Download or read book Figures of Catastrophe written by Francis Mulhern and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new vision of the modern English novel The leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the fiction of the past century, identifying a central new genre: the condition of culture novel. Reading across and against the grain of received patterns of literary association, tracing a line from Hardy and Forster, through Woolf, Waugh and Bowen, to Barstow, Fowles, Rendell, Naipaul, Amis, Kureishi and Smith, he elucidates the recurring topics and narrative logics of the genre, showing how culture emerges as a special ground of social conflict, above all between classes. The narrative evaluations of culture’s ends—the aspirations and the destinies of those whose lives are the subject of these novels—grow steadily darker over time, and the writing itself grows more introverted. A concluding discussion elicits the characteristics of the English condition of culture novel, in an international setting, and closes in, finally, on the central conundrum of the genre: its uncanny reprise, in its own plane, of the historical arc of the modern labour movement in Britain, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through its post-war heyday to the seemingly inexorable decline of recent decades.

Download or read book The Cure for Catastrophe written by Robert Muir-Wood and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We can't stop natural disasters but we can stop them being disastrous. One of the world's foremost risk experts tells us how. Year after year, floods wreck people's homes and livelihoods, earthquakes tear communities apart, and tornadoes uproot whole towns. Natural disasters cause destruction and despair. But does it have to be this way? In The Cure for Catastrophe, global risk expert Robert Muir-Wood argues that our natural disasters are in fact human ones: We build in the wrong places and in the wrong way, putting brick buildings in earthquake country, timber ones in fire zones, and coastal cities in the paths of hurricanes. We then blindly trust our flood walls and disaster preparations, and when they fail, catastrophes become even more deadly. No society is immune to the twin dangers of complacency and heedless development. Recognizing how disasters are manufactured gives us the power to act. From the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 to Hurricane Katrina, The Cure for Catastrophe recounts the ingenious ways in which people have fought back against disaster. Muir-Wood shows the power and promise of new predictive technologies, and envisions a future where information and action come together to end the pain and destruction wrought by natural catastrophes. The decisions we make now can save millions of lives in the future. Buzzing with political plots, newfound technologies, and stories of surprising resilience, The Cure for Catastrophe will revolutionize the way we conceive of catastrophes: though natural disasters are inevitable, the death and destruction are optional. As we brace ourselves for deadlier cataclysms, the cure for catastrophe is in our hands.

Download or read book Catastrophe written by Richard A. Posner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.

Download or read book The Moment of Scrutiny written by Francis Mulhern and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few thinkers have had more impact on English-speaking culture in the twentieth century than the late F.R. Leavis (1895-1978). Paradoxically, his literary-critical studies and the cultural ideas associated with them have become pervasive influences, whilst losing none of their power of provocation. Yet amidst the extremes of admiration and hostility that his name attracts-in academic circles and beyond, on Left and Right alike-little serious attention has been given to what was his most audacious and significant venture: the journal, Scrutiny, whose chief editor he was for twenty years, until its closure in 1953. The specific history of this fascinating cultural enterprise is now studied for the first time in The Moment of 'Scrutiny'. Beginning with an analysis of Scrutiny's emergence in the complex historical conditions of inter-war England, Francis Mulhern goes on to recount the work of the journal. Elucidating the logic of of the project that it served, he demonstrates its coherence of purpose, while at the same time tracing the successive mutations that its discourse underwent in the changing politico-cultural conjunctures of its lifetime. A final chapter situates Scrutiny comparatively in the context of early-twentieth-century European thought, considers its specific function in the cultural history of mid-century England and the enigmas of its last years and after-life, and moves finally to an assessment of its significance today.

Download or read book The Full Catastrophe written by James Angelos and published by Broadway Books. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A transporting, good-humored, and revealing account of Greece's dire troubles, reported from the mountain villages, idyllic islands, and hardscrabble streets that define the country today In recent years, small Greece, often associated with ancient philosophers and marble ruins, whitewashed villages and cerulean seas, has been at the center of a debt crisis that has sown economic and social ruin, spurred panic in international markets, and tested Europe's decades-old project of forging a closer union. In The Full Catastrophe, James Angelos makes sense of contrasting images of Greece, a nation both romanticized for its classical past and castigated for its dysfunctional present. With vivid character-driven narratives and engaging reporting that offers an immersive sense of place, he brings to life some of the causes of the country's financial collapse, and examines the changes, some hopeful and others deeply worrisome, emerging in its aftermath. A small rebellion against tax authorities breaks out on a normally serene Aegean island. A mayor from a bucolic, northern Greek village is gunned down by the municipal treasurer. An aging, leftist hero of the Second World War fights to win compensation from Germany for the wartime occupation. A once marginal group of neo-Nazis rises to political prominence out of a ramshackle Athens neighborhood. The Full Catastrophe goes beyond the transient coverage in the daily headlines to deliver an enduring and absorbing portrait of modern Greece.

Download or read book The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe written by Stefanos Geroulanos and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The injuries suffered by soldiers during WWI were as varied as they were brutal. How could the human body suffer and often absorb such disparate traumas? Why might the same wound lead one soldier to die but allow another to recover? In The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers uncover a fascinating story of how medical scientists came to conceptualize the body as an integrated yet brittle whole. Responding to the harrowing experience of the Great War, the medical community sought conceptual frameworks to understand bodily shock, brain injury, and the vast differences in patient responses they occasioned. Geroulanos and Meyers carefully trace how this emerging constellation of ideas became essential for thinking about integration, individuality, fragility, and collapse far beyond medicine: in fields as diverse as anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics. Moving effortlessly between the history of medicine and intellectual history, The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe is an intriguing look into the conceptual underpinnings of the world the Great War ushered in.

Download or read book Doom written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All disasters are in some sense man-made." Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.

Download or read book Mimi and the Cutie Catastrophe A Graphix Chapters Book Mimi 1 written by Shauna J. Grant and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rising star Shauna J. Grant makes her Graphix Chapters debut with this humorous and wholesome series. Get drawn into reading with Graphix Chapters! Graphix Chapters are ideal books for beginning and newly independent readers aged 6-8. With approachable page counts, easy-to-follow paneling, and artwork that supports text comprehension, these engaging stories with unforgettable characters help children become lifelong readers. Meet Mimi. She's charming! She's cheerful! She's cute! But that's not all! She's also a loyal friend and fun playmate, who has the best adventures with Penelope, her magical toy dog. But when Mimi notices people treating her like she's too cute, can she show them that she's much more than meets the eye? Or will she be stuck in this cute-astrophe?

Download or read book The Future as Catastrophe written by Eva Horn and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future as Catastrophe offers a novel critique of the fascination with disaster. Analyzing the catastrophic imaginary from its historical roots to the contemporary popularity of disaster fiction and end-of-the-world blockbusters, Eva Horn argues that apocalypse always haunts the modern idea of a future that can be anticipated and planned.

Download or read book The Age of Catastrophe written by Heinrich August Winkler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Germany's leading historians presents an ambitious and masterful account of the years encompassing the two world wars Characterized by global war, political revolution and national crises, the period between 1914 and 1945 was one of the most horrifying eras in the history of the West. A noted scholar of modern German history, Heinrich August Winkler examines how and why Germany so radically broke with the normative project of the West and unleashed devastation across the world. In this total history of the thirty years between the start of World War One and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Winkler blends historical narrative with political analysis and encompasses military strategy, national identity, class conflict, economic development and cultural change. The book includes astutely observed chapters on the United States, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the other European powers, and Winkler's distinctly European perspective offers insights beyond the accounts written by his British and American counterparts. As Germany takes its place at the helm of a unified Europe, Winkler's fascinating account will be widely read and debated for years to come.

Download or read book Global Catastrophes and Trends written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at global changes that may occur over the next fifty years—whether sudden and cataclysmic world-changing events or gradually unfolding trends. Fundamental change occurs most often in one of two ways: as a “fatal discontinuity,” a sudden catastrophic event that is potentially world changing, or as a persistent, gradual trend. Global catastrophes include volcanic eruptions, viral pandemics, wars, and large-scale terrorist attacks; trends are demographic, environmental, economic, and political shifts that unfold over time. In this provocative book, scientist Vaclav Smil takes a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at the catastrophes and trends the next fifty years may bring. Smil first looks at rare but cataclysmic events, both natural and human-produced, then at trends of global importance, including the transition from fossil fuels to other energy sources and growing economic and social inequality. He also considers environmental change—in some ways an amalgam of sudden discontinuities and gradual change—and assesses the often misunderstood complexities of global warming. Global Catastrophes and Trends does not come down on the side of either doom-and-gloom scenarios or techno-euphoria. Instead, Smil argues that understanding change will help us reverse negative trends and minimize the risk of catastrophe.

Download or read book Catastrophe Theory and Bifurcation Routledge Revivals written by Alan Wilson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathematical models have long been used by geographers and regional scientists to explore the working of urban and regional systems, via a system where the equilibrium point changes slowly and smoothly as the parameters change slowly and smoothly. However, this all changed with the advent of catastrophe theory and bifurcation, which enabled the development of models where a quite sudden change in the position of the equilibrium point results from a slow, small, smooth change in one or more parameters. First published in 1981, this reissue of Professor Wilson’s classic study outlines the implications of these mathematical models for geography and regional science, by way of a survey of contemporary applications.

Download or read book Financial and Fiscal Instruments for Catastrophe Risk Management written by John Pollner and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work addresses potential innovative insurance mechanisms to compensate flood losses in central Europe by applying financial instruments for pooling multi-country risks to reduce single-country costs.

Download or read book Catastrophe written by David Keys and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2000-10-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a catastrophe without precedent in recorded history: for months on end, starting in A.D. 535, a strange, dusky haze robbed much of the earth of normal sunlight. Crops failed in Asia and the Middle East as global weather patterns radically altered. Bubonic plague, exploding out of Africa, wiped out entire populations in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse. In a matter of decades, the old order died and a new world—essentially the modern world as we know it today—began to emerge. In this fascinating, groundbreaking, totally accessible book, archaeological journalist David Keys dramatically reconstructs the global chain of revolutions that began in the catastrophe of A.D. 535, then offers a definitive explanation of how and why this cataclysm occurred on that momentous day centuries ago. The Roman Empire, the greatest power in Europe and the Middle East for centuries, lost half its territory in the century following the catastrophe. During the exact same period, the ancient southern Chinese state, weakened by economic turmoil, succumbed to invaders from the north, and a single unified China was born. Meanwhile, as restless tribes swept down from the central Asian steppes, a new religion known as Islam spread through the Middle East. As Keys demonstrates with compelling originality and authoritative research, these were not isolated upheavals but linked events arising from the same cause and rippling around the world like an enormous tidal wave. Keys's narrative circles the globe as he identifies the eerie fallout from the months of darkness: unprecedented drought in Central America, a strange yellow dust drifting like snow over eastern Asia, prolonged famine, and the hideous pandemic of the bubonic plague. With a superb command of ancient literatures and historical records, Keys makes hitherto unrecognized connections between the "wasteland" that overspread the British countryside and the fall of the great pyramid-building Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico, between a little-known "Jewish empire" in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Japanese nation-state, between storms in France and pestilence in Ireland. In the book's final chapters, Keys delves into the mystery at the heart of this global catastrophe: Why did it happen? The answer, at once surprising and definitive, holds chilling implications for our own precarious geopolitical future. Wide-ranging in its scholarship, written with flair and passion, filled with original insights, Catastrophe is a superb synthesis of history, science, and cultural interpretation.

Download or read book Spell of Catastrophe written by Mayer Alan Brenner and published by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fantastical Dance of Gods series kicks off with “a huge blast of action . . . leaving the reader breathless but satisfied” (Kliatt). In a world of magic, where computers and nanotechnology are long gone, where thoughtless gods struggle for power with little regard for those below, one unlucky man must make some tough decisions . . . Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable isn’t sure what’s going on in the village of Roosing Oolvaya. Someone—probably a god—has trapped Max’s friend, the Great Karlini, in a castle that keeps trying to move at the most inconvenient times, and naturally it’s up to Max to figure out how to spring him. But the gods throwing their weight around in Roosing Oolvaya are more than Max bargained for, and soon he’s caught between necromancers, working with a detective named the Creeping Sword, and even dancing with Death itself in a desperate attempt to save the city from catastrophe. “A generally humorous and entertaining piece.” —Science Fiction Chronicle “An enjoyable book. The characters have a sense of who they are and can laugh at their own foibles. The action moves swiftly.” —Locus “Another bit of good reading . . . Plenty of action, likeable characters, plot twists galore a light-hearted humorous style and some pretty good lines.” —Out of This World Tribune & Niekas

Download or read book In the Shadow of Catastrophe written by Anson Rabinbach and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known Critique of the German Intelligentsia, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's The Question of German Guilt illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997. These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe

Download or read book Ecology or Catastrophe written by Janet Biehl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murray Bookchin was not only one of the most significant and influential environmental philosophers of the twentieth century--he was also one of the most prescient. From industrial agriculture to nuclear radiation, Bookchin has been at the forefront of every major ecological issue since the very beginning, often proposing a solution before most people even recognized there was a problem. Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin is the first biography of this groundbreaking environmental and political thinker. Author Janet Biehl worked as his collaborator and copyeditor for 19 years, editing his every word. Thanks to her extensive personal history with Bookchin as well as her access to his papers and archival research, Ecology or Catastrophe offers unique insight into his personal and professional life. Founder of the social ecology movement, Bookchin first started raising environmental issues in 1952. He foresaw global warming in the 1960s and even then argued that we should look into renewable energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuels. Wary of pesticides and other chemicals used in industrial agriculture, he was also an early advocate of small-scale organic farming, which has developed into the present locavore movement and the revival of organic markets. Even Occupy can trace the origins of its leaderless structure and general assemblies to the nonhierarchical organizational form Bookchin developed as a libertarian socialist. Bookchin believed that social and ecological issues were deeply intertwined. Convinced that capitalism pushes businesses to maximize profits and ignore humanist concerns, he argued that eco-crises could be resolved by a new social arrangement. His solution was Communalism, a new form of libertarian socialism that he developed. An optimist and utopian, Bookchin believed in the potentiality for human beings to use reason to solve all social and ecological problems.