The author of this enthralling book aims to present a well-illustrated and documented alternative history of the Western World through graphic accounts of looting and art theft from the time of Sargon, ruler of Syria in 721 BC, to the present day. Almost all the principal players included appear on the stage of World history and many of them are known as conquerors, confiscators (the old-fashioned word for looters) and ruthless administrators of the regions they created as a result of their conquests. Featured here are emperors, kings, queens, popes, adventurers, explorers and those whose energies and expertise supported the greed and acquisitive ambitions of their masters. The different motivation of the greatest looters in history is a recurrent theme which is examined throughout.
The engaging, witty, fascinating memoir of one of New Zealand's most eminent neurologists and winemakers. It all began when Ivan Donaldson's girlfriend, Chris, gave him Hugo Johnson's book Wine in 1966. A light bulb went off in the mind of the talented, ambitious young doctor. A fascination with wine started when he and that girfriend, now his wife of 46 years, started making fruit wines, then wine made with table grapes from her parents' garden. Things got more serious when he was working in London in the early 1970s and they were able to head off to France in their rackety old car to tour vineyards. Things got more serious still when, in the late 1970s, he and a group of Christchurch doctors planted out Mountainview vineyard in Halswell. And things became very serious indeed when, in 1984, Ivan and Chris Donaldson bought a parcel of land in the Waipara Valley on which to start Pegasus Bay Wines. It's now one of New Zealand's best-known and most awarded small wineries, still owned and run by the family and making magnificent wine using sustainable methods. It's highly sought after in overseas markets. Somehow, in between all this Ivan Donaldson has managed to carve out an impressive medical career. This engaging memoir tells how he has integrated the two great loves of his life. It's the story of one of this country's wine pioneers but also the fascinating account of a life in medicine, spent plumbing the deep mysteries of the human brain.
The Pen & Cape Society, in conjunction with Local Hero Press, is proud to present The Good Fight, an anthology of superhero fiction from some of the best authors working in the genre. Collected within this volume are stories by Scott Bachmann, Frank Byrns, Marion Harmon, Warren Hately, Drew Hayes, Ian Thomas Healy, Hydrargentium, Michael Ivan Lowell, T. Mike McCurley, Landon Porter, R. J. Ross, Cheyanne Young, and Jim Zoetewey. After enjoying the stories in The Good Fight, please be sure to check out the works of the individual authors, because they're just super!
In a world obsessed with the virtual, tangible things are once again making history. Tangible Things invites readers to look closely at the things around them, ordinary things like the food on their plate and extraordinary things like the transit of planets across the sky. It argues that almost any material thing, when examined closely, can be a link between present and past. The authors of this book pulled an astonishing array of materials out of storage--from a pencil manufactured by Henry David Thoreau to a bracelet made from iridescent beetles--in a wide range of Harvard University collections to mount an innovative exhibition alongside a new general education course. The exhibition challenged the rigid distinctions between history, anthropology, science, and the arts. It showed that object-centered inquiry inevitably leads to a questioning of categories within and beyond history. Tangible Things is both an introduction to the range and scope of Harvard's remarkable collections and an invitation to reassess collections of all sorts, including those that reside in the bottom drawers or attics of people's houses. It interrogates the nineteenth-century categories that still divide art museums from science museums and historical collections from anthropological displays and that assume history is made only from written documents. Although it builds on a larger discussion among specialists, it makes its arguments through case studies, hoping to simultaneously entertain and inspire. The twenty case studies take us from the Galapagos Islands to India and from a third-century Egyptian papyrus fragment to a board game based on the twentieth-century comic strip "Dagwood and Blondie." A companion website catalogs the more than two hundred objects in the original exhibition and suggests ways in which the principles outlined in the book might change the way people understand the tangible things that surround them.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
There is little hope of reconstructing by means of comparative or typological studies a lingua adamica essentially different from present-day languages. The distant preverbal past is however still present in live speech. Phonetic, syntactic and semantic rule transgressions, far from being products of a deficient output, are governed by a universal iconic apparatus, a sort of 'anti-grammar' or 'proto-grammar' which enables the speaker and the poet to express preconscious and subconscious mental contents that could not be conveyed by means of the grammar of any language. Secondary messages, generated by the proto-grammar are integrated into the primary grammatical message. The two messages whose structural and semantic divergence represents a chronological distance of hundreds of thousands of years, constitute a dialectic unity which characterize natural languages. The evolutive approach offers a different, perhaps better understanding of questions related to dynamic synchrony, vocal and verbal style, poetic language, language change.Chapters on: Diversity of the lexicon; Dual encoding: vocal style; Syntactic gesturing; Syntactic regressions; Prosodic expression of emotions; Poetry and vocal art; Situation and meaning; A hidden presence: verbal magic; Playing with language: joke and metaphor; Metaphor: a research instrument; Dynamics of poetic language; Semantic structure of possessive constructions; Semantic structure of punctuation marks; Why gestures?; Between acts and words; Language within language: dynamics, change and evolution.
While watching a movie, how many viewers notice some of the finer details of the film, such as the time of day during a scene—or even the date itself? For instance, does anyone remember what day detention is served by the high schoolers in The Breakfast Club or can guess when aliens first make their presence known in Independence Day? And perhaps only history buffs or fanatics of Leonardo DiCaprio can cite the exact date the Titanic sunk. In A Year of Movies: 365 Films to Watch on the Date They Happened Ivan Walters provides a selection for every day on the calendar in which at least some of the events in the film take place. For some films, the entire drama occurs on a very specific day. For other films, such as The Right Stuff, the date in question is represented in a key scene or two or even for just a few pivotal seconds. Certain films, to be sure, are obvious candidates for inclusion in this book. What other movie would make sense to watch on February 2nd than Groundhog Day? Is there a more appropriate film to consider for June 6th than The Longest Day? Representing a variety of genres—from comedies and dramas to westerns and film noir—these films offer fans a unique viewing opportunity. While helping viewers decide what to watch on a given day, this book will also introduce readers to films they may not have otherwise considered. Aimed at film buffs and casuals viewers alike, A Year of Movies is also an ideal resource for librarians who want to offer creative programming for their patrons.
The history of western notions about Islam is of obvious scholarly as well as popular interest today. This book investigates Christian images of the Muslim Middle East, focusing on the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, when the nature of divine as well as human power was under particularly intense debate in the West. Ivan Kalmar explores how the controversial notion of submission to ultimate authority has in the western world been discussed with reference to Islam’s alleged recommendation to obey, unquestioningly, a merciless Allah in heaven and a despotic government on earth. He discusses how Abrahamic faiths – Christianity and Judaism as much as Islam – demand devotion to a sublime power, with the faith that this power loves and cares for us, a concept that brings with it the fear that, on the contrary, this power only toys with us for its own enjoyment. For such a power, Kalmar borrows Slavoj Zizek’s term "obscene father". He discusses how this describes exactly the western image of the Oriental despot - Allah in heaven, and the various sultans, emirs and ayatollahs on earth – and how these despotic personalities of imagined Muslim society function as a projection, from the West on to the Muslim Orient, of an existential anxiety about sublime power. Making accessible academic debates on the history of Christian perceptions of Islam and on Islam and the West, this book is an important addition to the existing literature in the areas of Islamic studies, religious history and philosophy.
(Applause Books). This provocative collection and major publishing event brings together the critical highlights of the well-known New York cultural critic John Simon. Covering a span of more than three decades, it includes previously published work from New York, the Hudson Review, National Review, Opera News, the New Leader, and other notable publications. The theatre volume contains selected reviews that are as eloquent as they are famously provocative-reviews that can enrage but always entertain. Simon covers a wide range of New York productions, from the East Village to Broadway, examining all with the same rigor and high expectations. A SAMPLE: Simon on Vanessa Redgrave in Long Day's Journey into Night: "The highly accomplished Redgrave gets some details right, but the overarching mental unstableness she exudes is so excessive as to make one wonder whether she is playing or being unhinged.
An examination of how the Jews—real and imagined—so challenged the Christian majority in medieval Europe that it became a society that was religiously and culturally antisemitic in new ways In medieval Europe, Jews were not passive victims of the Christian community, as is often assumed, but rather were startlingly assertive, forming a Jewish civilization within Latin Christian society. Both Jews and Christians considered themselves to be God’s chosen people. These dueling claims fueled the rise of both cultures as they became rivals for supremacy. In How the West Became Antisemitic, Ivan Marcus shows how Christian and Jewish competition in medieval Europe laid the foundation for modern antisemitism. Marcus explains that Jews accepted Christians as misguided practitioners of their ancestral customs, but regarded Christianity as idolatry. Christians, on the other hand, looked at Jews themselves—not Judaism—as despised. They directed their hatred at a real and imagined Jew: theoretically subordinate, but sometimes assertive, an implacable “enemy within.” In their view, Jews were permanently and physically Jewish—impossible to convert to Christianity. Thus Christians came to hate Jews first for religious reasons, and eventually for racial ones. Even when Jews no longer lived among them, medieval Christians could not forget their former neighbors. Modern antisemitism, based on the imagined Jew as powerful and world dominating, is a transformation of this medieval hatred. A sweeping and well-documented history of the rivalry between Jewish and Christian civilizations during the making of Europe, How the West Became Antisemitic is an ambitious new interpretation of the medieval world and its impact on modernity.
Richard B. Welbourn, a retired endocrine surgeon who has written two books on the subject, has compiled the definitive history of the new and advancing discipline of endocrine surgery. The book traces the history of endocrine surgery from its origins to the 1980s, detailing the stories behind the surgery of each gland. A valuable biographical index containing basic information as well as the ideas and achievements of great names in the field will prove an invaluable resource. Topics include: Evolution of Endocrine Surgery; The Pituitary; The Thyroid; Thyroid Cancer; The Adrenal Glands; The Parathyroid Glands; The Endocrine Gut and Pancreas; Islet Cell Transplantation; Multiple Endocrine Adenopathy and Paraendocrine Syndromes; Cancer of the Breast and Prostate; Essential and Renal Hypertension; Surgical Stress. The book also includes more than 80 photos and diagrams. A chronological table shows the main events described in the text in their temporal context via milestones in general medicine, surgery and science, and selected major events in political and social history.
(Applause Books). "I find John's critical writing immensely entertaining even when I'm not in agreement... He has the gift, such a rare one, of being able to analyze the work in question, to be able to say why it is that it's so powerful, so touching; or, on the other hand, so trite, so meretricious, or so banal... I find his reviews full of insights and perceptions that make reading a collection of this sort as exciting as reading a gripping novel. John's wit is dazzling and is never displayed for its own sake, but to drive home an aspect of the review... It was exciting for me to read through this collection and see such warm praise for so many films that I feel have been unjustly ignored." Bruce Beresford
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