In recent years there has been a massive upsurge in academic, professional and lay interest in mortality. This is reflected in academic and professional literature, in the popular media and in the proliferation of professional roles and training courses associated with aspects of death and dying. Until now the majority of reference material on death and dying has been designed for particular disciplinary audiences and has addressed only specific academic or professional concerns. There has been an urgent need for an authoritative but accessible reference work reflecting the multidisciplina

Product Description Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation examines the emergence, implementation, and representation of industrial killing, an inherent and crucial component of modernity whose most extreme manifestation was the Holocaust.The mechanized, impersonal, and sustained mass destruction of human beings, organized and legitimized by states, scientists, jurists, and intellectuals, is rooted in the industrial slaughterhouse of the Great War. In Murder in Our Midst, Omer Bartov argues that the Nazi death factories are best understood in the context of modern warfare, beginning with the First World War. He shows how the way we understand ourselves reflects the ambivalent effects of the Holocaust on our perceptions of war and violence, history and memory, progress and barbarism.Analyzing a wide array of historical texts, works of fiction, films, and museums, Bartov leads the reader from ancient myths of heroism to the trenches of the Western Front, from Thomas Mann's romantic vision of war to Primo Levi's stark depictions of genocide, from colonial war museums to the visual art of the Holocaust. These representations of killing share some of the same important features. They attempt to form coherent images from horrific events, to draw didactic lessons from them, and to use them for political ends. About the Author Omer Bartov is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Contends that the Holocaust was an extreme instance of industrial killing, influenced by the mass killings on the battlefields of World War I, and akin to modern industrialized war. The Holocaust was not a historical aberration, but a natural product of modernity. Racism and antisemitism were secondary factors which legitimated the mass murder. Contends that the failure to grasp this fact has led to distorted representations of the Holocaust in historiography, as well as in films and memorial museums. Objects to relativization of the Holocaust in the works of some historians (e.g. Andreas Hillgruber) and filmmakers, and deplores abuse of the Holocaust for political purposes. The only lesson of the Holocaust is that it may reemerge in our society. Based on essays published previously (some revised here) and material written specifically for this book. Partial contents:

'Daring, learned and humane... A revelatory restoration of wonder' Stephen Greenblatt. We no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe. Science is an astounding achievement, but are we really any wiser than the ancients? Has science revealed the secrets of fate and immortality? Has it provided protection from jealousy or love? There are those who believe that science has replaced faith, but must it also be a death knell for mythology? Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. Here are the Earth and the Moon presenting a cosmological view of motherhood, a panicking Mitochondrion introducing sex and death to the world, the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus, and the birth of language in evolution summoning humankind's struggle with truth. Science may not solve our existential puzzles, but like the age-old legends, its magical discoveries can help us continue the never-ending search.

The legendary image of America as a land of opportunity was challenged in 1928 by Al Smith's race for the presidency. Could the governor from New York, a Catholic from the Lower East Side, really become president? His candidacy began a dark episode in American history as Al Smith found himself a victim of the very society that, ironically, gave him his greatest opportunity. p This sympathetic account of Smith's political career demonstrates that a changing society in the decades after World War I propelled Americans toward isolationism and a reassertion of comfortable verities about religion and ethnicity. Oscar Handlin notes that Americans were fundamentalists in 1928, and their anti-Catholicism affected the outcome of the presidential election. But religion was only one symptom of the American anxiety that prejudiced attitudes toward the city, toward foreigners, toward the League of Nations and Prohibition. Disillusioned and betrayed by an unsuccessful peace, Americans searched for external causes on which to lay blame, and Al Smith seemed to epitomize the alien forces that were undermining the nation.

Anthology of writings by the children of immigrants revealing their feelings of anxiety and alienation and their unique contributions to American life

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

As a child the distinguished historian Otto Dov Kulka was sent first to the ghetto of Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. As one of the few survivors he has spent much of his life studying Nazism and the Holocaust, but always as a discipline requiring the greatest dispassion and objectivity, with his personal story set to one side. He has nevertheless remained haunted by specific memories and images, thoughts he has been unable to shake off. The extraordinary result of this is Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death - a unique and powerful experiment in how one man has tried to understand his past (and our history).

"Among the strictly scientific applications of analysis to literature, Rank's exhaustive work on the theme of incest easily takes the first place."--Sigmund Freud.

"This unique text provides students with a basic course in both calculus and analytic geometry. It promotes an intuitive approach to calculus and emphasizes algebraic concepts. Minimal prerequisites. Numerous exercises. 1951 edition"--

Pamela Erens is an acclaimed author who has been a finalist for numerous prizes and writes for high-profile outlets.[Bokinfo]

"An entire industry preys on parental anxiety . . . Paul tries to lead us out of the catastrophization of childhood."— The New York Times Book Review Parenting coaches, ergonomic strollers, music classes, sleep consultants, luxury diaper creams, a never-ending rotation of DVDs that will make a baby smarter, socially adept, and bilingual before age three. Time-strapped, anxious parents hoping to provide the best for their baby are the perfect mark for the "parenting" industry. In Parenting, Inc. , Pamela Paul investigates the whirligig of marketing hype, peer pressure, and easy consumerism that spins parents into purchasing overpriced products and raising overprotected, overstimulated, and over-provided-for children. Paul shows how the parenting industry has persuaded parents that they cannot trust their children's health, happiness, and success to themselves. She offers a behind-the-scenes look at the baby business so that any parent can decode the claims—and discover shockingly unuseful products and surprisingly effective services. Paul's book leads the way for every parent who wants to escape the spiral of fear, guilt, competition, and consumption that characterizes modern American parenthood.

Howard Katz is a new play by Patrick Marber, who has been called "the greatest British playwright to have emerged in the 1990s." (The Financial Times) Following on the success of his play Closer, Patrick Marber's Howard Katz has been hailed as "a gripping piece of work" (Sunday Telegraph). This haunting play is centered on its title character, a hard-as-nails talent agent now down on his luck. Marber traces the story of the mighty Katz through almost dream- like flashbacks, capturing a man in freefall, while he determinedly clings to life. Marber's tale is a universal one about the search for faith and the power of love to touch even the most hardened soul. "Howard Katz is one of the most fascinating, relevant, and thoughtful plays to hit London in recent years." -- Time "A dream-play, a nightmare-play, a sad-funny life and death play. A must." -- Sunday Times (London)

" It's a book less on what I did than on what others, mainly my parents, did to me " Taking in a vast gallery of extraordinary characters from Paris' post-war years, Pedigree is an autobiographical portrait of Post-War Paris and a tumultuous childhood - a childhood replete with insecurity and sorrow that informed the oeuvre of France's Nobel Laureate. With his sometime-actress mother and shady businessman father barely functioning in any parental role, the young Modiano spent his childhood being packed off to the care of others, or held at a safe distance in a grimy boarding school - which he ran away from several times. His impecunious mother had "a heart of stone"; his womanising father once called the police when his son asked him for money, and later ceased all contact with him. But for all his parents' indifference, it is the death of his younger brother when Modiano is eleven that cuts deepest, leaving a wound that can never be healed.

Dream of Life is an intimate look into the interior life of the musician, artist, and poet Patti Smith. Integrated throughout the book are quotes and private transcripts, along with personal and unpublished photographs that reveals Patti's extraordinary personal journey. Captured are such colourful moments as Patti reciting "Prayer for New York" in 1975, hanging out at the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe, jamming with colloborator Sam Shepard, Patti's reading of an Allen Ginsberg poem at his funeral, kicking around the beach with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and so much more.

"In this useful guide, Paul Cantor provides a structured introduction to Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. Cantor examines Hamlet's status as tragic hero and the central enigma of his delayed revenge in light of the play's Renaissance context. He offers students a discussion of the dramatic and poetic techniques used in the play. In the final chapter he deals with the varied reception of Hamlet on the stage and in literature generally from the seventeenth century to the present day."--BOOK JACKET