This book was written in Chicago and Rome during the years 2002-2005．Difficulties in obtaining photographs (some insurmountable) delayed publication; the bibliography is reasonably up to date through early 2006 but later additions have been unsystematic.

Seven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the oeuvre of this intriguing theorist.Acknowledged only by a small circle of intellectuals during his lifetime, Benjamin is now a major figure whose work is essential to an understanding of modernity. Steiner traces the development of Benjamin's thought chronologically through his writings on philosophy, literature, history, politics, the media, art, photography, cinema, technology, and theology. Walter Benjamin reveals the essential coherence of its subject's thinking while also analyzing the controversial or puzzling facets of Benjamin's work. That coherence, Steiner contends, can best be appreciated by placing Benjamin in his proper context as a member of the German philosophical tradition and a participant in contemporary intellectual debates.As Benjamin's writing attracts more and more readers in the English-speaking world, Walter Benjamin will be a valuable guide to this fascinating body of work.

Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail industries, has evolved from an arena dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. And as in other areas of retail, this transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process. This has been especially pronounced in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate. What drives that debateAnd why do so many people believe that bookselling should be immune to questions of profit?In Reluctant Capitalists, Miller looks at a century of book retailing, demonstrating that the independent/chain dynamic is not entirely new. It began one hundred years ago when department stores began selling books, continued through the 1960s with the emergence of national chain stores, and exploded with the formation of "e;superstores"e; in the 1990s. The advent of the Internet has further spurred tremendous changes in how booksellers approach their business. All of these changes have met resistance from book professionals and readers who believe that the book business should somehow be "e;above"e; market forces and instead embrace more noble priorities.Miller uses interviews with bookstore customers and members of the book industry to explain why books evoke such distinct and heated reactions. She reveals why customers have such fierce loyalty to certain bookstores and why they identify so strongly with different types of books. In the process, she also teases out the meanings of retailing and consumption in American culture at large, underscoring her point that any type of consumer behavior is inevitably political, with consequences for communities as well as commercial institutions.

The Arkansas Gazette was born in a log cabin November 20, 1819, on a bank of the Arkansas River. A local establishment donated a barrel of whiskey to celebrate the event. The first issue carried a complaint from a citizen that the town had too many lawyers. When the paper died 167 years later, the problem was not lawyers but corporate executives who had found themselves, to their confusion, in charge of the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi and not knowing what to do with it.

William Gilmore Simms's (1806-1870) body of work, a sweeping fictional portrait of the colonial and antebellum South in all its regional diversity, with its literary and intellectual issues, is probably more comprehensive than any other nineteenth-century southern author. Simms's career began with a short novel, Martin Faber, published in 1833. This Gothic tale is reminiscent of James Hogg's Confessions of a Sinner and was written four years before Edgar Allan Poe's "e;William Wilson."e; Narrated in the first person, it is considered a pioneering examination of criminal psychology. Martin seduces then murders Emily so that he might marry another woman, Constance. Martin confesses to his friend and is killed after attempting to stab Constance when she visits him in jail. The book was immediately successful and was well received by the northern media, thus starting Simms's successful career as a writer, one that would rank him as the only major southern literary figure besides Poe before the Civil War. As with other volumes in the Arkansas Edition of Simms's work, this volume includes a critical introduction by the editor and a Simms chronology, as well as appendices dealing with textual matters. This edition also includes Simms's 1829 story, "e;Confessions of a Murderer,"e; which was the germ for his first book of fiction.

Worthy of the Cause for Which They Fight chronicles the experiences of a well-educated and articulate Confederate officer from Arkansas who witnessed the full evolution of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Department and western theater. Daniel Harris Reynolds, a community leader with a thriving law practice in Chicot County, entered service in 1861 as a captain in command of Company A of the First Arkansas Mounted Rifles. Reynolds saw action at Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge before the regiment was dismounted and transferred to the Army of Tennessee, the primary Confederate force in the western theater. As Reynolds fought through the battles of Chickamauga, Atlanta, Nashville, and Bentonville, he consistently kept a diary in which he described the harsh realities of battle, the shifting fortunes of war, and the personal and political conflicts that characterized and sometimes divided the soldiers. The result is a significant testimonial offering valuable insights into the nature of command from the company to brigade levels, expressed by a committed Southerner coming to grips with the realities of defeat and the ultimate demoralization of surrender.

A Documentary History of Arkansas provides a comprehensive look at Arkansas history from the state's earliest events to the present. Here are newspaper articles, government bulletins, legislative acts, broadsides, letters, and speeches that, taken collectively, give a firsthand glimpse at how the twenty-fifth state's history was made. Enhanced by additional documents and brought up to date since its original publication in 1984, this new edition is the standard source for essential primary documents illustrating the state's political, social, economic, educational, and environmental history.

Not Without Honor threads together the stories of three American POWs-Carano; his buddy Bill Blackmon, who was also at Stalag 17 b; and John C. Bitzer, who survived the brutal "e;Death March"e; from northern Germany to liberation in April 1945. At times the journal reads like a thriller as he records air battles and escape attempts. Yet in their most gripping accounts, these POWs ruminate on psychological survival. The sense of community they formed was instrumental to their endurance. This compelling book allows the reader to journey with these young men as they bore firsthand witness to the best and worst of human nature.

With the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in the 1880s came the emergence of a modern and profoundly multicultural New Mexico. Native Americans, working-class Mexicans, elite Hispanos, and black and white newcomers all commingled and interacted in the territory in ways that had not been previously possible. But what did it mean to be white in this multiethnic milieuAnd how did ideas of sexuality and racial supremacy shape ideas of citizenry and determine who would govern the region?Coyote Nation considers these questions as it explores how New Mexicans evaluated and categorized racial identities through bodily practices. Where ethnic groups were numerous and-in the wake of miscegenation-often difficult to discern, the ways one dressed, bathed, spoke, gestured, or even stood were largely instrumental in conveying one's race. Even such practices as cutting one's hair, shopping, drinking alcohol, or embalming a deceased loved one could inextricably link a person to a very specific racial identity.A fascinating history of an extraordinarily plural and polyglot region, Coyote Nation will be of value to historians of race and ethnicity in American culture.

Among the best-known and most prolific French women writers of the sixteenth century, Madeleine (1520-87) and Catherine (1542-87) des Roches were celebrated not only for their uncommonly strong mother-daughter bond but also for their bold assertion of poetic authority for women in the realm of belles lettres. The Dames des Roches excelled in a variety of genres, including poetry, Latin and Italian translations, correspondence, prose dialogues, pastoral drama, and tragicomedy; collected in From Mother and Daughter are selections from their celebrated oeuvre, suffused with an engaging and enduring feminist consciousness. Madeleine and Catherine spent their entire lives in civil war-torn Poitiers, where a siege of the city, vandalism, and desecration of churches fueled their political and religious commentary. Members of an elite literary circle that would inspire salon culture during the next century, the Dames des Roches addressed the issues of the day, including the ravages of religious civil wars, the weak monarchy, education for women, marriage and the family, violence against women, and the status of women intellectuals. Through their collaborative engagement in shared public discourse, both mother and daughter were models of moral, political, and literary agency.

Affect, or the process by which emotions come to be embodied, is a burgeoning area of interest in both the humanities and the sciences. For Timing of Affect, Marie-Luise Angerer, Bernd Bosel, and Michaela Ott have assembled leading scholars to explore the temporal aspects of affect through the perspectives of philosophy, music, film, media, and art, as well as technology and neurology. The contributions address possibilities for affect as a capacity of the body; as an anthropological in*ion and a primary, ontological conjunctive and disjunctive processes; as an interruption of chains of stimulus and response; and as an arena within cultural history for political, media, and psychopharmacological interventions. Showing how these and other temporal aspects of affect are articulated both throughout history and in contemporary society, the editors then explore the implications for the current knowledge structures surrounding affect today.

The Spirit of the Laws-Montesquieu's huge, complex, and enormously influential work-is considered one of the central texts of the Enlightenment, laying the foundation for the liberally democratic political regimes that were to embody its values. In his penetrating analysis, Thomas L. Pangle brilliantly argues that the inherently theological project of Enlightenment liberalism is made more clearly-and more consequentially- in Spirit than in any other work.In a probing and careful reading, Pangle shows how Montesquieu believed that rationalism, through the influence of liberal institutions and the spread of commercial culture, would secularize human affairs. At the same time, Pangle uncovers Montesquieu's views about the origins of humanity's religious impulse and his confidence that political and economic security would make people less likely to sacrifice worldly well-being for otherworldly hopes. With the interest in the theological aspects of political theory and practice showing no signs of diminishing, this book is a timely and insightful contribution to one of the key achievements of Enlightenment thought.

Ancient Greek tragedy has been an inspiration to Western culture, but the way it was first performed has long remained in question. In The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy, Graham Ley provides an illuminating discussion of key issues relating to the use of the playing space and the nature of the chorus, offering a distinctive impression of the performance of Greek tragedy in the fifth century BCE. Drawing on evidence from the surviving texts of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Ley explains how scenes with actors were played in the open ground of the orchestra, often considered as exclusively the dancing place of the chorus. In reviewing what is known of the music and dance of Greek antiquity, Ley goes on to show that in the original productions the experience of the chorus-expressed in song and dance and in interaction with the characters-remained a vital characteristic in the performance of tragedy.Combining detailed analysis with broader reflections about the nature of ancient Greek tragedy as an art form, this volume-supplemented with a series of illustrative drawings and diagrams-will be a necessary addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in literature, theater, or classical studies.

Design, build, and publish an iOS game from scratch using the stunning features of iOS 9 About This Book Create storyboards in Xcode from concept to code and designChalk out your game’s overall navigation and structureWork with 2D and 3D game development toolsWho This Book Is ForThis book is intended for game developers who wish to develop 2D and 3D games for iPhone and iPad. If you are a developer from another platform, or game engine such as Android or Unity, a current iOS developer wishing to learn more about Swift and the latest features of iOS 9, or even if you are new to game development, then this book is for you. Some prior programming knowledge is recommended, but not required.What You Will LearnFamiliarise yourself with both basic and advanced Swift game development codeUnderstand the structure and flow of a typical iOS appWork with the SpriteKit framework to make 2D games, sprites, and overlaysDiscover 3D game development with SceneKitVisually design levels and game assets with XCode 7’s latest featuresExplore the concept of component-based structuring with iOS 9’s GameplaykitBeta test and publish your game with iTunes ConnectIn DetailGame development has always been a combination of programming and art, and mobile game development is no exception to this rule. The iOS platform has been both a staple in the ever-growing mobile game market, as well as a launching point for many game developers (hobby and career-wise). The features and frameworks available in iOS 9 continue to cater to the synergy of design and computer engineering, using tools that allow developers to take a game idea from concept to application in record time.Whether you are new to iOS and game development as a whole, or are an experienced programmer wanting to learn the latest features of the platform, iOS 9 Game Development Essentials will provide you with crucial insight into this widely used platform.Starting with the Swift programming language, this book gets the ball rolling with code concepts and game-centric code samples right from the get-go, giving you get a solid understanding of Apple’s cutting-edge programming language. The book takes you through iOS game development concepts and introduces the various frameworks that allow you to develop robust, reusable, and intelligent game components in both 2D and 3D game environments.Style and approachThis book is a step-by-step guide into the code and concepts of iOS apps. Each chapter contains diagrams that showcase the features of the platform, along with code samples from Apple and code samples exclusive to this book.

Expand your knowledge of computer vision by building amazing projects with OpenCV 3About This BookBuild computer vision projects to capture high-quality image data, detect and track objects, process the actions of humans or animals, and much moreDiscover practical and interesting innovations in computer vision while building atop a mature open-source library, OpenCV 3Familiarize yourself with multiple approaches and theories wherever critical decisions need to be madeWho This Book Is ForThis book is ideal for you if you aspire to build computer vision systems that are smarter, faster, more complex, and more practical than the competition. This is an advanced book intended for those who already have some experience in setting up an OpenCV development environment and building applications with OpenCV. You should be comfortable with computer vision concepts, object-oriented programming, graphics programming, IDEs, and the command line.What You Will LearnSelect and configure camera systems to see invisible light, fast motion, and distant objectsBuild a “camera trap”, as used by nature photographers, and process photos to create beautiful effectsDevelop a facial expression recognition system with various feature extraction techniques and machine learning methodsBuild a panorama Android application using the OpenCV stitching module in C++ with NDK supportOptimize your object detection model, make it rotation invariant, and apply scene-specific constraints to make it faster and more robustCreate a person identification and registration system based on biometric properties of that person, such as their fingerprint, iris, and faceFuse data from videos and gyroscopes to stabilize videos shot from your mobile phone and create hyperlapse style videosIn DetailComputer vision is becoming accessible to a large audience of software developers who can leverage mature libraries such as OpenCV. However, as they move beyond their first experiments in computer vision, developers may struggle to ensure that their solutions are sufficiently well optimized, well trained, robust, and adaptive in real-world conditions. With sufficient knowledge of OpenCV, these developers will have enough confidence to go about creating projects in the field of computer vision.This book will help you tackle increasingly challenging computer vision problems that you may face in your careers. It makes use of OpenCV 3 to work around some interesting projects. Inside these pages, you will find practical and innovative approaches that are battle-tested in the authors’ industry experience and research. Each chapter covers the theory and practice of multiple complementary approaches so that you will be able to choose wisely in your future projects. You will also gain insights into the architecture and algorithms that underpin OpenCV’s functionality.We begin by taking a critical look at inputs in order to decide which kinds of light, cameras, lenses, and image formats are best suited to a given purpose. We proceed to consider the finer aspects of computational photography as we build an automated camera to assist nature photographers. You will gain a deep understanding of some of the most widely applicable and reliable techniques in object detection, feature selection, tracking, and even biometric recognition. We will also build Android projects in which we explore the complexities of camera motion: first in panoramic image stitching and then in video stabilization.By the end of the book, you will have a much richer understanding of imaging, motion, machine learning, and the architecture of computer vision libraries and applications!Style and approachThis book covers a combination of theory and practice. We examine blueprints for specific projects and discuss the principles behind these blueprints, in detail.

The death of a mother alters forever a family's story of itself. Indeed, it taxes the ability of a family to tell that story at all. The Accounts narrates the struggle to speak with any clear understanding in the wake of that loss. The title poem attempts three explanations of the departure of a life from the earth-a physical account, a psychological account, and a spiritual account. It is embedded in a long narrative sequence that tries to state plainly the facts of the last days of the mother's life, in a room that formerly housed a television, next to a California backyard. The visual focus of that sequence, a robin's nest, poised above the family home, sings in a kind of lament, giving its own version of ways we can see the transformation of the dying into the dead. In other poems, called "e;Arguments,"e; two voices exchange uncertain truths about subjects as high as heaven and as low as crime. Grief is a problem that cannot be solved by thinking, but that doesn't stop the mind, which relentlessly carries on, trying in vain to settle its accounts. The death of a well-loved person creates a debt that can never be repaid. It reminds the living of our own psychological debts to each other, and to the dead. In this sense, the death of this particular mother and the transformation of this particular family are evocative of a greater struggle against any changing reality, and the loss of all beautiful and passing forms of order.

In El Dorado, Peter Campion explores what it feels like to live in America right now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Splicing cell-phone chatter with translations of ancient poems, jump-cutting from traditional to invented forms, and turning his high-res lens on everything from box stores to trout streams to airport lounges, Campion renders both personal and collective experience with capacious and subtle skill.

Reel to Reel, Alan Shapiro's twelfth collection of poetry, moves outward from the intimate spaces of family and romantic life to embrace not only the human realm of politics and culture but also the natural world, and even the outer spaces of the cosmos itself. In language richly nuanced yet accessible, these poems inhabit and explore fundamental questions of existence, such as time, mortality, consciousness, and matter. How did we get hereWhy is there something rather than nothingHow do we live fully and lovingly as conscious creatures in an unconscious universe with no ultimate purpose or destination beyond returning to the abyss that spawned usShapiro brings his humor, imaginative intensity, characteristic syntactical energy, and generous heart to bear on these ultimate mysteries. In ways few poets have done, he writes from a premodern, primal sense of wonder about our postmodern world.

Milton's GodWhere I-95 meets The Pike,a ponderous thunderhead flowered-?stewed a minute, then flippedlike a flash card, tatterededges crinkling in, linings so darkwith excessive bright?that, standing, waiting, at the overpass edge,the onlooker couldn't decide?until the end, or even then,what was revealed and what had been hidden.Using a variety of forms and achieving a range of musical effects, Nate Klug's Anyone traces the unraveling of astonishment upon small scenes-natural and domestic, political and religious-across America's East and Midwest. The book's title foregrounds the anonymity it seeks through several means: first, through close observation (a concrete saw, a goshawk, a bicyclist); and, second, via translation (satires from Horace and Catullus, and excerpts from Virgil's Aeneid). Uniquely among contemporary poetry volumes, Anyone demonstrates fluency in the paradoxes of a religious existence: "e;To stand sometime / outside my faith . . . or keep waiting / to be claimed in it."e; Engaged with theology and the classics but never abstruse, all the while the poems remain grounded in the phenomenal, physical world of "e;what it is to feel: /moods, half moods, / swarming, then darting loose."e;

When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she's still on the road, in search not so much of a home as of understanding, a way of being in the world that demands neither constant struggle nor complete surrender.The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey-but it's also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.?Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock question: How does a person decide how to live their life?

OG Kush. Sour Diesel. Wax, shatter, and vapes. Marijuana has come a long way since its seedy days in the back parking lots of our culture. So has Howard S. Becker, the eminent sociologist, jazz musician, expert on "e;deviant"e; culture, and founding NORML board member. When he published Becoming a Marihuana User more than sixty years ago, hardly anyone paid attention-because few people smoked pot. Decades of Cheech and Chong films, Grateful Dead shows, and Cannabis Cups later, and it's clear-marijuana isn't just an established commodity, it's an entire culture. And that's just the thing-Becker totally called it: pot has everything to do with culture. It's not a blight on culture, but a culture itself-in fact, you'll see in this book the first use of the term "e;users,"e; rather than "e;abusers"e; or "e;addicts."e; Come along on this short little study-now a famous timestamp in weed studies-and you will be astonished at how relevant it is to us today.?Becker doesn't judge, but neither does he holler for legalization, tell you how to grow it in a hollowed-out dresser, or anything else like that for which there are plenty of other books you can buy. Instead, he looks at marijuana with a clear sociological lens-as a substance that some people enjoy, and that some others have decided none of us should. From there he asks: so how do people decide to get high, and what kind of experience do they have as a result of being part of the marijuana worldWhat he discovers will bother some, especially those who proselytize the irrefutably stunning effects of the latest strain: chemistry isn't everything-the important thing about pot is how we interact with it. We learn to be high. We learn to like it. And from there, we teach others, passing the pipe in a circle that begins to resemble a bona fide community, defined by shared norms, values, and definitions just like any other community.?All throughout this book, you'll see the intimate moments when this transformation takes place. You'll see people doing it for the first time and those with considerable experience. You'll see the early signs of the truths that have come to define the marijuana experience: that you probably won't get high at first, that you have to hold the hit in, and that there are other people here who are going to smoke that, too.?