Author: Edgar Landgraf File Type: pdf Improvisation as Art traces how modernitys emphasis on inventiveness has changed the meaning of improvisation and how the ideals and laws that led improvisation to be banned from high art in the eighteenth century simultaneously enabled the inventive reintegration of improvisation into modernism. After an in-depth exploration of contemporary theoretical contentions surrounding improvisation, Landgraf examines how the new emphasis on inventiveness affects the understanding of improvisation in the emerging aesthetic and anthropological discourses of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He first focuses on accounts of improvisational performances by Moritz, Goethe, and Fernow and reads them alongside the aesthetics of autonomy as it develops at the same time. In its second half, the book investigates how the problem of planning art receives a different treatment in German Romanticism. The final chapter focuses on the writings of Heinrich von Kleist where improvisation presents a central aesthetic principle. Kleists figurations of improvisation recognize the anthropological predicament of the self in modern society and the social constraints that invite and often force individuals to improvise. **

Author: Stephen Kinzer File Type: pdf With a thrilling narrative that sheds much light on recent events, this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the countrys elected prime minister, ushered in a quarter-century of brutal rule under the Shah, and stimulated the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and The Economist, it now features a new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran.From Publishers WeeklyWith breezy storytelling and diligent research, Kinzer has reconstructed the CIAs 1953 overthrow of the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who was wildly popular at home for having nationalized his countrys oil industry. The coup ushered in the long and brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, widely seen as a U.S. puppet and himself overthrown by the Islamic revolution of 1979. At its best this work reads like a spy novel, with code names and informants, midnight meetings with the monarch and a last-minute plot twist when the CIAs plan, called Operation Ajax, nearly goes awry. A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent and the author of books on Nicaragua (Blood of Brothers) and Turkey (Crescent and Star), Kinzer has combed memoirs, academic works, government documents and news stories to produce this blow-by-blow account. He shows that until early in 1953, Great Britain and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company were the imperialist baddies of this tale. Intransigent in the face of Irans demands for a fairer share of oil profits and better conditions for workers, British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison exacerbated tension with his attitude that the challenge from Iran was, in Kinzers words, a simple matter of ignorant natives rebelling against the forces of civilization. Before the crisis peaked, a high-ranking employee of Anglo-Iranian wrote to a superior that the companys alliance with the corrupt ruling classes and leech-like bureaucracies were disastrous, outdated and impractical. This stands as a textbook lesson in how not to conduct foreign policy. 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. ReviewBreezy storytelling and diligent research.... This stands as a textbook lesson in how not to conduct foreign policy. ---Publishers Weekly With a thrilling narrative that sheds much light on recent events, this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the countrys elected prime minister, ushered in a quarter-century of brutal rule under the Shah, and stimulated the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and The Economist, it now features a new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran.From the Back CoverA very gripping read . . . a cautionary tale for our current leaders.The New York TimesAs zealots in Washington intensify their preparations for an American attack on Iran, the story of the CIAs 1953 coupwith its many cautionary lessonsis more urgently relevant than ever. All the Shahs Men brings to life the cloak-and-dagger operation that deposed the only democratic regime Iran ever had. The coup ushered in a quarter-century of repressive rule under the Shah, stimulated the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, and exposed the folly of using violence to try to reshape Iran. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and the Economist, its essential reading if you want to place the American attack of Iraq in contextand prepare for what comes next.An entirely engrossing, often riveting, nearly Homeric tale. . . . For anyone with more than a passing interest in how the United States got into such a pickle in the Middle East, All the Shahs Men is as good as Grisham.The Washington Post Book WorldAn exciting narrative. [Kinzer] questions whether Americans are well served by interventions for regime change abroad, and he reminds us of the long history of Iranian resistance to great power interventions, as well as the unanticipated consequences of intervention.The Los Angeles TimesA swashbuckling yarn [and] helpful reminder of an oft-neglected piece of Middle Eastern history.The New York Times Book ReviewAbout the AuthorStephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has worked in more than fifty countries. He has been New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul, Berlin, and Managua, Nicaragua. His books include Overthrow Americas Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq and Crescent and Star Turkey Between Two Worlds.

Author: Yakov Ben-Haim File Type: pdf Innovations create both opportunities and dilemmas. They provide new and supposedly better opportunities, but because of their newness they are often more uncertain and potentially worse than existing options. Recent inventions and discoveries include new drugs, new energy sources, new foods, new manufacturing technologies, new toys and new pedagogical methods, new weapon systems, new home appliances and many other discoveries and inventions. Is it better to use or not to use a new and promising but unfamiliar and hence uncertain innovation? That dilemma faces just about everybody. The paradigm of the innovation dilemma characterizes many situations, even when a new technology is not actually involved. The dilemma arises from new attitudes, like individual responsibility for the global environment, or new social conceptions, like global allegiance and self-identity transcending nation-states. These dilemmas have far-reaching implications for individuals, organizations, and society at large as they make decisions in the age of innovation. The uncritical belief in outcome-optimization more is better, so most is best pervades decision-making in all domains, but is often irresponsible when facing the uncertainties of innovation. There is a great need for practical conceptual tools for understanding and managing the dilemmas of innovation. This book offers a new direction for a wide audience. It discusses examples from many fields, including e-reading, bipolar disorder and pregnancy, disruptive technology in industry, stock markets, agricultural productivity and world hunger, military hardware, military intelligence, biological conservation, on-line learning, and more. **About the Author Yakov Ben-Haim, Yitzhak Modai Chair in Technology and Economics, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Yakov Ben-Haim initiated and developed info-gap decision theory for modeling and managing severe uncertainty. Info-gap theory has impacted the fundamental understanding of uncertainty in human affairs, and is applied by scholars and practitioners around the world in engineering, biological conservation, economics, project management, climate change, natural hazard response, national security, medicine, and other areas (see info-gap.com). Ben-Haim has been a visiting scholar in many countries and has lectured at universities, technological and medical research institutions, public utilities and central banks. He has published more than 100 articles and 6 books. He is a professor of mechanical engineering and holds the Yitzhak Modai Chair in Technology and Economics at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Author: Matthias Maass File Type: pdf What is the story behind the paradoxical survival of small and weak states in a world of great powers and crude power politics? And what explains the dramatic rise and fall in the number of states overtime, following no consistent trend and not showing an immediately obvious direction or pattern? The answers lie at the system-level Small states survival is shaped by the international states system. Small state survival and proliferation is determined first and foremost by features of and dynamics created at the states system. As the states system changes and evolves the chances for small states to survive or proliferate change as well. In fact, a quantitive investigation confirms this, showing that over the course of more than 3 centuries, the number of small states did fluctuate widely and at times dramatically. In sum, the small state security is shaped by exogenous, systemic factors, not by small states own foreign policies. **