Anthem Press

This book explores the interdisciplinary pathways that leading environmental psychologists have taken to become educators, researchers, consultants, and professionals in this highly applied and growing field. Environmental psychology examines the transactions between people and the built and natural settings in which they inhabit. Despite this broad scope, few direct avenues to careers in environmental psychology exist, and students must forge varied and individualized routes to becoming scholars and practitioners in this important area of study.
The aim of the book is to serve as an inspiring supplemental resource for students who wish to know more about how leading thinkers established themselves as environmental psychologists. In each chapter, the author describes their inspirations, decisions about undergraduate and graduate courses, particular schools, and professional connections that have made a difference to their careers in environmental psychology. Many undergraduate students are disappointed with the lack of a clear path to becoming an environmental psychologist. A strong need exists for a resource like this book for students (and for others who may be looking to add to their careers) to understand how to gain experience and credentials in the field in different ways. Readers may also be bolstered in their attitude about choosing a niche field like environmental psychology and decide to stick with it if they read the success stories published in this book by leading thinkers who have taken varied and atypical approaches to becoming a professional environmental psychologist.
The book’s chapters are organized in a manner that shows readers how one may come from many different backgrounds and integrate environmental psychology into their education or professional realm. Part I contains chapters in which authors write about how they approached environmental psychology from architecture, urban planning, and geography, while Part II includes chapters from authors who found environmental psychology via cognitive psychology, clinical practice, and neuroscience. Part III has chapters from authors writing from the health sciences and social ecology, while Part IV contains chapters by authors inspired to become environmental psychologists through a general appreciation of nature and eco-conscious living in a variety of settings. Those who find a way to make environmental psychology part of their career are often very passionate individuals who are keen to describe their pathway to doing what they love with the hope that others will follow. This book is likely to advance that outcome

This book is a personal account of a medical education that began in 1966. Being a medical student and doctor was (and still is) a blend of absurdities, frustrations and joys. The curriculum was shot through with holes in the 1960s, and it still is. A hospital is no place to learn about how ill people live their lives.

This book is a personal account of a medical education that began in 1966. Being a medical student and doctor was (and still is) a blend of absurdities, frustrations and joys. The curriculum was shot through with holes in the 1960s, and it still is. A hospital is no place to learn about how ill people live their lives.

Chapter One, “Extracting the Essence: Toward Machine Translation of Literature,” rashly inquires whether artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation (MT) may eventually be applied to literary translation. Such translation strives to somehow preserve the essence of a work while carrying it over to a different language and culture and giving it rebirth there. To recognize that essence, the translator must accurately capture the meaning of the original; appreciate its metaphors, connotations, register, references, and other abstract or associative factors; and choose among available target language expressions by exercising aesthetic judgments. Computers, however, presently remain incapable of such accuracy, abstraction, and judgment. We revisit these shortfalls in light of developments in MT and AI. We tease apart several separable aspects of literary translation – literal meaning, meter, rhyme, and the abovementioned associative elements – with reference to arguments about Vladimir Nabokov’s hyperliteral translation of Pushkin’s poem Eugene Onegin. We accordingly propose analysis of translation as an optimization problem: because it will often prove impossible to perfectly convey all aspects or essences of a text in a single translation, the translator must search for some optimal compromise. Then, we discuss several avenues for improvement in MT which may help to extract these aspects of a text’s essence – first, those which may enhance textually grounded MT (i.e., MT trained on text only), leading to delivery of high-quality literal translations; and second, those related to future perceptually grounded MT (i.e., MT trained on simulated perception, e.g. of audiovisual input, as well as text), which might extract more abstract or associative elements of a text. We suggest that recognition of perceptually grounded categories will prove central to the essence extraction sought by translators. As this categorization improves, MT should increasingly support literary, and thus cultural, preservation. However, artificial aesthetic judgments will await artificial emotion.
• Chapter Two, going beyond Chapter One’s lookahead toward artificial translation of literature, asks whether an AI might eventually gain the ability to actually create works of literary art. We again take as exemplar the hyperconscious art of Vladimir Nabokov. To be sure, the suggestion that artworks combining Nabokov’s superhuman intricacy and wholly human depth could be authored by a collection of switches would horrify this transcendent author and does seem to fly in the face of everything that is most human. But while we are concerned with what machines might do, our more fundamental concern is to understand the human thoughts and feelings to which machines might aspire, and this understanding, promising to bridge the gap between C.P. Snow’s two cultures, is finally coming within reach. In our literary context, Nabokov scholarship provides many specific examples – in Ada: Or Ardor, Pale Fire, and other works – of the author’s hyperconscious artistic techniques: glorying in memory; repetition to establish themes and motifs; allusion to wide-ranging works and facts; intricate puzzle posing; and relentlessly careful structuring at multiple levels of the text. Here, we consider several such techniques, speculating about the extent to which current or coming AI capabilities could approach them. In Section One, to clarify assumptions, I set forth my own current conceptions of computation, consciousness, feeling, language, and thinking, providing in the process a somewhat prejudiced AI primer for the computer-shy humanist. In Section Two, I apply to Nabokov’s prodigious work my understanding of these aspects of mind. Subsections focus on self-awareness, perception, memory, and puzzles.
• In Chapter Three, focus is upon the recent successes of generative AI – of large language models (LLMs) for text and diffusion models for images and videos. These are yielding an explosion in AI capabilities, many of them “emergent,” meaning “largely unexplained.” I speculate about the underlying knowledge and procedures acquired through the current methods and their likely successors, with focus on linguistic skills and the implications for artificial translation and literary composition. The chapter proposes original definitions of intelligence, language, and other crucial elements of cognition and culminates in an assortment of striking demos.

Good Trouble will show the strong connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland – specifically the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march on the 1969 Belfast to Derry march through oral history, based on numerous interviews of events leading up to both marches and afterwards. This is close to the author’s heart as both of his parents marched to integrate lunch counters and movie theatres in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1963 as college students. His mother was at the 1963 March to Washington where Martin Luther King gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
Award winning author Julieann Campbell (On Bloody Sunday) wrote the introduction for Good Trouble, looking back at her times growing up in Derry, in the heart of the Catholic Civil Rights Movement. Jones travelled to Dublin, Belfast and Derry to conduct interviews for the book. In all, he did fifteen interviews with people who were involved in the movement in Northern Ireland (including Billy McVeigh – featured in the BAFTA winning documentary, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland) and in the United States (including Richard Smiley and Dr. Sheyann Webb-Christburg – both were at Bloody Sunday in Alabama and on the Selma to Montgomery march among others). Jones was also able to talk with Eamonn McCann (he took part in the Belfast to Derry march in 1969; he was the John Lewis of Northern Ireland).
Unlike most books on Northern Ireland, this goes into detail about the connection and the influence between the two movements. Also, most focus on Bloody Sunday and not the pivotal incidents at Burntollet Bridge and the Battle of the Bogside. Building off of unprecedented access and interviews with participants in both movements, Jones crafts a gripping and moving account of these pivotal years for both countries.

Chapter One, “Extracting the Essence: Toward Machine Translation of Literature,” rashly inquires whether artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation (MT) may eventually be applied to literary translation. Such translation strives to somehow preserve the essence of a work while carrying it over to a different language and culture and giving it rebirth there. To recognize that essence, the translator must accurately capture the meaning of the original; appreciate its metaphors, connotations, register, references, and other abstract or associative factors; and choose among available target language expressions by exercising aesthetic judgments. Computers, however, presently remain incapable of such accuracy, abstraction, and judgment. We revisit these shortfalls in light of developments in MT and AI. We tease apart several separable aspects of literary translation – literal meaning, meter, rhyme, and the abovementioned associative elements – with reference to arguments about Vladimir Nabokov’s hyperliteral translation of Pushkin’s poem Eugene Onegin. We accordingly propose analysis of translation as an optimization problem: because it will often prove impossible to perfectly convey all aspects or essences of a text in a single translation, the translator must search for some optimal compromise. Then, we discuss several avenues for improvement in MT which may help to extract these aspects of a text’s essence – first, those which may enhance textually grounded MT (i.e., MT trained on text only), leading to delivery of high-quality literal translations; and second, those related to future perceptually grounded MT (i.e., MT trained on simulated perception, e.g. of audiovisual input, as well as text), which might extract more abstract or associative elements of a text. We suggest that recognition of perceptually grounded categories will prove central to the essence extraction sought by translators. As this categorization improves, MT should increasingly support literary, and thus cultural, preservation. However, artificial aesthetic judgments will await artificial emotion.
• Chapter Two, going beyond Chapter One’s lookahead toward artificial translation of literature, asks whether an AI might eventually gain the ability to actually create works of literary art. We again take as exemplar the hyperconscious art of Vladimir Nabokov. To be sure, the suggestion that artworks combining Nabokov’s superhuman intricacy and wholly human depth could be authored by a collection of switches would horrify this transcendent author and does seem to fly in the face of everything that is most human. But while we are concerned with what machines might do, our more fundamental concern is to understand the human thoughts and feelings to which machines might aspire, and this understanding, promising to bridge the gap between C.P. Snow’s two cultures, is finally coming within reach. In our literary context, Nabokov scholarship provides many specific examples – in Ada: Or Ardor, Pale Fire, and other works – of the author’s hyperconscious artistic techniques: glorying in memory; repetition to establish themes and motifs; allusion to wide-ranging works and facts; intricate puzzle posing; and relentlessly careful structuring at multiple levels of the text. Here, we consider several such techniques, speculating about the extent to which current or coming AI capabilities could approach them. In Section One, to clarify assumptions, I set forth my own current conceptions of computation, consciousness, feeling, language, and thinking, providing in the process a somewhat prejudiced AI primer for the computer-shy humanist. In Section Two, I apply to Nabokov’s prodigious work my understanding of these aspects of mind. Subsections focus on self-awareness, perception, memory, and puzzles.
• In Chapter Three, focus is upon the recent successes of generative AI – of large language models (LLMs) for text and diffusion models for images and videos. These are yielding an explosion in AI capabilities, many of them “emergent,” meaning “largely unexplained.” I speculate about the underlying knowledge and procedures acquired through the current methods and their likely successors, with focus on linguistic skills and the implications for artificial translation and literary composition. The chapter proposes original definitions of intelligence, language, and other crucial elements of cognition and culminates in an assortment of striking demos.

Good Trouble will show the strong connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland – specifically the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march on the 1969 Belfast to Derry march through oral history, based on numerous interviews of events leading up to both marches and afterwards. This is close to the author’s heart as both of his parents marched to integrate lunch counters and movie theatres in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1963 as college students. His mother was at the 1963 March to Washington where Martin Luther King gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
Award winning author Julieann Campbell (On Bloody Sunday) wrote the introduction for Good Trouble, looking back at her times growing up in Derry, in the heart of the Catholic Civil Rights Movement. Jones travelled to Dublin, Belfast and Derry to conduct interviews for the book. In all, he did fifteen interviews with people who were involved in the movement in Northern Ireland (including Billy McVeigh – featured in the BAFTA winning documentary, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland) and in the United States (including Richard Smiley and Dr. Sheyann Webb-Christburg – both were at Bloody Sunday in Alabama and on the Selma to Montgomery march among others). Jones was also able to talk with Eamonn McCann (he took part in the Belfast to Derry march in 1969; he was the John Lewis of Northern Ireland).
Unlike most books on Northern Ireland, this goes into detail about the connection and the influence between the two movements. Also, most focus on Bloody Sunday and not the pivotal incidents at Burntollet Bridge and the Battle of the Bogside. Building off of unprecedented access and interviews with participants in both movements, Jones crafts a gripping and moving account of these pivotal years for both countries.

Hidden Heroes offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK to describe the average citizen who navigates the complexities of daily life with quiet dedication for their work and country.
The anthology is divided into three thematic sections—Identities, Communities, and Power—showcasing a diverse array of characters and settings. Readers will encounter factory managers juggling work and family responsibilities, neighbors bonding during friendly outings, university deans resisting corruption, and diasporic Koreans in Japan grappling with questions of belonging. Through these relatable human experiences, the stories challenge simplistic notions of North Korean society and reveal a more nuanced reality.
While elements of propaganda and state ideology are present, as is typical in all officially sanctioned DPRK literature, the focus in the text is rather on the personal struggles, relationships, and aspirations of the characters. By highlighting these universal themes, Hidden Heroes invites readers to look beyond geopolitical tensions and connect with the shared humanity of North Koreans. For anyone seeking to expand their understanding of this often-misunderstood country, this anthology provides an engaging and thought-provoking literary journey into the everyday lives of North Korean citizens.

Hidden Heroes offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK to describe the average citizen who navigates the complexities of daily life with quiet dedication for their work and country.
The anthology is divided into three thematic sections—Identities, Communities, and Power—showcasing a diverse array of characters and settings. Readers will encounter factory managers juggling work and family responsibilities, neighbors bonding during friendly outings, university deans resisting corruption, and diasporic Koreans in Japan grappling with questions of belonging. Through these relatable human experiences, the stories challenge simplistic notions of North Korean society and reveal a more nuanced reality.
While elements of propaganda and state ideology are present, as is typical in all officially sanctioned DPRK literature, the focus in the text is rather on the personal struggles, relationships, and aspirations of the characters. By highlighting these universal themes, Hidden Heroes invites readers to look beyond geopolitical tensions and connect with the shared humanity of North Koreans. For anyone seeking to expand their understanding of this often-misunderstood country, this anthology provides an engaging and thought-provoking literary journey into the everyday lives of North Korean citizens.

Gayle DeLong was a well-known activist in the autism community, the ‘Warrior Mom’ of two autistic daughters. She worked closely with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on vaccine injury issues. This book is a record (based largely on her diaries) of her happy marriage to Jonathan Rose, from their first date in 1994 to her untimely death from breast cancer in January 2022.

Love in the Age of Autism does not sugarcoat the stresses and heartbreak of raising autistic children: it is more honest about that than most other books on the subject. But it is also an inspiring love story, which can help autism parents find profound joys in spite of all the pains. It offers practical advice and models for sharing the burdens and pleasures of life, based on a strong sense of family values. Many autism moms give up their careers to care for their children, but Gayle was a determined professional woman, and her arrangements with Jonathan allowed her to continue working.

She also refused to give up one of her favourite sports – sex. This book frankly (and with an earthy sense of humour) illustrates how autism parents can continue to enjoy passionate, monogamous physical love – and it also explains how to provide sex education for autistic girls (who can easily be taken advantage of). In this book, the girl dies in the end, as she often does in love stories, but the tale is intensely romantic and life-affirming.

Renu’s Recipes: Delicious and Diabetic-Friendly Dishes
Discover a culinary journey where health meets indulgence with Renu’s Recipes. This all-in-one cookbook is your gateway to diabetic-friendly cuisine that doesn’t compromise on flavour or simplicity. Perfect for home cooks of all levels, this book curates a diverse selection of easy-to-make dishes from various global cuisines.
Key Features:
Diabetic-Friendly: Savour delectable dishes designed to meet the dietary needs of persons with diabetes, packed with flavours they crave but thought they couldn’t have.
Comprehensive and Accessible: From breakfast to desserts, including mains, sides, salads, snacks and special categories such as recipes for grandchildren.
Learn and Explore: Master diverse cooking techniques such as baking, steaming and stir-frying. Discover a variety of herbs and enjoy wholesome salads that make every meal nutritious.
Benefits:
Unlock the joy of cooking with recipes that are both healthy and enticing. Renu’s Recipes empowers you to bring the richness of home-made meals to your table, ensuring every bite is as nourishing as it is delicious.
Why Choose Renu’s Recipes?
This cookbook is your go-to resource for achieving culinary excellence while prioritising health. Whether you are managing diabetes or simply embracing a healthier lifestyle, Renu Sood’s expertly crafted recipes promise to elevate your cooking experience.
Join Renu Sood on a journey of flavour and wellness. Embrace wholesome cuisine and enjoy the satisfaction of home-made goodness with every meal.

Embark on a new exploration of power dynamics through the book. The book challenges traditional notions of power, introducing a contemporary model that empowers ordinary individuals to wield power. Delving into the intricacies of human behavior, it presents a compelling contrast to the Machiavellian approach, providing readers with actionable insights and strategic principles to navigate and thrive in complex social landscapes.
As the narrative unfolds, engaging stories illustrate the transformative potential of the new power model. Ordinary individuals become protagonists in their journey to gain power, showcasing the applicability of these principles in real-life scenarios. The book skillfully weaves together theory and practicality, offering a roadmap for readers to enhance their personal and professional lives by embracing a more authentic and impactful approach to power.
The book is a refreshing perspective that challenges traditional norms, providing a compass to navigate the evolving terrain of power. Whether in business, relationships, or personal growth, this paradigm shift promises to empower individuals, fostering a new era where ideology and principles take center stage.

Embark on a new exploration of power dynamics through the book. The book challenges traditional notions of power, introducing a contemporary model that empowers ordinary individuals to wield power. Delving into the intricacies of human behavior, it presents a compelling contrast to the Machiavellian approach, providing readers with actionable insights and strategic principles to navigate and thrive in complex social landscapes.
As the narrative unfolds, engaging stories illustrate the transformative potential of the new power model. Ordinary individuals become protagonists in their journey to gain power, showcasing the applicability of these principles in real-life scenarios. The book skillfully weaves together theory and practicality, offering a roadmap for readers to enhance their personal and professional lives by embracing a more authentic and impactful approach to power.
The book is a refreshing perspective that challenges traditional norms, providing a compass to navigate the evolving terrain of power. Whether in business, relationships, or personal growth, this paradigm shift promises to empower individuals, fostering a new era where ideology and principles take center stage.

This book draws together an oral and visual art history of a country that is extremely rich in culture and history but that is often overlooked or underestimated. By observing the country’s history and visual culture and the artistic practices of select artists from the UAE, it considers the development of contemporary art from the UAE. This will increase accessibility to art by Emiratis and underline its wider relevance.
There is a dearth of literature on contemporary art by Emiratis, and this may be one of the reasons contemporary art from the UAE is under-represented globally. In order to help the reader better understand art from the UAE, this book traces the country’s historical make-up, its culture and contemporary art tradition through oral histories based on interviews with a wide variety of artists and people working in the art industries. It also explores this development using global art discourses that are relevant to art produced in the UAE today.
This book also considers how cultural and artistic identities are formed and explores the political and socio-economic interests in the country that have stimulated art practices and appreciation. For so long, an exclusively Western narrative has dominated Art, and popular media portrays the Gulf’s accomplishments in development and modernity with suspicion. Thanks to the UAE’s espousal of the Internet and online communities over the last decade, this book is particularly timely. Following the pandemic, a wider understanding of global art discourses, values and perceptions are increasingly welcomed. Art from the UAE bridges the local and the global, giving a voice and a visual presence to a country’s contemporary art tradition that has been widely overlooked.
The UAE has a distinct visual arts tradition that relates to a broader and inclusive understanding of art centered on development and change.

This book draws together an oral and visual art history of a country that is extremely rich in culture and history but that is often overlooked or underestimated. By observing the country’s history and visual culture and the artistic practices of select artists from the UAE, it considers the development of contemporary art from the UAE. This will increase accessibility to art by Emiratis and underline its wider relevance.
There is a dearth of literature on contemporary art by Emiratis, and this may be one of the reasons contemporary art from the UAE is under-represented globally. In order to help the reader better understand art from the UAE, this book traces the country’s historical make-up, its culture and contemporary art tradition through oral histories based on interviews with a wide variety of artists and people working in the art industries. It also explores this development using global art discourses that are relevant to art produced in the UAE today.
This book also considers how cultural and artistic identities are formed and explores the political and socio-economic interests in the country that have stimulated art practices and appreciation. For so long, an exclusively Western narrative has dominated Art, and popular media portrays the Gulf’s accomplishments in development and modernity with suspicion. Thanks to the UAE’s espousal of the Internet and online communities over the last decade, this book is particularly timely. Following the pandemic, a wider understanding of global art discourses, values and perceptions are increasingly welcomed. Art from the UAE bridges the local and the global, giving a voice and a visual presence to a country’s contemporary art tradition that has been widely overlooked.
The UAE has a distinct visual arts tradition that relates to a broader and inclusive understanding of art centered on development and change.

A short, but highly relevant, history of the Cold War, 1919–1994, and its significance today. The 75-year Cold War pitted the Anglo-American world against the Soviet Bloc, with China, the ultimate prize. Chapter A will examine the creation of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, the end of World War I, 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty, and the lead-in to World War II. Chapter B will examine the Bolshevik revolution, 1919 Comintern creation, 1924 Soviet Bloc creation, the tumultuous 1930s, World War II, plus Soviet competition with America and England through 1949. Chapter C will discuss a China torn between West and East, finally joining the Soviet bloc in 1949 but by 1979 rejoining the West, and cooperating to destroy the USSR from 1979 to 1994, when the final Russian troops left Germany. In the Conclusion, the Cold War’s impact and strategic significance today will be discussed.
From 1979 to 1994, the U.S. government attempted to use its relations with China to exert diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on the USSR. Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s, China began to import high-technology equipment from the United States to fill key sensor and weapon roles. With the end of the Cold War, in particular, the Soviet navy was eliminated almost overnight as the world’s second most powerful naval force; Russia’s Pacific fleet is now so poorly supplied and equipped that it rarely leaves port.
This unprecedented reversal of fortunes has created a maritime vacuum throughout East Asia that China hopes to fill. In recent years, however, the former Sino-U.S. cooperation has changed as rising Chinese-sponsored tensions in the South China Sea have led to many possible points of alliance between Beijing and Moscow. Joint Sino-Russian Naval Exercises are just one example. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping appear to once again be combining against the Anglo-American-led West. Will history “rhyme” as Mark Twain says, allowing the Anglo-American West to win Cold War II, or will events turn out differently this time.

Former candidate in the race for his Party’s designation, Ron DeSantis is a rising star of the GOP. Despite his withdrawal from the tense campaign trail against Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, he is one of America’s best-known governors with a promising future.

The governor of Florida showcases an outstanding academic career, Yale then Harvard, and an exemplary military record. His consistency reassures both middle-class voters and big donors. Spokesman for the anti-woke culture war in the United States, he benefits from a strong republican and far-right electoral basis. A serious man with a clear vision on what he wants to do, he advocates deregulation, and the reduction of federal taxes and public debt.

Florida is the American dream, the blueprint for America in the next century, and DeSantis believes it is replicable across the country. Among his other assets are his youth, his image of a model family father, and his secret weapon—his wife Casey DeSantis. She allows him to soften his image of a calculating politician.

Aged 45, DeSantis therefore brings a breath of fresh air to the Republicans. He is a character to follow in Washington and in Florida in the next decade. We are witnessing the emergence of a new strongman in America.

In a community hospital in suburban Chicago run by Catholic nuns, surgeons performed an operation never done in the world before. The team at the Little Company of Mary Hospital led by Richard Lawler transplanted a kidney in 1950 from a just-deceased woman into the abdominal cavity of a 44-year-old woman.

Critics in the medical community called the operation irresponsible because immunosuppressant drugs that prevent the rejection of a transplanted organ had yet to be developed. Some Catholic clergy considered the transplant sacrilegious because it “desecrated” the sacred body of a dead woman when her kidney was removed. Yet the nuns who ran the hospital blessed the procedure.

Lawler said time alone would judge its success. Seventy years later, that transplant is largely lost to history—overshadowed by remarkable transplant surgeries and medical breakthroughs that have made life-saving kidney and other organ transplants almost routine. The book throws light on a seminal moment in medical history, offering new insights into the early days of human organ transplantation while also looking at the current national kidney crisis.

Warren Elofson’s interest in the cattle business stems from years of first-hand experience ranching and farming in western Canada. His interest in Africa originated in the summer of 2018 when he hired a young man named Jonah Weyessa to help him shingle a roof on a “cabin” in Windermere, British Columbia, Canada. As they worked, Weyessa told him all about his life growing up in Kibera, Kenya, one of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous city slums. Elofson was most intrigued by the fact that his young workmate remembered his experiences in Kibera with considerable fondness. “Yes,” he said when asked, “we were poor, but we lived in a community where people of different religions and cultures pulled together. I played in the streets with other kids and when one of our parents couldn’t be around or didn’t have food one day other parents stepped in and helped out.” “But weren’t you scared,” Elofson naively asked, “you know, wasn’t it dangerous there?” “No, it wasn’t” came the reply, “not at all, because in our little part of the community there were always two or three adults watching out for us. I felt safer there than I did later on in the first North American city we stayed in. 

Using a combination of personal experience and stories passed down to him, Jonah works with Warren to help textualize the realities of living in Nairobi’s poverty-stricken region, Kibera, one of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous city slums in Slum City Africa: “A Very Bad Place With Good Teachings”.

In the course of its unique exploration, Spirituality for the Independent Thinker combines themes from three related fields: quantum physics, theology, and philosophy. The result is a guide for independent thinkers who seek to do justice to the combination of ideas and feelings that generate spirituality.

Exploring themes of metaphysics and fundamental “ontology”—the philosophic study of being-as-such—the book singles out a constant structure of experience that we take completely for granted because it contains the reality we know: the experience of now. This is a structure that flows and it constitutes a phenomenon that scientists cannot understand or subject to experiments. They lack the standpoint from which to probe it because they are in it.

Spirituality for the Independent Thinker helps readers to navigate conceptions that are open to them as they think in an independent manner about religious issues. It confronts the darker side of reality with tough-minded candor, while offering a source of inspiration that withstands any realistic challenge: the ghostliness of the power that upholds us every single moment.

Christian Lehmann brings his experience as a musicologist, singer and academic to this fascinating journey through the origins of music and its role in human development, culture and society. The opening section examines the first stirrings of music in animals, birds and fish before moving on to humans in prehistoric times, and how musical sounds are an integral part of family bonding and social gatherings.

The second section follows the evolution of musical culture from ancient Greece and the educational theories of Pythagoras and Plato, as well as first great musical landmark in 1000 AD, when Guido di Arezzo devised the stave and music could now be written down instead of just being passed on verbally. The author examines the relationship between ‘art’ and folk music, and goes on to explore the flowering of secular music, the development of conservatoires and the democratisation of music with the rise of the middle classes and salon music. In 1877 came the second great landmark: Edison’s invention of the phonograph. Now for the first time music could be repeated and preserved, listened to anywhere, alone or in company.

The third section provides a critique of the decline of singing in our society and explores how we have become a race of listeners rather than music-makers. It considers our personal reactions to music – emotional, intellectual, subconscious and therapeutic – and the effects of the present-day ubiquitous ‘muzak’, which has made music a part of everyday life and has made it independent not just of the performer but of the listener as well.

Few books on music are as rewarding as this one. Technical terms are clearly described in a way that appeals to both the musically well-informed and the musically inexperienced. Well-chosen examples and amusing asides help to make this a highly informative and extremely readable book – a must for anyone interested in the development of music and how integral it is to the human condition.

This work of narrative non-fiction deals with common questions and doubts people have about vaccines, using very accessible, conversational, non-technical language. 

If you have ever thought any of the following, “Vaccines are not for me, I'm young and healthy and don't need them”; “I rather develop natural immunity to infections, without vaccination”; “Immunisation is a personal choice, it only affects me, so I'll take the risk” then this book is for you.  You would also enjoy this book if you have ever heard people articulate these beliefs and you couldn't quite put your finger on why these are common misunderstandings.  Throughout the book the author uses simple analogies, real-life examples and relatable stories, to explain common questions and objections people have about vaccines and vaccination. The text is wonderfully complemented by original and funny cartoons which bring home the main points, in a memorable and humorous way. 

This book is a collection of honest conversations and discussions he's had over the years with people who have doubts and hesitations about the contents, purpose, and safety of vaccines.

After years of relative indifference, space exploration has caught the public’s imagination once again. However, this enthusiasm may well hide a disturbing question: what if humankind is in fact bored with life on Earth? The end of the world has indeed arrived, but in an unexpected way. It can be described thus: man’s potential on Earth has been exhausted. We have discovered every piece of land, tried all sorts of political regimes, experienced all the forms of the arts and committed ourselves to all kinds of religious beliefs. Yet if we admit that the thirst for exploration and novelty is at the heart of human nature, we then have to confront the resulting question: can humanity survive the finitude of our world? Will we hold out long in this cloistered and domesticated Earth that has become so devoid of all mystery and adventure? Or will we die of boredom when the Earth will have become the biggest open-air zoo in the universe?

The consequences of our planet’s finiteness can already be perceived in our day-to-day experience: humans’ physical obsolescence, the decline of Eros, the epidemic of depression sweeping across the Western world and self-destructive tendencies that reveal an actual wish for the Deluge to happen, as if we wanted to recreate the clean slate we so yearn for. We must therefore find a way to break free from this looming trap. Part of the solution may lie above us, but the day when our technology can catapult us to a planet orbiting another star is considerably far off. One could consider that it matters little whether we are capable of colonizing space or not, as long as we have our humdrum lives to attend to here on Earth. But our human nature will not let this happen. We are wanderers, explorers, pioneers in all fields of life. 

The human race will therefore not be driven off our planet to escape meteorites or the depletion of natural resources, but to prevent our own mental and physical imprisonment. Knowing the world has nothing more to offer us is not merely a piece of information; it is a shattering reality to which our bodies and minds will react wildly and the biggest existential challenge humankind will have to face in the near future. By shedding light on this pervading worldwide mental condition, The End of the World and the Last God tries to raise awareness that the obstacles to interstellar expansion do not essentially lie in any technological limitation but in the demons and flaws we host in ourselves.

In “The Development of a Theory of Social Structure and Personality,” Melvin Kohn reexamines his 60-year inquiry––conducted across distinct cultures under radically different conditions––into the relationship between people’s location in the social order and their personality. The result of this reexamination is an important refinement of Kohn’s highly regarded theory on the relationship between social class, work and personality, adding key insights about the role of political intervention on personality to his scholarship.

Over the course of his career, Kohn and his collaborators––in the United States, Norway, East and West Germany, Japan, Poland, Ukraine and China––used groundbreaking empirical methodologies to understand the effect of social structure on personality. Beginning in mid-twentieth century America, Kohn established that for employed men and women, the most important aspect of social structure for personality was social status. Kohn confirmed and refined this insight over time and across distinct cultural, economic and changing political conditions. Whether in postwar America, East and West Germany, industrial Japan, Communist Poland or post-Soviet Ukraine, study after study demonstrated the primacy of social class and social stratification in determining people’s values and orientations.

This research also revealed interesting cross-national inconsistencies in people’s reactions to similar social conditions. These inconsistencies did not change the essential relationship of social class and stratification to personality, and repeatedly confirmed Kohn’s findings about the importance of occupational self-direction and substantive complexity on all aspects of personality. In “The Development of a Theory of Social Structure and Personality,” Kohn focuses on these inconsistencies. Based on insights derived from research conducted during the transition to privatization of urban China, Kohn identifies political intervention as the force that modifies, for better or for worse, but does not eliminate the dominant effect of class stratification and the opportunities they provide for self-direction at work on personality.

When experienced people who have been in a steady job for years are made redundant, coming to terms with today’s workplace is a major challenge. This challenge is even greater for those fresh out of college or university and who are looking to get their foot in the door. After all, the workplace is going through one of its most significant transitions in the past 100 years.

“How to Find Work in the 21st Century” explores this new world of work and suggests where the workplace is headed while providing successful and effective ways to sell and market yourself so you can find your place in today’s job market.

Learn to: –capitalize on what YOU have to offer.

–define your personal and career profile

–market yourself

–network

–navigate digital platforms

–master the art of the CV

–create your own job

–manage your own career

Narrative medicine is a growing field of research and teaching. It arises from an interdisciplinary interest in person-centered medicine and is regarded as a major innovation in the medical humanities. 

This anthology is the first of its kind which integrates chapters on legitimizing narrative medicine in education, practice and research on analyzing types of patient narratives and on studying interventions applying vulnerable or shared reading, creative writing, or Socratic dialogue as a means of rehabilitation and mental care. In her foreword, Rita Charon, who originally coined the term ‘narrative medicine’ recognizes this expansion of the field and name it ‘system narrative medicine’. 

The anthology is made up of four parts. The first describes narrative medicine as a diverse field. The second presents narrative medicine in the teaching of healthcare professionals. The third part provides examples of the application of narrative medicine in clinical practice, and the final part deals with narrative medicine in intervention research.

Companies that do not contribute to a better world do not have the right to exist. They need to focus on becoming a force for good. If focussed on making the world a better place profitability will follow. In February 2017, Kraft Heinz’s tried to buy Unilever for 135 billion euros. Unilever CEO Paul Polman frustrates the bid, he refuses to work for the benefit of a few billionaires. Companies must be a force for good and work for the billions of people who have nothing.

Polman is popular with governments and charitable organizations, but confidence among financial analysts and investors is thin. They are more interested in short-term sales projections; there is no place in their calculations for good deeds. But how sustainable is that in the long run?

His attempt to steer Unilever into a safe Dutch haven in order to escape Brexit and seek refuge from shareholders focused on short-term profits ultimately hits the rocks. Walking the line between making money and doing the right thing, Polman, more ‘priest’ than CEO, is too far ahead of his time.

The world is crying out for big businesses to address the major issues of our time, such as climate change. The Great Battle The Lonely Quest of Unilever's CEO Paul Polman is a compelling call to action for us all to rethink our behavior. This is the only way to save capitalism’s soul.

This course is designed to present and develop jazz arranging and compositional principles. In preparation for successful improvisation, composing and transcription, a wide range of theoretical topics are presented.
The stylistic considerations of jazz improvisation and composition require an extensive and working knowledge of jazz theory, and mastery of diatonic, bitonal, poly-tonal and atonal theoretical maximums and processes – including the refining of the [imitation] transcription process towards theoretical justification and conventional usage.

Artificial intelligence and robotics have defined and redefined work environments worldwide. Utilizing stories, news events, and academic research, the book highlights the new realities of business and leadership in the world of AI and provides meaningful insights to help executives and corporations manage and succeed.

The business and academic communities would find the book insights useful in understanding the basic notion of artificial intelligence and its impact on an organization’s success. The book discusses strategies that executives can use to best manage business in an AI environment. Written with an equally educational and fun approach, the book covers practical business strategies that will help managers succeed in an AI world.

Dante and the Night Journey articulates a psychological approach to the Commedia, based on the Jungian concept of the descent into the darkest possibilities of the self and of human nature, which is necessary for spiritual progress.  Different chapters explore Dante’s growth in the problematic areas of love, anger, and ambition, and draw analogies between his journey through purgatory and contemporary experiences of recovery.  The last chapter, “Identity in Paradise,” examines telepathic communication there in the light of Object Relations work on inter subjectivity.

 The book emphasizes Dante’s universality, and takes issue with the tendency among professional dantisti to read him exclusively in terms of the theology of his time.  I think it will be of particular use to those who teach Dante to undergraduates, allowing students to connect their reading with their own lives.  My hope is that the personal side of the book will also speak to those who have undergone their own night journeys, or embarked on a spiritual path.

This course is designed to present and develop jazz arranging and compositional principles. In preparation for successful improvisation, composing and transcription, a wide range of theoretical topics are presented.
The stylistic considerations of jazz improvisation and composition require an extensive and working knowledge of jazz theory, and mastery of diatonic, bitonal, poly-tonal and atonal theoretical maximums and processes – including the refining of the [imitation] transcription process towards theoretical justification and conventional usage.

Growing levels of education, increasing availability of capital, diversification and specialization of economic activities, and the numerous support options available to start a business has led to the creation of more and more micro and small businesses across Europe. But while the process of setting up a business is increasingly straightforward, keeping it going is much tougher. In normal times, business entry and business exit are natural processes, inherent to economic life. Yet, the number of bankruptcies peaked during the recent financial crisis. The Lisbon Partnership had identified the key role of overcoming the stigma of business failure as a strategy for growth and jobs.

There is a clear economic and social rationale in providing a second chance to failed entrepreneurs and helping them derive positive experiences from negative situations. First, businesses set up by restarters grow faster than those of first timers in terms of turnover and jobs created. The case studies of Ford, Hershey and Disney are instructive for young entrepreneurs in this matter.

Second, most of the time, the cause of a business failure is not the incompetence but external circumstances such as a slump in demand, financial crisis or rise of a new competitor. However, this professional failure is often confused with personal failure, and low self-esteem causes individuals to withdraw and retreat to safer employment options.

Third, it is accepted that a society does not generate innovation and productivity by steadfastly avoiding mistakes but rather by learning from them. Yet the culture of and incentive system in Europe does not reflect this.

Value of Failure is a comprehensive attempt to understand the various aspects of the phenomenon of business failure. It enables readers to understand business failure from the perspective of institutional theory; economic failure in the process of small business growth in the context of the shadow economy; Schumpeter’s theory of ‘creative destruction’ and the fear of failure; sustainable economic growth and development and system approach to failures and their impact on the enterprise operation.

Growing levels of education, increasing availability of capital, diversification and specialization of economic activities, and the numerous support options available to start a business has led to the creation of more and more micro and small businesses across Europe. But while the process of setting up a business is increasingly straightforward, keeping it going is much tougher. In normal times, business entry and business exit are natural processes, inherent to economic life. Yet, the number of bankruptcies peaked during the recent financial crisis. The Lisbon Partnership had identified the key role of overcoming the stigma of business failure as a strategy for growth and jobs.

There is a clear economic and social rationale in providing a second chance to failed entrepreneurs and helping them derive positive experiences from negative situations. First, businesses set up by restarters grow faster than those of first timers in terms of turnover and jobs created. The case studies of Ford, Hershey and Disney are instructive for young entrepreneurs in this matter.

Second, most of the time, the cause of a business failure is not the incompetence but external circumstances such as a slump in demand, financial crisis or rise of a new competitor. However, this professional failure is often confused with personal failure, and low self-esteem causes individuals to withdraw and retreat to safer employment options.

Third, it is accepted that a society does not generate innovation and productivity by steadfastly avoiding mistakes but rather by learning from them. Yet the culture of and incentive system in Europe does not reflect this.

Value of Failure is a comprehensive attempt to understand the various aspects of the phenomenon of business failure. It enables readers to understand business failure from the perspective of institutional theory; economic failure in the process of small business growth in the context of the shadow economy; Schumpeter’s theory of ‘creative destruction’ and the fear of failure; sustainable economic growth and development and system approach to failures and their impact on the enterprise operation.

Every day we hear and read about the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation but learn little about what it takes to become an entrepreneur. “Entrepreneurial Living” is intended for anyone who is interested in entrepreneurship but has not dared to venture into this world, yet.

“Entrepreneurial Living” takes the most relevant proven insights from research and practice and communicates them in an accessible and concise way with beautifully illustrated hands-on tools. Using the analogy of a board game and illustrative examples, the book teaches you the fundamentals of entrepreneurial life. Some exemplary lessons are as follows:

• Knowing your identity, network and competencies helps you identify interesting entrepreneurial problems that you are equipped to solve.

• Focusing on your means instead of a distant vision enables you to create goal portfolios and deal with uncertainty.

• Understanding your own strengths and those of your potential partners lets you evaluate the option of cofounding a business.

• Developing a business model in collaboration with your customers can be more useful than writing a business plan. Listening to customers early in the ideation process helps you develop the business systematically.

• If you are observant and reflective, your insights will combine and turn you into your personal version of a successful entrepreneur.

“Entrepreneurial Living” teaches that it is never too late to become an entrepreneur; any prior life experience will help you visualize what you can do. Do not be afraid of the uncertainty and dare to take the first step to start the adventure. The best day to begin was yesterday. Today is the next-best day.

The book is a concise and comprehensive resource for people who are middle-aged and beyond and are facing the prospects of their own aging and of caring for elderly loved ones—an often overwhelming task for which little in life prepares us. Using an interdisciplinary approach and many personal anecdotes, Professor Hoffman develops recommendations for building sustainable social, legal, medical, and financial support systems for aging and caregiving.

Aging with a Plan combines thorough research with engaging anecdotes and practical advice. It offers one-stop shopping for anyone in need of guidance without a lot of time for independent research. The book answers questions such as: What legal documents should you be sure to have? What expenses should you anticipate in retirement and how do you save for them? What do you need to know about medical care as you or your loved ones grow older? How should you approach conversations about the sensitive topic of safe driving with elderly loved ones? What options exist for end-of-life care, and how do you make sure that your wishes will be followed? The book is user-friendly and accessible to a general audience, and each chapter ends with a helpful checklist.

The book draws on the author's background in law and bioethics as well as personal experience with health care and the elderly. Dr. Hoffman presents thorough research to bolster her advice. She also writes of her parents’ many challenges during their last years and her husband’s Parkinson’s disease. This is an illuminating, engrossing, and immensely useful resource.

In the course of one’s life in academia, one tends to formulate insights on various matters one encounters in a succinct form to share with one’s students and colleagues. This book is a collection of such thoughts.

Adopting a long view that stretches back to the mid-nineteenth century, Robert Neild investigates why in recent years the University of Cambridge has been cutting expenditure, appealing for money and losing its academic independence. Using the university’s financial records and other statistics, Neild reveals the nature and scale of the changes experienced by the university since 1850 – particularly those affecting the extent of its scientific research, the sources and size of the its income, the social origin of its students, and its relationship with the British government.

Having suffered hard times both before and after the First World War, Cambridge prospered during the post-war years up until the 1970s. During that period government grants burgeoned, and both parties backed rapid university expansion. By the end of the 1970s this golden age had faded – largely as a result of inflation, economic crises and the revival of market economics. Both political parties have since cut grants, pushed universities to behave more like businesses, and taken steps to reintroduce fees. The university itself has achieved great success in acquiring non-government research grants and contracts – particularly in the biomedical sciences. Yet it has not escaped a financial squeeze, caused by repeated cuts in government funding and has suffered increases in governmental intervention. Thus, Neild shows, Cambridge’s academic independence and its finances are under threat.

The memoir Academia, Chernobyl, Expeditions and The Greeks: A Research Psychologist on the Move recounts memorable experiences over the course of the author’s career as an academic psychologist engaged in research on stress and coping in extreme environments. Throughout the memoir, the author presents short summaries of her research methods and findings; however, the focus of the book is on her personal experiences – the events, people, and the environment with its natural beauty or devastation that she encountered while conducting this research.

There is an array of events, some quite unique, that are detailed in the book, starting with Academia – challenges of teaching a psychology course at an American army base in Orleans, France; completing a doctoral degree at the University of Maryland while raising a family; academic activities and a 1972 sex discrimination complaint against Rutgers University, one of the first cases in the country following the passage of the Federal Title IX civil rights law; initial research as an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Minnesota, including studies of Holocaust survivors and their families, and Vietnam nurses; The Russian Drama – continuing research on stress and coping through four trips to the Soviet Union/Russia during a period when an entire country disappeared and a new one was formed (travel to Chernobyl only six years after the disaster, Magadan in Siberia where the major gulags were/are located) and her sometimes rather unbelievable experiences during that time; Expedition Adventures as an analog for long-duration planetary missions – studies of single and mixed gender national and international civilian and military polar expedition teams to simulate aspects of long-duration lunar and Mars missions, studied on-site in the Canadian Nunavut Territories and during three trips to Danish military stations in Greenland; Greece Disaster Connections – psychosocial training workshops for disaster response and research on the aftermath of disasters through collaboration with colleagues from Athens and Cairo. The author’s activities with the NASA Human Research Program over the years also is summarized.

The memoir Academia, Chernobyl, Expeditions and The Greeks: A Research Psychologist on the Move recounts memorable experiences over the course of the author’s career as an academic psychologist engaged in research on stress and coping in extreme environments. Throughout the memoir, the author presents short summaries of her research methods and findings; however, the focus of the book is on her personal experiences – the events, people, and the environment with its natural beauty or devastation that she encountered while conducting this research.

There is an array of events, some quite unique, that are detailed in the book, starting with Academia – challenges of teaching a psychology course at an American army base in Orleans, France; completing a doctoral degree at the University of Maryland while raising a family; academic activities and a 1972 sex discrimination complaint against Rutgers University, one of the first cases in the country following the passage of the Federal Title IX civil rights law; initial research as an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Minnesota, including studies of Holocaust survivors and their families, and Vietnam nurses; The Russian Drama – continuing research on stress and coping through four trips to the Soviet Union/Russia during a period when an entire country disappeared and a new one was formed (travel to Chernobyl only six years after the disaster, Magadan in Siberia where the major gulags were/are located) and her sometimes rather unbelievable experiences during that time; Expedition Adventures as an analog for long-duration planetary missions – studies of single and mixed gender national and international civilian and military polar expedition teams to simulate aspects of long-duration lunar and Mars missions, studied on-site in the Canadian Nunavut Territories and during three trips to Danish military stations in Greenland; Greece Disaster Connections – psychosocial training workshops for disaster response and research on the aftermath of disasters through collaboration with colleagues from Athens and Cairo. The author’s activities with the NASA Human Research Program over the years also is summarized.

The Insider’s Secrets to Finding Your School Leadership Job: This practical 125-page self-help professional guide coaches school and district leadership candidates through the hiring process for their dream jobs in public education. It delves into the fabric of how the process really works from the inside. Every aspect of being a candidate is strategic. INSIDER’S SECRETS offers and instructs the reader to embrace a core of job-seeking strategies, including creating a resume that captures attention and interviewing tactics, that when applied will get you the job.

With fifty years of award-winning service as a public school educator, spanning school districts considered as high needs to those of high wealth, Dr. Laurence Aronstein has hired over a thousand school leaders and teachers in one of the most competitive and highest-paying regions in the country. This book is targeted at professionals who are school leaders and aspiring leaders. Some might be nearing the end of their graduate studies in school leadership certification or sitting in central office and school leaders who are seeking promotion or positions that pay better or classroom teachers looking to land their entry-level leadership positions.

The reader will find authentic personal stories which are written by real educators in their own words. These accounts are designed to personalize the journeys of these educators as illustrative successful examples of the strategies that are described in this book.

Written in reverse, the chapters go backwards. The book starts from present (approximately Chapter 50, 2020, back 30 years, to Chapter 20, 1990). The story coincides with an imbedded “road itinerary.” Years are rarely mentioned in the text; and, in most cases, only initials are used for all characters. People, places and things are all real in relation to the timeline. The work involves the interpolation of common conversations—from sources such as texting and emails—to shed light on the fallibility of human relations. To a large degree, and within reason, the length of conversations are meant to be overbearing, countered by other aspects of the writing. Ron Westray’s father and grandfather’s stories are imbedded in the work. His mother’s free-verse-poetry is the muse/soul that binds the work together like a second, invisible narrator.

Specific objectives of the book include the discussion of the historical evolution of CBUM/Hip-Hop, and the development (and retention) of an informed perspective regarding legendary figures, bands, and genres in CBUM. The examination of the historical, social, and economic implications of CBUM that lead to the globalization of Hip-Hop, an understanding of how CBUM is perceived and measured in society, and the student’s ability to describe a range of effects fostered by the evolution of CBUM, all factor highly in this book.

A lot of contemporary discourse, both in the academy and beyond, is predicated on essentialized notions of gender, class, and ethnic identity. In critiquing the either-or polarizations that characterize identity thinking, Jackson emphasizes human plurality as entailing both difference and identity. The assumption here is that, as a species, human beings share the same evolutionary history and confront similar existential dilemmas, yet no two individuals are alike, and very different adaptive strategies and worldviews have emerged in the course of human history. To speak of the human condition, therefore, is to imply not only that existence is replete with contradiction and conflict but characterized by ongoing struggles to resolve, accept, or overcome them.

The chapters of this book touch on a variety of issues, including the ambiguity of belonging, the struggle for indigenous rights, expatriate experience, the ethics of genetic engineering, experiments in communal living, and intercultural dialogue. These issues have both local and global relevance, and Jackson addresses them as an expatriate and an ethnographer who has discovered that the anxiety that springs from being an outsider is often compensated for by an ability to see the world from a novel point of view. Moreover, as an outsider, one is sometimes consoled to find that one’s dilemmas are not unique. While one may be struggling to adapt to new customs, learn a new language, or cope with bizarre customs and inhospitable surroundings, one’s new neighbors may be suffering social exclusion, embroiled in family feuds, fighting prejudice, or coming to terms with the effects of a Pandemic, climate-change or economic collapse. Indeed, it is often through such critical experiences that people from diverse backgrounds come to realize that they share a common world.

This work is both a family history and asocial history of Scotland with a particular focus on Edinburgh. The families are traced from their roots in the seventeenthcentury into the twentieth. However, all their wandering and failures, and births and marriages, are in themselves of no importance – they are merely the actions of helpless actors (one not so helpless) caught in the midst of changing worlds and realities. The book embeds their lives into the larger forces shaping the Scottish culture, climaxing in the creation of the New Town of Edinburgh, one of the eighteenthand nineteenth century’s most extravagant romantic fantasies. It was a reality shaped by the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment to give identity to a capital of a nation in name only, after the closing of the Scottish parliament with the Union of the Crowns in 1707. 

This New Town became a vast idealised reality, which could only have been achieved in a Scotland that was and remains essentially feudal. All the lands surrounding the walls of the old city were the inherited properties of a few aristocratic families who were able, free of constraint, to sustain a succession of developments for over 80years, creating a continual stream of wealth for the landowners and their successors, and in the process producing extreme poverty for those left behind.

By the mid-nineteenth century, a very different reality emerged out of the need to accommodate the poor and the rising workforce in the city’s new industries. This resulted in street after street of monotonous, identical tenements, a joyless demeaning world in stark contrast to the lively grandeur of the housing in the New Town. The medieval tenements of city’s old High Street were once called ‘slums built to last a thousand years’, and in many ways the extensive tenements of the industrial city from the nineteenth and twentieth century can equally be said to represent the prospect of people divided for a thousand years. It will be argued that such division are unavoidable and can be found in many cities, but it is the extent and the willfulness of the planning that makes the Edinburgh example so potent.

“A giant case study with hundreds of micro-scenarios that can be used and further developed as narratives in coaching and training!”—Sabine Baer, Executive Coach, Brussels, coaching .sabinebaer @gmail .com

Most books about the Irish Famine tend to take Ireland’s reliance on potato for granted and treat the arrival of the deadly blight in 1845 as merely the trigger event that launched a humanitarian crisis—one that the British government famously failed to manage. In this work, considerable attention is paid to the origins and nature of Ireland’s dangerous potato dependency. Although introduced into Ireland as a cultivated plant, the potato nevertheless had the impact of an invasive species, disrupting and reorganizing Irish agriculture. Drawing upon ecology and systems theory, this study provides a detailed account of the intricacies of Ireland’s potato economy built upon an unstable and unsustainable monoculture that became a cybernetic trap. 

When almost the whole potato crop failed in the fall of 1846, what began as an ecological disaster quickly became a political one. Hampered by long-standing prejudice and Anglo-Irish tensions, the British government’s various attempts to deal with the humanitarian crisis were muddled by competing economic and social goals. Among these was the idea that the Famine represented an “opportunity” to purge Ireland of fragmented land holding and potato dependency by encouraging an English-type market-driven agriculture. Changes did occur, but the government’s imperial dreams eventually ran up against Irish realities. 

This book provides readers with a unique, in-depth understanding of the background to the Irish Famine and a detailed account of the crisis, as well as the immediate and long-term results of the catastrophe. In addition to ecological and agriculture factors, this work shows how cultural, economic and political influences shaped British attitudes and policies. Although Britain’s policies reflected anti-Irish prejudices, it was not the “Irish people” who were the victims of the Famine, but rather the Irish poor. By the mid-1840s, Great Britain was an emerging, middle-class democracy imbued with a faith in free markets and a deep suspicion of the poor, English as well as Irish. The Government’s response to the Irish Famine reflects the problems democracies often have setting aside class and racial prejudice in order to deal with humanitarian crises. 

Most books about the Irish Famine tend to take Ireland’s reliance on potato for granted and treat the arrival of the deadly blight in 1845 as merely the trigger event that launched a humanitarian crisis—one that the British government famously failed to manage. In this work, considerable attention is paid to the origins and nature of Ireland’s dangerous potato dependency. Although introduced into Ireland as a cultivated plant, the potato nevertheless had the impact of an invasive species, disrupting and reorganizing Irish agriculture. Drawing upon ecology and systems theory, this study provides a detailed account of the intricacies of Ireland’s potato economy built upon an unstable and unsustainable monoculture that became a cybernetic trap. 

When almost the whole potato crop failed in the fall of 1846, what began as an ecological disaster quickly became a political one. Hampered by long-standing prejudice and Anglo-Irish tensions, the British government’s various attempts to deal with the humanitarian crisis were muddled by competing economic and social goals. Among these was the idea that the Famine represented an “opportunity” to purge Ireland of fragmented land holding and potato dependency by encouraging an English-type market-driven agriculture. Changes did occur, but the government’s imperial dreams eventually ran up against Irish realities. 

This book provides readers with a unique, in-depth understanding of the background to the Irish Famine and a detailed account of the crisis, as well as the immediate and long-term results of the catastrophe. In addition to ecological and agriculture factors, this work shows how cultural, economic and political influences shaped British attitudes and policies. Although Britain’s policies reflected anti-Irish prejudices, it was not the “Irish people” who were the victims of the Famine, but rather the Irish poor. By the mid-1840s, Great Britain was an emerging, middle-class democracy imbued with a faith in free markets and a deep suspicion of the poor, English as well as Irish. The Government’s response to the Irish Famine reflects the problems democracies often have setting aside class and racial prejudice in order to deal with humanitarian crises.