Author: Samantha Power File Type: mobi From Publishers WeeklyThe death of the charismatic Brazilian chief of the U.N. Mission to Iraq in a 2003 terrorist bombing symbolized both the U.N.s haplessnesshe died because rescuers lacked the training and equipment to free him from the rubbleand its idealism. In this sprawling biography, Vieira de Mellos life symbolizes the tragic contradictions of coping with humanitarian crises. Journalist Power, author of the Pulitzer-winning The Problem from Hell America and the Age of Genocide, follows Vieira de Mello through a U.N. career spent in hot spots like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. His tasks were many implementing peace accords, settling refugees, overseeing elections, running the government of East Timor. In each posting, he confronts a hydra-headed monster of communal violence and poverty, plus difficulties compounded by U.N. red tape, miserly budgets and uncaring Western governments. Agonizing dilemmas abound. Should refugees be fed or sent home? Should U.N. peacekeepers observe or intervene? Should past atrocities be prosecuted or overlooked? Playing by ear, Vieira de Mello charts an erratic course through these conundrums. Sometimes hes a human rights zealot, sometimes he cozies up to the Khmer Rouge sometimes he negotiates with the Serbs, sometimes he wants to bomb them. Vieira de Mello comes off as a charming diplomat, a canny politician and an inspiring leader, and the author celebrates his flexibility and pragmatism (while criticizing his failures). Power wants to extract lasting lessons for the international communitys efforts to head off humanitarian catastrophes and mend failed states from his experience. Unfortunately, its hard to discern through his improvisations any systematic approach to nation building or to such vexed issues as humanitarian military intervention and regime change. The lack of perspective isnt helped by the biographical format, as the peripatetic Vieira de Mello jets from one conflagration to the next, then on to a romantic getaway with a mistress or to give a murky speech on Kant. We get the impression that U.N. missions are inevitably a hopeless muddle unless Sergio, with his unique talents, parachutes in to fix things the book may thus inadvertently encourage critics of the U.N.-style interventionism that Power supports. Readers will gain an appreciation of Vieira de Mellos gifts, but not the method to his magic. B&w photos. (Mar. 6) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From Bookmarks MagazineSamantha Power, a professor at Harvard, met Sergio Vieira de Mello when she was a journalist in Bosnia in 1994. Although he charmed her as he did everyone else, she has written a balanced biography of the flawed but dedicated and likable man. While Power impressed the critics with her research, she failed to convince all of them of her arguments. Several reviewers also noted that Poweras writing, laden with detail and subtle layering, doesnat rise to the level of her Pulitzer Prizeawinning A Problem from Hell America and the Age of Genocide (2002) until the very end, when she recounts Vieira de Melloas last moments. As much a critique of the United Nations and its policies as the story of a man battling injustice, Chasing the Flame, despite being cited as a somewhat slow read, is a significant contribution to our understanding of global affairs and the future of peacekeeping.br 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Author: Ron Brown File Type: pdf The Art of Suicide is a history of the visual representation of suicide from the ancient world to its decriminalization in the 20th century. After looking at instances of voluntary death in ancient Greece, Ron Brown discusses the contrast between the extraordinary absence of such events in early Christianity and the proliferation of images of biblical suicides in the late medieval era. He emphasizes how differing attitudes to suicide in the early modern world slowly merged, and pays particular attention to the one-time chasm between so-called heroic suicide and self-destruction as a crying crime. Brown tracks the changes surrounding the perception of suicide into the pivotal Romantic era, with its notions of the man of feeling, ready to hurl himself into the abyss over a woman or an unfinishable poem. After the First World War, the meaning of death and attitudes towards suicide changed radically, and in time this led to its decriminalization. The 20th century in fact witnessed a growing ambivalence towards suicidal acts, which today are widely regarded either as expressions of a death-wish or as cries for help. Brown concludes with Warhols picture of Marilyn Monroe and the videos taken by the notorious Dr Kevorkian.**

Author: Mary Orr File Type: pdf This is the first comprehensive study in English of Flauberts least well-known masterpiece, the final version of his Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874) which, thanks to Foucault, has the reputation of being an arcane and erudite fantastic library or, thanks to genetic criticism, is a narrative of Flauberts personal aesthetic (oeuvre de toute ma vie). By presuming instead no prior knowledge of the text, its versions or its contexts, Mary Orr provides new readings of the seven tableaux which comprise Temptation, and new ways of interpreting the work as a whole, whether the reader is a newcomer to Flaubert or a specialist. Arguing that Flaubert was imagining his own epoch through the eyes of a visionary saint in the fourth century AD, Orr elucidates the dialogues between religion and science that are the dynamic of the work for the first time. She also insists on the meticulous accuracy and imaginative representations of the science of the work, proposing--in the remapping analogy of her subtitle--that Flauberts Temptation is a paradigm of nineteenth-century French, and indeed European, literary science. For nineteenth-century French and Flaubert specialists, this book then challenges received critical wisdom on a number of fronts. Through his unlikely protagonist-visionary, Flauberts realism, anti-clericalism and orientalism are all given new airings in the religious and scientific evidence of the 1874 Temptation, as indeed in his temptation to write the life of his times.ReviewThis volume is not only an invaluable contribution to scholarship on the Tentation, but also presents considerable interest to anyone working on nineteenth-century attitudes to scientific knowledge Jennifer Yee, French Studies About the AuthorMary Orr is Professor of French and Director of Postgraduate Research in the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton. She is the author among others of Flaubert Writing the Masculine (OUP, 2000) and Intertextuality Debates and Contexts (Polity, 2003) as exemplifying her wide-ranging, interdisciplinary publications on Flaubert, gender, intertextuality and the modern French novel. Her most recent publications and current research are on the dissemination of nineteenth-century French science through intertextual and interpersonal relations.

Author: David M. Levy File Type: pdf From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools weve developed. David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the fast world of high tech and the slow world of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced, and more effective, while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers watch themselves closely while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment withunplugging for a specified period. Never prescriptive, the book opens up new avenues for self-inquiry and will allow readersin the workplace, in the classroom, and in the privacy of their homesto make meaningful and powerful changes. ** From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools weve developed. David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the fast world of high tech and the slow world of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced, and more effective, while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers watch themselves closely while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment withunplugging for a specified period. Never prescriptive, the book opens up new avenues for self-inquiry and will allow readersin the workplace, in the classroom, and in the privacy of their homesto make meaningful and powerful changes. **