"In the beginning, the beginning of your story, this story that isn't yours, there was a single article…." These are the opening words: the location is Manhattan, the protagonist is Richard Schwan, journalist for the New York Times. There follows a newsroom, an airplane, more airplanes, an ocean, two oceans, then after New York there is Los Angeles, Istanbul, Baghdad, Rome and then the return to New York via Bamberg (Baveria), everything to cross over, suffer, enjoy, to be lived. And in this living there is a war, one of those wars that continues but is never declared, that springs up just like that, as if by accident. And Richard Schwan will be there, with his ideals of truth and freedom. And the research for truth and freedom will also be the search for life, the search for life will be a search for the self, for the soul. And so, with a soul laid bare, he will go out into the world. Beyond the peculiarities of contingency, including the elements of time and space, this novel pushes the reader to look beyond, pass over from non-being into being.

The book deals with the complex notion of process worked out by Alfred N. Whitehead, a notion that includes his deep revision of the concepts of time and space. Throughout his whole career, Whitehead emphasized the importance of process for the account of reality. The book discusses Whitehead's concept of process starting from his works in mathematics, logic and epistemology of the natural sciences, in order to pave the way for a better understanding of Whitehead's speculative philosophy. The focus is on the relationship between concrescence and transition, seen as deeply correlated and reciprocally determined. In this perspective, the book offers a reinterpretation of Whitehead's most enigmatic proposal: the event of subjectivity interpreted as a process of subjectivation. This poses the problem of the endurance of subjectivity. The book suggests that this problem is solved by Whitehead through is appropriation of Plato's notion of chora, seen as the "place" of a processual subject.

After researching the life of a British Special Operation Executive agent, Oliver Churchill, who operated over the summer of 1944, Andrea Cominini found that his brother, Peter, had also been an SOE agent operating in France during WWII. Peter carried out four missions, spending 225 days in enemy territory. Finally captured, he spent over two years in captivity. After the war he wrote four novels based on his wartime experiences. Reviewing his second book, The Daily Herald wrote: "Now Peter Churchill wrote one of the best spy books of all time". The author describes the different literary genres in which Churchill's works can be situated and – through a subsequent analysis of the novels – how they provide a clear and historical representation of everyday life of a British secret agent during WWII. Peter Churchill’s works are then compared to those of pther novelists of his time, uncovering a range of connections with other related authors and literary genres. After the war, Churchill was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Croix de Guerre; his wife Odette, who worked with him as an underground courier during the war, was the first woman to receive the George Cross.

In 1956, together with his research group, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson published a theory that was to revolutionize the way of conceiving mental illness. Over the years, the central concept of this theory, the double bind, proved effective in an increasing number of fields of knowledge: from the theory of communication to epistemology, from sociology to pedagogy, from literature to philosophy. Through an examination of the inception and development of this concept, the book retraces the main themes, connections and critical points that mark the whole of Bateson’s multifaceted research: from the early ethnographic surveys in New Guinea through to the ecological ideas of his later years, including the cybernetic reflections, his studies of human and animal communication, his work in the psychiatric field. This analysis of the double bind theory, originally formulated as a hypothesis to explain schizophrenia, is not only a guide to the work of one of the most unpredictable and original thinkers of the last century, but also gives access to essential theoretical tools for bringing into focus a number of increasingly persistent contemporary problems.

In Lapis, poet Kerri Webster writes into the vast space left by the deaths of three women: her mother, a mentor, and a friend. Using a wide array of lyric forms and meditations, Webster explores matrilineages both familial and poetic, weaving together death, spirituality, women, and a sense of the shifting earth into one "doctrine of Non-linear Revelation."

Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes – from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas. This volume brings together contributions by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. Their focus is on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.

Belly to the Brutal sings a corrido of the love between mothers and daughters, confronting the learned complicity with patriarchal violence passed down from generation to generation. This poetry edges into the borderlands, touching the realm of chora - humming, screaming, rhythm - transporting the words outside of patriarchal and racist constructs. Drawing from curanderisma and a revived wave of feminist brujería, Jennifer Givhan creates a healing space for Brown women and mothers. Each poem finds its own form, interweaving beauty and devastation to create a pathway out of the systems that have for too long oppressed women. The poems dwell in the thick language of "motherfear," "where love grows too / in the shining center of the wound." This poetry of invocation moves toward a transformation of violence that is ultimately redemptive.

This volume offers a valuable resource by compiling and interpreting high-resolution satellite images of all Old and Middle Kingdom pyramid sites in Egypt. The sites included in this Atlas represent to a large degree the principal sites of the third- through the thirteenth-Dynasty. Their particular characteristics mirror the specific periods of Egyptian history, providing a fascinating window into the incredible story of ancient Egypt. Sites covered include (starting in the north): Abu Rawash, Giza, Zawiyet el-Aryan, Abusir, Saqqara, Dahshur, Mazghuna, Lisht, Meidum, Lahun, Hawara and Abydos. Also featured is the site of Abu Ghurob, with the two sun temples of Userkaf and Nyuserra of the fifth-Dynasty and the so-called minor step pyramids dating from the late third- to the early fourth-Dynasty. These start in Seila at the northeastern edge of the Faiyum Oasis and include – proceeding those of Zawyet Sultan – Nubt (Naqada), Abydos (Sinki), Hierakonpolis (el-Kula), Edfu (Ghonemeia) and Elephantine. The individual sites are characterised on the background of their local topography and changing nature of their development over time as reflected by the position of individual monuments, including the principal pyramids of the Old and Middle Kingdom. Each each site provides a different story in terms of its structure and content, reflecting the simple fact that every site developed under different conditions, in different local setting, had its own internal logics, its pace and its genuine characteristics. Each site also reflects a specific historical situation and tells a different story of its development and rediscovery. Most pyramid fields are increasingly more intensively endangered by modern development and locally-dominated neglect of the need for their preservation. It is strongly believed that the latest technological advances, including the satellite imaging in Egyptology, will ultimately translate into their systematic use in sites’ protection and management, site and landscape analysis and long-term strategies for both ongoing and future excavation and survey projects in Egypt.

What can we learn from the way artists live and operate in the world? This is one of the questions that Nietzsche asks himself throughout the course of his work, although it is not one for which he is most famous. In its answer, the question functions as a swinging incessant movement that oscillates between a highly critical analysis of dogmas and prejudices of the Western philosophical tradition and an equally profound recognition of how important it is for each of us to cling to a system of certainties and truths that are but illusions necessary to life. Art speaks to us of this perpetual transit from the brutality of the real to the enchantment of an invented world and teaches us how to move between both extremes. Beyond stereotypes and false myths, the crucial nodes of Nietzsche’s thought are shown in a different light, demonstrating once again the complexity of a philosophy that resists all simplifications.

James Still left eastern Kentucky for Europe in 1941 after enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II, leaving behind a recently published, semiautobiographical work of fiction, On Troublesome Creek. Even as he developed a broader worldview, his work continued to draw from the agrarian and regional sources of life in the Cumberland Plateau that supported the American war effort. Like the riverbeds and creeks he so often evoked, Still reminds readers of the local and regional founts that they were fighting for in the century's second great war. The "Dean of Appalachian Literature," James Still grew up in Alabama before settling down in Knott County, Kentucky in the early 1930s. In On Troublesome Creek, he describes the ebbs and flows of Appalachian living while celebrating the culture defined by family, self-sufficiency, and hard work. The colloquial dialogue brings to life a community attached to the land on which they had lived for generations and the victuals and rituals that kept their world in motion amidst uncertainty.

Twice torpedoed during the Battle of the Atlantic, LT. Tony Colombo USNR, a former merchant marine officer, is appointed to command a new Navy ship, PC-450, a 173 foot, steel-hulled and much advanced submarine chaser carrying five officers and sixty-five men. After a period of escorting convoys up and down the Atlantic coast, Tony suddenly finds himself escorting ships loaded with Marine Corps equipment all the way to Wellington, New Zealand and then to Brisbane, Australia. Once arrived, he is instantly ordered to begin escorting small convoys up and down the Australian coast. Some weeks later, Tony and PC-450 engage in battle with a dangerous Japanese midget submarine which is attempting to penetrate Brisbane Harbour. In the summer of 1942, as PC-450 begins to escort numerous convoys from Australia to Noumea in New Caledonia, the United States suddenly invades Guadalcanal with the result that Tony begins guiding convoys north in support of the invasion while fending off the multiple day and night air raids that the Japanese throw down The Slot. Subsequently, following the hard fought victory on Guadalcanal, PC-450 participates in the invasion of the Russell Islands and then, during the grinding fight for New Georgia, PC-450 not only helps to fend off Japanese air attacks on the fleet but twice engages in surface actions when the Japanese attempt to infiltrate troops onto the island. Wounded in a sudden air attack that radar could not detect in advance, Tony finds himself back in Australian territory awaiting new orders. Reviews for Splinter on the Tide, also by Phillip E. Parotti: "A deftly crafted novel of naval combat in World War II" – Midwest Book Review "People won't forget the visceral impact of these real-life characters. Ordinary people, pushed to extraordinary ends, surviving the true horrors of war accurately portrayed. A military, naval, novel you won’t want to put down." – Ron Lealos, author of Pashtun: A Military Thriller and 'Don't Mean Nuthin' "A page-turning historical portrayal of love, war, hardship and discovery of the true cost for sailors’ survival. Those who were at sea in any war time will savor every page." – Maria Riva, best-selling author of Marlene Dietrich: The Life

First published in 1937, Hounds on the Mountain evokes Still's personal experiences of Eastern Kentucky through reflective folk poems describing Appalachian mountain life from birth through death. Written during the Great Depression, the collection emphasizes a collective reliance on the earth and the primacy of nature that Still observed from the seclusion of his thirty-one acre home in Knott County, Kentucky. The "Dean of Appalachian Literature" describes the changing landscape of his adopted community as a tale of personal and environmental erosion. In many ways the author asks his readers to better protect this fragile ecosphere and set the stage for his rise to eminence in the literary field. Still's regional focus on the self-made authenticity of community artisans also reminded American readers during the Great Depression that local economies needed to be supported just as much as those at the national and global level. Both in prose and product, Hounds on the Mountain allows today's audiences to appreciate the book as both literature and cultural symbolism of Appalachian life as it exists then and now.

James Still (1906-2001) remains one of the most beloved and important writers in Appalachian literature. Best known for his acclaimed novel River of Earth (1940), the Alabama native and adopted Kentuckian left an enduring legacy of novels, stories, and poems during his nearly 70-year career. The Hills Remember: The Complete Short Stories of James Still honors the late writer by collecting all of Still's short stories, including those from On Troublesome Creek (1941), Pattern of a Man and Other Stories (1976), and The Run for the Elbertas (1980), as well as twelve prose pieces originally published as short stories and later incorporated into River of Earth. Also included are several lesser-known stories and ten that were previously unpublished. Recognized as a significant writer of short fiction in his day - many such pieces initially appeared in The Atlantic and The Saturday Evening Post and were included in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories and The Best American Short Stories collections - Still's short stories, while often overshadowed in recent years by his novels and poetry, are among his most enduring literary works. Editor Ted Olson in his introductory essay offers a reassessment of Still's short fiction within the contexts of the author's body of work and within Appalachian and American literature. Compiling all of James Still's compelling and varied short stories into one volume, The Hills Remember is a testament to a master writer.

When Charles Frederick Ball was killed at Gallipoli in 1915 The Irish Times called him ‘one of the best known botanists and horticulturists in Ireland’. Fred Ball (to friends and family) trained in horticulture at Kew Gardens in the UK, moved to Dublin in 1906, became Assistant Keeper at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, and was editor of the journal Irish Gardening. A skilled plant breeder, he could have expected, in time, to succeed Sir Frederick Moore as Keeper of the Botanic Gardens. Instead, he responded to the call to serve king and country, enlisting in the famous 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.This book describes Fred Ball’s life and achievements up to his tragic death at Suvla Bay in September 1915, shedding new light on his contribution to Irish horticulture as well as his time as a soldier. It is also the story of Fred Ball’s relationship with Alice Lane, the youngest daughter of a well to do Anglo-Irish family, who was the love of his life. They were married in Dublin in December 1914, just after Fred had joined up.The author, Alice’s grandson, discovered among his mother’s papers a small metal box containing over 100 letters that Fred wrote to Alice between 1911 and 1914. These letters, combined with further research in libraries and archives in Ireland and England, provide a captivating account of Fred Ball’s life in the Victorian and Edwardian worlds of which he was a part. Richly illustrated with historical photographs, Charles Frederick Ball offers a moving testament to a life tragically cut short.“A fascinating story, beautifully told. And what a wonderful collection of photographs.” – Jeff Kildea, author of Anzacs and Ireland“Excellent … [a] really valuable reference … It is a sad though exciting story.” – Seamus O’Brien, Head Gardener, National Botanic Gardens, Kilmacurragh

Revolutionary Gnosticism is a movement common to a great deal of modern and contemporary revolutionary phenomena such as Nazism, Bolshevism and Jacobinism. However no one has studied Salafi- Jihadism yet, the latest existing revolutionary ideology, in gnostic terms. If Salafi-Jihadism were a gnostic phenomenon, it would reveal its Promethean and atheist conception of the world that stands in the forgetfulness of a pure transcendent dimension, notwithstanding the apparently spiritual framework and religious justification that jihadists provide. A similar study, hence, would reveal Salafi-Jihadis’ will of redeeming humankind from Evil (with capital letter) and building the perfect society, leaving God without a clear possibility of intervening in human affairs.