From its creation in 1950, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German Democratic Republic's Ministry for State Security closely monitored its nation's citizens. Known as the Staatssicherheit or Stasi, this organization was regarded as one of the most repressive intelligence agencies in the world. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006 film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) has received international acclaim -- including an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and multiple German Film Awards -- for its moving portrayal of East German life under the pervasive surveillance of the Stasi.

In Totalitarianism on Screen, political theorists Carl Eric Scott and F. Flagg Taylor IV assemble top scholars to analyze the film from philosophical and political perspectives. Their essays confront the nature and legacy of East Germany's totalitarian government and outline the reasons why such regimes endure.

Other than magazine and newspaper reviews, little has been written about The Lives of Others. This volume brings German scholarship on the topic to an English-speaking audience for the first time and explores the issue of government surveillance at a time when the subject is often front-page news. Featuring contributions from German president Joachim Gauck, prominent singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, journalists Paul Hockenos and Lauren Weiner, and noted scholars Paul Cantor and James Pontuso, Totalitarianism on Screen contributes to the growing scholarship on totalitarianism and will interest historians, political theorists, philosophers, and fans of the film.

Visions of Glory brings together twenty-two images and twenty-two brisk essays, each essay connecting an image to the events that unfolded during a particular year of the Civil War. The book focuses on a diverse set of images that include a depiction of former slaves whipping their erstwhile overseer distributed by an African American publisher, a census graph published in the New York Times, and a cutout of a child's hand sent by a southern mother to her husband at the front. The essays in this collection reveal how wartime women and men created both written accounts and a visual register to make sense of this pivotal period. The collection proceeds chronologically, providing a nuanced history by highlighting the multiple meanings an assorted group of writers and readers discerned from the same set of circumstances. In so doing, this volume assembles contingent and fractured visions of the Civil War, but its differing perspectives also reveal a set of overlapping concerns. A number of essays focus in particular on African American engagements with visual culture. The collection also emphasizes the role that women played in making, disseminating, or interpreting wartime images. While every essay explores the relationship between image and word, several contributions focus on the ways in which Civil War images complicate an understanding of canonical writers such as Emerson, Melville, and Whitman.

The poems in this humane collection are hard and beautiful. They are hard, because the locals here are marginalized and somewhat lost, yet beautiful because they live with hope, and because each poem in this heartfelt book is accompanied by singing. Behind this cast of characters is the poet himself, a living spirit, capturing the human voice, swinging back and forth like the symbol evoked by the title of this honest and necessary collection. This is at once a portrait and a vision rendered into lines, notation for a place and time and the saintly people there. It is a gift to be in such able hands, and a further gift to turn the pages of their labor. Three cheers for this delight -Maurice Manning

Essential reading for physicians, legislators, economists, ethicists, and anyone interested in reproductive health policy, this is the first economic & demographic analysis to articulate why molecular genetic techniques must be integrated with IVF going forward. The consequences of multiple embryo transfers with conventional IVF are presented with an emphasis on the economic impact of these 'super-utiliser' outcomes. Dr. Sills depicts embryo selection in traditional IVF as an incomplete procedure, and forecasts the recovery of California health spend in the context of comprehensive (embryo) chromosomal screening using array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) and single embryo transfer. A funding formula is developed to show how partial government support for every IVF cycle in California can still be net revenue positive for the state--because although IVF+aCGH is expensive, the price to obtain this technology is always less than the cost for one high-risk preterm/multiple birth. Dr. Sills reinforces the compelling primary interest in lowering the preterm delivery rate from IVF, yet improved access to IVF is also framed as a major secondary public health benefit.

This book offers updates on the full range of contemporary GnRH knowledge, as articulated by authoritative contributors with extensive neurophysiology experience. In this new comprehensive volume, internationally-renowned experts explain what GnRH is, describe how it works, follow its associated pathology, and predict where future GnRH research is likely headed. These objectives are clearly developed by sixteen concise yet thorough chapters covering themes across human clinical medicine, veterinary science, marine organisms, and transitional states as observed in so-called "living fossils", as well as invertebrate biology. The authors depict GnRH fundamentals as a starting-point for examination of more recent data in this rapidly evolving field. Although ideally suited for the senior GnRH researcher, anyone with an early, basic interest in neuroendocrinology will also find this book highly approachable. Fully illustrated, indexed and annotated, this edition is an essential item in any modern personal or institutional GnRH library collection.