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  Modernising Irish Government -...

  Neil Collins, Terry Cradden

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  Modernising Irish Government presents the major historical turning points in the development of Irish public services with a particular focus on the civil service, covering the mid-nineteenth-century reforms, the foundations of the State and the Lemass-Whittaker economic initiative. It introduces the Strategic Management Initiative, its origins and its impact, discussed in terms of efficiency, responsibility and democracy.
  Authors Neil Collins, Terry Cradden and Patrick Butler examine the current, key issues within the Civil Service, including the contentious issue of decentralisation. Providing reviews of the institutional framework for regulating monopolies in such sectors as telecommunications, aviation and retail competition, they present a critique of the new kinds of relationships between government and the people by reviewing Social Partnership, the Citizen Charters of government departments and other similar instruments.
  This textbook at once examines the scale, scope and structure of the delivery of services to the public and their relationship to the civil service, government departments, commercial semi-state companies and other public bodies, while identifying a number of significant failures in service delivery in detail and offering an analysis for their reasons.

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  The True History of Merlin the...

  Anne Lawrence-Mathers

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  A medieval historian examines what we really know about the man who was "Merlin the Magician" and his impact on Britain. 
   
   
   
  The historical Merlin was no rough magician: he was a learned figure from the cutting edge of medieval science and adept in astrology, cosmology, prophecy, and natural magic, as well as being a seer and a proto-alchemist. His powers were convincingly real—and useful, for they helped to add credibility to the "long-lost" history of Britain which first revealed them to a European public. Merlin's prophecies reassuringly foretold Britain's path, establishing an ancient ancestral line and linking biblical prophecy with more recent times. Merlin helped to put British history into world history. 
   
   
   
  Anne Lawrence-Mathers also explores the meaning of Merlin's magic across the centuries, arguing that he embodied ancient Christian and pagan magical traditions, recreated for a medieval court and shaped to fit a new moral framework. Linking Merlin's reality and power with the culture of the Middle Ages, this remarkable book reveals the true impact of the most famous magician of all time.

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  Operation Balak: The History of...

  Editors Charles River

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  Less than two weeks after the creation of Israel, the state’s leader, David Ben-Gurion, announced the creation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This represented the combined military forces that would protect the new state, and while it might have sounded impressive on paper, the reality was very different. The new army was comprised mainly of ex-members of several paramilitary organizations that had fought for the establishment of the new state, but they lacked heavy weapons, armor and air defenses. The Israeli navy and air force did not exist other than as largely notional organizations, and at the beginning of 1948, the Israeli Air Force did not possess a single combat aircraft of any type.  
  	To many outsiders, the defeat of the nascent Jewish state seemed a certainty, yet in an unbelievably short space of time, and despite international embargoes on the export of arms to the region, Israel was able to procure sufficient arms to equip its armed forces and to successfully defend its territory in what became known as the War of Independence (also known as First Arab–Israeli War). 
  	This was not the last war that Israel would fight, nor the largest, but its very survival as a state depended on avoiding complete military defeat in 1948. The efforts to do so were tied to a series of secret operations that provided the aircraft and weapons that enabled Israel to survive the First Arab–Israeli War. The smuggling would center on procuring advanced European weaponry, which ironically meant that some of the weapons that reached Israel hailed from none other than Nazi Germany. 

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  Liberty Equality Fashion - The...

  Anne Higonnet

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  Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing left to lose. After surviving incarceration and forced incestuous marriage during the worst violence of the French Revolution of 1789, they dared sartorial revolt. Together, Joséphine and Térézia shed the underwear cages and massive, rigid garments that women had been obliged to wear for centuries. They slipped into light, mobile dresses, cropped their hair short, wrapped themselves in shawls, and championed the handbag. Juliette made the new style stand for individual liberty. 
   
   
   
  The erotic audacity of these fashion revolutionaries conquered Europe, starting with Napoleon. Everywhere a fashion magazine could reach, women imitated the news coming from Paris. It was the fastest and most total change in clothing history. Two centuries ahead of its time, it was rolled back after only a decade by misogynist rumors of obscene extravagance. 
   
   
   
  New evidence allows the real fashion revolution to be told. This is a story for our time: of a revolution that demanded universal human rights, of self-creation, of women empowering each other, and of transcendent glamor. 
   
   
   
  This audiobook includes bonus lectures from the author's "Clothing" course she teaches as professor of art history at Barnard College, Columbia University.

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  Hamas In Palestine

  Davis Truman

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  Hamas, from the Arabic Islamic Resistance Movement, is a militant Islamist organization that aims to represent and lead a resistance movement for the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation. The Movement is difficult to place on the spectrum of other non-State actors, such as Hezbollah, as since 2007, it has established itself as the de facto leader of the Gaza Strip, assuming the functions of authority and government. Despite being considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States, and Israel, the group rejects this designation and its diplomatic relations with major state actors such as Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.  
  The Jewish-Palestinian conflict is a complex and long-running conflict rooted in the 19th Century. It intensified during the 20th Century when Jewish immigration to Palestine grew significantly. This conflict focuses mainly on the struggle for land control between Jews and Palestinians in that region. 
  Within Israeli and Palestinian societies, the conflict generates a wide variety of positions. A distinctive feature of the conflict was the level of violence perpetrated for much of its duration. There have been clashes between regular armies, paramilitary groups, terrorist cells, and independent citizens. These clashes were not strictly limited to the military camp and caused a large number of civilian casualties on both sides.

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  Race Rights and Rifles - The...

  Alexandra Filindra

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  An eye-opening examination of the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today. 
   
   
   
  One-third of American adults—approximately 86 million people—own firearms. This is not just for protection or hunting. Although many associate gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that it rests on an equally old but different foundation. Instead, Alexandra Frilindra shows that American gun culture can be traced back to the American Revolution when republican notions of civic duty were fused with a belief in white male supremacy and a commitment to maintaining racial and gender hierarchies. 
   
   
   
  Drawing on wide-ranging historical and contemporary evidence, Race, Rights, and Rifles traces how this ideology emerged during the Revolution and became embedded in America's institutions, from state militias to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Utilizing original survey data, Filindra reveals how many white Americans—including those outside of the NRA's direct orbit—embrace these beliefs, and as a result, they are more likely than other Americans to value gun rights over voting rights, embrace antidemocratic norms, and justify political violence.

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