Search results for ""Academica Press""

In Russia’s Military Interventions, Elnur Ismayilov analyzes Russia’s recent military interventions in Georgia and Ukraine by assessing the driving factors – the interests fueling Russian involvement and the decisions that fostered the resulting wars. Ismayilov covers the creation and transformation behind Russia’s post-Soviet perspectives on Ukraine and Georgia and explores the panorama of post-Soviet Russia’s foreign policy from the 1990s up to the turbulent present, in which Ukraine and Georgia’s pro-Western orientations have remained a core concern of the Kremlin. Thoughtfully, Russia is fighting against being rated as a declining regional power and confronts a palpable clash of Russian nationalism and Western liberal democracy.

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Exiled Emissary is a biography of the colorful life of George H. Earle, III – a Main Line Philadelphia millionaire, war hero awarded the Navy Cross, Pennsylvania Governor, Ambassador to Austria and Bulgaria, friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian, playboy, and spy. Rich in Casablanca-style espionage and intrigue, Farrell’s deeply personal study presents FDR and his White House in a new light, especially when they learned in 1943 that high-ranking German officials approached Earle in Istanbul to convey their plot to kidnap Hitler and seek an armistice. When FDR rejected their offer, thereby prolonging World War II, his close relationship with Earle became most inconvenient, resulting in Earle’s exile to American Samoa. Earle eventually returned to the United States, renewing his warnings about communism to President Truman, who underestimated the threat as a “bugaboo.” Now, over four decades following Earle’s death, Farrell has uncovered newly declassified records that give voice to his warnings about a threat we now know should have never been dismissed.

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In 1740, the French King Louis XV granted his Swedish-led forces the title of Royal Swedish Regiment, for which it received the same privileges as all royal regiments including the protection of the king, new flags, and ordinance. Louis XV acted to fulfill a request of King Fredrik I of Sweden and to demonstrate his satisfaction with the great value shown by the regiment in battle. This intriguing book traces the history of this storied regiment throughout its service, including during the American War of Independence, and up to the time of the French Revolution of 1789.

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Of all the theological issues discussed in Christian circles, few have received more attention than the New Testament "gift of tongues." Were the tongues at Corinth "real languages," or something else? Some charismatics and an assortment of sympathetic observers, spurred on by modern linguistic analyses of audio recordings of modern tongues vocalizations, argue that modern tongues and the tongues in Corinth alike are not real languages at all. The questions Bruce Edminster seeks to answer in The Gift of Tongues include whether the Corinthian gift is the same as the one found in the book of Acts, what is the meaning and significance of the word "edification" in the context of the Corinthian phenomenon, and is the gift of tongues "real" language, the language of the angels, or a non-language? Further consideration asks what should the "gift of tongues" should be used for? Evangelism? Personal devotion? Self-gratification?

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Italian Culture in America: The Immigrants describes the nationwide anti-Italian discrimination, and often violent retribution, experienced by millions of immigrants during the formative years of an industrializing United States, from 1880 to 1930. This carefully presented work reveals the presence of Italian culture provided by hardworking, family-oriented Italians who bravely left their homeland in search of opportunity in America. Looking to his own Italian heritage, Giordano identifies so many of the "taken for granted" aspects of American life that have distinct Italian roots. Many creative innovations include banking, radio, the telephone, aeronautics, entertainment, and even the Statue of Liberty, among dozens of others. The study establishes that negative media stereotypes created by Hollywood are misunderstood and very often purely fictitious. In contrast, Giordano unfolds a factual story documenting the growing assimilation by Italians ingrained within all aspects of American culture. Italian Culture in America: The Immigrants will certainly fascinate those interested in Italian-American history. It will also help tell the story of all immigrants who entered and settled in the United States.

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Sex and Privacy in American Law presents empirical analyses of civil and criminal state court decisions applying the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas. After tracing key historical and legal developments leading up to the Lawrence decision's decriminalization of sodomy on substantive due process grounds in 2003, the study employs both quantitative and qualitative content analyses of 307 cases citing Lawrence over the two decades since it was decided. Results indicate that judicial decisions rarely embraced broad readings of Lawrence in criminal cases. In fact, Lawrence's long-term impact on criminal law has largely remained as limited as some commentators predicted shortly after the case was decided. In civil cases, courts tended not to rely on Lawrence significantly in most business and employment law cases. Courts that applied Lawrence in family law disputes – especially those involving same-sex couples – often construed the case narrowly at first, but broadened their interpretations after Obergefell v. Hodges brought marriage equality to the United States. Lawrence also impacted LGBTQ+ civil rights claims. Statistically significant geographic differences were found relating to how courts used Lawrence in those cases, with judges in Northeastern and Pacific coastal states having applied the precedent broadly, while judges in Southern and Midwestern states tending to have applied the case more narrowly. The implications are explored generally and within the specific context of the constriction of substantive due process rights in the wake Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

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The degradation of our life-enhancing planet Earth has resulted in climate change, desertification, wild fires, livestock mortality, microbial ecosystem alteration, floods, extreme weather conditions, economic meltdown, poverty, resource conflicts, disease, death, and desperate migration from the most vulnerable regions. Africa, the world`s hottest continent, has deserts and drylands that cover about 60 percent of its land surface area and remains the most vulnerable continent to climate change. At the same time, Africa is the world’s second most populous continent and is projected soon to be the most populous. Dr. Popoola’s work highlights the uniqueness of Africa and the extent of its vulnerability to global climate change as well as its advantages and limitations in context of current mitigation and adaptation strategies. Africa and Climate Change is an indispensable guide to ensuring global food security, sustainable livelihoods, and ecosystem survival, not only in Africa, but in other less vulnerable continents.

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This book examines diplomatic role of Okoi Arikpo during Biafran War in Nigeria. It examines his diplomatic engagements and how they shaped the international politics of the fighting. Okoi Arikpo was Nigeria's longest serving Minister of Foreign Affairs, saddled with the country's chief diplomatic responsibilities from 1967 and 1975. Okoi Arikpo played the role of Federal emissary on foreign relations in the Biafran Crisis as well. The Foreign Ministry's role in the foreign policy decision-making system was also due to the sort of leadership that Arikpo was able to provide.

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What is "cancel culture." A new phrase in popular circulation for less than two years, it has provoked passionate denunciations from observers concerned with civil liberties, especially rights of free speech and expression, and apologetic defenses from opponents who advocate equity and accountability in light of new mores. Still others deny that "cancel culture" exists at all, while many claim never to have heard of it. In Cancel Culture: Tales from the Front Lines, noted historian and critic Paul du Quenoy presents a series of case studies that reveal the new phenomenon known as "cancel culture" as experienced or claimed in media, academia, the arts, public space, and other areas of ideological controversy. More than a bald denunciation or frustrated description of an unfamiliar new concept, this groundbreaking approach seeks to understand "cancel culture" as a process – how it starts and stops, where it comes from and leads, and how and, indeed, whether it might one day end. This penetrating and highly original analysis sheds light on a society grappling feverishly with fundamental issues of freedom and liberty.

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In this new and persuasively argued study, philosopher Rod Cameron argues that definitive absolute Idealism changes the definition of logic, annuls ethics, and diminishes objective truth. Entitlement to "logic" is due to knowledge of the logos. The logos is religion and reasoning's common origin. They are thus made compatible. Logic accesses ontology: a metaphysical realm of causation. Logic performs philosophy's missing function: synthesis. The individual and the nation, Cameron argues, share the same essences. This correlation allows the nation to cater to the individual. It answers major political questions and discloses purposefulness in history.Ontology and this teleology define culture, which allows "race" to be categorized as an attribute of culture. Joined to absolute truths, race matters. Defending culture rebuffs both multiculturalism and antiracism. The ability to defeat pseudo-absolutes is vital for our existence and effectively preempts authoritarianism. Those searching for meaning in these troubled times will absorb Cameron's clear exposition of these concepts with great interest.

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This book discusses the eight novels by American expatriate author W. B. Trites, who, although highly praised by such contemporaries H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, W. B. Maxwell, Max Beerbohm, L. P. Hartley, and Frank Harris, among others, remains curiously unknown today. His spare style, which pre-dated Hemingway's by several decades, did not impress publishers accustomed to more expansive prose. Worse still, his prospects suffered from the forbidden social he dared to explore in a less open era, when publishers shied away from controversial topics. Richard Rex's masterful discussion of Trites's remarkable novels includes contemporary reviews, comments on the author's themes, his negotiations with publishers, and biographical details heretofore unknown.

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Kadya Molodowsky, the most prolific woman writer of Yiddish, wrote an autobiographical memoir that left many questions unanswered. Why does she say of her wedding day only that she wore new shoes and fell in the snow? Did she join those who saw communism as the answer to the Jewish problem? Why did she leave Israel after having spent only three years there? It took Zelda Kahan Newman's research at three archives, the YIVO archive in New York, the Municipal Jewish Library in Montreal, and the Machon Lavon archive in Ne'ot Afeka, Israel, to discover the answers to these questions. In this biography, Kahan Newman covers the arc of Molodowsky's life, a life that saw pogroms, World War I, an escape from Europe to the United States, and an attempt to revive Yiddish culture after World War II. Finally, as Kahan Newman notes, it was an ironic twist of fate "that Kadya's death was noted in the U.S., where she felt increasingly alien, and ignored in Israel, where she felt she belonged, if only in spirit.

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Courtly love and feminism are strange bedfellows, the one a controversial literary concept, and the other a continuing crusade. Both can be taken seriously or ridiculed. In this incisive book, Antonia Southern tries to do both with both. Courtly Love focuses a feminist lens on fourteen authors, some well-known and some less so. They aimed variously to entertain, amuse, instruct, make money, or please themselves. Marie de France is the supreme example of the last category. Sir Thomas Malory wrote in prison and needed to pass the time. Christine de Pizan wrote to make a living for herself and her family. The Knight of La Tour-Landry wrote advice for his own daughters. Sir Philip Sidney wrote for his sister and her friends. Chrétien de Troyes and Andrew Capellanus had patrons to please, and so sometimes did Geoffrey Chaucer. A historian unrepentantly trespassing in the verdant fields of English literature, Southern rejects the concept of "the Death of the Author" and the divorce of authors from their writing and seeks to understand them on their own terms.

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The Wild, Wild East recounts the adventures of late-onset Texan and international businessman Tom Meurer over a span of 55 years, from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. As a freshly commissioned Air Force lieutenant, Tom experienced a build-up to war. But it was only after billionaire H. Ross Perot wooed him into the seemingly starchy world of software engineering that Meurer traveled to wartime Vietnam and Laos, searching for evidence of 1,600 missing U.S. prisoners of war. He found himself negotiating with drug-runners, brothel owners, gold smugglers, and dangerously high-ranking diplomats. What started as a privately funded international spy-ring, ended with a privately funded tickertape parade and star-studded weekend reception in San Francisco. Years later, he returned to Vietnam, looking for oil instead of prisoners.Between trips to Southeast Asia, Meurer began working with the Nixon White House as a presidential advance man. Beyond the obvious challenges of anti-war and civil rights protests, Meurer recounts the perils of camera angles, college football fans, bathroom visits, exotic helicopter rides, and the devastating 1970 Peruvian earthquake, which killed more than 80,000 people.Meurer tells of his longtime friendship and business career with Ray Hunt, of Hunt Oil Company, and the game-changing discovery of oil in Yemen – a country "storming out of the 14th century." Ever the fish-out-of-water, he describes his travels, negotiations, and business developments in "Red China" as it began to turn capitalist in 1979. Through his role in Chinese oil exploration, private equity, personal friendships, and the nascent beef industry, Meurer witnessed the People's Republic of China's meteoric rise over the following 35 years. Along the way, we find him pranking communist border guards, breaking out of curfew-imposed war zone hotels and into U.S. embassies, nearly crash landing in Siberia, arrested for jogging in Albania, vacationing with the family in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and ingesting unspeakably exotic foods. He watched leaders, luminaries, lending practices, and landscapes change and change again (and then again), while collecting hotel soap, memberships to airline VIP lounges, and frequent flyer miles. He often found himself in rooms with presidents, prime ministers, sheikhs, and village chiefs as history was happening.In true Forest Gumpian fashion, The Wild, Wild East is a study in best-case scenario of wit + energized wonder + proximity to wealth. Through the opportunities presented by Perot and Hunt, Dallas billionaires who were employers but became dear family friends, Meurer found himself living his best life, one of worldwide adventure while simply having fun, making an honest living, and helping the truest of people and best of friends.These are stories of one man's life – the career, adventures, and impressive people, friends, axioms, discoveries, events, cultures, and institutions he encountered along the way.

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Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam discusses theoretical ideas, interpretations, and paleontological evidence to narrate the origin and evolutionary story of Sapiens through the transitional stages of archaic human species involved in the evolutionary pilgrimage, from the great apes and to modern humans. Author Subir Ranjan Kundu investigates the DNA footprints of primates – great apes, archaic humans, and anatomically modern human beings – to stretch out the missing links between evolutionary milestones to define and redefine the progress of life.The origin and evolution of Humans have always remained a source of debate between the creationists and evolutionists, in terms of recognizing the results of such researches on biological evolution and its credible interpretation of the evolutionists who upheld the origin and evolution of "Sapiens" resulting from great apes in course of the gradual evolutionary progress of life. Kundu analyzes interpretations of molecular and evolutionary geneticists over the last four decades and presents detailed illustrations on the matrilineal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (represented by mitochondrial Eve as primordial mother), patrilineal inheritance of Y-chromosomal DNA (represented by Y-chromosomal Adam as primordial father). He also presents elaborate structural aspects of the human genome and molecular aspects of the DNA footprint of Sapiens. This book is addressed to heterogeneous readers, graduate, and post-graduate students, research scientists and the general public interested in the origins and biological evolution of humans in view of molecular phylogenetics.

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By drawing on the opposing ideas of Carl Jung and Karl Marx, James Driscoll's develops fresh perspectives on urgent contemporary problems. Jung and Marx as thinkers, Driscoll contends, carry the projections of archetypal complexes that go back to the hostile Old Testament brothers Cain and Abel, whose enduring tensions shape our postmodern era. Because Marxism elevates the group over the individual, it is made to order for bureaucrats and bureaucracy's patron archetype, Leviathan. Jungian individuation offers a corrective rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic's affirmation of the ultimate value of free individuals. Although Marxism's promise of justice gives it demagogic appeal, the party betrays that promise through opportunism and a primitive ethic of retribution. Marxism's supplanting the Judeo-Christian ethic with bureaucracy's "only following orders," Driscoll maintains, has created the moral paralysis of our time. As Jung and writers like Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Elias Canetti have warned us, the influence of our ever-expanding bureaucracies is a grave threat to the survival of civilized humanity.The primary issues Driscoll addresses include the natures of justice and the soul, individuation and freedom, and mankind's responsibilities within the planetary ecology. Religion, ethics, economics, science, class divisions, immigration, financial fraud, abortion, and affirmative action are also explored in his analysis of the powerful archetypes moving behind Jung and Marx.

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The Emergence of the French Public Intellectual provides a working definition of "public intellectuals" in order to clarify who they are and what they do. It then follows their varied itineraries from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the nineteenth century. Public intellectuals became a fixture in French society during the Dreyfus Affair but have a long history in France, as the contributions of Christine de Pizan, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo, among many others, illustrate. The French novelist Émile Zola launched the Dreyfus Affair when he published "J'Accuse," an open letter to French President Félix Faure denouncing a conspiracy by the government and army against Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish and had been wrongly convicted of treason three years earlier. The consequent emergence of a publicly-engaged intellectual created a new, modern space in intellectual life as France and the world confronted the challenges of the twentieth century.

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Football effects the lives of many in substantial ways. This book first addresses the notion that this is "merely entertainment." The significance of why football emerged atypically in Texas is discussed as well as what this portends for American society. Unsurprisingly, Texan disparities in income and racial segregation dissolved in the mirage that all people are equal at game time as spectators. Major institutions such as the military additionally mesh with the ethos of pro football in various ways. The marked regional rivalries of the Dallas Cowboys are emblematic in a society of other polarizations, including political, racial, and gender conflicts. What is needed are substantive and constructive approaches to societal problems instead of ongoing destructive palliatives.

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Opium Consumption and Experience in India offers a "cultural biography" of opium in the subcontinent. It spans the Raj and India after independence. The book examines the "social lives" of opium in India, beginning as a commodity in the sixteenth century to its social transformation and singularization in the eighteenth century, and its decline from the mid-nineteenth century to obsolescence in the twentieth century to new "paths and diversions" in our own times. The book attempts to illuminate how opium came to occupy a central place in the "cultures of consumption" and also in the socio-economic and political life of a people. How did opium become embedded in a social ethos where it not only served as a social lubricant but soon morphed into a narco-identity for the people of India. The identification of India as a land of "great opium eaters" spawned the propaganda of a "civilizing mission" that ushered in a new era of material exploitation and political domination. This had a significant impact on the development and regulation of opium and its use.

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How Rampage Killers Interpret Their World addresses a question that recently has become disturbingly persistent: "What compels a person or a pair without notice and seemingly without any foreseeable benefit to attack numerous individuals, many of whom are strangers, in a single setting?" It considers that query from the vantage point of psychological circumspection – not as evidence of social fragmentation or historical turbulence. In doing so, it fills in the sketch for the seemingly random stimuli for rampage assaults by tracing the sequential development of motivators: the constitutional mindset of the murderer, his disenfranchisement from humanitarian norms, vindictive obsession, fantasy-driven planning, willful (though detached) engagement, and finally the bloody aftermath. The integrative design links the perspectives of three populations that have typically been treated as distinct – school annihilators, workplace avengers, and public executioners. Further, as expert psychologist S. Lee Funk demonstrates, such mass violence is rarely utilitarian but frequently performative. Throughout the work, carefully sourced theory, scientific data, and analytical biographies inform the analysis's premises, observations, and conclusions. Synthesizing research from multiple disciplines with carefully constructed case studies, the work once and for all puts to rest the prevailing mystique of the sudden rampaging assailant and reveals the predictable, premeditative nature of the crime. Central to the criminological autopsies are analyses of the words and deeds of the murderers themselves – before, during, and after their massacres.

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Until now, the influential agents in rampage killings have been described with unsatisfactory generalizations or chalked up to unconscious impulses. Instead of simply attributing lethal decision-making to distorted thinking, Why Rampage Killers Emerge proffers a conceptual tableau to explain the genesis of the mentality that engages in sudden acts of mass violence. Renowned psychologist S. Lee Funk applies psychiatric theory, case study methods, and statistical tools to define the external circumstances and excavate the internalized misconceptions necessary for the formation of a rampage mindset. Given the breadth of the construct and the anecdotal patterns supporting its categorization, there should be little doubt that an autogenic assailant will conform to the descriptive model diligently surveyed in this text. While by no means excusing the perpetrators of unprovoked mass attacks, this study does offer an explanation for the origins of the foreboding thought processes at work and contains valuable diagnostic implications. As such, it will be useful to mental professionals, school administrators, law enforcement professionals, business managers, and the public at large in the prevention of repeated acts of deadly spectacle. Dr. Funk's premises are studiously supported by rigorous scholarship and engagingly written to attract attentive readers.

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Since the first randomized controlled studies were conducted on medical circumcision to assess their effectiveness on reducing HIV transmission, health systems have made considerable progress in adopting this practice in their HIV/AIDS and sexual reproductive health policies. As such, medical circumcision is being adopted as an additional intervention measure to support previous practices for reducing HIV infections in various countries or settings.James Kityo’s pioneering book examines contexts, processes, policy projections, and likely engagements by reviewing sexual reproductive health policies or practices, and literature on medical circumcision, and identifies existing opportunities and challenges. His book also explores the medical, gender, ethical, socio-economic, and human rights dimensions of medical circumcision as an HIV/AIDS prevention method.Following peer-reviewed studies, Kityo found compelling evidence documenting the effectiveness of medical circumcision in reducing HIV transmission, and discusses this evidence in the context of HIV/AIDS in a developing health system in Sub-Saharan Africa. The author concludes that there is a range of opportunities from research and current practice to enable policy makers to adopt medical circumcision and other interventions at their disposal in order to reduce infections from HIV and AIDS-related deaths. The author suggests feasible recommendations for implementing successful HIV/AIDS prevention programs in developing nations’ health systems, including medical circumcision’s gradual inclusion in health practices; stakeholder support; an elaborate review of this intervention by women, politicians, religious communities, and funding agencies. The author introduces a guided action plan, which can be used as a launch pad to enhance the learning process in the integration of medical circumcision in existing health practices.

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The Perfect Officer focuses on the careers of a group of brilliant officers from the Napoleonic Wars and up to our own times: what they did right, what they did wrong, and what lessons they drew from their experiences. The book's recurring theme is the importance of imagination, and it demonstrates how these men were constantly inspired by each other and borrowed each other's ideas. A number of these lessons are equally applicable in the civilian sphere, with one notable difference: If a business leader errs, he may lose his position or his investment. An officer risks losing his life and the lives of the men entrusted to his command.

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Shenoute of Atripe and the Rise of Monastic Education in Egypt addresses the monastic teachings of Shenoute of Atripe, an Egyptian author and monastic leader of the fourth and fifth centuries CE, as well as the literary and cultural context of his teachings. The first chapter provides basic notions of Shenoute and explores the chronology of his life. Considering both known elements and new hints, it offers a new chronology that challenges the traditionally accepted reconstruction, especially with regard to the date of Shenoute's death. The second chapter focuses on Shenoute's educational background, particularly the hypothesis that Shenoute received a classical Greek education before becoming a monk. The last three chapters offer an analysis of the education offered by Shenoute, by his monastic predecessors in Egypt, and by Shenoute's successor Besa.

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Folktales of Mizoram is a translated collection of sixty-six short stories from northeast India taken up for a critical evaluation. The stories depict a typical Mizo culture in spirit and practice. This study focuses on the transformation of oral literature into written narratives. Folk practices, folk medicine, folk narratives, traditional songs, and received wisdom dominate these stories. A more insightful approach into folk narratives and songs emphasizes the world of new hermeneutics. The land, the culture, the language, the traditions have been remarkably explored through an elegant reading and evaluation of this collection. Antiquity speaks through the folk tales. The spirit of folktales becomes one of unique exploration of hermeneutics in the end.

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For the past three decades, Sino-African relations have attracted widespread coverage for the political, economic, and diplomatic engagements between African countries and China, as well as grassroots interactions and encounters between Africans and Chinese. Such engagements and interactions feature controversies, tensions, and biases fueled by the subjective viewpoints of various actors and observers. China in Africa examines these issues following interviews with African and Chinese policymakers, diplomats, professionals, and corporate managers. It also includes discussions, observations, and interviews with the members of the general public in Senegal, Namibia, and South Africa, as well as in China. It includes four key areas of Sino-African relations: economic relations, environmental and sustainable development issues, African migration to China, and Chinese migration to Africa.

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Research Methodology for Social and Legal Studies seeks to harness insights from both social and legal methods to promote interdisciplinary research. This is important because of the increasingly close relationship between social and legal issues in contemporary times. Chapters include: "Research Design," "A Critical Analysis of Legal Research Methodology," "The Relevance of History in Social and Legal Research," "Methods of Data Collection in Social and Legal Research and Referencing Styles." The uniqueness of this book makes it beneficial for scholars and other researchers to acquire diverse skills for conducting interdisciplinary research. The editors and contributors offer invaluable experience in pedagogical and practical aspects of research methods.

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As the beating drums within the United States for a war with Iran grow louder, it is important, now more than ever, to understand precisely how and why neo-conservatives have chosen to orchestrate a sustained and coordinated campaign for a U.S. attack on Iran, or short of that, support an Israeli strike against the Islamic Republic's nuclear technology facilities. This campaign is aimed at convincing U.S. politicians, and policy- and decision-makers, that the Iranian regime is inherently evil and dangerous, and is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of attacking Israel. This study breaks down some of the key rhetorical techniques neo-conservatives have utilized in this campaign, which gained serious momentum following the official withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq from 2007-2011 and the ratifying of the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015. It also locates and dissects the origins and the nature of the political and religious sources inspiring these choices, exploring the motivating roles played by ideas such as U.S., Israeli, and Jewish exceptionalism, and the concept of the End Times. While this work is heavily geared towards focusing on how and why the neo-conservatives have chosen to engage themselves in the war of ideas about the 'true nature' of the Iranian regime, its people and their intentions, it also addresses the 'bricks and mortar;' aspect of the neo-conservative network primarily operating in and around Washington D.C. and New York.

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In this book eminent philosopher Burton Porter examines the concept of “forbidden knowledge” in religion, science, government, and psychology. From the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden (forbidden fruit), to world altering scientific research (nuclear power, stem-cells, cloning) to damning government secrets (Abu Ghraib, domestic spying), to traumatic experiences that individuals want to repress (sexual abuse), humanity has encountered knowledge that has been hidden and suppressed. We experience this denial as a loss of control and respect, and we want to know exactly what knowledge has been prohibited and why we cannot have access to it. Forbidden knowledge, therefore, is of enormous interest to the general public.The basic question, then, is: when, if ever, should knowledge be forbidden? Are there sacred realms that human beings are not meant to explore? Can scientific research be a Frankenstein monster, which will harm us one day? When are government secrets necessary for national security, and when does the public have a right to know? Is too much information classified? When do databanks, eavesdropping, and surveillance invade our privacy? Is self-deception justified if the truth would be psychologically disturbing? In short, can we know more than is good for us?The author takes the general position that too much material is prohibited, especially today, even while business and government invade individual privacy more and more. A primary assumption in a democracy is that we can have confidence in the people, so information should not be forbidden unless there is a vital and compelling reason to withhold it.

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This collection of essays reflect the prolific philosopher David Kuhrt’s prescient thesis that subjectivity can be bypassed, thereby exploding the myth of positivist philosophy. In bypassing intuition with abstract ideas, “science,” as we have described it, has informed the notion of Western imperialism in the Middle East, from the dogmatic Christianity of the medieval Papacy through transnational corporate investment today. Kuhrt argues that Western intellect and abstract truths still prevail at the expense of practicality, negotiation, and face-to-face meetings. By supporting militant Israeli nationalism, the philosophical foundations of conflict and nationhood refuse all discourse with neighboring Muslim peoples.

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Literary critics have aptly noted that death is arguably the most frequent topic, theme, or occurrence in all of American literature. Naturally, the works of such authors as Charles Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Kate Chopin, Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King, among countless others, go to great lengths to support this observation; however, the renowned nineteenth-century American literary giant Herman Melville, most famous as the author of Moby Dick, has been frequently overlooked. In this book, seasoned literary scholar Corey Evan Thompson seeks to remedy this oversight.Death in Herman Melville’s Fiction: Melville’s “Memento Mori” is the first full-length study to examine the ubiquity and implications of death in Melville’s prose fiction. As Thompson shows, death occurs in all of Melville’s novels and much of his shorter fiction by various means. Not only is death a frequent occurrence in Melville’s fiction, but his characters die regardless of age, health, social status, or moral character. Drawing from his father’s death, Melville’s fiction provides his readers with the difficult realization that it is the inevitable destination for everyone who is on this journey called life.

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In this engaging study, theatre scholar Robert J. Andreach argues, in what will be his final book, that the contemporary American theatre merits appreciation for dramatizing experiences in genres that jostle the audience into thinking about the experiences in new ways, based on five units of analysis: the naturalistic play, modernist theatre, trilogies, tragedy, and comedy. Andreach’s insights maintain that familiarity with these five units should stimulate thinking about the experiences and what they reveal about contemporary American life and the ways in which the theatre can dramatize that life.

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The distinguished Russian archeologist Aleksei P. Okladnikov’s study reveals how a field archeologist goes about determining and writing prehistory. Over the course of his career, Okladnikov and his wife Vera Zaporozhskaya travelled across Siberia from the Lena River in the north to the Amur River in the south excavating archaeological sites. During that time Aleksei and Vera found and interpreted the rock art of the vast region from the Paleolithic Era to the present day. Relying on petroglyphs and pictographs left on cliffs and boulders, Okladnikov lays out in detail and straightforward language the prehistory of Siberia by “reading” these artifacts. This book permits the past to be told in its own words: the art portrayed on the cliffs of Siberia.

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In the first part of this book, noted legal scholar Dimtris Liakopoulos deals with reconstructing the legal regulatory framework governing human rights violations in the activities of organizations. After identifying rules that are generally applicable to organizations’ offenses and govern the profile of reparations, this study assesses primary rules that guarantee the right to an effective remedy. Liakopoulos then moves on to how this works in practice, examining the reparations obtainable by an individual in disputes between states and organizations. This includes, for example, damages caused by the United Nations in the context of force operations and requests for the cancellation or modification of sanctions unjustly imposed by the UN’s Sanctions Committee. The author then assesses enforcement practices, highlighting the limits of diplomatic protection from the perspective of protecting individual interests and enhancing some recent tendencies of “humanizing” institutions in question.

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In the post-Cold War era, religion and religious extremism has been the cause of most violent conflicts, thereby posing one of the major security challenges confronting the world and, in recent years, the stability and security of the African continent. Unfortunately, some states targeted by terrorist insurgencies, including Nigeria and Kenya, have been reactive, adopting coercive responses rather than proactive long-term measures to address the factors and drivers of religious extremism in a comprehensive and sustained manner. Confronting Islamist Terrorism in Africa: The Cases of Nigeria and Kenya addresses the fragility of state institutions in terms of their ability and capacity to manage diversity, corruption, inequality, human rights violations, environmental degradation, weak security, and judicial problems, as well as the current security challenges in Africa. It also serves as an indispensable comparative study evaluating the similarities and differences in two nations’ approaches to the war on terror in Africa.

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The Role of Customs in International Treaties concentrates on issues of friction between member states of the United Nations. In view of the role played by the United Nations in resolving international disputes, Dimitris Liakopoulos hypothesizes that ""practical guides"" based on custom often catalyze the positions taken by states, courts, scholars, and other actors, constituting an ""orthodox"" position against which formulaic legal opposition will become predictably more difficult. In addition to reiterating what some would say are obvious, on some particularly controversial issues, the United Nations has essentially chosen not to take a position and allowed customs to define conflict resolution.

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The past decade has overflowed in a raging stream of contradictions. Old certainties have yielded to relentless insecurity over a time when much of the human experience got immeasurably better even as many things only ever seemed to get worse. As Paul du Quenoy’s globetrotting criticism reveals, the arts were in a ferment that matched profound and yet totally unpredicted social and political transformations. Balanced, sometimes precariously, against the demands of an absurd and increasingly superfluous academic career, du Quenoy spent the 2010s seeking enlightenment, inspiration, and, above all, diversion, in total works of art all over the world, ranging from the traditional cultural capitals to humbler and more remote surroundings. Peering through the prism of performance, Through the Years With Prince Charming offers a unique bird’s eye view of art and life in a changing world.

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In Autonomy and Cooperation, noted legal scholar Dimitris Liakpolous explores the content of powers attributed by the Statute of Rome to United Nations Security Council. It begins by investigating the power to activate the investigations of the prosecutor before examining the power to suspend judicial activity. The book then defines the characteristics of Security Council intervention in the context of cooperation and judicial assistance and examines prerogatives regarding the crime of aggression. The study concludes with an appreciation of the effect of Security Council action on the jurisdictional activity of the International Criminal Court. Final considerations aim to examine the relevance of the possible coordination models of the action of the two bodies, proposed during this introduction, in defining the forms that the interactions between the two bodies.

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The purpose of The Jewish Communities in New England is to inform readers about the Jewish community in each of the six New England States: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Factual, inspirational, and poetic, it serves as a scholarly guide to institutions of Jewish life in this dynamic American region. Stocked with valuable information about community, schools, restaurants, and synagogues, Keith Warwick’s study will appeal to members of the Jewish community, sociologists, teachers, cultural anthropologists, and the general reader.

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Nwankwo Nwaezeigwe’s revelatory study of the Igbo people and their Nri neighbors presents a paradigm shift in the interpretation of Igbo history and culture. British colonial ethnography held that the Nri, who form part of a larger Igbo subgroup named Umunri, are the scions of a remote historical kingdom that once ruled the entire Igbo land. It further advanced the thesis that before the coming of the Nri, the Igbo as an ethnic group had no culture defined as Igbo except what the Nri introduced to become what is defined today as Igbo culture. By this definition of origin, Politics, Culture, and Origins in Nigeria posits that the Nri were not originally Igbo but recent immigrants from Igala kingdom of Idah who arrived in the early sixteenth century and that the Nri origin myth is factually and historically invalid.

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This pioneering translation of Plato’s Phaedrus, with detailed summary and full philological and exegetical notes taking into consideration all commentaries since Hermias, followed by a painstaking dialogical analysis of the text that shows what we must think at every moment in order to understand the thinking that brings the Greek text to life.In Kenneth Quandt’s treatment, Plato’s seminal work is allowed to create its own horizon and a new and profoundly unified interpretation emerges: Socrates’s conversation with Phaedrus reaches a vision of eros that explains the paradoxes of human nature, explodes the zero-sum game of master and slave, exposes the crabbed fetishism of the written word, and releases the mind to a life of contemplation fixed in a cloudless noon.

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This critical volume of essays explores how texts and literary theories interrelate and interconnect different principles of critical evaluation. Reading for pleasure is different from reading for aesthetic sensibility. To read literature is to seek experience but interpreting the text is to add perspective. A skilled reader will apply multiple lenses to the same text to explore how different texts and theories interact with each other. The Mirror and the Reflections collects various approaches to literary theory from a postcolonial perspective. It offers an invaluable resource for those who wish to familiarize themselves with multifaceted approaches to literature.

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Subjugate or Exterminate! is an authoritative first-hand account of the Russo-Chechen conflict by a Chechen leader who played a central role in all the main events. Akhmed Zakayev rose rapidly from an actor of Shakespearean roles to Commander of the Western Group for the Defense of Ichkeria, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya and, in exile, as Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). It describes how the Kremlin set about discrediting and destroying a democratic government by interacting with criminal gangs and fomenting Islamist forces to split the Chechen independence movement in a perverse reversal of the “War on Terror.”Akhmed Zakayev’s memoir begins with a historical survey of the fraught relations between the Chechens and the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, up to the collapse of the USSR. The advent of Gorbachev’s Perestroika raised hopes that independence might enable Chechnya to end centuries of oppression and exploitation.Russia’s first war against Chechnya (1994-1996), initially conceived by the military as a way of disguising the large-scale theft and embezzlement of funds from illegal sales of Soviet armaments during the withdrawal from East Germany, ended in humiliating defeat for Russia. Thereafter, Russia set about subverting the democratically elected government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by instigating the gruesome murder of Western humanitarian aid workers and business partners, and by financing criminal gangs and anti-democratic Islamist groups that the ChRI police were unable to subdue. Interference by nationals of countries in the Middle East caused further disruption. In August 1999, Russia launched a brutal second war in Chechnya, on grounds widely believed to be fabricated and characterized by widespread war crimes. The West did not intervene. This is an eyewitness account of the dangers faced by the Chechen leaders as they tried to resist and negotiate with a treacherous opponent. It ends in the year 2000, with Vladimir Putin’s election as Russia’s president.

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In Tradition and Emancipation, Japanese scholar Megumi Ohsumi explores the mimetic encounters of classical material across Alexander Pope’s poetry. Focusing particularly on Pope’s Horatian Imitations, Ohsumi attempts to identify the extent to which mimesis plays a role in Pope’s oeuvre. Horace has remained one of the central Roman figures in classical tradition, and Renaissance humanism propelled Western European writers to explore his life and career and weave them into their own creative accounts. Poets could easily identify with Horace, and they turned to him for channels through which to intimate ideological strife and vicissitudes of life, often as dislocated individuals in their native lands. While retaining interauthorial quality in his textual output, Pope metamorphoses into his own independent self as artist and poet as he evinces a renewed hope for his contemporary England. Ohsumi attempts to maintain a phenomenological outlook in delving deeper than surface appearance, so as to avoid reductionism in the endeavor to penetrate Pope’s intentions and perceptions.

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