Para Handy has been sailing his way into the affections of generations of Scots since he first weighed anchor in the pages of the Glasgow Evening News in 1905. The master mariner and his crew - Dougie the mate, Macphail the engineer, Sunny Jim and the Tar - all play their part in evoking the irresistible atmosphere of a bygone age when puffers sailed between West Highland ports and the great city of Glasgow. This definitive edition contains all three collections published in the author's lifetime, as well as those that were unpublished and a new story which was discovered in 2001. Extensive notes accompany each story, providing fascinating insights into colloquialisms, place-names and historical events. This volume also includes a wealth of contemporary photographs, depicting the harbours, steamers and puffers from the age of the Vital Spark.

Illustrating the power, simplicity, and generality of the concept of flatness, this reference explains how to identify, utilize, and apply flatness in system planning and design. The book includes a large assortment of exercises and models that range from elementary to complex classes of systems. Leading students and professionals through a vast array of designs, simulations, and analytical studies on the traditional uses of flatness, Differentially Flat Systems contains an extensive amount of examples that showcase the value of flatness in system design, demonstrate how flatness can be assessed in the context of perturbed systems and apply static and dynamic feedback controller design techniques.

The statistics detailing the socioeconomic growth of Russia and China are impressive. On some projections, China will be the world's largest economy by 2050, and Russia will be the sixth largest. Yet despite this impressive record of economic growth, a striking feature of both countries is the inegalitarian nature of their development - notwithstanding the (post)communist legacy. On most conventional measures, the two countries are now among the most unequal in the world, and the level of inequality has increased significantly since the 1990s. What effect does this endemic economic inequality have on political stability? From Aristotle onwards, observers have concluded that the greater the inequality within a society, the greater the likelihood of instability. This book addresses the relationship between economic inequality and political stability in Russia and China. Several chapters examine how economic performance has driven institutional reform, while others evaluate long term trends in public opinion to see how economic change has affected the public's views of politics. The conclusion is that both regimes have proved adept at adapting to rising inequality by managing the policy agenda, guiding public opinion and co-opting or repressing political opposition. The chapters in this book originally published as a special issue in Europe-Asia Studies.

The statistics detailing the socioeconomic growth of Russia and China are impressive. On some projections, China will be the world's largest economy by 2050, and Russia will be the sixth largest. Yet despite this impressive record of economic growth, a striking feature of both countries is the inegalitarian nature of their development - notwithstanding the (post)communist legacy. On most conventional measures, the two countries are now among the most unequal in the world, and the level of inequality has increased significantly since the 1990s. What effect does this endemic economic inequality have on political stability? From Aristotle onwards, observers have concluded that the greater the inequality within a society, the greater the likelihood of instability. This book addresses the relationship between economic inequality and political stability in Russia and China. Several chapters examine how economic performance has driven institutional reform, while others evaluate long term trends in public opinion to see how economic change has affected the public's views of politics. The conclusion is that both regimes have proved adept at adapting to rising inequality by managing the policy agenda, guiding public opinion and co-opting or repressing political opposition. The chapters in this book originally published as a special issue in Europe-Asia Studies.

Modern weaponry and warfare have entered a new era where death and destruction are produced electronically and with appalling speed and accuracy. This book shows for the first time how electronic combat and the battle for intelligence are changing every aspect of the battlefield of the future - from nuclear warfare to espionage. It is the first of its kind to show how the new technology and tactics are used, and how they shape strategy and peacetime planning.

Modern weaponry and warfare have entered a new era where death and destruction are produced electronically and with appalling speed and accuracy. This book shows for the first time how electronic combat and the battle for intelligence are changing every aspect of the battlefield of the future - from nuclear warfare to espionage. It is the first of its kind to show how the new technology and tactics are used, and how they shape strategy and peacetime planning.

As Fenella Wilson points out in her Introduction to this collection of Neil Munro's writings on war, the theme is represented in each aspect of his career as a writer - in his fiction, journalism and poetry. A number of the short stories here, including two Para Handy tales, were published Munro's lifetime, as was his introduction to Fred Farrell's 1920 The 51st Division War Sketches, and some of the Poems. What has not previously 'seen the light of day' since The Great War are the reports which Munro wrote as a war correspondent, as a civilian and later in uniform, in 1914, 1917 and 1918. They are vivid, personal, accounts from the Western Front, widely published in a range of newspapers of the time. Stories of Scottish regiments - in kilts, with their Pipers - abound. They cushion, but don't diminish, the reality of everyday life both for soldiers on all sides in the conflict, and for the local population, amid the 'havoc' of the battlefields; 'the filthy job of human slaughter'.