In Critique Of Black Reason, eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness - from the Atlantic slave trade to the present - to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations between colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital.

Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion.

With Critique Of Black Reason, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future.

With the country in chaos and corruption on all sides, there's only one person to turn to.

When a series of military-style attacks erupt across the United States, Detective John Sampson is called in to investigate. The attacks are untraceable, with patterns too random to decipher, leaving Sampson struggling to find a link amongst the carnage.

As Sampson discovers a lead through an ex-military contact, his partner Alex Cross is brutally side-lined, leaving him certain about one thing: he can trust no one.

With soldiers called on secret assignments and others mysteriously disappearing, Sampson must revisit his military past if he's to save his country's future.

The sequel to Out of Sight, the bestselling thriller featuring intelligence officer Amy Cornwall - an undercover CIA officer who has seven days to save her country from the world's most dangerous double-agent.

The CIA's highly classified Special Activities Division is in the business of tracking people down and keeping secrets hidden. Then a botched field operation reveals some dark dealings between an officer's superiors and an informant, including a plot that could kill thousands of Americans.

Knowing that her leadership is corrupt to the core, intelligence officer Amy Cornwall is forced to give up her identity and work from the shadows. But it's not easy staying hidden when your enemies are elite intelligence operatives.

Will she get the truth out into the light before losing her identity, her history, her family? The countdown has already begun.

Laying down the foundations of a critical sociological approach to the interdisciplinary domain of public policy, this insightful book presents the first systematic reflection on the use of Bourdieu’s theory of social fields to analyse policy processes. Engaging with theoretical dimensions, it provides innovative methodological tools, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, to be used in the wider field of policy studies. Bringing together expert contributors from across the globe, the book explores a diverse range of case studies on various policy sectors and processes such as international policy circulation and policy implementation. Offering a wealth of critical analysis, chapters highlight the unsatisfactory nature of mainstream policy approaches and advocate for the use of Bourdieu’s sociological theory to account for the social milieus, structures of relationships, and power dynamics in which public policies are made. Encompassing numerous actors and groups, this theory enables a critical sociological understanding of policy orientations by unveiling the structures of relationships in policymaking. Innovative and perceptive in its approach, this book will prove to be an important resource for scholars and students interested in the fields of critical policy studies, public policy, public administration and management, and sociology.

Her visions have helped solve crimes; her instincts have helped find missing people.

She can predict future events and read your mind.

When she was six years old, Allison's deceased great-grandfather came to her with a message for her mother: "I am okay, I am still with you. Tell your mom there's no more pain." Allison shared his comforting words with her mother and thus began a lifetime of creating connections between loved ones and those they have lost.

In this stunning book, Allison shares fascinating stories of her encounters with people who have passed and her adventures as a profiler for various law enforcement organizations. With wit and compassion, Allison shows us what it is like to live with these special gifts and talents and also tells about her struggle to live a normal life as a devoted wife and mother. She shows how learning to accept her own gifts has helped her accept the unique gifts of others and how her compelling desire to relieve the pain of others has helped to define her own life, a life committed to the search for ultimate truth.

In these pages, readers will meet people who have had both heartbreaking and heartwarming communication with the other side, providing comforting proof that the deceased stay with their loved ones and continue to share in the joys of their lives.

From Jennifer duBois, “one of a handful of living American novelists who can comprehend both the long arc of history and the minute details that animate it� (Karan Mahajan) and “a writer of thrilling psychological precision� (Justin Torres), comes a gripping new novel. In 2001, a few months after the death of her husband, Angela is devastated when she is ejected from her graduate program in linguistics at Harvard University. Soon after, she suffers a miscarriage. Spinning and raw, and with suppressed unresolved trauma, the young widow and her four-year-old child move into her mother’s house. Trained with an understanding of spoken language as the essential foundation of thought, Angela finds underpaid work at the Center, a fledgling organization utilizing an experimental therapy aimed at helping nonspeaking patients with motor impairments. Through the Center, Angela begins to work closely with Sam, a twenty-eight-year-old patient who has been confined to his bedroom for most of his life. Sam quickly takes to the technology—and so does Angela. Her once deeply philosophical interest in language comes vividly to life through her interactions with Sam. Angela becomes intensely drawn to him, and their relationship soon turns intimate. When Sam’s family discovers their relationship, they intervene and bring charges. As Angela tells her story from prison in the form of an unrepentant plea, we are plunged into the inner workings of her mind as she rejects all else in pursuit of a more profound understanding of language and humanity. As the sole narrator and perspective giver, Angela’s understanding pushes and pulls us into ambiguity, and a Nabokovian hall of mirrors emerges as she tumbles deeper and deeper into obsession. Provocative and profound in its exploration of the basis of humanity, this is an extraordinary novel from one of our most acclaimed contemporary writers.

Welfare offices usually attract negative descriptions of bureaucracy with their queues, routines, and impersonal nature. Are they anonymous machines or the locus of neutral service relationships? Showing how people experience state public administration, The Bureaucrat and the Poor provides a realistic view of French welfare policies, institutions and reforms and, in doing so, dispels both of these myths. Combining Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy theory with the sociology of Bourdieu and Goffman, this research analyses face-to-face encounters and demonstrates the complex relationship between welfare agents, torn between their institutional role and their personal feelings, and welfare applicants, required to translate their personal experience into bureaucratic categories. Placing these interactions within the broader context of social structures and class, race and gender, the author unveils both the social determinations of these interpersonal relationships and their social functions. Increasing numbers of welfare applicants, coupled with mass unemployment, family transformations and the so-called 'integration problem' of migrants into French society deeply affect these encounters. Staff manage tense situations with no additional resources - some become personally involved, while others stick to their bureaucratic role; most of them alternate between involvement and detachment, assistance and domination. Welfare offices have become a place for 're-socialisation', where people can talk about their personal problems and ask for advice. On the other hand, bureaucratic encounters are increasingly violent, symbolically if not physically. More than ever, they are now a means of regulating the poor.

A tiny, delicately illustrated picture book for young children and animal lovers that holds a world of emotion conveying a friendship between an energetic puppy and a new kitten. Little dog George isn't sure about the new kitten that appears in their home. George sniffs Tao, they look at each other, they wag and wave their tails. Then they start to play. George and Tao are best friends! But George is too excited and Tao gets hurt. Now Tao is gone. George looks everywhere, then waits--all morning, all afternoon, all night. Will Tao come home? George's overenthusiastic friendship comes to a sudden stop, turns to worry, a long wait, and then finally an outburst of pure doggy joy when Tao comes home. This puppy and kitten encapsulate everything about being small, and the intensity of the now-moment. With beautiful and irresistible animal illustrations, this warm friendship story that touches the heart is an ideal gift book for pet lovers of any age. Ideal for families to use as a tool for talking about a new baby or sibling in the home with themes of friendship, overenthusiasm, different styles, and overreaching boundaries. A lovely size for small hands, George and Tao is a story for anyone who knows the thrill of finding a new friend. Claude K. Dubois was born in Belgium and is the award-winning author of The Old Man. She has published nearly eighty children's books for which she has received several awards. She is also a sculptor and painter. Translated from the French edition by Daniel Hahn. Praise for The Old Man "[A]n extraordinary book, one that can make the needed connection for young children to see human beings as more than their circumstances."--starred, Kirkus Reviews "Young readers will be empowered. A brave, sensitive book."--Children's Books Ireland

Written by experienced leaders in gifted education, this book is a foundational guide for supervisors, administrators, and districts seeking to create culturally responsive and equity-focused gifted policies and programs. Engaging chapters supported by real-world vignettes and interactive contemplation corners outline key elements of culturally responsive leadership and the administrative actions necessary for disrupting systems of oppression within gifted programs. Topics covered include culturally responsive gifted education, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, authentic family engagement, using data to inform systemic change, and more. Featuring authentic applications of culturally responsive gifted leadership practices and an innovative tool to evaluate gifted program inclusivity, this book is essential reading for all current and future leaders in gifted education.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in Business Organizations and Networks

Written by experienced leaders in gifted education, this book is a foundational guide for supervisors, administrators, and districts seeking to create culturally responsive and equity-focused gifted policies and programs. Engaging chapters supported by real-world vignettes and interactive contemplation corners outline key elements of culturally responsive leadership and the administrative actions necessary for disrupting systems of oppression within gifted programs. Topics covered include culturally responsive gifted education, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, authentic family engagement, using data to inform systemic change, and more. Featuring authentic applications of culturally responsive gifted leadership practices and an innovative tool to evaluate gifted program inclusivity, this book is essential reading for all current and future leaders in gifted education.

For a long time vodka has been more than just Russia and Poland's national drink. From Asia and Great-Britain to the United States: this fire water has conquered the world and is now the most sold spirit internationally. The term 'fire water' refers to its most distinguishable quality: a neutral spirit, without smell and with a pure taste. It turned vodka also into a bar-tender's best friend and the basis of every Cosmopolitan, Moscow Mule or Bloody Mary. Vodka - The Complete Guide tells the whole story, from the origin and production method to an overview of the numerous vodka brands and the most delicious cocktails. The book also teaches you the best way to enjoy it to the fullest.

This book explores the issue of energy poverty in post-communist Europe and shows how it is viewed and addressed through public policies. Energy poverty is severely affecting many parts of the European Union, but up until now only a few comparative analyses have been developed to understand the phenomenon and its diversity throughout the region. Filling this gap, this volume focuses specifically on the Eastern European region, drawing on contributions that cover a wide range of countries including Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. This region has undergone significant transitions over the past three decades, but, as the contributions demonstrate, it still faces major challenges to providing clean and affordable energy to its citizens and renovating existing housing stock. The chapters explore the extent of energy poverty in each country and examine the drivers, while casting light on how policy-makers tackle the issue through a critical examination of the instruments implemented to help energy poor people. This book will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of energy policy and comparative politics, to policy-makers in post-communist countries and EU institutions, and also to other relevant actors, such as companies and NGOs who focus on issues of energy poverty. This book is based upon work from EU COST Action 'European Energy Poverty: Agenda Co-Creation and Knowledge Innovation' (ENGAGER 2017-2021, CA16232) supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology - www.cost.eu).

In Critique of Black Reason eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness-from the Atlantic slave trade to the present-to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital. Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion. With Critique of Black Reason, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future.

This book, first published in 1986, contains a collection of remarkable essays analysing such topics as the nature of reading, the power of books, literary creation, libraries and technology, and the freedom to read.

This book examines after-school programs in light of their explosive growth in recent years. In the rush to mount programs, there is a danger of promoting weak ones of little value and failing to implement strong ones adequately. But what is quality and how can it be achieved? This book presents findings from an intensive study of three after-school centers that differed dramatically in quality. Drawing from 233 site visits, the authors examine how - and why - young people thrive in good programs and suffer in weak ones. The book features engaging, in-depth case studies of each of the three centers and of six youths, two from each center. Written in a highly accessible style for academics, youth workers, after-school program leaders and policy makers, the study breaks new ground in highlighting the importance of factors such as collective mentoring, synergies among different programs and activities, and organizational culture and practices.

Since the release of his first monograph, Vincent Van Duysen has consolidated his reputation for buildings of exceptional spatial mastery and highly refined detailing, and built a growing international following. This beautiful companion volume presents thirty of the Belgian architect's most recent works produced over the past decade, much of which has been exquisitely captured by renowned photographers Helene Binet and Francois Halard. The buildings featured from this latest period include an array of elegant residences in Europe, New York, Paris and The Hamptons, as well as larger-scale commercial and public projects. Product and furniture designs, microcosms of the architect's rigorous attention to detail, are also featured, including yacht interiors and objets decoratifs. With a foreword by close friend and Academy Award-winning actor Julianne Moore, the broader context of Van Duysen's contribution to contemporary architecture is provided by architect Nicola di Battista and architecture critic Marc Dubois. An illustrated chronology provides a complete overview of the architect's recent projects. Van Duysen has established a reputation as one of the world's most refined and artful architects. This major new publication will further cement his uncompromising commitment to creating timeless places and spaces.