“A truly inspiring journey that celebrates the healing power of adventure. A must-read.� – Levison Wood “Wonderfully relatable on so many levels. Simon’s wanderlust, mental roller coaster and reactions to a fast-changing world had me enthralled in his journey, but very much reflecting on my own over the past few years. A brilliantly crafted book which holds a mirror up to the world we live in.� - Mark Beaumont "Simon’s cycle ride around his own country is a fine demonstration that adventure and transformation begins on your own doorstep.� - Alastair Humphreys   The remarkable and inspirational true story of how one man battled grief and anxiety, one pedal stroke at a time, on a 3,500-mile adventure around Britain In March 2020, as Britain entered its first lockdown, Simon Parker’s life fell apart; his travel journalism career vanished overnight and shortly afterwards he received the tragic news that a close friend had died. With a long-suppressed anxiety disorder starting to rear its head, he turned to the only therapies he knew and trusted: travel and exercise. Setting off on his bike from the northernmost point of Shetland with only a sleeping bag and a camping stove, Simon would end up cycling 3,427 miles around Britain. En route, he would meet hundreds of resilient Britons, who were all, in their own way, riding out the storm just like he was. Even in his gloomiest moments he began to see that a chink of light was never too far away. Riding Out is a story of optimism and hope, and a ground-level portrait of Britain as it transforms from a country in crisis to a nation on the mend. From Shetland to the Scillies, Dover to Durness, Simon learns that life’s sharpest corners are best navigated at the gentle pace of a bicycle.

This book discusses topical issues in entrepreneurship organized around the various stages of venture creation, development and performance. It is arranged in several parts, dealing with the pre-start stage, followed by venture creation, financing ventures, venture development, and venture performance. Each part contains several chapters written by experts in the relevant field. The multi-disciplinary flavor of the book is complemented by its international evidence base, featuring results from a range of different countries. The book will help researchers and practitioners who want to pinpoint the key points emerging from the latest academic thinking.

Urban Theory and the Urban Experience brings together classic and contemporary approaches to urban research in order to reveal the intellectual origins of urban studies and the often unacknowledged debt that empirical and theoretical perspectives on the city owe one another. From the foundations of modern urban theory in the work of Weber, Simmel, Benjamin and Lefebbvre to the writings of contemporary urban theorists such as David Harvey and Manuel Castells and the Los Angeles school of urbanism, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience traces the key developments in the idea of the city over more than a century. Individual chapters explore investigative studies of the great metropolis from Charles Booth to the contemporary urban research of William J. Wilson, along with alternative approaches to the industrial city, ranging from the Garden City Movement to 'the new urbanism'. The volume also considers the impact of new information and communication technologies, and the growing trend towards disaggregated urban networks, all of which raise important questions about viability and physical and social identity of the conventional townscape. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience concludes with a rallying cry for a more holistic and integrated approach to the urban question in theory and in practice if the rich potent. For the benefit of students and tutors, frequent question points encourage exploration of key themes, and annotated further readings provide follow-up sources for the issues raised in each chapter. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and all those who wish to learn more about why the urban has become the dominant social, economic and cultural form of the twenty-first century

Traditionally, the study of 'power in the city' was confined to the institutions of urban government and the actors involved in contesting and making political decisions in and for metropolitan societies. Increasingly, however, attention has turned to the function of the city not only as a centre of urban governance but as a major economic, social, cultural and strategic force in its own right.

Cities, Politics and Power combines this traditional concern with how the cities in which we live are organized and run with a broader focus on cities and urban regions as multiple sites and agents of power. This book is divided into five sections, with a short introduction outlining the argument and organisation of the text. Part two charts the development of the urban polity and considers the ways in which coercion and force continue to be used to segregate, oppress and annihilate urban populations. Part three critically examines the key collective actors and processes that compete for and organise political power within cities, and how urban governance operates and interacts with lesser and greater scales of government and networks of power. Part four then explores the ways in which 'the political' is constituted by urban inhabitants, and how social identity, information and communication networks, and the natural and built environment all comprise intersecting fields of urban power. The conclusion calls for a broader theoretical and thematic approach to the study of urban politics.

This book makes extensive use of comparative and historical case studies, providing broad coverage of politics and urban movements in both the Global North and the Global South, with a particular focus on the UK, USA, Canada, Latin America and China. It is written in an accessible and lucid style and provides suggestions for further reading at the end each chapter.

Contents:
Introduction: The New Italian Republic I Context 1. Explaining Italy's Crisis 2. Electoral Reform and Political Change in Italy 1991-94 II The Old Party System 1. Political Catholicism and the Strange Death of the Christian Democrats 2. Italian Communism in the First Republic 3. The Rise and fall of Craxi's Socialist Party 4. The Fate of the Secular Centre: The Liberals, Republicans and the Social Democrats III The "New Parties" 7. The Northern League from Regional Party to Party of Government 8. Forza Italia: The New Politics and Old Values of a Changing Italy 9. towards a Modern Right: Alleanza Nazionale and the "Italian Revolution" 10. The Great Failure? The PDs in Italy's Transition 11. The "Left Oppossition" and the crisis: Rifondazione Comunista and La Rete IV Politics and Society 12. A Legal Revolution? The Judges and the Tagentopoli 13. The Mass media and the Political Crisis 14. The System of Corrupt Exchange in Local Government 15. The Resistable Rise of the New Neopolitan Camorra 16. The Changing Mezzogiorno: Between Representations and Reality V Economic Aspects of the Crisis 17. The Economic Elites and the Political System 18. Excesses anf Limits of the Public Sector in the Italian Economy 19. Industrial Relations and the Labour Movement VI Conclusion 20 Italian Political Reform in Comparative Perspective

Recent Italian political life has been transformed by the demise of the Italian Communist Party, the growth of the federalist Northern Leagues and the collapse of the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and their government allies in the wake of the Tangentopoli (Kickback City) scandals. This study charts the breakdown of the old party system and examines the changed political climate that allowed Silvio Berlusconi and his allies to emerge as the political masters of Italy. The sections of the book are organized in such a way as to combine up to date information with reflection on longer term trends and problems. This book should be of interest to both students and scholars of west European politics, comparative politics and Italian studies as well as the general reader who wishes to make sense of the contemporary Italian political landscape.

One of the key issues of our time is the question of where power and governance should lie. In Taking power back Simon Parker makes a powerful case for giving power away: centralization, breeds distrust among citizens who are taking matters into their own hands. Offering policy recommendations and practical suggestions, Parker argues for a new kind of politics, one that can fully unleash society's creative potential.

Traditionally, the study of 'power in the city' was confined to the institutions of urban government and the actors involved in contesting and making political decisions in and for metropolitan societies. Increasingly, however, attention has turned to the function of the city not only as a centre of urban governance but as a major economic, social, cultural and strategic force in its own right. Cities, Politics and Power combines this traditional concern with how the cities in which we live are organized and run with a broader focus on cities and urban regions as multiple sites and agents of power. This book is divided into five sections, with a short introduction outlining the argument and organisation of the text. Part two charts the development of the urban polity and considers the ways in which coercion and force continue to be used to segregate, oppress and annihilate urban populations. Part three critically examines the key collective actors and processes that compete for and organise political power within cities, and how urban governance operates and interacts with lesser and greater scales of government and networks of power. Part four then explores the ways in which 'the political' is constituted by urban inhabitants, and how social identity, information and communication networks, and the natural and built environment all comprise intersecting fields of urban power. The conclusion calls for a broader theoretical and thematic approach to the study of urban politics. This book makes extensive use of comparative and historical case studies, providing broad coverage of politics and urban movements in both the Global North and the Global South, with a particular focus on the UK, USA, Canada, Latin America and China. It is written in an accessible and lucid style and provides suggestions for further reading at the end each chapter.

Urban Theory and the Urban Experience brings together classic and contemporary approaches to urban research in order to reveal the intellectual origins of urban studies and the often unacknowledged debt that empirical and theoretical perspectives on the city owe one another. From the foundations of modern urban theory in the work of Weber, Simmel, Benjamin and Lefebbvre to the writings of contemporary urban theorists such as David Harvey and Manuel Castells and the Los Angeles school of urbanism, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience traces the key developments in the idea of the city over more than a century. Individual chapters explore investigative studies of the great metropolis from Charles Booth to the contemporary urban research of William J. Wilson, along with alternative approaches to the industrial city, ranging from the Garden City Movement to 'the new urbanism'. The volume also considers the impact of new information and communication technologies, and the growing trend towards disaggregated urban networks, all of which raise important questions about viability and physical and social identity of the conventional townscape. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience concludes with a rallying cry for a more holistic and integrated approach to the urban question in theory and in practice if the rich potent. For the benefit of students and tutors, frequent question points encourage exploration of key themes, and annotated further readings provide follow-up sources for the issues raised in each chapter. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and all those who wish to learn more about why the urban has become the dominant social, economic and cultural form of the twenty-first century

This book compares a variety of biblical narratives with the stories found in several Northwest Semitic inscriptions from the ancient kingdom of Judah and its contemporary Syro-Palestinian neighbors. In genre, language, and cultural context, these epigraphic stories are closer to biblical narratives than any other ancient Near Eastern narrative corpus. For the first time, Parker analyzes and appreciates these stories as narratives and sets them beside comparable biblical stories. He illuminates the narrative character and techniques of both epigraphic and biblical stories and in many cases reveals their original social context and purpose. In some cases, he is able to shed light on the question of the sources and composition of the larger work in which most of the biblical stories appear, the Deuteronomistic history. Against the claim that the genius of biblical prose narrative derives from the monotheism of the authors, he shows that the presence or absence of a divine role in each type of story is consistent throughout both biblical and epigraphic examples, and that, when present, the role of the deity is essentially the same both inside and outside the Bible, inside and outside Israel.

This book discusses topical issues in entrepreneurship organized around the various stages of venture creation, development and performance. It is arranged in several parts, dealing with the pre-start stage, followed by venture creation, financing ventures, venture development, and venture performance. Each part contains several chapters written by experts in the relevant field. The multi-disciplinary flavor of the book is complemented by its international evidence base, featuring results from a range of different countries. The book will help researchers and practitioners who want to pinpoint the key points emerging from the latest academic thinking.