Academica Press

In the ever-evolving landscape of medicine, the boundaries between science, technology, and human experience continue to blur, leading us into uncharted territories where the possibilities seem as infinite as the universe itself. Narrative Frontiers: Essays at the Edge of Medicine and the Multiverse, by Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA, is a collection born from this intersection, where the art of healing meets the frontier spirit of exploration and innovation.Each essay in this collection is a probe of these intersecting dimensions, drawing connections between the tangible realities of healthcare and the expansive, often speculative worlds of science fiction, artificial intelligence, and contemporary societal issues. By venturing into these diverse realms, Dr, Lazarus illuminates the ways in which our understanding of medicine can be enriched and expanded through the lens of storytelling and imagination. As a practicing psychiatrist, Dr. Lazarus has witnessed firsthand the many ways in which medical practice intertwines with the broader narratives of our time. He invites you to journey to the edge of medicine and beyond, where the familiar world of clinical practice meets the dynamic forces shaping our future. Through these essays, you will encounter thought-provoking insights that challenge conventional perspectives, offering new ways to think about the role of medicine in our lives and its potential to transform societies. Whether you are a healthcare professional, a patient, a science enthusiast, or simply curious about the future, you will find in these pages a tapestry of ideas that provoke reflection and inspire innovation.

W. D. Fard: The Man, Myth, and Mystery Behind the Nation of Islam offers a bold, multidisciplinary investigation into the elusive founder of the Nation of Islam. W. D. Fard, known to his followers as Master Fard Muhammad, was the man of mystery whose teachings inspired Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and many figures involved in the separatist wing of the American civil rights movement. Fard disappeared without a trace in 1934, eluding adherents and scholars alike. Historians have debated his intentions: was he a missionary, a conman, or an agent? Why did this non-black teacher found a black nationalist movement? Drawing on theology, psychology, sociology, and archival research, John Morrow and Bilal Muhammad uncover Fard’s scriptural sources, apocalyptic influences, and esoteric affiliations. The book delves into Fard’s incarceration, love life, ties to Imperial Japan, and the conceptual origins of his teachings. The authors use cutting-edge tools, including AI, emotional recognition software, DNA testing, forensic linguistics, digitized newspapers, and anagram breakers to reveal the man behind the legend. This study pushes the boundaries of what is known about this controversial and momentous figure.

Surviving evolutionary lines of animals and plants all had their adaptive keys for flourishing in the long run. In the case of humans, a lack of primate specializations opened the door to unique evolutionary possibilities. From the Miocene Era about 20 million years ago, nature began to offer new possibilities to creatures with larger brains and the behaviors that tempted curiosity. From that broad panorama of decisions, the future said “hold up, wait a minute.” A new menu of life plans and structures determined hominid interests and possible opportunities. The passage of time saw movement away from anthropoids who did not migrate east towards south Asia, if they were not pushed into African extinction by other proto-hominids. At the end point of millions of years, migration towards modernistic dominance of the hominids was located in Eurasia and Southern Africa, the former probably a product of the early migrations of the European ancestors of the Heidelberg type.

Today, the remnants of the artistically talented human originating in Southern Africa are holding on. By contrast the Cro-Magnons, who were pressing the Eurasian Neanderthals and Harbin Asians humanoids into extinction 40,000 years ago helped carry a small measure of their genes into the contemporary populations of the world.

The powerful modern human brain power revealed its worldwide potential in the last 10,000 years following the abatement of the Ice Age. With this universal cultural expansion came an optimism and expansive sense of futurity, as well as an attitude of “we can do no wrong.” With this outlook, the demographics of expansion flooded the landscape – at least until our times, with pandemics, the Holocaust, atomic power, threats to the environment, and bloodshed without end.

Could it be time for Homo sapiens to say "our time is up?” We have been around, from the evolutionary timetable, for a rather short try out. Maybe we should take another look at what our Cro-Magnon ancestors created with very primitive tools, inside a frosty cave.

This volume platforms scholars working in cultural studies in Asia and responds to the recentering of cultural studies along the diaspora axis. Drawing together numerous authors, The Soul of Asia participates in cultural politics at a local level, but with an international agenda. As a collective, the authors aim to construct a “critical inter-Asian subjectivity,” drawing on local critical intellectual traditions while forging global links with other cultural studies networks. In this way, the collection problematizes “Asia” as a concept in the context of the continent’s postwar economic and cultural resurgence layered over its troubled history between colonized and colonizer.

Threads of the East traces the relationships among aesthetic, anthropological, and political-economic aspects of cultural production and reproduction. Cultural studies scholars and practitioners often begin their inquiries by questioning the common understandings, beliefs, and histories that shape our world. This approach helps explain the complexity of day-to-day life and the practice, habits, text, objects, rituals, and beliefs woven in the social matrix and laden with values and meaning. Culture is an umbrella covering many elements and conveying many meanings. In Asian societies, culture connotes value and respect as a religious duty; moreover, in Asian culture respect is centered around the family and formally demonstrated through language and gestures. The Asian concept of respect influences feelings of responsibility within the family and the ways in which Asian parents and children may set about making decisions.  Knowing Asia is only possible from a multidimensional approach, where problems can arise from misunderstandings, especially because we live in a multicultural world. By learning and understanding different cultures, one can understand why people do things the way they do.

“Wokeism” and, before it, “Political Correctness” are attempts to replace traditional privilege with a new privileged class of special interest groups that have supposedly been discriminated against. In Three Pillars of Wisdom, Dr. Michael Arnheim argues that that there are and always have been only two forms of government: monarchy and oligarchy, regardless of the labels placed on them, and that politics, religion, and law are all fields of contention between “in” and “out” groups.

The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad is based on a series of interviews, recorded between 2019 and 2021, with twelve Russophone immigrants—those who have achieved success and those who haven’t, the well-educated and the blue-collar—interpolated with the author’s memoir. Each story invites the reader into the intimate world of these men and women who have built their lives in England, the destination and dreamland for those who have arrived here from various corners of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Whereas, for others, the UK has become their third or even fourth home, these stories take readers on a journey to Canada, Italy, France, and New Zealand. These vividly reconstructed stories give voice to the so-often voiceless revealing family secrets and the trauma of generations. They are the stories of lives transformed. In The England We Know: Russian Voices Abroad Olga Kenton provides readers with a deep and empathetic understanding of the immigrant experience. These deeply personal stories—filled with moments of joy, sorrow, struggle, and triumph—explore themes of identity, belonging and the search for a new home.

Antisemitism in the twenty-first century remains a major threat to Jewish communities around the world, and a potent challenge to the liberal international order. But it can so often be a more hidden form of racism, relying on codes, images, cues, and ciphers embedded in the cultural mythology of prejudice against Jews. It is about the invocation of the blood libel, attacks on so-called “cosmopolitans,” accusations of “dual loyalty,” and conspiratorial notions of malign “Jewish power.” It is also a highly protean prejudice, ever adaptable to a multitude of changes in political and social circumstances, always ready to mutate and shape-shift to fit a new environment. That is why it has so easily become a feature of the modern anti-Israel movement. In this short volume, Jeremy Havardi explores how anti-Israelism has reproduced many of the canards, tropes, and ciphers of historic Jew-hatred and regurgitated them as attacks on Zionism and Israel. Today, the “Jewish question” has been replaced by the “Israel question,” with a similarly obsessive and ritualistic form of demonization and delegitimization. Anyone concerned about the future of liberal democracy should take note. 

What the World Can Learn from the Fall of the West is a dramatic title for a profound unease that has been festering for some time. In the Age of Brexit, Trump, and the surge of international populism, the West has been plagued by questions relating to identity, multiculturalism, social mobility, and the influence of Big Tech and social media on representative democracy. With a growing divide between “winners” of globalization and the “losers,” a question unfolds: Are the days of the West numbered? In this scholarly study, Dr. Sid Lukkassen, a notable Dutch scholar and politician, describes how the West masochistically mistreats itself by weakening national democracies and replacing its own culture and values with cultural Marxism. The rest of the world beholds this Western self-mutilation in shock and wonder – will China and Islam be the beneficiaries on the world stage?

In 1688, James II left the throne of England after the Glorious Revolution, ushering in an era of political intrigue and espionage. This book highlights the efforts of his followers, the Jacobites, to restore the Stuart dynasty. They were supported by the French Kings Louis XIV and Louis XV and faced the countermeasures from William III, James II's son-in-law, who replaced him as king alongside James's daughter Mary II, and then by Queen Anne and King George I. Thanks in part to effective intelligence, the new monarchs thwarted all attempts at invasion and insurrection, leading to the Jacobites’ final defeat in 1745. As Neil Kent and Clément Chevalier reveal in this fascinating new book, the intelligence war also marked the end of the old international order, with the triumph of British intelligence services and the advent of Great Britain as the dominant power in Europe and throughout the world.

Uncover the turbulent past and uncertain future of medical practice in Critical Condition: American Medicine at the Quarter-Century Mark by Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA—a gripping exploration of the forces reshaping healthcare today. 

This book is divided into two sections: 

Section 1: Analysis

Section 2: Accounts

Explore 48 incisive essays that cut to the heart of the most urgent lessons for navigating today’s healthcare landscape—not as abstract statistics or policy debates, but as the lived experiences of patients, doctors, and healthcare workers nationwide. Together, they expose the crises at hand while offering a vision for the future of medicine.

Whether you are a physician struggling to stay afloat, a policymaker grappling with reform, or simply an American trying to navigate a healthcare system in flux, Critical Condition: American Medicine at the Quarter-Century Mark is for you. Our system may be in critical condition, but it is not beyond saving. The question remains: Do we have the will to heal it?

In Human Rights Without Illusions, leading human rights advocate Aaron Rhodes traces the political and religious traditions that have led to prioritizing consensus among diverse nations as a prerequisite for upholding universal principles. The modern, global human rights regime sits on the foundation of Hellenistic stoicism and medieval Christendom, where natural law morally unified all of humanity. Drawing upon subsequent efforts to implement a secularized law of nations as promulgated natural law, and inspired by political progressivism, the international human rights system initiated in 1948 envisions a process of moral transformation on the basis of bureaucratic cooperation with institutions of the United Nations. By contrast, the natural rights tradition reflects a different form of universalism, one that focuses on a common understanding of human nature rather than intergovernmental consensus. The philosophy of natural rights, as crystallized in the Enlightenment, is skeptical of international formations, holding that interactions between governments occur in a state of nature without any overarching authority. Therefore, protecting human rights is possible only in nation-states, where the rules of civil society are legally enforceable. That does not render futile a campaign for improving respect for human rights around the world, however. Rhodes considers defending human rights and freedoms to be a moral duty, but human rights advocacy needs to free itself from the inevitable corruption of institutionalized universalism. Rhodes argues instead for a “human rights without illusions” consistent with the classical liberal principles that inspired America’s Founding Fathers and shaped their belief that basic freedoms are realized in a bottom-up process, not a top-down one. Progress toward a spontaneous order of global human rights can be made if liberal societies project inherent freedom as a compelling moral principle, rather than subjecting it to legalistic rationalization and compromise in inclusive global institutions.

Narrative Medicine: New and Selected Essays, by Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA, contains the thoughtful curation of the author’s best work alongside new contributions.

The book is divided into two sections:

Section 1: New Essays

In this section, 10 vibrant essays serve as a bridge between reflection and the future of the medical profession. They focus on themes that have emerged since the COVID-19 pandemic and have taken on a new urgency in light of our evolving healthcare landscape.

Section 2: Selected Essays

Here, 50 essays were chosen for their significance and quality, representing the author’s finest additions to the discourse on contemporary medical practice. These essays explore a range of topics critical to the medical field: the arduous journey through medical training, the ethical dilemmas doctors face, the rise of artificial intelligence, the importance of mentorship and reflective writing, and the career challenges that can either make or break a physician’s resolve.

Within these pages you will find a comprehensive gathering of essays and viewpoints that reflect the complexities of modern medicine and explore the intricate relationship between practice and storytelling, offering insights into how narrative shapes our understanding of patient care.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was founded in 1935. A great deal has been written about the addiction program and its membership, but little scholarship has been done on how it reflected the culture of the 1930s and Great Depression. Kevin Kaufmann’s Rigorous Honesty investigates what AA can tell us about America in the 1930s. It begins by examining the temperance movement and prohibition era and how they influenced the program’s initial design and foundational texts. With the advent of World War II, Alcoholics Anonymous, like the rest of the nation, underwent enormous changes. AA spread across the country and considerably increased its membership. The fellowship went from a slow-growing, grassroots movement to an international organization almost overnight. As American culture took a decidedly conservative turn in the postwar era, Alcoholics Anonymous changed its message to suit not only the changing political climate country but its evolving economy as well.

Computer Modeling and Simulation provides a comprehensive but concise analysis of the concepts, methods, and software for students, educators, and professionals in the field of modeling and simulation by computers. Stanislaw Raczynski’s book can be used in preparing and delivering graduate-level courses. It is written rather as an encyclopedic reference rather than a regular textbook. The book contains more than 130 topics, from the general methodological issues to the particular implementation and main existing software tools. Some new and original concepts are included, notably functional sensitivity, application of the differential inclusions, and determination of reachable sets of dynamic systems.

The revolutionary upheaval currently sweeping across Western democracies on parade under the banner term “woke” calls for rethinking the foundations of ethics and politics. The social justice movement challenges us to fundamentally reconceive our being with one another in society and to re-embrace our profoundest traditions. Focus on identities, however, has become divisive and vexatious. In Social Identities and Social Justice, William Franke indicates a way to exit from the current impasse empoisoning politics in Western democracies by thinking the concept of identity through to its grounds in the non-identity (or undelimited human potential) that all share and that unites rather than divides us. The traditions of negative theology (admission of ignorance of God) and apophasis (self-critical unsaying of one’s own certainties) are leveraged for outlining a truly relational approach to public discourse. We must open our concepts of mutually exclusive identities towards their infinite truth rooted in our unlimited interconnectedness. Doing so, we open our ideas beyond their finite content and open ourselves to building a world together.

Cicero, Politics, and the 21st Century addresses the West’s current crisis of confidence. Reflecting on how the famed Roman philosopher-statesmen Marcus Tullius Cicero thought and acted in a time of great turbulence in the ancient world, this book offers lessons to 21st century students of politics and statesmen alike. Cicero’s example shows that the survival of liberal democracy requires us to recover a sense of nobility in politics – a balance of power, honor, and justice with the pursuit of truth for the common good.

Cicero, Politics, and the 21st Century brings the reader into the dirty politics of the late Roman Republic and tells how Cicero rose to the top in this environment. He managed to work with people who were often diametrically opposed to him, juggling different power blocks and interest groups, while trying to implement reforms, all at a time when the state apparatus and public consensus holding the Republic together were breaking down. Cicero was able to attain power, all the while maintaining his integrity and advancing the interests of his people. Additionally, Cicero and his time bring much needed perspective to our political thinking by enabling us to examine events through a prism of assumptions different from those we have inherited from the turmoil of the 20th century.

Bridging Texts: Translation and Literary Studies in Dialogue is an insightful examination of the relationship between translation and literary studies. It discusses the linkage and mutual development of these two domains, commonly seen as separate. This book places translation as central to literary analysis, providing readers with new insights into the transformative influence of language and the essential function of translation in shaping literary traditions, promoting intercultural dialogue, and addressing the complexities of representation and identity. Rather than just a mechanical process of word conversion, translation emerges in this book as a creative, interpretive, and fundamentally human act. Translators function as cultural mediators and co-creators, revisiting texts to ensure their resonance across linguistic and cultural divides. The book emphasizes how literary studies can enhance our comprehension of translation, illuminating issues of honesty, adaptability, and the evolution of meaning during the transition between languages.

The book is organized by main themes and covers a broad range of subjects, including the translator’s authority, the ethics of representation, and the difficulties of translating poetry, humor, and culturally distinctive texts. It transcends theoretical discourse to offer pragmatic insights that will appeal to translators, literary scholars, and anyone who engages with literature in multiple languages. The book promotes dialogue by bringing together contributors from varied academic and cultural backgrounds, reflecting the richness and richness of its topic of discussion.

A Kind of Pantheism: Escape from Cosmic Pessimism and the Quest for a Biocentric Ethic explores how such nineteenth-century transcendentalists as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir advanced a biocentric ethic that recognized the intrinsic worth of both plants and animals. This ethic required a pantheistic cosmology to be coherent, however. As science progressed, with developments in evolutionary biology and ecology, the paths of environmental ethics and animal rights diverged. But at the turn of the twentieth century, the nature writer Joseph Wood Krutch, inspired by quantum theory, provided a crucial link that reconnected these fields—a contribution often overlooked even by his own biographers.
          This book traces the historical development of humanity’s attitudes toward the non-human world, highlighting the influence of philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas. In addition to Krutch, it brings attention to such lesser-known figures as Henry Stephens Salt and John Howard Moore, emphasizing their roles in shaping biocentric thought. Ultimately, the book argues that animal rights and environmental ethics are two expressions of the same biocentric outlook. By focusing on Krutch’s unique contribution, the book offers a way for secular thinkers to reclaim a pantheistic ethic. In the process, A Kind of Pantheism solves the problem of “cosmic pessimism”—which postulates the cold and meaningless universe implied by modern science, a concept that often undercuts the very ethic it suggests. Through the process of free inquiry, new answers emerge.

Long relegated to the shadows of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the role of James Madison in shaping America, its ideals, and its institutions resonates in the very soul of our nation. A lifelong public servant, Madison was a critical – if underappreciated – architect of the American Republic. Gary L. Rose’s James Madison, Public Servant shines an essential light on Madison’s wide-ranging legacy. An accomplished presidential scholar and political commentator, Rose begins with a brief treatment of the Madison family’s roots and early life in the Piedmont region of Virginia and his time as a student at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). It was there that Madison’s values of democratic government and personal liberty became ingrained thanks to the teachings of that institution’s president, the renowned scholar John Witherspoon.

Rose presents Madison’s captivating journey through the War of Independence, including his roles as a delegate to Virginia’s constitutional convention, appointment to the Governor’s Council, and selection as a member of the Continental Congress. Readers will learn of Madison’s essential role at the national Constitutional Convention in 1787, which immortalized him as “The Father of the Constitution.” As a co-author of the Federalist Papers, along with his skillful argumentation at Virginia’s ratifying convention, Madison was instrumental in securing the Constitution’s ratification by the states. Three public offices followed: four terms as a member of the U.S. Congress, during which time he authored the Bill of Rights; eight years as Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of State, and two terms as our nation’s fourth president. Madison’s presidency included a declared war against the United Kingdom, referred to by his political adversaries as “Mr. Madison’s War.” He also left a profound legacy in the formation of a political party committed to the principles of Jeffersonian republicanism.

Rose’s concise treatment of James Madison’s public service is essential reading for anyone invested in our nation’s political norms and institutions.

Voices From Vietnam began as a stage play but, due to the overwhelming number of contributors, is now published in this companion book. Both the play and the book are a collaborative effort between Major Bruce H. “Doc” Norton, USMC (Ret), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, author, and former oral historian for the Marine Corps, and Dr. Harry Kantrovich, a retired Chief of Naval Operations Command Master Chief, playwright, and award-winning director. From the front lines of battle to the school rooms and living rooms of our hometowns, Voices From Vietnam is a collection of letters, vignettes, reflections, and memories from Vietnam Veterans, former prisoners of war, families of servicemen who were missing in action, and the home front based upon interviews conducted by the authors. 

In Rogue Justice, Israeli-American attorney Yonatan Green provides indispensable critical insight into the heavily disputed state of the Israeli legal system, and into the controversial process by which the Israeli Supreme Court gradually attained judicial supremacy. Through exploration and discussion of key judicial decisions and novel doctrines developed by the Court since the 1980s, while providing critical perspective and context, Green illustrates the most severe flaws that have come to dominate and define the Israeli legal system, with effects extending far beyond the law and deep into Israeli politics and society. Anticipating the inevitable resurgence of the Israeli constitutional crisis and related societal woes, a nuanced and in-depth understanding of the power wielded by the Israeli Supreme Court – and of the arguments of those objecting to it – will prove crucial for anyone seeking to make sense of the debate surrounding Israeli law and government, and indeed of many related contemporary issues in Israeli politics, culture, national security, and economics. 

With Brexit complete, the European Union unbalanced, and populist national conservatism on the march across the continent, winds of rebellion continue to blow from Central Europe, where Hungary’s dynamic leader Viktor Orbán has been building a political alternative to neoliberal statism. Prime Minister of Hungary from 1998 to 2002, Orbán’s continuation in power since 2010 has marked a real European turning point as he transcends conventional divisions. He is an advocate of European unity, but a nemesis of the Brussels superstate. He is both democratic and illiberal, rigorous in economics, yet opposed to global free trade, a defender of the Christian West while eager to engage with China, Russia, and Iran. What will Orbán’s legacy be in a Europe that he continues not merely to confound, but to lead? Thibaud Gibelin explores the recent trends to explain what is happening not only in Central Europe but across Europe today and sheds light on one of the most criticized – and yet most experienced – statesmen on the European scene.

In his investigation of the nature of madness and civilization, the French social theorist Michel Foucault expressed the difficulty most scholars have in addressing episodes of confusion that lead a society into acts of self-destruction and chaos. He maintained that one problem is “a realm, no doubt, where what is in question is the limits rather than the identity of a culture.” The decision to continue as before, as if no changes have occurred, is a kind of madness, but the identity of normal people is associated with ideas of actions defined by the culture and performed as a means of demonstrating identity. Since today we have an evolving global culture that is an amalgam of European colonial history, the defeated servants of that history, and some of those who resisted, the nature of limited action is embedded  in the values that led to the conquest of the world. This process remains a central motive factor in resistance to modifications of world economic institutions that might deflect the worst consequences of climate change for, at least, the next few generations to come.

In today’s digital age, where data preservation is the cornerstone of security and communications, safeguarding this invaluable asset has never been more critical. In Information Security, Dr. Shekh Abdullah-Al-Musa Ahmed offers a dedicated framework for prevention techniques and will help readers navigate the complex and ever evolving landscape of digital data protection from social engineering attacks. It is imperative to recognize the fundamental necessity of information security risk management and to develop framework. Every bit and byte of Digital information holds immense value, whether it pertains to personal identities, corporate secrets, or the intellectual

property of nations.

The Olavo de Carvalho Reader, a far-reaching selection of philosophical essays by the celebrated Brazilian philosopher available for the first time in English, presents indispensable writings that have generated an intellectual revival in Brazil and beyond. Following Carvalho’s definition of philosophy as the “search for unity of knowledge in the unity of consciousness, and vice-versa,” it lays out the historical roots of the current cultural crisis in the West—both in the phenomenon he called “cognitive parallax” and then in the advent of the “revolutionary mind.” Averse to utopian thinking, Carvalho’s analyses are often responses to events that have shaped the history of ideas and their factual consequences. His approach seeks truth and expresses reality as Carvalho sees it, resisting pressure to conform to the collective and reaffirming the power of individual consciousness. In writings from a period of over three decades, this edition introduces the reader to one of the greatest philosophers of our time. 

Now presented in a new edition, Apologia Pro Beata Maria Virgine: John Henry Newman’s Defense of the Virgin Mary in Catholic Doctrine and Piety discusses an important theme within Cardinal Newman’s Mariology: namely, his apologetic defense of the place of the Virgin Mary in Catholic doctrine and piety. Newman is not instinctively known as a Marian theologian or apologist, but as a number of recent scholars have argued, he should. This revised paperback edition of the book shows ever more strongly how Newman possessed a highly developed Marian apologetic—one that grew out of his Anglican background and that developed into his life as a Catholic priest. Based solidly upon Scripture and the Church Fathers, his thought on the place of the Virgin Mary in the life and faith of Catholicism was, like much of his theology, ahead of its time and frequently out of step with the nineteenth-century Catholic milieu he lived within. This study of Newman’s defense of Catholic Mariology and its place in Catholic piety is achieved through an examination of some of Newman’s Anglican sermons, his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), some of his private correspondence and, finally, his Letter to Pusey (1866). From a discussion of these texts, this book argues that Newman’s Mariology was unique in its day and has proved prophetic in directing the future direction of Catholic Mariology. For Newman, the Virgin Mary—rightly understood in her biblical and patristic context—was “our pattern of faith,” a model for theological reflection and development.

Steel Workers in India discusses the factors that determine organizational climate and employee job satisfaction in the Salem Steel Plant. In this study, job satisfaction is delineated by twelve distinct dimensions, namely human resources policies and welfare measures, work stress, employee promotion, communication, pay and operations circumstances, nature of work, rewards system, safety measures, appraisal systems. Organizational climate is approach in four dimensions: humanistic climate, autonomous climate, flexible climate, and job dimension climate. These associations are framed into a central hypothesis suggesting that there is a strong correlation between organizational climate and job satisfaction. Organizational climate and job satisfaction reinforce each other, for the common ground connecting those concepts is employee perception. Hence the organizational climate and employee job satisfaction are essential reciprocal components for a workplace’s overall performance.

What is postmodern—postmodernism as philosophy—and what should we think of it? The first eight chapters of Julian Young’s new book examine the thought of key postmodernist philosophers: Lyotard, Deleuze, Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida, Vattimo, Richard Rorty, and Judith Butler. In the final chapter, he turns to the question of what makes them all “postmodernists.” His conclusion is that postmodernism is best thought of as the combination of two elements: a “practical principle” and a “theoretical principle.” The practical principle is the claim that the Western ethical tradition is collapsing, and that since it is permeated by exclusionary and oppressive “binaries” that present white, heterosexual men as excellent human beings and everyone else as inferior, this is a good thing that we should further promote. The theoretical principle is the claim that there is no such thing as objective truth. Both principles, Young shows, are motivated by a radical political project: the abolition of the West as a cultural entity. But both propositions, he argues, are false. The practical principle is false because though the Western tradition is indeed fragmenting, this is a process we need to resist rather than encourage. The theoretical principle is false, among other reasons, because the postmodernists contradict themselves in multiple ways in asserting it. These conclusions matter, Young argues, because although academia lost interest in postmodernism at the end of the last century, it lives on as the ideology of the so-called social justice movement that has redefined what it means to be “on the left.”

On The Warpath is an autobiographical account of controversial anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss's storied career on the front lines of the culture war in our colleges and universities. Her opposition to the reburial of Native American skeletal remains, her insistence that indigenous knowledge is not science but myth, and her fight against wokeism and political correctness in academia exposed her to numerous controversies and cancel culture campaigns, and a court case. A photograph of Weiss with a skull - as natural to anthropologists as a doctor being pictured with a stethoscope - led to her university shutting her out of the collection and changing the locks. This became an international news story, as did the American Anthropological Association canceling one of her presentations because she explained that a skeleton’s sex is binary and not gender fluid. This hard-hitting and often humorous book tells the story of Dr. Weiss’s fight for science against superstition, and her attempts to promote free speech and academic freedom. It also exposes the current rot in today’s universities, through the lens of her battles against day-to-day absurdities. These include an attempt to bar “menstruating personnel” (formerly known as women) from the curation facility, a campaign to ban research on ancient Carthaginian remains because the individuals concerned never consented to photography, and a plan to declare X-rays sacred, so that they can be repatriated to Native Americans (who may actually be Mexicans), prior to being burned or buried.

Scholars of Richard Wagner’s works have long noted his numerous comparisons between their characters and plots in his letters, essays, and recorded remarks. Yet no one has previously attempted to assess their implications for our understanding of his art systematically. Paul Heise’s quest to grasp the allegorical unity underlying Wagner’s canonical artworks began in the 1970s. Following his allegorical interpretation of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, The Wound That Will Never Heal (Academica Press, 2021), this fresh installment of Heise’s lifelong Wagner project will demonstrate how the composer employed key facets of the plots of his first three canonical operas The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin in building the sophisticated allegorical superstructure which culminated in his Ring of the Nibelung and his other mature music-dramas, Tristan and Isolde, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and Parsifal. This study casts a retrospective light on the many meanings hidden within these three operas, which were the prequel to the Ring, revealing their heretofore subliminal content as never before.

Narrative Medicine in Action: Lessons from the Maternal Mortality Project addresses the United States’s ongoing maternal health crisis by extracting findings from eighteen underrepresented women’s interviews using narrative medical research that is analyzed through the reproductive justice framework. To mitigate obstetric abuse and adverse birthing experiences, Dr. Kenya Mitchell concludes by recommending three collaborative care models that integrate diverse birth workers who are paid a living wage into existing maternal care systems.

Scholars devoted to analysis of Richard Wagner’s operas and music-dramas have long noted his numerous comparisons between their characters and plots in his letters, essays, and recorded remarks. Yet no one has previously attempted to assess their implications for our systematic understanding of his art. Following Heise’s allegorical interpretation of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, The Wound That Will Never Heal (Academica Press, 2021), this second installment of the author’s lifelong Wagner project will examine Wagner’s mature music-dramas Tristan and Isolde, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and Parsifal in light of their relationship to the Ring as understood through Heise’s allegorical interpretation. It will demonstrate how Wagner’s Ring is a master-myth which can make sense of these other mature music-dramas as never before.

The Law of Interrogations and Confessions traces the evolution of the primary approaches that U.S. courts have taken to regulating the interrogation of suspects by law enforcement officers. It examines the due process approach to the voluntariness of statements; the short-lived “focus of the investigation” test of Escobedo v. Illinois; the landmark Fifth Amendment approach announced in Miranda v. Arizona; and the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel approach to regulating the “deliberate elicitation” of incriminating statements. Henry F. Fradella’s authoritative book focuses on lower court interpretations of leading U.S. Supreme Court precedents with regard to issues such as determining when someone is in “custody” and subject to “interrogation” for Fifth Amendment purposes; the form, manner, and timing of Miranda warnings; the impact of multiple interrogations; the validity and scope of expressed and implied waivers; and the counters of Sixth Amendment protections to preserve suspects’ rights to counsel in the interrogation context after formal criminal proceedings have been initiated.

In this vividly written, politically-oriented travelogue, Tomáš Klvaňa offers a stark narrative of his decade-long travels to Cuba, interweaving a political analysis of the country's current state with a critical assessment of the ideology that has shaped its development. Cuba: A Brief History of the End reveals an immersive tableau of tropical landscapes that set the stage for the human stories that have unfolded in the shadow of the communist regime. The narrative tells of the author's encounters, ranging from the dramatic to the humorously absurd, with figures such as anti-communist dissidents, activists, independent journalists, and citizens struggling to survive in a challenging environment. He takes readers through iconic locations, from the tobacco valleys of Viñales and the urban sprawl of Pinar del Río to the eastern reaches of Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo. Historic sites such as the Bay of Pigs and Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución serve as backdrops for an exploration of the political upheavals of the past seventy years, which have not only captured the attention of global powers, but have also deeply affected life in Central Europe. The book draws parallels between Cuban communism and Czechoslovakia’s “era of normalization” in the 1970s and 1980s, while also reflecting on historical figures such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Ernest Hemingway, whose artistic legacy is closely tied to Cuba.

In the labyrinth of human experience, language stands as both a monument to our ingenuity and a barrier to our understanding. It is the medium through which we convey not just thoughts and ideas but the very essence of our cultures, emotions, and identities. Yet, in its complexity lies a challenge—a challenge that has persisted through the ages, morphing with the times but never diminishing in significance. This challenge is translation: the art and science of carrying meaning from one language into another, of finding equivalence where none seems to exist, and of bridging the vast chasms that separate human experiences. In Other Words: A Journey through Translation, Interpretation, and Meaning is an exploration of this intricate process, a deep dive into the heart of how we understand and misunderstand each other across the linguistic divides that define us.

The issue of African migration since the Covid-19 pandemic depended on novel influences and determinants. The chapters in this edited volume evaluate recent variables that instigated the migration of Africans and assess implications for Africans, Africans in diaspora, and their global reverberations. The volume unites well-researched and theoretically informed empirical studies constructed on qualitative research methodologies. To project significant social science and humanities voices, the book’s chapters reinforce theory-building rather than assumptions derived from arm-chair theorizing, journalistic presentations, and subjective personal views. The issue of African migration is fundamentally a matter of human modeling and therefore is never static. As this unique new volume demonstrates, it is consistently value-laden and reminiscent of “politics as an art.”

America and the West are now in the penultimate stage of a revolution defined by “wokeness.” What we call “partisanship” is essentially the effect of the late but growing realization of the revolution’s opponents that they face a major threat to their interests, convictions, and ways of life. It is not the “wokerati,” but their likely victims who are waking up. What they see is how a large number of social trends that may have posed little danger separately—mass migration made more divisive by multiculturalism; the rise of identity politics; the imposition of bureaucratic “diversity;” the collapse of Christianity and traditional religious restraints; the sexual revolution; the weakening of the family; radical gender theory and the rising hostility between the sexes; terrorism and its gradual accommodation by democratic governments and institutions; the smothering of national sovereignty by “global governance;” the rise of anti-national elites in Western societies; the post-communist crises of conservatism; the extraordinary recent resurrection of “socialism” as a social panacea among the young; the economic consequences of environmentalism—all have coalesced into a brewing social revolution that leaves most ordinary people feeling dispossessed in their countries and losing the future. In this series of essays written over the course of a storied career, John O’Sullivan, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and editor of National Review shows how this revolution has emerged and how this revolution can be resisted.

Nuclear Agendas in Japan and Taiwan compares practical management cases regarding nuclear energy in regional neighbouring partners: Japan and Taiwan. An introductory overview of Japan’s nuclear policy leads to the specification of important factors tangible in everyday life. What we perceive as knowledge transfer innovation and renewed industrial assessments shift to a regional territory that develops its own rules and practices within the dimension of nuclear energy innovation technology and post-crisis regulatory agendas. This literature-based discussion refers to complementary systems and recovery practices that have been envisioned in a post-Fukushima nuclear adaptive model. Thematic information about environmental effects and institutional partnerships advance the idea of a comparable ecosystem in which deliberative processes undertaken in Japan follow science, technology, and societal (STS) exchanges that form concurrent regional action plans with contextual disaster risk arrangements. Taiwan is an essential complementary innovation case reviewed in this analysis for contextual environmental policy directions. Reflections about regional knowledge transfers and energy innovation technology in Taiwan highlight some history-related factors that can facilitate a specific understanding of regional innovation in Asia-Pacific and local energy innovation partnerships. Nuclear energy organizational plans for Taiwan are introduced in association with the (STS) approach due to comparable socioeconomic dynamics that can deeply influence science and technology enterprises and Taiwanese localities, thereby offering objective participation. In both Japanese and Taiwanese nuclear regulatory cases, this technical account indicates the build-up of communication systems and a regional development framework that has been reformed progressively, but nevertheless shows an increased tendency to classify promotional learning networks through safety and security schemes intertwined with nuclear energy transitions worldwide. 

The Battle of Brandy Station occurred on June 9, 1863. It was the largest cavalry engagement ever to take place in the United States, with just over 20,000 participants. From the opening shots at Beverly Ford, to the final charge on Fleetwood Heights, the Laurel Brigade was in the thick of the fight. This book is a user’s guide for visiting and studying the Brandy Station Battlefield while touring sites associated with the Laurel Brigade. Maps and photographs produced in chronological order will assist readers who follow the line of march from the Shenandoah Valley through Culpeper County, Virginia, and across the field of Brandy Station with the most storied brigade of Confederate Cavalry. Photographs of key commanders, artifacts, and locations on the battlefield will bring the stories of these brave soldiers to life.

Hijab: Word of God or Word of Man? is the most comprehensive and exhaustive study of the subject of the Islamic veil to date. According to Muslim authorities, the Islamic veil is a religious obligation. For them, Muslim women who fail to wear the hijab commit a major sin that merits punishment in hell and even eternal damnation. Since the rise of Islamist movements in the twentieth century, some Muslims have gone as far as to mandate fines, imprisonment, physical punishment, rape, and even death for young girls and women who wear so-called “bad hijab,” or who fail to veil. What does the Qur’an really say regarding women’s dress? What does the hadith literature of Islam teach? How did Muslim women dress throughout history? What impact did culture have on the process? What moral and ethical conclusions can we draw regarding the rules governing women’s clothing? These are the questions that are answered in this seminal study.

The Recollections of Sir James Bacon, a leading light in the evolution of English law during the 19th century, casts an unexpectedly amusing and high-spirited light on turbulent times. Celebrated in his maturity as a witty judge whose decisions were rarely challenged, he was born in humble circumstances, one of ten children. His Recollections describe a happy and industrious, albeit Dickensian, childhood that began with leaving school for work at age twelve and ended with him enshrined as one of highest officials in the land. Enterprising and gifted, Sir James’s story carries us through his early writings and journalism, through his legal career, to his arrival at the pinnacle of government. Sir James also chronicled the colorful panoply of British society in his times: social and political crises, friends imprisoned for gambling debts, travels to Europe in the era of reaction and revolution, the celebrated legal cases he witnessed, and the fascinating Britons he knew. This fresh account, published after 150 years in the family archive, is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Britain, the evolution of its unparalleled legal tradition, and the extraordinary figures who made it possible.

Sleepless Nights: The Faults and Failings of Love is an inquiry into the cultural and psychological forces at work in our most intimate relationships. Romanticized and theorized throughout all ages, love remains the paradigm of human experience, the one aspect of life that could redeem all the suffering and disappointment to which we are otherwise heir. And yet it too often forms part of that very suffering itself. In this daring and reflective book, Stuart Walton invites the reader to check into a love hotel with a difference. Instead of selling rooms by the hour, this one offers a luxurious vacation from everyday reality, but in each of its public areas and in its guestrooms, a different scenario is unfolding that relates to the conduct of romantic liaisons in actuality, their momentary splendors, and the crashing and burning to which so many of them are subject. With help from philosophers and musicians through the ages, we find our way to a clear-sighted and honest assessment of the pitfalls and trapdoors with which all love, however ideally conceived, is furnished.

How should we interpret the Bible in light of the latest biblical research and archaeology? One day in the Spring of 2009, an exhausted technician realized he had made a colossal mistake. Part of a team of archaeologists, mathematicians, physicists who were on a high-tech quest to unlock a millennia-old secret, concealed in a few written documents from the First Temple Period (1000-587 B.C.E.), he had been tasked with photographing pottery fragments from a Judahite fortress in Arad, in the Negev desert. But as he looked at the photographs, he saw that he had mistakenly photographed the wrong side of the shards—the side that appears to be blank. Staring at the infrared images he had taken, Michael jumped from his chair: the seemingly blank shard in fact had four lines of what looked like graffiti. Suddenly, archaeologists across the Holy Land where able to identify vast amounts of writing. This led to the realization that literacy in ancient Israel was far more extensive than anyone had imagined—a finding that suggests that part of the Bible was probably already composed in the eighth century B.C.E., at about the same time, scholars believe, that Homer´s Iliad was compiled. This discovery in the Negev was only one of many vital findings made possible by applying the latest scientific methods in Biblical research. Ancient DNA, geo-archaeology, residue analysis, radiocarbon, and climate analysis has considerably changed what we know about the past. As a result, the Biblical narratives are being revaluated. This book will tell the story of how those and other technologies are transforming our understanding of the Bible and the cultures that created it.

Some scholars of Islam have argued that slavery and concubinage are permissible according to the Qur’an and the teachings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad. When faced with dissenting views on the disputed subject of the legitimacy of slavery in Islam, they often respond with a loaded question and a theological trap: “Did the Prophet Muhammad commit a grave moral wrong?” Others advance moral relativism. Georgetown University’s Jonathan Brown, for example, controversially maintained that “slavery is wrong,” but added the disclaimer that “as a Muslim myself, I cannot condemn it as grossly, intrinsically immoral across space and time. To do so would be to condemn the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad and God’s law as morally compromised.” As Dr. John Andrew Morrow makes clear in Islam & Slavery, there is not a single verse in the Qur’an that commands slavery. Slavery is neither an article of faith nor is it a religious obligation. In fact, the Qur’an encourages and even requires Muslims to emancipate enslaved people. As far as the exponents of Islam’s spiritual, moral, ethical, and egalitarian tradition are concerned, the Qur’an, the Prophet, and Islam introduced a system that would reform the practice of slavery and abolish it entirely and forever. As God asks in the Qur’an: “What will make you know what the steep path is? It is the freeing of a slave.”

Chris Heitzman’s innovative book looks beyond the first principles of business and considers ways you may not have thought of to build on the basics to elevate your performance from merely good to the next level. It will be an essential guide for start-ups, seasoned business leaders, and employees looking to be better at business.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1904, George Balanchine was the 20th century’s towering figure of classical ballet. Coming to America in 1933, Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, where he hired the Danish-born Peter Martins as a dancer and, later, as a choreographer. Balanchine and Me is dedicated to Martins’s profound artistic relationship with George Balanchine, who taught him a new, freer style of dance, and ultimately entrusted Martins with the future of the New York City Ballet, which Martins went on to lead for 35 years. This proved to be an inspired choice as Martins led the company to new heights, strengthened it financially, and initiated many innovative new programs. Peter Martins’ insights and anecdotes of working closely with Balanchine are historically important and often highly dramatic. Balanchine and Me is an indispensable resource to anyone interested in dance and the cultural universe of New York City.

The theory and praxis of ecofeminism has barely been investigated in an Indian context. Ecofeminism is an inclusive theory and provides an intersectional study of feminism, ecocriticism, and literature. Ecofeminism and Indian Women Writing in English unearths the sensibility of Indian women writings through the lens of ecofeminism. This book gives all the required details about ecofeminism, major movements and ecofeminist theories, in both the Indian as well as Western perspectives. It will help the readers understand the discourse of ecofeminism. The reader will get a thorough understanding on how to critically examine an ecofeminist element in a particular text. The book’s main objective is to re(store) the cultural heritage of India against its colonial history that had mis(interpreted) the environmental ethics of Indian philosophy, affinity of women with nature and animals. The so-called developmental models of post-modern era will be beneficial only when they will focus on mutual sustainability of man and nature.

This book offered to the reader’s attention is an ethnographic study devoted to the traditional pottery of Yakutia. The author, A. A. Savvin, collected materials for the book during field research in 1939–1941, when ceramic tableware had largely already lost its former role in the household way of the Yakuts. But the skills for its manufacture were still preserved in certain localities. Savvin managed to document the last “living” evidence of a craft that had a centuries-old history and established traditions. It is noteworthy that the research conducted by Savvin was a scientific project in the modern sense of the term. It was carefully planned and executed in accordance with a pre-written program, which is also included in this edition. The sources of information were not only direct observations of the working processes of the production of ceramic tableware but also conversations-interviews with potters, memoirs of representatives of the older generation. A special layer of research consisted of materials of folklore, folk beliefs, and customs related to pottery.

The Opium Factory of Ghazipur has a history all its own. Like most other colonial enterprises, it was developed to further colonial mercantile and imperial interests. Ghazipore, as it was known in British India, was the headquarters of the Benaras opium agency, which included almost the whole of the then-United Provinces. Directed and driven by metropolitan capital, the opium factory’s success signaled the rise of colonial India as a major exporter of raw opium. Nevertheless, the opium factory was not simply a site of production of “provision” opium; it was where metropolitan capital and imperial science and technology intertwined to ensure the vitality of a colonial establishment. Technology was not everything, however. Raising the standard of opium manufacturing required the services of the “opium chemist,” who became vital to the efficacy of the entire operation. Colonial research focused on the extraction of alkaloids to meet the growing demand of medicinal opium and its imports to England during and after World War II. From a site of manufacture of crude raw opium, the factory evolved into a modern pharmaceutical concern that was totally redesigned and reequipped. Renamed the “Government Opium and Alkaloid Works,” some elements of continuity render this 200-year old monument a legacy embodying a powerful narrative of how “opium made the world go round.” This work is an attempt to revisit and uncover the many trajectories of the Ghazipur opium factory, which still remains a site of production in the twenty-first century.