Search results for ""author peter hill""

''An outstanding intellectual biography.'' Eugene Rogan In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha’il Mishaqa’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith - Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together. By tracing Mishaqa’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually

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Hadrian's Wall was a small part of the thousands of miles of Roman frontiers, but presents the most magnificent spectacle. Its 90-mile length was conceived on a grand scale, with a stone wall 10 Roman feet thick and 15 high, and has been the subject of research for four centuries. There is, however, one aspect which has never been studied in detail: the practicalities of how it was actually built.This book examines every aspect of the work needed to construct the Wall, and analyses all the building operations including quarrying, stone dressing, transport and scaffolding. It is presented in a form accessible to the interested layman as well as to the student, and among other new conclusions throws light on the attitude of the Roman army to the work.

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This reassuring guide explains prescribed ADHD medicines for children in clear, everyday language. Based on questions the author has received from countless families in his work as a Consultant Psychiatrist, the expert information in this book answers the most pressing questions a parent will have about ADHD medicines: how they work, what they do, what is available and how to talk about them to your children. This book sheds light on why not all medicines are easily available, the differences between certain medications and their level of effectiveness, all based on scientific evidence. This information will support parents in discussions with medical professionals, explaining the practicalities and demystifying the terminology around medication and treatments. The book also provides insights into the decisions behind prescribing certain medicines and how they should be taken. Armed with this guide, parents - as well as teachers and others working with kids with ADHD - can feel confident and assured when their child is prescribed treatments for ADHD.

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Price is the most significant factor affecting the profitability of every business, profit centre or department. When the pressure is on to perform or grow, your instinct may be to discount, undercut your competitors, cut costs and promote through price. Yet these are often the last things you should do. Pricing for Profit is the most practical guide on pricing available. Using a firm, profit-focused framework developed running real projects for real businesses, this book shows you how by getting your pricing structures right you can make a huge difference to your bottom line. It gives business owners, managers and leaders simple, achievable pricing strategies that will deliver sustainable business growth. Can you afford to leave money on the table? If not, Pricing for Profit is the guide for you.

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When Peter Hill, a student at Dundee College of Art, answered an advert in The Scotsman seeking lighthouse keepers, little did he imagine that within a month he would be living with three men he didn't know in a lighthouse on Pladda, a small remote island off the west coast of Scotland. Hill was nineteen, it was 1973 and, with his head fed by Vietnam, Zappa, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Watergate and Coronation Street, he spent six months on various lighthouses, "keeping" with all manner of unusual and fascinating people. Within thirty years this way of life was to have disappeared entirely. The resulting book is a charming and beautifully written memoir that is not only a heartfelt lament for Hill's own youth and innocence but also for a simpler and more honest age.

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Focusing on 'day one competencies', this book offers essential guidance to the most common problems encountered in small animal general practice. Addressing 100 core scenarios, it is ideal for the undergraduate or newly qualified vet, and for those seeking an up-to-date refresher. Organized by presenting sign (diarrhoea, itching) or disease (diabetes mellitus, pancreatitis), and with colour illustration throughout, each chapter explains: how to make a diagnosis which interventions are most appropriate in general practice what the vet should say to the client before and after examination The authors also offer invaluable advice on other key topics such as annual health checks, neutering and euthanasia, and they tackle the tough questions: What if it doesn't get better? What is the low cost option? When should I refer? Never before has so much practical information been brought together in a single volume. Like having an experienced or specialist clinician standing by your side in the consulting room, 100 Top Consultations will become a trusted companion for students and practitioners alike.

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The French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) is a musician about whom most remains to be discovered. More than a decade after his death our knowledge of Messiaen is largely conditioned by what he said about himself in lectures and interviews, in his work as a teacher, and in the monumental seven-volume treatise that encompassed the whole of his composing world. But Messiaen’s public documents conceal as much as they reveal, seldom explaining why a work was written or what complexities went into its making. The composer was similarly reticent about his private life.This is the first book to explore the world that Messiaen was at pains to keep hidden. Based upon unprecedented access to Messiaen’s private archive granted to the authors by the composer’s widow, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone trace the origins of many of Messiaen’s greatest works and place them in the context of his life, from his years at the Paris Conservatoire and his passionate first marriage to Claire Delbos through the immense achievements of his final decades.

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What makes Oiseaux exotiques so important is that it is arguably the first of Messiaen's major works to create a successful synthesis between his music and his passion for ornithology. The earliest composition to use birdsong to a significant extent was the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (1940-41). A newspaper interview a few years later (France-Soir, 1948) demonstrates Messiaen's growing desire to move away from the stylization that had characterized the Quatuor towards a much greater realism, based on a close observation of birds in their natural habitat. At the same time, Messiaen continued to regard birdsong as music - and divinely inspired music at that - a belief that led for a time to an obsession with truth-to-nature. Against this background, Oiseaux exotiques proves to be a landmark, the work in which Messiaen the musician began to regain the upper hand over Messiaen the ornithologist. The introductory chapter (Chapter 1) outlines the background to Oiseaux exotiques, discussing Messiaen's relations with the 1950s avant garde - in particular with his former pupil Pierre Boulez - and his involvement with the concerts of the Domaine musical, for which Oiseaux exotiques was composed. In Chapter 2, access to Messiaen's sketches enables the authors to analyse his compositional methods in unprecedented detail; a generous number of music examples refer to birdsong recordings actually used by Messiaen (which can be heard on the accompanying CD), and trace step-by-step the evolution of musical ideas from first notation to finished score. Chapter 3 provides a commentary on the music, investigating issues of continuity and texture, and revealing the processes underlying the score's dazzling profusion. In two further chapters Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone recount the reception history of Oiseaux exotiques, and compare recorded interpretations, taking as their point of departure the historic premiere, included in full on the CD. Finally, the Conclusion considers

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