When instruments are harmoniously joined together, beautiful music ensues. Just as in a classic symphony, life often occurs in phases, or movements. In his creative comparison Symphony #1 in a Minor Key, literary exegete Alan Block shares his philosophies on four movements reflected in his own life, each loosely modeled on a different musical form linked to the emotions of a life both fully lived and joyously celebrated. In the first movement, "Sonata Allegro," Block juxtaposes biblical stories with personal experiences as he explores the contradictory nature of what it means to leave home in search of another home. In the second movement, representing a slow march to and from the grave, he focuses his examination on the funerals of three very different people from a Jewish perspective. In strong contrast, Block presents a glimpse into his absurd daily world in the third movement, punctuated by jokes and commentary. Finally, he shares a celebration of life and hope inspired by the final movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, encouraging others to be open to the sublime and realize that none of our worlds is perfect. Symphony #1 in a Minor Key shares one man's reflections as he offers a fascinating meditation on life, death, and everything in between.

Before Enron, before Arthur Anderson, and before Worldcom, there was the Bank of New York money laundering scandal, which hit headlines in 1999. Promising to be one of the most important books on international organized crime, money laundering, and the complicity between legitimate and illegitimate businesses in both the United States and the former Soviet Union, among other places, during the last decade of the 20th century, All Is Clouded by Desire examines the criminal dealings the led to the revelation that the Bank of New York's Eastern European Division laundered $6 billion for Russian organized criminals and other shady organizations and individuals. In a series of intrigues that involved crooked Geneva banker Bruce Rappaport and high-level members of the Bank of New York, criminal Russian organizations were able to thrive and prosper during a time when the rest of the former Soviet Union crumbled amidst growing corruption and a declining economy. Tracing the financial shenanigans back many years, Block and Weaver illustrate how the underworld of high finance, money laundering, mafia groups, CIA operatives, and legitimate banking institutions can clean dirty money and operate criminal enterprises that span the globe. Block and Weaver carefully assemble a vivid examination of the world of "hot money" in the arena of international banking and the roles played by Intelligence, the politically connected, and the criminally inclined. Focusing on the intensely private Genava banker Bruce Rappaport and the Bank of New York, the authors show how the two worked together with dodgy Russian banks to move and launder billions through channels that include off-shore banks, shadyjoint-ventures, and outright criminal organizations. Relying on primary sources from the logs of the institutions involved, interviews with British Intelligence operatives and former CIA officers, secret discussions with private detectives handling the infamous Marc Rich tax case, and material collected by two private detective agencies in London and New York, the book exposes the various machinations that were instrumental in completing the financial schemes that would ultimately cause the downfall of two top Bank of New York executives.

This book explores the practical and psychological factors that regulate teaching and learning in the classroom, and illustrates how hope and creativity may arise out of unforeseen, non-standard, or turbulent conditions. Written at the intersection of curriculum theory and psychoanalysis, this volume offers an original pedagogical stance that seeks to ameliorate the impact of the classroom's regulated and standardized environment. The author's approach to classroom education suggests that teachers investigate students' psychological entanglements to explain and transform difficult classroom experiences into productive, educative ones. By promoting an ethos of ironic engagement in teaching and learning, this book also demonstrates the importance of playfulness, imagination, and a readiness to make mistakes in classroom settings. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, and policy makers in the fields of curriculum studies, teacher education, educational psychology and classroom management.

Members of organized crime syndicates have gained control of key businesses and trade unions through their strategic positions as arbiters of labor-management conflicts and as dispensers of illegal credit. They are managing important sectors of the contemporary marketplace, engaging in activities far more significant than the vice enterprises usually associated with criminal activity. Difficult to access for scholarly study, organized crime is best documented in judicial findings and in legislative reports from criminal investigations and public hearings. In this book, Alan Block has assembled a rich cross section of these reports. Taken together, they illustrate how organized crime has infiltrated important industries and taken control of union pension and welfare funds. Designed for students of criminology, sociology, and deviance, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the business of crime in America today.

This book explores the seminal curriculum work of Joseph Schwab in the light of a Rabbinic Judaism to which Schwab did not-even, perhaps, could not-refer, but which Alan Block asserts might be central to a fuller understanding of Schwab's prescriptions for 'The Practical'. Using the language and methods of Rabbinic Judaism and Schwab's eclectic arts, Talmud, Curriculum, and The Practical opens a new, practical perspective onto American education, studying and redefining issues confronting education at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium.

Most research on organized crime reveals only a limited sense of its history. Our understanding suffers as a result. Space, Time, and Organized Crime shows how arguments about the sources, consequences, and extent of crime are distorted as a consequence of crude empiricism. Originally published in Europe in 1991 as Perspectives on Organizing Crime, this book is a timely blend of history, criticism, and research. Fully one-fourth of this new edition contains hitherto unpublished materials especially relevant to the American experience.

Space, Time, and Organized Crime describes the background of Progressive Era New York. It then broadens its scope by exploring the changes in drug production and distribution in Europe from about 1925 to the mid-1930s. Block addresses such little explored issues as the ethnicity of traders, the structure of drug syndicates, and the impact of legislation that attempted to criminalize increasing aspects of the world's narcotic industry prior to the Second World War. He then goes on to present organized crime's involvement with transnational political movements, intelligence services, and political murders. Space, Time, and Organized Crime concentrates on ambiguities evident in organized crime control, such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service's protection of criminal off-shore financial interests, and the contradictions found in America's war on drugs.

Space, Time, and Organized Crime demonstrates that the essential nature of crime in the twentieth century (regardless of where it takes place) cannot be understood without sound historical studies and a more sophisticated criminological approach. Block's unique blend of stratification in a historical context will be of special interest to historians, sociologists, criminologists, and penologist.

This book explores the practical and psychological factors that regulate teaching and learning in the classroom, and illustrates how hope and creativity may arise out of unforeseen, non-standard, or turbulent conditions. Written at the intersection of curriculum theory and psychoanalysis, this volume offers an original pedagogical stance that seeks to ameliorate the impact of the classroom's regulated and standardized environment. The author's approach to classroom education suggests that teachers investigate students' psychological entanglements to explain and transform difficult classroom experiences into productive, educative ones. By promoting an ethos of ironic engagement in teaching and learning, this book also demonstrates the importance of playfulness, imagination, and a readiness to make mistakes in classroom settings. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, and policy makers in the fields of curriculum studies, teacher education, educational psychology and classroom management.

When instruments are harmoniously joined together, beautiful music ensues. Just as in a classic symphony, life often occurs in phases, or movements. In his creative comparison Symphony #1 in a Minor Key, literary exegete Alan Block shares his philosophies on four movements reflected in his own life, each loosely modeled on a different musical form linked to the emotions of a life both fully lived and joyously celebrated. In the first movement, "Sonata Allegro," Block juxtaposes biblical stories with personal experiences as he explores the contradictory nature of what it means to leave home in search of another home. In the second movement, representing a slow march to and from the grave, he focuses his examination on the funerals of three very different people from a Jewish perspective. In strong contrast, Block presents a glimpse into his absurd daily world in the third movement, punctuated by jokes and commentary. Finally, he shares a celebration of life and hope inspired by the final movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, encouraging others to be open to the sublime and realize that none of our worlds is perfect. Symphony #1 in a Minor Key shares one man's reflections as he offers a fascinating meditation on life, death, and everything in between.