Author: David Emanuel Hoffman File Type: mobi A tour de force of investigative history. -Steve Coll The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union-a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today. The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the twentieth century the two superpowers had perfected the science of mass destruction and possessed nuclear weapons with the combined power of a million Hiroshimas. Whats more, a Soviet biological warfare machine was ready to produce bacteria and viruses to sicken and kill millions. In The Dead Hand, a thrilling narrative history drawing on new archives and original research and interviews, David E. Hoffman reveals how presidents, scientists, diplomats, soldiers, and spies confronted the danger and changed the course of history. The Dead Hand captures the inside story in both the United States and the Soviet Union, giving us an urgent and intimate account of the last decade of the arms race. With access to secret Kremlin documents, Hoffman chronicles Soviet internal deliberations that have long been hidden. He reveals that weapons designers in 1985 laid a massive Star Wars program on the desk of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to compete with President Reagan, but Gorbachev refused to build it. He unmasks the cover-up of the Soviet biological weapons program. He tells the exclusive story of one Soviet microbiologists quest to build a genetically engineered super-germ-it would cause a mild illness, a deceptive recovery, then a second, fatal attack. And he details the frightening history of the Doomsday Machine, known as the Dead Hand, which would launch a retaliatory nuclear strike if the Soviet leaders were wiped out. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the dangers remained. Soon rickety trains were hauling unsecured nuclear warheads across the Russian steppe tons of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium lay unguarded in warehouses and microbiologists and bomb designers were scavenging for food to feed their families. The Dead Hand offers fresh and startling insights into Reagan and Gorbachev, the two key figures of the end of the Cold War, and draws colorful, unforgettable portraits of many others who struggled, often valiantly, to save the world from the most terrifying weapons known to man. From the Hardcover edition.

Author: Benedict Ushedo File Type: epub This book examines the range of issues that echo in James Baldwins short stories. It articulates and defends the claim that the stories in the collection Going to Meet the Man are driven by the autobiographical memory of the author. To support this line of thought and the related proposition that the stories feed into themes relevant to self-knowledge, vicarious suffering, love, and forgiveness, their effectiveness as transformative and revelatory texts is highlighted. By drawing on contemporary studies and challenging the view that short stories are no more than miniature pieces merely echoing major works of their authors, this book demonstrates that the short story genre can be profoundly forceful and effective in the articulation of complex human issues. This study shows also that the humanistic import of the Baldwin stories is amplified by their ability to accumulate moral tension as they elicit the participation of the reader in an imaginative quest for a better world. This fresh and original appraisal of the short stories of James Baldwin from a religious perspective is theologically astute and theoretically deeply grounded. Drawing on thinkers such as Girard and Levinas, as well as the Bible and Christian theology, Ushedo unpacks the intensity of Baldwins prose in a series of close readings of his most powerful stories. --David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow, Distinguished Overseas Professor, Renmin University of China James Baldwin and the Short Story Ethics, Aesthetics, Psychogeographyis a very impressive and compelling study of Baldwin asa philosopherand religiousthinker. An authoritative and thoroughly well-researched book that tackles social and political issues with intellectual rigor, finesse, and sensitivity, it is written in a clear style and will serve as an outstanding resource forinterdisciplinary research in literature, theology, and American Social History. --Vincent Icheku, London South Bank University, Southwark Campus, Senior Lecturer in the School of Health And Social Care, Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), Fellow, Royal Society of Public Health (FRSPH), Editor, British Journal of Research Transcending the usual sociopolitical confines of Baldwin scholarship, Ushedos study of Baldwins short stories examines the neglected religious aspects that characterize these and all his works. Ushedo deftly incorporates a variety of theoretical frames along with theological research to provide new readings of these important stories in which the secular is redeemed by the sacred. --Michael F. Lynch, Kent State University Just as James Baldwins own life encapsulated a struggle with the manifold aspects of the human condition, Ushedo shows brilliantly that his short stories point beyond Baldwins political agenda. His thoughtful analysis--which draws on literary theory, philosophy, psychology, and theology--is bound to inspire those who reflect on the good life, as well as on why it may be so difficult to reach it. --Jan Deckers, Senior Lecturer in Bioethics, Newcastle University, UK After earning his teaching license from the University College in London, Benedict Ushedo has, since 2002, been teaching philosophy, ethics, and religion in schools in the greater London area. He was previously a school master in Nigeria. He developed his specialty in literature, theology, and the arts during his post-graduate studies at the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven in Belgium, and PhD research at the University of Glasgow. **About the Author After earning his teaching license from the University College in London, Benedict Ushedo has, since 2002, been teaching philosophy, ethics, and religion in schools in the greater London area. He was previously a school master in Nigeria. He developed his specialty in literature, theology, and the arts during his post-graduate studies at the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven in Belgium, and PhD research at the University of Glasgow.

Author: Mary Rizzo File Type: epub Class Acts explores the development of lifestyle marketing from the 1960s to the 1990s. During this time, young men began manipulating their identities by taking on the mannerisms, culture, and fashion of the working class and poor. These style choices had contradictory meanings. At once they were acts of rebellion by middleclass young men against their social stratum and its rules of masculinity and also examples of the privilege that allowed them to try on different identities for amusement or as a rite of passage. Starting in the 1960s, advertisers and marketers, looking for new ways to appeal to young people, seized on the idea of identity as a choice, creating the field of lifestyle marketing. Mary Rizzo traces the development of the concept of lifestyle marketing, showing how marketers disconnected class identity from material reality, focusing instead on a persons attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. The book includes discussions of the rebel of the 1950s, the hippie of the 1960s, the white suburban hip-hop fan of the 1980s, and the poverty chic of the 1990s. Class Acts illuminates how the concept of lifestyle, particularly as expressed through fashion, has disconnected social class from its material reality and diffused social critique into the opportunity to simply buy another identity. The book will appeal to scholars and other readers who are interested in American cultural history, youth culture, fashion, and style. **

Author: Luke Lavan File Type: pdf This book examines a number of themes relating to housing in Late Antiquity. Two extensive bibliographic essays provide an overview of published literature relating to housing in this period. A selection of thematic essays focus on episcopia, lighting, privacy vs. public access, and building regulations. These are complemented by regional syntheses covering Spain and Africa and case studies of recently investigated urban houses from across the Mediterranean, from Gaul to Jordan. Whilst being firmly based in Late Antiquity, the volume also looks forward to Middle Byzantine and Early Islamic housing, with papers on rock-cut houses in Cappadocia and a wealthy dar from Pella in Jordan, destroyed by earthquake, with its inhabitants inside, in A.D. 749.