This book is focused on explaining the grand strategic behavior of the United States from the Founding of the Republic to the Trump administration. To do so it employs a neoclassical realist framework to argue that while systemic change explains the broad evolution of US grand strategy, the precise shape and content of the grand strategies pursued has been conditioned by domestic political culture and interests. The book argues that distinct political cultures of statecraft (Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian and Wilsonian) have acted as permissive filters through which policy-makers have interpreted and responded to systemic stimuli making some grand strategy choices more likely than others in the pursuit of national security. The book demonstrates that while primacist grand strategies were facilitated by the predominance from the mid-19th century to the early 21st century of the vindicationist Hamiltonian and Wilsonian forms of statecraft, the costs of primacy have now stimulated the resurgence of the long dormant, exemplarist Jeffersonian and Jacksonian forms of statecraft under the Obama and Trump administrations, resulting in grand strategies that seek to either manage or stave off decline in America's relative power position.

August Mendo, a young successful novelist, falls in love with the beautiful and unique Sarah Gordon. At the height of his stellar career August suffers a tragic loss. He comes to realizations that force him to stop writing and retreat to a special sanctuary in the woods, a decision that will alter his life as well as Sarah´s."to live at the mouth of rivers" is a story of art, fame, fortune, tragedy, dreams and Truth: the awesome powers of Nature, the Human Spirit and Eternal Love. Life´s greatest adventure is the Journey within: the perils and limitless possibilities of self-discovery.

'Soft power' is an oft-used term and commands an instinctive understanding among journalists and casual observers, who mostly interpret it as 'diplomatic' or somehow 'persuasive'. 'Hard power' is seen, by contrast, as something more tangible and usually military. But this is a superficial appreciation of a more subtle concept - and one key to Britain's future on the international stage. Britain's Persuaders is a deep exploration of this phenomenon, using new research into the instruments of soft power evident in British society and most relevant to the 2020s. Some, like the British Council or the BBC World Service, are explicitly intended to generate soft power in accordance with governmental intentions; but rather more, like the entertainment industries, sport, professional regulatory bodies, hospitality industries or education sectors have more penetrating soft power effects even as they pursue their own independent or commercial rationales. This book conducts an up-to-date 'audit' of all Britain's principal sources of soft power. Situating its analysis within the current understanding of the 'smart power' of nation states - that desire to employ the full spectrum of policy instruments and national characteristics to achieve policy outcomes, specifically in the context of 'Brexit Britain' where soft power status is certain to loom larger during the 2020s.

Inside Computer Music is an investigation of how new technological developments have influenced the creative possibilities of composers of computer music in the last 50 years. This book combines detailed research into the development of computer music techniques with nine case studies that analyze key works in the musical and technical development of computer music. The book's companion website offers demonstration videos of the techniques used and downloadable software. There, readers can view interviews and test emulations of the software used by the composers for themselves. The software also presents musical analyses of each of the nine case studies to enable readers to engage with the musical structure aurally and interactively.

This bibliography in two volumes, originally published in 1988, lists and describes works by and about Jacques Lacan published in French, English, and seven other languages including Japanese and Russian. It incorporates and corrects where necessary all information from earlier published bibliographies of Lacan's work. Also included as background works are books and essays that discuss Lacan in the course of a more general study, as well as all relevant items in various bibliographic sources from many fields.

This book unveils a Gaian eco-social alternative to the misanthropic status quo and demands a revolutionary mental evolution to reformulate globalized culture so that mankind can finally resolve social injustice and conserve our climate.

An analysis that takes the complexity of British defence policy apart to view its anatomy and show how policy is made in this area. British defence policy is in a phase of great transition as the country confronts its Brexit future and also as world politics becomes more threatening and potentially unstable. This book uses the most up to date information to examine in a concise and readable way all the elements that go to make up Britain's defence policy as it goes through the most significant transition since the end of the Cold War in 1991. By analysing the costs of defence, the equipment issues, the personnel, the technical and intelligence back-up for it, and the strategies to employ military forces, this book offers a brief but rich guide to understanding an area of policy that many people find baffling. -- .

Michael Clark was an inquisitive, active boy-difficult for his mother, although he wasn't a bad child. In this memoir, Clark begins by detailing his childhood growing up in the fifties and sixties in rural Michigan, where he built forts, became an Eagle Scout, and met his future wife. As the Vietnam War raged, when he turned eighteen, he eventually registered for the draft. In 1969, after his number was called, Clark details how life changed exponentially as he left his new bride behind and reported for duty amid violent protests and draft card burnings. As he narrates his experiences from basic training to his assignment to the army's medical training center and finally his service in Vietnam, Clark provides a compelling glimpse into the emotional influences of war. In this engaging memoir, a Vietnam veteran chronicles his path before, during, and after war as he accepted his fate and learned to embrace the precious gift of life.

This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary theory, practice and themes in the study of national security. Part 1: Theories examines how national security has been conceptualised and formulated within the disciplines international relations, security studies and public policy. Part 2: Actors shifts the focus of the volume from these disciplinary concerns to consideration of how core actors in international affairs have conceptualised and practiced national security over time. Part 3: Issues then provides in-depth analysis of how individual security issues have been incorporated into prevailing scholarly and policy paradigms on national security. While security now seems an all-encompassing phenomenon, one general proposition still holds: national interests and the nation-state remain central to unlocking security puzzles. As normative values intersect with raw power; as new threats meet old ones; and as new actors challenge established elites, making sense out of the complex milieu of security theories, actors, and issues is a crucial task - and is the main accomplishment of this book.

Manuscripts provide rich documentary evidence for understanding the history of cultural life across the breadth of Europe and Asia down through the Middle Ages. Many illustrate engagement between and across languages, in both similar and contrasting ways from east to west. The demarcation of manuscript studies into single-language academic disciplines has often obscured this reality, privileging one constituent part or contributing language from each manuscript rather than exploring the combination as a nuanced and complex whole. This volume seeks to examine manuscripts as integrally united artefacts, respecting the diversity of their constituent elements. Case studies are presented of twelve manuscripts with evidence for various levels of inter-language exchange and collision, from horizons as diverse as the Atlantic West, Carolingian Europe, the Byzantine world, the Silk Road cultures, and east Asia. The essays function individually as discrete contributions, but together they highlight a range of overlapping themes, illustrating language interaction in global religions, pedagogical exchange, and secular society-building.The analogies as well as the concrete points of connection between them underline the value of a cross-disciplinary approach.

A concise introduction to the study of foreign policy, this textbook provides an essential guide to a major area of international politics which has become increasingly complex and sophisticated.Understanding Foreign Policy focuses on the foreign policy systems approach. It explores how such a system can be understood, how it can be used to generate further ideas and how to recognize its limitations. The book examines the context and the international environment in which foreign policy systems must be seen; and it shows how the approach can be used for comparative study. In particular, it offers three avenues of theory - bureaucratic politics, psychological processes, and the policy implementation - as a way of illustrating the utility of the systems approach. The book offers a comprehensive introduction to the study of foreign policy and will be essential reading for undergraduate courses on international politics.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is emerging as a vital lynch-pin in China's efforts to establish a maritime and continental zone of influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific interrogates to what extent BRI represents an achievable vision of a China-centric order in Asia and explores its major security implications for the region. The contributions to this volume provide up-to-date analysis of the effect of BRI on the region's foreign policy and alliance patterns, its connection to geo-economics and domestic Chinese politics, and the policy responses of key Indo-Pacific actors. While acknowledging that BRI remains prey to a variety of internal and exogenous shocks, the contributors conclude that at the very least BRI will continue to disrupt the existing alignments of economic and strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific and that on this minimal basis BRI will likely be judged a success by China. For regional actors, however, the BRI simultaneously enhances choice while presenting strategic and economic risks of greater dependency on China - a dilemma intensified by the disruptive effects of the Trump administration on regional confidence in the longevity of American commitments and leadership.

Offers the opportunity to spend a month with Julian of Norwich, with readings for both morning and evening

That part of Asia Minor which borders the narrow channel now known as the Dar-da-nelles', was in ancient times called Tro'as. Its capital was the city of Troy, which stood about three miles from the shore of the AE-ge'an Sea, at the foot of Mount Ida, near the junction of two rivers, the Sim'o-is, and the Sca-man'der or Xan'thus. The people of Troy and Troas were called Trojans. Some of the first settlers in northwestern Asia Minor, before it was called Troas, came from Thrace, a country lying to the north of Greece. The king of these Thra'cian colonists was Teu'cer. During his reign a prince named Dar'danus arrived in the new settlement. He was a son of Jupiter, and he came from Sam'o-thrace, one of the many islands of the AEgean Sea. It is said that he escaped from a great flood which swept over his native island, and that he was carried on a raft of wood to the coast of the kingdom of Teucer. Soon afterwards he married Teucer's daughter. He then built a city for himself amongst the hills of Mount Ida, and called it Dar-da'ni-a; and on the death of Teucer he became king of the whole country, to which he gave the same name, Dardani