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Crowns, Crosses, and Stars

Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller Baroness von Sell

This is the story of a remarkable life and a journey, from the privileged world of Prussian aristocracy, through the horrors of World War II, to high society in the television age of postwar America. It is also an account of a spiritual voyage, from a conventional Christian upbringing, through marriage to Pastor Martin Niemoeller, to conversion to Judaism. Born during the turbulent days of the Weimar Republic, the author was the goddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II (to whom her father was financial advisor). During her teenage years, she witnessed the rise of the Third Reich and her family's resistance to it, culminating in their involvement in «Operation Valkyrie,» the ill-fated attempt to assassinate Hitler and form a new government. At war's end, she worked with British Intelligence to uncover Nazis leaders. Keeping a promise to her father, she left Germany for a new life in the United States in the 1950s, working for NBC and raising her son in the exciting world of New York, only to return to Germany as the wife of Martin Niemoeller, the voice of religious resistance during the Third Reich and of German guilt and conscience in the postwar decades. Upon her husband's death in 1984 she returned to America, after having converted to Judaism in London, and turned yet another page by becoming an active public speaker and author. The title reflects a story of three parts: «Crowns,» the world of nobility in which the author was raised; «Crosses,» her life with Martin Niemoeller and his battles with the Third Reich; and «Stars,» the spiritual journey that brought her to Judaism.

Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War

Mate Nikola Tokić

Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War examines one of the most active but least remembered groups of terrorists of the Cold War: radical anti-Yugoslav Croatian separatists. Operating in countries as widely dispersed as Sweden, Australia, Argentina, West Germany, and the United States, Croatian extremists were responsible for scores of bombings, numerous attempted and successful assassinations, two guerilla incursions into socialist Yugoslavia, and two airplane hijackings during the height of the Cold War. In Australia alone, Croatian separatists carried out no less than sixty-five significant acts of violence in one ten-year period. Diaspora Croats developed one of the most far-reaching terrorist networks of the Cold War and, in total, committed on average one act of terror every five weeks worldwide between 1962 and 1980. Tokić focuses on the social and political factors that radicalized certain segments of the Croatian diaspora population during the Cold War and the conditions that led them to embrace terrorism as an acceptable form of political expression. At its core, this book is concerned with the discourses and practices of radicalization—the ways in which both individuals and groups who engage in terrorism construct a particular image of the world to justify their actions. Drawing on exhaustive evidence from seventeen archives in ten countries on three continents—including diplomatic communiqués, political pamphlets and manifestos, manuals on bomb-making, transcripts of police interrogations of terror suspects, and personal letters among terrorists—Tokić tells the comprehensive story of one of the Cold War’s most compelling global political movements.

Crisis y reemergencia

Veronica Garibotto

En las últimas décadas-especialmente a partir de los noventa-ha habido una visible reemergencia del siglo XIX en la cultura del Cono Sur. Figuras decimonónicas típicas (indios, gauchos, letrados y cautivas) han reaparecido en la escena literaria de Argentina, Chile y Uruguay. Héroes como San Martín y Artigas se han convertido en protagonistas principales de la literatura, el cine y el teatro. Géneros fundantes de la identidad nacional (el relato de viaje, la poesía gauchesca, el romance nacional) se han reciclado y transformado. Textos canónicos como La cautiva, el Martín Fierro y el Facundo han sido reescritos una vez más en diferentes campos artísticos. Y controvertidos eventos históricos (las guerras civiles, las masacres de las comunidades indígenas) han sido revisados y vueltos a narrar. Combinando el análisis textual con una perspectiva más abarcadora anclada en la teoría cultural, este libro responde a dos preguntas interrelacionadas: ¿por qué el siglo XIX ha resurgido de manera tan fuerte en las últimas décadas? ¿Cuáles son las implicaciones ideológicas de esta reemergencia?A través de una comparación transnacional de Argentina, Chile y Uruguay, y de una lectura de la ficción producida por figuras prominentes en los tres países (activistas políticos, intelectuales públicos y autores canónicos), Crisis y reemergencia contribuye a dilucidar cómo el campo cultural del Cono Sur ha cambiado desde los noventa: cómo la ética intelectual, las identidades nacionales y las estrategias discursivas que fueron funcionales a la consolidación del liberalismo en el siglo XIX han sido reformuladas, transformadas y repensadas en las últimas décadas. Apoyándose en el marxismo cultural, el análisis del discurso y la teoría poscolonial, el libro apunta a una triple contribución: definir los componentes ideológicos y discursivos que están en el corazón del siglo XIX, mostrar su continuidad hasta los noventa (y aclarar así las conexiones entre liberalismo y neo-liberalismo) y exponer su reciente transformaciónuna transformación que abrió el camino a lo que se ha llamado el «retorno de lo político» en la región.<BR><BR>In the last decades-and especially since the 1990s-there has been a noticeable reemergence of the nineteenth century in Southern Cone culture. Popular nineteenth-century figures (indios, gauchos, letrados, and cautivas) have reentered the national literary scene in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Nineteenth-century heroes such as San Martín and Artigas are again the main protagonists of Southern Cone theater, film, and literature. Canonical nineteenth-century texts (La cautiva, Martín Fierro, Facundo) are being rewritten one more time in different artistic fields. Foundational nineteenth-century genres (travel narratives, gauchesque poems, and national romances) are being transformed and recycled. Controversial nineteenth-century events (the civil wars, the massacre of indigenous communities) are being revisited and explored. Through a combination of close textual analysis and a broader perspective rooted in cultural theory, this book answers two interrelated questions: Why did the nineteenth century resurface so strongly in the last decades? What are the ideological implications of this reemergence?Based on a transnational comparison of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, and a survey of narratives that were mostly produced by well-known figures (political activists, public intellectuals, and canonical authors), Crisis y reemergencia helps to elucidate how the Southern Cone cultural field has changed since the 1990s: how intellectuals' ethics, national identities, and discursive strategies that were functional to the consolidation of liberalism in the nineteenth century have been challenged, transformed, and rethought in the last decades. Borrowing from cultural Marxism, discourse analysis, and postcolonial theory, the book pursues a triple contribution: to define the discursive and ideological components that were at the core of the nineteenth century, to show their continuity up to the 1990s (and thus clarify the connections between liberalism and neoliberalism), and to expose their recent transformation-a transformation that paved the way for the «return of the political» to the region.

Creating Moments of Joy Along the Alzheimer's Journey

Jolene Brackey

The beloved best seller has been revised and expanded for the fifth edition. Jolene Brackey has a vision: that we will soon look beyond the challenges of Alzheimer's disease to focus more of our energies on creating moments of joy. When people have short-term memory loss, their lives are made up of moments. We are not able to create perfectly wonderful days for people with dementia or Alzheimer's, but we can create perfectly wonderful moments, moments that put a smile on their faces and a twinkle in their eyes. Five minutes later, they will not remember what we did or said, but the feeling that we left them with will linger. The new edition of Creating Moments of Joy is filled with more practical advice sprinkled with hope, encouragement, new stories, and generous helpings of humor. In this volume, Brackey reveals that our greatest teacher is having cared for and loved someone with Alzheimer's and that often what we have most to learn about is ourselves.

Construction Site Planning and Logistical Operations

Группа авторов

Organizing and administering a construction site so that the right resources get to the right place in a timely fashion demands strong leadership and a rigorous process. Good logistical operations are essential to profitability, and this book is the essential, muddy boots guide to efficient site management. Written by experienced educator-practitioners from the world-leading Building Construction Management program at Purdue University, this volume is the ultimate guide to the knowledge, skills, and abilities that need to be mastered by project superintendents. Observations about leadership imperatives and techniques are included.Organizationally, the book follows site-related activities from bidding to project closeout. Beyond outlining broad project managerial practices, the authors drill into operational issues such as temporary soils and drainage structures, common equipment, and logistics. The content is primarily geared for the manager of a domestic or small commercial building construction project, but includes some reference to public and international work, where techniques, practices, and decision making can be substantially different.The book is structured into five sections and fifteen chapters. This facilitates ready adaptation either to industry training seminars or to university courses: Section I. The Project and Site Pre-Planning: The Construction Project and Site Environment (Randy R. Rapp); Due Diligence (Robert Cox); Site Organization and Layout (James O'Connor). Section II. The Site and Field Engineering Issues: Building Layout (Douglas Keith); Soil and Drainage Issues (Yi Jiang and Randy R. Rapp). Section III. Site Logistics: Site Logistical Procedures and Administration (Daphene Koch); Earthmoving (Douglas Keith); Material Handling Equipment (Bryan Hubbard). Section IV. Leadership and Control: Leadership and Communication (Bradley L. Benhart); Health, Safety, Environment (HSE), and Security (Jeffrey Lew); Project Scheduling (James Jenkins); Project Site Controls (Joseph Orczyk); Inspection and QA/QC (James Jenkins). Section V. Planning for Completion: Site-Related Contract Claims (Joseph Orczyk); Project Closeout (Randy R. Rapp).

Confronting Evil

Scott M. Powers

Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature holds that the concept of evil is central to the psychology of secularism. Drawing on notions of secularization as a phenomenon of ambivalence or dualism in which religion continues to exist alongside secularity in exerting influence on modern French thought, author Scott M. Powers enlists psychoanalytic theory on mourning and sublimation, the philosophical concept of the sublime, Charles Taylor's theory of religious and secular «cross-pressures,» and William James's psychology of conversion to account for the survival of religious themes in Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, and Céline. For Powers, Baudelaire's prose poems, Zola's experimental novels, and Huysmans's and Céline's early narratives attempt to account for evil by redefining the traditionally religious concept along secular lines. However, when unmitigated by the mechanisms of irony and sublimation, secular confrontation with the dark and seemingly absurd dimension of man leads modern writers such as Huysmans and Céline, paradoxically, to embrace a religious or quasi-religious understanding of good and evil. In the end, Powers finds that how authors cope with the reality of suffering and human wickedness has a direct bearing on the ability to sustain a secular vision.

Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies

Группа авторов

The studies presented in the collected volume Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies – edited by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvari – are intended as an addition to scholarship in (comparative) cultural studies. More specifically, the articles represent scholarship about Central and East European culture with special attention to Hungarian culture, literature, cinema, new media, and other areas of cultural expression. On the landscape of scholarship in Central and East Europe (including Hungary), cultural studies has acquired at best spotty interest and studies in the volume aim at forging interest in the field. The volume's articles are in five parts: part one, «History Theory and Methodology of Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies,» include studies on the prehistory of multicultural and multilingual Central Europe, where vernacular literatures were first institutionalized for developing a sense of national identity. Part two, «Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Literature and Culture» is about the re-evaluation of canonical works, as well as Jewish studies which has been explored inadequately in Central European scholarship. Part three, «Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Other Arts,» includes articles on race, jazz, operetta, and art, fin-de-siecle architecture, communist-era female fashion, and cinema. In part four, «Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Gender,» articles are about aspects of gender and sex(uality) with examples from fin-de-siecle transvestism, current media depictions of heterodox sexualities, and gendered language in the workplace. The volume's last section, part five, «Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Contemporary Hungary,» includes articles about post-1989 issues of race and ethnic relations, citizenship and public life, and new media.

Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur

Группа авторов

In this English translation and revision of her acclaimed German-language book, Elke Sturm-Trigonakis expands on Goethe's notion of Weltliteratur (1827) to propose that, owing to globalization, literature is undergoing a profound change in process, content, and linguistic practice. Rather than producing texts for a primarily national readership, modern writers can collate diverse cultural, literary, and linguistic traditions to create new modes of expression that she designates as «hybrid texts.» The author introduces an innovative framework to analyse these new forms of expression that is based on comparative cultural studies and its methodology of contextual (systemic and empirical) approaches to the study of literature and culture, including the concepts of the macro-and micro-systems of culture and literature. To illustrate her proposition, Sturm-Trigonakis discusses selected literary texts that exhibit characteristics of linguistic and cultural hybridity, the concept of «in-between,» and transculturality and thus are located in a space of a «new world literature.» Examples include Gastarbeiterliteratur («migrant literature») by authors such as Chiellino, Shami, and Atabay. The book is important reading for philologists, linguists, sociologists, and other scholars interested in the cultural and linguistic impact of globalization on literature and culture. The German edition of this volume was originally published as Global playing in der Literatur. Ein Versuch über die Neue Weltliteratur (2007) and it has been translated in collaboration with the author by Athanasia Margoni and Maria Kaisar.

Child Rights

Группа авторов

Over twenty years after the 1989 UN General Assembly vote to open the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for signature and ratification by UN member states, the United States remains one of only two UN members not to have ratified it. The other is Somalia. Child Rights: The Movement, International Law, and Opposition explores the reasons for this resistance. It details the objections that have arisen to accepting this legally binding international instrument, which presupposes indivisible universal civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, and gives children special protection due to their vulnerability. The resistance ranges from isolationist attitudes toward international law and concerns over the fiscal impact of implementation, to the value attached to education in a faith tradition and fears about the academic deterioration of public education. The contributors to the book reveal the significant positive influence that the CRC has had, despite not being ratified, on subjects such as educational research, child psychology, development ethics, normative ethics, and anthropology. The book also explores the growing homeschooling trend, which is often evangelically led in the US, but which is at loggerheads with an equally growing social science-based movement of experts and ethicists pressing for greater autonomy and freedom of expression for children. Looking beyond the US, the book also addresses some of the practical obstacles that have emerged to implementing the CRC in both developed countries (for example, Canada and the United Kingdom) and in poorer nations. This book, polemical and yet balanced, helps the reader evaluate both positive and the negative implications of this influential piece of international legislation from a variety of ethical, legal, and social science perspectives.

Cheerio and Best Wishes

Donald R. Schneck

This is the true story of a young boy from Posey County, Indiana, who had a dream to fly. The outbreak of World War II enabled him to fulfill that dream. Cheerio and Best Wishes is told entirely through the letters he wrote to his family and friends. Detailed narrative and commentary provide explanation and background information. One hundred thirty-eight letters are presented in this book. It is highly unusual to find this many letters from one person, curated by his family and recently rediscovered by his son, along with carefully created photograph albums. The story starts in rural southern Indiana and follows the young volunteer as he goes westward to California and New Mexico to be trained to fly bombers. From the United States, he travels via South America and North Africa to England and deploys with the Eighth Air Force. The accounts of his journeys and experiences are detailed, ranging from entertaining to spine-tingling. Moments of high drama intermingle with the mundane nature of war. Together the letters and pictures in this book (the originals are now preserved for posterity in the Purdue University Flight Archives) offer a comprehensive and cohesive story of how US airmen were prepared and trained for war, and detail the daily experience of a bomber pilot flying missions over Germany. The letters of one young flyer reflect the experience of thousands of Americans who volunteered to go to war in the 1940s. His experiences were those of a generation.