Author: John Courtenay Locke File Type: pdf

Author: Slavoj Zizek File Type: epub Called the Elvis of cultural theory by The New York Times, popular philosopher and leftist rabble-rouser Slavoj Zizek, looks at one of the most desperate situations of our time the current refugee crisis overwhelming Europe. In this short yet stirring book, Zizek argues that accepting all comers or blocking all entry are both untenable solutions... but there is a third option. Today, hundreds of thousands of people, desperate to escape war, violence and poverty, are crossing the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe. Our response, from our protected Western European standpoint, argues Slavoj Zizek, offers two versions of ideological blackmail either we open our doors as widely as possible or we try to pull up the drawbridge. Both solutions are bad, states Zizek. They merely prolong the problem, rather than tackling it. The refugee crisis also presents an opportunity, a unique chance for Europe to redefine itself but, if we are to do so, we have to start raising unpleasant and difficult questions. We must also acknowledge that large migrations are our future only then can we commit to a carefully prepared process of change, one founded not on a community that see the excluded as a threat, but one that takes as its basis the shared substance of our social being. The only way, in other words, to get to the heart of one of the greatest issues confronting Europe today is to insist on the global solidarity of the exploited and oppressed. Maybe such solidarity is a utopia. But, warns Zizek, if we dont engage in it, then we are really lost. And we will deserve to be lost. **Review [A]n urgent and entertaining diagnosis of the ongoing refugee crisis and global terror threat, highlighting the glaring contradictions in our attitudes and actions.***Mother Jones Slavoj Zizeks compellingly persuasive insights into the current refugee explosion...could not arrive at a more urgent time.*CounterPunch Praise forSlavoj Zizek One of the most influential and indeed popular public intellectuals in the world. The Guardian The Elvis of cultural theory.The New York Times The most dangerous philosopher in the West. The New Republic The master of the counterintuitive observation. The New Yorker Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj Zizek ... One of the worlds best known public intellectuals. The New York Review of Books About the Author Slavoj Zizek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political activist. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University. He is the author of numerous books on dialectical materialism, critique of ideology and art, including Event, and Trouble In Paradise, both published by Melville House.

Author: Melanie Keene File Type: epub In Victorian Britain an array of writers captured the excitement of new scientific discoveries, and enticed young readers and listeners into learning their secrets, by converting introductory explanations into quirky, charming, and imaginative fairy-tales forces could be fairies, dinosaurs could be dragons, and looking closely at a drop of water revealed a soup of monsters. Science in Wonderland explores how these stories were presented and read. Melanie Keene introduces and analyses a range of Victorian scientific fairy-tales, from nursery classics such as The Water-Babies to the little-known Wonderland of Evolution, or the story of insect lecturer Fairy Know-a-Bit. In exploring the ways in which authors and translators - from Hans Christian Andersen and Edith Nesbit to the pseudonymous A.L.O.E. and Acheta Domestica - reconciled the differing demands of factual accuracy and fantastical narratives, Keene asks why the fairies and their tales were chosen as an appropriate new form for capturing and presenting scientific and technological knowledge to young audiences. Such stories, she argues, were an important way in which authors and audiences criticised, communicated, and celebrated contemporary scientific ideas, practices, and objects. **

Author: Martin Meredith File Type: epub First published in 2005, The Fate of Africa was hailed by reviewers as A masterpiece. . . The nonfiction book of the year (The New York Post) a magnificent achievement (Weekly Standard) a joy, (Wall Street Journal) and one of the decades most important works on Africa (Publishers Weekly, starred review).Now Martin Meredith has revised this classic history to incorporate important recent developments, including the Darfur crisis in Sudan, Robert Mugabes continued destructive rule in Zimbabwe, controversies over Western aid and exploitation of Africas resources, the growing importance and influence of China, and the democratic movement roiling the North African countries of Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan.