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"From Washington to Jefferson, Lincoln to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Kennedy to Nixon, Reagan to Obama and Biden, the 45 United States presidents have left lasting impacts on our nation. Some of their legacies continue today, some are justly forgotten, and some have changed as America has changed. ... The authors' ... research has uncovered never before seen historical facts based on private correspondence and newly discovered documentation, such as George Washington's troubled relationship with his mother. In [their book], O'Reilly and Dugard present 45 ... entertaining and insightful portraits of each president, with no-spin commentary on their achievements--or lack thereof. Who best served America, and who undermined the founding ideals? Who were the first ladies, and what were their surprising roles in making history? Which presidents were the best, which the worst, and which didn't have much impact?"--
The handbook represents an important step towards dissemination of skills and knowledge in cardiovascular CT. It is a concise and practical companion, to benefit students, trainees or advanced users; cardiologists, radiologists, cardiac surgeons or technicians, in their everyday practice.
"[Kaufman] tells the story brilliantly. Anyone interested in the Middle East or military history will appreciate Kaufman's work."-Senator Joseph I. Lieberman "Stimulating and insightful...will no doubt find a permanent place on the Arab-Israeli bookshelf."-Michael Oren, New York Times bestselling author of Six Days of WarOctober 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East. The War was a trauma for Israel, a dangerous superpower showdown, and, following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order. The Jewish State came shockingly close to defeat. A panicky cabinet meeting debated the use of nuclear weapons. After the war, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in disgrace, and a 9/11-style commission investigated the "debacle."But, argues Uri Kaufman, from the perspective of a half century, the War can be seen as a pivotal victory for Israel. After nearly being routed, the Israeli Defense Force clawed its way back to threaten Cairo and Damascus. In the war's aftermath both sides had to accept unwelcome truths: Israel could no longer take military superiority for granted-but the Arabs could no longer hope to wipe Israel off the map. A straight line leads from the battlefields of 1973 to the Camp David Accords of 1978 and all the treaties since. Like Michael Oren's Six Days of War, this is the definitive account of a critical moment in history.
'For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings' Crowned as a child, Richard II only knows power. The King's court tire of his fickle, greedy reign, but it is only when he exiles his own cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, and attempts to steal his inheritance that they are pushed to act. What follows threatens Richard's crown and with it his sense of self. Shakespeare's most tragic history play uses the rich and messy familial web of monarchy to explore what it means to crave power, to hold it, to fight to take it, and to lose it. Richard II is Shakespeare's most human and tragic history play, a story about the ways power distorts a ruler's sense of self. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.' In Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, the Roman general Titus incurs the wrath of the Queen of the Goths when he enslaves her and kills one of her sons. The shocking violence of her revenge and his retaliation earn Titus its reputation as Shakespeare's bloodiest play. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition offers a range of critical approaches to the play, considering its initial popularity in the theatre, the authors' engagement with narrative sources and Roman history, and the ongoing problems scholars and theatremakers have had with the play's presentation of violence, rape, and racial difference. Throughout, it incorporates up-to-date scholarship and close readings of a number of landmark productions to consider the play's place in Shakespeare's canon and to illustrate Titus Andronicus's enduring value in interrogating some of wider culture's darkest and most challenging concerns. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtuesWe write in water.' Henry VIII or All is True is Shakespeare's retelling of one of the defining periods in English history: the marriage and divorce of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Written in the wake of the sudden death of Henry Stuart, King James I and VI's oldest son and heir, Shakespeare's most 'contemporary' history play offers provocative parallels between the Tudor past and Stuart present. The play examines the rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cranmer, and Anne Boleyn, providing both a meditation on history as a narrative dictated by Church and State, and on the tragic lives of those who become collateral damage to greater forces. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'I liv'd indeed like a Queen; or if you will have me confess, that my Condition had still the Reproach of a Whore, I may say, I was sure, the Queen of Whores.' Left destitute by her husband, the heroine of Defoe's final novel has to choose between her virtue and her life. Choosing survival, she makes her way as a kept woman and courtesan. The Fortunate Mistress (1724), also known under the title Roxana, tells the story of how she climbs society's ladder by dint of her own enterprise, shedding and gaining multiple identities as she moves through the worlds of business and finance, and across the trade capitals of Europe. Amassing a fortune, her taste for men and luxuries veers increasingly to the aristocratic and exotic, culminating when she dances before the King at a masquerade dressed in the garb of a Turkish Sultana--at which point she is granted the name by which she is known to history, Roxana. Despite her rise, Roxana's past never recedes from view, and her choices eventally begin to weigh on her, prompting an excruciating self-reckoning that is only compounded as the children she has abandoned return, threatening to expose this past to public view. Defoe resists easy solutions in a sprawling and complex novel which shows an unprecedented degree of psychological realism: readers experience the interplay of circumstance, need, desire, religion, and social convention that can allow the development of a moral sense, or conspire to suppress it. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
In 2007, Russia launched a hybrid war on the West to preserve its influence in the "lands in between" Russia and the European Union (EU), countries that had left the Soviet Union and gravitated towards an enlarged EU and NATO. Since Russia's meddling in the US presidential election in 2016 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this conflict has altered the politics of all countries involved. Just as the lands in between face a civilizational choice between a future in EU Europe or a revived Russian empire, Western countries must choose between dictatorship and democracy. Yet some politicians benefit from maneuvering between both sides in a conflict that seems to demand loyalty, but often rewards flexibility. This book shows that studying the polarized politics that have afflicted the lands in between for decades helps us to better understand the paradoxes of Western politics in an age of hybrid war.
'This travel book is truly a labyrinth--or, more precisely, a piece of the labyrinth that it has been my fate to wander, from the cradle to the grave.' Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth (1792-93) is a genre-bending and highly personal travel book that follows the young Danish author's journey, made in 1789, from Copenhagen through Germany to the Swiss border at Basel. In its outer form, it follows the conventions of travel writing: describing the cities, landscapes, and notable people encountered on the route, while also offering critical commentary on art, architecture, theatre, and literature, mixed with reactions to the unfolding French Revolution. However, Baggesen finds contemporary travel writing to be pedantic and dry and is determined to make his own account as engaging and personal as possible. Based on the principle that 'nothing is more necessary in a volume of travels than a traveller', the narrative eschews a focus on prescribed sights and instead foregrounds his individual responses to the places and people he encounters. Baggesen's account of his journey is not simply sentimental, but rather moves through an array of different, often conflicting affective and intellectual register: from dejection to wit, whimsy, and ebullient joy, including enchanted observations of nature as well as cosmopolitan reveries about the brotherhood of nations. Similarly, the prose style of the book---always acknowledged as a key feature--is determinedly eclectic. A richly varied compendium of literary styles, attitudes, and philosophical ideas, brought to life in a new English translation by Jesper Gulddal, The Labyrinth offers a rare glimpse into the mind of an endlessly thinking, feeling, and imagining traveller at a pivotal moment in European history. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring This Very Short Introduction introduces the life, work, and influence of one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Sophocles the Athenian. Placing his plays within their historical context, and explaining the conventions of ancient Greek tragic theatre, Edith Hall spotlights their distinctive features-tight plots, titanic personalities, lucid style, sympathetic women, exquisite poetry, and stagecraft. This analysis is followed by an account of how and why Sophoclean dramas have survived to be read and widely performed into the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring This Very Short Introduction to psycholinguistics is an accessible and engaging description of how people use language. Talking and understanding language probably seem like simple and straightforward skills, but research in psycholinguistics has shown that complex computations take place behind the scenes when you communicate with others. Recent debates concerning how AI tools such as ChatGPT work highlight some of these core questions about the language faculty and how it is that humans comprehend, produce, and learn language. The book begins with an overview of the fields of linguistics and psychology and how they have cooperated from the earliest days of psycholinguistics. It then considers how words and sentences are interpreted, how they are generated, and how human conversation is coordinated. The book also reviews research on reading, sign language processing, and bilingualism. The closing chapter summarizes where the field is heading, with a brief discussion of Large Language Models, the role of Information Theory, the growing emphasis on the neurobiology of language, and the increasing diversity of research in psycholinguistics, both with respect to the languages studied and the backgrounds and histories of language researchers. Issues that are considered include: (1) How successfully do people adapt what they say to the needs of their audience when they design their phrases and sentences? (2) How do people read languages such as Chinese, which do not use an alphabetic writing system? (3) Do the size and efficiency of a person's memory affect how effectively people use language? (4) Is bilingualism cognitively advantageous, and if so, what are the mechanisms that lead to this so-called bilingual advantage? And (5) Do users of sign language gesture when they communicate? These questions and more are answered using insights from the latest research based on methods from the cognitive and neurosciences. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
'I see a man's life is a tedious one.' Set in Ancient Britain, Cymbeline is a tragedy of deceit, disguise, banishment, and fidelity against the backdrop of a Roman invasion. When the King of Britain Cymbeline discovers his daughter's secret marriage, he banishes her husband to Rome, who then accuses Innogen of being unfaithful. Innogen must evade deadly plots and homicidal jealousy to restore her name. Long recognised as a response to James VI and I's project to unite England and Scotland, the play conjures ancient British history at a moment when that history was eroding, revealed as a medieval invention. This sense of historical endings is entangled with Cymbeline as a late play, and its numerous apparent callbacks across Shakespeare's career. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Cryptography is a part of everyday life for almost all of us, though we may not realise we're using it. We are a far cry from the historical prediction that cryptography would only be used by militaries and governments. With vast quantities of sensitive information transferred online by individuals, companies, organizations, and nation states, cryptography is increasingly important to everyone, and most of us, often without realising, use it daily. Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction demystifies the art of cryptography by tracing its historical use, explaining how it works, and providing examples of its practical use. These include online shopping, chip and PIN bank cards, and communicating via mobile phone. While many of these uses have been mainstream for some time now, the development and deployment of cryptography has changed enormously in the last twenty years. In this second edition, Sean Murphy and Rachel Player highlight the important advances in both academic cryptography research and its everyday use. Using non-technical language and without assuming advanced mathematical knowledge, they introduce symmetric and public-key cryptography and provide a detailed discussion of the design of cryptographic algorithms that are secure against quantum computers and the development of cryptographic algorithms with advanced functionalities. They also consider the new applications of cryptography such as blockchain, secure messaging apps, and electronic voting. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
'Cry "havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war' Set against the backdrop of a nation breaking out into civil war, Julius Caesar raises questions of governance, power, tyranny, and enslavement. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition situates these questions within the historical framework of the play's early history in theatre and print, as well as within its long performance history up to and including in the 21st century. The introduction examines the ways in which Roman history is deployed to justify and question political structures, both by Shakespeare and other writers, as well as the transition from historical sources to stage. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
What will remain of our plastic, cans, and other junk long after humans have vanished? What kind of fossils will we leave, as relics into the far future? A blizzard of new objects has suddenly appeared on Earth: plastic bottles, ballpoint pens, concrete flyways, outsize chicken bones, aluminium cans, teabags, mobile phones, T-shirts. They're produced for our comfort and pleasure ^—^ then quickly discarded. The number of our constructions has exploded, to outweigh the whole living world. This new-made treasure chest underpins our lives. But it is also giving a completely new style of fossilization to our planet, as hyper-diverse and hyper-rapidly-evolving technofossils spin out of our industrialized economy. Designed to resist sun, wind, rain, corrosion and decay, and buried in soils, seafloor muds and the gigantic middens of our landfill sites, many will remain, petrified, as future geology. What will these technofossils look like, in future rock? How long will they last and how will they change, as they lie underground for decades, then millennia, then millions of years? Discarded describes how they transform as they are attacked by bacteria, baked by the Earth's inner heat, squashed by overlying rock, permeated by subterranean fluids, crumpled by mountain-building movements ^—^ and what will be left of them. These new fossils also have meaning for our lives today. For we live on a world increasingly buried under our growing waste. As our discarded artefacts begin to change into fossils, they may be swallowed by birds, entangle fish, alter microbial communities and release toxins. Even deeply buried in rock, technofossils may break down into new-formed oil and gas, change the composition of groundwater, and attract new mineral growths. They will have a lasting impact. It is a new planetary phenomenon, now unfolding around us. Scientists are only just beginning to grasp its scale, and get to grips with how it functions. This book describes, for the general reader, the kind of science that is emerging to show the far-future human footprint on Earth. It offers a different perspective upon fossils and fossilization, one that expands the idea of what people think of as fossils, and what they can tell us.
'How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!' The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare's most farcical plays, with not one but two sets of twins sliding past each other into mistakes, violence, and madness. An early romantic comedy, it's often considered an immature play but also a piece of dramatic experimentation. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition examines links between Shakespeare's play and its literary sources and analogues, but also situates it within performance traditions. Illuminating points of comparison between The Comedy of Errors and Shakespeare's other comedies, as well as it's consonances with Shakespeare's later plays of estrangement and loss, this edition provides readers with a nuanced exploration of Shakespeare's shortest play. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Symbiosis, the sustained and intimate associations between unrelated life forms, is now recognized as a ubiquitous phenomenon, one that has shaped evolution since the origin of life and that continues to affect all species. This overview of symbiosis starts with a quick history of relevant early discoveries and researchers, and considers why symbiosis was so long neglected as a respectable topic of biological research and why it was a controversial topic. Today, symbiosis is widely appreciated as being everywhere in nature and as a pervasive influence on ecological communities. One chapter explores the fundamental drivers that lead to symbiotic associations, using examples ranging from sap-feeding insects to marine flatworms to coniferous forests to illustrate the nature of services exchanged between symbiotic partners. Another considers the evolutionary stability of symbiotic partnerships, which can quickly decay in the face of symbiotic cheating. Certain symbioses that have had an outsized impact on life on Earth, and on Earth itself, are given particular attention. A full chapter is devoted to the most consequential of all symbioses: the origin of the complex (eukaryotic) cell, and the origin of chloroplasts and green plants. Other triumphs of symbiosis described include the root-fungus associations that enabled plants to colonize land 450 million years ago, gut microbial communities that empower animals to utilize a wide range of foods including plant fiber wood and sap, and coral-algal symbioses that resulted in the rise of coral reefs. Analyses of genomic DNA have been important in symbiosis research, and this Very Short Introduction describes these molecular approaches, explaining how they sparked discovery of previously unknown symbionts, including those in our own bodies. Molecular data also have enabled us to understand the roles of symbionts within hosts, and the ages of symbiont-host associations, which range from hundreds of millions of years to very recent. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
An homage to the childhood genius of Black science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. Bringing to view a selection of Butler's unpublished writings and drawings, this book traces her fascination with human-alien symbiosis to her early empathy with horses and other marginalized creatures. The figure of the horse, at once earthly and transcendent, represented the contradictions of freedom and captivity that enabled young Octavia to develop her nuanced sense of voice and place. Drawing on previously unknown archival research, this volume illustrates how Butler's development as a writer was tied to her extraordinary resourcefulness and self-awareness growing up as an awkward, bookish Black girl in segregated, Cold War Pasadena. She persistently re-visited and revised her early writings on teenage angst, Martians, Westerns, and racial politics. In one way or another her supernatural characters defied the constraints of gender, race, and class with equine-inflected resilience. In the spirit of Butler's passion for library research, this book is comprised of twenty-six short A-Z chapters, on vocabulary, images, and themes central to her authorial formation. It is part childhood biography, art and literary analysis, and memoir. It interweaves the author's personal recollections with scholarly musings on poetry, film, and literature inspired by Butler's encyclopedic reading habits and experiments with genre. Just as cross-species kinships are at the heart of her Afro-futurist, eco-feminist storytelling, Butler demonstrates that coming-of-age is an ongoing process and key to healing our damaged planet.
'Forget the years, forget norms, let yourself be stirred by the boundless.' The Zhuangzi -- an anthology of anonymous writings produced in China between the fourth and second centuries BC -- is one of the world's great literary treasures and the single most important source for early Daoist philosophy. It has exerted a profound influence on Chinese thought, literature, and culture, inspiring philosophy, poetry, idioms, proverbs, and even visual art. This volume provides a complete, annotated English translation of the Zhuangzi with a philosophical focus that guides readers in understanding and appreciating the text's world of thought. Informed by traditional and recent scholarship, the translation presents the ideas, reasoning, and worldview of the Zhuangzi in smooth, idiomatic English carefully formulated to reflect the phrasing and philosophical nuances of the original Chinese. Providing a lucid, lively translation, this edition is a guidebook into the philosophy of the Zhuangzi. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Anthony Trollope is among the best-loved novelists in the English language. His strongly drawn characters and skilful plots are compelling, while his moral judgements are often subtly challenging. He is an entertainer, but his power to make his readers think, and to feel, is unrivalled. This Very Short Introduction will place Trollope's work in the context of his life and times, drawing on recent scholarship to illuminate his central interests and literary strategies. Readers will find a focussed critical guide to his writing, that will direct and inform their reading. The major series of novels (the six novels located in the fictional Barsetshire, and the six Palliser novels) are explored alongside the novels set in Ireland, his travel writing, and examples of his less well-known fiction. Trollope's work is energised by the complexities of the Victorian Britain, with its political tensions, its troubled views of the relation between men and women, its expanding place in the wider world, and its growing discomfort with the contradictions created by a corrosive preoccupation with wealth and display. But Trollope's writing is of more than historical interest. His insight into the motives of human behaviour (emotion, money, sex, and power), and of the conflict between the need for reform and the wish to defend what might be destroyed by the relentless pressure for change, feels surprisingly modern. Birch shows how his writing has retained its vivid appeal to new generations of readers. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Itchycoo Park, 1964-1970--the second volume of Sixties British Pop, Outside In--explores how London songwriters, musicians, and production crews navigated the era's cultural upheavals by reimagining the pop-music envelope. As the generation born during the postwar years approached adulthood, they gravitated to music that resonated with their lives. Mainstream pop remained true to the basics, but some British artists conjured up sophisticated hybrid forms by recombining elements of jazz, folk, blues, Indian ragas, and western classical music while others returned to the raw essentials. Encouraging these experiments, youth culture's economic power challenged the authority of their parents' generation. Improved amplification opened larger and more lucrative concert venues while the spread of studios with enhanced technologies allowed artists and production crews the means to improve performances and recordings. British charts began to reflect London's postcolonial heritage as groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who all listened for ideas and sounds that would distinguish their recordings. On stage, the Yardbirds, Cream, Led Zeppelin, the Nice, and others led by instrumental virtuosi developed British versions of American blues and rhythm and blues while the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson painted imaginary worlds. And, although Engelbert Humperdinck and other men lamented independent women, Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, and Lulu used their cultural capital to question systemic sexism. Based on extensive research, including vintage and original interviews, Itchycoo Park, 1964-1970 presents sixties British pop, not as lists of discrete people and events, but as an interwoven story. Communities of musicians, producers, music directors, engineers, songwriters, publishers, promoters, broadcasters, and journalists interacted as they provided songs, made and played recordings, organized concerts, and celebrated the optimism of youth. They brought audiences together and gave individuals identity while establishing the musical world in which we live today.
Downtown, 1956-1965--the first volume of Sixties British Pop, Outside In--describes the rise of London's music and recording cultures through the stories of those who empowered Britain's youth to be young. As the generations born in the postwar world entered adolescence and demanded a say in their lives, British musicians responded by creating music reflecting youth's quest for love and recognition. With waves of technological innovation sweeping through a world where political and economic superpowers postured for domination, deep-seated English values helped shape both pop music and its audiences. The music that reverberated in hundreds of local clubs and halls began as fervent attempts to imitate an ongoing American cultural invasion that television helped bring into front rooms across Britain. The emergence of British blues and rock 'n' roll began when broadcasters allowed teens to discover Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Adam Faith, Helen Shapiro, and others. These pioneers provided an opening for the Beatles to lead a northwest invasion of an unsuspecting London. Soon, from across the nation, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, and a host of other groups, and singers such as Petula Clark, Tom Jones, and Donovan were feeding their music into the same media stream that the US had dominated. Americans, reeling from the assassination of a president, embraced the unmitigated joy and optimism they heard and called it the British invasion. Based on extensive research and drawing on vintage and original interviews, Downtown, 1956-1965 frames the extraordinary rise of British pop in an era when pharmaceutical discoveries and electromagnetic innovation were altering lives. A community of musicians, producers, music directors, engineers, songwriters, publishers, promoters, broadcasters, and journalists provided songs, made and played recordings, organized concerts, and wrote about music expressing the exuberance of youth culture. They brought audiences together and gave individuals identity. Moreover, the fruits of their efforts set in motion the musical world in which we live today.
Many debates in interstate conflict and peace research address an important yet complex question: how, and to what degree, are the behavior of states and their relationships among one another fundamentally changing? The period after 1945 has seen a significant decline in the degree and intensity of warfare among states. While civil wars remain common, numerous scholars argue that a "long peace" has taken hold in which militarized interstate violence has become less common. Some argue that war has become obsolete as cultural attitudes toward war have changed, while others emphasize cognitive shifts that have reduced overall levels of human violence. Others favor material factors that have altered the historical net benefit of warfare among states. In Piecing Together the Peaces, Alexander K. Antony and William R. Thompson provide a novel explanation for how peace took hold in the international system and why state behavior drastically changed. According to the standard line of reasoning, states need only democratize, liberalize their trade, modernize their economic culture, or choose to forego territorial pursuits to reach peace with another state. As Antony and Thompson argue, most, if not all, of the processes put forward as causes of modern peace are highly intertwined with the macro-process of industrialization. Marshaling a long-view perspective, they show how the introduction of mechanization into production significantly altered nearly all aspects of economic and social life, including the costs and benefits of warfare. Rather than outlining a universal pathway through which states can arrive at peace, Antony and Thompson make the case that industrialization provides the starting point from which we can begin to unpack the transformation in conflict propensities among certain states. A bold challenge to the conventional wisdom that dominates interstate peace research, Piecing Together the Peaces shows that industrialization serves as the foundation for all other factors and processes fueling interstate peace.
Gaston Crunelle (1898--1990) was a remarkable flutist and a beloved teacher, yet his name is hardly known today. Gaston Crunelle and Flute Playing in Twentieth-Century France restores Crunelle's place in the pantheon of flutists while revealing details of musical life in France during his lifetime. Crunelle was Professor of Flute at the Paris Conservatory from 1941 to 1969--the longest tenure of any flute professor in the Conservatory's history--and taught an entire generation of the world's leading flutists, including Michel Debost, James Galway, Christian Lardé, Maxence Larrieu, and Jean-Pierre Rampal. He took an active interest in the annual commissions of morceaux de concours or contest pieces--including works by Dutilleux, Jolivet, Messiaen, and Sancan--which the book discusses in detail. As a performer, Crunelle was principal flutist of the Opéra-Comique and the Pasdeloup Orchestra and a member of the Quintette Instrumental de Paris, an ensemble of flute, harp, and string trio that left a rich legacy of about fifty commissioned works. His recordings of solo and chamber music of Bach, Mozart, and Baroque and twentieth-century French composers are among the best of the 78-rpm and early LP eras. In following Crunelle's early development through to his storied career as performer and pedagogue, Gaston Crunelle and Flute Playing in Twentieth-Century France also chronicles the evolution of musical life in France during the twentieth century, covering music during the silent film era, the interruptions of World War I, the apogee of Paris as a musical center between the wars, the German Occupation of 1940--1944, and the many changes in music and education after May 1968, including the increased participation by women. Through thorough archival research Garrison reveals previously unknown details about the relationships between Crunelle and other French flutists of his time, especially Marcel Moyse and René LeRoy. Oral histories showcase Crunelle's pedagogy, and discographies cover Crunelle and the Quintette Instrumental de Paris. From these rich resources emerges the sympathetic figure of flutist Gaston Crunelle, unjustly forgotten until now.
Democracy is struggling in an age of populism and post-truth. In a world swirling with competing political groups stating conflicting facts, citizens are left unsure whom to trust and which facts are true. The role of honesty in civic life is in jeopardy. When we lose sight of the importance of honesty, it hampers our ability to solve pressing problems. Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era asserts that to better enable young citizens to successfully engage in civic inquiry, the role of honesty must be foregrounded within education. The book posits that honesty is a key component of a well-functioning democracy. Building upon this foundation, Sarah M. Stitzlein defines what honesty is, how it is connected to truth, and why both are important to and at risk in democracies today. Furthermore, the chapters offer guidance on how honesty and truth should be taught in schools. Situated within the philosophical perspective of pragmatism, the book examines the relationships between honesty, truth, trust, and healthy democratic living and provides recommendations for improving citizenship education and our ability to engage in civic reasoning. Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era offers an improved path forward within our schools by detailing how to cultivate habits of truth-seeking and truth-telling. Such honesty will better enable citizens to navigate our difficult political moment and increase the likelihood that citizens can craft long-term solutions for democratic life together.
Comprehensive, systematic, and balanced, Systems of Psychotherapy uses a wealth of clinical cases to help readers understand the major psychotherapies, including psychodynamic, existential, experiential, interpersonal, exposure, behavioral, cognitive, third wave, systemic, multicultural, and integrative. The tenth edition of this landmark text thoroughly analyzes 15 leading systems of psychotherapy and briefly surveys another 32, providing students and practitioners with a broad overview of the discipline. The book explores each system's theory of personality, theory of psychopathology, and resulting therapeutic process and relationship. Through these explorations, the authors clearly demonstrate how psychotherapy systems agree on the processes producing change while diverging on the elements in need of change. Additionally, the authors present the central limitations, outcome research, and future directions of each system of psychotherapy. This tenth edition features a reconfigured chapter on positive psychological treatments, expanded coverage of the Unified Protocol and transdiagnostic personalizing, new self-reflection exercises, additional examples of child and adolescent therapy, and more than 500 new references, recommended readings, and web resources.
The practice of "gender training" has gained widespread popularity among numerous professions in the last few decades. Designed to address a range of problems--from corporate advancement, to sexual assault, to economic development--gender training is reliably presented as a solution to gendered disparities. Gender training has even become a requirement for soldiers and police officers deploying overseas as peacekeepers. But what happens when the concept of gender, the analytical purchase of which we owe to feminist activism and scholarship, is taken up by martial institutions shaped by hegemonic masculinity? How is gender training made to work in and for military and police organisations? Is it a normative good from the point of view of intersectional feminist politics? Through an ethnographic study of gender training practices in peacekeeping institutions, Aiko Holvikivi examines how gender is conceptualised, taught, and learned in these settings, and with what political effects. She finds that this training constitutes a deeply ambivalent practice from the point of view of intersectional feminist political commitments. On the one hand, it reinscribes the logic that martial force is an appropriate solution to gendered insecurities, and it affirms attachments to normative heterosexuality. On the other hand, this training simultaneously exposes contradictions that inhere to the logics of martiality, coloniality, and heteronormativity that structure the peacekeeping enterprise. Drawing on queer and postcolonial feminist thought, Fixing Gender examines the contradictory politics of gender training, arguing that we need to develop the analytical tools to grapple with paradoxical practices that are simultaneously good and bad feminist politics.
Why are conspiracy theories, extremist rhetoric, and acts of antagonism by fringe elements of society so much more visible today than in years past? The Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the surge of medical skepticism during the global COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the challenge of extreme rhetoric in global society, with increasing attention paid to the enabling role of the Internet. But beyond the ways in which the Internet allows for connection, how do fringe ideas travel into the mainstream to become more significant movements? In Subversion 2.0, Christopher Whyte describes the transformation of societal subversion in the digital age. Whyte makes the case that "leaderlessness"--characterized by an evolving and uneven feedback loop linking fringe spaces to mainstream elite rhetoric and popular discourse--has emerged in recent years as the default format of subversive activity. Through case explorations and novel data, Whyte shows how extreme narratives that originate in conspiratorial, restrictive virtual spaces are rapidly filtered into mainstream settings due to a series of socio-technological conditions present in the Web 2.0 era. As a result, fringe narratives and symbols often become the lens through which social and political elites interpret information that they then spread through public speech, which is projected back to subversive spaces and used to perpetuate fringe narratives. By examining the uneven feedback loop of leaderlessness, Whyte argues that social Internet platforms act as a vehicle for transmitting and amplifying extreme rhetoric but often fail to moderate extremism in turn. He ultimately shows how societal subversion, an activity that is about degrading existing power structures without directly attacking them, has taken on a new, dynamic form in the digital age.
An authoritative account of Xi Jinping's worldview and how it drives Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage.In his new book, On Xi Jinping, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage--that of President Xi Jinping, who now hold near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is now, in effect, president-for-life. Rudd argues that Xi's worldview differs significantly from those of the leaders who preceded him, and that this ideological shift is reflected in the real world of Chinese policy and behaviour. Focusing on China's domestic politics, political economy, and foreign policy, Rudd characterises Xi Jinping's ideological framing of the world as "Marxist-Leninist nationalism." According to Rudd, Xi's notion of Leninism has taken the party and Chinese politics further to the left in comparison to his predecessors. Also, his Marxism has also taken Chinese economic thinking to the left-in a more decisively more statist direction and away from the historical dynamism of the private sector. However, Chinese nationalism under Xi has moved further to the right- towards a much, harder-edged, foreign policy vision of China and a new determination to change the international status quo. Xi's worldview is an integrated one, where his national ideological vision for China's future is ultimately inseparable from his view on China's position in the region and the world. These changes in worldview are also reflected in Xi's broader rehabilitation of the concept of "struggle" as a legitimate concept for the conduct of both Chinese domestic and foreign policy--a struggle that need not necessarily always be peaceful. Finally, Xi's ideological worldview also exhibits a new level of nationalist self-confidence about China's future--derived from China's historical and civilizational strengths but reinforced by his Marxist-Leninist concept of historical determinism and the belief that the tides of history are now on firmly China's side. A powerful analysis of the worldview of arguably the most consequential world leader of our era, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in how Xi is transforming both China and the international order, and, most importantly, why?
Suppressed for centuries, the ideas of French philosopher Ãmilie Du Châtelet's are ever relevant today... Just as the Enlightenment was gaining momentum throughout Europe, philosopher Ãmilie Du Châtelet broke through the many barriers facing women at the time and published a major philosophical treatise in French. Within a few short years, she became famous: she was read and debated from Russia to Prussia, from Switzerland to England, from up north in Sweden to down south in Italy. This was not just remarkable because she was a woman, but because of the substance of her contributions. While the men in her milieu like Voltaire and Kant sought disciples to promote their ideas, Du Châtelet promoted intellectual autonomy. She counselled her readers to read the classics, but never to become a follower of another's ideas. Her proclamation that a true philosopher must remain an independent thinker, rather than a disciple of some supposedly "great man" like Isaac Newton or René Descartes, posed a threat to an emerging consensus in the Enlightenment. And that made her dangerous. After all, if young women took Du Châtelet's advice to heart, if they insisted on thinking for themselves, they might demand a proper education--the exclusion of women from the colleges and academies of Europe might finally end. And if young women thought for themselves, rather than listening to the ideas of the men around them, that might rupture the gender-based social order itself. Because of the threat that she posed, the men who created the modern philosophy canon eventually wrote Du Châtelet out of their official histories. After she achieved immense fame in the middle of the eighteenth century, her ideas were later suppressed, or attributed to the men around her. For generations afterwards, she was forgotten. Now we can hear her voice anew when we need her more than ever. Her lessons of intellectual independence and her rejection of hero worship remain ever relevant today.
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