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World War II saw the greatest ever flight of cultural and
intellectual talent from Europe. This mass escape from the Nazi
regime saw legends such as Greta Garbo and Igor Stravinsky leave
their homelands and settle in America. Their presence - in
Hollywood especially - enabled the evolution of film noir, and
changed movie-making forever. In "Exiles in Hollywood", David
Wallace profiles many of the refugees, including the filmmakers,
Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock, writers like Thomas Mann, and
actors such as Garbo and Charles Laughton. The result is a rich,
page-turning look at an era, its triumphs and tragedies, its gossip
and hidden facts, and its colourful personalities.
Wide-ranging examination of women's achievements in and influence
on many aspects of medieval culture. Medieval women were normally
denied access to public educational institutions, and so also
denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars
have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply
anomalies, and women generally as victims. This volume, however,
argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and
archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women
attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that
women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also
often exercised professional or communal leadership. Bringing
together contributors from the disciplines of literature, history
and religion, this volume challenges several traditional views:
firstly, the still-prevalent idea that women's intellectual
accomplishments were limited to the Latin literate. The collection
therefore engages heavily with vernacular writings (in Anglo-Saxon,
Middle English, French, Dutch, German and Italian), and also with
material culture (manuscript illumination, stained glass, fabric
and jewelry) for evidence of women's advanced capabilities. But in
doing so, the contributors strive to avoid the equally problematic
view that women's accomplishments were somehow limited to the
vernacular and the material. So several essays examine women at
work with the sacred languages of the three Abrahamic traditions
(Latin, Arabic and Hebrew). And a third traditional view is also
interrogated: that women were somehow more "original" for their
lack of learning and and dependence on their mother tongue.
Scholars here agree wholeheartedly that women could be daring
thinkers in any language; they engage readily with women's
learnedness wherever it can be found.
The Emergent Multiverse presents a striking new account of the
'many worlds' approach to quantum theory. The point of science, it
is generally accepted, is to tell us how the world works and what
it is like. But quantum theory seems to fail to do this: taken
literally as a theory of the world, it seems to make crazy claims:
particles are in two places at once; cats are alive and dead at the
same time. So physicists and philosophers have often been led
either to give up on the idea that quantum theory describes
reality, or to modify or augment the theory. The Everett
interpretation of quantum mechanics takes the apparent craziness
seriously, and asks, 'what would it be like if particles really
were in two places at once, if cats really were alive and dead at
the same time'? The answer, it turns out, is that if the world were
like that-if it were as quantum theory claims-it would be a world
that, at the macroscopic level, was constantly branching into
copies-hence the more sensationalist name for the Everett
interpretation, the 'many worlds theory'. But really, the
interpretation is not sensationalist at all: it simply takes
quantum theory seriously, literally, as a description of the world.
Once dismissed as absurd, it is now accepted by many physicists as
the best way to make coherent sense of quantum theory. David
Wallace offers a clear and up-to-date survey of work on the Everett
interpretation in physics and in philosophy of science, and at the
same time provides a self-contained and thoroughly modern account
of it-an account which is accessible to readers who have previously
studied quantum theory at undergraduate level, and which will shape
the future direction of research by leading experts in the field.
This book, originally published in 1995, examines the evolution of
environmental policy in 6 OECD countries. Through numerous
examples, it contrasts the widely-varying political and regulatory
styles and their consequences for innovation. Two industry-specific
case studies provide a transnational perspective on the
co-evolution of technology and environmental policy. The book
concludes that innovation can be successfully harnessed by setting
credible, long-term environmental goals and ensuring that
regulatory instruments are grounded in flexibility, dialogue and
trust.
This report, first published in 1996, argues that radical changes
in industrial organization and its relationship to society tend to
arise in rapidly industrializing countries, and that new principles
of sustainable production are more likely to bear fruit in
developing than in developed countries. The rising tide of
investment by multinational firms - who bring managerial,
organizational and technological expertise - is a major resource
for achieving this. Developing countries could steer such
investment towards environmental goals through coherent and
comprehensive policies for sustainable development.
What would it mean to apply quantum theory, without restriction and
without involving any notion of measurement and state reduction, to
the whole universe? What would realism about the quantum state then
imply? This book brings together an illustrious team of
philosophers and physicists to debate these questions. The
contributors broadly agree on the need, or aspiration, for a
realist theory that unites micro- and macro-worlds. But they
disagree on what this implies. Some argue that if unitary quantum
evolution has unrestricted application, and if the quantum state is
taken to be something physically real, then this universe emerges
from the quantum state as one of countless others, constantly
branching in time, all of which are real. The result, they argue,
is many worlds quantum theory, also known as the Everett
interpretation of quantum mechanics. No other realist
interpretation of unitary quantum theory has ever been found.
Others argue in reply that this picture of many worlds is in no
sense inherent to quantum theory, or fails to make physical sense,
or is scientifically inadequate. The stuff of these worlds, what
they are made of, is never adequately explained, nor are the worlds
precisely defined; ordinary ideas about time and identity over time
are compromised; no satisfactory role or substitute for probability
can be found in many worlds theories; they can't explain
experimental data; anyway, there are attractive realist
alternatives to many worlds. Twenty original essays, accompanied by
commentaries and discussions, examine these claims and
counterclaims in depth. They consider questions of ontology - the
existence of worlds; probability - whether and how probability can
be related to the branching structure of the quantum state;
alternatives to many worlds - whether there are one-world realist
interpretations of quantum theory that leave quantum dynamics
unchanged; and open questions even given many worlds, including the
multiverse concept as it has arisen elsewhere in modern cosmology.
A comprehensive introduction lays out the main arguments of the
book, which provides a state-of-the-art guide to many worlds
quantum theory and its problems.
This book, originally published in 1995, examines the evolution of
environmental policy in 6 OECD countries. Through numerous
examples, it contrasts the widely-varying political and regulatory
styles and their consequences for innovation. Two industry-specific
case studies provide a transnational perspective on the
co-evolution of technology and environmental policy. The book
concludes that innovation can be successfully harnessed by setting
credible, long-term environmental goals and ensuring that
regulatory instruments are grounded in flexibility, dialogue and
trust.
This report, first published in 1996, argues that radical changes
in industrial organization and its relationship to society tend to
arise in rapidly industrializing countries, and that new principles
of sustainable production are more likely to bear fruit in
developing than in developed countries. The rising tide of
investment by multinational firms - who bring managerial,
organizational and technological expertise - is a major resource
for achieving this. Developing countries could steer such
investment towards environmental goals through coherent and
comprehensive policies for sustainable development.
The last 'Indian War' was fought against Native American children
in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools.
Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended
periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization"
take root while childhood memories of 'savagism' gradually faded to
the point of extinction. In the words of one official: 'Kill the
Indian and save the man.' This fully revised edition of Education
for Extinction offers the only comprehensive account of this
dispiriting effort, and incorporates the last twenty-five years of
scholarship. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this
book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth
living in a 'total institution' designed to reconstruct them both
psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in
many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new
names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments,
relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic
indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender
rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially
poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students
resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many
converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed
arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance.
Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with
the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the
response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural
surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students
who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in
which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and
selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating
personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by
white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the
government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision.
Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly
because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of
progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did
eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically.
Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher
autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is
essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested
in Western history, Native American studies, American race
relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Essays examining the way in which the sea has shaped medieval and
later ideas of what it is to be English. Local and imperial,
insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and
culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of
Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of
insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago,
laying open the continuities and disruptions in the sea's
relationship with English identity in a British context. Ranging
from the beginnings of insular literature to Victorian
medievalisms, the subjects treated include King Arthur's struggle
with muddy banks, the afterlife of Edgar's forged charters, Old
English homilies and narratives of migration, Welsh and English
ideas about Chester, Anglo-Norman views of the sea in the Vie de St
Edmund and Waldef, post-Conquest cartography, The Book of Margery
Kempe, the works of the Irish Stopford Brooke, and the making of an
Anglo-British identity in Victorian Britain. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is
Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Contributors: Sebastian Sobecki,
Winfried Rudolf, Fabienne Michelet, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Judith
Weiss, Kathy Lavezzo, Alfred Hiatt, Jonathan Hsy, Chris Jones,
Joanne Parker, David Wallace
**SUNDAY TIMES AND THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 'An
epoch-defining book' Matt Haig 'If you read just one work of
non-fiction this year, it should probably be this' David Sexton,
Evening Standard Selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Sunday
Times, Spectator and New Statesman A Waterstones Paperback of the
Year and shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year 2019
Longlisted for the PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate
change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says
it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is
dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the
surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a
teenager today. Over the past decades, the term "Anthropocene" has
climbed into the popular imagination - a name given to the geologic
era we live in now, one defined by human intervention in the life
of the planet. But however sanguine you might be about the
proposition that we have ravaged the natural world, which we surely
have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that
we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then
in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many
centuries, perhaps until it destroys us. In the meantime, it will
remake us, transforming every aspect of the way we live-the planet
no longer nurturing a dream of abundance, but a living nightmare.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Philosophy of
physics is concerned with the deepest theories of modern physics -
notably quantum theory, our theories of space, time and symmetry,
and thermal physics - and their strange, even bizarre conceptual
implications. A deeper understanding of these theories helps both
physics, through pointing the way to new theories and new
applications, and philosophy, through seeing how our worldview has
to change in the light of what we learn from physics. This Very
Short Introduction explores the core topics in philosophy of
physics through three key themes. The first - the nature of space,
time, and motion - begins by considering the philosophical puzzles
that led Isaac Newton to propose the existence of absolute space,
and then discusses how those puzzles change - but do not disappear
- in the context of the revolutions in our understanding of space
and time that came first from special, and then from general,
relativity. The second - the emergence of irreversible behavior in
statistical mechanics - considers how the microscopic laws of
physics, which know of no distinction between past and future, can
be compatible with the melting of ice, the cooling of coffee, the
passing of youth, and all the other ways in which the large-scale
world distinguishes past from future. The last section discusses
quantum theory - the foundation of most of modern physics, yet
mysterious to this day. It explains just why quantum theory is so
difficult to make sense of, how we might nonetheless attempt to do
it, and why the question has been highly relevant to the
development of physics, and continues to be so. ABOUT THE SERIES:
The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press
contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These
pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new
subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis,
perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and
challenging topics highly readable.
Beginning with an examination of the different stages of women's lives--childhood, virginity, marriage and widowhood, this Companion addresses various aspects of medieval life that affected women's writing. These include the nature of authorship in the period, the position of women at home or in nunneries, and their relationship to religion. Additional essays cover the lives and work of such prominent women writers as Heloise, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Joan of Arc. A chronology and guides to further reading add information which students and scholars will find invaluable.
This is the first full-scale history of medieval English literature in nearly a century. Thirty-three contributors provide information on a vast range of literary texts and the conditions of their production and reception. The volume also contains a chronology, full bibliography and a detailed index. This book offers the most extensive account available of the medieval literatures so drastically reconfigured in Tudor England. It will prove essential reading for scholars of the Renaissance as well as medievalists, and for historians as well as literary specialists.
This is the first full-scale history of medieval English literature in nearly a century. Thirty-three contributors provide information on a vast range of literary texts and the conditions of their production and reception. The volume also contains a chronology, full bibliography and a detailed index. This book offers the most extensive account available of the medieval literatures so drastically reconfigured in Tudor England. It will prove essential reading for scholars of the Renaissance as well as medievalists, and for historians as well as literary specialists.
The last 'Indian War' was fought against Native American children
in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools.
Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended
periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization"
take root while childhood memories of 'savagism' gradually faded to
the point of extinction. In the words of one official: 'Kill the
Indian and save the man.' This fully revised edition of Education
for Extinction offers the only comprehensive account of this
dispiriting effort, and incorporates the last twenty-five years of
scholarship. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this
book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth
living in a 'total institution' designed to reconstruct them both
psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in
many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new
names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments,
relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic
indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender
rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially
poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students
resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many
converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed
arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance.
Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with
the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the
response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural
surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students
who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in
which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and
selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating
personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by
white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the
government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision.
Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly
because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of
progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did
eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically.
Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher
autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is
essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested
in Western history, Native American studies, American race
relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
From the indefatigable Wallace family, authors of "The Book of
Lists" and The People's Almanac series came 1981's "The Intimate
Sex Lives of Famous People." This compelling bestseller--with its
200 revealing profiles and 300 rare photos--just got better with a
dozen new entries.
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