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The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends
by Simon YoungWinner of the 2023 Brian McConnell Book Award from the International Society for Contemporary Legend ResearchIn the last fifty years, folklorists have amassed an extraordinary corpus of contemporary legends including the “Choking Doberman,” the “Eaten Ticket,” and the “Vanishing Hitchhiker.” But what about the urban legends of the past? These legends and tales have rarely been collected, and when they occasionally appear, they do so as ancestors or precursors of the urban legends of today, rather than as stories in their own right. In The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends, Simon Young fills this gap for British folklore (and for the wider English-speaking world) of the 1800s. Young introduces seventy Victorian urban legends ranging from “Beetle Eyes” to the “Shoplifter’s Dilemma” and from “Hands in the Muff” to the “Suicide Club.” While a handful of these stories are already known, the vast majority have never been identified, and they have certainly never received scholarly treatment. Young begins the volume with a lengthy introduction assessing nineteenth-century media, emphasizing the importance of the written word to the perpetuation and preservation of these myths. He draws on numerous nineteenth-century books, periodicals, and ephemera, including digitized newspaper archives—particularly the British Newspaper Archive, an exciting new hunting ground for folklorists. The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends will appeal to an academic audience as well as to anyone who is interested in urban legends.
The Naked And The Undead: Evil And The Appeal Of Horror
by Cynthia FreelandHorror is often dismissed as mass art or lowbrow entertainment that produces only short-term thrills. Horror films can be bloody, gory, and disturbing, so some people argue that they have bad moral effects, inciting viewers to imitate cinematic violence or desensitizing them to atrocities. In The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Cynthia A. Freeland seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and nature of evil?both human and cosmic. In exploring these films, the author argues against a purely psychoanalytic approach and opts for both feminist and philosophical understandings. She looks at what it is in these movies that serves to elicit specific reactions in viewers and why such responses as fear and disgust are ultimately pleasurable. The author is particularly interested in showing how gender figures into screen presentations of evil.The book is divided into three sections: Mad Scientists and Monstrous Mothers, which looks into the implications of male, rationalistic, scientific technology gone awry; The Vampire's Seduction, which explores the attraction of evil and the human ability (or inability) to distinguish active from passive, subject from object, and virtue from vice; and Sublime Spectacles of Disaster, which examines the human fascination with horror spectacle. This section concludes with a chapter on graphic horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Written for both students and film enthusiasts, the book examines a wide array of films including: The Silence of the Lambs, Repulsion, Frankenstein, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Alien, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Frenzy, The Shining, Eraserhead, Hellraiser, and many others.
The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World
by Marwan M. KraidyAcross the Arab world, protesters voiced dissent through slogans, graffiti, puppetry, videos, and satire that called for the overthrow of dictatorial regimes. Investigating what drives people to risk everything to express themselves in rebellious art, Marwan M. Kraidy uncovers the creative insurgency at the heart of the Arab uprisings of 2010-2012.
The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love
by Richard RestakConsider a world in which * Marketers use brain scans to determine consumer interest in a product * Politicians use brain-image-based profiles to target voters * A test could determine your suitability for a job or to whom you will be romantically attracted Far from science fiction, this "neurosociety"--a society in which brain science influences every aspect of daily life--is already here. Innovative researchers and cutting-edge technology, like brain imaging and brain scanning devices, have revolutionized our understanding of how we process information, communicate, trust, sympathize, and love. However, scientists and doctors are not the only ones interested in the naked brain; advertisers, politicians, economists, and others are using the latest findings on the human brain to reshape our lives, from the bedroom to the boardroom. Despite the potential benefits, there's obvious peril in the promise. Richard Restak explores the troubling moral and legal dilemmas that arise from corporate and political applications of this new brain research. Someday we may live in a world where our choices, our professional and personal prospects, even our morals and ethics will be controlled by those armed with an elite understanding of the principles of neuroscience. Eye-opening and provocative,The Naked Brainis a startling look at the impact such unprecedented access to our most secret thoughts and tendencies will have on all of us. InThe Naked Brain, bestselling author Richard Restak explores how the latest technology and research have exposed the brain and how we think, feel, remember, and socialize in unprecedented and often surprising ways. Now that knowledge is being used by doctors, advertisers, politicians, and others to influence and revolutionize nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Restak is our guide to this neurosociety, a brave new world in which brain science influences our present and will even more tangibly shape our future. Citing social trends, shifts in popular culture, the rise and fall of products in the public favor, even changes in the American vernacular,The Naked Brainis an illuminating and often troubling investigation of the impending opportunities and dangers being created by the neuroscience revolution, and a revelation for anyone who ever wondered why they prefer Coke over Pepsi or Kerry over Bush. From the Hardcover edition.
The Naked Civil Servant
by Quentin CrispA comical and poignant memoir of a gay man living life as he pleased in the 1930sIn 1931, gay liberation was not a movement—it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to "come out" as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was harrassed, ridiculed and beaten. Nevertheless, he claimed his right to be himself—whatever the consequences. The Naked Civil Servant is both a comic masterpiece and a unique testament to the resilience of the human spirit.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age
by Jeffrey RosenIn The Naked Crowd, acclaimed author Jeffrey Rosen makes an impassioned argument about how to preserve freedom, privacy, and security in a post-9/11 world. How we use emerging technologies, he insists, will be crucial to the preservation of essential American ideals. In our zeal to catch terrorists and prevent future catastrophic events, we are going too far—largely because of irrational fears—and violating essential American freedoms. That’s the contention at the center of this persuasive new polemic by Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor of The New Republic, which builds on his award-winning book The Unwanted Gaze. Through wide-ranging reportage and cultural analysis, Rosen argues that it is possible to strike an effective and reasonable balance between liberty and security. Traveling from England to Silicon Valley, he offers a penetrating account of why well-designed laws and technologies have not always been adopted. Drawing on a broad range of sources—from the psychology of fear to the latest Code Orange alerts and airport security technologies—he also explores the reasons that the public, the legislatures, the courts, and technologists have made feel-good choices that give us the illusion of safety without actually making us safer. He describes the dangers of implementing poorly thought out technologies that can make us less free while distracting our attention from responses to terrorism that might work. Rosen also considers the social and technological reasons that the risk-averse democracies of the West continue to demand ever-increasing levels of personal exposure in a search for an illusory and emotional feeling of security. In Web logs, chat rooms, and reality TV shows, an increasing number of citizens clutter the public sphere with private revelations best kept to themselves. The result is the peculiar ordeal of living in the Naked Crowd, in which few aspects of our lives are immune from public scrutiny. With vivid prose and persuasive analysis, The Naked Crowd is both an urgent warning about the choices we face in responding to legitimate fears of terror and a vision for a better future.
The Naked Future
by Patrick TuckerIn the past, the future was opaque--the territory of fortune-tellers, gurus, and dubious local TV weathermen. But thanks to recent advances in computing and the reams of data we create through smartphone and Internet use, prediction models for individual behavior grow smarter and more sophisticated by the day. Whom you should marry, whether you'll commit a crime or fall victim to one, if you'll contract a specific strain of flu--even your precise location at any given moment years into the future--are becoming easily accessible facts. the naked future is upon us, and the implications are staggering. Patrick Tucker draws on stories from health care to urban planning to online dating to reveal the shape of a future that's ever more certain. In these pages you'll meet scientists and inventors who can predict your behavior based on your friends' Twitter updates. They are also hacking the New York City sewer system to predict environmental conditions, anticipating how much the weather a year from now will cost an individual farmer, figuring out the time of day you're most likely to slip back into a bad habit, and guessing how well you'll do on a test before you take it. You'll learn how social networks like Facebook are using your data to turn you into an advertisement and why the winning formula for a blockbuster movie is more predictable than ever. The rise of big data and predictive analytics means that governments and corporations are becoming much more effective at accomplishing their goals and at much less cost. Tucker knows that's not always a good thing. But he also shows how we've gained tremendous benefits that we have yet to fully realize. Thanks to the increased power of predictive science, we'll be better able to stay healthy, invest our savings more wisely, learn faster and more efficiently, buy a house in the right neighborhood at the right time, avoid crime, thwart terrorists, and mitigate the consequences of natural disasters. What happens in a future that anticipates your every move? the surprising answer: we'll live better as a result. 'Where I saw a thrilling and historic transformation in the world's oldest idea--the future--other people saw only Target, Facebook, Google, and the government using their data to surveil, track, and trick them . . . But in fact, your data is your best defense against coercive marketing and intrusive government practices. Your data is nothing less than a superpower waiting to be harnessed. ' from the Introduction
The Naked Future
by Patrick Tucker"A thorough yet thoroughly digestible book on the ubiquity of data gathering and the unraveling of personal privacy." --Daniel Pink, author of DriveThanks to recent advances in technology, prediction models for individual behavior grow more sophisticated by the day. Whether you'll marry, commit a crime or fall victim to one, or contract a disease are becoming easily accessible facts. The naked future is upon us, and the implications are staggering.Patrick Tucker draws on fascinating stories from health care to urban planning to online dating. He shows how scientists can predict your behavior based on your friends' Twitter updates, anticipate the weather a year from now, figure out the time of day you're most likely to slip back into a bad habit, and guess how well you'll do on a test before you take it.Tucker knows that the rise of Big Data is not always a good thing. But he also shows how we've gained tremendous benefits that we have yet to fully realize.g. Patrick Tucker draws on stories from health care to urban planning to online dating to reveal the shape of a future that's ever more certain. In these pages you'll meet scientists and inventors who can predict your behavior based on your friends' Twitter updates. They are also hacking the New York City sewer system to predict environmental conditions, anticipating how much the weather a year from now will cost an individual farmer, figuring out the time of day you're most likely to slip back into a bad habit, and guessing how well you'll do on a test before you take it. You'll learn how social networks like Facebook are using your data to turn you into an advertisement and why the winning formula for a blockbuster movie is more predictable than ever. The rise of big data and predictive analytics means that governments and corporations are becoming much more effective at accomplishing their goals and at much less cost. Tucker knows that's not always a good thing. But he also shows how we've gained tremendous benefits that we have yet to fully realize. Thanks to the increased power of predictive science, we'll be better able to stay healthy, invest our savings more wisely, learn faster and more efficiently, buy a house in the right neighborhood at the right time, avoid crime, thwart terrorists, and mitigate the consequences of natural disasters. What happens in a future that anticipates your every move? The surprising answer: we'll live better as a result.
The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party
by Howard FastFast&’s book on his break with the Communist Party, and a riveting tribute to the importance of justice and beauty over dogma and rigidityThe Naked God is Howard Fast&’s public repudiation of the Communist Party, of which he was a devoted member for thirteen years until reading about the full scope of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The bestselling author of Spartacus and Citizen Tom Paine, Howard Fast lent his writing talents and celebrity to the communist cause as a steadfast advocate and public figure. However, he felt increasingly ill at ease with the superior manner Party leaders took with rank-and-file members and with rumors of Soviet anti-Semitism. In his first book after officially leaving the Party in 1956, Howard Fast explores the reasons he joined and his long inner struggle with a political movement in which he never felt he truly belonged. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author&’s estate.
The Naked Heart: Victoria to Freud)
by Peter GayIn The Naked Heart, Peter Gay explores the bourgeoisie's turn inward. At the very time that industrialists, inventors, statesmen, and natural scientists were conquering new objective worlds, Gay writes, "the secret life of the self had grown into a favorite and wholly serious indoor sport." Following the middle class's preoccupation with inwardness through its varied cultural expressions (such as fiction, art, history, and autobiography), Gay turns also to the letters and confessional diaries of both obscure and prominent men and women. These revealing documents help to round out a sparkling portrait of an age.
The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature
by Ludovic SlimakA riveting scientific journey exploring the enigma of the Neanderthal and the species&’ unique form of intelligence.What do we really know about our cousins, the Neanderthals? For over a century we saw Neanderthals as inferior to Homo Sapiens. More recently, the pendulum swung the other way and they are generally seen as our relatives: not quite human, but similar enough, and still not equal. Now, thanks to an ongoing revolution in palaeoanthropology in which he has played a key part, Ludovic Slimak shows us that they are something altogether different -- and they should be understood on their own terms rather than by comparing them to ourselves. As he reveals in this stunning book, the Neanderthals had their own history, their own rituals, their own customs. Their own intelligence, very different from ours. Slimak has travelled around the world for the past thirty years to uncover who the Neanderthals really were. A modern-day Indiana Jones, he takes us on a fascinating archaeological investigation: from the Arctic Circle to the deep Mediterranean forests, he traces the steps of these enigmatic creatures, working to decipher their real stories through every single detail they left behind. A thought-provoking adventure story, written with wit and verve, The Naked Neanderthal shifts our understanding of deep history -- and in the process reveals just how much we have yet to learn.
The Naked Society
by Rick Perlstein Vance PackardOriginally published in 1964, The Naked Society was the first book on the threats to privacy posed by new technologies such as modern surveillance techniques and methods for influencing human behavior. This all new edition of the book features an introduction by noted historian Rick Perlstein.
The Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
by Sheila DelanyA sequel to her seminal book on Chaucer’s House of Fame, Sheila Delany’s elegant and innovative study of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women explores what it meant to be a reader and a writer, and to be English and a courtier, in the late fourteenth century. The richness of late medieval art, philosophy, and history are powerfully brought to bear on one of Chaucer’s most controversial works. So too are the insights of modern critical theory—semiotics, historicism, and gender studies especially—making this a unique achievement in medieval and Chaucerian studies. Delany’s strikingly original readings of Chaucer’s Orientalism, his sexual wordplay, his theological attitudes, and his treatment of sex and gender have given us a Chaucer for our time. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.
The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall
by Lawrence OsborneFrom the theme resorts of Dubai to the jungles of Papua New Guinea, a disturbing but hilarious tour of the exotic east—and of the tour itselfSick of producing the bromides of the professional travel writer, Lawrence Osborne decided to explore the psychological underpinnings of tourism itself. He took a six-month journey across the so-called Asian Highway—a swathe of Southeast Asia that, since the Victorian era, has seduced generations of tourists with its manufactured dreams of the exotic Orient. And like many a lost soul on this same route, he ended up in the harrowing forests of Papua, searching for a people who have never seen a tourist. What, Osborne asks, are millions of affluent itinerants looking for in these endless resorts, hotels, cosmetic-surgery packages, spas, spiritual retreats, sex clubs, and "back to nature" trips? What does tourism, the world's single largest business, have to sell? A travelogue into that heart of darkness known as the Westernmind, The Naked Tourist is the most mordant and ambitious work to date from the author of The Accidental Connoisseur, praised by The New York Times Book Review as "smart, generous, perceptive, funny, sensible."
The Naked Woman: A Study Of The Female Body
by Desmond MorrisThe human female form is the brilliant end-point of millions of years of evolution, loaded with amazing adjustments and subtle refinements. It is the most remarkable organism on the planet. At different times and in different places, human societies have tried to improve on nature, modifying and embellishing the female form in a thousand different ways. In this new study, people-watcher Desmond Morris turns his skill and attention to the female form and takes the reader on a guided tour 'from head to toe'. Highlighting the evolutionary functions of biological features that all women share, Morris explores the enhancements and constraints that human societies have developed in the quest for control and perfection of the female form. Written from a zoologist's perspective and packed full of scientific fact, fascinating anecdote and thought-provoking conclusions, The Naked Woman builds on Desmond Morris's unrivalled experience as an observer of the human animal.
The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror
by Cynthia A. FreelandHorror is often dismissed as mass art or lowbrow entertainment that produces only short-term thrills. Horror films can be bloody, gory, and disturbing, so some people argue that they have bad moral effects, inciting viewers to imitate cinematic violence or desensitizing them to atrocities. In The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Cynthia A. Freeland seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and nature of evil-both human and cosmic. In exploring these films, the author argues against a purely psychoanalytic approach and opts for both feminist and philosophical understandings. She looks at what it is in these movies that serves to elicit specific reactions in viewers and why such responses as fear and disgust are ultimately pleasurable. The author is particularly interested in showing how gender figures into screen presentations of evil. The book is divided into three sections: Mad Scientists and Monstrous Mothers, which looks into the implications of male, rationalistic, scientific technology gone awry; The Vampire’s Seduction, which explores the attraction of evil and the human ability (or inability) to distinguish active from passive, subject from object, and virtue from vice; and Sublime Spectacles of Disaster, which examines the human fascination with horror spectacle. This section concludes with a chapter on graphic horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Written for both students and film enthusiasts, the book examines a wide array of films including: The Silence of the Lambs, Repulsion, Frankenstein, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Alien, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Frenzy, The Shining, Eraserhead, Hellraiser, and many others.
The Name Game: Cultural Modernization and First Names
by Jürgen GerhardsFrom decade to decade, significant changes occur in the choice of first names for children. One-time favorites are perceived as old fashioned and replaced by new choices. In The Name Game, Jurgen Gerhards shows that shifts in the choice of names are based on more than arbitrary trends of fashion. Instead, he demonstrates, they are determined by larger currents in cultural modernization. Using classic tools of sociology, Gerhards focuses on changing atterns of first names in Germany from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, using these as an indicator of cultural change. Among the influences he considers are religion, and he notes a trend toward greater secularization in first names. He considers the extent to which Christian names have been displaced, and whether the process is similar for Catholics and Protestants. He traces the impact of different political regimes (Second Empire, Weimar Republic, Third Reich, West Germany, East Germany) and the accompanying rise and fall of German nationalist sentiment. He also investigates the dissolution of the family as a unit of production, and its impact on the naming of children. He shows that the weakening of traditional ties of religion, nation, and family has led to greater individuation and greater receptivity toward foreign first names. Gerhards concludes with a discussion of whether the blurring of gender and sex roles is reflected in the decrease of gender-specific names. Written in a lucid, approachable style, The Name Game will be of interest not only to sociologists and cultural studies specialists, but also non-professionals, especially parents who are interested in reflecting on the process of name giving.
The Name Therapist: How Growing Up with My Odd Name Taught Me Everything You Need to Know about Yours
by Duana TahaWhat's a "stripper" name? For that matter, what's a high-class name? How do you tell the difference? Why does everyone call them "baby" names when they follow us through our whole lives? And can your name determine your destiny? From a television screenwriter and contributor on the LaineyGossip.com blog comes a book about what names really mean, how we use them, and why they matter. A child of Irish and Egyptian immigrants to Canada, Duana Taha became fascinated by names, not least because hers felt awkward at best and impossible at worst. She believed that names explained not only who you were, but where you came from and who you could be. She became a name nerd, and later a name snob, before settling into the role she was born to play--a Name Therapist, giving straight talk baby-and-grown-up-name advice to just about everyone. In a romp through North American naming trends, traditions, and pop culture, Duana brings us the hilarious, insightful, and surprising truths about hipster names in Brooklyn and Malibu, and the most "intelligent" names at Harvard University; digs into the stereotypes about culture and class where names are concerned; and heads backstage to find out the stories behind those supposed stripper names. And if you don't know what a Starbucks name is, Duana points out why you obviously never needed one. The Name Therapist's explorations will help you understand your feelings about your own name, whether it's one you share with millions (hi, Jennifer!), or one you grew up waiting in vain for the Romper Room host to say. Would you, by any other name, still be you? From the Hardcover edition.
The Name of God in Jewish Thought: A Philosophical Analysis of Mystical Traditions from Apocalyptic to Kabbalah (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
by Michael T MillerOne of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century’s linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in – the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the articulation of human relationships and dialogue. The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God. Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion.
The Names of All the Flowers: A Memoir
by Melissa ValentineA “poignant, painful, and gorgeous” memoir that explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief for a family shattered by loss (Alicia Garza, cocreator, Black Lives Matter).Melissa and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother. But as Junior approaches adolescence, a bullying incident and later a violent attack in school leave him searching for power and a sense of self in all the wrong places; he develops a hard front and falls into drug dealing. Right before Junior’s twentieth birthday, the family is torn apart when he is murdered as a result of gun violence.The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: “We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss.”“A portrait of a place, a person who died too young, the systems that led to that death, and the keen insights of the author herself. Lyrical and smart, with appropriate undercurrents of rage.” —Emily Raboteau, author of Searching for Zion“Eloquently poignant.” —Kirkus Reviews
The Nandi of Kenya
by G. W. HuntingfordThis book examines the political structure of the Nandi tribe in the first half of the twentieth century and contains chapters on the following: · Land divisions and local authorities · Age-sets · War organisation · Administrative changes · Law · Religion. First published in 1953
The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Studies Of The Pacific Basin Institute)
by Frank Gibney Katsuichi Honda Karen SandnessThis book is based on four visits to China between 1971 and 1989 by Honda Katsuichi, an investigative journalist for Asahi Shimbun. His aim is to show in pitiless detail the horrors of the Japanese Army's seizure and capture of Nanjing in December 1937. Unvarnished accounts of the testimony - Chinese victims and Japanese perpetrators - to the rape and slaughter are juxtaposed with public relations announcements of the Japanese Army as printed in various Japanese newspapers of the time. The bland announcements of triumphant victories stand in bitter contrast to the atrocities that actually took place on the scene. The story unfolds with horrible detail as we watch the triumphant progress of the Japanese army whose troops were bent on rape and killing in the so-called "heat of battle." Yet by recalling the testimony of Japanese soldiers and reporters who were on the scene, as well as reproducing dispatches by Japanese Army authorities at the time, Honda makes it clear that the atrocities were part of a studied effort directed by the Japanese high command to impress the Chinese people with the power of its army and the folly of resistance to it - the estimate of 300,000 killed in these "military operations" is no exaggeratoin. Honda has worked with other Japanese journalists and scholars who have attempted to reveal the truth of the Nanjing massacre, provoked by the efforts of right-wing Japanese, including, sadly, many government officials, to whitewash the whole incident, even to the point of contending that a "massacre" never happened. This gripping account of the atrocities and cover-up joins other exposes - Chinese and now German - in keeping alive the memory of this shameful event.
The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it
by Stuart Maconie'He is as funny as Bryson and as wise as Orwell' ObserverIt was the spirit of our finest hour, the backbone of our post-war greatness, and it promoted some of the boldest and most brilliant schemes this isle has ever produced: it was the Welfare State, and it made you and I. But now it's under threat, and we need to save it.In this timely and provocative book, Stuart Maconie tells Britain’s Welfare State story through his own history of growing up as a northern working class boy. What was so bad about properly funded hospitals, decent working conditions and affordable houses? And what was so wrong about student grants, free eye tests and council houses? And where did it all go so wrong? Stuart looks toward Britain’s future, making an emotional case for believing in more than profit and loss; and championing a just, fairer society.
The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador
by Michael UzendoskiBased upon historical and archival research, as well as the author's years of fieldwork in indigenous communities, Michael Uzendoski's theoretically informed work analyzes value from the perspective of the Napo Runa people of the Amazonian Ecuador. Written in a clear and readable style, The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador presents theoretical issues of value, poetics, and kinship as linked to the author's intersubjective experiences in Napo Runa culture. Drawing on insights from the theory of gift and value, Uzendoski argues that Napo Runa culture personifies value by transforming things into people through a process of subordinating them to human relationships. While many traditional exchange models treat the production of things as inconsequential, the Napo Runa understand production to involve a relationship with natural beings (plants, animals, spirits of the forest), which are considered to be subjects that share spiritual substance, or samai. Throughout the book, value is revealed as the outcome of a complicated poetics of transformation by which things and persons are woven into kinship forms that define daily social and ritual life.
The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism: New Perspectives (Routledge Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict)
by Sophie Richter-Devroe Mansour Nasasra Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder Richard RatcliffeThe Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism brings together new scholarship to challenge perceived paradigms, often dominated by orientalist, modernist or developmentalist assumptions on the Naqab Bedouin. The past decade has witnessed a change in both the wider knowledge production on, and political profile of, the Naqab Bedouin. This book addresses this change by firstly, endeavouring to overcome the historic isolation of Naqab Bedouin studies from the rest of Palestine studies by situating, studying and analyzing their predicaments firmly within the contemporary context of Israeli settler-colonial policies. Secondly, it strives to de-colonise research and advocacy on the Naqab Bedouin, by, for example, reclaiming ‘indigenous’ knowledge and terminology. Offering not only a nuanced description and analysis of Naqab Bedouin agency and activism, but also trying to draw broader conclusion as to the functioning of settler-colonial power structures as well as to the politics of research in such a context, this book is essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in Postcolonial Studies, Development Studies, Israel/Palestine Studies and the contemporary Middle East more broadly.