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Gain deeper insight into the principles and theory of Islamic economics Introduction to Islamic Economics: Theory and Application provides an overview of the organizing principles and fundamentals of an Islamic economy. With deep discussion of the characteristics, rationale, key institutions, objectives, and instruments at work, the book addresses the core economic principles underlying a system based on the foundational teachings of Islam, and examines the implications for economic policies. Social welfare, economic justice, market functionality, efficiency, and equity are explored from an Islamic perspective, and the role and instruments of fiscal and monetary policy in Islamic systems are used to illustrate contemporary applications. Universities around the globe are offering courses on Islamic economics and finance, but despite the industry's rapid growth, most research has been focused on the financial principles rather than underlying economic principles. The first book of its kind, Introduction to Islamic Economics brings all the key concepts together into one reference volume. By outlining the ways in which Islamic finance and Islamic economics interrelate, this book can help readers to: * Develop an understanding of the Islamic economic system and its institutional scaffolding * Differentiate between the major characteristics of the dominant conventional economy and one based on the fundamental sources of Islam * Understand the conditions that must be met for a just, well-balanced, stable, and growing economy * Clarify the role of State, public policy, and risk-sharing in the Islamic financial system The Islamic financial system is expanding quickly, and those looking to increase their relevance in a changing economic landscape must get up to speed. Introduction to Islamic Economics provides a comprehensive overview of underlying economic system offering a deeper understanding of the feature of the system. This book is an excellent complement to Introduction to Islamic Finance, 2E by Iqbal and Mirakhor.

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While the creation of Dolly the sheep, the world's most famous clone, triggered an enormous amount of discussion about human cloning, in Dolly Mixtures the anthropologist Sarah Franklin looks beyond that much-rehearsed controversy to some of the other reasons why the iconic animal's birth and death were significant. Building on the work of historians and anthropologists, Franklin reveals Dolly as the embodiment of agricultural, scientific, social, and commercial histories which are, in turn, bound up with national and imperial aspirations. Dolly was the offspring of a long tradition of animal domestication, as well as the more recent histories of capital accumulation through selective breeding, and enhanced national competitiveness through the control of biocapital. Franklin traces Dolly's connections to Britain's centuries-old sheep and wool markets (which were vital to the nation's industrial revolution) and to Britain's export of animals to its colonies—particularly Australia—to expand markets and produce wealth. Moving forward in time, she explains the celebrity sheep's links to the embryonic cell lines and global bioscientific innovation of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first. Franklin combines wide-ranging sources—from historical accounts of sheep-breeding, to scientific representations of cloning by nuclear transfer, to popular media reports of Dolly's creation and birth—as she draws on gender and kinship theory as well as postcolonial and science studies. She argues that there is an urgent need for more nuanced responses to the complex intersections between the social and the biological, intersections which are literally reshaping reproduction and genealogy. In Dolly Mixtures, Franklin uses the renowned sheep as an opportunity to begin developing a critical language to identify and evaluate the reproductive possibilities that post-Dolly biology now faces, and to look back at some of the important historical formations that enabled and prefigured Dollys creation.

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For ten years James Robertson walked the twenty-one-mile round-trip from his Detroit home to his factory job; when his story went viral, it brought him an outpouring of attention and support. But what of Robertson’s Detroit neighbors, likewise stuck in a blighted city without services as basic as a bus line? What they’re left with, after decades of disinvestment and decline, is DIY urbanism—sweeping their own streets, maintaining public parks, planting community gardens, boarding up empty buildings, even acting as real estate agents and landlords for abandoned homes.DIY Detroit describes a phenomenon that, in our times of austerity measures and market-based governance, has become woefully routine as inhabitants of deteriorating cities “domesticate” public services in order to get by. The voices that animate this book humanize Detroit’s troubles—from a middle-class African American civic activist drawn back by a crisis of conscience; to a young Latina stay-at-home mom who has never left the city and whose husband works in construction; to a European woman with a mixed-race adopted family and a passion for social reform, who introduces a chicken coop, goat shed, and market garden into the neighborhood. These people show firsthand how living with disinvestment means getting organized to manage public works on a neighborhood scale, helping friends and family members solve logistical problems, and promoting creativity, compassion, and self-direction as an alternative to broken dreams and passive lifestyles.Kimberley Kinder reveals how the efforts of these Detroiters and others like them create new urban logics and transform the expectations residents have about their environments. At the same time she cautions against romanticizing such acts, which are, after all, short-term solutions to a deep and spreading social injustice that demands comprehensive change.

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A comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in planning for and facilitating successful street commerce Street commerce has gained prominence in urban areas, where demographic shifts such as increasing numbers of single people and childless "empty nesters," along with technological innovations enabling greater flexibility of work locations and hours, have changed how people shop and dine out. Contemporary city dwellers are demanding smaller-scale stores located in public spaces that are accessible on foot or by public transit. At the same time, the emergence of online retail undermines both the dominance and viability of big-box discount businesses and drives brick and mortar stores to focus as much on the experience of shopping as on the goods and services sold. Meanwhile, in many developing countries, the bulk of urban retail activity continues to take place on the street, even as new car-oriented shopping centers are on the rise. In light of such trends, street commerce will play an important role in twenty-first-century cities, particularly in producing far-reaching benefits for the environment and local communities. Although street commerce is deeply intertwined with myriad contemporary urban visions and planning goals—walkability, quality of life, inclusion, equity, and economic resilience—it has rarely been the focus of systematic research and informed practice. In Street Commerce, Andres Sevtsuk presents a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce. Drawing on economic theory, urban design principles, regulatory policies, and merchant organization models, he conceptualizes key problems and offers innovative solutions. He provides a range of examples from around the world to detail how different cities and communities have bolstered and reinvigorated their street commerce. According to Sevtsuk, successful street commerce can only be achieved when the private sector, urban policy makers, planners, and the public are equipped with the relevant knowledge and tools to plan and regulate it.

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Spanning forty years, this collection of essays represents the work of a renowned teacher and scholar of the ancient Greek world. Martin Ostwald's contribution is both philological and historical: the thread that runs through all of the essays is his precise explanation, for a modern audience, of some crucial terms by which the ancient Greeks saw and lived their lives—and influenced ours. Chosen and sequenced by Ostwald, the essays demonstrate his methodology and elucidate essential aspects of ancient Greek society. The first section plumbs the social and political terms in which the Greeks understood their lives. It examines their notion of the relation of the citizen to his community; how they conceived different kinds of political structure; what role ideology played in public life; and how differently their most powerful thinkers viewed issues of war and peace. The second section is devoted to the problem, first articulated by the Greeks, of the extent to which human life is dominated by nature (physis) and human convention (nomos), a question that remains a central concern in modern societies, even if in different guises. The third section focuses on democracy in Athens. It confronts questions of the nature of democratic rule, of financing public enterprises, of the accountability of public officials, of the conflict raised by imperial control and democratic rule, of the coexistence of "conservative" and "liberal" trends in a democratic regime, and of the relation between rhetoric and power in a democracy. The final section is a sketch of the principles on which the two greatest Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, constructed their outlooks on human affairs. Ultimately, the collection intends to make selected key concepts in ancient Greek social and political culture accessible to a lay audience. It also shows how the differences—rather than the similarities—between the ancient Greeks and us can contribute to a deeper understanding of our own time.

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A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online—and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social mediaIn an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves.Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off—detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit "reset" and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research.Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts.

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Exploring the importance of Richard F. Heck’s carbon coupling reaction, this book highlights the subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis, and includes a foreword from Nobel Prize winner Richard F. Heck. The Mizoroki-Heck reaction is a palladium-catalyzed carbon–carbon bond forming process which is widely used in organic and organometallic synthesis. It has seen increasing use in the past decade as chemists look for strategies enabling the controlled construction of complex carbon skeletons. The Mizoroki-Heck Reaction is the first dedicated volume on this important reaction, including topics on: mechanisms of the Mizoroki-Heck reaction intermolecular Mizoroki-Heck reactions focus on regioselectivity and product outcome in organic synthesis waste-minimized Mizoroki-Heck reactions intramolecular Mizoroki-Heck reactions formation of heterocycles chelation-controlled Mizoroki-Heck reactions the Mizoroki-Heck reaction in domino processes oxidative heck-type reactions (Fujiwara-Moritani reactions) Mizoroki-Heck reactions with metals other than palladium ligand design for intermolecular asymmetric Mizoroki-Heck reactions intramolecular enantioselective Mizoroki-Heck reactions desymmetrizing Mizoroki-Heck reactions applications in combinatorial and solid phase syntheses, and the development of modern solvent systems and reaction techniques the asymmetric intramolecular Mizoroki-Heck reaction in natural product total synthesis Several chapters are devoted to asymmetric Heck reactions with particular focus on the construction of otherwise difficult-to-obtain sterically congested tertiary and quaternary carbons. Industrial and academic applications are highlighted in the final section. The Mizoroki-Heck Reaction will find a place on the bookshelves of any organic or organometallic chemist. “I am convinced that this book will rapidly become the most important reference text for research chemists in academia and industry who seek orientation in the rapidly growing and – for the layman – confusing field described as the “’Mizoroki–Heck reaction’.” (Synthesis, March 2010)

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Sprawl is an unsustainable pattern of growth that threatens to undermine the health of communities globally. It has been a dominant mid-to-late twentieth century growth pattern in developed countries and in the twenty-first century has shown widespread signs of proliferation in India, China, and other growing countries. The World Health Organization cites sprawl for its serious adverse public health consequences for humans and ecological habitats. The many adverse impacts of sprawl on the health of individuals, communities, and biological ecosystems are well documented. Architects have been rightly criticized for failing to grasp the aesthetic and functional challenge to create buildings and places that mitigate sprawl while simultaneously promoting healthier, active lifestyles in neighbourhoods and communities. Sprawling Cities and Our Endangered Public Health examines the past and present role of architecture in relation to the public health consequences of unmitigated sprawl and the ways in which it threatens our future. Topics examined include the role of twentieth century theories of architecture and urbanism and their public health ramifications, examples of current unsustainable practices, design considerations for the creation of health-promoting architecture and landscape urbanism, a critique of recent case studies of sustainable alternatives to unchecked sprawl, and prognostications for the future. Architects, public health professionals, landscape architects, town planners, and a broad range of policy specialists will be able to apply the methods and tools presented here to counter unmitigated sprawl and to create architecture that promotes active, healthier lifestyles. Stephen Verderber is an internationally respected evidence-based researcher/practitioner/educator in the emerging, interdisciplinary field of architecture, health, and society. This, his latest book on the interactions between our buildings, our cities and our health, is an invaluable reference source for everyone concerned with sustainable architecture and landscape urbanism.

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George Gershwin lived with purpose and gusto, but with melancholy as well, for he was unable to make a place for himself--no family of his own and no real home in music. He and his siblings received little love from their mother and no direction from their father. Older brother and lyricist Ira managed to create a home when he married Leonore Strunsky, a hard-edged woman who lived for wealth and status. The closest George came to domesticity was through his longtime relationship with Kay Swift. She was his lover, musical confidante, and fellow composer. But she remained married to another man while he went endlessly from woman to woman. Only in the final hours of his life, when they were separated by a continent, did he realize how much he needed her. Fatally ill, unprotected by (and perhaps estranged from) Ira, he was exiled by Leonore from the house she and the brothers shared, and he died horribly and alone at the age of thirty-eight.Nor was Gershwin able to find a satisfying musical harbor. For years his songwriting genius could be expressed only in the ephemeral world of show business, as his brilliance as a composer of large-scale works went unrecognized by highbrow music critics. When he resolved this quandary with his opera Porgy and Bess, the critics were unable to understand or validate it. Decades would pass before this, his most ambitious composition, was universally regarded as one of music's lasting treasures and before his stature as a great composer became secure.In George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait, Walter Rimler makes use of fresh sources, including newly discovered letters by Kay Swift as well as correspondence between and interviews with intimates of Ira and Leonore Gershwin. It is written with spirited prose and contains more than two dozen photographs.

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Winner, 2022 AATSEEL Best Book in Literary Studies, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and European LanguagesHonorable Mention, 2022 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language AssociationFollowing the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, in the 1920s the Soviet Union turned its attention to fostering anticolonial uprisings in Asia. China, divided politically between rival military factions and dominated economically by imperial powers, emerged as the Comintern’s prime target. At the same time, a host of prominent figures in Soviet literature, film, and theater traveled to China, met with Chinese students in Moscow, and placed contemporary China on the new Soviet stage. They sought to reimagine the relationship with China in the terms of socialist internationalism—and, in the process, determine how internationalism was supposed to look and feel in practice.Internationalist Aesthetics offers a groundbreaking account of the crucial role that China played in the early Soviet cultural imagination. Edward Tyerman tracks how China became the key site for Soviet debates over how the political project of socialist internationalism should be mediated, represented, and produced. The central figure in this story, the avant-garde writer Sergei Tret’iakov, journeyed to Beijing in the 1920s and experimented with innovative documentary forms in an attempt to foster a new sense of connection between Chinese and Soviet citizens. Reading across genres and media from reportage and biography to ballet and documentary film, Tyerman shows how Soviet culture sought an aesthetics that could foster a sense of internationalist community. He reveals both the aspirations and the limitations of this project, illuminating a crucial chapter in Sino-Russian relations. Grounded in extensive sources in Russian and Chinese, this cultural history bridges Slavic and East Asian studies and offers new insight into the transnational dynamics that shaped socialist aesthetics and politics in both countries.

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Latinos are now the largest so-called minority group in the United States-the result of a growth trend that began in the mid-twentieth century-and the influence of Latin cultures on American life is reflected in everything from politics to education to mass cultural forms such as music and television. Yet very few volumes have attempted to analyze or provide a context for this dramatic historical development. The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960 is among the few comprehensive histories of Latinos in America. This collaborative, interdisciplinary volume provides not only cutting-edge interpretations of recent Latino history, including essays on the six major immigrant groups (Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and South Americans), but also insight into the major areas of contention and debate that characterize Latino scholarship in the early twenty-first century. This much-needed book offers a broad overview of this era of explosive demographic and cultural change by exploring the recent histories of all the major national and regional Latino subpopulations and reflecting on what these historical trends might mean for the future of both the United States and the other increasingly connected nations of the Western Hemisphere. While at one point it may have been considered feasible to explore the histories of national populations in isolation from one another, all of the contributors to this volume highlight the deep transnational ties and interconnections that bind different peoples across national and regional lines. Thus, each chapter on Latino national subpopulations explores the ambiguous and shifting boundaries that so loosely define them both in the United States and in their countries of origin. A multinational perspective on important political and cultural themes-such as Latino gender systems, religion, politics, expressive and artistic cultures, and interactions with the law-helps shape a realistic interpretation of the Latino experience in the United States.

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An in-depth look at how the ideas formulated by the interwar League of Nations shaped American thinking on the modern global order. In Plowshares into Swords, David Ekbladh recaptures the power of knowledge and information developed between World War I and World War II by an international society of institutions and individuals committed to liberal international order and given focus by the League of Nations in Geneva. That information and analysis revolutionized critical debates in a world in crisis. In doing so, Ekbladh transforms conventional understandings of the United States’ postwar hegemony, showing that important elements of it were profoundly influenced by ideas that emerged from international exchanges. The League’s work was one part of a larger transnational movement that included the United States and which saw the emergence of concepts like national income, gross domestic product, and other attempts to define and improve the standards of living, as well as new approaches to old questions about the role of government. Forged as tools for peace these ideas were beaten into weapons as World War II threatened. Ekbladh recounts how, though the US had never been a member of the organization, vital parts of the League were rescued after the fall of France in 1940 and given asylum at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, this presence in the US is just one reason its already well-regarded economic analyses and example were readily mobilized by influential American and international figures for an Allied “war of ideas,” plans for a postwar world, and even blueprints for the new United Nations. How did this body of information become so valuable? As Ekbladh makes clear, the answer is that information and analysis themselves became crucial currencies in global affairs: to sustain a modern, liberal global order, a steady stream of information about economics, politics, and society was, and remains, indispensable.

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In a cultural landscape dominated by hot takes and petty polemics, The Point stands for something different. Informed by the conviction that humanistic thinking has relevance for everyday life, the magazine has long maintained a rare space for thoughtful dialogue between a wide range of political views, philosophical perspectives, and personal experiences: its contributors include liberals and conservatives, philosophers and activists, Marxists and Catholics, New Yorkers and Midwesterners. A little more than a decade since its founding on the campus of the University of Chicago, it offers a unique and revelatory look at the changing face of America, one that speaks not only to way American minds have been forced to "open" by a decade of trauma and transformation, but also to the challenge of remaining open to our fellow citizens during our deeply divided present. Featuring award-winning and highly acclaimed essays from The Point's first ten years, The Opening of the American Mind traces the path of American intellect from the magazine's inception in 2009, when Barack Obama was ascending the steps of the White House, to the brink of the 2020 election. The essays, chosen both for the way they capture their time and transcend it, are assembled into five sections that address cycles of cultural frustrations, social movements, and the aftermath of the 2016 election, and provide lively, forward-looking considerations of how we might expand our imaginations into the future. Spanning the era of Obama and Trump, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and renewed attention to reparations, this anthology offers critical reflections on some of the decade's most influential events and stands as a testament to the significance of open exchange. The intellectual dialogue provided by The Point has never been more urgently needed, and this collection will bring the magazine's vital work to an even broader readership.

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This book explores the total resistance to Nazism among the Catholic Christian voters of the Zentrum party in the elections in German states in the Interwar period. Kolden explains the unique Catholic resistance by comparing the diverging evolutions of Catholic and Protestant cultures and mentalities since the awakening of German nationalism in the late 18th century. During the Empire (1871–1918) both socialists and Catholics were regarded as pariah groups by the dominant non-socialist Protestant majority, and more so after the WW1 defeat, when the pariah-parties, together with Protestant liberals, tried to accommodate the new democratic circumstances with their Weimar Constitution. When right-wing radicals, and eventually the Nazis, increased their support —largely on behalf of the rapid shrinking number of liberals—the Catholic church leaders showed a stubborn stance against the rightists, issuing several resolutions of condemnation from the middle of the 1920s until 1933, whereas no such appeared from their Protestant counterparts. In contrast, many local Protestant clergymen agitated for the Nazi party. The anti-Catholic sentiment, which had been obvious among some Nazis in the 1920s, was intensified with the publication of Alfred Rosenbergs The Myth of the 20th Century after the election in 1930, which enhanced the antagonism. The basic and profound difference in Catholic and Protestant cultures also appears in the difference between the less Christian-profiled agrarian parties, which were confessionally separated: antisemitic and right-wing radical Protestant parties confronted by one left-wing and democratic Catholic party. By1945 the bulk of the former rightist Protestants sided with the Catholics, who reorganized their party to the non-denominational CDU, which has been the mightiest proponent in Europe of the former party's ambitions of democracy, stability, anti-racism, human rights, and European unity.

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THE TRUE STORY OF THE 41,000 BRITISH SOLDIERS WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND AFTER THE EVACUATION OF DUNKIRK, MAY 1940'Meticulously researched, very well written and deeply moving' Andrew Roberts'Few readers will be unmoved by Sean Longden's account' Dominic SandbrookAt 2am on the morning of the 3rd of June 1940, General Harold Alexander searched along the quayside, holding onto his megaphone and called "Is anyone there? Is anyone there?" before turning his boat back towards England. Tradition tells us that the dramatic events of the evacuation of Dunkirk, in which 300,000 BEF servicemen escaped the Nazis, was a victory gained from the jaws of defeat. For the first time, rather than telling the tale of the 300,000 who escaped, Sean Longden reveals the story of the 40,000 men sacrificed in the rearguard battles.On the beaches and sand dunes, besides the roads and amidst the ruins lay the corpses of hundreds who had not reached the boats. Elsewhere, hospitals full of the sick and wounded who had been left behind to receive treatment from the enemy's doctors. And further afield - still fighting hard alongside their French allies - was the entire 51st Highland Division, whose war had not finished as the last boats slipped away. Also scattered across the countryside were hundreds of lost and lonely soldiers. These 'evaders' had also missed the boats and were now desperately trying to make their own way home, either by walking across France or rowing across the channel. The majority, however, were now prisoners of war who were forced to walk on the death marches all the way to the camps in Germany and Poland, where they were forgotten until 1945.'Sean Longden is a rising name in military history, and is able to uncover the missing stories of the Second World War' Guardian

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Hard Science Fiction Films that Predict Future Technology“As the breakneck advance of technology takes us into a world that is both exciting and menacing, sci-fi films give us an inkling of what is to come, and what we should avoid.” —Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, and host of Big Picture Science#1 Best Seller in Nanotechnology, Computers & Technology, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mechanical Engineering, and Robotics & Automation, Cybernetics, and Experiments & ProjectsDr. Andrew Maynard, physicist and leading expert on socially responsible development of emerging and converging technologies, examines hard science fiction movies and brings them to life.Science and technology are radically changing our world. Films from the Future is an essential guide to navigating a future dominated by complex and powerful new technologies. The jump from room-filling processors to pocket-size super computers is just the beginning. Artificial intelligence, gene manipulation, cloning, and inter-planet travel are all ideas that seemed like fairy tales but a few years ago. And now their possibility is very much here. But are we ready to handle these advances? As Maynard explains, “Viewed in the right way―and with a good dose of critical thinking―science fiction movies can help us think about and prepare for the social consequences of technologies we don’t yet have, but that are coming faster than we imagine.”Dr. Maynard looks at twelve sci-fi movies and takes us on a journey through the worlds of biological and genetic manipulation, human enhancement, cyber technologies, and nanotechnology. Gain a broader understanding of the complex relationship between science and society. The movies include old and new, and the familiar and unfamiliar, providing a unique, entertaining, and ultimately transformative take on the power and responsibilities of emerging technologies.Read books such as The Book of Why, The Science of Interstellar, or The Future of Humanity? Then you’ll love Films from the Future!

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Build a chatbot using the Microsoft Conversational AI platform. This book will teach you, step by step, how to save time and money by including chatbots in your enterprise's strategy. You will learn how to be proficient at every phase of development, from collaboration on a chatbot in an end-to-end scenario, to the first mock-up phase, and on through to the deployment and evaluation phases.Microsoft built a cloud service ecosystem for running artificial intelligence workloads in public cloud scenarios and a robust AI platform that offers a broad range of services targeting conversational artificial intelligence solutions such as chatbots.Building a chatbot requires not just developer coding skills but special considerations, including input from business stakeholders such as domain matter experts and power users. You will learn by example how to use a great set of tools and services to bridge the gap between business and engineering.You will learn how to successfully morph business requirements into actionable IT and engineering requirements. You will learn about Bot Framework Composer, which allows power users to initiate the building of a chatbot that can then be handed over to the development team to add capabilities through code. Coverage is given to the process of sharing implementation tasks and workloads between power users, who are using a low-code or no-code approach, and developers, who are building out the enhanced features for the chatbot.What You Will Learn Understand Microsoft’s comprehensive AI ecosystem and its services and solutions Recognize which solutions and services should be applied in each business scenario Discover no-code/low-code approaches for building chatbots Develop chatbots using the conversational AI stack Align business and development for improved chatbot outcomes and reduced time-to-market Who This Book Is ForDevelopers and power users who want to build chatbots. An understanding of the core principles of writing code (.NET or JavaScript) for modern web applications is expected.

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Former NFL general manager and three-time Super Bowl winner Michael Lombardi takes readers on the ultimate journey through the NFL's history to present his calls on the greatest players and coaches the sport has ever seen. From Monday Night Football to Super Bowl Sunday, the NFL is a dominating force in the lives of millions of fans who tune in and passionately cheer for their favorite teams. And when the games are over, the conversation is just getting started. Who's the greatest player of all time? Which coaches truly shaped the game we known and love today? What was the most unforgettable game? Why is professional football such an undeniable part of our culture? Three-time Super Bowl winner Michael Lombardi has done it all-from scout to executive to coach-and now he sets the record straight on these questions and more. With Football Done Right, Lombardi tackles all aspects of the sport, discussing the best of the best. He channels his 35+ years of experience with the NFL into an all-encompassing celebration of the game. More than just ranking the giants of the league, Lombardi shows how and why each affected the game. Mixing first-person, in-the-locker-room experience with little known history and hard stats, Lombardi makes a definitive case for the most influential coaches and the best players, as well offers an insider look to how drafts and trades operate behind the scenes and honoring the sportscasters who played an essential role in popularizing the sport. Both a full history of the sport and a comprehensive re-imagining of the Football Hall of Fame to honor every deserving athlete and coach, Football Done Right will change the way you watch, discuss, and debate the gridiron.

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New York Times BestsellerRenowned political scientist Ian Bremmer draws lessons from global challenges of the past 100 years—including the pandemic—to show how we can respond to three great crises unfolding over the next decade. In this revelatory, unnerving, and ultimately hopeful book, Bremmer details how domestic and international conflicts leave us unprepared for a trio of looming crises—global health emergencies, transformative climate change, and the AI revolution. Today, Americans cannot reach consensus on any significant political issue, and US and Chinese leaders behave as if they’re locked in a new Cold War. We are squandering opportunities to meet the challenges that will soon confront us all. In coming years, humanity will face viruses deadlier and more infectious than Covid. Intensifying climate change will put tens of millions of refugees in flight and require us to reimagine how we live our daily lives. Most dangerous of all, new technologies will reshape the geopolitical order, disrupting our livelihoods and destabilizing our societies faster than we can grasp and address their implications. The good news? Some farsighted political leaders, business decision-makers, and individual citizens are already collaborating to tackle all these crises. The question that should keep us awake is whether they will work well and quickly enough to limit the fallout—and, most importantly, whether we can use these crises to innovate our way toward a better world. Drawing on strategies both time-honored and cutting-edge, from the Marshall Plan to the Green New Deal, The Power of Crisis provides a roadmap for surviving—even thriving in—the 21st century. Bremmer shows governments, corporations, and every concerned citizen how we can use these coming crises to create the worldwide prosperity and opportunity that 20th-century globalism promised but failed to deliver.

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Herbal Magic offers a directory of magical herbs (both rare and common) alongside 36 spells using herbs to amplify casts for attraction, enchantment, trust, friendship, fortune, and success. The plant kingdom is one of the oldest magical tools in existence. Known for millennia to have beneficial properties for both physical and spiritual well-being, many species of plants have been incorporated into the spiritual and healing practices of cultures around the world. These magical herbs are considered incredible gifts by shamans, green witches, hedge witches, and every wild woman and wild man. This guide introduces the magical properties of plants, how to use them, and how to source them, including detailed step-by-step instructions on how to blend them seamlessly into magical recipes to harness their intrinsic powers. Tips for the budding witch cover: Uses for both common and rare magical plants Connecting with nature through the process of growing your own plants Herbal magic lore and herbal magic spell tools Tea recipes that can enhance your psychic abilities Spells for attractions, trust, fortune, and friendship Work with the energies and properties of magical plants to connect deeply with the earth and all the greenery in her dominion and magnify the power of your magic spells. The Mystical Handbook series from Wellfleet takes you on a magical journey through the wonderful world of spellcraft and spellcasting. Explore a new practice with each volume and learn how to incorporate spells, rituals, blessings, and cleansings into your daily routine. These portable companions feature beautiful foil-detail covers and color-saturated interiors on a premium paper blend. Other titles in the series include: Witchcraft, Moon Magic, Love Spells, Knot Magic, Superstitions, and House Magic.

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The Times Science Book of the Year.A Sunday Times Bestseller.66 million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today, Dr. Steve Brusatte, one of the leading scientists of a new generation of dinosaur hunters, armed with cutting edge technology, is piecing together the complete story of how the dinosaurs ruled the earth for 150 million years.The world of the dinosaurs has fascinated on book and screen for decades – from early science fiction classics like The Lost World, to Godzilla terrorizing the streets of Tokyo, and the monsters of Jurassic Park. But what if we got it wrong? In The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, top dinosaur expert Brusatte, tells the real story of how dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet. Using the fossil clues that have been gathered using state of the art technology, Brusatte follows these magnificent creatures from their beginnings in the Early Triassic period, through the Jurassic period to their final days in the Cretaceous and the legacy that they left behind.Along the way, Brusatte introduces us to modern day dinosaur hunters and gives an insight into what it’s like to be a paleontologist. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is full of thrilling accounts of some of his personal discoveries, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs, monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex, and feathered raptor dinosaurs preserved in lava from China.At a time when Homo sapiens has existed for less than 200,000 years and we are already talking about planetary extinction, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a timely reminder of what humans can learn from the magnificent creatures who ruled the earth before us.'Thrilling . . . the best book on the subject written for the general reader since the 1980s.' - The Sunday Times

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Born in the timber colony of New Brunswick, Maine, in 1848, Andrew Benoni Hammond got off to an inauspicious start as a teenage lumberjack. By his death in 1934, Hammond had built an empire of wood that stretched from Puget Sound to Arizona—and in the process had reshaped the American West and the nation’s way of doing business. When Money Grew on Trees follows Hammond from the rough-and-tumble world of mid-nineteenth-century New Brunswick to frontier Montana and the forests of Northern California—from lowly lumberjack to unrivaled timber baron.Although he began his career as a pioneer entrepreneur, Hammond, unlike many of his associates, successfully negotiated the transition to corporate businessman. Against the backdrop of western expansion and nation-building, his life dramatically demonstrates how individuals—more than the impersonal forces of political economy—shaped capitalism in this country, and in doing so, transformed the forests of the West from functioning natural ecosystems into industrial landscapes. In revealing Hammond’s instrumental role in converting the nation’s public domain into private wealth, historian Greg Gordon also shows how the struggle over natural resources gave rise to the two most pervasive forces in modern American life: the federal government and the modern corporation.Combining environmental, labor, and business history with biography, When Money Grew on Trees challenges the conventional view that the development and exploitation of the western United States was dictated from the East Coast. The West, Gordon suggests, was perfectly capable of exploiting itself, and in his book we see how Hammond and other regional entrepreneurs dammed rivers, logged forests, and leveled mountains in just a few decades. Hammond and his like also built cities, towns, and a vast transportation network of steamships and railroads to export natural resources and import manufactured goods. In short, they established much of the modern American state and economy.

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A comprehensive graduate-level textbook that takes a fresh approach to complex analysisA Course in Complex Analysis explores a central branch of mathematical analysis, with broad applications in mathematics and other fields such as physics and engineering. Ideally designed for a year-long graduate course on complex analysis and based on nearly twenty years of classroom lectures, this modern and comprehensive textbook is equally suited for independent study or as a reference for more experienced scholars.Saeed Zakeri guides the reader through a journey that highlights the topological and geometric themes of complex analysis and provides a solid foundation for more advanced studies, particularly in Riemann surfaces, conformal geometry, and dynamics. He presents all the main topics of classical theory in great depth and blends them seamlessly with many elegant developments that are not commonly found in textbooks at this level. They include the dynamics of Möbius transformations, Schlicht functions and distortion theorems, boundary behavior of conformal and harmonic maps, analytic arcs and the general reflection principle, Hausdorff dimension and holomorphic removability, a multifaceted approach to the theorems of Picard and Montel, Zalcman’s rescaling theorem, conformal metrics and Ahlfors’s generalization of the Schwarz lemma, holomorphic branched coverings, geometry of the modular group, and the uniformization theorem for spherical domains.Written with exceptional clarity and insightful style, A Course in Complex Analysis is accessible to beginning graduate students and advanced undergraduates with some background knowledge of analysis and topology. Zakeri includes more than 350 problems, with problem sets at the end of each chapter, along with numerous carefully selected examples. This well-organized and richly illustrated book is peppered throughout with marginal notes of historical and expository value.Presenting a wealth of material in a single volume, A Course in Complex Analysis will be a valuable resource for students and working mathematicians.

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Written by Steven Collings, winner of Accounting Technician of the Year at the British Accountancy Awards 2011, this book deals with the significant changes auditing has undergone in recent years, due in large part to well-publicised corporate disasters such as Enron and Parmalat, which have shaken the profession. In response, many countries have replaced pre-existing domestic standards with International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) in an attempt to ensure that auditors throughout the world apply the same level of standards during all audit assignments, and that audit quality remains consistent on a global basis. International Standards on Auditing are frequently updated to improve and clarify their application throughout the audit and accounting profession. They can be extremely complex and difficult to apply in real life situations. It is essential to apply the standards with sufficient rigor to enable an efficient audit to take place, to satisfy the regulators and ensure that the client receives and audit which is beneficial, cost effective, and which conforms to the prescribed framework; however, auditors are often criticised for failing to do so. Recognising that auditing is not always an exact science, and that in many cases the auditor is called upon to make a judgement in situations open to differing opinions, this book takes a practical and pragmatic approach to following International Standards on Auditing. Steve Collings looks at the full ISAs in their final form, as reissued following the IAASB 'Clarity Project', and give auditors guidance on how to interpret and apply them in real life situations. Each redrafted or rewritten ISA is dealt with in a separate chapter, containing case studies and illustrative examples. The book also covers the regulatory framework of auditing and gives a summary of the five ethical standards applicable to auditors, as mapped by the IAASB. Detailed appendices provide an overview of IFRS and IAS, illustrative audit tests and illustrative financial statements.

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NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES ON PRIME VIDEOThe second novel in the Wheel of Time series - one of the most influential and popular fantasy epics ever published.For centuries, gleemen have told the tales of The Great Hunt of the Horn. So many tales about each of the Hunters, and so many Hunters to tell of . . . Now the Horn itself is found: the Horn of Valere long thought only legend, the Horn which will raise the dead heroes of the ages.And it is stolen.In pursuit of the thieves, Rand al'Thor is determined to keep the Horn out of the grasp of The Dark One. But he has also learned that he is The Dragon Reborn?the Champion of Light destined to stand against the Shadow time and again. It is a duty and a destiny that requires Rand to uncover and master extraordinary capabilities he never imagined he possessed.The Wheel of Time turns, and an epic adventure continues.'Epic in every sense' Sunday Times'With the Wheel of Time, Jordan has come to dominate the world that Tolkien began to reveal' New York Times'[The] huge ambitious Wheel of Time series helped redefine the genre' George R. R. Martin'A fantasy phenomenon' SFXThe Wheel of Time series:Book 1: The Eye of the WorldBook 2: The Great HuntBook 3: The Dragon RebornBook 4: The Shadow RisingBook 5: The Fires of HeavenBook 6: Lord of ChaosBook 7: A Crown of SwordsBook 8: The Path of DaggersBook 9: Winter's HeartBook 10: Crossroads of TwilightBook 11: Knife of DreamsBook 12: The Gathering StormBook 13: Towers of MidnightBook 14: A Memory of LightPrequel: New Spring Look out for the companion book: The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of TimeAlso look out for The Complete Wheel of Time Box Set, a box set containing all fifteen novels in this monumental series, presented in a sturdy box with a wood-finish effect.

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Imagine being able to see in ultraviolet wavelengths, or locating your next meal in near darkness, or being able to rotate your eyes independently so you can see nearly everything around you without moving your head. These are just a few examples of the incredible adaptations animals’ eyes have made to help them survive and thrive in their habitats. Animal Eyes introduces young readers to the wonderful, wideranging and sometimes downright weird eyes that make up the animal kingdom. The book starts with a crash course in how eyes and vision work — covering everything from the biology of eyes to the physics of light to the features that protect eyes and keep them clean. Following this is a survey of 40 of the world’s most interesting animal eyes, replete with gorgeous full-bleed and inset photos and detailed captions. Here are just some of the animals covered: The bald eagle sees four to five times better than humans; in fact it can see small prey as far as 2 miles away; Bees can see ultraviolet bull’s-eye patterns on flower petals, directing them to specific flowers; Domestic cats have strong low-light vision, which allows them to hunt in the dark. A special feature called a tapetum lucidum is a reflective layer under their retinas. This gives cats and other animals that distinct eye glow; Peacock mantis shrimp are said to have the best vision in the world. Their compound eyes rotate independently in all directions on the end of stalks. Their eyes are unlike any other animal’s: they can detect ultraviolet light, infrared light and have 16 photoreceptors. They can also see polarized light. Animal Eyes is sure to enthrall and inspire the next generation of young naturalists with its informative text and beautiful photos.

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Combining insights from evolutionary psychology with a broad sweep through history, down to the ideological civil war ripping the United States apart, the book explores the deeper roots of people's inability to accept claims about reality which come from the opposite ideological camp, no matter how valid they might be. After theorists around 1960 proclaimed the 'death of ideology', ideological divides and clashes have reemerged with renewed intensity throughout the world. In the United States they have become particularly venomous. Each side in America's escalating ideological civil war charges the other with concocting 'fake news' and 'alternative facts'. The other side is widely viewed as malicious, irrational or downright stupid, and, often, as barely legitimate. People are deaf to claims about reality that come from the opposite camp, no matter how valid they might be. The zeal of the opposing sides is often scarcely less than that which characterized the religious ideologies of old. Indeed, historical religious ideologies have largely been replaced by 'secular religions' or 'religion substitutes'. Ideology consists of normative prescriptions regarding how society should be shaped, together with an interpretive roadmap indicating how this normative vision can be implemented in reality. Ideological Fixation is the result of tensions and conflicts between these two elements. The book focuses on ideologies' factual claims about the world, typically subordinate to, and often distorted by, their normative commitment. In exploring this phenomenon, the book combines insights from evolutionary psychology regarding the nature of some of our deepest proclivities with a broad sweep through history and around the world. It proceeds from the Stone Age to the rise of civilization, the great religions and modernity, to a critique of fundamental factual premises that underlie some of the major debates dominating today's liberal democracies, not least the United States.

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'Ingenious and compelling' THE TIMES, SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS OF THE MONTH'Mind-bendingly clever and utterly gripping' DAILY MAIL, SCI-FI BOOKS OF THE MONTH'A fascinating and assured debut' THE GUARDIAN, BEST RECENT SCIENCE FICTIONIt's 1962 and physics student Grace Pulansky believes she has met the man of her dreams, Robert Jones, while serving up slices of pecan pie at the local diner. But then the FBI shows up, with their fedoras and off-the-rack business suits, and accuses him of being a bomb-planting mass-murderer.Finding herself on the run with Jones across America's Southwest, the discoveries awaiting Gracie will undermine everything she knows about the universe. Her story will reveal how scores of lives - an identity-swapping rock star, a mourning lover in ancient China, Nazi hunters in pursuit of a terrible secret, a crazed artist in pre-revolutionary France, an astronaut struggling with a turbulent interplanetary future, and many more - are interconnected across space and time by love, grief, and quantum entanglement.Spanning continents, centuries, and dimensions, this exquisitely crafted and madly inventive novel - a triple-disk, concept-album of a book - is a profound yet propulsive enquiry into the nature of reality - the perfect immersive read for fans of David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood.'A book designed to be more than the sum of its parts, and one that achieves that because love is the thing that binds it together. Vitally fresh' DOMINIC NOLAN'With strong echoes of David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami or Emily St John Mandel...this is a madcap ride to somewhere new with thrills to spare and a gallery of truly fascinating characters. One for the ages.' CRIME TIME'A trans-dimensional, kaleidoscopic mystery-box of a novel.... wholly and riotously original. Haddon is a mad scientist of genre and his epic is a tour de force.' PETER HO DAVIES

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From the Great Exhibition's showcasing of British national achievement in 1851 to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Stratford in 2012 and on to Brexit, an insightful exploration of the transformation of modern BritainThis revised and updated fourth and final volume in the concise Brief History of Britain series begins in the specially-constructed Crystal Palace, three times the length of St Paul's Cathedral, in Hyde Park at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Great Exhibition it housed marked a high point of British national achievement, at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, at the heart of a great empire, with Queen Victoria still to reign for fifty years. It was a time of confidence in the future, and exuberant patriotism for Britain's role in it.The beginning of the Second World War in 1939 marks a turning point because of the great change it heralded in Britain's global standing. At its peak, protected by the world's greatest navy, the British Empire stretched from Australasia to Canada, from Hong Kong and India to South Africa, and from Jamaica to the Falklands. Now the empire is no more: a fundamental change not only for the world, but also for Britain. The Second World War had been won, but it had exhausted Britain and marked the beginning of its national decline.Black links cultural and political developments closely - transport, health, migration and economic and demographic factors - in order to make clear how porous and changeable the manifestations of national civilisation can be, and to make sense of themes such as the triumph of town over country, Britain's international clout and the shift from the dominance of the market at the turn of the nineteenth century to the growing significance of the state. Importantly, he also looks at how public history has presented the nation's past, and how the changing and different ways we look at that past are central aspects of our shared history.

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In the 1940s chemists discovered that barbasco, a wild yam indigenous to Mexico, could be used to mass-produce synthetic steroid hormones. Barbasco spurred the development of new drugs, including cortisone and the first viable oral contraceptives, and positioned Mexico as a major player in the global pharmaceutical industry. Yet few people today are aware of Mexico’s role in achieving these advances in modern medicine. In Jungle Laboratories, Gabriela Soto Laveaga reconstructs the story of how rural yam pickers, international pharmaceutical companies, and the Mexican state collaborated and collided over the barbasco. By so doing, she sheds important light on a crucial period in Mexican history and challenges us to reconsider who can produce science.Soto Laveaga traces the political, economic, and scientific development of the global barbasco industry from its emergence in the 1940s, through its appropriation by a populist Mexican state in 1970, to its obsolescence in the mid-1990s. She focuses primarily on the rural southern region of Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, where the yam grew most freely and where scientists relied on local, indigenous knowledge to cultivate and harvest the plant. Rural Mexicans, at first unaware of the pharmaceutical and financial value of barbasco, later acquired and deployed scientific knowledge to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, lobby the Mexican government, and ultimately transform how urban Mexicans perceived them. By illuminating how the yam made its way from the jungles of Mexico, to domestic and foreign scientific laboratories where it was transformed into pills, to the medicine cabinets of millions of women across the globe, Jungle Laboratories urges us to recognize the ways that Mexican peasants attained social and political legitimacy in the twentieth century, and positions Latin America as a major producer of scientific knowledge.

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During the period after the Second World War, in which English Protestant non-conformity declined rapidly, a handful of exceptional names stand out, and one of the most remarkable was that of the Methodist minister Leslie Dixon Weatherhead. Both through his ministry at the City Temple, in the heart of London, and more generally through the massive sales of his books, Dr Weatherhead became a dominant figure, with an influence far beyond the British Isles. That the City Temple, a Congregationalist church, was widely seen at the time as the greatest English Free Church pulpit, ensured him a wide audience, while the quality of his preaching, combining emotional and intellectual power, wit and eloquence, won him admirers among all the churches, and led to offers from a number of American and Canadian universities and congregations, as well as numerous honorary degrees from British and American universities. Despite his Congregationalist call, he remained a Methodist minister, and indeed became President of the Methodist Conference. Perhaps even more important was that he was one of the earliest to recognise the value of the applications for the clergy of the insights of Freud and Jung. His seventy-odd publications, of which The Christian Agnostic and Psychology, Religion and Healing were the most influential, bring out not only the theological liberalism that made him suspect in some circles, but also his understanding of the value of healing and of psychological insights. The result was that his lay theology had a vast following. Although three other books have appeared about Weatherhead since his death, John Travell's explores all aspects of his life and portrays his historical, religious and theological context in greater depth.

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This volume presents the most recent studies on Japanese and American trade, antitrust, patent, and other laws and their effects on bilateral economic relations. The studies included, written by Japanese and American officials, lawyers, and economists, will be of interest to policy makers, scholars, and corporations concerned with or interested in bilateral trade, technology transfer, investment, and joint ventures. The studies also offer analyses and insights significant in examining the legal-economic issues involved in economic relations among all advanced industrial nations. The three foci of the book are Japan's laws and their enforcement which affect the practices and behavior of individuals, firms, and the government within its domestic economy; the effects of Japanese laws and legal administrative practices on foreign access to Japanese markets; and the roles American laws play in bilateral economic relations. Each article deals with specific Japanese and American laws affecting bilateral economic relations. Together they succeed in substantively increasing our understanding of the issues involved and in identifying the changes that are called for that will reduce the bilateral economic conflicts which now mar the otherwise friendly relations between the two nations. Resolution of these bilateral legal-economic issues will be difficult to attain because they arise in part from differences in legal traditions and in the roles government plays in each economy. However, only through studies such as those offered in this volume, prepared by individuals directly involved i n enforcement of the laws discussed and by scholars specializing in the legal-economic issues affecting bilateral economic relations, can we gain knowledge and insights essential in taking the necessary steps to reduce bilateral economic conflicts.

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A fascinating exploration of beer, ancient and contemporary, and its role in shaping human society Beer is and has always been more than an intoxicating beverage. Ancient beer produced in the Near East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas was a food that had a remarkable role in shaping the development of agriculture and some of the earliest state-level societies. Its invention 13,000 years ago was one of the fundamental motivations for the domestication of grains around the world. In early states, the control over the technological knowledge and resources to produce beer contributed to social hierarchies. Beer even likely provided the capital to motivate laborers to construct the ancient pyramids and other large-scale public works. The fermentation of beer also provided a healthy and safe alternative to the contaminated drinking water in early states and it continues to do so among rural Indigenous populations today. Beer is a social lubricant that brings people together and, in many Indigenous societies both past and present, is a gift connecting people to their ancestors. The same innovations pioneered by ancient brewers are transforming the types of ingredients and flavors produced by the global craft beer industry. In Beer, archaeologist John W. Arthur takes readers on an exciting global journey to explore the origins, development, and recipes of ancient beer. This unique book focuses on past and present non-industrial beers, highlighting their significance in peoples' lives through four themes: innovating new technologies, ensuring health and well-being, building economic and political statuses, and imbuing life with ritual and religious connections. As this book amply illustrates, beer has shaped our world in remarkable ways for the past 13,000 years.

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The historical consciousness of medieval Jewry has engendered lively debate in the scholarly world. The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. In his detailed analysis of Jews’ understanding of the history of the communities they lived among, Ram Ben-Shalom shows that in these southern European lands Jews experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeable about voices from other cultures, and that this had significant consequences for shaping Jewish historical consciousness. Among the topics that receive special attention are what Jews knew of the significance of Rome, of Jesus and the early days of Christianity, of Church history, and of the history of the Iberian monarchies. Ben-Shalom demonstrates that, despite the negative stereotypes of Jewry prevalent in Christian literature and increasing familiarity with that literature, they were more influenced by their interactions with Christian society at the local level. Consequently there was no single stereotype that dominated Jewish thought, and frequently little awareness of the two societies as representing distinct cultures. This book contributes to medieval Jewish intellectual history on many levels, demonstrating that, in Spain and southern France, Jews of the later Middle Ages evinced a genuine interest in history, including the history of non-Jews, and that in some cases they were deeply familiar with Christian and sometimes also classical historiography. In providing a comprehensive survey of the multiple contexts in which historiographical material was embedded and the many uses to which it was put, it enriches our understanding of medieval historiography, polemic, Jewish-Christian relations, and the breadth of interests characterizing Provencal and Spanish Jewish communities.

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A revealing genealogy of image-recognition techniques and technologies Today’s most advanced neural networks and sophisticated image-analysis methods come from 1950s and ’60s Cold War culture—and many biases and ways of understanding the world from that era persist along with them. Aerial surveillance and reconnaissance shaped all of the technologies that we now refer to as computer vision, including facial recognition. The Birth of Computer Vision uncovers these histories and finds connections between the algorithms, people, and politics at the core of automating perception today.James E. Dobson reveals how new forms of computerized surveillance systems, high-tech policing, and automated decision-making systems have become entangled, functioning together as a new technological apparatus of social control. Tracing the development of a series of important computer-vision algorithms, he uncovers the ideas, worrisome military origins, and lingering goals reproduced within the code and the products based on it, examining how they became linked to one another and repurposed for domestic and commercial uses. Dobson includes analysis of the Shakey Project, which produced the first semi-autonomous robot, and the impact of student protest in the early 1970s at Stanford University, as well as recovering the computer vision–related aspects of Frank Rosenblatt’s Perceptron as the crucial link between machine learning and computer vision.Motivated by the ongoing use of these major algorithms and methods, The Birth of Computer Vision chronicles the foundations of computer vision and artificial intelligence, its major transformations, and the questionable legacy of its origins. Cover alt text: Two overlapping circles in cream and violet, with black background. Top is a printed circuit with camera eye; below a person at a 1977 computer.

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How being “nice” in school and university settings works to reinforce racialized, gendered, and (dis)ability-related inequities in education and society Being nice is difficult to critique. Niceness is almost always portrayed and felt as a positive quality. In schools, nice teachers are popular among students, parents, and administrators. And yet Niceness, as a distinct set of practices and discourses, is not actually good for individuals, institutions, or communities because of the way it maintains and reinforces educational inequity. In The Price of Nice, an interdisciplinary group of scholars explores Niceness in educational spaces from elementary schools through higher education to highlight how this seemingly benign quality reinforces structural inequalities. Grounded in data, personal narrative, and theory, the chapters show that Niceness, as a raced, gendered, and classed set of behaviors, functions both as a shield to save educators from having to do the hard work of dismantling inequity and as a disciplining agent for those who attempt or even consider disrupting structures and ideologies of dominance. Contributors: Sarah Abuwandi, Arizona State U; Colin Ben, U of Utah; Nicholas Bustamante, Arizona State U; Aidan/Amanda J. Charles, Northern Arizona U; Jeremiah Chin, Arizona State U; Sally Campbell Galman, U of Massachusetts; Frederick Gooding Jr., Texas Christian U; Deirdre Judge, Tufts U; Katie A. Lazdowski; Román Liera, U of Southern California; Sylvia Mac, U of La Verne; Lindsey Malcolm-Piqueux, California Institute of Technology; Giselle Martinez Negrette, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Amber Poleviyuma, Arizona State U; Alexus Richmond, Arizona State U; Frances J. Riemer, Northern Arizona U; Jessica Sierk, St. Lawrence U; Bailey B. Smolarek, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Jessica Solyom, Arizona State U; Megan Tom, Arizona State U; Sabina Vaught, U of Oklahoma; Cynthia Diana Villarreal, U of Southern California; Kristine T. Weatherston, Temple U; Joseph C. Wegwert, Northern Arizona U; Marguerite Anne Fillion Wilson, Binghamton U; Jia-Hui Stefanie Wong, Trinity College; Denise Gray Yull, Binghamton U.

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An important new ethnographic study of São Paulo’s favelas revealing the widespread use of race-based police repression in Brazil While Black Lives Matter still resonates in the United States, the movement has also become a potent rallying call worldwide, with harsh police tactics and repressive state policies often breaking racial lines. In The Anti-Black City, Jaime Amparo Alves delves into the dynamics of racial violence in Brazil, where poverty, unemployment, residential segregation, and a biased criminal justice system create urban conditions of racial precarity. The Anti-Black City provocatively offers race as a vital new lens through which to view violence and marginalization in the supposedly “raceless” São Paulo. Ironically, in a context in which racial ambiguity makes it difficult to identify who is black and who is white, racialized access to opportunities and violent police tactics establish hard racial boundaries through subjugation and death. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in prisons and neighborhoods on the periphery of this mega-city, Alves documents the brutality of police tactics and the complexity of responses deployed by black residents, including self-help initiatives, public campaigns against police violence, ruthless gangs, and self-policing of communities.The Anti-Black City reveals the violent and racist ideologies that underlie state fantasies of order and urban peace in modern Brazil. Illustrating how “governing through death” has become the dominant means for managing and controlling ethnic populations in the neoliberal state, Alves shows that these tactics only lead to more marginalization, criminality, and violence. Ultimately, Alves’s work points to a need for a new approach to an intractable problem: how to govern populations and territories historically seen as “ungovernable.”

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Overseas volunteering has exploded in numbers and interest in the last couple of decades. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people travel from wealthier to poorer countries to participate in short-term volunteer programs focused on health services. Churches, universities, nonprofit service organizations, profit-making "voluntourism" companies, hospitals, and large corporations all sponsor brief missions. Hoping to Help is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of global health volunteering, based on research into how it currently operates, its benefits and drawbacks, and how it might be organized to contribute most effectively. Given the enormous human and economic investment in these activities, it is essential to know more about them and to understand the advantages and disadvantages for host communities. Most people assume that poor communities benefit from the goodwill and skills of the volunteers. Volunteer trips are widely advertised as a means to "give back" and "make a difference." In contrast, some claim that health volunteering is a new form of colonialism, designed to benefit the volunteers more than the host communities. Others focus on unethical practices and potential harm to the presumed "beneficiaries." Judith N. Lasker evaluates these opposing positions and relies on extensive research—interviews with host country staff members, sponsor organization leaders, and volunteers, a national survey of sponsors, and participant observation—to identify best and worst practices. She adds to the debate a focus on the benefits to the sponsoring organizations, benefits that can contribute to practices that are inconsistent with what host country staff identify as most likely to be useful for them and even with what may enhance the experience for volunteers. Hoping to Help illuminates the activities and goals of sponsoring organizations and compares dominant practices to the preferences of host country staff and to nine principles for most effective volunteer trips.

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Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763–1818 examines how Creek communities and their leaders remained viable geopolitical actors in the trans-Appalachian West well after the American Revolution. The Creeks pursued aggressive and far-reaching diplomacy between 1763 and 1818 to assert their territorial and political sovereignty while thwarting American efforts to establish control over the region. The United States and the Creeks fought to secure recognition from the powers of Europe that would guarantee political and territorial sovereignty: the Creeks fought to maintain their connections to the Atlantic world and preserve their central role in the geopolitics of the trans-Appalachian West, while the American colonies sought first to establish themselves as an independent nation, then to expand borders to secure diplomatic and commercial rights. Creeks continued to forge useful ties with agents of European empires despite American attempts to circumscribe Creek contact with the outside world. The Creeks’ solicitation of trade and diplomatic channels with British and Spanish colonists in the West Indies, Canada, and various Gulf Coast outposts served key functions for defenders of local autonomy. Native peoples fought to preserve the geopolitical order that dominated the colonial era, making the trans-Appalachian West a kaleidoscope of sovereign peoples where negotiation prevailed. As a result, the United States lacked the ability to impose its will on its Indigenous neighbors, much like the European empires that had preceded them. Hill provides a significant revisionist history of Creek diplomacy and power that fills gaps within the broader study of the Atlantic world and early American history to show how Indigenous power thwarted European empires in North America.

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From dial-up to wi-fi, an engaging cultural history of the commercial web industry In the 1990s, the World Wide Web helped transform the Internet from the domain of computer scientists to a playground for mass audiences. As URLs leapt off computer screens and onto cereal boxes, billboards, and film trailers, the web changed the way many Americans experienced media, socialized, and interacted with brands. Businesses rushed online to set up corporate “home pages” and as a result, a new cultural industry was born: web design. For today’s internet users who are more familiar sharing social media posts than collecting hotlists of cool sites, the early web may seem primitive, clunky, and graphically inferior. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, this pre-crash era was dubbed “Web 1.0,” a retronym meant to distinguish the early web from the social, user-centered, and participatory values that were embodied in the internet industry’s resurgence as “Web 2.0” in the 21st century. Tracking shifts in the rules of “good web design,” Ankerson reimagines speculation and design as a series of contests and collaborations to conceive the boundaries of a new digitally networked future. What was it like to go online and “surf the Web” in the 1990s? How and why did the look and feel of the web change over time? How do new design paradigms like user-experience design (UX) gain traction? Bringing together media studies, internet studies, and design theory, Dot-com Design traces the shifts in, and struggles over, the web’s production, aesthetics, and design to provide a comprehensive look at the evolution of the web industry and into the vast internet we browse today.

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From dial-up to wi-fi, an engaging cultural history of the commercial web industry In the 1990s, the World Wide Web helped transform the Internet from the domain of computer scientists to a playground for mass audiences. As URLs leapt off computer screens and onto cereal boxes, billboards, and film trailers, the web changed the way many Americans experienced media, socialized, and interacted with brands. Businesses rushed online to set up corporate “home pages” and as a result, a new cultural industry was born: web design. For today’s internet users who are more familiar sharing social media posts than collecting hotlists of cool sites, the early web may seem primitive, clunky, and graphically inferior. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, this pre-crash era was dubbed “Web 1.0,” a retronym meant to distinguish the early web from the social, user-centered, and participatory values that were embodied in the internet industry’s resurgence as “Web 2.0” in the 21st century. Tracking shifts in the rules of “good web design,” Ankerson reimagines speculation and design as a series of contests and collaborations to conceive the boundaries of a new digitally networked future. What was it like to go online and “surf the Web” in the 1990s? How and why did the look and feel of the web change over time? How do new design paradigms like user-experience design (UX) gain traction? Bringing together media studies, internet studies, and design theory, Dot-com Design traces the shifts in, and struggles over, the web’s production, aesthetics, and design to provide a comprehensive look at the evolution of the web industry and into the vast internet we browse today.

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An insightful study of how identity is mobilized in and for war in the face of homegrown terrorism. “You are either with us, or against us” is the refrain that captures the spirit of the global war on terror. Images of the “them” implied in this war cry—distinct foreign “others”—inundate Americans on hit television shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and nightly news. However, in this book, Piotr Szpunar tells the story of a fuzzier image: the homegrown terrorist, a foe that blends into the crowd, who Americans are told looks, talks, and acts “like us.” Homegrown delves into the dynamics of domestic counterterrorism, revealing the complications that arise when the terrorist threat involves Americans, both residents and citizens, who have taken up arms against their own country. Szpunar examines the ways in which identities are blurred in the war on terror, amid debates concerning who is “the real terrorist.” He considers cases ranging from the white supremacist Sikh Temple shooter,,to the Newburgh Four, ex-convicts caught up in an FBI informant-led plot to bomb synagogues, to ecoterrorists, to the Tsarnaev brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. Drawing on popular media coverage, court documents, as well as “terrorist”-produced media, Szpunar poses new questions about the strategic deployment of identity in times of conflict. The book argues that homegrown terrorism challenges our long held understandings of how identity and difference play out in war—beyond “us versus them”—and, more importantly, that the way in which it is conceptualized and combatted has real consequences for social, cultural, and political notions of citizenship and belonging. The first critical examination of homegrown terrorism, this book will make you question how we make sense of the actions of ourselves and others in global war, and the figures that fall in between.

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Explores how Black Buddhist Teachers and Practitioners interpret Western Buddhism in unique spiritual and communal ways In Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition, Rima Vesely-Flad examines the distinctive features of Black-identifying Buddhist practitioners, arguing that Black Buddhists interpret Buddhist teachings in ways that are congruent with Black radical thought. Indeed, the volume makes the case that given their experiences with racism—both in the larger society and also within largely white-oriented Buddhist organizations—Black cultural frameworks are necessary for illuminating the Buddha’s wisdom. Drawing on interviews with forty Black Buddhist teachers and practitioners, Vesely-Flad argues that Buddhist teachings, through their focus on healing intergenerational trauma, provide a vitally important foundation for achieving Black liberation. She shows that Buddhist teachings as practiced by Black Americans emphasize different aspects of the religion than do those in white convert Buddhist communities, focusing more on devotional practices to ancestors and community uplift. The book includes discussions of the Black Power movement, the Black feminist movement, and the Black prophetic tradition. It also offers a nuanced discussion of how the Black body, which has historically been reviled, is claimed as a vehicle for liberation. In so doing, the book explores how the experiences of non-binary, gender non-conforming, and transgender practitioners of African descent are validated within the tradition. The book also uplifts the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer Black Buddhists. This unique volume shows the importance of Black Buddhist teachers’ insights into Buddhist wisdom, and how they align Buddhism with Black radical teachings, helping to pull Buddhism away from dominant white cultural norms.

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How Latinx artists engage in sonic subcultures to reject neoliberal definitions of belonging What is the connection between the British rock star Morrissey and the Latinx culture of transnational “unbelonging”? What is the relevance of “dyke chords” in Chicana feminist punk and lesbian dissolution? In what ways can dissonant sounds challenge systems of dominance? Unbelonging answers these questions and more through an exploration into Mexican and US-based Latinx artists’, writers’, and creators’ use of the discordant sounds of punk, metal, and rock to give voice to the aesthetic of “unbelonging,” a rejection of consumerist and nationalist mentalities. Iván A. Ramos argues that racial identity and belonging have historically required legible forms of performance. Sound has been the primary medium that amplifies and is used to assign cultural citizenship and, for Latinx individuals, legibility is essential to music perceived as traditional and authentic to their national origins. In the context of twentieth-century neoliberal policies, which cemented the concept of “citizen” within logics of consumerism and capitalism, Ramos turns to focus on Latinx artists, writers, and audiences, who produce experimental and often “inauthentic” performances and installations in sonic subcultures to reject new definitions of economic citizenship. Organized around studies of a number of artists, all whom are explored through the methodological frameworks of sound studies, performance studies, and queer theory, Unbelonging unearths how their very different genres of music share a unifying theme of dissonance. With the backdrop of neoliberalism’s attempt to define citizenship in relation to economic and cultural legibility, Unbelonging offers an urgent analysis of how these oft-overlooked queer and feminist performers and fans used sonic illegibility to challenge gender norms, official definitions of citizenship, and narratives of assimilation. Ultimately, these forms of inauthenticity move beyond negation and become ways to imagine alternative realities.

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The first book to offer a truly global perspective on the theory and practice of clinical psychology While clinical psychology is practiced the world over, up to now there has been no text devoted to examining it within a global context. The first book of its kind, Clinical Psychology: A Global Perspective brings together contributions from clinicians and scholars around the world to share their insights and observations on the theory and practice of clinical psychology. Due partly to language barriers and entrenched cultural biases, there is little cultural cross-pollination within the field of clinical psychology. In fact, most of the popular texts were written for English-speaking European and Anglo-American audiences and translated for other countries. As a result, most psychologists are unaware of how their profession is conceptualized and practiced in different regions, or how their own practices can be enriched by knowledge of the theories and modalities predominant among colleagues in other parts of the world. This book represents an important first step toward rectifying that state of affairs. Explores key differences and similarities in how clinical psychology is conceptualized and practiced with children, adolescents and adults across different countries and cultures Addresses essential research methods, clinical interviews, psychometric testing, neuropsychological assessments, and dominant treatment modalities Follows a consistent format with each chapter focusing on a specific area of the practice of clinical psychology while integrating cultural issues within the discussion Includes coverage of how to adapt one’s practice to the differing cultures of individual clients, and how to work in multidisciplinary teams within a global context Clinical Psychology: A Global Perspective is a valuable resource for students, trainees, and practicing psychologists, especially those who work with ethnic minority groups or with interpreters. It is also a must-read for practitioners who are considering working internationally.

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X—The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought offers an original account of matters African American, and by implication the African diaspora in general, as an object of discourse and knowledge. It likewise challenges the conception of analogous objects of study across dominant ethnological disciplines (e.g., anthropology, history, and sociology) and the various forms of cultural, ethnic, and postcolonial studies. With special reference to the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, Chandler shows how a concern with the Negro is central to the social and historical problematization that underwrote twentieth-century explorations of what it means to exist as an historical entity—referring to their antecedents in eighteenth-century thought and forward into their ongoing itinerary in the twenty-first century. For Du Bois, “the problem of the color line” coincided with the inception of a supposedly modern horizon. The very idea of the human and its avatars—the idea of race and the idea of culture—emerged together with the violent, hierarchical inscription of the so-called African or Negro into a horizon of commonness beyond all natal premises, a horizon that we can still situate with the term global. In ongoing struggles with the idea of historical sovereignty, we can see the working out of then new concatenations of social and historical forms of difference, as both projects of categorical differentiation and the irruption of originary revisions of ways of being. In a word, the world is no longer—and has never been—one. The world, if there is such—from the inception of something like “the Negro as a problem for thought”— could never be, only, one. The problem of the Negro in “America” is thus an exemplary instance of modern historicity in its most fundamental sense. It renders legible for critical practice the radical order of an ineluctable and irreversible complication at the heart of being—its appearance as both life and history—as the very mark of our epoch.

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Under modernity, time is regarded as linear and measurable by clocks and calendars. Despite the historicity of clock-time itself, the modern concept of time is considered universal and culturally neutral. What Walter Benjamin called “homogeneous, empty time” founds the modern notions of progress and a uniform global present in which the past and other forms of time consciousness are seen as superseded. In Translating Time, Bliss Cua Lim argues that fantastic cinema depicts the coexistence of other modes of being alongside and within the modern present, disclosing multiple “immiscible temporalities” that strain against the modern concept of homogeneous time. In this wide-ranging study—encompassing Asian American video (On Cannibalism), ghost films from the New Cinema movements of Hong Kong and the Philippines (Rouge, Itim, Haplos), Hollywood remakes of Asian horror films (Ju-on, The Grudge, A Tale of Two Sisters) and a Filipino horror film cycle on monstrous viscera suckers (Aswang)—Lim conceptualizes the fantastic as a form of temporal translation. The fantastic translates supernatural agency in secular terms while also exposing an untranslatable remainder, thereby undermining the fantasy of a singular national time and emphasizing shifting temporalities of transnational reception.Lim interweaves scholarship on visuality with postcolonial historiography. She draws on Henri Bergson’s understanding of cinema as both implicated in homogeneous time and central to its critique, as well as on postcolonial thought linking the ideology of progress to imperialist expansion. At stake in this project are more ethical forms of understanding time that refuse to domesticate difference as anachronism. While supernaturalism is often disparaged as a vestige of primitive or superstitious thought, Lim suggests an alternative interpretation of the fantastic as a mode of resistance to the ascendancy of homogeneous time and a starting-point for more ethical temporal imaginings.

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Hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the idea that the September 11 attacks had “changed everything” permeated American popular and political discussion. In the period since then, the events of September 11 have been used to justify profound changes in U.S. public policy and foreign relations. Bringing together leading scholars of history, law, literature, and Islam, September 11 in History asks whether the attacks and their aftermath truly marked a transition in U.S. and world history or whether they are best understood in the context of pre-existing historical trajectories. From a variety of perspectives, the contributors to this collection scrutinize claims about September 11, in terms of both their historical validity and their consequences. Essays range from an analysis of terms like “ground zero,” “homeland,” and “the axis of evil” to an argument that the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay has become a site for acting out a repressed imperial history. Examining the effect of the attacks on Islamic self-identity, one contributor argues that Osama bin Laden enacted an interpretation of Islam on September 11 and asserts that progressive Muslims must respond to it. Other essays focus on the deployment of Orientalist tropes in categorizations of those who “look Middle Eastern,” the blurring of domestic and international law evident in a number of legal developments including the use of military tribunals to prosecute suspected terrorists, and the justifications for and consequences of American unilateralism. This collection ultimately reveals that everything did not change on September 11, 2001, but that some foundations of democratic legitimacy have been significantly eroded by claims that it did.ContributorsKhaled Abou el FadlMary L. DudziakChristopher L. EisgruberLaurence R. HelferSherman A. JacksonAmy B. KaplanElaine Tyler MayLawrence G. SagerRuti G. TeitelLeti VolppMarilyn B. Young

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