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Before Mickey
Before Mickey
Crafton, Donald
¥288.41
This witty and fascinating study reminds us that there was animation before Disney: about thirty years of creativity and experimentation flourishing in such extraordinary work as Girdie the Dinosaur and Felix the Cat. Before Mickey, the first and only in-depth history of animation from 1898-1928, includes accounts of mechanical ingenuity, marketing and art. Crafton is equally adept at explaining techniques of sketching and camera work, evoking characteristic styles of such pioneering animators as Winsor McCay and Ladislas Starevitch, placing work in its social and economic context, and unraveling the aesthetic impact of specific cartoons."e;Before Mickey's scholarship is quite lively and its de*ions are evocative and often funny. The history of animation coexisted with that of live-action film but has never been given as much attention."e;-Tim Hunter, New York Times
Metropolitan Jews
Metropolitan Jews
Berman, Lila Corwin
¥288.41
In this provocative and accessible urban history, Lila Corwin Berman considers the role that Detroit's Jews played in the city's well-known narrative of migration and decline. Taking its cue from social critics and historians who have long looked toward Detroit to understand twentieth-century urban transformations, Metropolitan Jews tells the story of Jews leaving the city while retaining a deep connection to it. Berman argues convincingly that though most Jews moved to the suburbs, urban abandonment, disinvestment, and an embrace of conservatism did not invariably accompany their moves. Instead, the Jewish postwar migration was marked by an enduring commitment to a newly fashioned urbanism with a vision of self, community, and society that persisted well beyond city limits.Complex and subtle, Metropolitan Jews pushes urban scholarship beyond the tenacious black/white, urban/suburban dichotomy. It demands a more nuanced understanding of the process and politics of suburbanization and will reframe how we think about the American urban experiment and modern Jewish history.
Courtiers' Anatomists
Courtiers' Anatomists
Guerrini, Anita
¥288.41
The Courtiers' Anatomists is about dead bodies and live animals in Louis XIV's Paris--and the surprising links between them. Examining the practice of seventeenth-century anatomy, Anita Guerrini reveals how anatomy and natural history were connected through animal dissection and vivisection. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Parisian scientists, with the support of the king, dissected hundreds of animals from the royal menageries and the streets of Paris. Guerrini is the first to tell the story of Joseph-Guichard Duverney, who performed violent, riot-inducing dissections of both animal and human bodies before the king at Versailles and in front of hundreds of spectators at the King's Garden in Paris. At the Paris Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, Claude Perrault, with the help of Duverney's dissections, edited two folios in the 1670s filled with lavish illustrations by court artists of exotic royal animals.Through the stories of Duverney and Perrault, as well as those of Marin Cureau de la Chambre, Jean Pecquet, and Louis Gayant, The Courtiers' Anatomists explores the relationships between empiricism and theory, human and animal, as well as the origins of the natural history museum and the relationship between science and other cultural activities, including art, music, and literature.
Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe
Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe
Ursula Klein and E. C. Spary
¥488.54
It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences' systematic observation and experimentation get their startsIn Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe, the laboratories, workshops, and marketplaces emerge as arenas where hands-on experience united with higher learning. In an age when chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and botany intersected with mining, metallurgy, pharmacy, and gardening, materials were objects that crossed disciplines.Here, the contributors tell the stories of metals, clay, gunpowder, pigments, and foods, and thereby demonstrate the innovative practices of technical experts, the development of the consumer market, and the formation of the observational and experimental sciences in the early modern period. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe showcases a broad variety of forms of knowledge, from ineffable bodily skills and technical competence to articulated know-how and connoisseurship, from methods of measuring, data gathering, and classification to analytical and theoretical knowledge. By exploring the hybrid expertise involved in the making, consumption, and promotion of various materials, and the fluid boundaries they traversed, the book offers an original perspective on important issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology.
Boll Weevil Blues
Boll Weevil Blues
Giesen, James C.
¥394.36
Between the 1890s and the early 1920s, the boll weevil slowly ate its way across the Cotton South from Texas to the Atlantic Ocean. At the turn of the century, some Texas counties were reporting crop losses of over 70 percent, as were areas of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. By the time the boll weevil reached the limits of the cotton belt, it had destroyed much of the region's chief cash crop-tens of billions of pounds of cotton, worth nearly a trillion dollars.?As staggering as these numbers may seem, James C. Giesen demonstrates that it was the very idea of the boll weevil and the struggle over its meanings that most profoundly changed the South-as different groups, from policymakers to blues singers, projected onto this natural disaster the consequences they feared and the outcomes they sought. Giesen asks how the myth of the boll weevil's lasting impact helped obscure the real problems of the region-those caused not by insects, but by landowning patterns, antiquated credit systems, white supremacist ideology, and declining soil fertility. Boll Weevil Blues brings together these cultural, environmental, and agricultural narratives in a novel and important way that allows us to reconsider the making of the modern American South.
Mastering Iron
Mastering Iron
Knowles, Anne Kelly
¥394.36
Veins of iron run deep in the history of America. Iron making began almost as soon as European settlement, with the establishment of the first ironworks in colonial Massachusetts. Yet it was Great Britain that became the Atlantic world's dominant low-cost, high-volume producer of iron, a position it retained throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until after the Civil War that American iron producers began to match the scale and efficiency of the British iron industry.?In Mastering Iron, Anne Kelly Knowles argues that the prolonged development of the US iron industry was largely due to geographical problems the British did not face. Pairing exhaustive manu* research with analysis of a detailed geospatial database that she built of the industry, Knowles reconstructs the American iron industry in unprecedented depth, from locating hundreds of iron companies in their social and environmental contexts to explaining workplace culture and social relations between workers and managers. She demonstrates how ironworks in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia struggled to replicate British technologies but, in the attempt, brought about changes in the American industry that set the stage for the subsequent age of steel.?Richly illustrated with dozens of original maps and period art work, all in full color, Mastering Iron sheds new light on American ambitions and highlights the challenges a young nation faced as it grappled with its geographic conditions.
How Our Days Became Numbered
How Our Days Became Numbered
Bouk, Dan
¥329.62
Long before the age of "e;Big Data"e; or the rise of today's "e;self-quantifiers,"e; American capitalism embraced "e;risk"e;--and proceeded to number our days. Life insurers led the way, developing numerical practices for measuring individuals and groups, predicting their fates, and intervening in their futures. Emanating from the gilded boardrooms of Lower Manhattan and making their way into drawing rooms and tenement apartments across the nation, these practices soon came to change the futures they purported to divine.How Our Days Became Numbered tells a story of corporate culture remaking American culture--a story of intellectuals and professionals in and around insurance companies who reimagined Americans' lives through numbers and taught ordinary Americans to do the same. Making individuals statistical did not happen easily. Legislative battles raged over the propriety of discriminating by race or of smoothing away the effects of capitalism's fluctuations on individuals. Meanwhile, debates within companies set doctors against actuaries and agents, resulting in elaborate, secretive systems of surveillance and calculation.Dan Bouk reveals how, in a little over half a century, insurers laid the groundwork for the much-quantified, risk-infused world that we live in today. To understand how the financial world shapes modern bodies, how risk assessments can perpetuate inequalities of race or sex, and how the quantification and claims of risk on each of us continue to grow, we must take seriously the history of those who view our lives as a series of probabilities to be managed.
What Is Education?
What Is Education?
Jackson, Philip W.
¥253.10
One day in 1938, John Dewey addressed a room of professional educators and urged them to take up the task of "e;finding out just what education is."e;?Reading this lecture in the late 1940s, Philip W. Jackson took Dewey's charge to heart and spent the next sixty years contemplating his words. The stimulating result of a lifetime of thinking about educating, What Is Educationis a profound philosophical exploration of how we transmit knowledge in human society and how we think about accomplishing that vital task.?Most contemporary approaches to education follow a strictly empirical track, aiming to discover pragmatic solutions for teachers and school administrators. Jackson argues that we need to learn not just how to improve on current practices but also how to think about what education means-in short, we need to answer Dewey by constantly rethinking education from the ground up. Guiding us through the many facets of Dewey's comments, Jackson also calls on Hegel, Kant, and Paul Tillich to shed light on how a society does, can, and should transmit truth and knowledge to successive generations. Teasing out the implications in these thinkers' works ultimately leads Jackson to the conclusion that education is at root a moral enterprise.?At a time when schools increasingly serve as a battleground for ideological contests, What Is Educationis a stirring call to refocus our minds on what is for Jackson the fundamental goal of education: making students as well as teachers-and therefore everyone-better people.
Engineering the Revolution
Engineering the Revolution
Alder, Ken
¥247.21
Engineering the Revolution documents the forging of a new relationship between technology and politics in Revolutionary France, and the inauguration of a distinctively modern form of the "e;technological life."e;Here, Ken Alder rewrites the history of the eighteenth century as the total history of one particular artifact-the gun-by offering a novel and historical account of how material artifacts emerge as the outcome of political struggle. By expanding the "e;political"e; to include conflict over material objects, this volume rethinks the nature of engineering rationality, the origins of mass production, the rise of meritocracy, and our interpretation of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Debate of the Romance of the Rose
Debate of the Romance of the Rose
Christine de Pizan
¥353.16
In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365-1430?), one of the most renowned and prolific woman writers of the Middle Ages, wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular and widely read Romance of the Rose for its blatant and unwarranted misogynistic depictions of women. The debate that ensued, over not only the merits of the treatise but also of the place of women in society, started Europe on the long path to gender parity. Pizan's criticism sparked a continent-wide discussion of issues that is still alive today in disputes about art and morality, especially the civic responsibility of a writer or artist for the works he or she produces.In Debate of the "e;Romance of the Rose,"e; David Hult collects, along with the debate documents themselves, letters, sermons, and excerpts from other works of Pizan, including one from City of Ladies-her major defense of women and their rights-that give context to this debate.?Here, Pizan's supporters and detractors are heard alongside her own formidable, protofeminist voice.The resulting volume affords a rare look at the way people read and thought about literature in the period immediately preceding the era of print.
Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice
Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice
Sarra Copia Sulam
¥353.16
These recent achievements have their origins in things women (and some male supporters) said for the first time about six hundred years ago. Theirs is the “other voice,” in contradistinction to the “first voice,” the voice of the educated men who created Western culture. Coincident with a general reshaping of European culture in the period 1300- 1700 (called the Renaissance or early modern period), questions of female equality and op-portunity were raised that still resound and are still unresolved.
Travels with Tooy
Travels with Tooy
Richard Price
¥265.87
At first glance, the rough shantytowns that ring Cayenne, where Haitian, Brazilian, Guyanese, and Suriname migrants live cheek by jowl, might seem the least likely of places to meet a fellow intellectual. And yet . . . The poverty that threatens to crush the spirit of both the hardworking and the unemployed can leave largely untouched the richness of the imagination. Amidst the mud and stench and random violence, Tooy—captain of the Saramakas of Cayenne—runs a household in which spiritual and rhetorical gifts abound. I’ve felt privileged to play a part in it during the past seven years.
Framing Finance
Framing Finance
Alex Preda
¥253.10
As the banking crisis and its effects on the world economy have made plain, the stock market is of colossal importance to our livelihoods. In Framing Finance, Alex Preda looks at the history of the market to figure out how we arrived at a point where investing is not only commonplace, but critical, as market fluctuations threaten our plans to send our children to college or retire comfortably. As Preda discovers through extensive research, the public was once much more skeptical. For investing to become accepted, a deep-seated prejudice against speculation had to be overcome, and Preda reveals that over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries groups associated with stock exchanges in New York, London, and Paris managed to redefine finance as a scientific pursuit grounded in observational technology. But Preda also notes that as the financial data in which they trafficked became ever more difficult to understand, charismatic speculators emerged whose manipulations of the market undermined the benefits of widespread investment. And so, Framing Finance ends with an eye on the future, proposing a system of public financial education to counter the irrational elements that still animate the appeal of finance.
HarperCollins e-books
HarperCollins e-books
Christe, Ian
¥101.00
The definitive history of the first 30 years of heavy metal, containing over 100 interviews with members of Black Sabbath, Metallica, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Slipknot, Kiss, Megadeth, Public Enemy, Napalm Death, and more. More than 30 years after Black Sabbath released the first complete heavy metal album, its founder, Ozzy Osbourne, is the star of The Osbournes, TV's favourite new reality show. Contrary to popular belief, headbangers and the music they love are more alive than ever. Yet there has never been a comprehensive book on the history of heavy metal - until now. Featuring interviews with members of the biggest bands in the genre, Sound of the Beast gives an overview of the past 30-plus years of heavy metal, delving into the personalities of those who created it. Everything is here, from the bootlegging beginnings of fans like Lars Ulrich (future founder of Metallica) to the sold-out stadiums and personal excesses of the biggest groups. From heavy metal's roots in the work of breakthrough groups such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to MTV hair metal, courtroom controversies, black metal murderers and Ozzfest, Sound of the Beast offers the final word on this elusive, extreme, and far-reaching form of music.
Lateral Thinking
Lateral Thinking
De Bono, Edward
¥95.39
The first practical explanation of how creativity works, this results-oriented bestseller trains listeners to move beyond a "vertical" mode of thought to tap the potential of lateral thinking.
Immortal Ever After
Immortal Ever After
Sands, Lynsay
¥56.07
New York Times bestselling author Lynsay Sands delivers a wickedly fun Argeneau novel featuring a vampire ready to claim his mate and the beauty who resists her fate! A kiss doesn’t mean eternity . . . Valerie Moyer doesn’t believe in vampires until she is kidnapped by a fanged psychopath! After escaping her bloodthirsty captor, she through with creatures of the night. Until she finds herself under the protection of the darkly handsome Anders. Not only is she expected to accept that Anders is immortal, but also that she is the woman destined to be his life mate! . . . Or does itAnders felt a connection to Valerie from the moment he cradled her bruised body in his arms. But before he claims her, he must destroy the vampire who almost stole her from him forever. His job would be easier if Valerie didn’t fight him every step of the way. Still, Anders loves a challenge, and the green-eyed beauty is worth fighting for!
American Sniper
American Sniper
Kyle, Chris
¥69.16
NOW A BLOCKBUSTER MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD NOMINATED FOR SIX ACADEMY AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST PICTURE He is the deadliest American sniper ever, called “the devil” by the enemies he hunted and “the legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers . . . From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him al-Shaitan ( the devil ) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time. A native Texan who learned to shoot on childhood hunting trips with his father, Kyle was a champion saddle-bronc rider prior to joining the Navy. After 9/11, he was thrust onto the front lines of the War on Terror, and soon found his calling as a world-class sniper who performed best under fire. He recorded a personal-record 2,100-yard kill shot outside Baghdad; in Fallujah, Kyle braved heavy fire to rescue a group of Marines trapped on a street; in Ramadi, he stared down insurgents with his pistol in close combat. Kyle talks honestly about the pain of war of twice being shot and experiencing the tragic deaths of two close friends. American Sniper also honors Kyles fellow warriors, who raised hell on and off the battlefield. And in moving first-person accounts throughout, Kyles wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their marriage and children, as well as on Chris. Adrenaline-charged and deeply personal, American Sniper is a thrilling eyewitness account of war that only one man could tell.
Avon
Avon
Boyle, Elizabeth
¥55.31
Sensible gentleman of means seeks a sensiblelady of good breeding for correspondence, and indue consideration, matrimony. Which is exactly the sort of advertisement that makespractical-to-a-fault Daphne Dale's heart flutter. A sensiblegentleman, in her estimation, is the perfect match,and she's even more convinced once she's exchanging sensiblyromantic letters with her very appropriate suitor. That is,until Lord Henry Seldon strays into her path. He's everythingshe's vowed to avoid a rakish charmer whose verytouch seduces her practical sensibilities and her resolve. Lord Henry Seldon was not amused when his nephewplaced an advertisement to find him a wife. Yet he couldn'tresist replying to the note from "Miss Spooner." And oncehe discovers he's corresponding with none other thanthe disarming Daphne Dale, he finds it's too late to disavowhis heart. Now it is up to Henry to prove to Daphne just howinsensible and powerfully passionate true love can be . . .
The Eighth Day
The Eighth Day
Salerni, Dianne K.
¥38.72
In this riveting fantasy adventure, thirteen-year-old Jax Aubrey discovers a secret eighth day with roots tracing back to Arthurian legend. Fans of Percy Jackson will devour this first book in a new series that combines exciting magic and pulse-pounding suspense.When Jax wakes up to a world without any people in it, he assumes it's the zombie apocalypse. But when he runs into his eighteen-year-old guardian, Riley Pendare, he learns that he's really in the eighth day—an extra day sandwiched between Wednesday and Thursday. Some people—like Jax and Riley—are Transitioners, able to live in all eight days, while others, including Evangeline, the elusive teenage girl who's been hiding in the house next door, exist only on this special day. And there's a reason Evangeline's hiding. She is a descendant of the powerful wizard Merlin, and there is a group of people who wish to use her in order to destroy the normal seven-day world and all who live in it. Torn between protecting his new friend and saving the entire human race from complete destruction, Jax is faced with an impossible choice. Even with an eighth day, time is running out. Stay tuned for The Inquisitor's Mark, the spellbinding second novel in the Eighth Day series.
The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak
The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak
Katcher, Brian
¥99.65
Perfect for fans of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak is Stonewall Award-winning author Brian Katcher's hilarious he said/she said romance about two teens discovering themselves on an out-of-this-world accidental first date at a sci-fi convention.When Ana Watson's brother ditches a high school trip to run wild at Washingcon, type-A Ana knows that she must find him or risk her last shot at freedom from her extra-controlling parents.In her desperation, she's forced to enlist the last person she'd ever want to spend time with—slacker Zak Duquette—to help find her brother before morning comes.But over the course of the night, while being chased by hordes of costumed Vikings and zombies, Ana and Zak begin to open up to each other. Soon, what starts as the most insane nerdfighter manhunt transforms into so much more. . . .
Rising Sun
Rising Sun
Gill, David Macinnis
¥21.73
Rising Sun is a stand-alone novella, a prequel to David Macinnis Gill's acclaimed Black Hole Sun, of which Suzanne Collins said, "Black Hole Sun rockets readers to new frontiers . . . action-packed."Jacob Stringfellow, aka Durango, once had a promising career in the elite armed forces. That was before. Before his father betrayed him and his unit. Before he almost died and had an artificial intelligence flash-cloned to his brain. Now Durango and Mimi (the AI) are figuring out how to get along and figuring out how to stay in the game. Set on a violent and unforgettable dystopian Mars, this is a must read for fans of the author's Black Hole Sun trilogy and for anyone who loves intense, action-packed science fiction.Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.