäki shows that the transatlantic relationship is playing out this cycle today. Not only will the "Pax Transatlantica" continue to exist, Hanhimäki concludes, it is likely to thrive in the future.

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WATERSTONES' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023: PUZZLES AND HUMOURWhether it was Harry talking about his todger in his controversial autobiography, or celebrities from Gary Lineker to Phillip Schofield and Huw Edwards dominating the news agenda, plus strikes, inflation, wildfires, the Wagner group performing the briefest mutiny of all time, an ill-fated trip to the Titanic, and - as usual - a stack of scandals leaking out of the Cabinet, 2023 has had just as many newsworthy things you'd like to forget as any other year. Before you can do that though, this book is going to quiz you on them.There's the missing words round, odd one outs, stolen formats from other quiz books, word searches, crosswords, mazes, and - as a word of warning - some close-up photographs of Michael Fabricant. With over 1,000 questions on everything from politics to pop culture, Have I Got News for You: The Quiz of 2023 promises hours of entertainment and is probably the only sardonic souvenir of 2023 going.

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Your one-stop reference for entering the global logistics environment Global Logistics for Dummies is an operational-level reference and overview for those manufacturers, businesses, product distributors, providers of logistics services, humanitarian and disaster relief responders and logisticians on both ends of a global chain who are considering entry in or have recently embarked on entering the global logistics chain/market. Easy to follow and packed with tons of helpful information, it serves as a springboard to larger texts for more detailed information. Beginning with an introduction to both the “whats” and “whys” of global logistics, the book sheds light on how global logistics demands the involvement of not only all elements of the logistics enterprise – e.g., design, logistics engineering, supply, storage/distribution, maintenance, transportation, returns/re-manufacturing, etc. – but also all elements of the business enterprise. In no time, it’ll get you up to speed on the whole-enterprise logistics elements that should be considered in the decision to enter and excel in providing logistics end-items, goods, and services to a global customer. Deliver global disaster and relief logistics support Explore global manufacturing and distribution logistics Provide logistics services for foreign customers Adapt domestic logistics to foreign operating environments Written by a team of SOLE – The International Society of Logistics credentialed practitioners and academicians, Global Logistics for Dummies makes it easier than ever to succeed in this ever-growing field.

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In de Late Middeleeuwen was het lijden van Jezus een 'hot item': religieuzen mediteerden er dagelijks over. De vele passieteksten die bij deze meditatie gebruikt werden, zijn in schier ontelbare afschriften bewaard gebleven. De "Honderd artikelen van de passie" van de Duitse dominicaan Henricus Suso is een van de meest wijdverbreide teksten geweest: uit de Nederlanden zijn tenminste twaalf bewerkingen en vertalingen bekend, die samen in ruim tweehonderdnegentig handschriften overgeleverd zijn. In deze studie staan de oorspronkelijke Duitse meditatietekst en de drie oudste bewerkingen uit de Nederlanden centraal. De meditatieoefening, rond 1320 ontstaan in Zuid-Duitsland, werd al voor het midden van de veertiende eeuw gebruikt en bewerkt in het Brabantse klooster Groenendaal. De volkstalige bewerking die hier ontstond, werd op haar beurt weer voor 1372 in het Latijn vertaald door de Groenendaalse kanunnik Willem Jordaens. Deze Latijnse vertaling is over grote delen van Europa verspreid geraakt. Voor het einde van de veertiende eeuw werd Jordaens' vertaling in de Noordelijke Nederlanden vertaald in de kringen van de Moderne Devotie. De meditatietekst van de "Honderd artikelen" heeft in de vier genoemde veertiende-eeuwse tekstversies een behoorlijke ontwikkeling doorgemaakt: zowel de inhoud als de structuur van de tekst is gaandeweg ingrijpend veranderd. Deze tekstontwikkeling hangt samen met de manier waarop de tekst in verschillende milieus gebruikt werd. Factoren die de tekstontwikkeling bepalen, zijn vooral het opleidingsniveau van de tekstgebruikers en de manier waarop zij mediteren. Om de tekstontwikkeling te kunnen begrijpen, wordt elke tekstversie bestudeerd tegen de achtergrond van de historische context waarin zij gemaakt is. Hierdoor wordt duidelijk hoe de tekst in de meditatiepraktijk functioneerde. Door deze studie is een begin gemaakt met de verkenning van het zeer uitgestrekte en vooralsnog onoverzichtelijke terrein van de laat-middeleeuwse passieliteratuur.

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His winning percentage was well above Jordan’s shooting average or Woods’s domination of golf tournaments. And he sold products and drew spectators like no one had ever done. He was hands-down the most famous athlete in America’s most popular spectator sport, and exactly one hundred years ago you would have been hard pressed to find anybody in the country who didn’t know his name. He was Dan Patch, and he was a racehorse. At the turn of the last century, harness racing drew larger crowds and offered bigger paychecks than any other sport. Its stars were household names, and Dan Patch was both the most celebrated and the richest. As successful as he was on the track, Dan Patch was also America’s first “marketing machine”: the horse who could sell cigars, washing machines, stoves, automobiles, and animal feed, just by the presence of his name and photograph. The Best There Ever Was examines the evolution of sports marketing through the lives of Dan Patch and the three men who owned him: an Indiana breeder, Dan Messner; M. E. Sturgis, who sold the horse for $20,000 (a fortune in those days) and spent the rest of his life trying to buy him back; and Marion W. Savage of Minneapolis, whose entrepreneurial skills presaged today’s sports marketing geniuses.Any athlete who can draw a 90,000-person crowd, offer up world records, and then sell a coal stove with his name on it may well be the best by anybody’s standards. A fun and fascinating read for sports lovers.

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The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper reevaluates how United Nations peacekeeping missions reform (or fail to reform) their participating members. It investigates how such missions affect military organizations and civil-military relations as countries transition to a more democratic system. Two-thirds of the UN's peacekeepers come from developing nations, many of which are transitioning to democracy as well. The assumption is that these "blue helmet" peacekeepers learn not only to appreciate democratic principles through their mission work but also to develop an international outlook and new ideas about conflict prevention. Arturo C. Sotomayor debunks this myth, arguing that democratic practices don't just "rub off" on UN peacekeepers. So what, if any, benefit accrues to these troops from emerging democracies? In this richly detailed study of a decade's worth of research (2001-2010) on Argentine, Brazilian, and Uruguayan peacekeeping participation, Sotomayor draws upon international socialization theory and civil-military relations to understand how peacekeeping efforts impact participating armed forces. He asks three questions: Does peacekeeping reform military organizations? Can peacekeeping socialize soldiers to become more liberalized and civilianized? Does peacekeeping improve defense and foreign policy integration? His evaluation of the three countries' involvement in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti reinforces his final analysis - that successful democratic transitions must include a military organization open to change and a civilian leadership that exercises its oversight responsibilities. The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper contributes to international relations theory and to substantive issues in civil-military relations and comparative politics. It provides a novel argument about how peacekeeping works and further insight into how international factors affect domestic politics as well as how international institutions affect democratizing efforts.

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Leaving the crowded, tourist-driven French Quarter by crossing Esplanade Avenue, visitors and residents entering the Faubourg Marigny travel through rows of vibrantly colored Greek revival and Creole-style homes. For decades, this stunning architectural display marked an entry into a more authentic New Orleans. In the first complete history of this celebrated neighborhood, Scott S. Ellis chronicles the incomparable vitality of life in the Marigny, describes its architectural and social evolution across two centuries, and shows how many of New Orleans's most dramatic events unfolded in this eclectic suburb.Founded in 1805, the Faubourg Marigny benefited from waves of refugees and immigrants settling on its borders. Émigrés from Saint-Domingue, Germany, Ireland, and Italy, in addition to a large community of the city's antebellum free people of color, would come to call Marigny home and contribute to its rich legacy. Shaped as well by epidemics and political upheaval, the young enclave hosted a post- Civil War influx of newly freed slaves seeking affordable housing and suffered grievous losses after deadly outbreaks of yellow fever. In the twentieth century, the district grew into a working-class neighborhood of creolized residents that eventually gave way to a burgeoning gay community, which, in turn, led to an era of ""supergentrification"" following Hurricane Katrina. Now, as with many historic communities in the heart of a growing metropolis, tensions between tradition and revitalization, informality and regulation, diversity and limited access contour the Marigny into an ever more kaleidoscopic picture of both past and present.Equally informative and entertaining, this nuanced history reinforces the cultural value of the Marigny and the importance of preserving this alluring neighborhood.

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This history of the U.S. Public Health Service's efforts to educate Americans about sex makes clear why federally funded sex education has been haphazard, ad hoc, and often ineffectual. Since launching its first sex ed program during World War I, the Public Health Service has dominated federal sex education efforts. Alexandra M. Lord draws on medical research, news reports, the expansive records of the Public Health Service, and interviews with former surgeons general to examine these efforts, from early initiatives through the administration of George W. Bush. Giving equal voice to many groups in America-middle class, working class, black, white, urban, rural, Christian and non-Christian, scientist and theologian-Lord explores how federal officials struggled to create sex education programs that balanced cultural and public health concerns. She details how the Public Health Service left an indelible mark on federally and privately funded sex education programs through partnerships and initiatives with community organizations, public schools, foundations, corporations, and religious groups. In the process, Lord explains how tensions among these organizations and local, state, and federal officials often exacerbated existing controversies about sexual behavior. She also discusses why the Public Health Service's promotional tactics sometimes inadvertently fueled public fears about the federal government's goals in promoting, or not promoting, sex education. This thoroughly documented and compelling history of the U.S. Public Health Service's involvement in sex education provides new insights into one of the most contested subjects in America.

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Before phonographs and moving pictures, live performances dominated American popular entertainment. Carnivals, circuses, dioramas, magicians, mechanical marvels, musicians, and theatrical troupes-all visited rural fairgrounds, small-town opera houses, and big-city palaces around the country, giving millions of people an escape from their everyday lives for a dime or a quarter. In From Traveling Show to Vaudeville, Robert M. Lewis has assembled a remarkable collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century primary sources that document America's age of theatrical spectacle. In eight parts, Lewis explores, in turn, dime museums, minstrelsy, circuses, melodramas, burlesque shows, Wild West shows, amusement parks, and vaudeville. Included in this compendium are biographies, programs, ephemera produced by theatrical entrepreneurs to lure audiences to their shows, photographs, scripts, and song lyrics as well as newspaper accounts, reviews, and interviews with such figures as P. T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill Cody. Lewis also gives us reminiscences about and reactions to various shows by members of audiences, including such prominent writers as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, O. Henry, and Maxim Gorky. Each section also includes a concise introduction that places the genre of spectacle into its historical and cultural context and suggests major interpretive themes. The book closes with a bibliographic essay that identifies relevant scholarly works. Many of the pieces collected here have not been published since their first appearance, making From Traveling Show to Vaudeville an indispensable resource for historians of popular culture, theater, and nineteenth-century American society.

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Why did the twentieth century witness unprecedented organized genocide? Can we learn why genocide is perpetrated by comparing different cases of genocide? Is the Holocaust unique, or does it share causes and features with other cases of state-sponsored mass murder? Can genocide be prevented? Blending gripping narrative with trenchant analysis, Eric Weitz investigates four of the twentieth century's major eruptions of genocide: the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on historical sources as well as trial records, memoirs, novels, and poems, Weitz explains the prevalence of genocide in the twentieth century--and shows how and why it became so systematic and deadly. Weitz depicts the searing brutality of each genocide and traces its origins back to those most powerful categories of the modern world: race and nation. He demonstrates how, in each of the cases, a strong state pursuing utopia promoted a particular mix of extreme national and racial ideologies. In moments of intense crisis, these states targeted certain national and racial groups, believing that only the annihilation of these "enemies" would enable the dominant group to flourish. And in each instance, large segments of the population were enticed to join in the often ritualistic actions that destroyed their neighbors. This book offers some of the most absorbing accounts ever written of the population purges forever associated with the names Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Milosevic. A controversial and richly textured comparison of these four modern cases, it identifies the social and political forces that produce genocide.

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Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many inside and outside Japan have asked whether the country should or will return to commanding armed forces amid an increasingly challenging regional and global context and as domestic politics have shifted in favor of demonstrations of national strength.Tom Phuong Le offers a novel explanation of Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize that foregrounds the relationship between demographics and security. Japan’s Aging Peace demonstrates how changing perceptions of security across generations have culminated in a culture of antimilitarism that constrains the government’s efforts to pursue a more martial foreign policy. Le challenges a simple opposition between militarism and pacifism, arguing that Japanese security discourse should be understood in terms of “multiple militarisms,” which can legitimate choices such as the mobilization of the Japan Self-Defense Forces for peacekeeping operations and humanitarian relief missions. Le highlights how factors that are not typically linked to security policy, such as aging and declining populations and gender inequality, have played crucial roles. He contends that the case of Japan challenges the presumption in international relations scholarship that states must pursue the use of force or be punished, showing how widespread normative beliefs have restrained Japanese policy makers. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, military personnel, atomic bomb survivors, museum coordinators, grassroots activists, and other stakeholders, as well as analysis of peace museums and social movements, Japan’s Aging Peace provides new insights for scholars of Asian politics, international relations, and Japanese foreign policy.

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The growing ubiquity of drones means that they are more readily available for both terrorists and civilians to use. At the same time, the military use of drones has globalised. Yet regulations for their international use, both military and domestic, are sparse and lacking in clarity, and most books on the legality of drones tend to be written by journalists or activists. Drones and the Law: International Responses to Rapid Drone Proliferation presents a fresh, scholarly perspective on the increasingly complex relations between drone usage and international and privacy law. Combining expert insights into strategy, international law, international humanitarian law, targeted killing, ethics, and privacy, Vivek Sehrawat offers an important historical and context for understanding how drone usage has become widespread; investigates how international law and international humanitarian law on the use of force interact with the rapid proliferation of military drones; and outlines how civilian use of drones poses specific challenges to national privacy laws in large countries such as the UK, the USA, and India. Throughout, Sehrawat discusses potential world policies for drone strikes and counter terrorism and debunks myths about current drone capabilities and the law regarding drone usage, making this book a useful and timely addition to the growing literature on drones and the law. For its rigorous legal research that offers a precise, accurate, and authoritative account of the legal challenges posed by rapid drone proliferation, Drones and the Law is a must-read for students and scholars of law and international relations.

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She could lose the perfect life... if she tells the truth. At the school gates in Wimbledon Village, Faiza fits in. It took a few years and a brand new wardrobe, but now the snobbish mothers who mistook her for the nanny treat her as one of their own. But the perfect life costs money. When her husband Tom loses his job, Faiza realises she'll have to reveal her biggest secret: she's spent her family's entire life savings. Unless she doesn't... It only takes a second to lie to Tom. Now Faiza has six weeks to find £75,000 or risk losing the family she has worked so hard to protect. Readers and reviewers are loving Would I Lie to You? 'Warm, intelligent [...] and keeps up the tension right till the end' Sophie Kinsella 'A properly indulgent page turner' Adele Parks, Platinum 'A fresh take on domestic dynamics and moral dilemma... Great for book clubs' Clare Mackintosh 'Convincing and compelling' Stacey Halls 'I couldn't put it down... Tense and funny' Claire Douglas 'I was immediately hooked' Lizzie Damilola Blackburn 'Wise and warm... A page turner' Woman & Home 'A breathtaking, tense ride' Jesse Sutanto 'I just fell into it and couldn't stop' Sarah Pearse 'A refreshing new voice in commercial fiction' Cosmopolitan 'Intelligent and original' Lesley Kara 'So warm, funny, sad and brilliantly written' Laura Marshall 'Not just entertaining, but intelligent and original too [...] and the resourceful Faiza will steal your heart' Lesley Kara 'A warm, funny, compelling, escapist read' Debbie Howells 'Tense, funny, poignant and very clever' Claire Douglas

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Illuminating the conditions for global governance to have precipitated the devastating decline of one of the ocean’s most majestic creatures The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is the world’s foremost organization for managing and conserving tunas, seabirds, turtles, and sharks traversing international waters. Founded by treaty in 1969, ICCAT stewards what has become under its tenure one of the planet’s most prominent endangered fish: the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Called “red gold” by industry insiders for the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands in the sushi economy, the giant bluefin tuna has crashed in size and number under ICCAT’s custodianship.With regulations to conserve these sea creatures in place for half a century, why have so many big bluefin tuna vanished from the Atlantic? In Red Gold, Jennifer E. Telesca offers unparalleled access to ICCAT to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. ICCAT manages the bluefin not to protect them but to secure export markets for commodity empires—and, as a result, has become complicit in their extermination.The decades of regulating fish as commodities have had disastrous consequences. Amid the mass extinction of all kinds of life today, Red Gold reacquaints the reader with the splendors of the giant bluefin tuna through vignettes that defy technoscientific and market rationales. Ultimately, this book shows, changing the way people value marine life must come not only from reforming ICCAT but from transforming the dominant culture that consents to this slaughter.

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In Useful Bullshit Neil J. Diamant pulls back the curtain on early constitutional conversations between citizens and officials in the PRC. Scholars have argued that China, like the former USSR, promulgated constitutions to enhance its domestic and international legitimacy by opening up the constitution-making process to ordinary people, and by granting its citizens political and socioeconomic rights. But what did ordinary officials and people say about their constitutions and rights? Did constitutions contribute to state legitimacy? Over the course of four decades, the PRC government encouraged millions of citizens to pose questions about, and suggest revisions to, the draft of a new constitution. Seizing this opportunity, people asked both straightforward questions like "what is a state?", but also others that, through implication, harshly criticized the document and the government that sponsored it. They pressed officials to clarify the meaning of words, phrases, and ideas in the constitution, proposing numerous revisions. Despite many considering the document "bullshit," successive PRC governments have promulgated it, amending the constitution, debating it at length, and even inaugurating a "Constitution Day." Drawing upon a wealth of archival sources from the Maoist and reform eras, Diamant deals with all facets of this constitutional discussion, as well as its afterlives in the late '50s, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao era. Useful Bullshit illuminates how the Chinese government understands and makes use of the constitution as a political document, and how a vast array of citizens—police, workers, university students, women, and members of different ethnic and religious groups—have responded.

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Commercial development of energy from renewables and nuclear is critical to long-term industry and environmental goals. However, it will take time for them to economically compete with existing fossil fuel energy resources and their infrastructures. Gas fuels play an important role during and beyond this transition away from fossil fuel dominance to a balanced approach to fossil, nuclear, and renewable energies. Chemical Energy from Natural and Synthetic Gas illustrates this point by examining the many roles of natural and synthetic gas in the energy and fuel industry, addressing it as both a "transition" and "end game" fuel. The book describes various types of gaseous fuels and how are they are recovered, purified, and converted to liquid fuels and electricity generation and used for other static and mobile applications. It emphasizes methane, syngas, and hydrogen as fuels, although other volatile hydrocarbons are considered. It also covers storage and transportation infrastructure for natural gas and hydrogen and methods and processes for cleaning and reforming synthetic gas. The book also deals applications, such as the use of natural gas in power production in power plants, engines, turbines, and vehicle needs. Presents a unified and collective look at gas in the energy and fuel industry, addressing it as both a "transition" and "end game" fuel. Emphasizes methane, syngas, and hydrogen as fuels. Covers gas storage and transport infrastructure. Discusses thermal gasification, gas reforming, processing, purification and upgrading. Describes biogas and bio-hydrogen production. Deals with the use of natural gas in power production in power plants, engines, turbines, and vehicle needs.

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In the years since the new mobilities paradigm burst onto the social scientific scene, scholars from various disciplines have analyzed the social, cultural, and political underpinnings of transport, contesting its long-dominant understandings as defined by engineering and economics. Still, the vast majority of mobility studies, and even key works that mention the “good life” and its dependence on the car, fail to consider mobilities in connection with moral theories of the common good. In Assembling Moral Mobilities Nicholas A. Scott presents novel ways of understanding how cycling and driving animate urban space, place, and society and investigates how cycling can learn from the ways in which driving has become invested with moral value. By jointly analyzing how driving and cycling reassembled the “good city” between 1901 and 2017, with a focus on various cities in Canada, in Detroit, and in Oulu, Finland, Scott confronts the popular notion that cycling and driving are merely antagonistic systems and challenges social-scientific research that elides morality and the common good. Instead of pitting bikes against cars, Assembling Moral Mobilities looks at five moral values based on canonical political philosophies of the common good, and argues that both cycling and driving figure into larger, more important “moral assemblages of mobility,” finally concluding that the deeper meta-lesson that proponents of cycling ought to take from driving is to focus on ecological responsibility, equality, and home at the expense of neoliberal capitalism. Scott offers a fresh perspective of mobilities and the city through a multifaceted investigation of cycling informed by historical lessons of automobility.

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Advance your current career or start a new one by obtaining the industry-leading SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP certifications The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world's largest professional association for Human Resources practitioners. Its certifications, while challenging to obtain, open enormous opportunities in the HR field and prove your competence and expertise in the profession. In SHRM Society for Human Resource Management Complete Study Guide: SHRM-CP Exam and SHRM-SCP Exam, veteran HR consultant Sandra M. Reed delivers a comprehensive roadmap to achieving the premier certification for global human resource professionals. You'll get access to Sybex's comprehensive study package, including an assessment test, chapter tests, practice exams, electronic flashcards, and a glossary of key terms. Discover hands-on, practical exercises that prepare you for real-world HR interviews and jobs as you master the technical, leadership, and business competencies you'll need to succeed on the SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP Exams and in your new HR career. This book also provides: Fully updated information for the latest SHRM Certified Professional and Senior Certified Professional exams Opportunities for new career transitions or advancement with a highly sought-after professional certification Access to Sybex online study tools, with chapter review questions, full-length practice exams, hundreds of electronic flashcards, and a glossary of key terms Perfect for HR leaders who wish to pursue the SHRM Senior Certified Professional or SHRM Certified Professional designations, this study guide also teaches the skills required by anyone seeking to transition into an HR-related role. It offers intuitive and easy-to-follow organization and comprehensive domain coverage ideal for experienced and novice professionals alike.

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“When you say, ‘Black is Beautiful,’ what in fact you are saying . . . is: Man, you are okay as you are; begin to look upon yourself as a human being.” With such statements, Stephen Biko became the voice of Black Consciousness. And with Biko’s brutal death in the custody of the South African police, he became a martyr, an enduring symbol of the horrors of apartheid. Through the lens of visual culture, Biko’s Ghost reveals how the man and the ideology he promoted have profoundly influenced liberation politics and race discourse—in South Africa and around the globe—ever since. Tracing the linked histories of Black Consciousness and its most famous proponent, Biko’s Ghost explores the concepts of unity, ancestry, and action that lie at the heart of the ideology and the man. It challenges the dominant historical view of Black Consciousness as ineffectual or racially exclusive, suppressed on the one side by the apartheid regime and on the other by the African National Congress.Engaging theories of trauma and representation, and icon and ideology, Shannen L. Hill considers the martyred Biko as an embattled icon, his image portrayals assuming different shapes and political meanings in different hands. So, too, does she illuminate how Black Consciousness worked behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, a decade of heightened popular unrest and state censorship. She shows how—in streams of imagery that continue to multiply nearly forty years on—Biko’s visage and the ongoing life of Black Consciousness served as instruments through which artists could combat the abuses of apartheid and unsettle the “rainbow nation” that followed.

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"[An] empathetic study of the meanings of cross-racial adoption to adoptees."—Law and Politics Book Review Can White parents teach their Black children African American culture and history? Can they impart to them the survival skills necessary to survive in the racially stratified United States? Concerns over racial identity have been at the center of controversies over transracial adoption since the 1970s, as questions continually arise about whether White parents are capable of instilling a positive sense of African American identity in their Black children. Through in-depth interviews with adult transracial adoptees, as well as with social workers in adoption agencies, Sandra Patton, herself an adoptee, explores the social construction of race, identity, gender, and family and the ways in which these interact with public policy about adoption. Patton offers a compelling overview of the issues at stake in transracial adoption. She discusses recent changes in adoption and social welfare policy which prohibit consideration of race in the placement of children, as well as public policy definitions of "bad mothers" which can foster coerced aspects of adoption, to show how the lives of transracial adoptees have been shaped by the policies of the U.S. child welfare system. Neither an argument for nor against the practice of transracial adoption, BirthMarks seeks to counter the dominant public view of this practice as a panacea to the so-called "epidemic" of illegitimacy and the misfortune of infertility among the middle class with a more nuanced view that gives voice to those directly involved, shedding light on the ways in which Black and multiracial adoptees articulate their own identity experiences.

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Sites Unseen examines the complex intertwining of race and architecture in nineteenth and early-twentieth century American culture, the period not only in which American architecture came of age professionally in the U.S. but also in which ideas about architecture became a prominent part of broader conversations about American culture, history, politics, and—although we have not yet understood this clearly—race relations. This rich and copiously illustrated interdisciplinary study explores the ways that American writing between roughly 1850 and 1930 concerned itself, often intensely, with the racial implications of architectural space primarily, but not exclusively, through domestic architecture. In addition to identifying an archive of provocative primary materials, Sites Unseen draws significantly on important recent scholarship in multiple fields ranging from literature, history, and material culture to architecture, cultural geography, and urban planning. Together the chapters interrogate a variety of expressive American vernacular forms, including the dialect tale, the novel of empire, letters, and pulp stories, along with the plantation cabin, the West Indian cottage, the Latin American plaza, and the “Oriental” parlor. These are some of the overlooked plots and structures that can and should inform a more comprehensive consideration of the literary and cultural meanings of American architecture. Making sense of the relations between architecture, race, and American writing of the long nineteenth century—in their regional, national, and hemispheric contexts—Sites Unseen provides a clearer view not only of this catalytic era but also more broadly of what architectural historian Dell Upton has aptly termed the social experience of the built environment.

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The Maternalists is a study of the hitherto unexplored significance of utopian visions of the state as a maternal entity in mid-twentieth century Britain. Demonstrating the affinities between welfarism, maternalism, and psychoanalysis, Shaul Bar-Haim suggests a new reading of the British welfare state as a political project. After the First World War, British doctors, social thinkers, educators, and policy makers became increasingly interested in the contemporary turn being made in psychoanalytic theory toward the role of motherhood in child development. These public figures used new notions of the "maternal" to criticize modern European culture, and especially its patriarchal domestic structure. This strand of thought was pioneered by figures who were well placed to disseminate their ideas into the higher echelons of British culture, education, and medical care. Figures such as the anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Geza Róheim, and the psychiatrist Ian Suttie—to mention only a few of the "maternalists" discussed in the book—used psychoanalytic vocabulary to promote both imagined perceptions of motherhood and their idea of the "real" essence of the "maternal." In the 1930s, as European fascism took hold, the "maternal" became a cultural discourse of both collective social anxieties and fantasies, as well as a central concept in many strands of radical, and even utopian, political thinking. During the Second World War, and even more so in the postwar era, psychoanalysts such as D. W. Winnicott and Michael Balint responded to the horrors of the war by drawing on interwar maternalistic thought, making a demand to "maternalize" British society, and providing postwar Britain with a new political idiom for defining the welfare state as a project of collective care.

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In The Apocalypse of Empire, Stephen J. Shoemaker argues that earliest Islam was a movement driven by urgent eschatological belief that focused on the conquest, or liberation, of the biblical Holy Land and situates this belief within a broader cultural environment of apocalyptic anticipation. Shoemaker looks to the Qur'an's fervent representation of the imminent end of the world and the importance Muhammad and his earliest followers placed on imperial expansion. Offering important contemporary context for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam, he surveys the political eschatologies of early Byzantine Christianity, Judaism, and Sasanian Zoroastrianism at the advent of Islam and argues that they often relate imperial ambition to beliefs about the end of the world. Moreover, he contends, formative Islam's embrace of this broader religious trend of Mediterranean late antiquity provides invaluable evidence for understanding the beginnings of the religion at a time when sources are generally scarce and often highly problematic. Scholarship on apocalyptic literature in early Judaism and Christianity frequently maintains that the genre is decidedly anti-imperial in its very nature. While it may be that early Jewish apocalyptic literature frequently displays this tendency, Shoemaker demonstrates that this quality is not characteristic of apocalypticism at all times and in all places. In the late antique Mediterranean as in the European Middle Ages, apocalypticism was regularly associated with ideas of imperial expansion and triumph, which expected the culmination of history to arrive through the universal dominion of a divinely chosen world empire. This imperial apocalypticism not only affords an invaluable backdrop for understanding the rise of Islam but also reveals an important transition within the history of Western doctrine during late antiquity.

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The United States today is the most powerful nation in the world, perhaps even stronger than Rome was during its heyday. It is likely to remain the world's preeminent power for at least several decades to come. What behavior is appropriate for such a powerful state? To answer this question, Robert J. Art concentrates on "grand strategy"—the deployment of military power in both peace and war to support foreign policy goals. He first defines America's contemporary national interests and the specific threats they face, then identifies seven grand strategies that the United States might contemplate, examining each in relation to America's interests. The seven are: * dominion—forcibly trying to remake the world in America's own image; * global collective security—attempting to keep the peace everywhere; * regional collective security—confining peacekeeping efforts to Europe; * cooperative security—seeking to reduce the occurrence of war by limiting other states' offensive capabilities; * isolationism—withdrawing from all military involvement beyond U.S. borders; * containment—holding the line against aggressor states; and * selective engagement—choosing to prevent or to become involved only in those conflicts that pose a threat to the country's long-term interests. Art makes a strong case for selective engagement as the most desirable strategy for contemporary America. It is the one that seeks to forestall dangers, not simply react to them; that is politically viable, at home and abroad; and that protects all U.S. interests, both essential and desirable. Art concludes that "selective engagement is not a strategy for all times, but it is the best grand strategy for these times."

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White identity is in ferment. White, European Americans living in the United States will soon share an unprecedented experience of slipping below 50% of the population. The impending demographic shifts are already felt in most urban centers and the effect is a national backlash of hyper-mobilized political, and sometimes violent, activism with a stated aim that is simultaneously vague and deadly clear: 'to take our country back.' Meanwhile the spectre of 'minority status' draws closer, and the material advantages of being born white are eroding. This is the political and cultural reality tackled by Linda Martín Alcoff in The Future of Whiteness. She argues that whiteness is here to stay, at least for a while, but that half of whites have given up on ideas of white supremacy, and the shared public, material culture is more integrated than ever. More and more, whites are becoming aware of how they appear to non-whites, both at home and abroad, and this is having profound effects on white identity in North America. The young generation of whites today, as well as all those who follow, will have never known a country in which they could take white identity as the unchallenged default that dominates the political, economic and cultural leadership. Change is on the horizon, and the most important battleground is among white people themselves. The Future of Whiteness makes no predictions but astutely analyzes the present reaction and evaluates the current signs of turmoil. Beautifully written and cogently argued, the book looks set to spark debate in the field and to illuminate an important area of racial politics.

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Political scandals have become a pervasive feature of many societies today. From Profumo to the cash-for-questions scandal, from Watergate to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, scandals have come to play a central role in politics and in the shaping of public debate. What are the characteristics of political scandals and why have they come to assume such prominence today? What are the social and political consequences of the preoccupation with political scandal in the public domain? In this major new book Thompson develops a systematic and wide-ranging analysis of the phenomenon of political scandal. He shows that the rise of political scandal is linked to the changes brought about by the development of communication media, which have transformed the nature of visibility and altered the relations between public and private life. He analyses the characteristics of scandals as mediated events and he explains why mediated scandals in the political field have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Distinguishing between three basic types of political scandal, Thompson reconstructs the development of sex scandals, financial scandals and what he calls 'power scandals' in Britain and the United States, showing how scandals unfold and how they form part of distinctive political cultures of scandal. In the final chapter, Thompson develops an original theoretical account of political scandal and its consequences which highlights the connections between scandal, reputation and trust. This book is a path-breaking analysis of a troubling phenomenon which has become a central feature of public life in our societies today. It will be of great interest to students of sociology, politics, and media and cultural studies. It will also appeal to a wider readership interested in social and political issues.

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