A new account of Shakespearean tragedy as a response to life in an uncertain world In Shakespeare’s Tragic Art, Rhodri Lewis offers a powerfully original reassessment of tragedy as Shakespeare wrote it—of what drew him toward tragic drama, what makes his tragedies distinctive, and why they matter. After reconstructing tragic theory and practice as Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew them, Lewis considers in detail each of Shakespeare’s tragedies from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus. He argues that these plays are a series of experiments whose greatness lies in their author’s nerve-straining determination to represent the experience of living in a world that eludes rational analysis. They explore not just our inability to know ourselves as we would like to, but the compensatory and generally unacknowledged fictions to which we bind ourselves in our hunger for meaning—from the political, philosophical, social, and religious to the racial, sexual, personal, and familial. Lewis’s Shakespeare not only creates tragedies that exceed those written before them. Through his art, he also affirms and invigorates the kinds of knowing that are available to intelligent animals like us. A major reevaluation of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Shakespeare’s Tragic Art is essential reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare, tragedy, or the capacity of literature to help us navigate the perplexities of the human condition.
An acclaimed new interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, Rhodri Lewis reveals a Hamlet unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended. Recovering a work of far greater magnitude than the tragedy of a young man who cannot make up his mind, Lewis shows that in Hamlet, as in King Lear, Shakespeare confronts his audiences with a universe that received ideas are powerless to illuminate—and where everyone must find their own way through the dark.
Stung by the allegation that his version of the new philosophy tended towards atheism and materialism, Sir William Petty-medic, mathematician, pioneering political economist, intellectual entrepreneur, and Fellow of the Royal Society-set out to compose a treatise vindicating his philosophical piety. Written between 1676 and 1678, this was entitled Of the Scale of Creatures. By redefining the scala naturae ("scale of creatures" or "chain of being"), Petty sought within it to combine doctrinal orthodoxy, biological comparativism, and a view of the world more familiar from the writings of Thomas Hobbes. Until recently, the Scale was thought only to survive in a partial copy within Petty's own archive. William Petty on the Order of Nature provides a scholarly edition of the fullest version of the text, and in an introductory study assesses the Scale in relation both to Petty's own thought and to the religious, philosophical, political, and literary dynamics of the later seventeenth century. Viewed through these prisms, Petty emerges as a thinker at striking ease in both ancient and modem traditions of learning. Further, early modern attitudes to the interactions between human and animal life are cast into revealing new relief, as are the histories of fields as diverse as theology, colonialism, anthropology (especially in connection with "racism" and the problem of human diversity), scribal culture, and political theory. In addition to those researching the cultural and intellectual contours of seventeenth-century natural philosophy, this book will be of interest to all scholars of early modern intellectual, religious, literary, and cultural history. Book jacket.
Rhodri: A Political Life in Wales and Westminster is the political autobiography of Rhodri Morgan. This posthumously published account of the political life of the father of Welsh devolution is delivered with the fluency and wit that was so characteristic of the man himself. The first First Minister of Wales and Welsh Labour leader revisits the early influences that shaped him politically and which led him to Westminster, and his relationship with the New Labour project and the party establishment’s campaign to prevent him becoming Labour leader in Wales – before ‘the people’s choice’ eventually prevailed. As First Minister of Wales from 2000, he led three terms of Labour Government in Cardiff Bay (with the political, as well as health, challenges of two coalition arrangements), and navigated his own path into clear red water to present a distinct alternative policy agenda to the New Labour Government in London. Written with his typical lack of ostentation, this book allows us to read the final reflections by Rhodri Morgan on political life in Wales, in Westminster and beyond, with unique insight into the first ten years in the history of the National Assembly of Wales.
How can historians make sense of visions, hauntings and demonic possession? Do miraculous events have any place in a world governed by cause and effect? In Resisting history, Rhodri Hayward examines the cumulative attempts of theologians, historians and psychologists to create a consistent and rational narrative capable of containing the inexplicable. This lucid and provocative account argues that the psychological theories we routinely use to make sense of supernatural experience were born out of struggles between popular mystics and conservative authorities. Hayward’s lively analysis of the Victorian disciplines of Christology, psychology and psychical research reveals how our modern concept of the subconscious was developed as a tool for policing religious inspiration. Written in a clear and accessible style, Resisting history provides a fresh and entertaining perspective for anyone interested in questioning the concepts that underlie historical writing and psychological thought today.
Yorkshire-born Francis Mawson Rattenbury (1867-1935) emigrated toBritish Columbia as a young architect in 1892. Within months of hisarrival in Victoria he launched his brilliant, if abbreviated, careerby winning an international competition to design the legislativebuildings. While his life was marred by controversy, scandal and, inthe end, tragedy, Rattenbury's architecture had an enduring impacton the Canadian landscape and his commercial ventures were important tothe economic development of the West. Richly illustrated with over 200 drawings and photographs, FrancisRattenbury and British Columbia is the first major critical study of aCanadian architect in the context of his times. Using unpublishedprimary sources, including his recently discovered private letters, theauthors document Rattenbury's professional career and the evolutionof his architectural style. Detailed descriptions are given of some ofhis most famous projects, notably the legislative buildings and theEmpress Hotel in Victoria. Besides working on a number of governmentcommissions, Rattenbury became chief architect for the Canadian PacificRailway and designed "chateau-like" buildings for C.P.R.hotels in the Rockies, Vancouver, and Victoria. Other projects such as the Vancouver and Nanaimo Courthouses andBank of Montreal branches set the pattern for institutionalarchitecture in British Columbia. His buildings not only drew attentionto the growing importance of the province, but also lent dignity andcharacter to its major centres. Filled with the vigour and confidence of the imperial age,Rattenbury initiated a number of commercial ventures. These includedthe founding of a transportation system to the Yukon goldfields andextensive land speculations. As the authors point out, theseinvestments were perhaps not undertaken solely for monetary gain butreflected Rattenbury's firm belief in the future of BritishColumbia and his desire to play an active role in its growth.Unfortunately, his entrepreneurial adventures involved heavy financiallosses, among which were ruinous lawsuits involving the provincialgovernment. This pioneering work on Western Canadian architecture will serve asa valuable design source for both the specialist and lay reader. Italso includes an important account of the part played by major Canadiancompanies and government patronage in the development of BritishColumbia. This professional biography reveals new facets ofRattenbury's life and character which have been the subject of bothpublic and literary controversy.
The story of surveillance in Britain and the United States - from the detective agencies of the late nineteenth century to the era of wikileaks and the Snowden revelations in the twenty-first. The first history of its kind - and a salutary assessment of the dangers of the surveillance society in which we live today.
Conflicting models of selfhood have become central to debates over modern medicine. Yet we still lack a clear historical account of how this psychological sensibility came to be established. The Transformation of the Psyche in British Primary Care, 1880-1970 will remedy this situation by demonstrating that there is nothing inevitable about the current connection between health, identity and personal history. It traces the changing conception of the psyche in Britain over the last two centuries and it demonstrates how these changes were rooted in transformed patterns of medical care. The shifts from private medicine through to National Insurance and the National Health Service fostered different kinds of relationship between doctor and patient and different understandings of psychological distress. The Transformation of the Psyche in British Primary Care, 1880-1970 examines these transformations and, in so doing, provides new critical insights into our modern sense of identity and changing notions of health that will be of great value to anyone interested in the modern history of British medicine.
This book provides a varied collection of recent research relating to small businesses in tourism. In doing so it reflects the eclecticism of interest and method associated with this under-researched and under-theorised area of investigation. Topics range from the potential contribution of small firms to achieving social or economic goals to understanding more about business performance and growth. As is common in tourism research, disciplinary boundaries are routinely transgressed in the interests of gaining greater illumination. Insights from a variety of countries are offered, sometimes as a result of trans-national collaboration initiated specifically for this book.
This edition of the “brief, yet subtle and penetrating account” of the CIA includes a new prologue covering the agency’s more recent history (Christian Science Monitor). Now in its third edition, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’s comprehensive history of the Central Intelligence Agency is widely acclaimed for its thorough and even-handed analysis. A renowned U.S. intelligence expert, Jeffreys-Jones chronicles the evolution of the agency from its beginning in 1947 to the present day. With clarity and acuity, he examines the CIA’s activities during some of the most dramatic episodes in American history, from McCarthyism to the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Iran-Contra affair, and many others. A new prologue by the author also covers the CIA’s history from the end of the Cold War to the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001. A landmark of intelligence history since its first edition in 1989, The CIA and American Democracy is “a judicious and reasonable...sophisticated study” (David P. Calleo, New York Times Book Review).
Details the achievements of left-wing politics in the USA, from effective opposition to militarism to the winning of racial justice and from the socialists of the 1960s to President Barack Obama.
Essentials of Youth Fitness is an evidence informed, practical guide for fitness and strength and conditioning professionals working with younger clientele. Backed by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and coauthored by three leading authorities in pediatric exercise science, this cutting-edge book reflects current research. It is built around the modern understanding that youth are not simply smaller versions of adults but are instead a special population with their own specific needs. This is a must-have resource for professionals working with young clients. Readers will learn the scientific theories behind youth training as well as how to apply them to help design effective programs that maximize creativity, engagement, and fun. This seminal resource is broken into three parts to systematically bridge the gap between science and practice. Part I lays the groundwork for understanding fundamental concepts of pediatric exercise science, including physiology, growth and maturation, long-term athletic development, and pedagogical strategies. Part II is devoted to the assessment of youth fitness and development of fitness components, including motor skill, strength and power, speed and agility, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness, and it features a chapter on designing integrative training programs. This practical section will demonstrate the impact of factors specific to youth on fitness, and it will teach readers how to design programs to meet the needs of youth of varying abilities and different stages of development. Sample training sessions with accompanying exercise photos within each chapter offer clear visual guidelines for implementing exercises correctly. Part III delves into modern-day topics specific to the youth population, including participation in organized sports and injury concerns; overweight and obese youth; those diagnosed with clinical conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and physical and mental disabilities; and the role of nutrition in healthy lifestyle habits. Learning aids throughout the text enhance comprehension and enable practitioners to quickly locate important information. Chapter objectives and key terms reinforce learning, while Teaching Tip boxes contextualize important themes and Do You Know? boxes illustrate practical application of the content. Combining the science of pediatric exercise with the practice of designing youth fitness programs, Essentials of Youth Fitness provides professionals with the information necessary to create a safe, effective exercise experience that sparks an ongoing interest in active play, exercise, and sports participation. Earn continuing education credits/units! A continuing education exam that uses this book is also available. It may be purchased separately or as part of a package that includes both the book and exam.
This “penetrating and remarkable history of the FBI” examines its operations and development from the Reconstruction era to the 9/11 attacks (M. J. Heale, author of McCarthy's Americans). In The FBI, U.S. intelligence expert Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones presents the first comprehensive portrait of the vast, powerful, and sometimes bitterly criticized American institution. Setting the bureau’s story in the context of American history, he challenges conventional narratives—including the common misconception that traces the origin of the bureau to 1908. Instead, Jeffreys-Jones locates the FBI’s true beginnings in the 1870s, when Congress acted in response to the Ku Klux Klan campaign of terror against black American voters. The FBI derives its character and significance from its original mission of combating domestic terrorism. The author traces the evolution of that mission into the twenty-first century, making a number of surprising observations along the way: that the role of J. Edgar Hoover has been exaggerated and the importance of attorneys general underestimated; that splitting counterintelligence between the FBI and the CIA in 1947 was a mistake; and that xenophobia impaired the bureau’s preemptive anti-terrorist powers before and after 9/11.
How did the protests and support of ordinary American citizens affect their country's participation in the Vietnam War? This engrossing book focuses on four social groups that achieved political prominence in the 1960s and early 1970s--students, African Americans, women, and labor--and investigates the impact of each on American foreign policy during the war. Drawing on oral histories, personal interviews, and a broad range of archival sources, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones narrates and compares the activities of these groups. He shows that all of them gave the war solid support at its outset and offers a new perspective on this, arguing that these "outsider" social groups were tempted to conform with foreign policy goals as a means to social and political acceptance. But in due course students, African Americans, and then women turned away from temptation and mounted spectacular revolts against the war, with a cumulative effect that sapped the resistance of government policymakers. Organized labor, however, supported the war until almost the end. Jeffreys-Jones shows that this gave President Nixon his opportunity to speak of the "great silent majority" of American citizens who were in favor of the war. Because labor continued to be receptive to overtures from the White House, peace did not come quickly.
Times change. People move on. Plunging a hand into a pot of boiling oil is no longer considered an accurate way of determining the guilt of an adulterous woman. We tend not to casually vomit at the dinner table, do the Macarena, or fly around in airships inflated with highly flammable gas. We live our lives amid a complex web of rapidly changing ideas, desires and ethics; we pick the ones that seem like a good idea, and jettison the ones that don't. The Next Big Thing points, laughs and winces at all those things that were suddenly deemed not that great after all. The guide is a tribute to the fad, the dead-end trend, the ephemeral nature of our beliefs, needs and aspirations. Choose your fad by era - Prehistory, Ancient Civilizations, The Middle Ages, Renaissance & Elizabethan, Georgian & Victorian, World Wars, The Post-War Years, The 1960s & 70s, The 1980s & 90s right through to today. Think about it: In the 1930s, men who played the clarinet were considered incredibly sexually attractive by young women. This is no longer the case. The Next Big Thing will tell you why. A Rough Guide to things that seemed like a good idea at the time.
A Question of Standing deals with recognizable events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency's intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA. The mission of the CIA, derived from U-1 in World War I more than from World War II's OSS, has always been intelligence. Seventy-five years ago, in the year of its creation, the National Security Act gave the agency, uniquely in world history up to that point, a democratic mandate to pursue that mission of intelligence. It gave the CIA a special standing in the conduct of US foreign relations. That standing diminished when successive American presidents ordered the CIA to exceed its original mission. When they tasked the agency secretly to overthrow democratic governments, the United States lost its international standing, and its command of a majority in the United Nations General Assembly. Such dubious operations, even the government's embrace of assassination and torture, did not diminish the standing of the CIA in US public opinion. However, domestic interventions did. CIA spying on domestic protesters led to tighter congressional oversight from the 1970s on. The chapters in A Question of Standing offer a balanced narrative and perspective on recognizable episodes in the CIA's history. They include the Bay of Pigs invasion, the War on Terror, 9/11, the weapons of mass destruction deception, the Iran estimate of 2007, the assassination of Osama bin Laden, and Fake News. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 diminished the CIA and is construed as having been the right solution undertaken for the wrong reasons, reasons that grew out of political opportunism. The book also defends the CIA's exposure of foreign meddling in US elections.
Canada is a country of massive size, of diverse geographical features and an equally diverse population—all features that are magnificently reflected in its architecture. In this book, Rhodri Windsor Liscombe and Michelangelo Sabatino offer a richly informative history of Canadian architecture that celebrates and explores the country’s many contributions to the spread of architectural modernity in the Americas. A distinct Canadian design attitude coalesced during the twentieth century, one informed by a liberal, hybrid, and pragmatic mindset intent less upon the dogma of architectural language and more on thinking about the formation of inclusive spaces and places. Taking a fresh perspective on design production, they map the unfolding of architectural modernity across the country, from the completion of the transcontinental railway in the late 1880s through to the present. Along the way they discuss architecture within the broader contexts of political, industrial, and sociocultural evolution; the urban-suburban expansion; and new building technologies. Examining the works of architects and firms such as ARCOP, Eric Arthur, Ernest Cormier, Brigitte Shim, and Howard Sutcliffe, this book brings Canadian architecture chronologically and thematically to life.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones offers the first comprehensive overview of women's influence on US foreign policy since the First World War ... It is an important contribution to international historical literature". -- The International History Review
Acclaimed popular-science writer Brian Clegg and popular TV and radio astronomer Rhodri Evans give us a Top Ten list of physicists as the central theme to build an exploration of the most exciting breakthroughs in physics, looking not just at the science, but also the fascinating lives of the scientists themselves. The Top Ten are: 1.Isaac Newton (1642-1727) 2.Niels Bohr (1885-1962) 3.Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) 4.Albert Einstein (1879-1955) 5.James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) 6.Michael Faraday (1791-1867) 7.Marie Curie (1867-1934) 8.Richard Feynman (1918-1988) 9.Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) 10.Paul Dirac (1902-1984) Each of these figures has made a huge contribution to physics. Some are household names, others more of a mystery, but in each case there is an opportunity to combine a better understanding of the way that each of them has advanced our knowledge of the universe with an exploration of their often unusual, always interesting lives. Whether we are with Curie, patiently sorting through tons of pitchblende to isolate radium or feeling Bohr's frustration as once again Einstein attempts to undermine quantum theory, the combination of science and biography humanizes these great figures of history and makes the Physics itself more accessible. In exploring the way the list has been built the authors also put physics in its place amongst the sciences and show how it combines an exploration of the deepest and most profound questions about life and the universe with practical applications that have transformed our lives. The book is structured chronologically, allowing readers to follow the development of scientific knowledge over more than 400 years, showing clearly how this key group of individuals has fundamentally altered our understanding of the world around us.
Spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this fascinating history explores the lives and achievements of great women in science across the globe. Ten Women Who Changed Science and the World tells the stories of trailblazing women who made a historic impact on physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine. Included in this volume are famous figures, such as two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, as well as individuals whose names will be new to many, though their breakthroughs were no less remarkable. These women overcame significant obstacles, discrimination, and personal tragedies in their pursuit of scientific advancement. They persevered in their research, whether creating life-saving drugs or expanding our knowledge of the cosmos. By daring to ask ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’, each of these women made a positive impact on the world we live in today. In this book, you will learn about: Astronomy Henrietta Leavitt (United States, 1868–1921) discovered the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variable stars, which enabled us to measure the size of our galaxy and the universe. Physics Lise Meitner (Austria, 1878–1968) fled Nazi Germany in 1938, taking with her the experimental results which showed that she and Otto Hahn had split the nucleus and discovered nuclear fission. Chien-Shiung Wu (United States, 1912–1997) demonstrated that the widely accepted ‘law of parity’, which stated that left-spinning and right-spinning subatomic particles would behave identically, was wrong. Chemistry Marie Curie (France, 1867–1934) became the only person in history to have won Nobel prizes in two different fields of science. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (United Kingdom, 1910–1994) won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964 and pioneered the X-ray study of large molecules of biochemical importance. Medicine Virginia Apgar (United States, 1909–1974) invented the Apgar score, used to quickly assess the health of newborn babies. Gertrude Elion (United States, 1918–1999) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for her advances in drug development. Biology Rita Levi-Montalcini (Italy, 1909–2012) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for her co-discovery in 1954 of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). Elsie Widdowson (United Kingdom, 1906–2000) pioneered the science of nutrition and helped devise the World War II food-rationing program. Rachel Carson (United States, 1907–1964) forged the environmental movement, most famously with her influential book Silent Spring.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a leading expert on the history of American espionage, here offers a lively and sweeping history of American secret intelligence from the founding of the nation through the present day. Jeffreys-Jones chronicles the extraordinary expansion of American secret intelligence from the 1790s, when George Washington set aside a discretionary fund for covert operations, to the beginning of the twenty-first century, when United States intelligence expenditure exceeds Russia's total defense budget. How did the American intelligence system evolve into such an enormous and costly bureaucracy? Jeffreys-Jones argues that hyperbolic claims and the impulse toward self-promotion have beset American intelligence organizations almost from the outset. Allan Pinkerton, whose nineteenth-century detective agency was the forerunner of modern intelligence bureaus, invented assassination plots and fomented anti-radical fears in order to demonstrate his own usefulness. Subsequent spymasters likewise invented or exaggerated a succession of menaces ranging from white slavery to Soviet espionage to digital encryption in order to build their intelligence agencies and, later, to defend their ever-expanding budgets. While American intelligence agencies have achieved some notable successes, Jeffreys-Jones argues, the intelligence community as a whole has suffered from a dangerous distortion of mission. By exaggerating threats such as Communist infiltration and Chinese espionage at the expense of other, more intractable problems--such as the narcotics trade and the danger of terrorist attack--intelligence agencies have misdirected resources and undermined their own objectivity. Since the end of the Cold War, the aims of American secret intelligence have been unclear. Recent events have raised serious questions about effectiveness of foreign intelligence, and yet the CIA and other intelligence agencies are poised for even greater expansion under the current administration. Offering a lucid assessment of the origins and evolution of American secret intelligence, Jeffreys-Jones asks us to think also about the future direction of our intelligence agencies.
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