Title search results
Showing 8321 - 8340 of 20641 items
Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy
By Robert Vitalis. 2020
A bracing corrective to the myths that have shaped economic, military, and diplomatic policy, dispelling our oil-soaked fantasies of dependence.…
There is a conventional wisdom about oil—that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this strategic resource; that the "special" relationship with Saudi Arabia is necessary to stabilize an otherwise volatile market; and that these assumptions in turn provide Washington enormous leverage over Europe and Asia. Except, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Robert Vitalis debunks the myths to reveal "oilcraft," a line of magical thinking closer to witchcraft than statecraft. Oil is a commodity like any other: bought, sold, and subject to market forces. Thus, the first goal of this book is to expose the suspect fears of oil scarcity and conflict. The second goal is to investigate the significant geopolitical impact of these false beliefs. In particular, Vitalis shows how we can reconsider the question of the U.S.–Saudi special relationship, which confuses and traps many into unnecessarily accepting what they imagine is a devil's bargain. The House of Saud does many things for U.S. investors, firms, and government agencies, but guaranteeing the flow of oil, making it cheap, or stabilizing the price isn't one of them. Freeing ourselves from the spell of oilcraft won't be easy—but the benefits make it essential.The Benchley Roundup: A Selection by Nathaniel Benchley of His Favorites
By Robert Benchley, Nathaniel Benchley. 1982
Foreword ONE time, during the recent war, an Air Force sergeant accosted Robert Benchley in a bar and, with little…
or no preamble, said, "I might as well tell you that I don't like your work." Benchley replied that he had moments of doubt himself, and the sergeant then explained that he had hitched a ride from Africa to Italy on a cargo plane, and that the only available sleeping space had been on bags that were full of overseas editions of Benchley's books. By the time they passed Sicily, the man said, he was so stiff and sore that he hoped never to hear the name Benchley again. "Try it yourself sometime," he concluded. "That stuff isn't funny when you have to sleep on it." In somewhat the same way, I would suggest that The Benchley Roundup be read piecemeal rather than in one lumppicked up and put down as though you were waiting for a telephone call, or for guests to arrivebecause, after all, the pieces had their original appeal as separate entities. In making my selection from about a thousand previously published pieces, I read in fits and starts over a long period of time. Many people have tried to analyze Robert Benchley's particular form of humor, and I would be the last one to add my tiny voice to that of the throng, because I don't think it can be analyzed. It is sometimes mad, sometimes penetrating, and sometimes based on nothing more than word associations, and the only generalization that can be made with any degree of certainty is that it is different or, if you will, unique. So let's just leave it that the humorous pieces collected here, written between 1915 and 1945, are those which seem to stand up best over the years. There were some that were much admired when they first appeared, but were based on premises that now seem a little soft; others were glorious in part but evaporated when taken as a whole; and all these have been left out in an attempt to select the most durable. Another compiler might have picked an entirely different group, but that would have been his worry. These are the ones that I like best, and beyond that there isn't much more I ought to say. Nathaniel BenchleyThe Flash: The Tornado Twins
By Barry Lyga. 2018
Barry Allen, also known as the Flash, in the third book of this middle-grade series. Featuring adventures not seen on…
TV, Barry continues his mission to protect Central City from sinister plots.This book examines the permissibility and effectiveness of targeted killing in campaigns against terror. Targeted killing has become a primary…
counterterrorism measure used by several countries in their confrontation with lethal threats. The practice has been extensively used by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. Several studies have already explored the difficult balance between achieving security while maintaining the liberties and rights of a country’s civilians. This book goes a step further by seeking to examine whether maintaining those liberties by complying with legal standards and minimizing unintended deaths can be more effective for national security. Using targeted killing applied by Israel, in particular, as well as the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century as case studies, this book explores that question and ultimately assesses whether compliance with legal standards can strengthen a state in its campaign against terrorism and thus provide stronger security. The book focuses on civilian-related criteria, hypothesizing that minimizing civilian casualties will maximize effectiveness in an asymmetric war setting. The conclusions are not limited to a specific tactic or theater, and if adopted might have far-reaching implications for how asymmetric warfare is strategized. This book will be of much interest to students of counter-terrorism, law, Middle Eastern studies, and security studies.The Saigon Sisters: Privileged Women in the Resistance (NIU Southeast Asian Series)
By Patricia D. Norland. 2020
The Saigon Sisters offers the narratives of a group of privileged women who were immersed in a French lycée and…
later rebelled and fought for independence, starting with France's occupation of Vietnam and continuing through US involvement and life after war ends in 1975.Tracing the lives of nine women, The Saigon Sisters reveals these women's stories as they forsook safety and comfort to struggle for independence, and describes how they adapted to life in the jungle, whether facing bombing raids, malaria, deadly snakes, or other trials. How did they juggle double lives working for the resistance in Saigon? How could they endure having to rely on family members to raise their own children? Why, after being sent to study abroad by anxious parents, did several women choose to return to serve their country? How could they bear open-ended separation from their husbands? How did they cope with sending their children to villages to escape the bombings of Hanoi? In spite of the maelstrom of war, how did they forge careers? And how, in spite of dislocation and distrust following the end of the war in 1975, did these women find each other and rekindle their friendships? Patricia D. Norland answers these questions and more in this powerful and personal approach to history.Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes
By Nadav G. Shelef. 2020
Why are some territorial partitions accepted as the appropriate borders of a nation's homeland, whereas in other places conflict continues…
despite or even because of division of territory? In Homelands, Nadav G. Shelef develops a theory of what homelands are that acknowledges both their importance in domestic and international politics and their change over time. These changes, he argues, driven by domestic political competition and help explain the variation in whether partitions resolve conflict.Homelands also provides systematic, comparable data about the homeland status of lost territory over time that allow it to bridge the persistent gap between constructivist theories of nationalism and positivist empirical analyses of international relations.Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile (New Directions in Palestinian Studies #1)
By Loren D. Lybarger. 2020
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Chicago is home to one of the…
largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gained strength. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interview data, Palestinian Chicago charts the origins of these changes and the multiple effects they have had on identity across religious, political, class, gender, and generational lines. The perspectives that emerge through this rich ethnography challenge prevailing understandings of secularity and religion, offering critical insight into current debates about immigration and national belonging.Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937
By Ishita Pande. 2020
Ishita Pande's innovative study provides a dual biography of India's path-breaking Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and of 'age' itself…
as a key category of identity for upholding the rule of law, and for governing intimate life in late colonial India. Through a reading of legislative assembly debates, legal cases, government reports, propaganda literature, Hindi novels and sexological tracts, Pande tells a wide-ranging story about the importance of debates over child protection to India's coming of age. By tracing the history of age in colonial India she illuminates the role of law in sculpting modern subjects, demonstrating how seemingly natural age-based exclusions and understandings of legal minority became the alibi for other political exclusions and the minoritization of entire communities in colonial India. In doing so, Pande highlights how childhood as a political category was fundamental not just to ideas of sexual norms and domestic life, but also to the conceptualisation of citizenship and India as a nation in this formative period.Spatial Imaginings in the Age of Colonial Cartographic Reason: Maps, Landscapes, Travelogues in Britain and India
By Nilanjana Mukherjee. 2020
This volume explores how India as a geographical space was constructed by the British colonial regime in visual and material…
terms. It demonstrates the instrumentalisation of cultural artefacts such as landscape paintings, travel literature and cartography, as spatial practices overtly carrying scientific truth claims, to materially produce artificial spaces that reinforced power relations. It sheds light on the primary dominance of cartographic reason in the age of European Enlightenment which framed aesthetic and scientific modes of representation and imagination. The author cross-examines this imperial gaze as a visual perspective which bore the material inscriptions of a will to assert, possess and control. The distinguishing theme in this study is the production of India as a new geography sourced from Britain's own interaction with its rural outskirts and domination in its fringes. This book: Addresses the concept of "production of space" to study the formulation of a colonial geography which resulted in the birth of a new place, later a nation; Investigates a generative period in the formation of British India c. 1750–1850 as a colonial territory vis-à-vis its representation and reiteration in British maps, landscape paintings and travel writings; Brings Great Britain and British India together on one plane not only in terms of the physical geo-spaces but also in the excavation of critical domains by alluding to critics from both spaces; Seeks to understand the pictorial grammar that legitimised the expansive British imperial cartographic gaze as the dominant narrative which marginalised all other existing local ideas of space and inhabitation. Rethinking colonial constructions of modern India, this volume will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of modern history, cultural geography, colonial studies, English literature, cultural studies, art, visual studies and area studies.Unofficial China: Popular Culture And Thought In The People's Republic
By Perry Link. 1990
This book presents a view of social life in China and discusses different methods for studying contemporary China as a…
tool for introducing students to the study of popular culture. Through a diverse set of case studies, it introduces readers to a wide range of issues facing Chinese society.The Asiatic Mode of Production in China (Chinese Studies On China)
By Timothy Brook. 1989
Brook (history, U. of Toronto) surveys the history of the concept of the AMP (a concept formulated by Karl Marx…
in the 1850s) in China in relation to debates elsewhere, and examines the particular issues raised in recent Chinese discussions. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.In this ground-breaking new study, Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracle workers (pawangs) in…
the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Malay world. Through close textual analysis of hitherto overlooked manuscripts and personal interaction with modern pawangs readers are introduced to a universe of miracle workers that existed both in the past and in the present, uncovering connections between miracles and material life. Sevea demonstrates how societies in which the production and extraction of natural resources, as well as the uses of technology, were intertwined with the knowledge of charismatic religious figures, and locates the role of the pawangs in the spiritual economy of the Indian Ocean world, across maritime connections and Sufi networks, and on the frontier of the British Empire.Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India’s Long Decolonization (South Asia in Motion)
By Sanjukta Sunderason. 2020
Partisan Aesthetics explores art's entanglements with histories of war, famine, mass politics and displacements that marked late-colonial and postcolonial India.…
Introducing "partisan aesthetics" as a conceptual grid, the book identifies ways in which art became political through interactions with left-wing activism during the 1940s, and the afterlives of such interactions in post-independence India. Using an archive of artists and artist collectives working in Calcutta from these decades, Sanjukta Sunderason argues that artists became political not only as reporters, organizers and cadre of India's Communist Party, or socialist fellow travelers, but through shifting modes of political participations and dissociations. Unmooring questions of Indian modernism from its hitherto dominant harnesses to national or global affiliations, Sunderason activates, instead, distinctly locational histories that refract transnational currents. She analyzes largely unknown and dispersed archives—drawings, diaries, posters, periodicals, and pamphlets, alongside paintings and prints—and insists that art as archive is foundational to understanding modern art's socialist affiliations during India's long decolonization. By bringing together expanding fields of South Asian art, global modernisms, and Third World cultures, Partisan Aesthetics generates a new narrative that combines political history of Indian modernism, social history of postcolonial cultural criticism, and intellectual history of decolonization.Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS
By Maria Sherman. 2020
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri; min-height: 17.0px}…
This nostalgic, fully-illustrated history of boy bands -- written by culture critic and boy band stan Maria Sherman -- is a must-have for diehard fans of the genre and beyond.The music, the fans, the choreography, the clothes, the merch, the hair. Long after Beatlemania came and went, a new unstoppable boy band era emerged. Fueled by good looks and even greater hooks, the pop phenomenon that dominated the '80s, '90s, and 2000s has left a long-lasting mark on culture, and it's time we celebrate it. Written by super fan Maria Sherman for stans and curious parties alike, Larger Than Life is the definitive guide to boy bands, delivered with a mix of serious obsession and tongue-in-cheek humor.Larger Than Life begins with a brief history of male vocal groups, spotlighting The Beatles, the Jackson 5, and Menudo before diving into the building blocks of these beloved acts in "Boy Bands 101." She also focuses on artists like New Edition, New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, One Direction, and BTS before ending with an interrogation into the future of boy bands. Included throughout are Tiger Beat-inspired illustrations, capsule histories of the swoon-iest groups, in-depth investigations into one-hit wonders, and sidebars dedicated to conspiracy theories, dating, in-fighting, haters, fan fiction, fashion (Justin and Britney in denim, of course), and so much more.Informative, affectionate, funny, and never, ever fan-shaming, Larger Than Life is the first and only text of its kind: the ultimate celebration of boy bands and proof that this once maligned music can never go unappreciated.Russia in Asia: Imaginations, Interactions, and Realities (Routledge Studies in Modern History)
By Jane F. Hacking. 2020
This edited volume presents new research on Russian-Asian connections by historians, art historians, literary scholars, and linguists. Of particular interest…
are imagined communities, social networks, and the legacy of colonialism in this important arena of global exchanges within the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras. Individual chapters investigate how Russians imagined Asia and its inhabitants, how these different populations interacted across political and cultural divides, and how people in Siberia, China, and other parts of Asia reacted to Russian imperialism, both in its formal and informal manifestations. A key strength of this volume is its interdisciplinary approach to the topic, challenging readers to synthesize multiple analytical lenses to better understand the multivalent connections binding Russia and Asia together.How to Make Children Laugh
By Michael Rosen. 2018
'A WORK OF GENIUS' - Chris EvansJokes, a jack-in-the-box, jelly and jumping beans make children laugh.As do practical jokes, peekaboo,…
pantomine and poetry that makes no sense.Why and how does this work? And why does it matter?Writer and Professor of Children's Literature Michael Rosen, whose books - from We're Going on a Bear Hunt to Chocolate Cake - have made millions of children rock with laughter, gives us the tools for this greatest of gifts.Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy
By Anirudh Krishna. 2002
The idea of social capital allows scholars to assess the quality of relationships among people within a particular community and…
show how that quality affects the ability to achieve shared goals. With evidence collected from sixty-nine villages in India, Krishna investigates what social capital is, how it operates in practice, and what results it can be expected to produce. Does social capital provide a viable means for advancing economic development, promoting ethnic peace, and strengthening democratic governance? The world is richer than ever before, but more than a fifth of its people are poor and miserable. Civil wars and ethnic strife continue to mar prospects for peace. Democracy is in place in most countries, but large numbers of citizens do not benefit from it. How can development, peace and democracy become more fruitful for the ordinary citizen? This book shows how social capital is a crucial dimension of any solution to these problems.Thomas Philipp's study of Acre combines the most extensive use to date of local Arabic sources with commercial records in…
Europe to shed light on a region and power center many identify as the beginning of modern Palestinian history. The third largest city in eighteenth-century Syria—after Aleppo and Damascus—Acre was the capital of a politically and economically unique region on the Mediterranean coast that included what is today northern Israel and southern Lebanon. In the eighteenth century, Acre grew dramatically from a small fishing village to a fortified city of some 25,000 inhabitants. Cash crops (first cotton, then grain) made Acre the center of trade and political power and linked it inextricably to the world economy. Acre was markedly different from other cities in the region: its urban society consisted almost exclusively of immigrants seeking their fortune. The rise and fall of Acre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Thomas Philipp argues, must be seen against the background of the decay of central power in the Ottoman empire. Destabilization of imperial authority allowed for the resurfacing of long-submerged traditional power centers and the integration of Arab regions into European and world economies. This larger imperial context proves the key to addressing many questions about the local history of Acre and its peripheries. How were the new sources of wealth and patterns of commerce that remade Acre reconciled with traditional forms of political power and social organization? Were these forms really traditional? Or did entirely new classes develop under the circumstances of an immigrant society and new commercial needs? And why did Acre, after such propitious beginnings as a center of export trade and political and military power strong enough to defy Napoleon, give way to the dazzling rise of Beirut in the nineteenth century? For centuries the object of the Crusader's fury and the trader's envy, Acre is here restored to its full significance at a crucial moment in Middle Eastern history.El guardián entre el ibuprofeno
By Enfermera Saturada. 2020
Es triste amar sin ser amado, pero más triste es quedarte sin gasas en la habitación del aislado. ¿Cuál es…
el colmo de una enfermera? Ponerse enferma. Y si esto sucede en sus días libres, es todavía peor porque no puede automedicarse y tiene que ir a su centro de salud a por recetas. Así empieza esta nueva entrega de las aventuras de Satu. Aquí descubrirás que los puntos para la bolsa de empleo son los bitcoins de la sanidad, que los pijamas también van de Erasmus ya que si echas a lavar uno del Servicio Galego de Saude pueden devolverte otro del Servicio de Salud de Castilla y León, que escuchar "paciente independiente, orientado y colaborador" puede producir más placer que el satisfyer y que a final de mes una enfermera con turno de noche ha visto más lunas que Joseba el de Carglass. Bienvenidos una vez más al mundo de Enfermera Saturada, porque ya sabemos que el humor no cura las heridas... pero las hace más soportables. Si no tienes claro si una enfermera que pincha en el turno de noche es una DJ. Si estás convencido de que la persona que inventa el tamaño de las pastillas no es buena persona. Si no soportas a las señoras que te dicen en qué vena tienes que pincharlas, este es tu libro. La crítica ha dicho...«Enfermera Saturada, el tuitero gallego que te cuenta lo que no sabes de los hospitales.»El Español. «Su autor consigue lo que parece imposible, describir con humor la precaria situación de la enfermería española.»Cadena SER. «Una saga de libros que muestran el poder de las historias que nos tocan.»La Voz de Galicia.