Deemed too small for his school Gaelic football team at the age of fourteen, Rob Heffernan took up race walking on a whim. Driven by a fiercely competitive nature and a dogged desire to be the best, he strode his way to the pinnacle of the sport, winning bronze in the London 2012 Olympics and becoming world champion in Moscow in 2013. In 2016, he became the first athlete to represent Ireland at the Olympic Games for a fifth time. In this no-holds-barred account, Rob describes his battles with injury, depression and poverty on his way to the top. Even when at his best, he found himself cheated out of medals by those who crossed the dark line into doping. He candidly tells of the confrontations with Athletics Ireland and the Irish Sports Council that raged in the background to his struggle for that prestigious Olympic medal. This is the inside story of how one boy's dream led him from the council flats of his tough upbringing to the winners' podium. It is also a heartfelt chronicle of the sometimes nightmare-ridden journey to become a top athlete in this gruelling sport.
Provides a summary and more detailed sections of the mandatory sections of the HSC syllabus and includes essential facts, exam style questions and answers.
Deemed too small for his school Gaelic football team at the age of fourteen, Rob Heffernan took up race walking on a whim. Driven by a fiercely competitive nature and a dogged desire to be the best, he strode his way to the pinnacle of the sport, winning bronze in the London 2012 Olympics and becoming world champion in Moscow in 2013. In 2016, he became the first athlete to represent Ireland at the Olympic Games for a fifth time. In this no-holds-barred account, Rob describes his battles with injury, depression and poverty on his way to the top. Even when at his best, he found himself cheated out of medals by those who crossed the dark line into doping. He candidly tells of the confrontations with Athletics Ireland and the Irish Sports Council that raged in the background to his struggle for that prestigious Olympic medal. This is the inside story of how one boy's dream led him from the council flats of his tough upbringing to the winners' podium. It is also a heartfelt chronicle of the sometimes nightmare-ridden journey to become a top athlete in this gruelling sport.
Passionate, vivid and immediate, and full of insights, this is Rob OakeshottÆs honest and real story of life in Australian politics. From his apprenticeship in the NSW parliament to the last days of the Gillard government, he tells it as it was. When the results of the 2010 federal election became known, no party had a majority in the House of Representativesùit was the first hung parliament for forty years. So, both the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, set about wooing the Independents - Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie - and Adam Bandt of the Greens. In the end, Julia Gillard stitched together an agreement to form government. When it was announced, famously there was talk of a 'kinder, gentler polity'. That lasted for about one day. Rob Oakeshott, in this very candid and compelling memoir, relates the events leading up to this agreement and what happened thereafter when he and Windsor, in particular, proved themselves to be stauncher supporters of Julia Gillard than many of her party colleagues. He remembers moments of celebration and incidents of perfidy. But above all, we get to meet close up and personal the man who played such an important role in the forty-third parliament.
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2014 Spectator sport is living, breathing, non-stop theatre for all. Focusing on spectator sports and their accompanying issues, tracing their origins, evolution and impact, inside the lines and beyond the boundary, this book offers a thematic history of professional sport and the ingredients that magnetise millions around the globe. It tells the stories that matter: from the gladiators of Rome to the runners of Rift Valley via the innovator-missionaries of Rugby School; from multi-faceted British exports to the Americanisation of professionalism and the Indianisation of cricket. Rob Steen traces the development of these sports which captivate the turnstile millions and the mouse-clicking masses, addressing their key themes and commonalities, from creation myths to match fixing via race, politics, sexuality and internationalism. Insightful and revelatory, this is an entertaining exploration of spectator sports' intrinsic place in culture and how sport imitates life – and life imitates sport.
A Dictionary of Human Geography is a brand new addition to Oxford's Paperback Reference Series, offering over 2,000 clear and concise entries on human geography terms. From basic terms and concepts to biographical entries, acronyms, organisations, and major periods and schools in the history of human geography, it provides up-to-date, accurate, and accessible information. It also includes entry-level web links that are listed and regularly updated on a dedicated companion website. This dictionary is a reliable reference for students of human geography and ancillary subjects, for researchers and professionals in the field, and for interested generalists.
“Beautiful . . . an essential book for anyone with an interest in the material culture of the Roman frontier in its wider context.” —Current Archaeology Dr. Rob Collins and the curators of the remarkable collections from Hadrian’s Wall present a striking new contribution to understanding the archaeology of a Roman frontier. This highly illustrated volume showcases the artifacts recovered from archaeological investigations along Hadrian’s Wall in order to examine the daily lives of those living along the Northern Frontier of the Roman Empire. Presented by theme, no other book offers such a diverse and thorough range of the rich material culture of the Wall. The accompanying text provides an ethnographic perspective, guiding us through the everyday lives of the people of frontier communities, from the Commanding Officer to the local farmer. This holistic view allows us an insight into the homes and communities, how people dressed, what they ate and drank, their religions and beliefs, domestic and military forms of security, and how they conducted their business and pleasure. “With so many of the objects described and set in context in this fine book, it gives no more than a brief bright flash of lives once led, and yet provides such a spark for the imagination.” —Hexham Local History Society Newsletter
This book offers a distinctive and novel approach to state-sponsored violence, one of the major problems facing humanity in the previous and now the twenty-first century. It addresses the question: how is it possible that large numbers of ordinary men and women are able to do the killing, torturing and violence that defines crimes against humanity? In his striking analysis, Rob Watts shows how and why states, of all political persuasions, engage in crimes against humanity, including: genocide, homicide, torture, kidnapping, illegal surveillance and detention. This book advances a new interpretive frame. It argues against the ‘civilizing process’ model, showing how both states and social sciences like sociology and criminology have been complicit in splitting 'the social' from 'the ethical' while accepting too complacently that modern states are the exemplars of morality and rationality. The book makes the case that it is possible to bring together in the one interpretative frame, our understanding of social action involving personal motivation and ethical responsibility and patterns of collective social action operating in terms of the agencies of ‘the State’. Rob Watts identifies and charts the pathways of action and ‘practical’ (i.e. ethical) judgements which the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity constructed for themselves to make sense of what they were doing. At once challenging and highly accessible, the book reveals the policy-making processes that produce state crime as well as showing how ordinary people do the state’s dirty work.
Why is the search for democratic renewal so elusive? This book examines both the political and policy implications of efforts by the centre-left to transform democracy. This is a story not only about democratic change, but also the identity crisis of centre-left political parties. The book offers a fresh critique of the Big Society agenda, and analyses why both left and right are searching for democratic renewal. Drawing on high-profile interviews and examining an in-depth series of comparative cases, the book argues that the centre-left’s search for democratic renewal contains a range of policy and political aims, contradictions and tensions. It will be of interest to students, academics, researchers, interest groups and policy analysts interested in consultation, democratic renewal, labour politics, and Australian and British politics.
Provides a summary and more detailed sections of the mandatory sections of the HSC syllabus and includes essential facts, exam style questions and answers.
In recent years the pace of reform in health policy and the NHS has been relentless. But how are policies formed and implemented? This fully updated edition of a bestselling book explores the processes and institutions that make health policy, examining what constitutes health policy, where power lies, and what changes could be made to improve the quality of health policy making. Drawing on original research by the author over many years, and a wide range of secondary sources, the book examines the role of various institutions in the formation and implementation of health policy. Unlike most standard texts, it considers the impact of devolution in the UK and the role of European and international institutions and fills a need for an up-to-date overview of this fast-moving area. It features new case studies to illustrate how policy has evolved and developed in recent years. This new edition has been fully updated to reflect policies under the later years of New Labour and the Coalition government. Although written particularly with the needs of students and tutors in mind, this accessible textbook will also appeal to policy makers and practitioners in the health policy field.
The Arctic region has been the subject of much popular writing. This book considers nineteenth-century representations of the Arctic, and draws upon an extensive range of evidence that will allow the 'widest connections' to emerge from a 'cross-disciplinary analysis' using different methodologies and subject matter. It positions the Arctic alongside more thoroughly investigated theatres of Victorian enterprise. In the nineteenth century, most images were in the form of paintings, travel narratives, lectures given by the explorers themselves and photographs. The book explores key themes in Arctic images which impacted on subsequent representations through text, painting and photography. For much of the nineteenth century, national and regional geographical societies promoted exploration, and rewarded heroic endeavor. The book discusses images of the Arctic which originated in the activities of the geographical societies. The Times provided very low-key reporting of Arctic expeditions, as evidenced by its coverage of the missions of Sir John Franklin and James Clark Ross. However, the illustrated weekly became one of the main sources of popular representations of the Arctic. The book looks at the exhibitions of Arctic peoples, Arctic exploration and Arctic fauna in Britain. Late nineteenth-century exhibitions which featured the Arctic were essentially nostalgic in tone. The Golliwogg's Polar Adventures, published in 1900, drew on adult representations of the Arctic and will have confirmed and reinforced children's perceptions of the region. Text books, board games and novels helped to keep the subject alive among the young.
Global building and construction cultures are hard-wired to constructing too much, too badly, with major social and ecological consequences. Rob Imrie calls us to build less and to build better as a pre-requisite for enhancing welfare and well-being.
This book draws on a wealth of evidence including young people’s own stories, to document how they are now faring in increasingly unequal societies like America, Britain, Australia, France and Spain. It points to systematic generational inequality as those born since 1980 become the first generation to have a lower standard of living than previous generations. While governments and experts typically explain this by referring to globalization, new technologies, or young people’s deficits, the authors of this book offer a new political economy of generations, which identifies the central role played by governments promoting neoliberal policies that exacerbate existing social inequalities based on age, ethnicity, gender and class. The book is a must read for social science students, human service workers and policy-makers and indeed for anyone interested in understanding the impact of government policy over the last 40 years on young people.
Fractured fairy tales meet modern day middle school in book two of this hilarious series that’s perfect for fans of Shrek, Dork Diaries, and Wimpy Kid. Even after rescuing the king, Zarf is scum on the bottom rung of the middle school social ladder. After all, he is still a troll. But at least he still has his two best friends, Kevin and Chester . . . until Kevin disappears, that is. It seems a band of wolves are seeking revenge for the constant disgrace they’ve suffered over the years, and Little Red Ridinghood’s kid might be next on their list. Now it’s up to Zarf to crank out a solution from that troll brain of his, and save his best friend before it’s too late. Award-winning comic creator Rob Harrell has middle-grade humor mastered. This second book in his Life of Zarf series is packed with even more witty one-liners and clever twists on classic folk and fairytales. It's perfect for fans of Chris Colfer's Land of Stories series. Praise for Life of Zarf: The Trouble with Weasels: "Entertainingly goofy. A promising series kickoff full of off-kilter action and humor." —Publishers Weekly "A Wimpy Kid format with a fairy-tale twist? Yes, this is bound to be a hit." —Booklist
While liberal-democratic states like America, Britain and Australia claim to value freedom of expression and the right to dissent, they have always actually criminalized dissent. This disposition has worsened since 9/11 and the 2008 Great Recession. This ground-breaking study shows that just as dissent involves far more than protest marches, so too liberal-democratic states have expanded the criminalization of dissent. Drawing on political and social theorists like Arendt, Bourdieu and Isin, the book offers a new way of thinking about politics, dissent and its criminalization relationally. Using case studies like the Occupy movement, selective refusal by Israeli soldiers, urban squatters, democratic education and violence by anti-Apartheid activists, the book highlights the many forms dissent takes along with the many ways liberal-democratic states criminalize it. The book highlights the mix of fear and delusion in play when states privilege security to protect an imagined ‘political order’ from difference and disagreement. The book makes a major contribution to political theory, legal studies and sociology. Linking legal, political and normative studies in new ways, Watts shows that ultimately liberal-democracies rely more on sovereignty and the capacity for coercion and declarations of legal ‘states of exception’ than on liberal-democratic principles. In a time marked by a deepening crisis of democracy, the book argues dissent is increasingly valuable.
American International Pictures was in many ways the "missing link" between big-budget Hollywood studios, "poverty-row" B-movie factories and low-rent exploitation movie distributors. AIP first targeted teen audiences with science fiction, horror and fantasy, but soon grew to encompass many genres and demographics--at times, it was indistinguishable from many of the "major" studios. From Abby to Zontar, this filmography lists more than 800 feature films, television series and TV specials by AIP and its partners and subsidiaries. Special attention is given to American International Television (the TV arm of AIP) and an appendix lists the complete AITV catalog. The author also discusses films produced by founders James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff after they left the company.
Thinking Geographically offers students and faculty alike an elegant, concise, and thorough overview of contemporary theoretical concerns in geography. Easily accessible to those unfamiliar with social theory, this volume "pushes the envelope" of understanding by sketching the contours of post-structuralist spatial thought, including such critical emerging topics as geographies of text, the body, money, and globalisation. Brief biographies of influential theorists demonstrate how ideas are embodied and personified. This volume is highly useful for courses in human geography, the history and status of the discipline, and will stand as a milestone in the discipline's conceptual understanding over the next decade or more." Barney Warf, Florida State University The last decade has seen Geography transformed by an astonishing range of cultural and philosophical concepts and approaches. Thinking Geographically is designed for students as an accessible and enjoyable introduction to this new landscape of geographical ideas. The book takes the reader through the history of geographic thought up to a survey of the present. Contemporary theory is then used to explore real world issues drawn from across the discipline of social, cultural, political and economic geography. Entertainingly written and packed with examples and with profiles of key theorists, the book is an ideal introduction for any student who wants to discover the potential of thinking geographically.
Microsoft PowerPivot is a free add-on to Excel from Microsoft that allows users to produce new kinds of reports and analyses that were simply impossible before, and this book is the first to tackle DAX formulas, the core capability of PowerPivot, from the perspective of the Excel audience. Written by the world's foremost PowerPivot blogger and practitioner, the book's concepts and approach are introduced in a simple, step-by-step manner tailored to the learning style of Excel users everywhere. The techniques presented allow users to produce, in hours or even minutes, results that formerly would have taken entire teams weeks or months to produce. It includes lessons on the difference between calculated columns and measures; how formulas can be reused across reports of completely different shapes; how to merge disjointed sets of data into unified reports; how to make certain columns in a pivot behave as if the pivot were filtered while other columns do not; and how to create time-intelligent calculations in pivot tables such as "Year over Year" and "Moving Averages" whether they use a standard, fiscal, or a complete custom calendar. The "pattern-like" techniques and best practices contained in this book have been developed and refined over two years of onsite training with Excel users around the world, and the key lessons from those seminars costing thousands of dollars per day are now available to within the pages of this easy-to-follow guide. This updated second edition covers new features introduced with Office 2015.
This book provides a rigorous examination into the realities of the current university system in Britain, America and Australia. The radical makeover of the higher education system which began in the 1980s has conventionally been understood as universities being transformed into businesses which sell education and research in a competitive market. This engaging and provocative book argues that this is not actually the case. Drawing on lived experience, Watts asserts that the reality is actually a consequence of contradictory government policy and new public management whose exponents talk and act ‘as-if’ universities have become businesses. The result of which is ‘market crazed governance’, whereby universities are subjected to expensive rebranding and advertising campaigns and the spread of a toxic culture of customer satisfaction surveys which ask students to evaluate their teachers and what they have learned, based on government ‘metrics’ of research ‘quality’. This has led to a situation where not only the normal teacher-student relationship is inverted, academic professional autonomy is eroded and many students are short-changed, but where universities are becoming places whose leaders are no longer prepared to tell the truth and too few academics are prepared to insist they do. An impassioned and methodical study, this book will be of great interest to academics and scholars in the field of higher education and education policy.
Hydrology in Practice is an excellent and very successful introductory text for engineering hydrology students who go on to be practitioners in consultancies, the Environment Agency, and elsewhere. This fourth edition of Hydrology in Practice, while retaining all that is excellent about its predecessor, by Elizabeth M. Shaw, replaces the material on the Flood Studies Report with an equivalent section on the methods of the Flood Estimation Handbook and its revisions. Other completely revised sections on instrumentation and modelling reflect the many changes that have occurred over recent years. The updated text has taken advantage of the extensive practical experience of the staff of JBA Consulting who use the methods described on a day-to-day basis. Topical case studies further enhance the text and the way in which students at undergraduate and MSc level can relate to it. The fourth edition will also have a wider appeal outside the UK by including new material on hydrological processes, which also relate to courses in geography and environmental science departments. In this respect the book draws on the expertise of Keith J. Beven and Nick A. Chappell, who have extensive experience of field hydrological studies in a variety of different environments, and have taught undergraduate hydrology courses for many years. Second- and final-year undergraduate (and MSc) students of hydrology in engineering, environmental science, and geography departments across the globe, as well as professionals in environmental protection agencies and consultancies, will find this book invaluable. It is likely to be the course text for every undergraduate/MSc hydrology course in the UK and in many cases overseas too.
This book provides a theoretically informed guide to the practice of working with offenders in different settings and for different purposes. It deals with topics such as offender rehabilitation, case management, worker-offender relationships, working with difficult clients and situations, collaboration, addressing complex needs, and processes of integration. The book offers a unique perspective on working with offenders in that it incorporates three key elements. As part of the latter, it provides different types of data, including descriptions of programs and selected statistics from each jurisdiction, and presents this information in easy-to-read formats. The chapters are structured around a dual focus of workers and their environments on the one hand, and the nature of the offenders with whom they work on the other. The condition and situation of workers is thus considered in the context of the condition and situation of offenders, and the relationship between the two. The book is intended to be relevant and familiar to those already working in the field, as well as to introduce contemporary principles and practices to those wishing to do so in the future. Each chapter concludes with two key features. The first, Further Reading, is oriented toward concepts and the 'why' questions of practice. The second, Key Resources, alerts readers to appropriate manuals and handbooks, and the 'how' questions of practice. This includes reference to evidence-based examples of good practice and specific intervention models.
With calm abandon, Rob Schlegel stands among the genderless trees to shake notions of masculinity and fatherhood. Schlegel incorporates the visionary into everyday life, inhabiting patterns of relation that do not rely on easy categories. Working from the premise that poetry is indistinguishable from the life of the poet, Schlegel considers how his relationship to the creative process is forever changed when he becomes something new to someone else. “The meaning I’m trying to protect is,” Schlegel writes, “the heart is neither boy, nor girl.” In the Tree Where the Double Sex Sleeps is a tender search for the mother in the father, the poet in the parent, the forest in the human.
America in the 1950s was a cauldron of contradictions. Advances in technology chafed against a grimly conservative political landscape; the military-industrial complex ceaselessly promoted the "Communist menace"; young marrieds fled crumbling cities for artificial communities known as suburbs; and the corporate cipher known as "The Organization Man" was created, along with stifling images of women. The decade, huddled under the fear of nuclear holocaust, was also dedicated to all things futuristic. Science fiction was in its salad days, in magazines and novels and in motion pictures, trying every trick in the book to lure customers back from television, including reliance on monster movies. All of these forces collided in 1957, when an astounding 57 movies of the science fiction, horror and fantasy variety were shown in the United States--a record unmatched to this day. Reflecting some of the socio-political topics of the day, several are exceptional examples of their genres. This book critically discusses each of the films.
Identity in the Covid-19 Years explores the how the COVID-19 pandemic has been represented in media, communication and culture, and the role these changes have played in renewing how we understand identity, engage in social belonging and relate ethically to each other and the world. This book explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on how we perform our identities, engage in social belonging, and communicate with each other. Understanding the onset of the pandemic as a moment experienced as cultural rupture, Cover provides a framework for understanding how selfhood, belonging, relationships and perceptions of time and space have undergone a disruption that not only is damaging to continuity and stability but also provides positive value through renewal and the re-making of the self and ways of living ethically. Drawing on philosophic, media and cultural studies approaches, this book describes how networks of mutual care and global interdependency have been powerfully drawn out by the experience of the pandemic, yet also disavowed in some settings in favour of a problem individualism and sustained inequalities. The roles of disruption and interdependency are examined across an array of pandemic-related topics, including health communication, apocalyptic storytelling, lockdowns and immobilities, mask-wearing, social distancing and new practices touch, anti-vaccination discourses, and frameworks for mourning the lost past and the uncertain future. By focusing on the impact of the pandemic on identity, this work explains and revisits theories of belonging and ethics to help us understand how new ways of perceiving our vulnerability may lead to more positive, inclusive and ethical ways of living.
Rob White’s pioneering work in the establishment and growth of green criminology has been part of a paradigm shift for the field of criminology as it has moved to include crimes committed against the environment. For the first time, this book brings together a selection of White’s essays that explore the theories, research approaches and concepts that have been instrumental to our understanding of environmental harm and eco-justice. The book provides an additional foundation for scholarship that goes beyond expression of opinion or immediate empirical finding; the emphasis is on systematic analysis and theoretically informed consideration of complex realities. It serves as a platform for further debate and discussion of green criminology’s theories, perspectives, approaches and concepts and their application to specific sub-areas such as environmental law enforcement, wildlife trafficking, pollution and climate change. Its aim is not to provide answers, but to stimulate further dedicated theoretical contemplation of environmental harms, threats to biodiversity and extinction of species. This is essential reading for all those engaged with green criminology, as well as criminological theory, eco-justice and environment and sustainability studies.
Remember the ill-fitting tuxes, regrettable dresses, wilting corsages, cheap beer, and rented limos that marked the biggest, most-anticipated celebration of the school year? Remember when the whole world hung in the balance of just one night? Well, lots of your favorite writers do too, and they share the good, the bad, and the embarrassingly ugly in this wonderful compendium of personal reminiscences about prom night. Rob Spillman has collected the prom memories of Cintra Wilson, Walter Kirn, Steve Almond, Samantha Dunn, Susie Bright, Mike Albo, and many others, capturing the magic, the misery, and the atrocious attire in a hilarious look at the simultaneously sublime and ridiculous event that has become the American right of passage. Whether prom night is something you fondly remember or long to forget, The Time of My Life will bring it all back, capturing with wit and poignancy precisely what it was like to be young, hormonal, and dressed like a butler or bridesmaid.
This book shows that the connected histories of decolonization and globalization concern the practices of individuals and movements as much as they do the ideologies of states, institutions and organizations. Viewing decolonization through non-state activist practices, and setting anti-colonial solidarity in the context of the methods of contemporary global peace movements, it argues that seemingly marginal histories can illuminate aspects of the end of empire that are not readily apparent in studies centred on state diplomacy and nationalist movements. Focusing on a group of British and American activists, including the pacifist campaigner A.J. Muste, the anti-apartheid priest Michael Scott and the civil rights organiser Bayard Rustin, Skinner explores connected global histories of anti-nuclear peace campaigns, anti-colonialism and decolonization to illuminate new perspectives on the end of empire and the Cold War. Studying a failed attempt to infiltrate the French atom bomb test site in southern Algeria, and a mass march across the border between Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia that never took place, these stories provide valuable insights into the interactions between local and global scales of historical experience. In presenting these histories, this book demonstrates how global and transnational histories can challenge and disrupt, rather than reinforce hierarchies of power and privileges. In doing so, it also contributes to ongoing debates surrounding the nature of decolonization as a historical phenomenon by focusing on the practices of activism that shaped - and were shaped by the political and intellectual structures of decolonization.
This book explores the development of the global phenomenon of Prison Shakespeare, from its emergence in the 1980s to the present day. It provides a succinct history of the phenomenon and its spread before going on to explore one case study the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble's (Australia) Shakespeare Prison Project in detail. The book then analyses the phenomenon from a number of perspectives, and evaluates a number of claims made about the outcomes of such programs, particularly as they relate to offender health and behaviour. Unlike previous works on the topic, which are largely individual case studies, this book focuses not only on Prison Shakespeare's impact on the prisoners who directly participate, but also on prison culture and on broader social attitudes towards both prisoners and Shakespeare.
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