Search results for ""Touchstone""

A few minutes after noon on the 24th April, 1916, Patrick Pearse stepped outside the newly occupied GPO on Sackville Street with a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Reading aloud, he declared a strike for Irish freedom against the world’s greatest imperial power. The Easter Rising, as the six days of intense, bloody fighting that followed came to be known, set the course for the next 100 years of Irish history; the ‘Heroes of ‘16’ becoming a national cultural and political touchstone down the generations. But today, canonised and mummified, the radical visions of Pearse and the socialist James Connolly are an awkward encumbrance on an Irish state that has its roots in the counter-revolution of the civil war, and which has emerged as a haven of economic neoliberalism. In this fascinating alternative history of modern Ireland, Kieran Allen follows the thread of 1916’s ‘revolutionary tradition’ - an uneasy marriage of Socialism and Republicanism - as it has unravelled across the century. From the strikes, boycotts, occupations and land redistribution that accompanied the war of independence; to the ‘carnival of reaction’ that followed; all the way up to the current movement against water charges and austerity, Allen reveals the complexities, ruptures and continuities of a revolutionary tradition that continues to haunt the establishment today.

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From the beginning, the Beatles acknowledged in interviews their debt to Black music, apparent in their covers of and written original songs inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, and other giants of R&B. Blackbird goes deeper, appreciating unacknowledged forerunners, as well as Black artists whose interpretations keep the Beatles in play.Drawing on interviews with Black musicians and using the song “Blackbird” as a touchstone, Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith tell a new history. They present unheard stories and resituate old ones, offering the phrase “transatlantic flight” to characterize a back-and-forth dialogue shaped by Black musicians in the United States and elsewhere, including Liverpool. Kapurch and Smith find a lineage that reaches back to the very origins of American popular music, one that involves the original twentieth-century blackbird, Florence Mills, and the King of the Twelve String, Lead Belly. Continuing the circular flight path with Nina Simone, Billy Preston, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Sylvester, and others, the authors take readers into the twenty-first century, when Black artists like Bettye LaVette harness the Beatles for today.Detailed, thoughtful, and revelatory, Blackbird explores musical and storytelling legacies full of rich but contested symbolism. Appealing to those interested in developing a deep understanding of the evolution of popular music, this book promises that you’ll never hear “Blackbird”—and the Beatles—the same way again.

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Is being an artist a radical form of entrepreneurship or a vocational calling like the priesthood? Is it an extension of philosophy or an offshoot of entertainment? In three richly interlinked but distinct 'acts' - Politics, Kinship and Craft - Sarah Thornton compares and contrasts answers to the simple but profound question: what is an artist? 33 Artists in 3 Acts draws on hundreds of personal encounters with the world's most important artists, to ask what it means to be making artworks in different parts of the world today. With Thornton as expert guide and trusted insider, we have unprecedented access to the lives of the artists, from late-night Skype chats with Ai Weiwei to taxi rides with Maurizio Cattelan on the way to and from the show that announces his death. We join Thornton as she rummages through artists' studios, homes and solo shows, inquiring about everything from their bank accounts to their bedrooms. The result is a series of cinematic experiences, which juxtapose artists in thought-provoking ways, and build up narratives that end with epiphanies. 33 Artists in 3 Acts is a generational touchstone, a powerful triptych and gripping anti-monograph about truth, integrity, credibility and recognition. Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary art, this masterful act of storytelling will also delight any reader seeking to understand creative lives.

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Wales Book of the Year 2018. Winner of the 2018 Roland Mathias Poetry Award. Shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. The opening poem sequence, 'Diary of the Last Man', sets the tone for Robert Minhinnick's book, a celebration of the dwindling Earth, an elegy, a caution. His Wales is a touchstone; other landscapes and cityscapes are tried against it, with its erratic weather, its sudden changes of mood, 'a black tonic'. The sequence remembers all the geographies of his earlier work, old and new world, but now unpeopled and the lonely spirit free to go anywhere, do anything, but meaning with mankind has drained away. Yet still alive, and still with language, registering. The rest of the book is filled with voices: of children, of rivers, terrorists, magicians; and voices translated from the Welsh, and from Turkish and Arabic, shared, enriching with their difference, their other worlds. History washes over and washes up on the strand of this Welsh book. It is seen and recognised, it begins to be transformed. In the long concluding poem, 'The Sand Orchestra', the poet returns to his own voice, and to the voice of a Bechstein piano abandoned in the open air, played now by nature, its winds and sand. The last man, who has been looking for Ulysses, is the very man he has been looking for.

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Carry John Muir’s wisdom with you in this inspirational guide that features 60 of his most insightful quotes. As a patriarch of the American environmental movement, John Muir helped to give birth to the national park system, the Sierra Club, and a myriad of smaller groups devoted to saving rivers, redwoods, and wildlife. Yet, he is also a spiritual parent who leads us down unmarked trails of the spirit. By urging us to simply be present in the world around us, loving and honoring it as our garden home, his poetic insight liberates life. In Meditations of John Muir, editor Chris Highland pairs 60 Muir quotes with selections from other celebrated thinkers and spiritual texts. Take this pocket-size guide with you on backpacks, nature hikes, and camping trips. Let Muir’s words enrich your experience as you ponder the wilderness from riverbank, mountaintop, or as you relax beside your campfire. Inside you’ll find: 60 inspiring John Muir quotes Selections of text from other philosophical minds Short excerpts for convenient reading Muir’s exuberance for nature was the touchstone for his commitment to the earth and all of its creatures. Let him lead you along the ultimate adventure that treks every range of light. Then venture off on your own deertrails of the heart, harkening to his granite gospel that calls for you “to get as near to the heart of the world” as you can.

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Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), filmed by Maya Deren and her then husband Alexader Hammid in their bungalow above Sunset Boulevard for a mere $274.90, is the most important film in the history of American avant-garde cinema. The artistic collaboration between Deren and Hammid finds its distorted reflection in the vision of the film's tormented female protagonist. Its focus - through a series of intricate and interlocking dream sequences - on female experience and the domestic sphere links Meshes to the Hollywood melodramas of the period, while its unsettling atmosphere of dread, death and doubles makes it a counter-cinematic cousin to film noir. The film has influenced not only the subsequent history of experimental film, but also on the work of Hollywood auteurs. It is a touchstone of women's film-making, of modern cinema and of modern art. John David Rhodes traces the film's history back into the lives of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, but in particular that of Deren. He reads the film as a culmination of Deren's abiding interest in modernism and her intense engagement in socialist politics. Rhodes argues that while the film remains a powerful point of reference for feminist film-makers and experimentalists, it is also an example of political art in the broadest terms. In his foreword to this new edition, Rhodes reflects upon the film's continuing importance for and influence upon feminist and avant-garde filmmaking.

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An examination of the efforts of faith-based organizations to expand the rights of the formerly incarcerated The use of religion to rehabilitate and redeem formerly incarcerated individuals has been a cultural touchstone of the modern era. Yet religious outreach to those with criminal records has typically been associated with an emphasis on private spirituality, with efforts focused on repentance, conversion, and restorative justice. This book sheds light on how faith-based organizations utilize the public arena, mobilizing to expand the social and political rights of former inmates. In “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con,” Edward Orozco Flores profiles Community Renewal Society and LA Voice, two faith-based organizations which have actively waged community organizing campaigns to expand the rights of people with records. He illuminates how these groups help the formerly incarcerated re-enter broader communities through the expansion of citizenship rights and participation in civic engagement. Most work on prisoner reentry has focused on how the behavior of those with records may be changed through interventions, rather than considering how those with records may change the society that receives them. Flores explores how the formerly incarcerated use redemption scripts to participate in civic engagement, to remove the felony conviction question from employment applications and to restrict the use of criminal background checks in housing and employment. He shows that people with records can redeem themselves while also challenging and changing the way society receives them.

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Reveals how young American Jewish children come to develop their views about Israel Israel has long occupied a prominent place in the lives and imaginations of American Jews, serving as both a symbolic touchstone and a source of intercommunal conflict. In My Second-Favorite Country, Sivan Zakai offers the first longitudinal study of how American Jewish children come to think and feel about Israel, tracking their evolving conceptions from kindergarten to fifth grade. This work sheds light on the perception of Israel in the minds of Jewish children in the US and provides a rich case study of how children more generally develop ideas and beliefs about self, community, nation, and world. In contrast to popular views of America’s youth as naive or uninterested, this book illuminates both the complexity of their thinking and their desire to be included in conversations about important civic and political matters. Zakai draws from compelling empirical data to prove that children spend considerable effort contemplating the very concepts that adults often assume they are not ready to discuss. Indeed, the book argues that over the course of their elementary school education, children develop and express deep interest in complex issues such as the intricacies of identity and belonging, conflicting ways of framing the past, and the demands of civic responsibility. Ultimately, Zakai argues that in order to take children’s ideas seriously and better prepare them for a world full of disagreement, a substantive shift in educational practices is necessary.

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Named "one of the best books of 2006" by The New York Sun Described by Carl Van Doren as "a harmonious human multitude," Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American of his time, of perhaps any time. His life and careers were so varied and successful that he remains, even today, the epitome of the self-made man. Born into a humble tradesman's family, this adaptable genius rose to become an architect of the world's first democracy, a leading light in Enlightenment science, and a major creator of what has come to be known as the American character. Journalist, musician, politician, scientist, humorist, inventor, civic leader, printer, writer, publisher, businessman, founding father, and philosopher, Franklin is a touchstone for America's egalitarianism. The first volume traces young Franklin's life to his marriage in 1730. It traces the New England religious, political, and cultural contexts, exploring previously unknown influences on his philosophy and writing, and attributing new writings to him. After his move to Philadelphia, made famous in his Autobiography, Franklin became the Water American in London in 1725, where he was welcomed into that city's circle of freethinkers. Upon his return to the colonies, the sociable Franklin created a group of young friends, the Junto, devoted to self-improvement and philanthropy. He also started his own press and began to edit and publish the Pennsylvania Gazette, which became the most popular American paper of its day and the first to consistently feature American news.

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A special illustrated hardcover edition of an international bestselling classic. This edition includes 10 specially commissioned, full-color original plates, as well as original illustrations throughout. Few books can be described as universal. And yet, The Prophet, by Lebanese-American author Kahlil Gibran, can only be described as that. Originally published in 1923, The Prophet is considered Gibran's masterpiece and is one of the most beloved spiritual classics of all time. Further cementing its status as a worldwide classic is the fact that it has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history. Drawn from Gibran's own experience as an immigrant, The Prophet transcends generations, languages, and borders. In this beautiful meditation on the meaning of life, Al Mustafa, the prophet, is about to board a ship back to his homeland after 12 years spent living in exile in the city of Orphalese. Before he departs, he is stopped by a group of followers who ask him to share his wisdom. In twenty-six poetic essays, Al Mustafa offers profound and timeless insights on various aspects of life and the myriad impulses of the human heart and mind. He offers lessons on love, marriage, children, pain, friendship, beauty, religion, joy, knowledge, reason and passion, time, good and evil, pleasure, and death. A timeless spiritual touchstone, this gorgeously illustrated gift edition is perfect for graduating students, or for anyone searching for solace, peace, hope, and purpose in today's world.

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As immediately believable as they were cartoonish, as much an inner city cipher as a suburban boys gang, the foursome that made up the Pharcyde were the most relatable MCs to ever pass the mic. On their debut and magnum opus Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, they created a record almost overstuffed with possibility, the sound of four restless man-children fresh out of their teens, finding a perfect outlet in a form of music that was just as young and fertile. And like the product of any adolescent, Bizarre Ride wears its contrarianism and contradictions on its sleeve. It's a party album about shyness and unrequited love. A swirl of jubilant L.A. psychedelia recorded in the midst of the Rodney King trial. A blast of black consciousness that still makes room to poke fun at Public Enemy and reference the Pixies. A dense, sophisticated sonic stew punctuated by yo mama jokes and prank calls. While hip-hop was already calcifying its tropes of steely machismo and aspirational fantasy, Bizarre Ride was a pure distillation of the average hip-hop listener's actual lifestyle—the joys and sorrows of four guys who were young, broke, sexually frustrated, and way too clever for their own good. A touchstone for Kanye West, Drake, Lil B and a whole generation of off-center MCs, Bizarre Ride sketched out a whole strata of emotions that other rappers hadn't yet dared to tackle, and to a certain extent, still haven't.

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Emerging from two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad, the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift in the early 1950s. Although conservative luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin all published important works at this time, none of their writings would match the influence of Russell Kirk's 1953 masterpiece The Conservative Mind. This seminal book became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in Americans' attitudes toward traditionalism.In Russell Kirk, Bradley J. Birzer investigates the life and work of the man known as the founder of postwar conservatism in America. Drawing on papers and diaries that have only recently become available to the public, Birzer presents a thorough exploration of Kirk's intellectual roots and development. The first to examine the theorist's prolific writings on literature and culture, this magisterial study illuminates Kirk's lasting influence on figures such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., and Senator Barry Goldwater -- who persuaded a reluctant Kirk to participate in his campaign for the presidency in 1964.While several books examine the evolution of postwar conservatism and libertarianism, surprisingly few works explore Kirk's life and thought in detail. This engaging biography not only offers a fresh and thorough assessment of one of America's most influential thinkers but also reasserts his humane vision in an increasingly inhumane time.

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This unique book traces the past 200 years of German history, using an iconic German folk hero as a bellwether of changing politics and culture. In 1809, at the height of Napoleon's power in Europe, the Prussian Major Ferdinand von Schill led a revolt against the French empire. Within a month his rebellion was crushed, and Schill became a martyr for German nationalists. As the years passed, Schill's legend grew and evolved until he had become one of Germany's most famous and celebrated Napoleonic figures: the subject of hundreds of novels, poems, plays, operas, films, biographies, and monuments. Sam A. Mustafa explores the radical changes in German society and politics in the two centuries since Schill's death. In the first English-language work on the subject, he shows how Schill remarkably endured as other heroes fell in and out of fashion. For imperial propagandists, Liberal Democrats, Nazis, and Communists alike, he was a favorite historical icon and cultural touchstone. The author traces how an obscure failed rebel became a revered national symbol of patriotism and heroism and the ways each successive German regime coopted his story for its own ideological mission. Drawing on a rich array of primary and secondary sources, Mustafa considers the nature of patriotism, the creation of heroes and heroic mythology, and the fragility of history itself in a masterful narrative that will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the German experience during the Napoleonic Wars.

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Most of us know the legend of Secretariat, the tall, handsome chestnut racehorse whose string of honours runs long and rich: the only two-year-old ever to win Horse of the Year, in 1972; winner in 1973 of the Triple Crown, his times in all three races still unsurpassed; featured on the cover of "Time", "Newsweek", and "Sports Illustrated"; the only horse listed on ESPN's top fifty athletes of the twentieth century (ahead of Mickey Mantle). His final race at Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack is a touchstone memory for horse lovers everywhere. Yet while Secretariat will be remembered forever, one man, Eddie "Shorty" Sweat, who was pivotal to the great horse's success, has been all but forgotten - until now.In "The Horse God Built", bestselling equestrian writer Lawrence Scanlan has written a tribute to an exceptional man that is also a back roads journey to a corner of the racing world rarely visited. As a young black man growing up in South Carolina, Eddie Sweat struggled at several occupations before settling on the job he was born for - groom to North America's finest racehorses. As Secretariat's groom, loyal friend, and protector, Eddie understood the horse far better than anyone else. A wildly generous man who could read a horse with his eyes, he shared in little of the financial success or glamour of Secretariat's wins on the track, but won the heart of Big Red with his soft words and relentless devotion.

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It is 1967, and as America’s allies hesitate over whether to send more troops to Vietnam and the strains of 'All You Need is Love' echo from Abbey Road, students take to the streets of Wellington, New Zealand, to protest the war. Among them are Race, Candy, Chadwick and FitzGerald and their elusive, electrifying friend Morgan Tawhai. They are young and hopeful and the world is all before them. Forty years later, in Washington DC, Race’s son Toby is navigating his own path across a landscape still trembling with the reverberations of 9/11. Uncertain whether love is really all he needs, Toby, along with his girlfriend JoJo, watches the centuries-old fragments of a comet fall across the sky while America secretly begins planning to invade Iraq. As Race and his companions move through the first decade of the new millennium, their friendships tested and pulled apart and reconfigured anew, they come to discover that Morgan – who burned as brightly as any comet, who could quote Shakespeare and Sterne, The Iliad and Bob Dylan, and who will forever remain the twenty-year-old they once knew – is both the mystery and the touchstone of their lives. From the shores of New Zealand to the political heart of Washington and to the hills above Beirut, Some Here Among Us is a stunning meditation on youth and promise and loss. It is a novel for our times.

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In 1900, Dutch art historians Andre Jolles and Aby Warburg constructed an experimental dialogue in which Jolles supposed he had fallen in love with the figure of a young woman in a painting: "A fantastic figure - shall I call her a servant girl, or rather a classical nymph? What is the meaning of it all - Who is the nymph? Where does she come from?" Warburg's response: "In essence she is an elemental spirit, a pagan goddess in exile," serves as the touchstone for this wide-ranging and theoretical exploration of female representation in iconography. In "Nymphs", the newest translation of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's work, the author notes that academic research has lingered on the "pagan goddess," while the concept of "elemental spirit," ignored by scholars, is vital to the history of iconography. Tracing the genealogy of this idea, Agamben goes on to examine subjects as diverse as the aesthetic theories of choreographer Domineco da Piacenza, Friedrich Theodor Vischer's essay on the "symbol," Walter Benjamin's concept of the dialectic image, and the bizarre discoveries of photographer Nathan Lerner in 1972. From these investigations emerges a startlingly original exploration of the ideas of time and the image. Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields, and "Nymphs" will engage not only the author's devoted fans in philosophy, legal theory, sociology, and literary criticism, but his growing audience among art theorists and historians as well.

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Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion-historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In "Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars", Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude. The book begins with Lincoln's "Theses on Method" and ends with "The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies," in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things-inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor-as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian. Tackling many questions central to religious study, "Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars" will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

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Christopher Phillips has devoted his life to carrying the torch of Socrates and his quest to “Know Thyself.” Yet upon the death of his beloved father and mentor, the originator of the burgeoning global Socrates Café movement had little choice but to confront the inescapable truth: that there are some things we cannot know for sure. This moving, insightful and ultimately hopeful and helpful blend of memoir and philosophical exploration begins in Phillips’ native stomping grounds of the tiny volcanic island of Nisyros, Greece and unfurls through space and time as the author explores the connections between his immediate circumstances and the eternal wisdom of popular philosophers. –In this personal and probing book, the acclaimed ‘philosopher for the people’ shares lessons gleaned from his intimate and often unexpected encounters with uncommonly perceptive human beings both living and long deceased, in the form of weary travelers and some of history’s greatest thinkers, from Heraclitus to Dr. Cornel West. Along the way, he charts a pathway for sculpting what Shakespeare describes as a “soul of goodness,” which meshes with Plato’s paradigm-shattering conception of the “healthiness of soul.” For those struggling to overcome the hopelessness that can result from grievous loss, setback, or betrayal – what Phillips’ touchstone Percy Blythe Shelley calls life circumstances “darker than death or night” – the author spotlights, with philosophical prescriptions both timely and timeless, how to cultivate a ‘Socratic spirit’ that leads to renewed love, forbearance, and hope at the other end of the tunnel.

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In this account of a simple life, Stephanie Mills reaches deep into classical sources of pleasure - good food, good health, good friends and particularly the endless delights of the natural world. Her musings about the life she desires - and the life she has created - ultimately led her to the third century Greek philosopher Epicurus, whose philosophy was premised on the trustworthiness of the senses, a philosophy that Mills wholeheartedly embraces. While later centuries have come to associate Epicurus's name with hedonism, Mills discovered that he extolled simplicity and prudence as the surest means to pleasure, and his thinking offers an important philosophical touchstone for the book. As the author explains, one of the primary motivations for her pursuit of simplicity is her concern about the impacts of a consumerist lifestyle on the natural world. Mills touches on broad range of topics relating to that issue - social justice, biological extinctions, the global economy and also more personal aspects such as friendship, the process of country living, the joys of physical exertion, the challenges of a writer's life and the natural history and seasonal delights of a life lived close to nature. An overarching theme is the destructiveness of consumerism, and how even a simple life affects a wide range of organisms and adds strain to the earth's systems. The author uses her own experience as an entry point to the discussion with a self-effacing humour and lyrical prose that bring big topics to a personal level.

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A major reconsideration of the relationship between warrior aristocrats, epics, and heroes in medieval culture. The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages (10th-12th centuries) among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focussing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the "literary" persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite; the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a "supplement" to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two. ANDREW COWELL isAssociate Professor of the Department of French and Italian, and the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Colorado.

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The very first Drawn and Quarterly Kitaro collection, now back in print with a lush new cover. Kitaro seems just like any other boy. Of course, he isn t what with his one eye and jet-powered geta sandals, and the fact that he can shape shift like a chameleon. It s all a part of being a 350 year-old yokai, a Japanese spirit monster. Against a backdrop of photorealistic landscapes, Kitaro and his otherworldly cartoon friends plunge into the depths of the Pacific Ocean and forge the oft-unseen wilds of Japan s countryside. The twelve stories in this special collection include more works published in the golden age of GeGeGe no Kitaro between 1967 and 1969. It is a must-have for Kitaro s most devoted fans and features one of the earliest battles of monster versus giant robot battles seen in print. In another very special episode, our titular good guy even battles vampires, werewolves, and witches alongside creepy compatriots and occasional foes. Kitaro, as seen on TV and played in video games, is now a cultural touchstone for several generations. This updated and newly released edition is a wonderful companion to the classic all-ages Kitaro series that blends the eerie with the comic. The Eisner-Award winner Shigeru Mizuki s offbeat sense of humor and genius for the macabre make for a delightful, lighthearted romp where bad guys always get what s coming to them.

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Shakespeare and Lao Tzu match wits and wisdom in this playful encounter—a new take on the old dialogue between East and West. The Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way of Virtue, is a touchstone of Eastern philosophy and mysticism. It has been called the wisest book ever written. Its author, Lao Tzu, is known as the Great Archivist, but some say he has never lived or is the synthesis of many people. Shakespeare, the Bard, was the West’s greatest writer and even invented human nature, according to some. The Tao and the Bard is the delightful conversation between these two unlikely spokesmen, who join in a free exchange of views in its pages.Here, in his own words, Lao Tzu offers the eight-one verses that comprise the Tao, and, responding to each verse, the Bard answers with quotations from his plays and poems. In sometimes surprising ways, Shakespeare’s words speak to Lao Tzu’s, as the two trade observations on such topics as good and evil, love and virtue, wise fools and foolish wisdom, and being the “nothing from which all things are.” As moderator, Phillip DePoy sometimes adds his own helpful comments, and the reader is invited to take part—whether to parse the meanings closely or sit back and enjoy the entertainment!

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ÊLove Peace and SoulÊ tells the story of the television phenomenon known as ÊSoul TrainÊ a show created in the land of bell bottoms afros and soul power; a show that became the touchstone of the Baby Boomer generation. Don Cornelius host and owner of the show was one of the coolest cats on television. With his platform shoes wide neckties and mellifluous voice he showed the world just how corny ÊAmerican BandstandÊ was in comparison. In 2012 fans were shocked to hear one of the most powerful men in the music and television business took his own life.ÞÊLove Peace and SoulÊ is a celebratory behind-the-scenes collection of anecdotes stories and reflections from the people who were there about the host the show and the power of black music and dance on television.ÞMusic and television connoisseurs will enjoy the history of not just ÊSoul TrainÊ but of other shows including ÊShindig!Ê ÊDon Kirshner's Rock ConcertÊ ÊHullabalooÊ ÊAmerican BandstandÊ and ÊGraffiti RockÊ. Entrepreneurs will be interested in Cornelius' humble beginnings with the local version of the show in Chicago created with his own money. Fans will delight in the lively images and the quirky details. The first mass market book on ÊSoul TrainÊ since Cornelius's passing this volume has something for everyone. Includes afterword by Gary Harris.

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This book uses the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as a touchstone for the importance and value of including place-based education in the social studies curriculum. Whitlock scrutinizes this local environmental issue to not only drive critical inquiry in the classroom, but also to show how the curriculum can propel valuable social change in the community. Each part of this book highlights critical place inquiry and place-based education with an overall inquiry question: How can schools respond to a community's needs? How can schooling be reimagined to center "place?" How can teacher preparation be place-based? What did we learn from the Flint crisis and where do we go from here? Individual chapters investigate the inquiry question by examining Flint and the Flint water crisis more specifically, as well as the lessons we can learn from Flint educators. Social studies teachers (Pre-K-16) can use these experiences to inform their own approach to understanding their own places.Book Features: Employs narrative inquiry, including interviews with school officials, teachers, parents, and teacher educators. Offers key "takeaways" in every chapter to assist educators in applying place-based education principles to their classrooms. Written in an accessible journalistic style that is both scholarly and personal. Includes photographs taken by the author of real people and places in Flint that illustrate the story.

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Los estudios críticos sobre literaturas y culturas coloniales que concurren en este volumen asumen el mundo hispano como piedra de toque para todo debate sobre la gestación de la modernidad. En consecuencia, según declara la compiladora, se ofrece “una contralectura a la exclusión de América Latina de la formación de la modernidad en la época colonial”. Al puntualizar el papel crucial que tuvo el imperio español en la emergencia del mundo moderno se reconoce también a los pueblos colonizados –indígenas, afrodescendientes y mestizos– como agentes activos en las resistencias y contrarresistencias que definieron las modernidades reales y virtuales que hoy se nos proyectan desde aquella múltiple experiencia histórica. ~ The critical studies on colonial literatures and cultures compiled in this volume view the Hispanic world as a touchstone for any debate on the gestation of modernity. Therefore, according to the compiler, it offers ‘a counter-reading on the exclusion of Latin America from the creation of modernity in the colonial era.’ By pointing out the crucial role that the Spanish empire played in the emergence of the modern world, those it colonized –indigenous, Afro-descendants and mixed-race– are also acknowledged as active agents in the resistance and counter-resistance that defined the real and virtual modernities that are projected to us today from that complex historical experience.

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This 11th volume in the highly acclaimed Encyclopedia of Law and Economics provides a sophisticated summary of law and economics approaches to the most important topics in contemporary corporate law.The work is divided into three thematic parts, namely; corporate governance, securities regulation, and the law and economics of debt financing. The Encyclopedia reviews leading empirical research and provides theoretical methods for a nuanced understanding of the field, including such specific issues as the characteristics of corporations, the role of passive index funds in corporate governance, the board of directors’ actions, and core principles such as the business judgement rule. Presenting a synopsis of both the classic and emerging literature across several corporate law sectors, each chapter also offers a detailed bibliography and operates as a springboard and touchstone for further research. Corporate Law and Economics will be an indispensable resource for scholars and students of corporate law as well as for economics, accountancy and management scholars working in the fields of corporate governance and industrial organisation.Key Features: Includes new theoretical tools for thinking about the changing roles of key actors, such as business directors Addresses contemporary topics such as the economics of insider trading to illustrate a complete picture of modern economics Expert contributions and comprehensive literature reviews that will benefit scholars from a variety of law and non-law disciplines such as economics and accounting

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Centered around the touchstone stories Jen tells in her popular workshops, On Being Human is the story of how a starved person grew into the exuberant woman she was meant to be all along by battling the demons within and winning.Jen did not intend to become a yoga teacher, but when she was given the opportunity to host her own retreats, she left her thirteen-year waitressing job and said "yes," despite crippling fears of her inexperience and her own potential. After years of feeling depressed, anxious, and hopeless, in a life that seemed to have no escape, she healed her own heart by caring for others. She has learned to fiercely listen despite being nearly deaf, to banish shame attached to a body mass index, and to rebuild a family after the debilitating loss of her father when she was eight. Through her journey, Jen conveys the experience most of us are missing in our lives: being heard and being told, "I got you." Exuberant, triumphantly messy, and brave, On Being Human is a celebration of happiness and self-realization over darkness and doubt. Her complicated yet imperfectly perfect life path is an inspiration to live outside the box and to reject the all-too-common belief of "I am not enough." Jen will help readers find, accept, and embrace their own vulnerability, bravery, and humanness.

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From its Broadway debut to the Oscar-winning film to countless amateur productions, West Side Story is nothing less than an American touchstone an updating of Shakespeare located in a vividly realized, rapidly changing postwar New York. That vision of postwar New York is at the heart of Julia L. Foulkes's A Place for Us. A lifelong fan of the show, Foulkes became interested in its history when she made an unexpected discovery: parts of the iconic film version were shot on the demolition site of what would ultimately be part of the Lincoln Center redevelopment a crowning jewel of postwar urban renewal. Foulkes interweaves the story of the creation of the musical and film with the remaking of the Upper West Side and the larger tale of New York's postwar aspirations. Making unprecedented use of Jerome Robbins's revelatory papers, she shows the crucial role played by the political commitments of Robbins and his fellow gay, Jewish collaborators, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents: their determination to evoke life in New York as it was actually lived helped give West Side Story its unshakable sense of place even as it put forward a vision of a new, vigorous, determinedly multicultural American city. Beautifully written and full of surprises for even the most dedicated West Side Story fan, A Place for Us is a powerful new exploration of an American classic.

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit emerged at a nexus of people, technology, and circumstances that is historically, culturally, and aesthetically momentous. By the 1980s, animation seemed a dying art. Not even the Walt Disney Company, which had already won over thirty Academy Awards, could stop what appeared to be the end of an animation era. To revitalize popular interest in animation, Disney needed to reach outside its own studio and create the distinctive film that helped usher in a Disney Renaissance. That film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, though expensive and controversial, debuted in theaters to huge success at the box office in 1988. Unique in its conceit of cartoons living in the real world, Who Framed Roger Rabbit magically blended live action and animation, carrying with it a humor that still resonates with audiences. Upon the film's release, Disney's marketing program led the audience to believe that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was made solely by director Bob Zemeckis, director of animation Dick Williams, and the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, though many Disney animators contributed to the project. Author Ross Anderson interviewed over 140 artists to tell the story of how they created something truly magical. Anderson describes the ways in which the Roger Rabbit characters have been used in film shorts, commercials, and merchandising, and how they have remained a cultural touchstone today.

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Poor, frustrated, and angered by the “fashion-mongers and mode-purveyors” of art, Richard Wagner published The Art-Work of the Future in 1849. It marked a turning point in his life: an appraisal of the revolutionary passions of mid-century Europe, his farewell to symphonic music, and his vision of the music to come. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was unsurpassable, he wrote. Henceforth "The Folk must of necessity be the Artist of the Future," and only artists who were in harmony with the Folk could know what harmony was for. The essay became a touchstone for Wagner, his family, friends, and followers, as he sought to produce works that thoroughly combined music, dance, drama, and national saga. In addition to Wagner’s epoch-defining essay, this volume includes his "Autobiographical Sketch," "Art and Climate"; his libretto for an opera, "Wieland the Smith"; and his notorious "Art and Revolution." The concluding piece, "A Communication to My Friends (1851), explains his views on his first successes—The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin, and Tannhäuser—and defines his agenda for later works. As spokesman for the future, Wagner spoke most of himself. In these works he set forth his ambitions, identified his enemies, and began a campaign for public attention that made him a legend in his own time and in ours.

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Faithful, Focused Commentary on the Whole BibleSerious students of Scripture can easily lose their focus among the many Bible commentaries available today, studying for hours yet discovering no meaningful application of God's eternal truth. This one-volume commentary on the entire Bible from one of America's foremost Bible expositors offers instead a minilibrary of understandable resources designed to convey the Bible's overarching message with historical and theological clarity.Pastor and teacher John MacArthur covers the complete Bible—every passage of the Old and New Testaments, phrase by phrase—in this valuable one-volume resource. Hundreds of additional study tools complement the commentary, such as Word studies Charts, graphs, and brief articles Overviews of each major division of the Bible Introductions to each biblical book A summary of essential Christian theology Special sections on Jesus's life and ministry Harmonies of historical writings Guidance in studying, applying, and teaching God's Word Readers benefit from the coherence a single commentator provides, finding faithful, understandable, and relevant resources for any passage from the entire Bible. Consistent elements include exploring God's character; seeing Christ in all Scripture; and identifying key doctrines, vital people, and touchstone Scripture passages. The MacArthur Bible Commentary offers pastors, Bible teachers, serious Bible readers, and anyone seeking to read and understand the Scriptures a way to focus their studies while still seeing the entire Bible's application to the Christian life.

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Doreen Massey (1944–2016) changed geography. Her ideas on space, region, labour, identity, ethics and capital transformed the field itself, while also attracting a wide audience in sociology, planning, political economy, cultural studies, gender studies and beyond. The significance of her contributions is difficult to overstate. Far from a dry defence of disciplinary turf, her claim that “geography matters” possessed both scholarly substance and political salience. Through her most influential concepts – such as power-geometries and a “global sense of place” – she insisted on the active role of regions and places not simply in bearing the brunt of political-economic restructuring, but in reshaping the uneven geographies of global capitalism and the horizons of politics. In capturing how global forces articulated with the particularities of place, Massey’s work, right up until her death, was an inspiration for critical social sciences and political activists alike. It integrated theory and politics in the service of challenging and transforming both. This collection of Massey’s writings brings together for the first time the full span of her formative contributions, showcasing the continuing relevance of her ideas to current debates on globalization, immigration, nationalism and neoliberalism, among other topics. With introductions from the editors, the collection represents an unrivalled distillation of the range and depth of Massey’s thinking. It is sure to remain an essential touchstone for social theory and critical geography for generations to come.

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At dawn on March 18, 1871, Parisian women stepped between cannons and French soldiers, using their bodies to block the army from taking the artillery from their working-class neighborhood. When ordered to fire, the troops refused and instead turned and arrested their leaders. Thus began the Paris Commune, France’s revolutionary civil war that rocked the nineteenth century and shaped the twentieth. Considered a golden moment of hope and potential by the left, and a black hour of terrifying power inversions by the right, the Commune occupies a critical position in understanding modern history and politics. A 72-day conflict that ended with the ferocious slaughter of Parisians, the Commune represents for some the final insurgent burst of the French Revolution’s long wake, for others the first “successful” socialist uprising, and for yet others an archetype for egalitarian socio-economic, feminist, and political change. Militants have referenced and incorporated its ideas into insurrections across the globe, throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, keeping alive the revolution’s now-iconic goals and images. Innumerable scholars in countless languages have examined aspects of the 1871 uprising, taking perspectives ranging from glorifying to damning this world-shaking event. The Commune stands as a critical and pivotal moment in nineteenth-century history, as the linchpin between revolutionary pasts and futures, and as the crucible allowing glimpses of alternate possibilities. Upending hierarchies of class, religion, and gender, the Commune emerged as a touchstone for the subsequent century-and-a-half of revolutionary and radical social movements.

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Between 1971 and 1979, All in the Family was more than just a wildly popular television sitcom that routinely drew 50 million viewers weekly. It was also a touchstone of American life, so much so that the living room chairs of the two main characters have spent the last 40 years on display at the Smithsonian. How did a show this controversial and boundary-breaking manage to become so widely beloved?Those Were the Days is the first full-length study of this remarkable television program. Created by Norman Lear and produced by Bud Yorkin, All in the Family dared to address such taboo topics as rape, abortion, menopause, homosexuality, and racial prejudice in a way that no other sitcom had before. Through a close analysis of the sitcom’s four main characters—boorish bigot Archie Bunker, his devoted wife Edith, their feminist daughter Gloria, and her outspoken liberal husband Mike—Jim Cullen demonstrates how All in the Family was able to bridge the generation gap and appeal to a broad spectrum of American viewers in an age when a network broadcast model of television created a shared national culture. Locating All in the Family within the larger history of American television, this book shows how it transformed the medium, not only spawning spinoffs like Maude and The Jeffersons, but also helping to inspire programs like Roseanne, Married... with Children, and The Simpsons. And it raises the question: could a show this edgy ever air on broadcast television today?

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Magna Carta is the most famous document in English history. And yet its survival is purely accidental. King John, who negotiated the document with his rebellious barons, had no intention of honouring its contents. Annulled by the pope within weeks of being issued, it was destined to oblivion. But with the sudden death of John, all of this changed. Magna Carta was reissued by the regents of the boy King Henry III as an apology for past misrule and as a promise of future good government. It was reissued on successive occasions and repeatedly cited in legal cases in the following centuries. Later, it played a part in conflicts such as the English Civil War and the US Wars of Independence. Echoes of Magna Carta are to be found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. It continues to be cited today as a touchstone of fundamental universal freedoms. This book tells the story of the birth and development of Magna Carta from its origins to the modern day. It also reproduces and describes, for the very first time, every surviving copy of the Great Charter, as well as related charters of the period, including various new discoveries. It addresses the previously unanswered question of how the charter was published and disseminated to the shires of England and includes a chapter on the charter's scribes and sealing, supplying a truly unique insight into both the creation and afterlife of the most fundamental legal document in British history.

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A comprehensive history of the battle over sex education in the United States Mid-century America had a problem talking about sex. Dr. Mary Calderone first diagnosed this condition and, in 1964, led the uphill battle to de-stigmatize sex education. Supporters hailed her as the “grandmother of modern sex education” while her detractors painted her as an “aging libertine,” but both could agree that she was quickly shaping the way sex was discussed in the classroom. Part biography, part social history, The Transformation of American Sex Education for the first time situates Dr. Mary Calderone at the center of decades of political, cultural, and religious conflict in the fight for comprehensive sex education. Ellen S. More examines Americans’ attempts to come to terms with the vexed subject of sex education in schools from the late 1940s to the early twenty-first century. Using Mary Calderone’s life and career as a touchstone, she traces the origins of modern sex education in the United States from the work of a group of reformers who coalesced around Calderone to create the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in 1964, to the development and use of the competing approaches known as “abstinence-based” and “comprehensive” sex education from the 1980s into the twenty-first century. A fascinating and timely read, The Transformation of American Sex Education provides a substantial contribution to the history of one of America’s most intense and protracted culture wars, and the first account of the woman who fought those battles.

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The contributors to Negotiated Moments explore how subjectivity is formed and expressed through musical improvisation, tracing the ways the transmission and reception of sound occur within and between bodies in real and virtual time and across memory, history, and space. They place the gendered, sexed, raced, classed, disabled, and technologized body at the center of critical improvisation studies and move beyond the field's tendency toward celebrating improvisation's utopian and democratic ideals by highlighting the improvisation of marginalized subjects. Rejecting a singular theory of improvisational agency, the contributors show how improvisation helps people gain hard-won and highly contingent agency. Essays include analyses of the role of the body and technology in performance, improvisation's ability to disrupt power relations, Pauline Oliveros's ideas about listening, flautist Nicole Mitchell's compositions based on Octavia Butler's science fiction, and an interview with Judith Butler about the relationship between her work and improvisation. The contributors' close attention to improvisation provides a touchstone for examining subjectivities and offers ways to hear the full spectrum of ideas that sound out from and resonate within and across bodies. Contributors. George Blake, David Borgo, Judith Butler, Rebecca Caines, Louise Campbell, Illa Carrillo Rodríguez, Berenice Corti, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Nina Eidsheim, Tomie Hahn, Jaclyn Heyen, Christine Sun Kim, Catherine Lee, Andra McCartney, Tracy McMullen, Kevin McNeilly, Leaf Miller, Jovana Milovic, François Mouillot, Pauline Oliveros, Jason Robinson, Neil Rolnick, Simon Rose, Gillian Siddall, Julie Dawn Smith, Jesse Stewart, Clara Tomaz, Sherrie Tucker, Lindsay Vogt, Zachary Wallmark, Ellen Waterman, David Whalen, Pete Williams, Deborah Wong, Mandy-Suzanne Wong

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During his sojourn in England during the 1870s, a young Cavafy found himself enthralled by the aesthetic movement of cosmopolitan London. It was during these years that he encountered the canvases and personalities of Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Burne-Jones and Whistler, as well as works of aesthetic writers who were effecting a revolution in British literary culture and channeling influences from France that would gradually coalesce into an international decadent movement. In Reframing Decadence, Peter Jeffreys returns us to this critical period of Cavafy’s life, showing the poet’s creative indebtedness to British and French avant-garde aesthetes whose collective impact on his poetry proved to be profound. In the process, Jeffreys offers a critical reappraisal of Cavafy’s relation to Victorian aestheticism and French literary decadence. Foremost among the tropes of decadence that captivated Cavafy were the decline of imperial Rome, the rise of Christianity, and the lingering twilight of Byzantium. The influence of Walter Pater on Cavafy’s view of classical and late-antique history was immense, inflected as it was with an unapologetic homoerotic aesthetic that Cavafy would adopt as his own, making Pater’s imaginary portraits an important touchstone for his own historicizing poetry. Cavafy would move beyond Pater to explore a more openly homoerotic sensuality but he never quite abandoned this rich Victorian legacy, one that contributed greatly to his emergence as a global poet. Jeffreys concludes by considering Cavafy’s current popularity as a gay poet and his curious relation to kitsch as manifest in his ongoing popularity via translation and visual media.

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First published in 1981, The Renewal of Buddhism in China broke new ground in the study of Chinese Buddhism. An interdisciplinary study of a Buddhist master and reformer in late Ming China, it challenged the conventional view that Buddhism had reached its height under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and steadily declined afterward.Chün-fang Yü details how in sixteenth-century China, Buddhism entered a period of revitalization due in large part to a cohort of innovative monks who sought to transcend sectarian rivalries and doctrinal specialization. She examines the life, work, and teaching of one of the most important of these monks, Zhuhong (1535–1615), a charismatic teacher of lay Buddhists and a successful reformer of monastic Buddhism. Zhuhong’s contributions demonstrate that the late Ming was one of the most creative periods in Chinese intellectual and religious history. Weaving together diverse sources—scriptures, dynastic history, Buddhist chronicles, monks’ biographies, letters, ritual manuals, legal codes, and literature—Yü grounds Buddhism in the reality of Ming society, highlighting distinctive lay Buddhist practices to provide a vivid portrait of lived religion.Since the book was published four decades ago, many have written on the diversity of Buddhist beliefs and practices in the centuries before and after Zhuhong’s time, yet The Renewal of Buddhism in China remains a crucial touchstone for all scholarship on post-Tang Buddhism. This fortieth anniversary edition features updated transliteration, a foreword by Daniel B. Stevenson, and an updated introduction by the author speaking to the ongoing relevance of this classic work.

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Arguing that the presidency is not defined by the Constitution - which doesn't use the term - but by what presidents say and how they say it, "Deeds Done in Words" has been the definitive book on presidential rhetoric for more than a decade. "Presidents Creating the Presidency" expands and recasts this classic work for the YouTube era, revealing how our media-saturated age has transformed the rhetorical strategies presidents use to increase and sustain the executive branch's powers.Identifying the primary genres of presidential oratory, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson add new analyses of signing statements and national eulogies to their explorations of inaugural addresses, veto messages, and war rhetoric, among other types. They explain that in some genres, the president acts alone, while in others, such as speeches that urge a legislative agenda, the executive solicits reaction from the other branches. Many of these rhetorical acts, the authors contend, extend over time: George W. Bush's post - September 11 statements, for example, culminated in a speech at the National Cathedral and became a touchstone for his subsequent address to Congress.For two centuries, presidential discourse has both succeeded brilliantly and failed miserably at satisfying the demands of audience, occasion, and institution - and in the process, it has increased and depleted political capital by enhancing authority or ceding it to the other branches. Illuminating the reasons behind each outcome, Campbell and Jamieson draw an authoritative picture of how presidents have used rhetoric to shape the presidency - and how they continue to recreate it.

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A Thorough, Comprehensive Guide to Seventy-Five of the Most Interesting and Influential Figures from the War Between the States, from Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman to Davis, Lee, and Jackson—and more For over 150 years, the Civil War has been an important touchstone in the history of the United States. Now, The Wikipedia Legends of the Civil War offers readers and history fans a new opportunity to learn about these legendary figures in greater depth and detail than ever before. Featuring extensive information about seventy-five important Civil War figures both famous and little-known, as well as a variety of supplemental information—photos, maps, documents, and more—this book is an essential guide for any Civil War fan, anyone curious about US history, or any reader who wants an insight into the most fascinating stories and interesting characters from this critical period for America. Included in The Wikipedia Legends of the Civil War, among many others, are: Robert E. Lee Ulysses S. Grant Frederick Douglass Stonewall Jackson William Tecumseh Sherman Abraham Lincoln Harriet Jacobs Jefferson Davis J.E.B. Stuart Clara Barton Ambrose Burnside Harriet Tubman Belle Boyd Robert Smalls and many others With nearly six million English language articles covering essentially any topic imaginable, Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites on the internet and an important resource for anyone curious to learn about the world. This curated selection of content has been carefully selected and compiled by our editors to be the definitive book on the subject.

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Christians in the United States and around the world are politically polarized today, unable to speak to one another across deep divisions regarding urgent social issues. Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice addresses this dire reality by offering a theological framework for Christian justice-seeking. Amy Carr and Christine Helmer draw on Paul's theology to center the idea of justification by faith in Christ as the primary ground of Christian belonging and community.This approach yields a theology of ordinary faith that resists the temptation to equate Christian identity with the performance of a heroic "here I stand" posture against moral and political positions felt to be inimical to a properly Christian life. An ordinary faith situates Christian identity on a baptismal belonging to Christ. Baptism draws Christians into the messy process of discerning together the shape of justice in and through the Beloved Community. With justification by faith as the touchstone of Christian unity, Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times reveals how Christians who inhabit different ethical and political positions can navigate the disorientations and reorientations that arise when they debate what justice-seeking looks like from within the body of Christ.Carr and Helmer articulate ways that justification by faith grounds Christian practices of affective listening and storytelling, even on the most contentious ethical questions today, with the hope that mutual conversation in and through the Beloved Community can get Christians who disagree oriented towards each other again for the good of the world.

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At dawn on March 18, 1871, Parisian women stepped between cannons and French soldiers, using their bodies to block the army from taking the artillery from their working-class neighborhood. When ordered to fire, the troops refused and instead turned and arrested their leaders. Thus began the Paris Commune, France’s revolutionary civil war that rocked the nineteenth century and shaped the twentieth. Considered a golden moment of hope and potential by the left, and a black hour of terrifying power inversions by the right, the Commune occupies a critical position in understanding modern history and politics. A 72-day conflict that ended with the ferocious slaughter of Parisians, the Commune represents for some the final insurgent burst of the French Revolution’s long wake, for others the first “successful” socialist uprising, and for yet others an archetype for egalitarian socio-economic, feminist, and political change. Militants have referenced and incorporated its ideas into insurrections across the globe, throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, keeping alive the revolution’s now-iconic goals and images. Innumerable scholars in countless languages have examined aspects of the 1871 uprising, taking perspectives ranging from glorifying to damning this world-shaking event. The Commune stands as a critical and pivotal moment in nineteenth-century history, as the linchpin between revolutionary pasts and futures, and as the crucible allowing glimpses of alternate possibilities. Upending hierarchies of class, religion, and gender, the Commune emerged as a touchstone for the subsequent century-and-a-half of revolutionary and radical social movements.

Read more less

The contributors to Negotiated Moments explore how subjectivity is formed and expressed through musical improvisation, tracing the ways the transmission and reception of sound occur within and between bodies in real and virtual time and across memory, history, and space. They place the gendered, sexed, raced, classed, disabled, and technologized body at the center of critical improvisation studies and move beyond the field's tendency toward celebrating improvisation's utopian and democratic ideals by highlighting the improvisation of marginalized subjects. Rejecting a singular theory of improvisational agency, the contributors show how improvisation helps people gain hard-won and highly contingent agency. Essays include analyses of the role of the body and technology in performance, improvisation's ability to disrupt power relations, Pauline Oliveros's ideas about listening, flautist Nicole Mitchell's compositions based on Octavia Butler's science fiction, and an interview with Judith Butler about the relationship between her work and improvisation. The contributors' close attention to improvisation provides a touchstone for examining subjectivities and offers ways to hear the full spectrum of ideas that sound out from and resonate within and across bodies. Contributors. George Blake, David Borgo, Judith Butler, Rebecca Caines, Louise Campbell, Illa Carrillo Rodríguez, Berenice Corti, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Nina Eidsheim, Tomie Hahn, Jaclyn Heyen, Christine Sun Kim, Catherine Lee, Andra McCartney, Tracy McMullen, Kevin McNeilly, Leaf Miller, Jovana Milovic, François Mouillot, Pauline Oliveros, Jason Robinson, Neil Rolnick, Simon Rose, Gillian Siddall, Julie Dawn Smith, Jesse Stewart, Clara Tomaz, Sherrie Tucker, Lindsay Vogt, Zachary Wallmark, Ellen Waterman, David Whalen, Pete Williams, Deborah Wong, Mandy-Suzanne Wong

Read more less

First published in 1981, The Renewal of Buddhism in China broke new ground in the study of Chinese Buddhism. An interdisciplinary study of a Buddhist master and reformer in late Ming China, it challenged the conventional view that Buddhism had reached its height under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and steadily declined afterward.Chün-fang Yü details how in sixteenth-century China, Buddhism entered a period of revitalization due in large part to a cohort of innovative monks who sought to transcend sectarian rivalries and doctrinal specialization. She examines the life, work, and teaching of one of the most important of these monks, Zhuhong (1535–1615), a charismatic teacher of lay Buddhists and a successful reformer of monastic Buddhism. Zhuhong’s contributions demonstrate that the late Ming was one of the most creative periods in Chinese intellectual and religious history. Weaving together diverse sources—scriptures, dynastic history, Buddhist chronicles, monks’ biographies, letters, ritual manuals, legal codes, and literature—Yü grounds Buddhism in the reality of Ming society, highlighting distinctive lay Buddhist practices to provide a vivid portrait of lived religion.Since the book was published four decades ago, many have written on the diversity of Buddhist beliefs and practices in the centuries before and after Zhuhong’s time, yet The Renewal of Buddhism in China remains a crucial touchstone for all scholarship on post-Tang Buddhism. This fortieth anniversary edition features updated transliteration, a foreword by Daniel B. Stevenson, and an updated introduction by the author speaking to the ongoing relevance of this classic work.

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“Feels revolutionary in its freshness.” —Entertainment Weekly“The Arsonists’ City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan’s hands, one family’s tale becomes the story of a nation—Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States. It’s the kind of book we are lucky to have.” —Rumaan AlamA rich family story, a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East, and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home The Nasr family is spread across the globe—Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut—a constant touchstone—and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father’s recent death, Idris, the family’s new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets—lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame—that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together. In a novel teeming with wisdom, warmth, and characters born of remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us again that “fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us” (NPR).

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American auteur Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams's genius for creating densely plotted scripts has won him broad commercial and critical success in TV shows such as Felicity (1998--2002), Emmy-nominated Alias (2001--2006), Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Lost (2004--2010), and the critically acclaimed Fringe (2008--2013). In addition, his direction in films such as Cloverfield (2008), Super 8 (2011), and the new Mission Impossible and Star Trek films has left fans eagerly awaiting his revival of the Star Wars franchise. As a writer, director, producer, and composer, Abrams seamlessly combines geek appeal with blockbuster intuition, leaving a distinctive stamp on all of his work and establishing him as one of Tinsel Town's most influential visionaries.In The Philosophy of J.J. Abrams, editors Patricia L. Brace and Robert Arp assemble the first collection of essays to highlight the philosophical insights of the Hollywood giant's successful career. The filmmaker addresses a diverse range of themes in his onscreen pursuits, including such issues as personal identity in an increasingly impersonal digitized world, the morality of terrorism, bioethics, friendship, family obligation, and free will.Utilizing Abrams's scope of work as a touchstone, this comprehensive volume is a guide for fans as well as students of film, media, and culture. The Philosophy of J.J. Abrams is a significant contribution to popular culture scholarship, drawing attention to the mind behind some of the most provocative television and movie plots of our day.

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Almost fifty years after he first crossed the small screen, Doctor Who remains a science fiction touchstone. His exploits are thrilling, his world is mind-boggling, and that time travel machine-known as the Tardis-is almost certainly an old-fashioned blue police box, once commonly found in London. Paul Parsons's plain-English account of the real science behind the fantastic universe portrayed in the Doctor Who television series provides answers to such burning questions as whether a sonic screwdriver is any use for putting up a shelf, how Cybermen make little Cybermen, where the toilets are in the Tardis, and much more. Taking the show as a starting point-episode-by-episode in some cases-Parsons dissects its scientific concepts. In addition to explaining why time travel is possible and just how that blue police box works, Parsons * discusses who the Time Lords are and how we may one day be able to regenerate just like them* ponders the ways that the doctor's two hearts might work and introduces us to a terrestrial animal with five* details the alien populations and cosmology of the Whovian Universe and relates them to what we currently know about our universe* compares the robotics of the show with startlingly similar real-world applications This slender, equation-free discussion is penned by a Ph.D. cosmologist and is ideal beach reading for anyone who loves science and watches the show-no matter which planet the beach is on.

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