This book is a critical appraisal of the status of the so-called Climate Sciences (CS). These are contributed by many other basic sciences like physics, geology, chemistry and as such employ theoretical and experimental methods. In the last few decades most of the CS have been identified with the global warming problem and numerical models have been used as the main tool for their investigations. The produced predictions can only be partially tested against experimental data and may represent one of the reasons CS are drifting away from the route of the scientific method. On the other hand the study of climate faces many other interesting and mostly unsolved problems (think about ice ages) whose solution could clarify how the climatic system works. As for the global warming, while its existence is largely proved, scientifically it can be solved only with a large experimental effort carried out for a few decades. Problems can arise when not proved hypotheses are adopted as the basis for public policy without the recognition that they may be on shaky ground. The strong interactions of the Global Warming (GW) with the society create another huge problem of political nature for the CS. The book argues that the knowledge gained so far on the specific GW problem is enough for the relevant political decisions to be taken and that Climate Science should resume the study of the climate system with appropriate means and methods. The book introduces the most relevant concepts needed for the discussion in the text or in appropriate appendices and it is directed to the general public with upper undergraduate background. Each chapter closes with a debate between a climate scientist and a humanist to reflect the discussions between climate science and philosophy or climate scientists and society.
Reviews the lives and works of two members of Assisi society, Francis and Clare, who renounced their wealth and founded religious orders dedicated to relying on God and living in peace, poverty, and humility.
This book takes an introductory look at the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere and the climate dynamics. It provides the basics in thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, radiation and chemistry and explains the most interesting problems existing in the study of the atmosphere of the Earth and planets. This book also offers the computer programs to solve these problems. Themes covered include the most recent evolution concerning the ozone hole, the carbon dioxide problem, and chaos theory.
As he awaits his master's return, the ox welcomes animals of all kinds in his stable. But when a donkey carrying travelers arrives, the ox must find a way to make room for them in the crowded stable. This tale of hospitality and friendship reminds readers that selflessness is the true message of Christmas. Full color.
The book is conceived at two levels. An introductory one intended for undergraduate and/or environmental studies students and the other (in the appendix) for advanced students (graduate). The book is different from others on the same subject which are either too descriptive or too much specialized. Beside there are large sections on biogeochemistry not usually found in other textbooks. Whenever possible an approach based on entropy considerations is introduced. The book includes a quite classical introduction to the thermodynamics of ocean and atmosphere, then the circulation of the ocean and atmosphere, the connection climate-chemistry with main emphasis on the carbon dioxide problem. The chemistry is also considered in connection with the polluted atmosphere and ocean and particulate in the atmosphere . A chapter is dedicated to the biogeochemical cycles which are solved both with the integration of a system of equations or matrix algebra. An original chapter is dedicated to sea-atmosphere interactions which includes the monsoons meteorology, hurricanes and the ENSO phenomena. Finally a concise description of the fluid environments in the Solar System is given.
This introductory book addresses a broad range of classical Fluid Dynamics topics, interesting applications, and related problems in everyday life. The geophysical and astrophysical applications discussed concern e.g. the shape and internal structure of the Earth and stars, the dynamics of the atmosphere and ocean, hydrodynamic instabilities, and the different kinds of waves that can be found in the atmosphere, ocean and solid Earth. Non-linear waves (solitons) are also mentioned. In turn, the book explores problems from everyday life, including the motion of golf balls, life at low Reynolds numbers, the physics of sailing, and the aerodynamics of airplanes and Grand Prix cars. No book on this topic would be complete without a look at chaos and turbulence; here the problems span from Gaussian plumes to chaotic dynamos, to stochastic climate modeling. Advances in fluid dynamics have produced a wealth of numerical methods and techniques, which are used in many of the applications. Given its structure, the book can be used both for an introductory course to fluid dynamics and as preparation for more advanced problems typical of graduate-level courses.
A merchant arrives in a sun-scorched kindom which has lost all its trees and become a desert. One of his tapestries delights the king's daughter with its pictures of trees, flowers and birds. She sets out to find a painter who will paint birds for her. A delightful story of the magic of a child's imagination brought to life through art.
This book offers a rich and exciting new way of thinking about the Italian Renaissance as both a historical period and a historical movement. Guido Ruggiero's work is based on archival research and new insights of social and cultural history and literary criticism, with a special emphasis on everyday culture, gender, violence, and sexuality. The book offers a vibrant and relevant critical study of a period too long burdened by anachronistic and outdated ways of thinking about the past. Familiar, yet alien; pre-modern, but suggestively post-modern; attractive and troubling, this book returns the Italian Renaissance to center stage in our past and in our historical analysis.
This is the first volume to attempt a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the 'Arian' churches in the Roman world of Late Antiquity and their political importance in the late Roman kingdoms of the 5th-6th centuries, ruled by barbarian warrior elites. Bringing together researchers from the disciplines of theology, history and archaeology, and providing an extensive bibliography, it constitutes a breakthrough in a field largely neglected in historical studies. A polemical term coined by the Orthodox Church (the side that prevailed in the Trinitarian disputes of the 4th century C.E.) for its opponents in theology as well as in ecclesiastical politics, Arianism has often been seen as too complicated to understand outside the group of theological specialists dealing with it and has therefore sometimes been ignored in historical studies. The studies here offer an introduction to the subject, grounded in the historical context, then examine the adoption of Arian Christianity among the Gothic contingents of the Roman army, and its subsequent diffusion in the barbarian kingdoms of the late Roman world.
These volumes of the "Documentary History of the Jews in Italy," illustrate the history of the Jews in Genoa and surroundings from Antiquity to the French Revolution. The earliest documentary evidence takes the form of letters from King Theodoric. For the Middle Ages the documentation is relatively fragmentary and sporadic. Later there is greater abundance of historical evidence, which portrays chiefly the destinies of the Jews in the Republic from the sixteenth century on, when the presence of the Jews became permanent and a regular community was established also in the capital. The historical records presented illustrate mainly the relationship between the government of the Genoese Republic and the Jews, the latter's economic activities and their communal and social life. Some of the detailed descriptions of the Jewish population in Genoa, their living conditions and occupations, allow for a close examination of the social conditions of this Northern Italian community. For a while Genoa became a haven of refuge for some of the exiles from Spain, including the historian Joseph Hacohen and members of the Abarbanel family. The volumes are provided with an extensive introduction, bibliography, glossary and indexes.
This is the most in-depth analysis of inequality and social polarization ever attempted for a preindustrial society. Using data from the archives of the Venetian Terraferma, and compared with information available for elsewhere in Europe, Guido Alfani and Matteo Di Tullio demonstrate that the rise of the fiscal-military state served to increase economic inequality in the early modern period. Preindustrial fiscal systems tended to be regressive in nature, and increased post-tax inequality compared to pre-tax - in contrast to what we would assume is the case in contemporary societies. This led to greater and greater disparities in wealth, which were made worse still as taxes were collected almost entirely to fund war and defence rather than social welfare. Though focused on Old Regime Europe, Alfani and Di Tullio's findings speak to contemporary debates about the roots of inequality and social stratification.
How the rich and the super-rich throughout Western history accumulated their wealth, behaved (or misbehaved) and helped (or didn’t help) their communities in times of crisis The rich have always fascinated, sometimes in problematic ways. Medieval thinkers feared that the super-rich would act 'as gods among men’; much more recently Thomas Piketty made wealth central to discussions of inequality. In this book, Guido Alfani offers a history of the rich and super-rich in the West, examining who they were, how they accumulated their wealth and what role they played in society. Covering the last thousand years, with frequent incursions into antiquity, and integrating recent research on economic inequality, Alfani finds—despite the different paths to wealth in different eras—fundamental continuities in the behaviour of the rich and public attitudes towards wealth across Western history. His account offers a novel perspective on current debates about wealth and income disparity. Alfani argues that the position of the rich and super-rich in Western society has always been intrinsically fragile; their very presence has inspired social unease. In the Middle Ages, an excessive accumulation of wealth was considered sinful; the rich were expected not to appear to be wealthy. Eventually, the rich were deemed useful when they used their wealth to help their communities in times of crisis. Yet in the twenty-first century, Alfani points out, the rich and the super-rich—their wealth largely preserved through the Great Recession and COVID-19—have been exceptionally reluctant to contribute to the common good in times of crisis, rejecting even such stopgap measures as temporary tax increases. History suggests that this is a troubling development—for the rich, and for everyone else.
These volumes of the "Documentary History of the Jews in Italy", illustrate the history of the Jews in Genoa and surroundings from Antiquity to the French Revolution. The earliest documentary evidence takes the form of letters from King Theodoric. For the Middle Ages the documentation is relatively fragmentary and sporadic. Later there is greater abundance of historical evidence, which portrays chiefly the destinies of the Jews in the Republic from the sixteenth century on, when the presence of the Jews became permanent and a regular community was established also in the capital. The historical records presented illustrate mainly the relationship between the government of the Genoese Republic and the Jews, the latter's economic activities and their communal and social life. Some of the detailed descriptions of the Jewish population in Genoa, their living conditions and occupations, allow for a close examination of the social conditions of this Northern Italian community. For a while Genoa became a haven of refuge for some of the exiles from Spain, including the historian Joseph Hacohen and members of the Abarbanel family. The volumes are provided with an extensive introduction, bibliography, glossary and indexes.
When America began to emerge as a world power at the end of the nineteenth century, Italy was a young nation, recently unified. The technological advances brought about by electricity and the combustion engine were vastly speeding up the capacity of news, ideas, and artefacts to travel internationally. Furthermore, improved literacy and social reforms had produced an Italian working class with increased time, money, and education. At the turn of the century, if Italy's ruling elite continued the tradition of viewing Paris as a model of sophistication and good taste, millions of lowly-educated Italians began to dream of America, and many bought a transatlantic ticket to migrate there. By the 1920s, Italians were encountering America through Hollywood films and, thanks to illustrated magazines, they were mesmerised by the sight of Manhattan's futuristic skyline and by news of American lifestyle. The USA offered a model of modernity which flouted national borders and spoke to all. It could be snubbed, adored, or transformed for one's personal use, but it could not be ignored. Perversely, Italy was by then in the hands of a totalitarian dictatorship, Mussolini's Fascism. What were the effects of the nationalistic policies and campaigns aimed at protecting Italians from this supposedly pernicious foreign influence? What did Mussolini think of America? Why were jazz, American literature, and comics so popular, even as the USA became Italy's political enemy? America in Italian Culture provides a scholarly and captivating narrative of this epochal shift in Italian culture.
Three paranormal stories with a strong historical background. A trilogy of stories aimed at a youthful audience, and with strong themes of history and culture. Historically accurate and with added notes so the stories can be used in an academic context. Lively and informative to stimulate debate and discussion. Enchantment is the story of an English girl, Helen, who is shaken by strange perceptions and vibrations when touching ruins or artifacts from an ancient world. At college she meets Giulio, and the attraction, triggered by their different cultures, sparks off a sequence of events that takes place in different dimensions of time in which the present and the past, reality and dreams, overlap in a tangle of unpredictable twists. Matteo Revives. Since childhood, a successful middle-aged manager from Milan suffers from momentarily losing consciousness and being catapulted into another reality far away in time and culture. With the help of a psychologist friend, he finds out under hypnosis that he lived two hundred years before in West Bengal under another identity. Romeo and Juliet in Progress tells the experience of a Canadian professor of drama while preparing this Shakespearean tragedy featuring an international group of students at his university. The final performance will be staged in Verona. Julie, playing the role of Juliet, confesses to her teacher that she is tormented by the presence in her life of a young Italian lady executed for adultery with her lover in 1391.
This extended autobiographical essay explains in clear, engaging terms how the role of economics and finance in the Western world has shifted in the twenty-first century, from cultivating wellbeing in society to eroding the wealth of the middle class. Just a handful of years into the new millennium, globalization has had a profound impact on economies and societies throughout Europe and America. In this accessible yet literary work, Edoardo Nesi and Guido Maria Brera illustrate its effects in Italy through the changes that occurred in their own lives: while the former was forced to sell the textile company his grandfather founded before World War II, the latter became one of the key figures in European asset management. Between Bill Clinton's remarks at the Lincoln Memorial on December 31, 1999 that closed the American Century, and Donald Trump's inauguration speech, economics and finance stopped functioning as instruments constructing a healthy society and became weapons to destroy the middle class. As demagogues seduce citizens of nations across the globe, Everything Is Broken Up and Dances tells the critical story of how we corrupted what we might in retrospect call "the best of all possible worlds"--a world without banking crises, unemployment, terrorism, and populism, in which it was impossible to think that a state might default on its debt.
Elio Vittorini holds a major position in 20th-century Italian literature thanks to both his narrative production and his activity as editor and militant intellectual. This work aims to present the English-speaking reader with a comprehensive study of the author, his times and his work. Particular attention has been paid to the interconnection between Vittorini's work as a fiction writer and his political commitment which saw him move from revolutionary fascism to communism, to independent left-wing militancy. The combination of extensive archival research with a re-appraisal of his fiction and of his editorial activity provides a full picture reaching beyond the traditional restricted view of Vittorini as the anti-fascist author of ""Conversazione in Sicilia"".
In medieval Europe baptism did not merely represent a solemn and public recognition of the 'natural' birth of a child, but was regarded as a second, 'spiritual birth', within a social group often different from the child's blood relations: a spiritual family, composed of godfathers and godmothers. By analyzing the changing theological and social nature of spiritual kinship and godparenthood between 1450 and 1650, this book explores how these medieval concepts were developed and utilised by the Catholic Church in an era of reform and challenge. It demonstrates how such ties continued to be of major social importance throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but were often used in ways not always coherent with their original religious meaning, and which could have unexpected social consequences. In particular, the book analyzes in detail the phase of transition from the traditional model of godparenthood which allowed for multiple godparents, to the new couple model (one godfather and one godmother) imposed by Tridentine law. Drawing upon a large database of archival data taken from parish books of baptisms and marriages, pastoral visitations, diocesan statutes, synods and provincial councils, it is shown how attempts were made to resist or to compromise with the Church, thus providing a better understanding of the often contested meaning given to godparenthood by early modern society. Whilst the Church was ultimately successful in imposing its will, the book concludes that this was to have unexpected results that were to eventually weaken the role of godparents. Rather than persuading parents to choose real 'spiritual tutors' to act as godparents, the choice of godparents became increasingly influenced with social status, so that godparenthood began to resemble a pure clientele system, something it had never been before. Through this long-term exploration of Catholic spiritual kinship, much is revealed, not only about godparenthood, but about the wider social and religious networks. Comparison with Protestant reactions to the same issues provides further insight into the importance of this subject to early modern European society.
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