It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ego must be in want of a woman to cut him down to size... When journalist Jasmin Field lands the coveted role of Elizabeth Bennet in a one-off fundraising adaptation of Pride and Prejudice she discovers that the play's director, Hollywood heart-throb Harry Noble, is every bit as obnoxious as she could have hoped. Which means a lot of material for her column. And a lot of fun in rehearsals. And then disaster strikes. Jazz's best friend abandons her for a man not worthy to buy her chocolate, her family starts to crumble before her eyes and her award-winning column hits the skids. Worse still, Harry Noble keeps staring at her. As the lights dim, the audience hush and Jazz awaits her cue, she realises two very important things, one: she can't remember her lines, and two: Harry Noble looks amazing in breeches...

Surveying the state of American ballet in a 1913 issue of Clure's Magazine, author Willa Cather reported that few girls expressed any interest in taking ballet class and that those who did were hard-pressed to find anything other than dingy studios and imperious teachers. One hundred years later, ballet is everywhere. Beginning with the arrival of Russian dancers like Anna Pavlova, who first toured the United States on the eve of World War I, 'Ballet Class: An American History' explores the growth of ballet from an ancillary part of nineteenth-century musical theater, opera, and vaudeville to the quintessential extracurricular activity it is today, pursued by countless children nationwide and an integral part of twentieth-century American childhood across borders of gender, class, race, and sexuality. 0A social history, 'Ballet Class' takes a new approach to the very popular subject of ballet and helps ground an art form often perceived to be elite in the experiences of regular, everyday people who spent time in barre-lined studios across the United States. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, including children's books, memoirs by professional dancers and choreographers, pedagogy manuals, and dance periodicals, in addition to archival collections and oral histories, this pathbreaking study provides a deeply-researched national perspective on the history and significance of recreational ballet class in the United States and its influence on many facets of children's lives, including gender norms, consumerism, body image, children's literature, extracurricular activities, and popular culture

[Hilbert's] style has not the terseness of many of our modem authors in mathematics, which is based on the assumption that printer's labor and paper are costly but the reader's effort and time are not. H. Weyl [143] The purpose of this book is to describe the classical problems in additive number theory and to introduce the circle method and the sieve method, which are the basic analytical and combinatorial tools used to attack these problems. This book is intended for students who want to lel?Ill additive number theory, not for experts who already know it. For this reason, proofs include many "unnecessary" and "obvious" steps; this is by design. The archetypical theorem in additive number theory is due to Lagrange: Every nonnegative integer is the sum of four squares. In general, the set A of nonnegative integers is called an additive basis of order h if every nonnegative integer can be written as the sum of h not necessarily distinct elements of A. Lagrange 's theorem is the statement that the squares are a basis of order four. The set A is called a basis offinite order if A is a basis of order h for some positive integer h. Additive number theory is in large part the study of bases of finite order. The classical bases are the squares, cubes, and higher powers; the polygonal numbers; and the prime numbers. The classical questions associated with these bases are Waring's problem and the Goldbach conjecture.

Among the conflicts to break out during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, the most famous took place in the summer of 1969 in Nyemo, a county to the south and west of Lhasa. In this incident, hundreds of villagers formed a mob led by a young nun who was said to be possessed by a deity associated with the famous warrior-king Gesar. In their rampage the mob attacked, mutilated, and killed county officials and local villagers as well as People's Liberation Army troops. This groundbreaking book, the first on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, revisits the Nyemo Incident, which has long been romanticized as the epitome of Tibetan nationalist resistance against China. Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, and Tanzen Lhundrup demonstrate that far from being a spontaneous battle for independence, this violent event was actually part of a struggle between rival revolutionary groups and was not ethnically based. On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet proffers a sober assessment of human malleability and challenges the tendency to view every sign of unrest in Tibet in ethno-nationalist terms.

A memoir written from the viewpoint of veteran film, television and stage actor, Melvyn Douglas. This actor's performance career spanned 60 years in Hollywood and New York and brought him two academy awards, a Tony and an Emmy) the film, Broadway and television 'Grand Slam' of the acting world.

How to live a life of wisdom and fulfillment in a far-from-perfect world? Philosopher Menachem Fisch and artist Debra Band together probe Qohelet''s inquiry into the value of life "under the sun" in this brilliant work--the first illuminated manuscript of the entire biblical text, the first philosophical analysis tracing the coherent path of this biblical thinker''s full argument. Whereas modern readers influenced by the famous declaration "vanity, vanity, all is vanity" from the 1611 King James Bible have commonly understood that Qohelet found only futility and hopelessness in human life, Fisch restores the literal meaning, "vapor," to Qohelet''s key word, hevel , with implications that reveal Qohelet''s path to wisdom and even serenity. Through linguistic precision and careful unfolding of the book''s philosophical argument, Fisch uncovers Qohelet''s twin concerns: life is short, and situated as we are, far below the heavens, we can never be assured of comprehending our world, or understanding divine will and intent. He reveals Qohelet''s understanding that since we can never fully predict or understand our fortunes or the heritage we leave behind us, the best we can do is to live our lives fully, relating to others attentively, always aware of the limits of human life. In her glowing, immersive, and discursive illuminated paintings of the entire text, Band imagines Qohelet''s teachings, employing the grandest of palaces, the Alhambra, as the central metaphor for the beauty and impermanence of human life and accomplishments. She fills its halls and gardens with often surprising imagery, symbolism, and related poetry, creating a visual midrash that reveals the relationship of Qohelet''s thought to other biblical texts and Jewish lore and its reverberations across the centuries and cultures of Western civilization, from ancient Israel to today''s America. Each illuminated page is complemented by lucid commentary explaining its full meaning. Renowned scholars Ellen F. Davis and Moshe Halbertal crown the work with a penetrating foreword and preface. "Illuminated manuscripts have a rich tradition to which this gem adds creatively. Not only does Debra Band''s exquisite micrography, calligraphy, and artwork invite us to marinate in and meditate on Qohelet''s suggestive composition, Menachem Fisch adds a unique and penetrating philosophical analysis. This work takes us from the ancient world of the Bible through medieval traditions of illumination and into a reading of Qohelet as a harbinger of post-modern thinking."--Peter A. Pettit, Teaching Pastor, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa "''Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,'' wrote the mysterious author of the biblical Qohelet--Ecclesiastes, in English, from the Greek. ''There is nothing new under the sun.'' For generations, the meaning of this haunting outlier text seemed clear and even merciless: in its endless cycling, nothing in the cosmos lasts, so nothing matters. Even if God is real, human life is in the end unreal and can have no real purpose. Resignation is the only valid response: at best, ''living for the moment;'' at worst, existential despair. But what if there were something new under the sun? In this fresh approach to Qohelet, philosopher Menachem Fisch and scholar-artist Debra Band radically re-vision a text whose interpretation was ''settled.'' Through exciting exposition that ranges from the history of rabbinical thought to analytical philosophy to the pain of personal loss, and illumined by Band''s glowing paintings, the authors return us to the original Hebrew word on which Qohelet pivots: hevel . When hevel is not read ''figuratively'' but is restored to its literal meaning as ''vapor'' or ''mist,'' an unexpected theology is revealed. What if the text were never a meditation on absurdity after all, but instead ''a vivid portrayal of the limits of human knowledge?'' These limits can inspire us to return to our deepest human challenge: how should we live? Fisch and Band show how we can take up the question again in fascination--and even more, in hope. An unforgettable book."--Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion, Harvard Divinity School

Science in the Bet Midrash explores the religious thought of Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), one of the most influential Jews of the last thousand years. While covering many aspects of his religious philosophy, these essays focus on the way Maimonides elucidated and expressed the universalistic thrust of the Jewish tradition. Maimonides construed the election of Israel as a challenge, not an endowment. This challenge is ultimately addressed to all human beings, not just to Jews.

A comprehensive corpus of texts relating to Jews and Judaism by the Greek and Latin authors of Antiquity. The collection furnishes valuable source material on the place of Jews and Judaism in the Mediterranean world during the rise and spread of Hellenism, concluding with concepts of Judaism held by the Neoplatonist philosophers. The writings of each author are accompanied by an introduction, a critical apparatus, an English translation and a detailed commentary in which the sources are examined in the context of the latest scholarship and archaeological findings.

Presents photographs of the Łódź ghetto taken by Grossman, with translation of selected texts from the "Kronika getta łódzkiego" (published in Łódź in 1965-66). The last 17 pp. contain an article by Arie Ben-Menachem on Grossman, who perished in the Holocaust.

The Weekly Daf affords the serious student of Talmud the opportunity to gain a new perspective on the material, with the framework of "daf yomi" or out of it, and it provides for the relative newcomer to Torah a tantalizing gateway to the incomparable wealth of intellect and guidance in the Talmud

Nightfall requires a chorus of at least 26 voices with at least two basses.

Benjamin Schwartz taught at Harvard from 1950 until his retirement in 1987. Through his teaching and writing, he became a major force in the field of Chinese studies, setting standards--above all in the area of intellectual history--that have been a source of inspiration to students and scholars worldwide. His influence extends well beyond the China field, cutting across conventional disciplinary boundaries, touching political science, religion, philosophy, and literature as well as history. The essays in this book are by scholars who have studied with Benjamin Schwartz. Given the range of his own interests, it is fitting that they embrace an expanse of time from the Zhou dynasty to the present and a range of subjects equally inclusive--ancient and medieval Chinese thought, the fate of democracy in early Republican China, the development of aesthetic modernism in the 1920s and 1930s and its reemergence in the post-Mao era, the emphasis on spiritual regeneration and cultural transformation in Chinese and Japanese Marxism, popular values in twentieth-century China (as reflected in village theatrical performances), the larger issue of what part our own values should take in the study and assessment of other societies and cultures, and the equally broad issue of how we are to address the relationship between Chinese modernization and China's traditional culture. Despite this heterogeneity and the fact that the contributors include two political scientists, five historians with strong philosophical interests, and three scholars whose writing bridges the disciplines of history and literature, there is a surprising coherence to the volume. Almost all the authors consciously address either aspects of Schwartz's general approach or specific themes dealt with in his work. Each contribution is about ideas and takes ideas and their societal roles seriously. Although presented in the specific context of China, the issues raised in these essays are important to the world beyond China. Exploring them in both their Chinese and non-Chinese settings reflects the power of Schwartz's own work in illuminating a broader canvas of human thought.