BiblioVault - Books by Lucas, S.

American Denominational History

Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future

Edited by Keith Harper

University of Alabama Press, 2008

Brings various important topics and groups in American religious history the rigor of scholarly assessment of the current literature

Fruitful questions that are posed by the positions and experiences of the various groups are carefully examined. American Denominational History points the way for the next decade of scholarly effort.

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Bamboo

Susanne Lucas

Reaktion Books, 2024

A natural and cultural history of this important and useful plant.

We may think of bamboo only as a snack for cuddly panda bears, but we use the plant as food, clothing, paper, fabric, and shelter. Drawing on a vast array of sources, this book builds a complete picture of bamboo in both history and our modern world. Susanne Lucas shows how bamboo has always met the physical and spiritual requirements of humanity while at the same time being exploited by people everywhere.

Lucas describes how bamboo’s special characteristics, such as its ability to grow quickly and thus be an easily replaced resource, offers potential solutions to modern ecological dilemmas. She explores the vital role bamboo plays in the survival of many animals and ecosystems, as well as its use for some of the earliest books ever written, as the framework for houses, and for musical instruments. As modern research and technologies advance, she explains, bamboo use has increased dramatically—it can now be found in the filaments of light bulbs, airplanes, the reinforcements of concrete, and even bicycles. Filled with illustrations, Bamboo is an interesting new take on a plant that is both very old and very new.

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The Betrayal of Dissent

Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century

Scott Lucas

Pluto Press, 2004

Since his death in 1950, George Orwell has been canonised as England's foremost
political writer, and the standard-bearer of honesty and decency for the honourable 'Left'. In this controversial polemic, Scott Lucas argues that the exaltation of Orwell, far from upholding dissent against the State, has sought to quash such opposition. Indeed, Orwell has become the icon of those who, in the pose of the contrarian, try to silence public opposition to US and U K foreign policy in the 'War on Terror'.

Lucas's lively and readable critique of public intellectuals including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Walzer, David Aaronovitch, and Johann Hari – who have all invoked Orwellian honesty and decency to shut down dissent – will appeal to anyone disillusioned with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Lucas contends that these leading journalists and commentators have used Orwell to justify their own political transition from radicals to upholders of the establishment. All of them play influential roles in supporting the UK and US governments' charge that opponents of war -- and those who question the motives behind American foreign policy and its implementation -- should be condemned as 'appeasers of mass murder'.

This controversial book shows how Orwell has been used since 9/11 to justify, in the guise of independent thought, the suppression of dissent. We must rescue ourselves from Orwell and from those who take on his guise so, as Lucas puts it, our ‘silencing is… vital to a "manufacture of consent" for the wars which are supposedly being fought in our name and for our good’.

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Genetic Algorithms in Engineering Systems

A.M.S. Zalzala

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1997

This book comprises ten invited expert contributions on the theory and applications of genetic algorithms in a variety of engineering systems. In addition to addressing the simple formulation of GAs, the chapters include original material on the design of evolutionary algorithms for particular engineering applications. Chosen for their experience in the field, the authors are drawn from both academia and industry worldwide, and provide extensive insight into their respective fields. The volume is suitable for researchers and postgraduates who need to be up-to-date with developments in this important subject, as well as practitioners in industry who are eager to find out how to solve their particular real-life problems.

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Just Who Loses?

Discrimination in the United States, Volume 2

Samuel Lucas

Temple University Press, 2013

In Just Who Loses? Samuel Roundfield Lucas continues his penetrating and comprehensive assessment of sex and race discrimination in the United States that he began in Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice.

This new volume demonstrates that the idea of discrimination being a zero-sum game is a fallacy. If discrimination costs women, men do not necessarily reap the gains. Likewise, if discrimination costs blacks, non-blacks do not reap the gains. Lucas examines the legal adjudication of discrimination, as well as wider public debates about policy on the issue, to prove how discrimination actually operates.

He uses analytic methods to show that across the socioeconomic lifecycle—including special education placement, unemployment, occupational attainment, earnings, poverty, and even mortality—both targets and non-targets of discrimination “lose.”

In Just Who Loses? Lucas proposes the construction of a broad-based coalition to combat the pervasive discrimination that affects social relations and law in the United States.

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Little Words

Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Acquisition

Ronald P. Leow, Héctor Campos, and Donna Lardiere, Editors

Georgetown University Press, 2009

Little Words is an interdisciplinary examination of the functions and change in the use of clitics, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, discourse particles, auxiliary/light verbs, prepositions, and other “little words” that have played a central role in linguistic theory and in language acquisition research. Leading scholars present advanced research in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse function, historical development, variation, and acquisition by children and adults.

This unique volume integrates the views and findings of these different research areas into one professional source to be used within and across disciplines. Languages studied include English, Spanish, French, Romanian, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Slavonic, and Medieval Leonese.

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Logic and the Art of Memory

The Quest for a Universal Language

Paolo Rossi

University of Chicago Press, 2001

The mnemonic arts and the idea of a universal language that would capture the essence of all things were originally associated with cryptology, mysticism, and other occult practices. And it is commonly held that these enigmatic efforts were abandoned with the development of formal logic in the seventeenth century and the beginning of the modern era. In his distinguished book, Logic and the Art of Memory Italian philosopher and historian Paolo Rossi argues that this view is belied by an examination of the history of the idea of a universal language.

Based on comprehensive analyses of original texts, Rossi traces the development of this idea from late medieval thinkers such as Ramon Lull through Bruno, Bacon, Descartes, and finally Leibniz in the seventeenth century. The search for a symbolic mode of communication that would be intelligible to everyone was not a mere vestige of magical thinking and occult sciences, but a fundamental component of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Seen from this perspective, modern science and combinatorial logic represent not a break from the past but rather its full maturity.

Available for the first time in English, this book (originally titled Clavis Universalis) remains one of the most important contributions to the history of ideas ever written. In addition to his eagerly anticipated translation, Steven Clucas offers a substantial introduction that places this book in the context of other recent works on this fascinating subject. A rich history and valuable sourcebook, Logic and the Art of Memory documents an essential chapter in the development of human reason.

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"A Mirror for Magistrates" and the Politics of the English Reformation

Scott Lucas

University of Massachusetts Press, 2009

Perhaps no other work of secular poetry was as widely read in Tudor England as the historical verse tragedy collection A Mirror for Magistrates. For over sixty years (1559–1621), this compendium of tragic monologues presented in the voices of fallen political figures from England's past remained almost constantly in print, offering both exemplary warnings to English rulers and inspiring models for literary authors, including Spenser and Shakespeare.

In a striking departure from previous scholarship, Scott Lucas shows that modern critics have misconstrued the purpose of the tragic verse narratives of the Mirror, approaching them primarily as uncontroversial meditations on abstract political and philosophical doctrines. Lucas revises this view, revealing many of the Mirror tragedies to be works topically applicable in form and politically contentious in nature.

Lucas returns the earliest poems of A Mirror for Magistrates to the troubled context of their production, the tumultuous reign of the Catholic Queen Mary (1553–1558). As Protestants suffering from the traumatic collapse of King Edward VI's "godly" rule (1547–1553) and from the current policies of Mary's government, the Mirror authors radically reshaped their poems' historical sources in order to craft emotionally moving narratives designed to provide models for interpreting the political failures of Edward VI's reign and to offer urgent warnings to Marian magistrates.

Lucas's study also reveals how, in later poems, the Mirror authors issued oblique appeals to Queen Elizabeth's officers, boldly demanding that they allow the realm of "the literary" to stand as an unfettered discursive arena of public controversy. Lucas thus provides a provocative new approach to this seminal but long-misunderstood collection, one that restores the Mirror to its rightful place as one of the greatest works of sixteenth-century English political literature.

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Rhetoric, Independence, and Nationhood, 1760–1800, Volume II

Stephen E Lucas

Michigan State University Press, 2022

Few periods of American history have been studied more extensively or debated more intensely than the last four decades of the eighteenth century, during which the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, won their independence on the battlefield, created the United States Constitution, and implemented a new national government. Scholars have approached these developments from a variety of perspectives—economic, social, political, religious, legal, and diplomatic, to name a few. This volume adopts a rhetorical perspective, which foregrounds the art of effective expression as a means of influencing political perceptions, values, and behaviors. It presents eleven essays by an interdisciplinary group of scholars who bring to bear a variety of methods, backgrounds, perspectives, and specializations. The essays illuminate key rhetors, works, controversies, and moments that helped shape American discourse and politics during the years 1760–1800.

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Rooting for the Home Team

Edited by Daniel A. Nathan

University of Illinois Press, 2013

Rooting for the Home Team examines how various American communities create and maintain a sense of collective identity through sports. Looking at large cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles as well as small rural towns, suburbs, and college towns, the contributors consider the idea that rooting for local athletes and home teams often symbolizes a community's preferred understanding of itself, and that doing so is an expression of connectedness, public pride and pleasure, and personal identity.

Some of the wide-ranging essays point out that financial interests also play a significant role in encouraging fan bases, and modern media have made every seasonal sport into yearlong obsessions. Celebrities show up for big games, politicians throw out first pitches, and taxpayers pay plenty for new stadiums and arenas. The essays in Rooting for the Home Team cover a range of professional and amateur athletics, including teams in basketball, football, baseball, and even the phenomenon of no-glove softball.

Contributors are Amy Bass, Susan Cahn, Mark Dyreson, Michael Ezra, Elliott J. Gorn, Christopher Lamberti, Allison Lauterbach, Catherine M. Lewis, Shelley Lucas, Daniel A. Nathan, Michael Oriard, Carlo Rotella, Jaime Schultz, Mike Tanier, David K. Wiggins, and David W. Zang.

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Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice

Discrimination in the United States

Samuel Roundfield Lucas

Temple University Press, 2009

Despite several decades of attention, there is still no consensus on the effects of racial or sexual discrimination in the United States. In this landmark work, the well-known sociologist Samuel Lucas shows how discrimination is not simply an action that one person performs in relation to another individual, but something far more insidious: a pervasive dynamic that permeates the environment in which we live and work.

Challenging existing literature on the subject, Lucas makes a clear distinction between prejudice and discrimination. He maintains that when an era of “condoned exploitation” ended, the era of “contested prejudice,” as he terms it, began. He argues that the great strides made in the 1950s and 1960s repudiated prejudice, but not discrimination. Drawing on critical race theory, feminist theory, and a critique of dominant perspectives in the social sciences and law, Lucas offers a new understanding of racial and sexual discrimination that can guide our actions and laws into a more just future.

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