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Spring returns and with it the birds. But it also brings throngs of birders who emerge, binoculars in hand, to…
catch a glimpse of a rare or previously unseen species or to simply lay eyes on a particularly fine specimen of a familiar type. In a delightful meditation that unexpectedly ranges from the Volga Delta to Central Park and from Charles Dickens's Hard Times to a 1940s London burlesque show, Jeremy Mynott ponders what makes birds so beautiful and alluring to so many people. Princeton Shorts are brief selections taken from influential Princeton University Press books and produced exclusively in ebook format. Providing unmatched insight into important contemporary issues or timeless passages from classic works of the past, Princeton Shorts enable you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium.The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
Par Adrienne Mayor. 2014
The real history of the Amazons in war and loveAmazons—fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world—were…
the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons.But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China.Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons—Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China.Driven by a detective's curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District
Par Peter Moskos. 2009
When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep…
into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."The Calculus of Friendship is the story of an extraordinary connection between a teacher and a student, as chronicled through…
more than thirty years of letters between them. What makes their relationship unique is that it is based almost entirely on a shared love of calculus. For them, calculus is more than a branch of mathematics; it is a game they love playing together, a constant when all else is in flux. The teacher goes from the prime of his career to retirement, competes in whitewater kayaking at the international level, and loses a son. The student matures from high school math whiz to Ivy League professor, suffers the sudden death of a parent, and blunders into a marriage destined to fail. Yet through it all they take refuge in the haven of calculus--until a day comes when calculus is no longer enough. Like calculus itself, The Calculus of Friendship is an exploration of change. It's about the transformation that takes place in a student's heart, as he and his teacher reverse roles, as they age, as they are buffeted by life itself. Written by a renowned teacher and communicator of mathematics, The Calculus of Friendship is warm, intimate, and deeply moving. The most inspiring ideas of calculus, differential equations, and chaos theory are explained through metaphors, images, and anecdotes in a way that all readers will find beautiful, and even poignant. Math enthusiasts, from high school students to professionals, will delight in the offbeat problems and lucid explanations in the letters. For anyone whose life has been changed by a mentor, The Calculus of Friendship will be an unforgettable journey.The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Prison Journey - To Hell and Back
Par Lara Love Hardin. 2023
'Lara Love Hardin shares compelling and important truths in her beautifully told personal story.' PIPER KERMAN, author of the no.…
1 New York Times bestseller Orange is the New Black'Thrilling, funny, heartbreaking and moving. I'll return to this book when I need to be reminded of the power of the human spirit.' DAVID SHEFF, author of the no. 1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Boy'Compelling and timely' BRYAN STEVENSON, author of the New York Times bestseller Just MercyThe Neighbour From Hell is the astonishing tale of Lara's descent from middle class soccer mum with an enviable lifestyle, beautiful home and family to an opiate addict and identity thief. Convicted of 32 felonies, her children are taken away and she is placed in a local jail.In this strange and frightening new world, she has to get grips with life behind bars. Lara becomes known in prison as Mama Love. She helps the women around her get to grips with their own troubles, writes letters for them, acts as an advocate, and comforts them in their darkest moments. Soon she climbs the jailhouse social ladder to become 'the shot caller' showing that jailhouse politics and PTA politics are not that different.Through her incarceration, Lara reveals a world where makeshift furniture is made from tampon boxes and snicker bars are currency, a world of brutal corruption and abuse, and of surprising humanity and tenderness.Her story gives us a rare glimpse into the lives of the women in jail she spent time with and the very real challenges they, and she, faced trying to make it out of prison, regain custody of their children and start life afresh.The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
Par Adrienne Mayor. 2011
The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular…
creatures of classical mythologyGriffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact—in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans.As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground.Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.A revolutionary approach to how we view Europe's prehistoric cultureThe peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the…
Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as Peter Wells argues here, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Wells reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. He sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places—and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience.How Ancient Europeans Saw the World offers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. The book demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought…
and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture. Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors. Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, The Origins of Monsters sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition.Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Elements in Critical Heritage Studies)
Par Null Natalia Grincheva, Null Elizabeth Stainforth. 2024
Geopolitics of Digital Heritage analyzes and discusses the political implications of the largest digital heritage aggregators across different scales of…
governance, from the city-state governed Singapore Memory Project, to a national aggregator like Australia's Trove, to supranational digital heritage platforms, such as Europeana, to the global heritage aggregator, Google Arts & Culture. These four dedicated case studies provide focused, exploratory sites for critical investigation of digital heritage aggregators from the perspective of their geopolitical motivations and interests, the economic and cultural agendas of involved stakeholders, as well as their foreign policy strategies and objectives. The Element employs an interdisciplinary approach and combines critical heritage studies with the study of digital politics and communications. Drawing from empirical case study analysis, it investigates how political imperatives manifest in the development of digital heritage platforms to serve different actors in a highly saturated global information space, ranging from national governments to transnational corporations.Perspectivism in Archaeology: Insights into Indigenous Theories of Reality
Par Null Andrés Laguens. 2024
Perspectivism in Archaeology explores recurring features in Amerindian mythology and cosmology in the past, as well as distinctions and similarities…
between humans, non-humans and material culture. It offers a range of possibilities for the reconstruction of ancient ontological approaches, as well as new ways of thinking in archaeology, notably how ancient ontological approaches can be reconciled with current archaeological theories. In this volume, Andrés Laguens contributes a new set of approaches that incorporate Indigenous theories of reality into an understanding of the South American archaeological record. He analyses perspectivism as a step-by-step theory with clear explanations and examples and shows how it can be implemented in archaeological research and merged with ontological approaches. Exploring the foundations of Amerindian perspectivism and its theoretical and methodological possibilities, he also demonstrates applications of its precepts through case studies of ancient societies of the Andes and Patagonia.Patricia Highsmith: The New York Years, 1941–1950
Par Patricia Highsmith. 2023
'My secrets - the secrets that everyone has - are here, in black and white.'Before Alfred Hitchcock adapted her debut…
novel, Strangers on a Train, for the big screen; before Thomas Ripley snaked his way into the canon of psychological suspense; before Carol became a cult classic of romantic obsession, who was Patricia Highsmith?Beginning in 1941 and encompassing Highsmith's adventurous twenties, The New York Years is an intimate self-portrait of a young artist, reading voraciously and honing her craft, intertwined with scenes from her dizzying social life, rife with sleepless nights spent in the queer bars of Greenwich Village.This condensed edition of Highsmith's monumental Diaries and Notebooks offers all the pleasures of her fiction, along with an unparalleled insight into the life, mind and times of this enigmatic, iconic, trailblazing author. 'One of the most observant and ecstatic accounts . . . about being young and alive in New York City' New York TimesThe Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
Par David W. Anthony. 2007
Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the…
early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization. Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
Par Justin Butcher. 2018
2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day…
War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.Dancing on Eggshells: Kitchen, ballroom & the messy inbetween
Par John Whaite. 2023
'We come for the glitter, but instead we get the grit, in stories told with insight, tenderness and joy.' -…
Russell T DaviesWith a foreword by Steph McGovern'I never thought I'd write a memoir. I never thought I'd do a lot of the things I have done in my thirty-four years, but life has a wonderful way of surprising us.'Well-known as the winner of the third series of The Great British Bake Off and runner up of Strictly Come Dancing with his same-sex dance partner Johannes Radebe, John Whaite's personal story is a complicated narrative of contradictions, highs and lows, told with tenderness, joy, insight and wit, but also unflinching honesty. A shy little boy from rural Lancashire, who was scared to sleep alone and danced a little 'too gay' at family weddings, he was also an unruly teen who shaved a checkerboard pattern into his hair and refused to conform. From childhood his life has revolved around food - his parents owned a fish and chip shop where John worked in the back peeling potatoes - but for long periods he has been haunted by bulimia and body dysmorphia and not a day goes by when he doesn't worry about what or how much he eats. He achieved TV fame but then seemingly wilfully chose to self-destruct, before finding the strength to pull back when he woke up in a car with half a kebab at his feet and chilli sauce on his shoes. Through it all, his essential optimism has meant that he has chosen to take every step back as a chance to reassess and begin again, finally arriving at the realisation that external validation and fulfilment is transient - a distraction from the sometimes painful pilgrimage we make as we gain wisdom from our experiences.Sigrid Rides: The Story of an Extraordinary Friendship and An Adventure on Two Wheels
Par Travis Nelson. 2023
'A one-man, one-cat mission to cheer people up' - The Mirror When Travis Nelson arrived in London, he expected to…
embark on a new life and a new job. Coming from California, he'd uprooted his wife and his cat, Sigrid, and planned to be here for the long haul. Then Covid-19 struck. Travis's new job vanished as the company cut staff. For two years, and through successive lockdowns, he was stuck in limbo in an unfamiliar city, trying to find his way.To keep himself occupied, Travis set out to discover his adoptive home. He bought a bike and began cycling through London's streets and parks with his unusual travelling companion, Sigrid - his deaf, Norwegian Forest cat - who came along for the ride. But what started as a way of injecting routine and purpose into Travis's life in stressful times, created an internet sensation. When Travis began posting videos of the pair's rides on social media, he drew in another community of people looking for moments of joy in an anxious world.In this charming memoir, Travis charts his adventures with Sigrid. He unlocks a hidden London seen only from cyclist's viewpoint, as well as finding friendship and hope. Most of all, it is the story of one man's relationship with his feline companion - one that has given him direction and a sense of belonging at a time when he felt lost.The Sun Over The Mountains: A Story of Hope, Healing and Restoration
Par Suzie Fletcher. 2023
A memoir of hope, healing and restoration, from star of TV's The Repair Shop, Suzie Fletcher.Suzie Fletcher is the warm…
and friendly face on TV's The Repair Shop that viewers look forward to watching every week as the resident leather expert - a craft she has honed over four decades and was born out of her love of horses. But while she tends to be the one repairing and offering a gentle kindness to others, Suzie has also been in a process of change, reflection, and healing.In her first book Suzie looks back over her life - which moves from England to Colorado and back again - and the places, people and experiences that have shaped the person she is today. We'll hear for the first time, how Suzie has overcome some of life's most difficult challenges, from complicated relationships to grief.A self-confessed free spirit with a deep connection to nature, Suzie's exceptional warmth and zest for life shine through on every page, making The Sun Over the Mountains a truly inspiring read that will resonate with anyone who has faced uncertainty but has the courage and power within them to overcome it.The behind-the-scenes story of how today's war crimes tribunals came to beWithin days of Madeleine Albright's confirmation as U.S. ambassador…
to the United Nations in 1993, she instructed David Scheffer to spearhead the historic mission to create a war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As senior adviser to Albright and then as President Clinton's ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, Scheffer was at the forefront of the efforts that led to criminal tribunals for the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia, and that resulted in the creation of the permanent International Criminal Court. All the Missing Souls is Scheffer's gripping insider's account of the international gamble to prosecute those responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and to redress some of the bloodiest human rights atrocities in our time.Scheffer reveals the truth behind Washington's failures during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the anemic hunt for notorious war criminals, how American exceptionalism undercut his diplomacy, and the perilous quests for accountability in Kosovo and Cambodia. He takes readers from the killing fields of Sierra Leone to the political back rooms of the U.N. Security Council, providing candid portraits of major figures such as Madeleine Albright, Anthony Lake, Richard Goldstone, Louise Arbour, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, Richard Holbrooke, and Wesley Clark, among others.A stirring personal account of an important historical chapter, All the Missing Souls provides new insights into the continuing struggle for international justice.The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of Exodus
Par Barbara J. Sivertsen. 2009
For more than four decades, biblical experts have tried to place the story of Exodus into historical context--without success. What…
could explain the Nile turning to blood, insects swarming the land, and the sky falling to darkness? Integrating biblical accounts with substantive archaeological evidence, The Parting of the Sea looks at how natural phenomena shaped the stories of Exodus, the Sojourn in the Wilderness, and the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Barbara Sivertsen demonstrates that the Exodus was in fact two separate exoduses both triggered by volcanic eruptions--and provides scientific explanations for the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. Over time, Israelite oral tradition combined these events into the Exodus narrative known today. Skillfully unifying textual and archaeological records with details of ancient geological events, Sivertsen shows how the first exodus followed a 1628 B.C.E Minoan eruption that produced all but one of the first nine plagues. The second exodus followed an eruption of a volcano off the Aegean island of Yali almost two centuries later, creating the tenth plague of darkness and a series of tsunamis that "parted the sea" and drowned the pursuing Egyptian army. Sivertsen's brilliant account explains inconsistencies in the biblical story, fits chronologically with the conquest of Jericho, and confirms that the Israelites were in Canaan before the end of the sixteenth century B.C.E. In examining oral traditions and how these practices absorb and process geological details through storytelling, The Parting of the Sea reveals how powerful historical narratives are transformed into myth.Despite what history has taught us about imperialism's destructive effects on colonial societies, many classicists continue to emphasize disproportionately the…
civilizing and assimilative nature of the Roman Empire and to hold a generally favorable view of Rome's impact on its subject peoples. Imperialism, Power, and Identity boldly challenges this view using insights from postcolonial studies of modern empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of Roman imperialism. Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, David Mattingly focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. He examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. Mattingly draws on his own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. He shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire. Imperialism, Power, and Identity advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers. In a new preface, Mattingly reflects on some of the reactions prompted by the initial publication of the book.The Seducer's Diary
Par Søren Kierkegaard. 2013
"In the vast literature of love, The Seducer's Diary is an intricate curiosity--a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic…
failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast," observes John Updike in his foreword to Søren Kierkegaard's narrative. This work, a chapter from Kierkegaard's first major volume, Either/Or, springs from his relationship with his fiancée, Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard fell in love with the young woman, ten years his junior, proposed to her, but then broke off their engagement a year later. This event affected Kierkegaard profoundly. Olsen became a muse for him, and a flood of volumes resulted. His attempt to set right, in writing, what he feels was a mistake in his relationship with Olsen taught him the secret of "indirect communication." The Seducer's Diary, then, becomes Kierkegaard's attempt to portray himself as a scoundrel and thus make their break easier for her. Matters of marriage, the ethical versus the aesthetic, dread, and, increasingly, the severities of Christianity are pondered by Kierkegaard in this intense work.