Other books that might interest you

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  Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook...

  Anita Engels, Jochem Marotzke,...

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  Many countries, communities, and social actors around the world are struggling to cope with the impacts of climate change. Adapting to climate change in a sustainable manner involves a huge collective effort and is barely happening. How can sustainable climate change adaptation become plausible? The Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2024 provides a unique systematic and global assessment of the context conditions for sustainable climate change adaptation, evaluating the social dynamics of deep decarbonization and the physical dynamics in regional climate variability and extremes. Through nine case studies across the globe, the assessment provides insights into key barriers and opportunities for sustainable climate change adaptation.

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  The Invention of Scarcity -...

  Deborah Valenze

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  With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. 
   
   
   
  Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century contexts that generated his arguments, showing how Malthus mobilized a redemptive narrative of British historical development and dismissed the ways that people adapted to the challenges of subsistence needs. She uses history, anthropology, and food studies to redirect our attention to the margins of Malthus's essay, where activities such as hunting and gathering were rendered extraneous. She demonstrates how Malthus's omissions and his subsequent canonization provided a rationale for colonial imposition of British agricultural models, regardless of environmental diversity. 
   
   
   
  By broadening our conception of human livelihoods, Valenze suggests pathways to resistance against the hegemony of Malthusian political economy. She invites us to imagine a world where monoculture is in retreat and the margins are recentered as spaces of experimentation, nimbleness, and human flourishing.

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  Victories Never Last - Reading...

  Robert Zaretsky

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  In any time of disruption or grief, many of us seek guidance in the work of great writers who endured similar circumstances. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historian and biographer Robert Zaretsky did the same while also working as a volunteer in a nursing home in south Texas. In Victories Never Last Zaretsky weaves his reflections on the pandemic siege of his nursing home with the testimony of six writers on their own times of plague: Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus, whose novel The Plague provides the title of this book. 
   
   
    
  Zaretsky delves into these writers to uncover lessons that can provide deeper insight into our pandemic era. At the same time, he goes beyond the literature to invoke his own experience of the tragedy that enveloped his Texas nursing home, one which first took the form of chronic loneliness and then, inevitably, the deaths of many residents whom we come to know through Zaretsky's stories. In doing so, Zaretsky shows the power of great literature to connect directly to one's own life in a different moment and time. 
   
   
    
  For all of us still struggling to comprehend this pandemic and its toll, this book serves as a thoughtful and down-to-earth guide to the many ways we can come to know and make peace with human suffering.

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  Laches - What Is Courage? –...

  Plato, Tim Zengerink

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  What if true courage wasn’t the absence of fear—but the wisdom to know when to face it? 
  In Laches, Plato explores the meaning of courage through a powerful conversation between Socrates and two Athenian generals. The dialogue begins with a question about military training—but quickly becomes a deeper philosophical inquiry into the nature of bravery. 
  This modern translation makes Plato’s wisdom approachable and relevant, offering a timeless guide to understanding virtue, strength, and leadership. 
  What you'll discover inside: 
  •	A Philosophical Definition of Courage – More than fearlessness, courage is examined through reason and reflection 
  •	Socratic Inquiry Meets Real-World Experience – Generals Laches and Nicias weigh in with lived wisdom 
  •	A Modern, Engaging Translation – Clear and thoughtful, bringing ancient ideas into today’s world 
  •	A Conversation About Raising Virtuous People – Explore courage in war, in parenting, and in personal character 
  Discover how Laches offers insights into bravery that go far beyond the battlefield—and into the heart of moral life.

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  No One to Meet - Imitation and...

  Raphael Falco

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  The literary establishment tends to regard Bob Dylan as an intriguing, if baffling, outsider. That changed overnight when Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, challenging us to think of him as an integral part of our national and international literary heritage. No One to Meet places Dylan the artist within a long tradition of literary production and offers an innovative way of understanding his unique, and often controversial, methods of composition. 
   
   
   
  In lucid prose, Raphael Falco demonstrates the similarity between what Renaissance writers called imitatio and the way Dylan borrows, digests, and transforms traditional songs. Although Dylan's lyrical postures might suggest a post-Romantic, "avant-garde" consciousness, No One to Meet shows that Dylan's creative process borrows from and expands the methods used by classical and Renaissance authors. 
   
   
   
  Drawing on numerous examples, including Dylan's previously unseen manuscript excerpts and archival materials, Falco illuminates how the ancient process of poetic imitation, handed down from Greco-Roman antiquity, allows us to make sense of Dylan's musical and lyrical technique. By placing Dylan firmly in the context of an age-old poetic practice, No One to Meet deepens our appreciation of Dylan's songs and allows us to celebrate him as what he truly is: a great writer.

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  Beyond Proportionality -...

  Thane Rosenbaum

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  Imagine a war without battlefields. There are no uniforms. Civilians and combatants are indistinguishable. Homes, schools, hospitals, and religious buildings are used as command and communication centers, and for the warehousing of weapons. Apartment rooftops are launching pads; the civilians who live inside . . . human shields. There are over 300 miles of reinforced tunnels, all outfitted with weapons and passageways for terrorists to take hostages and travel freely. 
   
   
   
  Beyond Proportionality examines Israel's battles against Hamas and Hezbollah under the laws of war and concludes that its wartime conduct was based on military necessity and fought justly. The targets are terrorists, weapons, and tunnels—not civilians. Israel relies upon verifiable intelligence, deploys precise weapons, and endangers its own soldiers in order to minimize civilian death. 
   
   
   
  The bombings over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden, and the urban warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, produced large numbers of civilian dead that were not considered acts of genocide; the war in Gaza was no different.

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