Author: Miri Shefer-Mossensohn File Type: pdf Scholars have long thought that, following the Muslim Golden Age of the medieval era, the Ottoman Empire grew culturally and technologically isolated, losing interest in innovation and placing the empire on a path toward stagnation and decline. Science among the Ottomans challenges this widely accepted Western image of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottomans as backward and impoverished. In the first book on this topic in English in over sixty years, Miri Shefer-Mossensohn contends that Ottoman society and culture created a fertile environment that fostered diverse scientific activity. She demonstrates that the Ottomans excelled in adapting the inventions of others to their own needs and improving them. For example, in 1877, the Ottoman Empire boasted the seventh-longest electric telegraph system in the world indeed, the Ottomans were among the eras most advanced nations with regard to modern communication infrastructure. To substantiate her claims about science in the empire, Shefer-Mossensohn studies patterns of learning state involvement in technological activities and Turkish- and Arabic-speaking Ottomans who produced, consumed, and altered scientific practices. The results reveal Ottoman participation in science to have been a dynamic force that helped sustain the six-hundred-year empire. **

Author: Mary Flanagan File Type: pdf

Author: Judy Jones File Type: epub When it was originally published in 1987, An Incomplete Education became a surprise bestseller. Now this instant classic has been completely updated, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge on global affairs, popular culture, economic trends, scientific principles, and modern arts. Heres your chance to brush up on all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you could be! How do you tell the Balkans from the Caucasus? Whats the difference between fission and fusion? Whigs and Tories? Shiites and Sunnis? Deduction and induction? Why arent all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers? What are transcendental numbers and what are they good for? What really happened in Platos cave? Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day? And for extra credit, when should you use the adjective continual and when should you use continuous? An Incomplete Education answers these and thousands of other questions with incomparable wit, style, and clarity. American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science, and World History Heres the bottom line on each of these major disciplines, distilled to its essence and served up with consummate flair. In this revised edition youll find a vitally expanded treatment of international issues, reflecting the seismic geopolitical upheavals of the past decade, from economic free-fall in South America to Central Africas world war, and from violent radicalization in the Muslim world to the crucial trade agreements that are defining globalization for the twenty-first century. And dont forget to read the section A Nervous Americans Guide to Living and Loving on Five Continents before you answer a personal ad in the International Herald Tribune. As delightful as it is illuminating, An Incomplete Education packs ten thousand years of culture into a single superbly readable volume. This is a book to celebrate, to share, to give and receive, to pore over and browse through, and to return to again and again. From the Hardcover edition.**ReviewPraise for An Incomplete Education AN ASTONISHING AMOUNT OF INFORMATION. The New York Times IT IS PRECISELY THE BOOK THAT IVE ALWAYS WANTED WITHOUT KNOWING THAT I ALWAYS WANTED IT. . . . Its for people who have huge gaps in their knowledge of specific areas of culture and intellectual history. . . . Cheerfully, subversively anti-academic. Jon Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle MEMORIZE THIS BOOK AND YOU CAN DROP NAMES, ALLUSIONS, AND ARCANE TERMS WITH THE BEST OF THEM, whether you (or they) know what theyre talking about. . . . The book will rekindle warm memories of your favorite courses, favorite professors, favorite books, favorite theories, favorite philosophical paradoxes. Chicago Tribune RUSH TO YOUR NEAREST BOOKSTORE AND BUY An Incomplete Education. . . . [It] brings you 10,000 years of information. Imagine the power of knowing where Watteau went when the lights went out! New York Daily News ARTICULATE AND IRREVERENT, crammed with facts, figures, drawings, definitions, and historic information sufficient to fill your every gap. . . . Judy Jones and William Wilson . . . tell you everything you shouldve learned but didnt. Esquire THIS BOOK GETS AN A+. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution From the Hardcover edition.About the Author Judy Jones is a freelance writer who lives in Princeton, New Jersey. William Wilson was also a freelance writer. Wilson went to Yale and Jones to Smith, but both have maintained that they got their real educations in the process of writing this book. William Wilson died in 1999.

Author: Carin Gerhardsen File Type: epub Hoofdinspecteur Conny Sjoberg en zijn collegas worden verrast door de gruwelijke moord op een Filippijnse vrouw en haar twee kinderen. De Zweedse vader van de kinderen leidt een eenzaam bestaan en heeft met bijna niemand contact. Behalve de vraag hoe de Filippijnse schoonmaakster het zich kon veroorloven om in een dure flat te wonen, zijn er geen aanwijzingen voor verder onderzoek. Maar het verhaal begint heel lang geleden, op een mooie zonnige dag in mei, wanneer een jong stel bij een kruidenier stopt om snoepjes te kopen voor de twee jongetjes op de achterbank.