Liam Downey's Books

Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment

By: Liam Downey

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Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment

By: Liam Downey

Winner, American Sociological Association Section on Environment and Technology Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award The world currently faces several severe social and environmental crises, including economic under-development, widespread poverty and hunger, lack of safe drinking water for one-sixth of the world’s population, deforestation, rapidly increasing levels of pollution and waste, dramatic declines in soil fertility and biodiversity, and global warming. Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment sheds light on the structural causes of these and other social and environmental crises, highlighting in particular the key role that elite-controlled organizations, institutions, and networks play in creating these crises. Liam Downey focuses on four topics—globalization, agriculture, mining, and U.S. energy and military policy—to show how organizational and institutional inequality and elite-controlled organizational networks produce environmental degradation and social harm. He focuses on key institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Military and the World Trade Organization to show how specific policies are conceived and enacted in order to further elite goals. Ultimately, Downey lays out a path for environmental social scientists and environmentalists to better understand and help solve the world’s myriad social and environmental crises. Inequality, Democracy and the Environment presents a passionate exposé of the true role inequality, undemocratic institutions and organizational power play in harming people and the environment.

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Page Count

342

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1479878405

ISBN 13

9781479878406

The Violent Underpinnings of American Life

How Violence Maintains Social Order in the US

By: Liam Downey

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The Violent Underpinnings of American Life

How Violence Maintains Social Order in the US

By: Liam Downey

A damning examination of how violence serves to maintain social order and elite power in the United States The Violent Underpinnings of American Life boldly asserts that violence—far from going against American ideals—is as American as apple pie, central to the country’s social order and the dominance of its most powerful groups. Drawing from extensive research and analysis of key social, political, and cultural events, Liam Downey investigates the myriad ways violence maintains the American way of life. Through compelling case studies, Downey identifies four main ways in which violence produces and maintains the American social hierarchy: the creation of divisions among non-elite social groups; the reinforcement of dominant discourses in multiple social arenas; the aligning of marginalized group identities with dominant institutional practices; and the selective promotion of the interests of specific, non-elite groups. This is the first book to argue that violence is both a negative, coercive power and a positive, productive one that helps produce not only social order but also consent, discipline, discourse, identity, subjectivity, and embodied knowledge, among other things. The Violent Underpinnings of American Life is an audacious work that argues violence is absolutely central to social life in America, and that Americans cannot effectively fight against the inequalities that surround them without accepting this reality.

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Page Count

320

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

147981492X

ISBN 13

9781479814923

The Comic Book Film Adaptation

Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

By: Liam Burke

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The Comic Book Film Adaptation

Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

By: Liam Burke

In the summer of 2000 X-Men surpassed all box office expectations and ushered in an era of unprecedented production of comic book film adaptations. This trend, now in its second decade, has blossomed into Hollywood's leading genre. From superheroes to Spartan warriors, The Comic Book Film Adaptation offers the first dedicated study to examine how comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production. Through in-depth analysis, industry interviews, and audience research, this book charts the cause-and-effect of this influential trend. It considers the cultural traumas, business demands, and digital possibilities that Hollywood faced at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The industry managed to meet these challenges by exploiting comics and their existing audiences. However, studios were caught off-guard when these comic book fans, empowered by digital media, began to influence the success of these adaptations. Nonetheless, filmmakers soon developed strategies to take advantage of this intense fanbase, while codifying the trend into a more lucrative genre, the comic book movie, which appealed to an even wider audience. Central to this vibrant trend is a comic aesthetic in which filmmakers utilize digital filmmaking technologies to engage with the language and conventions of comics like never before. The Comic Book Film Adaptation explores this unique moment in which cinema is stimulated, challenged, and enriched by the once-dismissed medium of comics.

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Page Count

432

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1626745153

ISBN 13

9781626745155

Black Cat in the Window

A Family Album with Much Love and Squalor

By: Liam Ó Murchú

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Black Cat in the Window

A Family Album with Much Love and Squalor

By: Liam Ó Murchú

There is a large floor of broken boards, covered here and there with bit and pieces of broken linoleum. I cannot see the walls or what's above them, but there is a woman at a fire who keeps looking at me, and a man on a chair reading a paper, who keeps looking at me.' Born in a fourth-floor tenement, the youngest of twelve, Liam was the son of a Dublin Fusilier and a flaxmill worker. Although half his siblings were dead before he was born, he does not 'look back in anger' but at people's tough resolve not to be bitter about life's lot and see the next generation through to better times. Set in the territory of Frank O'Connor on Cork's north side, this is not another sorry tale of childhook poverty. It is a memoir of courage and endurance, telling an often uproarious and always poignant story. Alive with the yowling of cats and scurrying of rats, the ghosts of Blarney and Shandon Street appear – ex-soldiers, money lenders, fruit-sellers and women overwhelmed by children, drink and galloping consumption. For some it ended with their head in a gas oven or with long tresses floating through the weir grass on the quiet waters of the River Lee. 'A black cat in the window' - was it a sign of luck? With six alive at least there was a chance. Despite the taboos of a strict time there was still some sex in a damp climate, some great heroes and heroines, and a bicycle in the hallway was a sure sign of upward mobility.

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Page Count

229

Publisher

Gill & Macmillan Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848898576

ISBN 13

9781848898578

Against Art and Culture

By: Liam Dee

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Against Art and Culture

By: Liam Dee

Offering a negative definition of art in relation to the concept of culture, this book establishes the concept of ‘art/culture’ to describe the unity of these two fields around named-labour, idealised creative subjectivity and surplus signification. Contending a conceptual and social reality of a combined ‘art/culture’ , this book demonstrates that the failure to appreciate the dynamic totality of art and culture by its purported negators is due to almost all existing critiques of art and culture being defences of a ‘true’ art or culture against ‘inauthentic’ manifestations, and art thus ultimately restricting creativity to the service of the bourgeois commodity regime. While the evidence that art/culture enables commodification has long been available, the deduction that art/culture itself is fundamentally of the world of commodification has failed to gain traction. By applying a nuanced analysis of both commodification and the larger systems of ideological power, the book considers how the ‘surplus’ of art/culture is used to legitimate the bourgeois status quo rather than unravel it. It also examines possibilities for a post-art/culture world based on both existing practices that challenge art/culture identity as well as speculations on the integration of play and aesthetics into general social life. An out-and-out negation of art and culture, this book offers a unique contribution to the cultural critique landscape.

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Page Count

292

Publisher

Springer

Published Date

ISBN 10

981107092X

ISBN 13

9789811070921

State Religious Education and the State of Religious Life

By: Liam Gearon,Joseph Prud'homme

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State Religious Education and the State of Religious Life

By: Liam Gearon,Joseph Prud'homme

This book explores recent calls to increase instruction of the Bible in American public schools. The work develops a distinctive philosophical and trans-Atlantic assessment of these proposals by critiquing European approaches to religious education and by reviewing the role of religion in contemporary democracies. The work will spark debate among political scientists, policy experts, Religious Education instructors, theologians, and social and educational theorists.

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Page Count

219

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1625647263

ISBN 13

9781625647269

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland

By: Kay Muhr,Liam Ó hAisibéil

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The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland

By: Kay Muhr,Liam Ó hAisibéil

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland contains more than 3,800 entries covering the majority of family names that are established and current in Ireland, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. It establishes reliable and accurate explanations of historical origins (including etymologies) and provides variant spellings for each name as well as its geographical distribution, and, where relevant, genealogical and bibliographical notes for family names that have more than 100 bearers in the 1911 census of Ireland. Of particular value are the lists of early bearers of family names, extracted from sources ranging from the medieval period to the nineteenth century, providing for the first time, the evidence on which many surname explanations are based, as well as interesting personal names, locations and often occupations of potential family forbears. This unique Dictionary will be of the greatest interest not only to those interested in Irish history, students of the Irish language, genealogists, and geneticists, but also to the general public, both in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora in North America, Australia, and elsewhere.

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Page Count

2365

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

019252478X

ISBN 13

9780192524782

Sacraments of Initiation, Second Edition

A Theology of Life, Word, and Rite

By: Liam G. Walsh OP

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Sacraments of Initiation, Second Edition

A Theology of Life, Word, and Rite

By: Liam G. Walsh OP

The original edition of this book presented a theology of sacraments that emerged out of a Church stirred into new life by the Second Vatican Council. It is a theology that can claim to have been continuously received in the Catholic Church since then. It is the theology that has been widely practiced and preached in pastoral life, has been given catechetical shape in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, during the past 23 years, some trends developed in pastoral theology and practice that were taking directions that seemed hard to reconcile with the decisions of the Council. This new edition examines the way some theological counter-currents have developed over those years, both in theory and in practice. The sacramental theology contained in this study maintains the broad on-going agreement between what it proposes and mainstream Church teaching and practice. The book examines the tradition of sacramental practice and teaching. Biblical and historical studies continue to uncover new riches of the tradition, and recent findings are discussed. A careful listening to the tradition of rite and word is truly indispensable for sacramental theology. It was out of such listening that Vatican II teaching on sacraments emerged and provision was made for recovering the full richness of the tradition. Not all of the recent theological speculations and pastoral strategies given an equally serious acknowledgement to the tradition. The liturgies that are studied in this book have been given to the Church in the wake of Vatican II. The historical chapters will show the liturgies to be a contemporary expression of fidelity to core values of the Apostolic Tradition. The chapters on the rite of each sacrament are mainly descriptive and historical, but also include anthropological reflections that unveil the human significances of the various rites. The chapters on the word examine the biblical and traditional word spoken in the churches about each sacrament, and conclude with what is called a 'systematic essay'. The bibiography has updated to reflect the development in the field.

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628

Publisher

LiturgyTrainingPublications

Published Date

ISBN 10

1618330284

ISBN 13

9781618330284

Heffo - A Brilliant Mind

A Biography of Kevin Heffernan

By: Liam Hayes

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Heffo - A Brilliant Mind

A Biography of Kevin Heffernan

By: Liam Hayes

Kevin Heffernan was a giant amongst GAA men. A giant with a brilliant mind who repeatedly warned everybody that he would not let his own mother get in the way of him winning one more game of football. Heffo was deeply admired and absolutely feared like no other. And like no other manager in the history of the GAA, his strength of mind and brutal toughness as a leader raised an army that was called his own – Heffo’s Army. Heffo: A Brilliant Mind tells the Kevin Heffernan story for the first time. It’s the story of a boy with the biggest dreams, and a man who lived with triumphs and the greatest regrets. It’s the story of a club, and how Heffo and St Vincent’s GAA club revolutionized the game of Gaelic football and changed the face of Dublin football forever. It’s the story, too, of a great war. Heffo: A Brilliant Mind dramatically re-enacts the battles that Kevin Heffernan fought over four decades as a footballer and a manager in a long and punishing war with Kerry. A war waged by one man with the courage and fearlessness of a true giant.

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Page Count

385

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1448171288

ISBN 13

9781448171286

Prisoners of War: Ballykinlar, An Irish Internment Camp 1920-1921

By: Liam Ó Duibhir

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Prisoners of War: Ballykinlar, An Irish Internment Camp 1920-1921

By: Liam Ó Duibhir

Ballykinlar Internment Camp was the first mass internment camp to be established by the British in Ireland during the War of Independence. Situated on the County Down coast and opened in December 1920, it became home to hundreds of Irish men arrested by the British, often on little more than the suspicion of involvement in the IRA. Held for up to a year, and subjected to often brutal treatment and poor quality food in an attempt to break them both physically and mentally, the interned men instead established a small community within the camp. The knowledge and skills possessed by the diverse inhabitants were used to teach classes, and other activities, such as sports, drama and music lessons, helped stave off boredom. In the midst of all these activities the internees also endeavoured to defy their captors with various plans for escape. The story of the Ballykinlar internment camp is on the one hand an account of suffering, espionage, murder and maltreatment, but it is also a chronicle of survival, comradeship and community.

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Page Count

339

Publisher

Mercier Press Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1781171890

ISBN 13

9781781171899

Mysticism in Early Modern England

By: Liam Peter Temple

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Mysticism in Early Modern England

By: Liam Peter Temple

Mysticism in Early Modern England traces how mysticism featured in polemical and religious discourse in seventeenth-century England and explores how it came to be viewed as a source of sectarianism, radicalism, and, most significantly, religious enthusiasm.

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Page Count

238

Publisher

Boydell & Brewer

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783273933

ISBN 13

9781783273935

Next Goal Wins!

The Ultimate NHL Historian's One-of-a-Kind Collection of Hockey Trivia

By: Liam Maguire

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Next Goal Wins!

The Ultimate NHL Historian's One-of-a-Kind Collection of Hockey Trivia

By: Liam Maguire

Fun, always surprising and a hockey lover's treasure chest of the little-known facts that shaped the game, you cannot Google the stuff that Liam Maguire shares in this entertaining little book. About 30% updated, revised and renewed from Liam’s 2001 trivia collection, What's the Score?, First Goal Wins! includes a foreword by Wayne Gretzky. Liam has scoured the depths of the NHL archives and stats to put together many of these questions and answers, which you can't get from just looking up your favourite player on Wikipedia. What sets his take on hockey trivia apart from the many pretenders out there is the magical connections he builds between the numbers, the players and the game's history. Besides the straight goods, you always get the ultimate "And did you know...?

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Random House Canada

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307363406

ISBN 13

9780307363404

Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts

By: Liam Lewis

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Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts

By: Liam Lewis

A redefinition of the animal's relationship to sound and language in French texts from medieval England. The barks, hoots and howls of animals and birds pierce through the experience of medieval texts. In captivating episodes of communication between species, a mandrake shrieks when uprooted from the ground, a saint preaches to the animals, and a cuckoo causes turmoil at the parliament of birds with his familiar call. This book considers a range of such episodes in Old French verse texts, including bestiaries, treatises on language, the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Fables by Marie de France, aiming to reconceptualize and reinterpret animal soundscapes. It argues that they draw on sound to produce competing perspectives, forms of life, and linguistic subjectivities, suggesting that humans owe more to animal sounds than we are disposed to believe. Texts inviting readers to listen and learn animal noises, to seek spiritual consolation in the jargon of birds, or to identify with the speaking wolf, create the conditions for an assertion of human exceptionalism even as they simultaneously invite readers to question such forms of control. By asking what it means for an animal to cry, make noise, or speak in French, this book provides an important resource for theorizing sound and animality in multilingual medieval contexts, and for understanding the animal's role in the interpretation of the natural world.

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Page Count

212

Publisher

Boydell & Brewer

Published Date

ISBN 10

1843846225

ISBN 13

9781843846222

Blood And Thunder

Rugby and Irish Life: A History

By: Liam O’Callaghan

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Blood And Thunder

Rugby and Irish Life: A History

By: Liam O’Callaghan

Liam O'Callaghan's revelatory Blood and Thunder shows that the rise of Irish rugby is inextricable from the tensions, debates and divisions – of politics, religion and class – that have defined modern Irish history. Despite the political partition of the island, Ireland competes at rugby internationally with an all-island team – and with a bespoke anthem that nobody loves but everyone tolerates. Ireland has become a leading rugby nation despite its tiny population and the fact that the sport is only the fourth most popular team game on the island by participation. In Blood and Thunder, O’Callaghan traces the dramatic evolution whereby a rugby nation that was deeply attached to amateurism has made such a dramatic success of professionalism. From the sequence of events that led Ireland's private Catholic secondary schools to embrace rugby, to the controversies and crises that have shaken Irish rugby – including the Northern Troubles, the Belfast rape trial, and the rising toll of head injuries – Blood and Thunder tells the rich and fascinating story of Irish rugby. Blood and Thunder is more than a social and political history of Irish rugby. It is also a shadow-history of modern Ireland, rooted in brilliant original research and packed with terrific stories.

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Page Count

193

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

184488662X

ISBN 13

9781844886623

Superhero Movies

By: Liam Burke

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Superhero Movies

By: Liam Burke

In 1978 Superman made audiences believe a man could fly. Since then, superhero movies have shown that man can not only fly, but swing from webs through New York’s concrete canyons, turn monstrous shades of green if suitably angry, and dress as giant rodents to safeguard the city streets. Today, there are more superhero movies than ever before as the cinematic skies are filled with caped crusaders and nocturnal vigilantes that continue to delight and excite filmgoers the world over. Through detailed analysis and fascinating facts, this guide explores how, in a single bound, the superhero has made the leap from the comic book page to the silver screen. So fasten your utility belt as you prepare to take flight with this must-read for fans of superheroes and blockbuster cinema.

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Page Count

192

Publisher

Oldacastle Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1842438220

ISBN 13

9781842438220

Donegal & the Civil War

The Untold Story

By: Liam Ó Duibhir

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Donegal & the Civil War

The Untold Story

By: Liam Ó Duibhir

This text is an in-depth look at the Irish Civil War in the Donegal part of the country. It tells how Donegal became the scene of the last stand up fight between the IRA and British military with the latter using heavy artillery for the first time in Ireland since 1916.

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