Stupid Wars: A Citizens Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions
Author: Ed Strosser File Type: pdf When winners write history, they sometimes forget to include their own embarrassing misjudgments. Fortunately, this take-no-prisoners edition of history isnt going to let the winners (or the losers) forget the mistakes of the past. Be prepared to laugh out loudand gasp in horrorat the most painfully idiotic strategies, alliances, and decisions the world has ever known. These stupid wars have been launched by democracies as well as monarchies and dictatorships, in recent decades just as often as in less enlightened times. The ridiculous and reckless conflicts chronicled in Stupid Wars include the misdirected Fourth Crusade, the half-baked invasion of Russia by the U.S., the U.K.s baffling Falklands War, Hitlers ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch, several incredibly foolish South American conflicts, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and many more. Whether youre a future dictator, war-mongering politician, royal mistress, or history lover, these blow-by-stupid-blow accounts will teach you the valuable lessons you need to stay off the list, including Dont declare war on all your neighbors at the same time. Working radios, accurate maps, and weather-appropriate uniforms are big plusses. Large amounts of bird poop and very small islands are probably not worth dying for. Never invade Russia. Seriously. Its a really bad idea.
Author: Michael J. Gitlin
File Type: epub
In the last 20 years much work has been done on the influence of brain biochemistry on mood and behaviour and on pharmacological approaches to treating mental and emotional disorders. Partly as a result of this fact, a large proportion of patients who consult psychotherapists are already on medication of some sort. This book presents an overview of psychopharmacology for psychotherapists. It is designed to help them to treat patients in a way that takes into account the effects of the medication, and to recognize when some kind of pharmacological assistance might be useful in treating a disorder.**
Author: Roberto Bottazzi
File Type: pdf
Digital Architecture Beyond Computers explores the deep history of digital architecture, tracing design concepts as far back as the Renaissance and connecting them with the latest software used by designers today. It develops a critical account of how the tools and techniques of digital design have emerged, and allows designers to deepen their understanding of the digital tools they use every day. What aesthetic, spatial, and philosophical concepts converge within the digital tools architects employ? What is their history? And what kinds of techniques and designs have they given rise to? This book explores the answers to these questions, showing how digital architecture brings together complex ideas and trajectories which span across several domains and have evolved over many centuries. It sets out to unpack these ideas, trace their origin and permeation into architecture, and re-examine their use in contemporary software. Chapters are arranged around the histories of nine fragments each a fundamental concept embedded in popular CAD applications database, layers and fields, parametrics, pixel, programme, randomness, scanning, topology, and voxelmaxel with each theme examined through a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book thus connects the digital design process with architectural history and theory, allowing designers and theorists alike to develop more analytical and critical tools with which to conceptualise digital design and its software. **About the Author Roberto Bottazzi is an architect, researcher, and educator based in London. He is Research Co-ordinator, Master Tutor, and Master Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, UK.
Author: Lisa Genova
File Type: epub
From neuroscientist and bestselling author Lisa Genova comes a story of resilience in the face of a devastating diagnosis. After a car crash leaves a vibrant mother in her thirties with a traumatic brain disorder called left neglect, she learns what truly matters most in life. Sarah Nickerson, like any other working mom, is busy trying to have it all. One morning while racing to work and distracted by her cell phone, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In that blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her over-scheduled life come to a screeching halt. After a brain injury steals her awareness of everything on her left side, Sarah must retrain her mind to perceive the world as a whole. In so doing, she also learns how to pay attention to the people and parts of her life that matter most. In this powerful and poignant New York Times bestseller, Lisa Genova explores what can happen when we are forced to change our perception of everything around us. Left Neglected is an unforgettable story about finding abundance in the most difficult of circumstances, learning to pay attention to the details, and nourishing what truly matters. **
Author: Lauren Arrington
File Type: pdf
Constance Markievicz (18681927), born to the privileged Protestant upper class in Ireland, embraced suffrage before scandalously leaving for a bohemian life in London and then Paris. She would become known for her roles as politician and Irish revolutionary nationalist. Her husband, Casimir Dunin Markievicz (18741932), a painter, playwright, and theater director, was a Polish noble who would eventually join the Russian imperial army to fight on behalf of Polish freedom during World War I. Revolutionary Lives offers the first dual biography of these two prominent European activists and artists. Tracing the Markieviczes entwined and impassioned trajectories, biographer Lauren Arrington sheds light on the avant-garde cultures of London, Paris, and Dublin, and the rise of anti-imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing from new archival material, including previously untranslated newspaper articles, Arrington explores the interests and concerns of Europeans invested in suffrage, socialism, and nationhood. Unlike previous works, Arringtons book brings Casimir Markievicz into the foreground of the story and explains how his liberal imperialism and his wifes socialist republicanism arose from shared experiences, even as their politics remained distinct. Arrington also shows how Constance did not convert suddenly to Irish nationalism, but was gradually radicalized by the Irish Revival. Correcting previous depictions of Constance as hero or hysteric, Arrington presents her as a serious thinker influenced by political and cultural contemporaries. Revolutionary Lives places the exciting biographies of two uniquely creative and political individuals and spouses in the wider context of early twentieth-century European history. **
Author: Stephanie Lynn Budin
File Type: pdf
Review...meticulous examination...clear argumentation. The book is a thrilling expose of historiography at its worst. --TLSThroughout most of the book the material is presented well and each avenue is thoroughly explored. It provides a good grounding for students studying Ancient Greece and Rome to explore this hotly debated topic. --RosettaThis well-researched and often humorously written monograph deals with what the author calls the myth of sacred prostitution. The author uses the word myth to denote something that is widely believed but has no foundation in reality, along the line of the modern expression urban myth. She makes her point forcefully although sacred prostitution is regarded in multiple scholarly books and dictionaries as an actual historical phenomenon, it never existed. Budins book investigates both the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world. As such, it breaks new ground, as most previous similar studies have dealt exclusively with Mesopotamia. --Review of Biblical LiteratureB. has written a thought-provoking book that forces the reader to rethink the institution of sacred prostitution and even historical method more generally. She collects together and analysis in context all references associated with sacred prostitution, making the book essential reading on the topic. In general, she is convincing in her conclusion that sacred prostitution has no historical authority and that scholars have wrongfully manipulated evidence to support such an institution. Since the belief in sacred prostitution has in many ways impeded the study of prostitution more generally, particularly at Corinth, this conclusion is to be welcomed. --Classical Review Book DescriptionThis book shows that sacred prostitution did not exist in the ancient world. Whereas many scholars believe that ancient people prostituted themselves for religion, this is simply not the case. This book reexamines texts arguing for the existence of sacred prostitution and disproves these theories.
Author: Michael David Kaplan
File Type: pdf
Soon after the start of the Civil War, 14-year-old runaway David Frakes Day told the so-called patriotic lie when he falsified his age and enlisted in the 57th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, becoming perhaps the youngest full-time spy in American military history. His courageous feats at the Battle of Vicksburg two years later eventually earned him a Medal of Honor, and his remarkable escapes from Andersonville and other military prisons--including one the night before his scheduled execution--remain the stuff of Civil War legend. Days postwar career as a muckraking journalist in Colorado proved no less treacherous. He angered powerful enemies with his investigative reporting of corrupt politicians and mining officials and survived assassination attempts, physical assaults, and countless libel suits to become an accomplished humorist. In this biography, Day emerges from historical obscurity to take his rightful place among the most intriguing figures of the Civil War and the American West.**
Author: Amy J. Fitzgerald
File Type: pdf
Every day, millions of people around the world sit down to a meal that includes meat. This book explores several questions as it examines the use of animals as food How did the domestication and production of livestock animals emerge and why? How did current modes of raising and slaughtering animals for human consumption develop, and what are their consequences? What can be done to mitigate and even reverse the impacts of animal production? With insight into the historical, cultural, political, legal, and economic processes that shape our use of animals as food, Fitzgerald provides a holistic picture and explicates the connections in the supply chain that are obscured in the current mode of food production. Bridging the distance in animal agriculture between production, processing, consumption, and their associated impacts, this analysis envisions ways of redressing the negative effects of the use of animals as food. It details how consumption levels and practices have changed as the relationship between production, processing, and consumption has shifted. Due to the wide-ranging questions addressed in this book, the author draws on many fields of inquiry, including sociology, (critical) animal studies, history, economics, law, political science, anthropology, criminology, environmental science, geography, philosophy, and animal science.**
Author: Colin Imber
File Type: pdf
This stimulating and ground-breaking book surveys the history of the Ottoman Empire from its obscure origins in the early 1300s, through its rise to the status of a world power, and its times of trouble in the seventeenth century. Drawing both on existing scholarship and research as well as original source materials, The Ottoman Empire provides a preliminary narrative of key events and examines the internal structure and politics of the Ottoman dynasty, revealing the growth and development of the power, politics, and institutions through which the Sultans ruled the Empire. The Ottoman Empire draws from a wealth of multi-lingual sources, many of which are previously untranslated, and presents a fresh view on one of the most important, yet misunderstood, Empires of the pre-modern age. **From Publishers WeeklyIn this diligent and rather dry general history, Imber, a lecturer at the University of Manchester, charts the Ottoman Empire from its birth, circa 1300, through its zenith in the reign of Suleyman, to the end of its expansion in the mid-17th century. The first section of his book, a chronological narrative, begins with Osman, the founder who gave the Ottoman Empire his name, and ends, essentially, with the Sultan Ibrahims descent into madness and his 1648 murder. Imber then moves into considerations of the structures and workings of power in the empire the dynasty, which galvanized control around a sultan and his male progeny the methods by which ministers and other officials were recruited the physical and political structure of the palace, with its eunuchs, harems and grand viziers the division of control in the provinces, the sacred and secular laws and the branches of the military. His narrative, which makes great use of secondary sources but also employs newly translated primary ones as well, will introduce the lay reader to the complicated and often bloody history of the Empire, if not necessarily elegantly, then efficiently and thoroughly. 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist For many laymen in the West, the Ottoman Empire is almost a pejorative term. High-school students learn about the sick man of Europe prior to World War I or are well versed in the massacres of Armenians within the empire. The successor state to the empire, Turkey, is poised to join the European Union so it would be wise for general readers to receive a balanced account of the empires growth and structure. Imber, senior lecturer in Turkish at the University of Manchester, has certainly provided that account. The first quarter of this well-written book is a chronological history ending in the mid-seventeenth century. The remainder of the book is devoted to topics such as the organization of the military, the legal system, and administrative control of the provinces. What emerges is a portrait of an imperial system that provided reasonably efficient government and surprising opportunities for both non-Turks and non-Muslims. Jay Freeman American Library Association. lt