Summer 1939: Alexandre lives peacefully in Brittany, France, with his wife and newborn child. Suddenly, war is declared. He is enlisted on the Eastern Front line with his engineer regiment. His fascinating odyssey takes him to Flanders, Belgium, and Dunkirk where he misses the last boat for England. Taken prisoner, he walks to Holland where he is then transported to two prison camps in Pomerania. From the stalags to the village of Schivelbein, where he works in a kommando for five interminable years of confinement, Alexandre goes through many tragic, but sometimes also comical, adventures where he encounters a plethora of endearing characters – Jean, the erudite joker; Fanch, the bon vivant; Théo, the simpleton horse broker; Léon, the unfortunate teacher; Violette, the spinster organist; Émile, the tenor; André, the poet miller; Frida, the Teutonic bewitcher and her lover Janusz, the lame hunchback; Gus, the ingenious and facetious escapee; Amadeusz, the Francophile haulier; Gérard, the fox; Dmitri, the Russian soldier and Latin scholar; Marie, the madly in love; and many more …. Eventually, the Red Army liberates Alexandre, who then experiences new dramatic adventures before his return, after six years of absence, to his barely-known little boy and his wife who are impatiently waiting for him. Inspired by true events, Alexandre’s story is enthralling, written with a compelling honesty to the brutality he experienced. The narrative is well-paced, heart-breaking twists and turns combine a deep emotional effect with a compulsion that drags the reader to the edge of their seat beyond the final dramatic moments. The authorial voice is transfixing, evoking the War and its lasting impact to great effect. Supported by a detailed, nuanced, and complex cast, a layered narrative and an immersive evocation of the era, ‘SIX YEARS OF ABSENCE - An endless confinement’ is undoubtedly a crafted novel worthy of attention.
Summer 1939: Alexandre lives peacefully in Brittany, France, with his wife and newborn child. Suddenly, war is declared. He is enlisted on the Eastern Front line with his engineer regiment. His fascinating odyssey takes him to Flanders, Belgium, and Dunkirk where he misses the last boat for England. Taken prisoner, he walks to Holland where he is then transported to two prison camps in Pomerania. From the stalags to the village of Schivelbein, where he works in a kommando for five interminable years of confinement, Alexandre goes through many tragic, but sometimes also comical, adventures where he encounters a plethora of endearing characters – Jean, the erudite joker; Fanch, the bon vivant; Théo, the simpleton horse broker; Léon, the unfortunate teacher; Violette, the spinster organist; Émile, the tenor; André, the poet miller; Frida, the Teutonic bewitcher and her lover Janusz, the lame hunchback; Gus, the ingenious and facetious escapee; Amadeusz, the Francophile haulier; Gérard, the fox; Dmitri, the Russian soldier and Latin scholar; Marie, the madly in love; and many more …. Eventually, the Red Army liberates Alexandre, who then experiences new dramatic adventures before his return, after six years of absence, to his barely-known little boy and his wife who are impatiently waiting for him. Inspired by true events, Alexandre’s story is enthralling, written with a compelling honesty to the brutality he experienced. The narrative is well-paced, heart-breaking twists and turns combine a deep emotional effect with a compulsion that drags the reader to the edge of their seat beyond the final dramatic moments. The authorial voice is transfixing, evoking the War and its lasting impact to great effect. Supported by a detailed, nuanced, and complex cast, a layered narrative and an immersive evocation of the era, ‘SIX YEARS OF ABSENCE - An endless confinement’ is undoubtedly a crafted novel worthy of attention.
A profound look at what it means for new generations to read and interpret ancient religious texts In this book, rabbi and philosopher Marc-Alain Ouaknin offers a postmodern reading of the Talmud. Combining traditional learning and contemporary thought, Ouaknin dovetails discussions of spirituality and religious practice with such concepts as deconstruction, intertextuality, undecidability, multiple voicing, and eroticism in the Talmud. On a broader level, he establishes a dialogue between Hebrew tradition and the social sciences, which draws, for example, on the works of Lévinas, Blanchot, and Jabès as well as Derrida. The Burnt Book represents the innovative thinking that has come to be associated with a school of French Jewish studies, headed by Lévinas and dedicated to new readings of traditional texts. The Talmud, transcribed in 500 C.E., is shown to be a text that refrains from dogma and instead encourages the exploration of its meanings. A vast compilation of Jewish oral law, the Talmud also contains rabbinical commentaries that touch on everything from astronomy to household life. Examining its literary methods and internal logic, Ouaknin explains how this text allows readers to transcend its authority in that it invites them to interpret, discuss, and recreate their religious tradition. An in-depth treatment of selected texts from the oral law and commentary goes on to provide a model for secular study of the Talmud in light of contemporary philosophical issues. Throughout, the author emphasizes the self-effacing quality of a text whose worth can be measured by the insights that live on in the minds of its interpreters long after they have closed the book. He points out that the burning of the Talmud in anti-Judaic campaigns throughout history has, in fact, been an unwitting act of complicity with Talmudic philosophy and the practice of self-effacement. Ouaknin concludes his discussion with the story of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who himself burned his life achievement—a work known by his students as "the Burnt Book." This story leaves us with the question, should all books be destroyed in order to give birth to thought and renew meaning?
Daniélou's powerful rebuttal to the conventional view of India's history, which calls for a massive reevaluation of the history of humanity • Explores historical occurrences from each major time period starting with the first appearance of man 30,000 years ago • Couples the clarity and perspective of an outsider with the unique and specific knowledge of an insider • By the internationally recognized Hindu scholar and translator of The Complete Kama Sutra (200,000 copies sold) Alain Daniélou approaches the history of India from a new perspective--as a sympathetic outsider, yet one who understands the deepest workings of the culture. Because the history of India covers such a long span of time, rather than try to create an exhaustive chronology of dates and events, Daniélou instead focuses on enduring institutions that remain constant despite the ephemeral historical events that occur. His selections, synthesis, and narration create a thoroughly engaging and readable journey through time, with a level of detail and comprehensiveness that is truly a marvel. Because of the continuity of its civilization, its unique social system, and the tremendous diversity of cultures, races, languages, and religions that exist in its vast territory, India is like a history museum. Its diverse groups maintained their separate identities and never fully supplanted the culture and knowledge of their predecessors. Even today one may encounter in India primitive Stone Age people whose technology has remained at what is considered prehistoric levels. Thus Daniélou's examination of India reveals not only the diversity and historical events and trends of that country, but also the history of all mankind. Through Daniélou's history of India we learn from whence we came, what we have discovered over the years in the fields of science, arts, technology, social structures, religions, and philosophical concepts, and what the future may hold for us.
Three major features set French transfusion medicine apart from other international models: in France, blood donation is underpinning by four founding principles : it is anonymous, voluntary, non-remunerated and not-for-profit. “Ethical blood donation” is the foundation of the French model; - this model is led by a single government agnecy, the EFS, which has a monopoly over the distribution of labile blood products to ensure constant availability across the country; - delivery is inseparable from immunohaematology (the EFS is the largest medical testing laboratory in France) and transfusion support, which is also provided by the EFS, to guide the prescriber towards the “right prescription” (the right product for the right patient). Through the EFS, the French State is therefore responsible for selfsufficiency, health safety and the efficient management of the rare and precious commodity that is human blood. The French model is one of the few to provide both “ethical blood donation” and internationally recognized efficiency.
Les systèmes embarqués rendent un nombre de services grandissant et font partie de notre vie quotidienne : ascenseurs, transports, téléphonie, médecine, énergie, industrie, etc. Ainsi, si l’on parle de plus en plus de systèmes embarqués, il s’agit avant tout d’un ensemble complet et intégré (matériel + logiciel). Le point central de leur développement est leur interaction avec leur environnement et les conséquences associées en termes de sécurité et de fiabilité. Cet ouvrage dresse un état de l’art du développement des systèmes embarqués. Il se concentre particulièrement sur leur modélisation et leur analyse. Il s’agit d’opérations cruciales qui détermineront la fiabilité du futur système. L’apparition récente des techniques basées sur l’ingénierie des modèles pourrait révolutionner le développement de ces systèmes en assurant une continuité entre le niveau conceptuel et l’implémentation de la partie logicielle. L’ouvrage expose trois approches parmi les plus utilisées : SysML (aspects ingénierie système), UML/MARTE et AADL (conception/analyse).
For Alain Badiou, theatre—unlike cinema—is the place for the staging of a truly emancipatory collective subject. In this sense theatre is, of all the arts, the one strictly homologous to politics: both theatre and politics depend on a limited set of texts or statements, collectively enacted by a group of actors or militants, which put a limit on the excessive power of the state. This explains why the history of theatre has always been inseparable from a history of state repression and censorship. This definitive collection includes not only Badiou’s pamphlet Rhapsody for the Theatre but also essays on Jean-Paul Sartre, on the political destiny of contemporary theatre, and on Badiou’s own work as a playwright, as author of the Ahmed Tetralogy.
An authority on Hinduism and renowned for his directorship of the Institute of Comparative Music Studies in Berlin and Venice, Alain Daniélou is also an accomplished pianist, dancer, player of the Indian vînâ, painter, linguist and translator, photographer, and world traveler. To these attainments he has added The Way to the Labyrinth--as vivid, uninhibited, and wide-ranging a memoir as one is ever likely to encounter, now translated and published in English for the first time. Born of a haute-bourgeoise French family--his mother an ardent Catholic, his father an anticlerical leftwing politician, his older brother a cardinal--Daniélou spent a solitary childhood. Escaping from his family milieu, he went to Paris, where he fell in with avant-garde, bohemian, sexually liberated circles, among whose luminaries were Cocteau, Diaghilev, Max Jacob, and Maurice Sachs. But however fervently he plunged into various activities, he felt some other destiny awaited him. After a number of journeys, some of them highly adventurous, he found his real home in India. He spent twenty years there, fifteen of them in Benares on the banks of the Ganges. There he immersed himself in the study of Sanskrit, Hindu philosophy, music, and the art of the ancient temples of Northern India, and converted to the Hindu religion. But times changed, and soon after India gained its independence, he returned to live again in Europe and devoted much of his great energy to the encouragement of traditional musics from around the world.
The inside story of decades of government interference in the work of our national public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada. Is there a quiet campaign to hamstring and silence the CBC? In Losing Our Voice Alain Saulnier, long-time head of news and public affairs at Radio-Canada, documents the decades of political interference that have jeopardized the very existence of one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions. For French-speaking Canadians, with limited options in their own language, the national broadcaster is all the more important. But tensions surrounding national unity and identity have exacerbated the tendency of federal politicians to meddle in CBC/Radio-Canada’s content and management. Saulnier takes us behind the scenes as these tensions play out, and culminate in the punitive Harper budget cuts.
Optimal control is a branch of applied mathematics that engineers need in order to optimize the operation of systems and production processes. Its application to concrete examples is often considered to be difficult because it requires a large investment to master its subtleties. The purpose of Optimal Control in Bioprocesses is to provide a pedagogical perspective on the foundations of the theory and to support the reader in its application, first by using academic examples and then by using concrete examples in biotechnology. The book is thus divided into two parts, the first of which outlines the essential definitions and concepts necessary for the understanding of Pontryagin’s maximum principle – or PMP – while the second exposes applications specific to the world of bioprocesses. This book is unique in that it focuses on the arguments and geometric interpretations of the trajectories provided by the application of PMP.
This monograph presents a general mathematical theory for biological growth. It provides both a conceptual and a technical foundation for the understanding and analysis of problems arising in biology and physiology. The theory and methods are illustrated on a wide range of examples and applications. A process of extreme complexity, growth plays a fundamental role in many biological processes and is considered to be the hallmark of life itself. Its description has been one of the fundamental problems of life sciences, but until recently, it has not attracted much attention from mathematicians, physicists, and engineers. The author herein presents the first major technical monograph on the problem of growth since D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s 1917 book On Growth and Form. The emphasis of the book is on the proper mathematical formulation of growth kinematics and mechanics. Accordingly, the discussion proceeds in order of complexity and the book is divided into five parts. First, a general introduction on the problem of growth from a historical perspective is given. Then, basic concepts are introduced within the context of growth in filamentary structures. These ideas are then generalized to surfaces and membranes and eventually to the general case of volumetric growth. The book concludes with a discussion of open problems and outstanding challenges. Thoughtfully written and richly illustrated to be accessible to readers of varying interests and background, the text will appeal to life scientists, biophysicists, biomedical engineers, and applied mathematicians alike.
Endlich ein Forschungsleitfaden für Wissenschaftler des Fachgebiets, die neue Methoden entwickeln oder einsetzen. Dieses Handbuch umfasst fünf thematische Bände und bietet damit einen umfassenden Überblick über das Fachgebiet. Erläutert werden Grundlagen, die Methodenentwicklung und hochkarätige Anwendungen für alle wichtigen Analyseverfahren, darunter chromatische Verfahren, Techniken in den Bereichen Elektromigration und Membranen. Dieses Referenzwerk umfasst ein breites Spektrum und legt den Schwerpunkt auf Entwicklungen für die Zukunft. Damit ist es ein Muss für Forscher und eine wertvolle Wissensquelle für Studenten im Hauptstudium und Studienabsolventen.
Ideal for history buffs interested in inland navigation and industrial history, this volume reveals how the construction of the Lachine Canal starting in 1821 played a pivotal role in the industrial development of Montreal and all of Canada. Truly revolutionary, the canal ultimately allowed ships to bypass the previously insurmountable rapids and reach the Great Lakes, and its many consequences and benefits are described in detail.
The first full biography of one of the greatest figures of eighteenth-century Europe, known in his time as the "Black Mozart" Virtually forgotten until now, his life is the stuff of legend. Born in 1739 in Guadeloupe to a slave mother and a French noble father, he became the finest swordsman of his age, an insider at the doomed court of Louis XVI, and, most of all, a virtuosic musician. A violinist, he directed the Olympic Society of Concerts, which was considered the finest in Europe in an age of great musicians, including Haydn, from whom he commissioned a symphony, and Mozart, to whom he was often compared. He also became the first Freemason of color, embracing the French Revolution with the belief that it would end the racism against which-despite his illustrious achievements-he struggled his whole life. This is the life of Joseph Bologne, known variously as Monsieur de Saint-George, the "Black Mozart," and, because of his origins, "the American." Alain Guédé offers a fascinating account of this extraordinary individual, whose musical compositions are at long last being revived and whose story will never again be forgotten.
Accounts of the work of six significant figures in Canadian political thought are used to examine key intellectual debates, including the national unity issue and Canada's relationship with the United States. James Bickerton, Stephen Brooks, and Alain Gagnon analyse the work and influence of George Grant, Harold Innis, Charles Taylor, and Pierre Trudeau, as well as two writers crucial to French-Canadian nationalism, André Laurendeau and Marcel Rioux. The authors look at the ways these individuals understood freedom, equality, and community and consider the impact they have had on Canadian political life.
Unique in its breadth of coverage and level of presentation, this revised textbook provides more on the nature of galaxies, extragalactic objects, the large-scale structure of the Universe, and cosmology than is available in general textbooks on astronomy. It remains, however, accessible to advanced undergraduate students. One or more chapters are devoted to each of the following: the classification and morphology of galaxies; the galactic interstellar medium; galactic kinematics; elliptical, spiral, and barred spiral galaxies; the interactions between galaxies; extragalactic radio sources, quasars and their line spectra, and other active galactic nuclei; the formation of galaxies; the Universe as a whole; and cosmology.
Starting in 1994, Cameroon introduced regulatory and market-based reforms to regulate access to its rainforests, balance public and private interests in those forests, and integrate wider economic, cultural, and environmental perspectives of the value of forests. Based on historical data and extensive interviews, this report concludes that the reforms brought order over the most aggressively competing interests and started to address deeper social and environmental issues, but a significant unfinished agenda remains. On the positive side, information on the boundaries, ownership, use rights, and management of Cameroon s rainforests has become available for public scrutiny, along with information on detection and prosecution of illegal activities. Better and better known rules of the game have improved forest governance and collaboration between forest institutions and civil society. More than 60 percent of Cameroon s rainforests are under management systems that emphasize sustainability. Illegal logging has declined sharply managed parks and production forests, although it persists in rural areas. The restructured forest industry has adopted internationally recognized management practices that have started to align logging with the forest s capacity to regenerate. Cameroon has established rules to preserve customary rights to forests, and community forests have progressed despite unanticipated challenges. Yet further reform is needed. Deeper recognition of the customary rights of all people who depend on Cameroon s forests, regardless of ethnicity, is vital. Timber and nontimber forest products like medicinal plants and bush meat remain subject to illegal exploitation outside state forests. Cameroon needs qualified eco-investors to sustain conservation and diminish reliance on timber production. Community involvement in the management of all types of forests should expand further. Great attention to local markets and small firms will strengthen forest governance and the forest industry in important ways. Rewarding responsible corporate behavior with more lenient bank guarantees and tax incentives may prove as important for conserving forests as punishing corporate misbehavior.
Manuscripts containing Greek medical texts were inventoried by author and work at the beginning of the 20th century by a group of philologists under the direction of Hermann Diels. Useful as it was - and will continue to be – Diels’ catalogue omitted authors and works, misidentified manuscripts, and overlooked codices. Furthermore, since the publication of the catalogue, some libraries have adopted a new system of classification, manuscripts have been destroyed, items have changed location, and new ones have come to light. The present Census is a checklist of the Greek medical manuscripts currently known in collections worldwide. It is both an amended and updated index of Diels’ catalogue, and a list of the items missed or overlooked in Diels, or located since. Although it does not supersede Diels’ catalogue, it is the indispensable instrument for a New Diels, and will be the reference for years to come for any new critical edition and medico-historical research based on manuscripts, besides providing the basis for a broad range of other historical inquiries, from codicology to the history of medicine and science, including Byzantine intellectual history, Renaissance studies and humanism, history of the book and early printing, and the history of medical philology and learning.
Superhydrophobic surfaces (water contact angles higher than 150a ) can only be achieved by a combination of hydrophobicity (low surface energy materials) with appropriate surface texture. In nature one can find an array of impressive and elegant examples of superhydrophobic surfaces. For example, on a lotus leaf rain drops bounce off after impact,
This “rich and poignant” history traces Jewish radicals from their Eastern European roots through years of hope, Nazi resistance, and beyond—“with fascinating asides on Spain and Palestine” (Noam Chomsky). Jewish radicals manned the barricades on the avenues of Petrograd and the alleys of the Warsaw ghetto; they were in the vanguard of those resisting Franco and the Nazis. They originated in Yiddishland, a vast expanse of Eastern Europe that, before the Holocaust, ran from the Baltic Sea to the western edge of Russia and incorporated hundreds of Jewish communities with a combined population of 11 million people. Within this territory, revolutionaries arose from the Jewish misery of Eastern and Central Europe; they were raised in the fear of God and taught to respect religious tradition but were caught up in the great current of revolutionary utopian thinking. Socialists, Communists, Bundists, Zionists, Trotskyists, manual workers and intellectuals, they embodied the multifarious activity and radicalism of a Jewish working class that glimpsed the Messiah in the folds of the red flag. Today, the world from which they came has disappeared, dismantled and destroyed by the Nazi genocide. After this irremediable break, there remain only survivors, and the work of memory for red Yiddishland. This book traces the struggles of these militants, their singular trajectories, their oscillation between great hope and doubt, their lost illusions—a red and Jewish gaze on the history of the 20th century. “Nowadays we know more and more about the Nazi Genocide . . . we have much less knowledge about the everyday life which preceded the horror and was so brutally terminated.” —Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People
A compelling analysis of the work of art historian Aby Warburg and its radical implications for the study of visual images Aby Warburg (1866–1929) is best known as the originator of the discipline of iconology and as the founder of the institute that bears his name. His followers included some of the celebrated art historians of the twentieth century, such as Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind, and Fritz Saxl. But his heirs developed, for the most part, a domesticated iconology based on the decipherment and interpretation of symbolic material. As Philippe-Alain Michaud demonstrates in this important book, Warburg’s project was remote from any positivist or neo-Kantian ambitions. Nourished on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacob Burckhardt, Warburg fashioned a “critical iconology” to reveal the irrationality of the image in Western culture. Opposing the grand teleological narratives of art inaugurated by Giorgio Vasari, Warburg’s method operated through historical anachronisms and discontinuities. Using procedures of “montage-collision” he brought together pagan artifacts with masterpieces of Florentine Renaissance art, the astrology of the ancient Near East with the Lutheran Reformation, Mannerist festivals with the sacred dances of Native Americans. Michaud insists that for Warburg, the practice of art history was not only the recognition of the radical heterogeneity of objects but the discovery within the art work itself of lines of fracture, contradictions, tensions, and the energies of magic, empathy, totemism, and animism. Michaud provides us with a book that not only is about Warburg but also extends his intuitions and discoveries into analyses of other categories of imagery like the daguerreotype, the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey, early cinema, and the dances of Loïe Fuller. This edition also includes a foreword by Georges Didi-Huberman and texts by Warburg not previously translated into English. Chosen as one of the best art books of 2004 by the Washington Post and Bookforum.
Is it meaningful to call oneself a democrat? And if so, how do you interpret the word?" In responding to this question, eight iconoclastic thinkers prove the rich potential of democracy, along with its critical weaknesses, and reconceive the practice to accommodate new political and cultural realities. Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Rancière highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it. Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate.
A beautiful volume that brings to light the forgotten Le Nain brothers, a trio of 17th-century French master painters who specialized in portraiture, religious subjects, and scenes of everyday peasant life In France in the 17th century, the brothers Antoine (c. 1598-1648), Louis (c. 1600/1605-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677) Le Nain painted images of everyday life for which they became posthumously famous. They are celebrated for their depictions of middle-class leisure activities, and particularly for their representations of peasant families, who gaze out at the viewer. The uncompromising naturalism of these compositions, along with their oddly suspended action, imparts a sense of dignity to their subjects. Featuring more than sixty paintings highlighting the artists' full range of production, including altarpieces, private devotional paintings, portraits, and the poignant images of peasants for which the brothers are best known, this generously illustrated volume presents new research concerning the authorship, dating, and meaning of the works by well-known scholars in the field. Also groundbreaking are the results of a technical study of the paintings, which constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on the Le Nain brothers.
The history of psychoanalysis in 50 countries shows the relationship between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, with entries discussing writers, philosophers, literary movements and historical events.
Ce fut a la fin du XVIe siecle, au moment ou Marseille retrouvait un statut et un role en Mediterranee que l'archipel maltais entra ""personnellement"" dans l'histoire. Chef-lieu de la contre-course chretienne, elle passa progressivement de l'influence espagnole a l'influence francaise. Tout naturellement Marseille et la Provence eurent avec elle des liens d'interets, principalement lies a l'armement en course. Dans cet ouvrage les auteurs examinent la relation commerciale et politique entre Malte et Marseille, ou les interets francais font de Malte un centre d'importance pour la marine de commerce provencale. Grace a l'etude des registres de lazaret et aux lettres consulaires recues de Marseille et de Toulon (dont les details sont reproduits dans le livre) par le charge d'affaires francais a Malte, ils nous amenent au c ur de cette Mediterranee du dix-huitieme siecle.
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