What does Aquinas have to teach us on the topic of peace? Looking over the scholarly literature, one would think very little. Most Thomists ignore Aquinas’s thought on peace. Most peace researchers summarily dismiss Aquinas. Peace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas challenges both these trends and offers the first book length study of peace in Aquinas’s thought. John Meinert outlines Aquinas's historical predecessors, then provides an exposition and interpretation of the full scope of Aquinas's thought on peace: metaphysics, Trinitarian theology, Christology, Pneumatology, ecclesiology, natural theology, ethics, and sacramental theology. What emerges from this extended study is a new vision of Aquinas’s work. Peace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas establishes Aquinas as an indispensable dialogue partner for anyone thinking rigorously about the theology, philosophy, and ethics of peace. As Aquinas himself says, “observe peace and you will come to salvation.”

This second of three volumes in the Principles of Modern Radar series offers a much-needed professional reference for practicing radar engineers. It provides the stepping stones under one cover to advanced practice with overview discussions of the most commonly used techniques for radar design, thereby bridging readers to single-topic advanced books, papers, and presentations. It spans a gamut of exciting radar capabilities from exotic waveforms to ultra-high resolution 2D and 3D imaging methods, complex adaptive interference cancellation, multi-target tracking in dense scenarios, multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) and much more. All of this material is presented with the same careful balance of quantitative rigor and qualitative insight of Principles of Modern Radar: Basic Principles. Each chapter is likewise authored by recognized subject experts, with the rigorous editing for consistency and suggestions of numerous volunteer reviewers from the radar community applied throughout. Advanced academic and training courses will appreciate the sets of chapter-end problems for students, as well as worked solutions for instructors. Extensive reference lists show the way for further study.

Recipient of the Hubert Herring Memorial Award from the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies for the best unpublished manuscript of 1973, Prose Fiction of the Cuban Revolution is an in-depth study of works by Cubans, Cuban exiles, and other Latin American writers. Combining historical and critical approaches, Seymour Menton classifies and analyzes over two hundred novels and volumes of short stories, revealing the extent to which Cuban literature reflects the reality of the Revolution.

Menton establishes four periods—1959–1960, 1961–1965,1966–1970, and 1971–1973—that reflect the changing policies of the revolutionary government toward the arts. Using these periods as a chronological guideline, he defines four distinct literary generations, records the facts about their works, establishes coordinates, and formulates a system of literary and historical classification. He then makes an aesthetic analysis of the best of Cuban fiction, emphasizing the novels of major writers, including Alejo Carpentier's El siglo de las luces, and José Lezama Lima's Paradiso. He also discusses the works of a large number of lesser-known writers, which must be considered in arriving at an accurate historical tableau.

Menton's exploration of the short story combines a thematic and stylistic analysis of nineteen anthologies with a close study of six authors: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Calvert Casey, Humberto Arenal, Antonio Benítez, Jesús Díaz Rodríguez, and Norberto Fuentes. Several chapters are devoted to the increasing number of novels and short stories written by Cuban exiles as well as to the eighteen novels and one short story written about the Revolution by non-Cubans, such as Julio Cortázar, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Luisa Josefina Hernández, and Pedro Juan Soto.

In studying literary works to reveal the intrinsic consciousness of a historical period, Menton presents not only his own views but also those of Cuban literary critics. In addition, he clarifies the various changes in the official attitude toward literature and the arts in Cuba, using the revolutionary processes of several other countries as comparative examples.

This book intertwines two themes in medieval studies hitherto kept apart: comparisons of Latin and Orthodox Europe and the "feudal revolution" of the late- and post-Carolingian periods. The book broadens the debate by comparing texts written in "learned" and "vulgar" Latin, Church Slavonic, Anglo-Norman, and East Slavonic. From this comparison, the Kingdom of the Rus appears as a regional variation of European society. This suggests current interpretations overemphasize factors unique to the medieval West and overlook deeper pan-European processes.

Although many books deal individually with each of the major writers treated in Poets of Reality, none attempts through analyses of these particular men and their works, to identify the new directions taken by twentieth-century literature. J. Hillis Miller, challenging the assumption that modern poetry is merely the extension of an earlier romanticism, presents critical studies of the six central figures—Joseph Conrad, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams—who played key roles in evolving a poetry in which “reality comes to be present to the senses, and present in the words of the poem which ratify this possession.”

A new kind of poetry has appeared in the twentieth century, the author claims, a poetry which, growing out of romanticism and symbolism, goes far beyond it. The old generalizations about the nature and use of poetry are no longer applicable, and it is the gradual emergence of new forms, culminating in the work of Williams, that Miller traces and defines.

Based on extensive new research and a bold interpretation of the man and his texts, The Passion of Michel Foucault is a startling look at one of this century's most influential philosophers. It chronicles every stage of Foucault's personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.

The automotive industry is waking up to the fact that hybrid electric vehicles could provide an answer to the ever-increasing need for lower-polluting and more fuel-efficient forms of personal transport. This is the first book to give comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the hybrid vehicle design, from its power plant and energy storage systems, to supporting chassis subsystems necessary for realising hybrid modes of operation. Key topics covered include hybrid propulsion system architectures, propulsion system sizing, electric traction system sizing and design, loss mechanisms, system simulation and vehicle certification. Offering in-depth coverage of hybrid propulsion topics, energy storage systems and modelling, and supporting electrical systems, this book will be an invaluable resource for practising engineers and managers involved in all aspects of hybrid vehicle development, modelling, simulation and testing. It will also be of interest to postgraduate students in the field.

Worldwide, the automotive industry is being challenged to make dramatic improvements in vehicle fuel economy. In Europe there are CO₂ emissions penalties prorated by the degree to which vehicles exceed mandated CO₂ levels. In the United States, vehicle fuel economy targets set by Congress in 2007 for 20 per cent fuel economy improvement by 2020 are now being accelerated by the Obama administration to 35.5 mpg by 2016 for a passenger car. Taking effect in 2012, the new rules set more aggressive fuel economy measures that will require significant gains in engine and driveline efficiency, better performance cabin climate control and the introduction of electric hybridization. This 2nd Edition of Propulsion Systems for Hybrid Vehicles addresses the electrification innovations that will be required, ranging from low end brake energy recuperators, idle-stop systems and mild hybrids on to strong hybrids of the power split architecture in both single mode and two mode and introducing new topics in plug-in hybrid and battery electrics. Important topics of the 1st Edition are retained and expanded and some outdated material has been replaced with new information.

This book provides a remarkable overview of significant themes in Russian history and culture, in each case starting well before the eighteenth century, while frequently following them up into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Robin Milner-Gulland shows how the public face of Russia developed and evolved through its distinct architecture, astonishing art, and its varied public spaces. What emerges is a clear picture of how Russians fashioned their identity, and the national monuments associated with it, in their setting: the Russian natural landscape as well as distinctive elements of traditional material culture. Tellingly illustrated, concise and free of jargon, Patterns of Russia will appeal to all those with an interest in the history and culture of this complex—and much discussed—country.

Throughout Latin America and the rest of the Third World, profound social problems are growing in response to burgeoning populations and unstable economic and political systems. In Peru, terrorist acts by the Shining Path guerilla movement are the most visible manifestation of social discontent, but rapid economic and religious changes have touched the lives of almost everyone, radically altering traditional lifeways. In this twenty-year study of the community of Quinua in the Department of Ayacucho, William Mitchell looks at changes provoked by population growth within a severely limited ecological and economic setting, including increasing conversion to a cash economy and out-migration, the decline of the Catholic fiesta system and the rise of Protestantism, and growing poverty and revolution.

When Mitchell first began his field studies in Quinua in 1966, farming was still the Quinueños' principal means of livelihood. But while the population was increasing rapidly, the amount of arable land in the community remained the same, creating increased food shortfalls. At the same time, government controls on food prices and subsidies of cheap food imports drove down the value of rural farm production. These ecological and economic factors forced many people to enter the nonfarm economy to feed themselves.

Using a materialist approach, Mitchell charts the new economic strategies that Quinueños use to confront the harsh pressures of their lives, including ceramic production, wage labor, petty commerce, and migration to cash work on the coat and in the eastern tropical forests. In addition, he shows how the growing conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism is also an economic strategy, since Protestant ideology offers acceptable reasons for redirecting the money that used to be spent on elaborate religious festivals to household needs and education.

The twenty-year span of this study makes it especially valuable for students of social change. Mitchell's unique, interdisciplinary approach, considering ecological, economic, and population factors simultaneously, offers a model that can be widely applied in many Third World areas. Additionally, the inclusion of an entire chapter of family histories reveals how economic and ecological forces are played out at the individual level.

Companion volumes <i>Classic Readings on Monster Theory</i> and <i>Primary Sources on Monsters</i> gather a wide range of readings and sources to enable us to see and understand what monsters can show us about what it means to be human. The first volume introduces important modern theorists of the monstrous and aims to provide interpretive tools and strategies for students to use to grapple with the primary sources in the second volume, which brings together some of the most influential and indicative monster narratives from the West.

In “The Politics of the Opioid Epidemic,” leading political scientists from diverse theoretical traditions provide new insights into the enduring features of American policy and practice that have influenced state-level and national responses to the ongoing opioid crisis. Key among these features is the persistent power of race in shaping public opinion of the opioid crisis, influencing the development of punitive and treatment-oriented legislation, and impacting media portrayal of opioids and the communities they affect. Other factors include the development of the conservative welfare state and the challenges of delivering information and services to affected communities through existing, dysfunctional systems. Analyzing the manifold politics that have contributed to the current situation, contributors explain the depth of the current opioid epidemic and highlight the need for structural change to produce durable, effective policies.

Contributors. Amanda Abraham, Christina M. Andrews, Clifford S. Bersamira, Andrea Louise Campbell, Sarah E. Gollust, Colleen M. Grogan, Gali Katznelson, Jin Woo Kim, Miriam Laugesen, Joanne M. Miller, Susan L. Moffitt, Evan Morgan, Brendan Nyhan, Eric M. Patashnik, Elizabeth Peréz-Chiqués, Harold A. Pollack, Marie Schenk, Carmel Shachar, Phillip M. Singer, Bikki Tran Smith, Patricia Strach, Paul Testa, Tess Wise, Katie Zuber

"Both Newman and Polanyi rank high among the pioneers in the history of the post-critical movement in epistemology. They pointed out the limitations of the methods that had become current since the time of Descartes and Spinoza. . . . The systems of these two authors are exceptionally useful for dealing with the major issues that trouble the theological climate today."—From the Foreword by Avery Dulles, S.J. "This engaging and lucid study brings into dialogue two thinkers whose methods share much in common despite their different purposes. . . . A principal contribution of Moleski's study is its cultivation of the common ground that religion shares with science."—Theological Studies "An important and utterly engaging study. . . . Those familiar with Newman's Grammar of Assent and Polanyi's Personal Knowledge will appreciate the ways in which Moleski makes sometimes unexpected connections between the two thinkers, despite Polanyi's critical disposition toward Catholicism. Personal Catholicism is a most welcome contribution to today's rethinking of the relationship between faith and reason."—First Things "There is a wealth of material here that could be applied to issues of faith and reason, science and faith, faith and the nature of reality as they are raised in contemporary society. . . ."—The Gospel and Our Culture

A powerful vision for reimagining prosperity for the twenty-first century.

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century sets out a new vision for prosperity in the twenty-first century and how it can be achieved for all. The volume challenges orthodox understandings of economic models but goes beyond contemporary debates to show how social innovation drives economic value. Drawing on substantive research in the UK, Lebanon, and Kenya, it develops new concepts, frameworks, models, and metrics for prosperity across a wide range of contexts, emphasizing commonalities and differences. Departing from general propositions about post-growth to delineate pathways to prosperity, the volume emphasizes that visions of the good life are diverse and require empirical work co-designed with local communities and stakeholders to drive change. It will be essential reading for policymakers who are stuck, local government officers who need new tools, activists who wonder what is next, academics in need of refreshment, and students and people of all ages who want a way forward.
 

An incisive account of the crucial role money played in the formation and development of British North America.
 
Promise to Pay follows America’s first paper money—the “bills of credit” of British North America—from its seventeenth-century origins as a means of war finance to its pivotal role in catalyzing the American Revolution. Katie A. Moore combs through treasury records, account books, and the bills themselves to tell a new story of money’s origins that challenges economic orthodoxy and mainstream histories. Promise to Pay shows how colonial governments imposed paper bills on settler communities through existing labor and kinship relations, their value secured by thousands of individual claims on the public purse—debts—and the state’s promise to take them back as payment for taxes owed. Born into a world of hierarchy and deference, early American money eroded old social ties and created new asymmetries of power, functioning simultaneously as a ticket to the world of goods, a lifeline for those on the margins, and a tool of imperial domination.

Grounded in sustained engagement with scholarship from multiple disciplines, Promise to Pay breathes new life into old debates and offers an incisive account of the centrality of money in the politics and conflicts of empire, community, and everyday life. 
 

The nature of authority and rulership was a central concern in ancient Greece, where the figure of the king or tyrant and the sovereignty associated with him remained a powerful focus of political and philosophical debate even as Classical Athens developed the world's first democracy. This collection of essays examines the extraordinary role that the concept of tyranny played in the cultural and political imagination of Archaic and Classical Greece through the interdisciplinary perspectives provided by internationally known archaeologists, literary critics, and historians.

The book ranges historically from the Bronze and early Iron Age to the political theorists and commentators of the middle of the fourth century B.C. and generically across tragedy, comedy, historiography, and philosophy. While offering individual and sometimes differing perspectives, the essays tackle several common themes: the construction of authority and of constitutional models, the importance of religion and ritual, the crucial role of wealth, and the autonomy of the individual. Moreover, the essays with an Athenian focus shed new light on the vexed question of whether it was possible for Athenians to think of themselves as tyrannical in any way. As a whole, the collection presents a nuanced survey of how competing ideologies and desires, operating through the complex associations of the image of tyranny, struggled for predominance in ancient cities and their citizens.

Post-cinema designates a new way of making films. It is time to ask whether this novelty is complete or relative and to evaluate to what extent it represents a unitary or diversified current. The book proposes to integrate the post-cinema question within the post-art question in order to study the new ways of making filmic images. The issue will be considered at three levels: the impression of post-art on "regular" films; the "relocation" (Casetti) of the same films that can be seen using devices of all kinds in conditions more or less removed from the dispositif of the theater; the integration of cinema into contemporary art in all kinds of forms of creation and exhibition, parallel to the integration of contemporary art in "regular" cinema.

Over 170 years, Pittsburgh rose from remote outpost to industrial powerhouse. With the formation of the United States, the frontier town located at the confluence of three rivers grew into the linchpin for trade and migration between established eastern cities and the growing settlements of the Ohio Valley. Resources, geography, innovation, and personalities led to successful glass, iron, and eventually steel operations. As Pittsburgh blossomed into one of the largest cities in the country and became a center of industry, it generated great wealth for industrial and banking leaders. But immigrants and African American migrants, who labored under insecure, poorly paid, and dangerous conditions, did not share in the rewards of growth. Pittsburgh Rising traces the lives of individuals and families who lived and worked in this early industrial city, jammed into unhealthy housing in overcrowded neighborhoods near the mills. Although workers organized labor unions to improve conditions and charitable groups and reform organizations, often helmed by women, mitigated some of the deplorable conditions, authors Muller and Ruck show that divides along class, religious, ethnic, and racial lines weakened the efforts to improve the inequalities of early twentieth-century Pittsburgh—and persist today. 

This book describes recent developments in the power and energy markets that are driving major changes in the generation mix, network requirements and customer engagement. The industry now faces new challenges associated with global warming and escalating demand from developing countries such as China and India. The effect of government interventions to manage changes and to meet emission targets has resulted in an industry that is neither a free market nor centrally coordinated and often lacks strategic direction. The uncertainty has resulted in a dearth of investment in generation and unprecedented low margins of spare capacity. This book provides an analysis of the changes and quantifies their impact. It reviews strategic decisions in the management of changes in the sector and aims to identify the optimal way forward to meet the triple objectives of security, affordability and sustainability with low emissions. It focuses on the economic aspects of initiatives to provide insight into their interaction. It also provides insight into the opportunities in the sector to the many new potential players.

Picturing Emerson reproduces and explores the background of all known images of Ralph Waldo Emerson created from life, including drawings, paintings, silhouettes, sculptures, and photographs. The book provides dates for these images; information about their makers and Emerson’s sittings; as well as commentary by family members and contemporaries. The resulting work makes it possible for the first time to trace Emerson’s visage over seven decades.

Dating and correctly identifying images of Emerson has long challenged scholars, collectors, and the general public. By examining over fifty years of archival and published research—including web resources, library catalogs, and correspondence with international collections—the authors have been able to locate nearly 140 images dating from 1829 to immediately before Emerson’s death in 1882.

Joel Myerson has written or edited over sixty books on Emerson and the Transcendentalists, most recently Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose with Ronald A. Bosco. They have jointly received the Julian P. Boyd Award, the highest award presented by the Association for Documentary Editing. Leslie Perrin Wilson is a curator at the Concord Free Public Library, a repository known for significant holdings of Emerson portraiture. She has written extensively on local historical and literary topics.

The first comprehensive volume in English from one of Hungary’s most popular twentieth-century writers. 

Iván Mándy (1918–1995) has been called “the prose poet of Budapest,” and this volume of short stories presents the first comprehensive collection of his work in English. His early oeuvre created an urban mythology full of picaresque characters inhabiting the seedier neighborhoods of the city: its flea-market stalls, second-run cinemas, and old-fashioned coffeehouses. The stories from the later decades of Mándy’s life, often bordering on the absurd, introduce many autobiographical elements spun around the author’s alter-ego, János Zsámboky, whose hapless adventures on a rare trip abroad constitute this group of stories, including “Postcard from London.” Mándy’s unique style at times borrows techniques from films and radio plays, his quirky cuts creating a flicker of images seen in the mind’s eye. Memory and perception, time and place spin in narrative legerdemain that invites and rewards the reader’s active participation.

Bringing together the fields of sociology, political science, and management and organization studies, Ursula Mühle offers in this unique volume an authoritative overview of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Mühle first considers the origins of CSR during the 1970s, highlighting the various approaches to CSR and explaining its early shortcomings. She then turns to the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative to investigate why, since the mid-1990s, CSR has been on the rise. Finally, Mühle employs several case studies as well as interviews with business executives and politicians to illustrate why businesses worldwide now view CSR as a key component to their success. The Politics of Corporate Social Responsibility will be welcomed by scholars and CSR practitioners alike.

An ethnography on early-career workers facing job insecurity at the United Nations.

This ethnography focuses on the work and lifeworld at the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna. By emphasizing the perspectives of entry-level workers, this book addresses the increasing flexibility and job insecurity for those at the beginning of their potential UN careers. It explores questions such as: How do career aspirants reconcile their narratives with the organization’s image built over the past decades? How can we understand institutional power and individual agency through the lens of ritual theory and the theory of social orders? This study finally examines the entangled discourses around privilege and prestige on the one hand and the precarity and vulnerability of a growing number of UN workers on the other hand. It shows that these phenomena are not contractionary but two sides of the coin. Using the UN as an example, the study considers mechanisms of flexible and unstable work environments in times of cognitive and affective capitalism.

Challenging the claim that Palestine’s peasant economy progressed during the 1920s and 1930s, Amos Nadan skillfully integrates a wide variety of sources to demonstrate that the period was actually one of deterioration on both the macro (per capita) and micro levels.

The economy would have most likely continued its downward spiral during the 1940s had it not been for the temporary prosperity that resulted from World War II. Nadan argues that this deterioration continued despite the British authorities’ channeling of funds from the Jewish sector and the wealthier Arab sectors into projects for the Arab rural economy. The British were hoping that Palestine’s peasants would not rebel if their economic conditions improved. These programs were, on the whole, defective because the British chose programs based on an assumption that the peasants were too ignorant to manage their farms wisely, instead of working with the peasants and their own institutions.

The festival of the Panathenaia, held in Athens every summer to celebrate the birthday of the city's goddess, Athena, was the setting for performances of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey by professional reciters or "rhapsodes." The works of Plato are our main surviving source of information about these performances. Through his references, a crucial phase in the history of the Homeric tradition can be reconstructed. Through Plato's eyes, the "staging" of Homer in classical Athens can once again become a virtual reality.

This book examines the overall testimony of Plato as an expert about the cultural legacy of these Homeric performances. Plato's fine ear for language—in this case the technical language of high-class artisans like rhapsodes—picks up on a variety of authentic expressions that echo the talk of rhapsodes as they once practiced their art.

Highlighted among the works of Plato are the Ion, the Timaeus, and the Critias. Some experts who study the Timaeus have suggested that Plato must have intended this masterpiece, described by his characters as a humnos, to be a tribute to Athena. The metaphor of weaving, implicit in humnos and explicit in the peplos or robe that was offered to the goddess at the Panathenaia, applies also to Homeric poetry: it too was pictured as a humnos, destined for eternal re-weaving on the festive occasion of Athena's eternally self-renewing birthday.

Type “Mikhail Kalashnikov” into Google and the biography of the inventor will come back to you almost at the speed of light. Squeeze the trigger of a Kalashnikov and a bullet is kicked up the barrel by an archaic chemical explosion that would have been quite familiar to Oliver Cromwell or General Custer. The gun—antique, yet contemporary—still dominates the world. Geopolitical events and even consumer culture have been molded by the often-unseen research that firearms evoked. The new science of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton owed much to the Renaissance study of ballistics. But research into making guns and aiming them also brought on the more recent invention of mass production and kickstarted the contemporary field of artificial intelligence. This book follows the history of the gun and its often-unsuspected wider linkages, looking from the first cannons to modern gunnery, and to the yet-to-be-realized electrical futures of rays and beams.

The history of European videogames has been so far overshadowed by the global impact of the Japanese and North American industries. However, European game development studios have played a major role in videogame history, and prominent videogames in popular culture, such as Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Alone in the Dark were made in Europe. This book proposes an exploration of European videogames, including both analyses of transnational aspects of European production and close readings of national specificities. It offers a kaleidoscope of European videogame culture, focusing on the analysis of European works and creators but also addressing contextual aspects and placing videogames within a wider sociocultural and philosophical ground. The aim of this collective work is to contribute to the creation of a, so far, almost non-existent yet necessary academic endeavour: a story of the works, authors, styles and cultures of the European videogame.

Public diplomacy enables private citizens to be involved in international relations either through initiatives sponsored by governments or through direct people-to-people contacts in areas such as culture, business, education, tourism and sport. Public Diplomacy in Ireland and Japan traces the evolution of this growing branch of diplomacy and examines the role it has played in the foreign policies of Ireland and Japan, and in their bilateral relationship. It concludes that public diplomacy has contributed significantly to strengthening the links between the two countries.

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen.

Portrayals of Women in Early Twentieth-Century China explores the role played by woman, and their visual representations, in introducing modern design and modern ways of living to China. It investigates this through an analysis of how women and modern design were represented in the advertisements, photographs, and films of Republican-era China. This study explores the intersection of modernity and the Chinese woman, as they negotiated their changing identities through, and with, new designs that proliferated in Chinese households in the first half of the twentieth century. The advertisements, mass media, photographs and films took on the function of social conditioning, conveying to the viewers ideas of modern social standards, behavior and appearances. With women both instrumentalised within these images, and addressed through them, their visual representations became metaphors that fashioned a new portrait of China, while concurrently impacting on the identity, agency and subjectivity of women themselves.

A consensus mechanism is the core component of a blockchain network, which ensures that every participant agrees on the state of the network in trustless environments. Until now, current blockchain networks have been using the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which has serious limitations such as huge energy consumption, low transaction processing capabilities, and centralization and scalability issues. To overcome these problems, a new consensus mechanism entitled proof-of-stake (PoS) has been developed. PoS has many advantages, including negligible energy consumption and very low consensus delay. Ethereum (the largest decentralized global software platform to create secured digital technology powered by blockchain technology and the blockchain of choice globally for all developers and enterprises) has just switched from PoW to PoS. As a result, this mechanism is expected to become a cutting-edge technology for future blockchain networks.

In The Promise of Beauty, Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe. Nguyen conceptualizes beauty, which she observes that we turn to in emergencies and times of destruction, as a tool to identify and bridge the discrepancy between the world as it is and what it ought to be. Drawing widely from aesthetic and critical theories, Nguyen outlines how beauty—or its lack—points to the conditions that must exist for it to flourish. Noting that an absence of beauty becomes both a political observation and a call to action to transform the conditions of the situation so as to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty. The promise of beauty can then engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures that would set the foundations for its possibility and presence. In this way, Nguyen highlights the role of beauty in inspiring action toward a more just world.

Analyzes the reasons why biologists have referred to and continue to refer to plasticity.
 
Since the early twentieth century, plasticity has become an important topic in biology. Some even wondered whether plasticity has acquired in biology the theoretical importance that the concept of the gene enjoyed at the beginning of the last century. In this historical and epistemological analysis, Antonine Nicoglou shows how the recurrence of the general idea of plasticity throughout the history of the life sciences indicates its essential role in the way we think about life processes. She also argues that although plasticity has become a key element in new evolutionary thinking, its role in contemporary biology is not so limited. Rather, as mobilized in contemporary biology, plasticity most often seeks to account for the specific nature of living systems.
 
The book is divided into two parts, with the first taking up the history of plasticity from Aristotle to contemporary biology. Then, the second part of the book offers an original way of distinguishing between different phenomena described by “plasticity.” In the process, the author explores what has led some biologists to speak of plasticity as a way of overcoming genetic determinism.

A creative writing manual for high school to adult aged writers and storytellers, this volume includes the authors' philosophy regarding story creation and pointers especially related to the variety of choices regarding point of view available to writers and other story-creators or refiners.

Rapid development of sophisticated new techniques has vastly increased physicians' ability to detect congenital disorders before birth. Yet advances in treatment, before or after birth, have been very modest. This discrepancy leads to ethical and social problems that require serious attention by professionals and patients alike. This innovative book tackles such problems in the case of prenatal screening for neural tube defects. Afflicting about 7,000 newborn babies each year in the United States, neural tube defects are serious abnormalities in the development of the brain and spinal cord that have grave consequences for the child and family.

The editors, Elena O. Nightingale, a geneticist, physician, and expert in health policy, and Susan B. Meister, a specialist in parent-child nursing, social and developmental psychology, and quantitative methods, led a multidisciplinary effort by distinguished Harvard faculty, including economist Richard Zeckhauser and clinical decision analyst Barbara J. McNeil. Other contributors include Donald S. Shepard, Mary L. Kiely, and Stephen G. Pauker. The book examines the impact of technology assessment, cost effectiveness analysis, and decision analysis on reaching decisions about prenatal screening. The book includes a discussion of the results of formal analyses against a backdrop of our basic ethical and societal values, as well as the analyses themselves. Health care workers, policymakers, and concerned individuals will find this volume informative and thought provoking.

Contextualizes the Czech Reformation in the setting of Prague University.

The Czech Reformation offered a radical solution to the spiritual and institutional crisis of the late medieval church at the end of the fourteenth century. The beginnings of this reform are distinctly connected with Prague University, which drew many educated people to Prague from across Europe. Through John Hus—a former Prague University student who became its rector in 1402—the Czech Reformation gave rise to a new, radical ecclesiology. Not only did Hus challenge the hierarchical system of the church, but under his influence, the Czech Reformation acquired a specific national shape, and elements of Czech messianism emerged with the university.

Prague, John Hus and Prague University explores that sentiment within Prague University, as well as its limits and restrictive consequences for the Czech Reformation and Czech medieval society. Emphasis is placed on showing how Prague and the university became a world that existed outside the Christian ecumenism of the time.

Performative Images draws upon the work of video artists and activists in France between the 1970s and the early 2020s and focuses on significant practices with technology. Video art and video activism are analysed together in the book to revaluate key concepts in media studies and foreground a performative approach to the theory of image technology. The book engages works in visual culture, performance studies, digital studies, critical race theory, and feminist methodologies to account for the changes brought about by video technology in social and psychic life. Performative Images is about art and activists’ engagement in video technology—an engagement that unsettles the hegemonic narrative of dominant media, as well as the apparently politically neutral dimension of communication technology. In this book, the author explores how video-image technology shapes our psychic and social environments from an art historiographical perspective. We know media technology is dramatically shaping our political and epistemological landscape: this book foregrounds the emergence of performative video images as a key factor in the revaluation of culture and politics.

As the federal government’s programs have increased in complexity, with regard both to world and national affairs and to state and local interests, the problems of decision making have become vastly more intricate. This book is designed to help improve understanding of the principles of program budgeting in relation to the decisionmaking process in the federal government; to stimulate others to develop these ideas further; and to accelerate the application of program budgeting in governmental activities.

Divided into three sections, the book begins with a discussion of the government decisionmaking process, the role of budgeting, and efforts made in past years by the federal government to improve the planning–programming–budgeting process. The second section covers the introduction of program budgeting in the Department of Defense and possible application to other federal activities. The third section deals with the subject of implementation and operation of the program budget and discusses an operating federal program budget in terms of its usefulness to specific areas.

 Poet Charles Lamb described the pineapple as “too ravishing for moral taste . . . like lovers’ kisses she bites—she is a pleasure bordering on pain, from fierceness and insanity of her relish.” From the moment Christopher Columbus discovered it on a Caribbean island in 1493, the pineapple has seduced the world, becoming an object of passion and desire. Beloved by George Washington, a favorite of kings and aristocrats, the pineapple quickly achieved an elite status among fruits that it retains today. Kaori O’Connor tells the story of this culinary romance in Pineapple, an intriguing history of this luscious fruit.

This is an auto-narrated audiobook edition of this book.

In this age of nearly unprecedented partisan rancor, you’d be forgiven for thinking we could all do with a smaller daily dose of politics. In his provocative and sharp book, however, Ned O’Gorman argues just the opposite: Politics for Everybody contends that what we really need to do is engage more deeply with politics, rather than chuck the whole thing out the window. In calling for a purer, more humanistic relationship with politics—one that does justice to the virtues of open, honest exchange—O’Gorman draws on the work of Hannah Arendt (1906–75). As a German-born Jewish thinker who fled the Nazis for the United States, Arendt set out to defend politics from its many detractors along several key lines: the challenge of separating genuine politics from distorted forms; the difficulty of appreciating politics for what it is; the problems of truth and judgment in politics; and the role of persuasion in politics. O’Gorman’s book offers an insightful introduction to Arendt’s ideas  for anyone who wants to think more carefully

The claim of this book is that it is a precondition for Heaven that victims experience an eschatological healing of their other-inflicted wounds. Nathan O’Halloran, SJ, argues that the best theological space in which to locate this eschatological healing is in what he terms Paradise-in-Purgatory. The doctrine of Purgatory developed as a postmortem theological category for addressing sins committed after baptism and for which adequate penance has not been completed before death. In its full doctrinal articulations at Lyons II, Florence, and Trent, Purgatory is a doctrine concerned with personal, self-inflicted sin. Victims, on the other hand, require healing from other-inflicted sin rather than self-inflicted sin. For this reason, a certain expansion of this Catholic doctrine is required to make theological space for victims. O’Halloran argues that he has found that theological space within the Church’s ample tradition. The wellspring from which the doctrine of Purgatory emerged contains a richer content than has been represented thus far by conciliar definitions. Paradise in Purgatory maintains that the soteriological logic out of which Purgatory developed can be extended also to the postmortem healing of victims, and the soteriological logic of the New Testament supports this conclusion. Using as fundamental touchstones the wiping away of victims’ tears in the Book of Revelation, and the healing of Dinocrates through the prayers of his sister Perpetua in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, O’Halloran argues that victims must have an opportunity to experience full postmortem salvation from other-inflicted sin. The volume concludes that Purgatory can be theologically expanded to include a Paradise-in-Purgatory, i.e., a process that heals the other-inflicted wounds of sin which victims carry with them through death. The wounds of victims cannot be eschatologically discarded but must be subjected to the healing salvation which Christ came to offer.

This collection of papers is devoted to the significance of particular formal and literary aspects of the Platonic dialogues.