BiblioVault - Books by Ray, John

Advances in Cognitive Systems

Samia Nefti

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2010

This book has been inspired by the portfolio of recent scientific outputs from a range of European and national research initiatives in cognitive science. It presents an overview of recent developments in cognition research and unites the various emerging research strands within a single text as a reference point for progress in the subject. It also provides guidance for new researchers on the breadth of the field and the interconnections between the various research strands identified here.

[more]

The Charleston Orphan House

Children's Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America

John E. Murray

University of Chicago Press, 2012

The first public orphanage in America, the Charleston Orphan House saw to the welfare and education of thousands of children from poor white families in the urban South. From wealthy benefactors to the families who sought its assistance to the artisans and merchants who relied on its charges as apprentices, the Orphan House was a critical component of the city’s social fabric. By bringing together white citizens from all levels of society, it also played a powerful political role in maintaining the prevailing social order.

John E. Murray tells the story of the Charleston Orphan House for the first time through the words of those who lived there or had family members who did. Through their letters and petitions, the book follows the families from the events and decisions that led them to the Charleston Orphan House through the children’s time spent there to, in a few cases, their later adult lives. What these accounts reveal are families struggling to maintain ties after catastrophic loss and to preserve bonds with children who no longer lived under their roofs.

An intimate glimpse into the lives of the white poor in early American history, The Charleston Orphan House is moreover an illuminating look at social welfare provision in the antebellum South.

[more]

Innovation and the Communications Revolution

From the Victorian pioneers to broadband Internet

John Bray

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2002

This book describes the stage-by-stage creation and development, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, of the remarkable global communications technologies that have profoundly transformed the way that people live and work.

[more]

The Last Grizzly and Other Southwestern Bear Stories

Edited by David E. Brown and John A. Murray

University of Arizona Press, 1988

A collection of true stories about grizzly and black bears in the Greater Southwest—Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, southern California, Chihuahua, and Sonora—from the 1820s to the present.

[more]

Liberalism

John Gray

University of Minnesota Press, 1995

Since the publication in 1986 of the first edition of Liberalism, both the world and the author’s views have changed significantly. In this new edition, John Gray argues that whereas liberalism was the political theory of modernity, it is ill-equipped to cope with the dilemmas of the postmodern condition. The task now, as Gray sees it, is to develop a pluralist theory, in which the liberal problem of finding a modus vivendi among rival communities and worldviews is solved in postliberal terms.

Copublished with Open University Press

[more]

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt

John Ray

Harvard University Press, 2007

The Rosetta Stone is one of the world’s great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone’s story, from its discovery by Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt to its current—and controversial—status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum.

A pharaoh’s forgotten decree, cut in granite in three scripts—Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and ancient Greek—the Rosetta Stone promised to unlock the door to the language of ancient Egypt and its 3,000 years of civilization, if only it could be deciphered. Capturing the drama of the race to decode this key to the ancient past, John Ray traces the paths pursued by the British polymath Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion, the “father of Egyptology” ultimately credited with deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. He shows how Champollion “broke the code” and explains more generally how such deciphering is done, as well as its critical role in the history of Egyptology. Concluding with a chapter on the political and cultural controversy surrounding the Stone, the book also includes an appendix with a full translation of the Stone’s text.

Rich in anecdote and curious lore, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant and frequently amusing guide to one of history’s great mysteries and marvels.

[more]

Theatre Symposium, Vol. 22

Broadway and Beyond: Commercial Theatre Considered

David S. Thompson

University of Alabama Press, 2014

That theatre is a business remains a truth often ignored by theatre insiders and consumers of the performing arts alike. The essays in Theatre Symposium, Volume 22 explore theatre as a commercial enterprise both historically and as a continuing part of the creation, production, and presentation of contemporary live performance.

The eleven contributors to this fascinating collection illuminate many aspects of commercial theatre and how best to examine it. George Pate analyzes the high-stakes implication of a melodramatic legal battle. Christine Woodworth recounts the difficulties encountered by British actresses near the turn of the twentieth century, while Boone J. Hopkins considers newly found images of Margo Jones along with the commercial appeal they represent.

The volume continues with articles that follow developments with ties to commercial theatre, such as the interplay between Broadway companies and regional theatres, musical productions in communist Poland, and the influence of Korean popular culture on theatre and the unique production arrangements that have resulted. Other essays investigate alternative concepts related to commercial themes with regard to audience interaction and the burgeoning world of geek theatre.

Edited by David S. Thompson, this latest publication by the largest regional theatre organization in the United States collects the most current scholarship on theatre history and theory.

[more]