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Meltdown: Financial Times' best business books of the year, 2018
by Chris Clearfield András TilcsikFinancial Times' best business books of the year, 2018'Endlessly fascinating, brimming with insight, and more fun than a book about failure has any right to be.' - Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit A groundbreaking exploration of how complexity causes failure in business and life - and how to prevent it.An accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital. The Post Office software that led to a multimillion-pound lawsuit. The mix-up at the 2017 Oscars Awards ceremony. An overcooked meal on holiday. At first glance, these events have little in common. But surprising new research shows that many modern failures share similar causes. In Meltdown, world-leading experts in disaster prevention, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, use real-life examples to reveal the errors in thinking, perception, and system design that lie behind both our everyday errors and disasters like the Fukushima nuclear accident. But most crucially, Meltdown is about finding solutions. It reveals why ugly designs make us safer, how a five-minute exercise can prevent billion-dollar catastrophes, why teams with fewer experts are better at managing risk, and why diversity is one of our best safeguards against failure. The result is an eye-opening and empowering book - one that will change the way you see our complex world and your own place within it.
Meltdown: Stories of nuclear disaster and the human cost of going critical
by Joel LevyMeltdown investigates and recreates the dramatic events behind the most notorious nuclear accidents in history, as well as those shrouded in secrecy. Combining human tragedy with intriguing science, each account reveals new aspects of humanity's complex relationship with nuclear power and the ongoing struggle to harness and control it. From the pioneers of Los Alamos who got up close and personal with the cores of atomic bombs, to the hapless engineers in Soviet fuel-processing plants who unwittingly mixed up a disaster in a bucket, and from the terrifying impact of a tsunami at Fukushima to the mystery of the recent Russian incident, Meltdown explores the past and future of this extraordinary and potentially lethal source of infinite power.
Meltdown Iceland: How the Global Financial Crisis Bankupted an Entire Country
by Roger BoyesIt is a truism that when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold. The subprime mortgage crisis, which began in America in 2007, unleashed a veritable epidemic of financial ill health all over the world. All European countries were affected, and the developing world also felt a chill. However it was Iceland, a tiny volcanic outcrop in the North Atlantic whose population of 300,000 had the highest GDP and counted itself the happiest in the world, which caught the worst cold. It has nearly killed them. For a few short years, the Icelanders deluded themselves that they were rich. Dour Reykjavik became the Capital of Cool. Rock musicians like Damon Albarn bought houses and stakes in pubs. Clubs boomed, the alcohol was expensive and the Krona was strong. All over the world people are trying to understand what caused the economic crisis and are asking themselves who is to blame. In Iceland that question is easily answered and the handful of bankers and politicians responsible have had to hire body guards, hole themselves up in their country houses and stay off the streets for fear of attack. Collaborating with the business editor of Iceland's leading daily newspaper, award-winning writer Roger Boyes tells the inside story of the bankrupting of Iceland and explains how it has ramifications for us all, from the private and public investors who trusted their money in Iceland's banks, to the workers in high street clothes stores whose owners no longer can pay for the shirts on their own backs. Writing with panache and colour, and drawing on interviews with everyone from artists and policitians to the local fisherman, Meltdown Iceland is an authoritative and compelling account of the financial destruction of this tiny, icy but vibrant country.
Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks - From Hagedorn Temperature to Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions at CERN: With a Tribute to Rolf Hagedorn
by Johann RafelskiThis book shows how the study of multi-hadron production phenomena in the years after the founding of CERN culminated in Hagedorn's pioneering idea of limiting temperature, leading on to the discovery of the quark-gluon plasma -- announced, in February 2000 at CERN.Following the foreword by Herwig Schopper -- the Director General (1981-1988) of CERN at the key historical juncture -- the first part is a tribute to Rolf Hagedorn (1919-2003) and includes contributions by contemporary friends and colleagues, and those who were most touched by Hagedorn: Tamás Biró, Igor Dremin, Torleif Ericson, Marek Gaździcki, Mark Gorenstein, Hans Gutbrod, Maurice Jacob, István Montvay, Berndt Müller, Grazyna Odyniec, Emanuele Quercigh, Krzysztof Redlich, Helmut Satz, Luigi Sertorio, Ludwik Turko, and Gabriele Veneziano.The second and third parts retrace 20 years of developments that after discovery of the Hagedorn temperature in 1964 led to its recognition as the melting point of hadrons into boiling quarks, and to the rise of the experimental relativistic heavy ion collision program. These parts contain previously unpublished material authored by Hagedorn and Rafelski: conference retrospectives, research notes, workshop reports, in some instances abbreviated to avoid duplication of material, and rounded off with the editor's explanatory notes.About the editor: Johann Rafelski is a theoretical physicist working at The University of Arizona in Tucson, USA. Born in 1950 in Krakow, Poland, he received his Ph.D. with Walter Greiner in Frankfurt, Germany in 1973. Rafelski arrived at CERN in 1977, where in a joint effort with Hagedorn he contributed greatly to the establishment of the relativistic heavy ion collision, and quark-gluon plasma research fields. Moving on, with stops in Frankfurt and Cape Town, to Arizona, he invented and developed the strangeness quark flavor as the signature of quark-gluon plasma.
Melting Point: A groundbreaking family history for fans of Edmund de Waal and Philippe Sands
by Rachel Cockerell'A truly radical book; radical in subject, radical in form. For the most tragic reasons, it could not feel more immediate; and yet it's a fluid, fast-paced, hugely enjoyable and engaging read.' - Andrew Marr'Meticulously researched, elegantly constructed, unforgettable.' - Jonathan Freedland'This is an extraordinarily original way of writing memoir, history and truth. An enthralling book and a wonderful new writer.' - Laura CummingOn June 7th 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail into the Atlantic. It is heading not to Jerusalem or New York, as many on board have dreamt, but to Texas. The man who persuades the passengers to go is David Jochelmann, Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather. It marks the beginning of the Galveston Movement, a forgotten moment in history when 10,000 Jews fled to Texas in the lead-up to WWI.The charismatic leader of the movement is Jochelmann's closest friend, Israel Zangwill, whose beloved novels have made him a household name across Europe and America. As Russia becomes infected by anti-Semitic violence, and Theodor Herzl tries and fails to create a Jewish state, Zangwill embarks on a desperate search across the continents for a temporary homeland: from Australia to Canada, Angola to Antarctica. He reluctantly settles on Galveston, Texas. He fears the Jewish people will be absorbed into the great American melting pot, but there is no other hope. The story is told in a highly inventive format: there is no 21st-century narration. Instead the author weaves together a vivid and colourful account from an extraordinary array of sources - letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles and interviews. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York and Jerusalem - as their lives intertwine with some of the most significant figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history, or brush it off like dust and melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks questions of belonging, identity, and what can be salvaged from the past.
Melting the Snow on Hester Street
by Daisy WaughThey saved each other once. Can they save each other again?
Melville and Aesthetics
by Samuel Otter and Geoffrey SanbornIn an original and provocative series of readings that range across Melville's career, the contributors consider not only the sources and implications of Melville's aesthetics, but the relationship between aesthetic criticism, historical analysis, and contemporary theory.
Melville's Intervisionary Network: Balzac, Hawthorne, and Realism in the American Renaissance (Clemson University Press)
by John HaydockThe romances of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor, are usually examined from some setting almost exclusively American. European or other planetary contexts are subordinated to local considerations. But while this isolated approach plays well in an arena constructed on American exclusiveness, it does not express the reality of the literary processes swirling around Melville in the middle of the nineteenth century. A series of expanding literary and technological networks was active that made his writing part of a global complex. Honoré de Balzac, popular French writer and creator of realism in the novel, was also in the web of these same networks, both preceding and at the height of Melville’s creativity. Because they engaged in similar intentions, there developed an almost inevitable attraction that brought their works together. Until recently, however, Balzac has not been recognized as a significant influence on Melville during his most creative period. Over the last decade, scholars began to explore literary networks by new methodologies, and the criticism developed out of these strategies pertains usually to modernist, postcolonial, contemporary situations. Remarkably, however, the intertextuality of Melville with Balzac is quite exactly a casebook study in transcultural comparativism. Looking at Melville’s innovative environment reveals meaningful results where the networks take on significant roles equivalent to what have been traditionally classed as genetic contacts. Intervisionary Network explores a range of these connections and reveals that Melville was dependent on Balzac and his universal vision in much of his prose writing.
Melville's Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (AAR Academy Series)
by Damien B. SchlarbIn Melville's Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, Damien B. Schlarb explores the manner in which Herman Melville responds to the spiritual crisis of modernity by using the language of the biblical Old Testament wisdom books to moderate contemporary discourses on religion, skepticism, and literature. Schlarb argues that attending to Melville's engagement with the wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) can help us understand a paradox at the heart of American modernity: the simultaneous displacement and affirmation of biblical language and religious culture. In wisdom, which addresses questions of theology, radical skepticism, and the nature of evil, Melville finds an ethos of critical inquiry that allows him to embrace modern analytical techniques, such as higher biblical criticism. In the medium of literature, he articulates a new way of accessing the Bible by marrying the moral and spiritual didacticism of its language with the intellectual distance afforded by critical reflection, a hallmark of modern intellectual style. Melville's Wisdom joins other works of post secular literary studies in challenging its own discipline's constitutive secularization narrative by rethinking modern, putatively secular cultural formations in terms of their reciprocity with religious concepts and texts. Schlarb foregrounds Melville's sustained, career-spanning concern with biblical wisdom, its formal properties, and its knowledge-creating potential. By excavating this project from his oeuvre, Melville's Wisdom shows how Melville celebrates intellectually rigorous, critical inquisitiveness, an attitude that we often associate with modernity but which Melville saw augured by the wisdom books. He finds in this attitude the means for avoiding the spiritually corrosive effects of skepticism.
Melville's Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (AAR Academy Series)
by Damien B. SchlarbIn Melville's Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, Damien B. Schlarb explores the manner in which Herman Melville responds to the spiritual crisis of modernity by using the language of the biblical Old Testament wisdom books to moderate contemporary discourses on religion, skepticism, and literature. Schlarb argues that attending to Melville's engagement with the wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) can help us understand a paradox at the heart of American modernity: the simultaneous displacement and affirmation of biblical language and religious culture. In wisdom, which addresses questions of theology, radical skepticism, and the nature of evil, Melville finds an ethos of critical inquiry that allows him to embrace modern analytical techniques, such as higher biblical criticism. In the medium of literature, he articulates a new way of accessing the Bible by marrying the moral and spiritual didacticism of its language with the intellectual distance afforded by critical reflection, a hallmark of modern intellectual style. Melville's Wisdom joins other works of post secular literary studies in challenging its own discipline's constitutive secularization narrative by rethinking modern, putatively secular cultural formations in terms of their reciprocity with religious concepts and texts. Schlarb foregrounds Melville's sustained, career-spanning concern with biblical wisdom, its formal properties, and its knowledge-creating potential. By excavating this project from his oeuvre, Melville's Wisdom shows how Melville celebrates intellectually rigorous, critical inquisitiveness, an attitude that we often associate with modernity but which Melville saw augured by the wisdom books. He finds in this attitude the means for avoiding the spiritually corrosive effects of skepticism.
Members of the Regiment: Army Officers' Wives on the Western Frontier, 1865-1890 (Contributions in American History)
by Michele NacyMany extraordinary women traveled west with their Army officer husbands between 1865 and 1890 and discovered a world that was completely controlled by the United States Army. The Army as a public institution colored virtually every aspect of their domestic lives. Army directives, customs, and traditions imposed social obligations on these women, and the world of the frontier Army garrison continually challenged their sense of what it meant to be true women. Remarkably, they flourished and established a defined role for themselves that went beyond the conventional definition of true womanhood.The shared values, loyalties, and patriotism within the institutional environment of the frontier garrison transcended gender. As distinctly masculine as the Army garrison was perceived to be, the officers' wives shared with their comrades in arms an unequivocal commitment to the Regiment. Because of their presence, the frontier garrison became a much different place to live, as they subtly and slowly changed the very nature of the institution through their efforts to bring some notion of proper society to these rugged circumstances. Unlike most studies, which focus only on farm and frontier women, this volume details the experiences of the women who viewed the world from within garrison walls.
Membrane Computing: 13th International Conference, CMC 2012, Budapest, Hungary, August 28-31, 2012, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #7762)
by Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju György Vaszil Marian Gheorghe Grzegorz Rozenberg Arto SalomaaThis book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Membrane Computing, CMC 2012, held in Budapest, Hungary, in August 2012. The 21 revised selected papers presented together with 6 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 papers presented at the conference. The book also deals with membrane systems, also called P systems, which are distributed and parallel algebraic models processing multisets of objects in a localized manner (evolution rules and evolving objects are encapsulated into compartments delimited by membranes), with an essential role played by the communication among compartments and with the environment.
Membranes to Molecular Machines: Active Matter and the Remaking of Life (Synthesis)
by Mathias GroteToday's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac. Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.
Membranes to Molecular Machines: Active Matter and the Remaking of Life (Synthesis)
by Mathias GroteToday's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac. Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.
Membranes to Molecular Machines: Active Matter and the Remaking of Life (Synthesis)
by Mathias GroteToday's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac. Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.
Membranes to Molecular Machines: Active Matter and the Remaking of Life (Synthesis)
by Mathias GroteToday's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac. Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.
Memento Mori: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire (The Medicus Series #8)
by Ruth DownieThe eighth gripping novel in the bestselling Medicus series, in which Ruso and Tilla investigate the death of the wife of Ruso's friend in the sacred hot spring of Aquae Sulis.A scandal is threatening to engulf the popular spa town of Aquae Sulis (modern-day Bath). The wife of Ruso's best friend, Valens, has been found dead in the sacred hot spring, stabbed through the heart. Fearing the wrath of the goddess and the ruin of the tourist trade, the temple officials are keen to cover up what's happened. But the dead woman's father is demanding justice, and he's accusing Valens of murder.If Valens turns up to face trial, he will risk execution. If he doesn't, he'll lose his children.Ruso and Tilla do their best to help but it's difficult to get anyone--even Valens himself--to reveal what really happened. Could Ruso's friend really be guilty as charged?
Memento Mori: What the Romans Can Tell Us About Old Age and Death (Classic Civilisations)
by Peter JonesIn this revealing and entertaining guide to how the Romans confronted their own mortality, Peter Jones shows us that all the problems associated with old age and death that so transfix us today were already dealt with by our ancient ancestors two thousand years ago.Romans inhabited a world where man, knowing nothing about hygiene let alone disease, had no defences against nature. Death was everywhere. Half of all Roman children were dead by the age of five. Only eight per cent of the population made it over sixty. One bizarre result was that half the population consisted of teenagers. From the elites' philosophical take on the brevity of life to the epitaphs left by butchers, bakers and buffoons, Memento Mori ('Remember you die') shows how the Romans faced up to this world and attempted to take the sting out of death.
Memes, Myth and Meaning in 21st Century Chinese Visual Culture (Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics)
by Justine PoplinThis book explores the impact of global change in China in what is considered in the West as ‘the Asian century’ and what this in turn means for visual culture. Unravelling a deep understanding of historical shifts in visual culture that represent socio-political mirrors of culture, it expands the Western perception of Chinese visual culture and the intertwined complexities of cultural signification. This book provides a key resource for Galleries and Academic Institutions, offering insights into understanding the systems underpinning ideas, skills and influences of the new visual culture in the Asian century.
Memnon
by Scott OdenHe lived in the shadow of kings. One trusted him with his empire; the other feared his every move. Memnon of Rhodes (375-333 BC) walked in the footsteps of giants. As a soldier, sailor, statesman and general, he was, in the words of Diodorus of Sicily, "outstanding in courage and strategic grasp."A contemporary of Demosthenes and Aristotle, Memnon rose from humble origins to command the whole of western Asia in a time of strife and slaughter. To his own people, he was a traitor, to his rivals, a mercenary. But, to the King of Kings, his majesty Darius III of Persia, Memnon was the one man capable of defending Asia Minor from the rising power of the barbaric Macedonians. In a war pitting Greek against Greek, Memnon proved his quality beyond measure. His enemies fought for glory and gold; Memnon fought for something more: for loyalty, for honour, and for duty. He fought for the love of Barsine, a woman of remarkable beauty and grace, but most of all, he fought for the promise of peace.Through the deathbed recollections of a mysterious woman, the life of Memnon unfolds with brilliant clarity. It is a record of his triumphs and tragedies, his loves and losses, and of the determination that drove him to stand against the most renowned figure of the ancient world - an ambitious and brilliant young conqueror called Alexander the Great.
A Memoir
by Tim CooganFrom the personal to the political, this is the much-awaited memoir from Tim Pat Coogan. Ireland's best-known journalist, broadcaster, historian and bestselling biographer Tim Pat Coogan has not only reported the news - he's been the news. Through the Irish Press, where he served as editor for twenty years, he is renowned for bringing social and political change to Ireland. He went on to play a vital role in bringing the IRA/Sinn Fein to the peace talks table, and has always been uniquely placed to comment authoritatively - if not controversially - on all aspects of Irish current affairs. From personal to political, his revelatory memoir gives genuine insight into the life and high-profile career of a man at the centre of Irish politics and society.
Memoir of a Gulag Actress (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
by Tamara PetkevichIn an abridged translation that retains the grace and passion of the original, Klots and Ufberg present the stunning memoir of a young woman who became an actress in the Gulag. Tamara Petkevich had a relatively privileged childhood in the beautiful, impoverished Petrograd of the Soviet regime's early years, but when her father—a fervent believer in the Communist ideal—was arrested, 17-year-old Tamara was branded a "daughter of the enemy of the people." She kept up a search for her father while struggling to support her mother and two sisters, finish school, and enter university. Shortly before the Russian outbreak of World War II, Petkevich was forced to quit school and, against her better judgment, she married an exiled man whom she had met in the lines at the information bureau of the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs). Her mother and one sister perished in the Nazi siege of Leningrad, and Petkevich was herself arrested. With cinematic detail, Petkevich relates her attempts to defend herself against absurd charges of having a connection to the Leningrad terrorist center, counter-revolutionary propaganda, and anti-Semitism that resulted in a sentence of seven years' hard labor in the Gulag. While Petkevich became a professional actress in her own right years after her release from the Gulag, she learned her craft on the stages of the camps scattered across the northern Komi Republic. The existence of prisoner theaters and troupes of political prisoners such as the one Petkevich joined is a little-known fact of Gulag life. Petkevich's depiction not only provides a unique firsthand account of this world within a world but also testifies to the power of art to literally save lives. As Petkevich moves from one form of hardship to another she retains her desire to live and her ability to love. More than a firsthand record of atrocities committed in Stalinist Russia, Memoir of a Gulag Actress is an invaluable source of information on the daily life and culture of the Soviet Union at the time. Russian literature about the Gulag remains vastly underepresented in the United States, and Petkevich's unforgettable memoir will go a long way toward filling this gap. Supplemented with photographs from the author's personal archive, Petkevich's story will be of great interest to general readers, while providing an important resource for historians, political scientists, and students of Russian culture and history.
The Memoir of General Toussaint Louverture
by Philippe R. GirardHere is an annotated, scholarly, multilingual edition of the only lengthy text personally written by Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture: the memoirs he wrote shortly before his death in the French prison of Fort de Joux. The translation is based on an original copy in Louverture's hand never before published. Historian Philippe Girard begins with an introductory essay that retraces Louverture's career as a slave, rebel, and governor. Girard provides a detailed narrative of the last year of Louverture's life, and analyzes the significance of the memoirs and letters from a historical and linguistic perspective. The book includes a full transcript, in the original French, of Louverture's handwritten memoirs. The English translation appears side by side with the original. The memoirs contain idiosyncrasies and stylistic variations of interest to linguists. Scholarly interest in the Haitian Revolution and the life of Toussaint Louverture has increased over the past decade. Louverture is arguably the most notable man of African descent in history, and the Haitian Revolution was the most radical of the three great revolutions of its time. Haiti's proud revolutionary past and its more recent upheavals indicate that interest in Haiti's history goes far beyond academia; many regard Louverture as a personal hero. Despite this interest, there is a lack of accessible primary sources on Toussaint Louverture. An edited translation of Louverture's memoirs makes his writings accessible to a larger public. Louverture's memoirs provide a vivid alternative perspective to anonymous plantation records, quantitative analyses of slave trading ventures, or slave narratives mediated by white authors. Louverture kept a stoic façade and rarely expressed his innermost thoughts and fears in writing, but his memoirs are unusually emotional. Louverture questioned whether he was targeted due to the color of his skin, bringing racism an issue that Louverture rarely addressed head on with his white interlocutors, to the fore.
The Memoir of James Jackson, The Attentive and Obedient Scholar, Who Died in Boston, October 31, 1833, Aged Six Years and Eleven Months (The John Harvard library #24)
by Susan Paul“The design of this Memoir is, to present the incidents in the life of a little colored boy.” So begins the life story of James Jackson, as set down by his African American teacher, Susan Paul, in 1835, as an example to other children and adults who might learn from the boy’s goodness. This remarkable document—the first African American biography and a work that predates Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by almost thirty years—is a lost treasure from the annals of African American history. With its combination of eyewitness accounts, personal testimony, and excerpts from traditional Sunday school texts, the memoir is an extraordinary social history rooted in both nineteenth-century evangelicalism and the experiences of free African Americans. Susan Paul’s portrayal of James Jackson’s Christian sensibility, his idealism, and his racial awareness emphasizes his humanity and exemplary American character over his racial identity, even as it embeds him in his African American community.
A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing
by Hilary Mantel'I breathed in stories, as soon as I breathed in air. Sometimes I think I wasn't born, but I just came out of an ink blot.''Mantel's idiosyncratic and magisterial voice comes through on every page, carrying readers across an astonishing array of subject matter with ease. This is a treasure' Publishers Weekly As well as her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of her writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. 'Ink is a generative fluid,' she explains. 'If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all.' A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Mantel's subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels - revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England - and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V. S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews - from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop - and, published for the first time, her stunning Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.From her unique childhood to her all-consuming fascination with Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall Trilogy, A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel's life in her own dazzling words, 'messages from people I used to be.' Compelling, often very funny, always luminous, it is essential reading from one of our greatest writers.'A smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature' Margaret Atwood