Responding to a reawakened concern about human activities that put the Earth at peril, this report examines the measures being taken to preserve the ecological balance of this planet. It explores the greenhouse effect, the erosion of soil and the spread of the world's deserts.

Virtually undeveloped one hundred years ago, Israel, the promised "land of milk and honey," is in ecological disarray. In this gripping book, Alon Tal provides--for the first time ever--a history of environmentalism in Israel, interviewing hundreds of experts and activists who have made it their mission to keep the country's remarkable development sustainable amid a century of political and cultural turmoil.The modern Zionist vision began as a quest to redeem a land that bore the cumulative effects of two thousand years of foreign domination and neglect. Since then, Israel has suffered from its success. A tenfold increase in population and standard of living has polluted the air. The deserts have bloomed but groundwater has become contaminated. Urban sprawl threatens to pave over much of the country's breathtaking landscape. Yet there is hope. Tal's account considers the ecological and tactical lessons that emerge from dozens of cases of environmental mishaps, from habitat loss to river reclamation. Pollution in a Promised Land argues that the priorities and strategies of Israeli environmental advocates must address issues beyond traditional green agendas.

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A powerful hero of the Bible, Jacob is also one of its most complex figures. Bible stories recounting his life often expose his deception, lies, and greed-then, puzzlingly, attempt to justify them. In this book, eminent biblical scholar Yair Zakovitch presents a complete view of the patriarch, first examining Jacob and his life story as presented in the Bible, then also reconstructing the stories that the Bible writers suppressed-tales that were well-known, perhaps, but incompatible with the image of Jacob they wanted to promote. Through a work of extraordinary "literary archaeology," Zakovitch explores the recesses of literary history, reaching back even to the stage of oral storytelling, to identify sources of Jacob's story that preceded the work of the Genesis writers. The biblical writers were skilled mosaic-makers, Zakovitch shows, and their achievement was to reshape diverse pre-biblical representations of Jacob in support of their emerging new religion and identity. As the author follows Jacob in his wanderings and revelations, his successes, disgraces, and disappointments, he also considers the religious and political environment in which the Bible was written, offering a powerful explication of early Judaism.

Art and Judaism During the Greco-Roman Period explores the Jewish experience with art during the Greco-Roman period-from the Hellenistic period through the rise of Islam. It starts from with the premise that Jewish art in antiquity was a "minority" or "ethnic" art and surveys ways that Jews fully participated in, transformed, and at times rejected the art of their general environment. Art and Judaism focuses upon the politics of identity during the Greco-Roman period, even as it discusses ways that modern identity issues have sometimes distorted and at other times refined scholarly discussion of ancient Jewish material culture. Art and Judaism, the first historical monograph on ancient Jewish art in forty years, evaluates earlier scholarship even as it sets out in new directions. Placing literary sources in careful dialogue with archaeological discoveries, this "New Jewish Archaeology" is an important contribution to Judaic Studies, Religious Studies, Art History, and Classics. The Revised Edition includes a new introduction, additional images, and color plates.

Introduction -- Anthropology of China : history, regionalism and comparison -- Kinship as ideology and as corporation -- Relatedness and gender -- Love, emotion and sentiment -- The exchange of money, gifts and favours -- The localization and globalization of food -- Nature, environment and activism -- Ritual and belief -- Hospitality -- The stranger king and the outside of an imperial civilisation -- The anthropology of the modern state in China -- Conclusion.

The role of the military in a society raises a number of issues: How much separation should there be between a civil government and its army? Should the military be totally subordinate to the polity? Or should the armed forces be allowed autonomy in order to provide national security? Recently, the dangers of military dictatorships-as have existed in countries like Panama, Chile, and Argentina-have become evident. However, developing countries often lack the administrative ability and societal unity to keep the state functioning in an orderly and economically feasible manner without military intervention.Societies, of course, have dealt with the realities of these problems throughout their histories, and the action they have taken at any particular point in time has depended on numerous factors. In the "first world" of democratic countries, the civil-military relationship has been thoroughly integrated, and indeed by most modern standards this is seen as essential. However, several influential Western thinkers have developed theories arguing for the separation of the military from any political or social role. Samuel Huntington, emphasized that professionalism would presuppose that the military should intervene as little as possible in the political sphere. Samuel E. Finer, in contrast, emphasizes that a government can be efficient enough way to keep the civil-military relationship in check, ensuring that the need for intervention by the armed forces in society would be minimal. At the time of the book's original publication, perhaps as a consequence of a post-World War II Cold War atmosphere, this was by no means a universally accepted position. Some considered the military to be a legitimate threat to a free society. Today's post-Cold War environment is an appropriate time to reconsider Finer's classic argument.The Man on Horseback continues to be an important contribution to the study of the military's role in the realm of politics, and will be of interest to students of political science, government, and the military.

"This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living. His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as equally destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr Chazan's research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West"--

Disease and Healing in the Indus Civilisation presents a synthesis of what is currently known about health, disease and healing in the Indus Civilisation in the third to early second millennia BCE, underpinned by original research. It is the result of a detailed study of published human skeletal remains and material culture, with an increasing awareness of the natural environment. When combined with a knowledge of palaeoepidemiology and the natural history of disease, ancient climate change, and what is known of healing and health in contemporary Bronze Age societies of the Near East, with which the Indus Civilisation was in contact, it has been possible to piece together a picture of diseases in the period, the practice of healing and the development of public health. For the first time, the book illustrates the health, life expectancy, and the illnesses and injuries from which those at the bottom of society suffered, both at work and at home.

Recipient of the ECI Prize in 1993 for terrestrial ecology. Reviews and analyses the essential aspects of modern ecological research and its bearing on society and on related sciences. The author deplores that many ecologists are not doing enough to motivate society into counteracting the increasing degradation of our environment. Hence, he outlines and discusses what, in his opinion, research ecologists should do to avoid the world's plunge towards ecocatastrophe.

This book created the field of the law of democracy, offering a systematic account of the legal construction of American democracy. This edition represents a significant revision that reflects the embattled state of democracy in the U.S. and abroad. With the addition of Franita Tolson as well as Nathaniel Persily to the prior edition, the book now turns to a changed legal environment following the radical reconfiguration of the Voting Rights Act, the rise of social media and circumvention of the formal channels of campaign finance, and the increased fragmentation of political parties. Strikingly, in the current political environment the right to register and vote passes from being a largely historical inquiry to a source of front-burner legal challenge. This edition further streamlines the coverage of the Voting Rights Act, expands the scope of coverage of campaign finance and political corruption issues, and turns to the new dispute over voter access to the ballot. The section on election litigation and remedies has been expanded to address the expanded range of legal challenges to election results. For the first time, this book isolates the distinct problems of presidential elections, ranging from the conflict over federal and state law in Bush v. Gore, to the distinct challenges to the 2020 presidential elections, to the renewed focus on the Electoral Count Act. The basic structure of the book continues to follow the historical development of the individual right to vote; current struggles over gerrymandering; the relationship of the state to political parties; the constitutional and policy issues surrounding campaign-finance reform; and the tension between majority rule and fair representation of minorities in democratic bodies.

Global warming is an issue on which everyone - from layman to scientist, besides politicians, economists, policy makers and businessmen - has a stake, and an opinion that often borders on the extreme. In this persuasively argued work, Nigel Lawson calls for a fresh look at global warming, without in any way discounting the importance of the subject. Lawson carefully and succinctly examines all aspects of the debate: the science, the economics, the politics and the ethics. He concludes that conventional wisdom on global warming is suspect on a number o grounds; that global warming is not the devastating threat to the planet it is widely alleged to be; and that the remedy being proposed is, for very good reasons, not politically attainable; and even if it were, it would be worse than the warming it is supposed to avert. This hard-hitting response, argued with logic, common sense and wit, is particularly relevant to India, given that as a prime mover of the so-called 'Basic' countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) India is at the forefront of the environment debate, and that policies on emissions applicable to developed nations would have a direct impact on its rapid economic development - and livelihoods.

In a dialogue with modern literature, discusses the search for meaning through meeting with the particular. Ch. 10 (pp. 157-185), "The Shoah - Our Ultimate Confrontation, " analyzes works by Andre Schwarz-Bart, Primo Levi, Nelly Sachs, and Paul Celan on the Holocaust, which are "paradigmatic of the absurdity of our time." Schwarz-Bart's novel "The Last of the Just" portrays its protagonist as a "suffering servant" (Isaiah) who suffers voluntarily (including death in a gas chamber) for God, all Jews, and all humanity, during a period of the "eclipse of God." Levi found meaning after the Holocaust via his writing; in "Survival in Auschwitz" he wrote of an Italian civilian, Lorenzo, who represented humanity in a camp environment where there was mainly hunger, cold, and death. Sachs' poetry fused the horror of Holocaust death with a strange transcendence. Celan was torn between affirmation and negation, and "forever in exile"; in his poetry, God was both absurd and divine.

"Whatever historical judgments one wishes to make about Mao Tse-tung and the Maoist era," Maurice Meisner writes, "that era will be recorded as one of the great utopian episodes in world history, and the history of Maoism will remain relevant for those who seek to understand the fate of Marxism and the role of utopianism in the modern world, whatever their political persuasions. In an age which suffers from a paucity of utopian imagination, it is perhaps a history worth recalling." In this volume, Meisner makes an important contribution to understanding the Maoist era in the history of Chinese Communism by exploring the utopian strains in the thought of Mao Tse-tung. Believing that an activistic utopianism is essential to the vitality of Marxism in the contemporary world. Meisner argues that it was precisely Mao's utopian departures from orthodox Marxism-Leninism that transformed the inherited body of Marxist theory into a doctrine relevant to the needs of revolution in the modern Chinese historical environment. He argues further that it was Mao's visionary utopianism in the years after 1949 that was responsible, in large measure, for molding much of what has been distinctive about the postrevolutionary history of the People's Republic of China. In examining the nature of Maoist utopianism, Meisner employs cross-cultural and comparative perspectives to analyze the relationship of Maoism to the original writings of Marx and Engels, early nineteenth-century Western European socialist theories, and classical Russian Populist thought. He also discusses the idiosyncratic character of Mao's utopian vision, the phenomenon of the cult of Mao, and the fate of Maoist utopianism in post-Maoist Chinese Marxist ideology.

Many consider conscience to be one of the most important--if not the fundamental--quality that makes us human, distinguishing us from animals, on one hand, and machines on the other. But what is conscience, exactly? Is it a product of our biological roots, as Darwin thought, or is it a purely social invention? If the latter, how did it come into the world? In this biography of that most elusive human element, Martin van Creveld explores conscience throughout history, ranging across numerous subjects, from human rights to health to the environment. Along the way he considers the evolution of conscience in its myriad, occasionally strange, and ever-surprising permutations. He examines the Old Testament, which--erroneously, it turns out--is normally seen as the fountainhead from which the Western idea of conscience has sprung. Next, he takes us to meet Antigone, the first person on record to explicitly speak of conscience. We then visit with the philosophers Zeno, Cicero and Seneca; with Christian thinkers such as Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and, above all, Martin Luther; as well as modern intellectual giants such as Machiavelli, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. Individual chapters are devoted to Japan, China, and even the Nazis, as well as the most recent discoveries in robotics and neuroscience and how they have contributed to the ways we think about our own morality. Ultimately, van Creveld shows that conscience remains as elusive as ever, a continuously mysterious voice that guides how we think about right and wrong.

A major new collection of poems about women's lives and the closing circle of nature, from a bestselling poet. These poems celebrate the beauties of nature and the eternal cycle of love, death and birth that is being interrupted by the assault on the environment.

Traditionally, neuroscience has considered the nervous system as an isolated entity and largely ignored influences of the social environments in which humans and many animal species live. However, there is mounting evidence that the social environment affects behavior across species, from microbes to humans. This volume brings together scholars who work with animal and human models of social behavior to discuss the challenges and opportunities in this interdisciplinary academic field.

Why Did You Do That? is an autobiography of David Matas, an international human rights advocate. The book sets out his human rights activities and then attempts to explain why he did them. People are focused on their immediate environment, their family, their friends, their work or their neighbourhood. Why should they go to the bother of trying to address a seemingly intractable situation in order to try help those with whom superficially they have nothing in common, who may be living in a country far away to which they have never been, speaking in a language they do not understand and part of a culture which is both foreign and strange? The reason for the autobiography is an attempt to answer that question. By trying to explain why he did what he did, the author hopes to mobilize others, not to do what he did or is now doing, but rather just to do something, to shed feelings of indifference and impotence, to join the international human rights cause.

"Nobody at the Globe much likes the word 'authentic'. It is a difficult adjective to justify, given that so little is known about theatrical practice in Shakespeare's time, and the modern environment inevitably makes its presence felt, as does the modern weather. Performances take place for only half the year, between May and September. Evening performances are routine, whereas they were afternoons-only, at the original Globe. The theatre itself can be no more than a 'best guess' as to how things were. And the same sense of limitation pervades all aspects of the productions - casting, clothing, properties, design, music, movement ... Every attempt at an 'original practice' is an experiment, whether it be the casting of men in women's roles, the design and making of contemporary costume, or the performance of songs and instrumental music. The Globe has nonetheless carved out for itself an enviable reputation in each of these areas"-- Provided by publisher.

Telling lies, gossiping, practicing adultery, gambling, smoking, using offensive language, corporal punishment of one’s children, copying copyrighted material – these are moral issues that affect, and often deeply affect, our daily lives.Everyday Ethicsis a collection of readings devoted to ethical problems like these that confront ordinary people in everyday life. The anthology covers the areas of communication, sex, parents and children, animals, money matters, and body and environment. Nearly all selections are from the late 1980s and the 1990s.