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Alice in Space
The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll
Gillian Beer
University of Chicago Press, 2016
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll created fantastic worlds that continue to delight and trouble readers of all ages today. Few consider, however, that Carroll conceived his Alice books during the 1860s, a moment of intense intellectual upheaval, as new scientific, linguistic, educational, and mathematical ideas flourished around him and far beyond. Alice in Space reveals the contexts within which the Alice books first lived, bringing back the zest to jokes lost over time and poignancy to hidden references.

Gillian Beer explores Carroll’s work through the speculative gaze of Alice, for whom no authority is unquestioned and everything can speak. Parody and Punch, evolutionary debates, philosophical dialogues, educational works for children, math and logic, manners and rituals, dream theory and childhood studies—all fueled the fireworks. While much has been written about Carroll’s biography and his influence on children’s literature, Beer convincingly shows him at play in the spaces of Victorian cultural and intellectual life, drawing on then-current controversies, reading prodigiously across many fields, and writing on multiple levels to please both children and adults in different ways.

With a welcome combination of learning and lightness, Beer reminds us that Carroll’s books are essentially about curiosity, its risks and pleasures. Along the way, Alice in Space shares Alice’s exceptional ability to spark curiosity in us, too.
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Badass Feminist Politics
Exploring Radical Edges of Feminist Theory, Communication, and Activism
Sarah Jane Blithe
Rutgers University Press, 2022
In the late 2010s, the United States experienced a period of widespread silencing. Protests of unsafe drinking water have been met with tear gas; national park employees, environmentalists, and scientists have been ordered to stop communicating publicly. Advocates for gun control are silenced even as mass shootings continue. Expressed dissent to political power is labeled as “fake news.” DREAMers, Muslims, Trans military members, women, black bodies, the LGBTQI+ community, Latina/o/x communities, rape survivors, sex workers, and immigrants have all been systematically silenced. During this difficult time and despite such restrictions, advocates and allies persist and resist, forming dialogues that call to repel inequality in its many forms. Addressing the oppression of women of color, white women, women with (dis)abilities, and LBTQI+ individuals across cultures and contexts remains a central posit of feminist struggle and requires “a distinctly feminist politics of recognition.” However, as second wave debates about feminism have revealed, there is no single way to express a feminist politic. Rather, living feminist politics requires individual interpretation and struggle, collective discussion and disagreement, and recognizing difference among women as well as points of convergence in feminist struggle.
 
Badass Feminist Politics includes a diverse range of engaging feminist political projects to not only analyze the work being done on the ground but provide an overview for action that can be taken on by those seeking to engage in feminist activism in their own communities. Contributors included here are working for equality and equity and resisting violent, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and sexist language and action during this tension-filled political moment. Collectively, the book explores what it means to live and communicate feminist politics in everyday choices and actions, and how we can facilitate learning by analyzing these examples. Taking up current issues and new theoretical perspectives, the authors offer novel perspectives into what it means to live feminist politics. This book is a testament to resilience, resistance, communication, and forward thinking about what these themes all mean for new feminist agendas. Learning how to resist oppressive structures through words and actions is particularly important for students. Badass Feminist Politics features scholars from non-dominant groups taking up issues of marginalization and oppression, which can help people accomplish their social justice goals of inclusivity on the ground and in the classroom.
 
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Brave new world
Imperial and democratic nation-building in Britain between the wars
Volume editor Laura Beers and Geraint Thomas
University of London Press, 2012
After the First World War, Britain faced a number of challenges as it sought to adapt to domestic conditions of mass democracy while maintaining its position in the empire in the face of national independence movements. As politicians at home and abroad sought to legitimize their position, new efforts were made to conceptualize nationality and citizenship, with attempts to engage the public using mass media and greater emphasis on governing in the public interest. Brave New World reappraises the domestic and imperial history of Britain in the inter-war period, investigating how 'nation building' was given renewed impetus by the upheavals of the First World War. The essays in this collection address how new technologies and approaches to governance were used to forge new national identities both at home and in the empire, covering a wide range of issues from the representation of empire on film to the convergence of politics and 'star culture'. The book is an invaluable resource for scholars of British social, political and imperial history, as well as being of interest to the general reader.
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A Companion to Medieval Translation
Jeanette Beer
Arc Humanities Press, 2019
<div>Translation played an essential role throughout the Middle Ages, bridging the gap between literate and lay, and enabling intercourse between languages in multi-lingual Europe. Medieval translation was extremely diverse, ranging from the literality and Latinity of legal documents to the free adaptation of courtly romance. </div><div>This guide to medieval translation covers a broad range of religious and vernacular texts and addresses the theoretical and pragmatic problems faced by modern translators of medieval works as they attempt to mediate between past and present.</div>
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Contemporary Mexican Women Writers
Five Voices
By Gabriella de Beer
University of Texas Press, 1996

Mexican women writers moved to the forefront of their country's literature in the twentieth century. Among those who began publishing in the 1970s and 1980s are Maria Luisa Puga, Silvia Molina, Brianda Domecq, Carmen Boullosa, and Angeles Mastretta. Sharing a range of affinities while maintaining distinctive voices and outlooks, these are the women whom Gabriella de Beer has chosen to profile in Contemporary Mexican Women Writers.

De Beer takes a three-part approach to each writer. She opens with an essay that explores the writer's apprenticeship and discusses her major works. Next, she interviews each writer to learn about her background, writing, and view of herself and others. Finally, de Beer offers selections from the writer's work that have not been previously published in English translation. Each section concludes with a complete bibliographic listing of the writer's works and their English translations.

These essays, interviews, and selections vividly recreate the experience of being with the writer and sharing her work, hearing her tell about and evaluate herself, and reading the words she has written. The book will be rewarding reading for everyone who enjoys fine writing.

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A Dictionary of Ethology
Klaus Immelmann and Colin Beer
Harvard University Press, 1989

What do such words as “information,” “displacement,” and “courtship” mean to the growing ranks of ethologists who study animal behavior? Like all sciences, ethology has accumulated its own set of concepts and terms, taken from everyday language, borrowed from neighboring disciplines, or coined especially to describe novel ideas and phenomena. Klaus Immelmann and Colin Beer have responded to the acute need for an authoritative dictionary of ethology with this valuable guide to the world of animal behavior.

The authors present a balance of historical, enduring, and current terminology, providing clear and concise definitions of the terms central to ethological writing. They give special treatment to terms from related disciplines, particularly evolutionary biology, physiology, ecology, and sociobiology, and to controversial concepts such as “instinct,” “motivation,” and “imprinting.” For words like these, the authors take pains to explain the nature of the problem, to distinguish differences of meaning, and to chart the range of application. A preponderance of terms relate to the behavior of higher vertebrates, especially mammals and birds, since these animals supply a high proportion of ethology’s basic ideas and technical concepts.

Representing the culmination of two decades of assiduous scholarship, this book will be immensely useful to neophyte and professional alike.

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The End of Eden
Agrarian Spaces and the Rise of the California Social Novel
Terry Beers
University of Nevada Press, 2018
The story of the Joad family’s journey from their ravaged farm in dustbowl Oklahoma to the storied paradise of California helped inform a nation about the brutality, poverty, and vicious competition among fellow immigrants desperate for work. But Steinbeck is only one successor to a rich and esteemed literary tradition in California. 

Drawing on history and cultural theory, The End of Eden traces the rise of the California social novel, its embrace of the agrarian dream, and its ambivalence about technology and the development it enables. It relies on various cultural conceptions of space, among them, the American Public Land Survey (the source of the “grid” allotments shaping homestead claims), Mexican-era diseños, and Native American traditions that defined a fluid relationship between human beings and the land.
 
This animation of four California social novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries demonstrates how conflicts over space and place signify cultural conflict. It is deeply informed by the author’s understanding of historical land issues. The works include Joaquin Miller’s Unwritten History: Life Amongst the Modocs, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, Frank Norris’ The Octopus, and Mary Austin’s The Ford.

Miller’s Unwritten History: Life Amongst the Modocs and Jackson’s Ramona examine the tragic but inevitable consequences for native people of making space—inhabited already by Native American and Hispanic populations—safe for Americans who pursue the agrarian dream without regard to its effects upon those who claim prior tenure on the land. Norris’ The Octopus and Austin’s The Ford examine the murkier story of trying to preserve or to reclaim the agrarian dream when confronted by the unchecked materialist interests of American capitalism.

A wide-reaching interdisciplinary approach to various cultural conceptions of space, The End of Eden provides a crucial understanding of the conflicts depicted in social novels that lament the ways in which land is allocated and developed, the ways in which American agrarianism—and its promise of local, sustainable land use—is undermined, and how it applies to contemporary California. In an era where California confronts, yet again, the complicated patterns of land use: fracking, water use and water rights, coastal regulation and management, and agribusiness, this groundbreaking work provides an ever-relevant context.
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For the Prevention of Cruelty
The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States
Diane L. Beers
Ohio University Press, 2006

Animal rights. Those two words conjure diverse but powerful images and reactions. Some nod in agreement, while others roll their eyes in contempt. Most people fall somewhat uncomfortably in the middle, between endorsement and rejection, as they struggle with the profound moral, philosophical, and legal questions provoked by the debate. Today, thousands of organizations lobby, agitate, and educate the public on issues concerning the rights and treatment of nonhumans.

For the Prevention of Cruelty is the first history of organized advocacy on behalf of animals in the United States to appear in nearly a half century. Diane Beers demonstrates how the cause has shaped and reshaped itself as it has evolved within the broader social context of the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society.

Until now, the legacy of the movement in the United States has not been examined. Few Americans today perceive either the companionship or the consumption of animals in the same manner as did earlier generations. Moreover, powerful and lingering bonds connect the seemingly disparate American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of the nineteenth century and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals of today. For the Prevention of Cruelty tells an intriguing and important story that reveals society’s often changing relationship with animals through the lens of those who struggled to shepherd the public toward a greater compassion.

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From Imperial Myth to Democracy
Japan's Two Constitutions, 1889-2002
Lawrence W. Beer
University Press of Colorado, 2002
While English-language studies of Japanese law have enjoyed remarkable growth in the past half-century, scholars have given only scant attention to the broad sweep of Japan's constitutional history. Deftly combining legal and historical analysis, Lawrence W. Beer and John M. Maki contrast Japan's two modern-era constitutions - the Meiji Constitution of 1889 and the Showa Constitution of 1947. Moving beyond a narrowly focused study of the documents themselves, Beer and Maki present these constitutions as key to understanding differences in Japanese society and politics before and after World War II. Their clear and fluid presentation makes this an engaging and approachable study of not only constitutional law but also this remarkable period in Japanese history.
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Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
International Engagement on Cyber V
Azhar Unwala
Georgetown University Press

This fifth edition in the International Engagement on Cyber series focuses on securing critical infrastructure. The centrality of critical infrastructure in the Obama administration’s recent cybersecurity initiatives demonstrates the timeliness of this topic for greater review and scholarly input. In this manner, articles in this issue uncover the role and extent of international law and norms, public-private cooperation, as well as novel ways of conceptualizing ‘security’ in efforts to improve critical infrastructure cybersecurity. Other pieces provide case studies on the telecommunications, power, and energy sectors to generate an in-depth understanding of specific responses to security concerns in different infrastructure areas.

Additional contributions examine regulatory activities in cyberspace, the potential value of cryptocurrency, the evolution of cloud computing, cybersecurity in Brazil, as well as the integration of cyber in the military strategies of Russia, China, and the United States. The diversity of these topics demonstrates the Journal’s continued commitment to pursuing the myriad facets that compromise the field of cyber.

Please note, this special issue is not included in the subscription to the journal.

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Ischemic Stroke
Diagnosis and Treatment
Martin-Schild, Sheryl
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and is a leading cause of adult disability and discharge from hospitals to chronic care facilities. Despite the frequency and morbidity of stroke, there is a relative paucity of “stroke experts,” such as vascular neurologists and neurocritical care physicians, to care for these patients. Clinical research in the diagnosis and treatment of stroke has grown exponentially over the past two decades resulting in a great deal of new clinical information for attending physicians to absorb. Grounded in cutting-edge and evidence-based strategies, Ischemic Stroke closes the gap in stroke care by providing a cogent and intuitive guide for all physicians caring for stroke patients.

Key topics explored cover all elements of stroke care, including examinations of: emergent evaluation of the suspected stroke patient, clinical signs and symptoms of stroke, mechanisms of ischemic stroke, neuroimaging, cardiac-based evaluation, thrombolytic therapy, endovascular therapy, critical care management, rehabilitation, cardiac arrhythmias, and structural heart disease.
 
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The Mammals of Minnesota
Harvey L. Gunderson and James R. Beer
University of Minnesota Press, 1953

The Mammals of Minnesota was first published in 1953. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

For the many Minnesotans interested in the wildlife of their state and for anyone with a special interest in the fur or game animals or in the control of harmful species, this is a practical source of information. Schools will find the book useful in teaching natural history. All the mammal species identified within Minnesota are described, and keys to the classification are given, with careful instructions on how to use the keys. Step- by step directions include photographs of animals, diagrams of the methods described, and 70 maps showing the geographical distribution of species. The material is based primarily on the collections in the Museum of Natural history and the Division of Entomology and Economic Zoology at the University of Minnesota.

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Metaphorical World Politics
Francis A. Beer
Michigan State University Press, 2004

Metaphorical World Politics argues that language and metaphor are important parts of international political reality. Metaphors and world politics have appeared together many times in recent history. The blended space that results is metaphorical world politics, a real- world game for political and scientific actors. This collection picks up the challenge to unravel the game, to examine its rules, to clarify the mixture of images and facts that is so real in politics but so exceptional in science. Scholars have studied metaphor mostly from a linguistic or a literary point of view. This work forces those primarily interested in metaphors to think about applications and implications beyond the text. Others concerned mainly with world politics may consider how metaphors may help to energize and structure international political thought and action.
     Scholars have most often studied world politics embedded in so-called "facts." Metaphorical World Politics shows that facts are misleading in their compactness, that facts are often meaningless, that metaphors in contrast are energetic processors of meaning, and that facts in world politics are nothing more than weak emulsions of metaphor. This work outlines the general place of metaphor on the map of politics and highlights the location of specific metaphors on the political terrain.

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A Mind That Found Itself
Clifford W. Beers
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981

At once a classic account of the ravages of mental illness and a major American autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself tells the story of a young man who is gradually enveloped by a psychosis.  His well-meaning family commits him to a series of mental hospitals, but he is brutalized by the treatment, and his moments of fleeting sanity become fewer and fewer. His ultimate recovery is a triumph of the human spirit.
 
The publication of A Mind That Found Itself did for the American mental health movement what Thomas Paineís Common Sense did for the American Revolution.  Moreover, it grips the imagination of readers not because it is a document of social reform but because it is a superb narrative. As the distinguished psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles has noted, the book ìprovides the virtues of clinical analysis, as well as personal reminiscence, all rendered with a novelistís eye for the particular, for emotional nuance, for chronological progression. . . . Steadily, forthrightly, we come in touch with the nature of delusions and hallucinations: the complex, symbolically charged, nightmarish world of fear, suspicion, irritability and truculence.î
 
Recovered from his illness, Beers began a lifelong crusade, through the National Committee for Mental Hygiene and the American Foundation for Mental Hygiene, to revolutionize the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The persuasive chronicler of mental illness became a sophisticated, pragmatic organizer and reformer.
 
A Mind That Found Itself was first published in 1908 but remains compelling and clinically accurate—an unforgettable reading experience.

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Mission Uruzgan
Collaborating in Multiple Coalitions for Afghanistan
Edited by Robert Beeres, Jan van der Meulen, Joseph Soeters, and Ad Vogelaar
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Mission Uruzgan provides on-site testimony of the Dutch military mission in Uruzgan, Afghanistan from 2001 to the present day. Proffering fresh data and probing analyses, this extensive examination of a controversial deployment addresses a variety of crucial issues related to Dutch involvement in Afghanistan, from the politicking that led up to the utilization of military tactics to the rules of engagement on the ground. This collection brings together an assortment of learned scholars to deliver a wide range of insights into the problems faced by Dutch soldiers.
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Post-Realism
The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations
Francis A. Beer
Michigan State University Press, 1996
The end of the Cold War encourages new perspectives on international relations. Beer and Hariman provide a comprehensive set of essays that challenge and reinterpret the tradition of realism which has dominated the thinking of academics and foreign policy makers. Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations systematically discusses the major realist writers of the Post-War era, the foundational concepts of international politics, and representative case studies of foreign policy discourse.

These essays demonstrate how realism operates rhetorically and point the way toward a richer understanding of world politics.
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Properties of Plastics
A Guide for Conservators
Thea B. van Oosten
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2022
A practical, comprehensive resource on the complex behaviors of plastics written expressly for conservation and cultural heritage professionals.
 
Almost every museum in the world is confronted with plastics in their collections. Research initiatives and knowledge concerning the conservation of heritage objects made of plastics have proliferated over the last twenty-five years, necessitating this up-to-date, comprehensive resource. Intended as a highly practical guide for the conservation community, this authoritative book offers information essential to understanding plastics, polymers, and rubber/elastomers and their behaviors in the cultural heritage context. Numerous graphs, diagrams, and illustrations allow readers to compare the mechanical, physical, thermal, and optical properties of these substances during conservation. Aimed at the hands-on museum practitioner, this book will assist professionals in choosing the appropriate methods and materials for preserving and treating plastic objects.
 
Complementing the main chapters, fifty-six illustrated “fact sheets” summarize, at a glance, the properties of those plastics most commonly found in museum collections. Six informative case studies present real-world examples of current conservation approaches to works of art and design made of plastics and rubber/elastomers. Under the expert authorship of Thea B. van Oosten, conservation scientist, educator, and internationally regarded authority on the behavior and properties of plastics, this instructive volume is destined to become an invaluable resource for the field.
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Red Ellen
The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist
Laura Beers
Harvard University Press, 2016

In 1908 Ellen Wilkinson, a fiery adolescent from a working-class family in Manchester, was “the only girl who talks in school debates.” By midcentury, Wilkinson had helped found Britain’s Communist Party, earned a seat in Parliament, and become a renowned advocate for the poor and dispossessed at home and abroad. She was one of the first female delegates to the United Nations, and she played a central role in Britain’s postwar Labour government. In Laura Beers’s account of Wilkinson’s remarkable life, we have a richly detailed portrait of a time when Left-leaning British men and women from a range of backgrounds sought to reshape domestic, imperial, and international affairs.

Wilkinson is best remembered as the leader of the Jarrow Crusade, the 300-mile march of two hundred unemployed shipwrights and steelworkers to petition the British government for assistance. But this was just one small part of Red Ellen’s larger transnational fight for social justice. She was involved in a range of campaigns, from the quest for official recognition of the Spanish Republican government, to the fight for Indian independence, to the effort to smuggle Jewish refugees out of Germany.

During Wilkinson’s lifetime, many British radicals viewed themselves as members of an international socialist community, and some, like her, became involved in socialist, feminist, and pacifist movements that spanned the globe. By focusing on the extent to which Wilkinson’s activism transcended Britain’s borders, Red Ellen adjusts our perception of the British Left in the early twentieth century.

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Threat
Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel
Edited by Abeer Baker and Anat Matar
Pluto Press, 2011

Palestinian prisoners charged with security-related offences are immediately taken as a threat to Israel's security. They are seen as potential, if not actual, suicide bombers. This stereotype ignores the political nature of the Palestinian prisoners' actions and their desire for liberty.

By highlighting the various images of Palestinian prisoners in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Abeer Baker and Anat Matar chart their changing fortunes. Essays written by prisoners, ex-prisoners, Human rights defenders, lawyers and academic researchers analyse the political nature of imprisonment and Israeli attitudes towards Palestinian prisoners. These contributions deal with the prisoners' status within Palestinian society, the conditions of their imprisonment and various legal procedures used by the Israeli military courts in order to criminalise and de-politicise them. Also addressed are Israel's breaches of international treaties in its treatment of the Palestinian prisoners, practices of torture and solitary confinement, exchange deals and prospects for release.

This is a unique intervention within Middle East studies that will inspire those working in human rights, international law and the peace process.

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To Make a Nation
The Rediscovery of American Federalism
Samuel H. Beer
Harvard University Press, 1993

Lyndon Johnson heralded a “new federalism,” as did Ronald Reagan. It was left to the public to puzzle out what such a proclamation, coming from both ends of the political spectrum, could possibly mean. Of one thing we can be certain: theories of federalism, in whatever form they take, are still shaping our nation. The origin of these theories—what they meant to history and how they apply today—becomes clear in this book by one of our most distinguished writers on political thought.

The great English republicans of the seventeenth century appear in this story along with their American descendants, who took the European idea of a federal republic and recast it as new and unique. Samuel Beer’s extraordinary knowledge of European political thought, displayed especially in discussions of Thomas Aquinas and James Harrington, allows him to show at every turn the historical precedents and the originality of American federalism in theory and practice. In deft comparisons with Hume, Burke, Blackstone, and Montesquieu, the familiar figures of Madison and Hamilton emerge with new substance and depth, while some who would seem fully known by now, such as Ben Franklin, reveal unsuspected dimensions, and others, such as James Wilson, are lifted from obscurity.

Beer uses this history to highlight the contrast between the nation-centered federalism of the framers of the Constitution and the state-centered federalism of its opponents. His concern is not only with historical origins but, more important, with a conflict of ideas which reaches far into our history and continues on to this day. The result is the clearest articulation ever given of the provenance and purpose of the ideas of nationalism and federalism in American political philosophy. A masterpiece of historical and political analysis, this book provides an innovative interpretive framework for understanding democracy and the American Constitution.

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Towards a Data-Driven Military
A Multidisciplinary Perspective
Peter B.M.J. Pijpers
Leiden University Press, 2023
Towards a Data-Driven Military: A Multidisciplinary Perspective assesses the use of data and information on modern conflict from different scientific and methodological disciplines, aiming to generate valuable contributions to the ongoing discourse on data, the military and modern warfare. Part one, ‘Military Systems and Technology’,, approaches the theme empirically by researching how data can enhance the utility of military materiel and subsequently accelerate the decision-making process. Part two, ‘War Studies’, takes a multidisciplinary approach to the evolution of warfare, while the third part, ‘Military Management Studies’, takes a holistic organisational and procedural approach. Based on their scientific protocols and research methods, the three domains put forward different research questions and perspectives, providing the unique character of this book.
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Transitions
Legal Change, Legal Meanings
Austin Sarat
University of Alabama Press, 2012

Transitions: Legal Change, Legal Meanings illustrates the various intersections, crises, and shifts that continually occur within the law, and how these moments of change interact with and comment on contemporary society.

Together the essays in this volume investigate the transformation of US law during moments of political change and explore what we can learn about law by examining its role and its use in times of transition. Whether by an abrupt shift in regime or an orderly progression from one government to the next, political change often calls into question the stability and versatility of the law, making it appear temporarily absent or in suspension.  What challenges to the law arise at these times? To what extent do transitional periods foster ingenuity and resourcefulness, and how might they precipitate crises in legal authority? What do moments of legal change mean for law itself and how legal institutions bring about and respond to times of transition in legal arrangements? Transitions begins the scholarly exploration of these questions that have largely been neglected.
 
Contributors
Akhil Reed Amar / William L. Andreen /
Jack M. Beermann / Heather Elliott / Joshua
Alexander Geltzer / David Gray / Paul
Horwitz / Daniel H. Joyner / Nina
Mendelson / Meredith Render / Austin
Sarat / Ruti Teitel / Lindsey Ohlsson Worth
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Transparency in Population Forecasting
Methods for Fitting and Projecting Fertility, Mortality and Migration
Joop de Beer
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
To create an accurate population forecast, a forecaster can use a myriad of different methods to assemble his or her data. The transparency of the forecaster’s data and methods is essential, and the forecaster must be able to argue for and explain their assumptions. In this useful book, Joop de Beer specifically investigates how a population’s fertility, life expectancy, and migration patterns can be used to shape a population forecast. He also shows how comparative data, such as the difference between longevity in Europe and Japan, can be helpful when creating population projections. 

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The Values Campaign?
The Christian Right and the 2004 Elections
John C. Green, Mark J. Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2006

The Christian Right never ceases to surprise professional observers of American politics. With the Christian coalition in disarray, many expected that the movement would play less of a role in the 2004 elections. But when exit polls reported that "moral values" were the most commonly cited reason for presidential vote choice, pundits immediately proclaimed the importance of the "values vote." Yet the role of the Christian Right, of statewide referenda on same-sex marriage, and of religious mobilization remained the subject of debate. The Values Campaign? The Christian Right and the 2004 Elections reaches well beyond the instant analyses of the post-election period to provide an assessment of the role of the religious right in 2004. The contributors to this volume are among the leading scholars of religion and politics in the United States, and many have contributed for over a decade to ongoing discussions of the role played by the religious right in national elections.

The authors consider national mobilization and issues, and also explore the role of the Christian Right in specific states. Their evaluations contend that the "values campaign" was not an aberration but a consistent pattern of national politics, and that moral traditionalism will likely continue to be a significant factor in future elections.

A timely study of the 2004 elections, this volume will appeal to scholars and observers of electoral politics, state politics, and religion and politics.

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Your Britain
Media and the Making of the Labour Party
Laura Beers
Harvard University Press, 2010

In the early twentieth century, new mass media—popular newspapers, radio, film—exploded at the same time that millions of Britons received the vote in the franchise expansions of 1918 and 1928. The growing centrality of the commercial media to democratic life quickly became evident as organizations of all stripes saw its potential to reach new voters. The new media presented both an exciting opportunity and a significant challenge to the new Labour Party.

Laura Beers traces Labour’s rise as a movement for working-class men to its transformation into a national party that won a landslide victory in 1945. Key to its success was a skillful media strategy designed to win over a broad, diverse coalition of supporters. Though some in the movement harbored reservations about a socialist party making use of the “capitalist” commercial media, others advocated using the media to hammer home the message that Labour represented not only its traditional base but also women, office workers, and professionals. Labour’s national leadership played a pivotal role in the effective use of popular journalism, the BBC, and film to communicate its message to the public. In the process Labour transformed not only its own national profile but also the political process in general.

New Labour’s electoral success of the late twentieth century was due in no small part to its grasp of media communication. This insightful book reminds us that the importance of the mass media to Labour’s political fortunes is by no means a modern phenomenon.

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