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As the waves of Occupy movements gradually recede, we soon forget the political hope and passions these events have offered. Instead, we are increasingly entrenched in the simplified dichotomies of Left and Right, us and them, hating others and victimizing oneself. Studying Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, which might be the largest Occupy movement in recent years, The Appearing Demos urges us to re-commit to democracy at a time when democracy is failing on many fronts and in different parts of the world.
 
The 79-day-long Hong Kong Umbrella Movement occupied major streets in the busiest parts of the city, creating tremendous inconvenience to this city famous for capitalist order and efficiency. It was also a peaceful collective effort of appearance, and it was as much a political event as a cultural one. The urge for expressing an independent cultural identity underlined both the Occupy movement and the remarkably rich cultural expressions it generated. While understanding the specificity of Hong Kong’s situations, The Appearing Demos also comments on some global predicaments we are facing in the midst of neoliberalism and populism. It directs our attention from state-based sovereignty to city-based democracy, and emphasizes the importance of participation and cohabitation. The book also examines how the ideas of Hannah Arendt are useful to those happenings much beyond the political circumstances that gave rise to her theorization. The book pays particular attention to the actual intersubjective experiences during the protest. These experiences are local, fragile, and sometimes inarticulable, therefore resisting rationality and debates, but they define the fullness of any individual, and they also make politics possible. Using the Umbrella Movement as an example, this book examines the “freed” political agents who constantly take others into consideration in order to guarantee the political realm as a place without coercion and discrimination. In doing so, Pang Laikwan demonstrates how politics means neither to rule nor to be ruled, and these movements should be defined by hope, not by goals.

The Book of Before & After is the traditional name given to the book of commonly-used portions of the liturgy of the hours of the Church of the East (the branches of which are now the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Apostolic Assyrian Church of the East, and the Malabar Catholic Church). This volume will present, for the first time, a complete English translation (from the original Aramaic/Syriac) of all the Ordinaries and Commons of the Liturgy of the Hours used by all the Churches of this Tradition. It will also include a complete translation of the Psalter as included in the liturgical books (with antiphons and prayers between sets of Psalms), the full collection of the famous “Martyr Hymns,” and extensive selections of the Propers for each week of the Liturgical Year. Finally, the volume will also include translations of the Introductions written by the various Chaldean and Assyrian Patriarchs who published editions of the Hudhra (the full liturgy of the hours) over the past two centuries, as well as a comprehensive Introductory Essay by Younan. Many of the hymns translated in this volume will be singable according to their original melody.

The Cold War is often presented as an international power struggle between the Soviet Union and the US. Richard Saull challenges this assumption. He broadens our understanding of the defining political conflict of the twentieth-century by stressing the social and ideological differences of the superpowers and how these differences conditioned their international behaviour.

Saull argues that US-Soviet antagonism was part of a wider conflict between capitalism and communism involving states and social forces other than the superpowers. The US was committed to containing revolutionary and communist movements that emerged out of uneven capitalist development.

In highlighting the socio-economic and ideological dimensions of the Cold War, Saull not only provides a richer history of the Cold War than mainstream approaches, but is also able to explain why revolutionary domestic transformations caused international crises. Tracing the origins of new resistance to American global power, Saull's book provides an ideal alternative perspective on the Cold War and its end.