A journey through the informal and taken-for-granted ways of getting things done across the world.

For a post-human hitchhiker, human life–with its anxiety, aging, illness, and constant need for problem-solving–may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by human touch, human emotion, and human cooperation.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 continues the journey of the two previous volumes into the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules, and hidden practices. It focuses on issues of emotional ambivalence and pressures of the digital age. The informal practices presented in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and the need to tackle the central problem of modern societies—uncertainty.

The volume takes the reader on a biographical journey through elusive, taken-for-granted, or banal ways of getting things done from over seventy countries and world regions. It offers an innovative understanding of the significance of fringes and challenges the assumption that informality is associated exclusively with poverty, underdevelopment, the Global South, oppressive regimes, or the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also maps the patterns of informality around the globe, identifies specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way, and documents their ambivalent impact on people engaged in problem-solving, on societies in which these problems arise, and on humanity overall.
 

Antelope and porcupines in Africa. Feral cats and wild goats in Australia. Deer, pheasants, and rabbits in the United States and Europe. These are just a few of the world’s game animals, or creatures hunted for food. Game has been central to the development of humanity and forms a core part of cultures—and meat industries—from the Amazon to the Arctic. But despite the ubiquity of its consumption, it has never been the subject of a culinary overview. Paula Young Lee rectifies this oversight in Game, describing the fascinating history of a food so diverse it ranges from luxury good to staple of the poor.

This study highlights a selection of garden ornaments from Dumbarton Oaks, the Washington, D.C., estate of Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. Drawings from Beatrix Farrand’s office and excerpts from her Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks, combined with original period photographs, endeavor to show the stylistic sources, evolution of design, and iconography. Other works were selected that reflect an evolution of thought about the gardens and illustrate the conscious choices that were made in shaping the landscape. As Lanning Roper states in Dumbarton Oaks: A Great American Garden, “The garden ornament deserves special comment. Mrs. Bliss had made a particular study of this subject and wished to show the variety of media that can be used and often effectively combined… All ornaments are carefully placed and one is impressed both by the quality, inconspicuousness and the originality of the conception.” Garden ornaments were logical extensions of the Blisses’ collections of art objects.

Inscriptions play a significant role in the decoration of the grounds and have been included as well. The majority of them relate to the personal lives of Robert and Mildred Bliss and reflect the strong humanist tradition represented by Dumbarton Oaks.

From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers and men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world.In this volume, which embodies the William James lectures for 1933, Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles—plenitude, continuity, and graduation—which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse samifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

This comprehensive guide to Jewish observance throughout the life cycle is the best introduction to Reform Jewish practice available.  It includes sections on birth, childhood and education, marriage and the Jewish home, and death and mourning, as well as essays on sexuality, kashrut, divorce and the single parent family, Jewish ethical wills, tzedakah and other topics.  Shaarei Mitzvah also features extensive notes and references for further study.

The Cyclamen is a literary and artistic darling, decorating ceramics, pottery, and jewelry, and found in botanical art references dating back to the first century. It is also a favorite of gardeners, growers, and botanists due to its extraordinary capacity for variation, in colors, shapes, fragrances, and flowering periods.

Genus Cyclamen is a celebration of this remarkable plant. Its science-based emphasis on botany and cultivation is complemented by sections on art and history, including twenty-five newly commissioned paintings and over seven hundred photographs. It provides a wealth of information, including taxonomic descriptions, flowering periods, distribution, and habitat, all based on the deep knowledge and practical experiences of the Cyclamen Society and other cyclamen experts. This book will find a wide audience of growers, gardeners, botanists, and enthusiasts, thanks to its all-encompassing coverage of the cyclamen and its informative, but accessible style.

Varying from tiny mountain shrubs to tall trees, there is a rowan suitable for every garden. Dr McAllister has 25 years of knowledge and experience in growing rowans, and in this book describes over 60 visually striking species, including recent introductions from China. The re-appraisal of classification, evolutionary history, ecology and conservation will bring botanists up to date on latest research, while sections on propagation and cultivation will prove invaluable to gardeners, nurserymen and horticulturists. Eighteen full-page paintings by the renowned artist Josephine Hague, and over 100 colour photographs, illustrate the text.

Feathered with illustrations, a deep dive into the meaning of this half-lion, half-bird creature over millennia of human history.
 
Griffinology is a fascinating exploration of the mythical creature’s many depictions in human culture. Drawing on a wealth of historical and literary sources, this book shows how the griffin has captured the imagination of people for over five thousand years, representing power, transcendence, and even divinity. It explores the history and symbolism of griffins in art, from their appearances in ancient Egyptian magic wands to medieval bestiaries, and from medieval coats of arms to modern corporate logos. The use of the griffin as a symbol of power and protection is surveyed throughout history and into modern times, such as in the Harry Potter series. Beautifully illustrated, this book should appeal to all those interested in monsters, magic, and the mystical, as well as art and history.

Every night, astronomers use a new generation of giant telescopes at observatories around the world to study phenomena at the forefront of science. By focusing on the history of the Gemini Observatory—twin 8-meter telescopes located on mountain peaks in Hawaii and Chile—Giant Telescopes tells the story behind the planning and construction of modern scientific tools, offering a detailed view of the technological and political transformation of astronomy in the postwar era.

Drawing on interviews with participants and archival documents, W. Patrick McCray describes the ambitions and machinations of prominent astronomers, engineers, funding patrons, and politicians in their effort to construct a modern facility for cutting-edge science—and to establish a model for international cooperation in the coming era of “megascience.” His account details the technological, institutional, cultural, and financial challenges that scientists faced while planning and building a new generation of giant telescopes. Besides exploring how and why scientists embraced the promise and potential of new technologies, he considers how these new tools affected what it means to be an astronomer. McCray’s book should interest anyone who desires a deeper understanding of the science, technology, and politics behind finding our place in the universe.

The German sinologist and general linguist Georg von der Gabelentz (1840—1893) occupies a crucial place in linguistic scholarship around the end of the nineteenth century. As professor at the University of Leipzig and then at the University of Berlin, Gabelentz was present at the main centers of linguistics of the time. He was, however, generally critical of the narrow, technical focus of mainstream historical-comparative linguistics as practiced by the Neogrammarians and instead emphasized approaches to language inspired by a line of researchers stemming from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gabelentz’ alternative conception of linguistics led him to several pioneering insights into language that anticipated elements of the structuralist revolution of the early twentieth century. *Gabelentz and the Science of Language* brings together four essays that explore Gabelentz’ contributions to linguistics from a historical perspective. In addition, it makes one of his key theoretical texts, ‘Content and Form of Speech’, available to an English-speaking audience for the first time.

Arthur McKeown presents the first full-length analysis of the continuation of Buddhism in India after the thirteenth century. This study describes later Indian Buddhism through a detailed examination of the life of Śāriputra (c. 1335–1426), the last known abbot of the Bodhgayā Mahāvihāra, whose very presence extends Indian Buddhism by two centuries. This work also provides a view into the legacy of Indian Buddhism in fifteenth-century Nepal, Tibet, and China. McKeown follows Śāriputra’s travels and works throughout pan-Buddhist Asia, from restoring the Swayambhunātha caitya in Nepal and establishing tantric lineages in Tibet to overseeing the rebuilding of the Mahābodhi temple in Ming Dynasty Beijing.

McKeown centers his examination on newly revealed Tibetan and Chinese biographies of Śāriputra, as well as looking at a collection of historical documents in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. These sources point to a fundamental reconsideration of later Indian Buddhism, its relationship with Brahmanism and Islam, and its enduring importance throughout Central, East, and Southeast Asia.

Guardians of Living History: An Ethnography of Post-Soviet Memory Making in Estonia interrogates how people living in a society with an extremely complicated, violent past, only a short history of independence, and a desire to belong to Europe engage with the past, both within their families and as members of a national community. In line with other scholarship on memory, this book shows that many Estonians desire an established collective story, as they live in a society where their national identity is quite regularly under threat. At the same time however, that same closure is perceived to pose a threat to the survival of Estonian culture and independence. Guardians of Living History provides an intimate insight into the lives of Estonians from the countryside, former deportees, young intellectuals, and memory activists, who all in their own ways act as guardians of a national history: a history which they wish to keep alive, apolitical, and as close to their family stories as possible.

In 1947, Arabs made up two-thirds of the population of Palestine, and they owned most of its cultivable land. Why then, did they "lose" their homes and land to a relatively small Jewish community just emerging from the shocks of World War II? Did the Palestinians "lose" their homeland because they were backward, primitive, and reactionary? Or was Israel the product of persistent victimization of Palestinian Arabs by an imperialist power which supported Zionist colonization? Did the Palestinians sell each other out? Or were they helpless sufferers in the face of a sophisticated enemy with endless resources?

Too often discussions of Palestine are couched in such rhetorical language, based on the assumption that either Jews or Arabs are morally to blame for historical realities. This study seeks to go beyond attributions of responsibility to investigate the concrete conditions which determined and limited Palestinian Arab actions between 1920 and 1948. It was during that period, while Great Britain governed the area under a League of Nations mandate, that Palestine both emerged and disappeared as a modern political entity.

Many studies of Palestinian Arab nationalism have looked to Zionism as the primary agent of change in the region. Miller assumes the impact of Jewish settlement but goes beyond these earlier studies to explore the way in which policies of the Palestine government affected the daily lives of villagers—the majority of the population—and their understanding of the changes occurring around them. In this way, what emerges is a detailed analysis of the influence, for good or ill, that government policy had on village community life.

Based largely on archival sources never before used, this work allows the reader to gain a deeper appreciation of the internal life of the rural community, which had previously received relatively little attention. Understanding the experiences of Palestinians before 1948 helps us to comprehend immeasurably better the continuity of movements for Palestinian statehood as well as the continuing tensions and problems on the West Bank today.

The finest ghazals of Mir Taqi Mir, the most accomplished of Urdu poets.

The prolific Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810), widely regarded as the most accomplished poet in Urdu, composed his ghazals—a poetic form of rhyming couplets—in a distinctive Indian style arising from the Persian ghazal tradition. Here, the lover and beloved live in a world of extremes: the outsider is the hero, prosperity is poverty, and death would be preferable to the indifference of the beloved. Ghazals offers a comprehensive collection of Mir’s finest work, translated by a renowned expert on Urdu poetry.

Drawing upon literary, historical, and visual evidence, this collection of interdisciplinary essays examines how the Mediterranean shaped practices of gender in the premodern era. This volume bridges the gap between gender studies and Mediterranean studies, which have a natural fit with each other in their interest on defining identity carefully through connectivity and attentiveness to cultural hegemonies. The essays in this volume build off of this double approach to offer a unique contribution to the field, and use gender to understand the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean to understand premodern gender.

Whereas other volumes have examined gender in the premodern period or premodern Mediterranean Studies, to date no other volume has sought to explore the intersection of the two.  The interdisciplinary nature of the essays will make them useful to both scholars and teachers, for they will combine theory and practice in a length that makes them easily accessible to advanced students as well as specialized researchers. The first chapter provides a critical overview of the scholarship on Mediterranean studies as a field of area studies as well as an overview of gender studies in the medieval period. As such, the volume will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers, and its interdisciplinary nature reflects the diaspora of the Mediterranean itself.

Both Tromp-class frigates entered service in 1975/-76. Their primary task was area air defense. They acted as flagships for the COMNLTG (Commander Netherlands Task Group). Their large radome (which housed a 3D radar antenna) is why the ships had the nickname ‘Kojak’, after the bald-headed actor in the famous crime tv-series.

Deaths from infectious diseases continue to take a heavy toll even though there have been spectacular successes in their control over the last thirty years. In the developing regions, five of the ten leading causes of death and disease burden in 1990 were infectious diseases--respiratory infections, diarrhea, tuberculosis, measles, and malaria--while in the developed regions the only infectious disease among the ten leading causes of death in 1990 was respiratory infections.

This volume contains comprehensive data and detailed discussions of the global epidemiologies of twenty-three infectious diseases, including the above-mentioned conditions as well as hepatitis B, meningitis, polio, and tetanus.

The Global Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases will serve as a comprehensive reference for epidemiologists, public health professionals, and tropical disease specialists.

Over 50 percent of all deaths worldwide are from noncommunicable diseases. The results of the Global Burden of Disease Study dispel the notions that these noncommunicable diseases are related to affluence. In all developing regions, except for India and sub-Saharan Africa, noncommunicable diseases are responsible for more deaths than infectious diseases. Deaths from noncommunicable diseases have been projected to climb from 28.1 million deaths in 1990 to 49.7 million in 2020, increasing as a proportion of all deaths from 55 percent in 1990 to 73 percent in 2020.

This volume provides comprehensive data and detailed discussions of the epidemiologies of all major cancers and cardiovascular conditions, as well as those of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, ulcers, diabetes, nephritis, cirrhosis, and appendicitis.

David Nasaw has written a sparkling social history of twentieth-century show business and of the new American public that assembled in the city's pleasure palaces, parks, theaters, nickelodeons, world's fair midways, and dance halls.

The new amusement centers welcomed women, men, and children, native-born and immigrant, rich, poor and middling. Only African Americans were excluded or segregated in the audience, though they were overrepresented in parodic form on stage. This stigmatization of the African American, Nasaw argues, was the glue that cemented an otherwise disparate audience, muting social distinctions among "whites," and creating a common national culture.

This pioneering collection of nine original essays carves out a new conceptual path in the field by theorizing the ways in which the language of games and warfare inform and illuminate each other in the early modern cultural imagination. They consider how warfare and games are mapped onto each other in aesthetically and ideologically significant ways in the plays, poetry, or prose of William Shakespeare, Thomas Morton, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Jonathan Swift, among others. Contributors interpret the terms ‘war games’ or ‘games of war’ broadly, freeing them to uncover the more complex and abstract interplay of war and games in the early modern mind, taking readers from the cockpits and clowns of Shakespearean drama, through the intriguing manuals of cryptographers and the ingenious literary war games of Restoration women authors, to the witty but rancorous paper wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is the official publication of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Each issue of the journal provides readers with a diverse array of timely, peer-reviewed content penned by top policymakers, business leaders, and academic luminaries. The Journal takes a holistic approach to international affairs and features a ‘Forum’ that offers focused analysis on a specific key issue with each new edition of the publication, as well as nine regular sections: Books, Business & Economics, Conflict & Security, Culture & Society, Law & Ethics, A Look Back, Politics & Diplomacy, Science & Technology, and View from the Ground.

This study of the German community of early twentieth-century Buenos Aires is a major contribution to the literature on Argentine history and on the New World immigrant experience. Beginning with the first wave of immigration in the late nineteenth century and continuing to the outbreak of World War II, Ronald C. Newton reconstructs the growth, development, and influence of a powerful foreign population in what was then the largest city in South America.

In the three decades before World War I, Argentina became a major food-producing and exporting country. Through the port of Buenos Aires was funneled the bulk of the Pampas’ foodstuff and fiber in one direction and Europe’s capital, technology, and surplus labor in the other. The German speakers made up one of the smaller Western European communities within the Argentine metropolis, but their cultural and economic influence was far out of proportion to their numbers. Based in a large and occupationally diverse middle class, the German community was represented at all social levels. Newton analyzes the experience of this well-demarcated group during a period of rapid demographic growth and increasing pressure to assimilate. He constructs working hypotheses that may be applied and refined in further investigations.

The book draws substantially on materials from within the Buenos Aires German community—newspapers, memoirs, the records of associations and welfare agencies—to reconstruct its intense daily life. The author highlights, for instance, the sharp economic reversals German-speaking residents suffered during World War I and shows how their fortunes declined further after continued Germanic immigration in the 1920s. Especially significant is his finding that the German community, which until 1914 had seemed impervious to the currents of Argentine nationalism, became susceptible to assimilation into Argentine society. In concluding chapters Newton demonstrates the way the German economic elite came to terms with the Nazis for opportunistic reasons; thus, the volume also serves as an introduction to the question of Nazism’s diffusion in Argentina.

In modern power networks with high shares of renewable energy sources, and a mixture of alternating (AC) and direct current (DC) technology in different sections of the network, power switching devices are exposed to more and different stresses compared with those in conventional AC networks.

The Venetian painter known as Giorgione or “big George” died at a young age in the dreadful plague of 1510, possibly having painted fewer than twenty-five works. But many of these are among the most mysterious and alluring in the history of art. Paintings such as The Three Philosophers and The Tempest remain compellingly elusive, seeming to deny the viewer the possibility of interpreting their meaning. Tom Nichols argues that this visual elusiveness was essential to Giorgione’s sensual approach and that ambiguity is the defining quality of his art. Through detailed discussions of all Giorgione’s works, Nichols shows that by abandoning the more intellectual tendencies of much Renaissance art, Giorgione made the world and its meanings appear always more inscrutable.

This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Focusing on games as a leitmotif of creative expression, these scholarly inquiries are framed as a response to two main questions: how were games used to convey special meanings in art and literature, and how did games speak to greater issues in European society? In chapters dealing with chess, playing cards, board games, dice, gambling, and outdoor and sportive games, essayists show how games were used by artists, writers, game makers and collectors, in the service of love and war, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprise, politics and diplomacy, and assertions of civic and personal identity. Offering innovative iconographical and literary interpretations, their analyses reveal how games“played, written about, illustrated and collected“functioned as metaphors for a host of broader cultural issues related to gender relations and feminine power, class distinctions and status, ethical and sexual comportment, philosophical and religious ideas, and conditions of the mind.

Not since Edward Wood’s Giants and Dwarfs published in 1868 has the subject been the focus of a scholarly study in English. Treating the topic afresh, this volume offers new insights into the vogue for giants and dwarfs that flourished in late-medieval and early modern Europe. From chapters dealing with the real dwarfs and giants in the royal and princely courts, to the imaginary giants and dwarfs that figured in the crafting of nationalistic and ancestral traditions, to giants and dwarfs used as metaphorical expression, scholars discuss their role in art, literature, and ephemeral display. Some essays examine giants and dwarfs as monsters and marvels and collectibles, while others show artists and writers emphasizing contrasts in scale to inspire awe or for comic effect. As these investigations reveal, not all court dwarfs functioned as jesters, and giant figures might equally be used to represent heroes, anti-heroes, and even a saint.

An overview of how graphic designers in India use global platforms.

Digital freelance platforms promise workers flexibility, independence, and access to a global labor market. But what does organizing and positioning oneself in this environment look like? Global Platform Work focuses on the everyday lives of graphic designers in India who use gig platforms to connect to a global client base. Drawing on interviews, observations, and photo diaries, Anna Oechslen describes how important it is for gig workers to constantly put themselves in a positive light, build relationships, and adapt to an ever-changing work environment. In doing so, she formulates gig work as making and sustaining relationships and sheds light on everyday practices that common understandings of work often leave unconsidered.
 

Together with the late Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, the 1982 Nobel laureate, stands at the pinnacle of Latin American literature. His work, in the words of Julio Ortega, "contains its own 'deconstructive' force—a literary power capable of reshaping natural order and rhetorical tradition in order to 'carnivalize' the Borges' library and allow us to hear the voices—and the laughter—of a culture, that of Latin America." This reshaping force invites us to read the works of García Márquez in a new way, one that bypasses the traditional, inadequate approaches through Latin American politics, history, and "magical realism."

In Gabriel García Márquez and the Powers of Fiction, noted scholars Julio Ortega, Ricardo Gutiérrez Mouat, Michael Palencia-Roth, Aníbal González, and Gonzalo Díaz-Migoyo offer English-speaking readers a new approach to García Márquez's work. Their poststructuralist readings focus on the peculiar sign-system, formal configuration, intradiscursivity, and unfolding representation in the novels One Hundred Years of Solitude, No One Writes to the Colonel, In Evil Hour, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold and in several of the author's short stories. Also included as an appendix is a translation of García Márquez's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "The Solitude of Latin America."

Gulf to Rockies is a chapter in the business and economic history of the American West and the story of two of the most colorful railroad builders of the nineteenth century.

Throughout the 1860s the mineral treasures of Colorado were virtually inaccessible for lack of railroads. Even after a hectic decade of building in the 1870s, the state faced a new sort of isolation: every railroad crossing her borders was controlled by the Union Pacific or the Santa Fe. As a result, the Rocky Mountain region could not hope to compete with the Midwest for the business of the Atlantic seaboard.

To remedy this situation, John Evans, former governor of Colorado, organized in 1881 a railroad to run southward from Denver as the first link in a cheap rail-water route via the Gulf of Mexico to the East. Meanwhile ambitious Fort Worth citizens had incorporated the Fort Worth and Denver City in 1873. Not a rail was laid on either road, however, until General Grenville M. Dodge, famed builder of the Union Pacific and the Texas Pacific, took up the Texas project and joined forces with Evans to create the Gulf-to-Rockies route.

It took seven years for these men and their associates to mobilize funds and complete the Fort Worth–Denver line, and another decade to establish the system’s independence and solve its financial problems in the face of drought, depression, and intense competition.

Gulf to Rockies was written under special agreements with Northwestern University and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, whereby the university relieved Mr. Overton of a part of his duties in order that he might have time for research and writing and the railroad undertook to bear the cost of the research. The Burlington also permitted him free access to all company records and granted him unrestricted freedom to publish his findings.

A gathering of poetic blossoms.

The Greek Anthology (literally, “Gathering of Flowers”) is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called Stephanus, literally, “wreath” or “garland”) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BC) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century AD), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the Circle, by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas’ compilation.

The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato’s “Musa Puerilis”; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art.

Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius.

A gathering of poetic blossoms.

The Greek Anthology (literally, “Gathering of Flowers”) is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called Stephanus, literally, “wreath” or “garland”) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BC) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century AD), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the Circle, by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas’ compilation.

The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato’s “Musa Puerilis”; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art.

Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius.

A gathering of poetic blossoms.

The Greek Anthology (literally, “Gathering of Flowers”) is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called Stephanus, literally, “wreath” or “garland”) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BC) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century AD), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the Circle, by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas’ compilation.

The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato’s “Musa Puerilis”; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art.

Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius.

A gathering of poetic blossoms.

The Greek Anthology (literally, “Gathering of Flowers”) is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called Stephanus, literally, “wreath” or “garland”) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BC) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century AD), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the Circle, by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas’ compilation.

The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato’s “Musa Puerilis”; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art.

Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius.

The Greek Anthology (“Gathering of Flowers”) is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called “Stephanus”, wreath or garland) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BCE) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century CE), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the “Circle”, by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas’s compilation.

The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato’s “Musa Puerilis”; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art.

Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition is in five volumes.

A systematic account of recognised species, fully illustrated with 65 line drawings.

Written over a decade while the author lived on four continents, A Gaze Hound That Hunteth by the Eye maps the cultural legacies we cherish against those we reject. Playful and wrenching by turns, with lines inflected by the spoken music of their Arabic, Oshiwambo, Xhosa, and Italian contexts, these profound poems explore a life where displacement is the norm. From choosing not to have children to wrestling with a left-hand stick shift in Johannesburg traffic to braising a camel loin for friends in Damascus, V. Penelope Pelizzon’s poems transport us into unexpected depths of feeling with language that is scintillant, luxurious, and wise. 

Greek Language, Italian Landscape traces the transformation of language ideologies and practices of Griko, a variety of Modern Greek used in the southern Italian province of Lecce, in Apulia. Building on ethnographic and linguistic data collected in Grecìa Salentina and Greece, Manuela Pellegrino recounts the story of Griko, highlighting the effects of the interplay of language ideologies and policies promoted by the European Union, Italy, and Greece. She shows how the longstanding concern about language demise has, over time, generated social relationships and fueled moral feelings and political interests that have ultimately shaped the predicament of Griko.

Pellegrino proposes the concept of “the cultural temporality of language” to describe how locals are continually re-storying Griko by recounting its multiple pasts, converting what was once considered a “backward language” into a symbolic resource that has reentered their daily lives in multiple ways. Yet the question as to which chapter of Griko’s past best represents the language—and is best represented by it—becomes a discursive struggle for community self-understanding and representation. Griko and its cultural heritage are used to redeem the past, to contest the present, and to envision the future of this land and its people.

Outrages committed during violent conflict and as part of the 'war on terror' are not only an affront to human dignity -- they also violate the Geneva Conventions.

This book examines recent high-profile cases of repeated and open abuse of the Conventions. The contributors explore why these and related violations of international humanitarian law cannot be viewed as anomalies, but must be regarded as part of a pattern which is set to undermine the Geneva Conventions as a whole.

The contributors argue that an international system in which there is diminishing legal restraint on the use of force means that the world will become less secure and more volatile, even for those in the most powerful countries. Individuals everywhere face the prospect of a horrifying vulnerability.

This is the first scholarly yet accessible work to consider the meanings of outrages such as the normalisation of torture, as well as the worrying new normative, technical and tactical developments that challenge the purpose and standing of the Geneva Conventions.

In this second volume of the groundbreaking survey, Michael J. Pfeifer edits a collection of essays that illuminates lynching and other extrajudicial "rough justice" as a transnational phenomenon responding to cultural and legal issues.

The volume's European-themed topics explore why three communities of medieval people turned to mob violence, and the ways exclusion from formal institutions fueled peasant rough justice in Russia. Essays on Latin America examine how lynching in the United States influenced Brazilian debates on race and informal justice, and how shifts in religious and political power drove lynching in twentieth-century Mexico. Finally, scholars delve into English Canadians' use of racist and mob violence to craft identity; the Communist Party's Depression-era campaign against lynching in the United States; and the transnational links that helped form--and later emanated from--Wisconsin's notoriously violent skinhead movement in the late twentieth century.

Contributors: Brent M. S. Campney, Amy Chazkel, Stephen P. Frank, Dean J. Kotlowski, Michael J. Pfeifer, Gema Santamaría, Ryan Shaffer, and Hannah Skoda.

The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs has once again partnered with the Cyber Project at Georgetown University’s Institute for Law, Science, and Global Security to publish the sixth special issue of International Engagement on Cyber. This special issue of the journal seeks to uncover timely topics, broaden dialogue, and advance knowledge within the field of cyber. The articles are written by an international group of leading scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The Forum of this issue evaluates the US Department of Defense’s 2015 Cyber Strategy and its efficacy in meeting cyber threats. Other topics covered in this issue include applying Just War Theory to the cyber capabilities of non-state actors including ISIS and Anonymous, litigating competing perspectives on the establishment of cyber norms, assessing tensions on the Korean peninsula in the cyber domain, and much more.

The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is the official publication of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The journal was founded to serve as an academic resource for scholars, business leaders, policy makers, and students of international relations, cultivating a dialogue accessible to those with all levels of knowledge about foreign affairs and international politics. Each issue of the journal provides readers with a diverse array of timely, peer-reviewed content that bridges the gap between the work done by news outlets and that done by traditional academic journals.

This volume explores twenty-four literary friendships in succinct, structured entries, from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante.
 
Close friendships are a heart-warming feature of many of our best-loved works of fiction. From the poignant schoolgirl relationship between Jane Eyre and Helen Burns to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s adventures on the Mississippi, fictional friends have supported, guided, comforted—and at times betrayed—the heroes and heroines of our most popular plays and novels.

This book explores twenty-four literary friendships and together with character studies and publication history, describes how each key relationship influences character, determines the plot, or underlines the theme of each literary work. It shows how authors have by turn celebrated, lamented, or transformed friendships throughout the ages. Some friendships—Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Holmes and Watson, and even Bridget Jones and pals—have taken on creative lives beyond the bounds of their original narratives.

Including a broad scope of literature from writers such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, John Steinbeck, Alice Walker, Dona Tartt, and Margaret Atwood, this book is the ideal gift for your literature-loving friend.

Poetry is exciting, but elusive to most. This is troublesome for Christians because the Bible, John Poch reminds us, is largely composed of poetical verse. In God’s Poems, Poch re-introduces sacred text as purposefully poetic, and explains what that means and invites the reader to with this insight live more thoughtfully and beautifully. 

But that is not all. Poch as a well-established and regarded poet, turns his eye to contemporary poetry and vindicates its function in a “created and creative world.” Today many have abandoned the genre as a wasteland of misguided voice that really has nothing to say. The poet is a truth-teller, and Poch as devoted writer, teacher, and believer sends out a renewed call to turn to verse as a means of seeing oneself as God’s poeima, or poem (Letter to Ephesians). The depth of self-knowing relates directly to an aptitude to engage the category of poetry at some level. A tragic void is filled with Poch’s effort to exhort the reader to patiently reconnect with poetry even though it has been hijacked by persons who want to be heard more than speak well. (This book is essential, therefore, for aspiring poets.)

For faithful readers or those seeking to return, Poch is a place to begin to understand contemporary writers worth knowing and which poets of the past must remain with us. In Virgilian fashion, he can see the panorama behind him and that which lies immediately ahead and instills a recovered love of an eternal medium that will be restored to a state of coherency and enlightened perspective. If Poch has faith in poetry it is because poetry is indeed a source of faith. If Justin Martyr claimed that everything that is true belongs to Christians, Poch shows us that everyone who speaks truth is to some degree a poet. Even God with his revealed wisdom chooses poetry as medium par excellence. It is essential to know how poetry works. “Great poems that we consider literature give us what we never expected. They go beyond the usefulness of conveying a feeling and unveiling beauty; and they tell us who we are.” 

Incorporating over 250 illustrations, this is the first comprehensive study in English of French artist and caricaturist George Ferdinand Bigot (1860-1927) who, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, was renowned in Japan but barely known in his own country. Even today, examples of his cartoons appear in Japanese school textbooks. Inspired by what he saw of Japanese culture and way of life at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878, Bigot managed to find his way to Japan in 1882 and immediately set about developing his career as an artist working in pen and ink, watercolours and oils. He also quickly exploited his talent as a highly skilled sketch artist and cartoonist. His output was prodigious and included regular commissions from The Graphic and various Japanese as well as French journals. He left Japan in 1899, never to return. The volume includes a full introduction of the life, work and artistry of Bigot by Christian Polak, together with an essay by Hugh Cortazzi on Charles Wirgman, publisher of Japan Punch. Wirgman was Bigot’s ‘predecessor’ and friend (he launched his own satirical magazine Tôbaé in 1887, the year Japan Punch closed). Georges Bigot and Japan also makes a valuable contribution to Meiji Studies and the history of both Franco- and Anglo-Japanese relations, as well as the role of art in modern international relations.

At once collector, botanist, reader, artist, and patron, Agnes Block is best described as a cultural producer. A member of an influential network in her lifetime, today she remains a largely obscure figure. The socioeconomic and political barriers faced by early modern women, together with a male-dominated tradition in art history, have meant that too few stories of women’s roles in the creation, production, and consumption of art have reached us. This book seeks to write Block and her contributions into the art and cultural history of the seventeenth-century Netherlands, highlighting the need for and advantages of a multifaceted approach to research on early modern women. Examining Block’s achievements, relationships, and objects reveals a woman who was independent, knowledgeable, self-aware, and not above self-promotion. Though her gender brought few opportunities and many barriers, Agnes Block succeeded in fashioning herself as Flora Batava, a liefhebber at the intersection of art and science.

The twelfth century witnessed the birth of modern Western European literary tradition: major narrative works appeared in both French and in German, founding a literary culture independent of the Latin tradition of the Church and Roman Antiquity. But what gave rise to the sudden interest in and legitimization of literature in these “vulgar tongues"? Until now, the answer has centred on the somewhat nebulous role of new female vernacular readers. Powell argues that a different appraisal of the same evidence offers a window onto something more momentous: not “women readers” but instead a reading act conceived of as female lies behind the polysemic identification of women as the audience of new media in the twelfth century. This woman is at the centre of a re-conception of Christian knowing, a veritable revolution in the mediation of knowledge and truth. By following this figure through detailed readings of key early works, Powell unveils a surprise, a new poetics of the body meant to embrace the capacities of new audiences and viewers of medieval literature and visual art.

"In the beginning, God administrated." For as Donald Prudlo observes, "There can be no achievement without administration." In this book he seeks to restore the idea that while administration is necessary even in the institutional Church, holiness is not only possible for those charged with governance, but is a fulfillment and type of Christus Rector omnium, or "Christ, Ruler of all.

Scrutinizing the relevant thought of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Aquinas, and Nietzsche, among others, Prudlo pursues the notion of order in governance and confronts both the bloat of bureaucracy and the "intoxicating nature of power." How can men and women who strive to live out humility and holiness likewise establish and participate in the structures that wield the powers of governance? "For the followers of Christ does not such a combination seem doomed from the outset?" Prudlo advances a thorough investigation of saints of the Christian tradition, whose responses to the problems inherent in authority and administration are living examples of the reality of grace building upon nature.

Of particular interest is Prudlo's historical presentation of the concept of Romanitas, a style of governance inherited from ancient Rome. Four early popes are given close attention for their respective administrations: Damasus I, Leo I, Gelasius I, and Gregory I. Emphasis is also given to the specific administrative genius that emerges from the monastic orders, including the 'Pachomian solution' and the Benedictine Rule.  Prudlo gives the reader a portrait of Leo IX's reinvigoration of the ancient practice of 'synodality,' and the centrality of the papacy to internal ecclesial reform. In the context of an inquiry into monastic and papal administrations, readers encounter the beginnings of the Roman Curia as well, and are confronted with the difficulty of inserting new forms of apostolic itinerant preaching into the institutional life of the Church. 

This study is an important contribution to the history of the papacy, ecclesiology and its relevance to legal ordering, and administration within governance as affected by multiple legal and cultural traditions. It is a masterful presentation that provides both the framework and reflection needed to inspire true perfection the in administrative forum. The relevance and force of Prudlo's Governing Perfection makes it a choice follow-up to his recent translation of Bartholomew of the Martyr's classic, Stimulus Pastorum: A Charge to Pastors (2022).

Tradition, translation, and transcription in Henrician verse functioned together in systems of communally created, coded position-taking. Understanding this system as an extensive network of production and reception in which women took on many roles allows for new readings of Henrician verse that emphasize the interpretive range available to contemporary reading and writing communities. This restoration demasculinizes our approach to Henrician verse not only through a more equitable consideration of gender’s functions in that social world, but also in de-emphasizing individualized self-fashioning or authorial intent in favor of an engagement with communal production and shared sociopolitical engagement. The creation in this system is not of a code, but of systems for coding and recognizing position-taking. These communal systems offer a site for the intersection of reader and writer, of transcriber and composer, and of King and courtier in a space that questions, creates, and troubles power in the Henrician court.

This issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs focuses on the topic of “Social Media & Social Activism.” While the jury is still out on the degree to which social media has impacted traditional activism, these evolving technologies undoubtedly have transformed modern social movements. Still, we do not wish to suggest that the causal link follows only one direction. Indeed, it will be interesting to observe what future effects social activism will have on the information technology industry as it grapples with the increasing complexities associated with doing business globally—across cultures and government types—in a sector where national laws differ greatly and where international norms are ill-defined or nonexistent. This issue’s Forum considers responses taken and methods employed by major stakeholders, from grassroots activists to state governments to multinational information technology companies.

The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is the official publication of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Each issue of the journal provides readers with a diverse array of timely, peer-reviewed content penned by top policymakers, business leaders, and academic luminaries. The Journal takes a holistic approach to international affairs and features a ‘Forum’ that offers focused analysis on a specific key issue with each new edition of the publication, as well as nine regular sections: Books, Business & Economics, Conflict & Security, Culture & Society, Law & Ethics, A Look Back, Politics & Diplomacy, Science & Technology, and View from the Ground.

According to the United Nations, 9.6 billion people will inhabit our planet by 2050. Population growth and movement will have an enormous impact on global dynamics in the twenty-first century, in both the developing world as well as in advanced industrialized societies. In light of this global demographic reality, this issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs focuses on the topic of “Destabilizing Demographics,” exploring the opportunities and challenges presented by dynamic population patterns and structures. Demographic shifts affect multiple facets of international affairs, impacting economies, modifying politics, and reshaping the fabric of our societies. These changes could have catastrophic international consequences if ignored or evaded. However, as this issue’s Forum demonstrates, the future holds promise for those who choose to reorganize on the cusp of significant population transformation. Adaptation as a form of mitigation must be informed by diverse solutions and multi-sectoral cooperation. Consider, for example, the intersection of family planning and climate change, or the connection between gender gaps and crime. Through pragmatic policymaking and international collaboration, seismic demographic change may not necessitate disaster. We round out this issue with articles regarding decidedly twenty-first century concerns: communication, integration, and globalization. Moha Ennaji describes the challenges of Berber language incorporation in Morocco and its significance to democratic reform. Dan Saxon examines the role of human judg­ment in semi-autonomous weapons use, questioning the ethics of unmanned machines. Andrés Monroy-Hernández and Luis Daniel Palacios analyze the utility, efficacy, and implications of citizen journalism within Mexico’s ongoing drug war. And Lawrence Gostin and Alexandra Phelan explore how, in an increasingly interconnected world, the international community can collectively prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases.

The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is the official publication of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Each issue of the journal provides readers with a diverse array of timely, peer-reviewed content penned by top policymakers, business leaders, and academic luminaries. The Journal takes a holistic approach to international affairs and features a ‘Forum’ that offers focused analysis on a specific key issue with each new edition of the publication, as well as nine regular sections: Books, Business & Economics, Conflict & Security, Culture & Society, Law & Ethics, A Look Back, Politics & Diplomacy, Science & Technology, and View from the Ground.

This volume approaches three key concepts in Roman history — gender, memory and identity — and demonstrates the significance of their interaction in all social levels and during all periods of Imperial Rome. When societies, as well as individuals, form their identities, remembrance and references to the past play a significant role. The aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World is to cast light on the constructing and the maintaining of both public and private identities in the Roman Empire through memory, and to highlight, in particular, the role of gender in that process. While approaching this subject, the contributors to this volume scrutinise boththe literature and material sources, pointing out how widespread the close relationship between gender, memory and identity was. A major aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World as a whole is to point out the significance of the interaction between these three concepts in both the upper and lower levels of Roman society, and how it remained an important question through the period from Augustus right into Late Antiquity.