Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  A Rare Recording of Tennis...

  Dr. Renee Richards

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  Renée Richards, formerly Richard Raskind, (born August 19, 1934) is an American ophthalmologist and former tennis player who played professionally as a woman from 1977 to 1981, when she retired at age 47. Richards became known worldwide, following male-to-female medical transition, when she fought to compete as a woman at the 1976 US Open.
   
  Richards played her first professional event as a female at the U.S. Open the following year, and was ranked as high as 20th in the world in February 1979. Her greatest successes on the court came as a doubles finalist, with Betty Ann Grubb Stuart, at the 1977 US Open, and a semifinalist in mixed doubles, with Ilie Năstase, at the US Open.
   
  In 1979, she defeated Nancy Richey for the 35-and-over singles title at the US Open. Richards posted wins over Hana Mandlíková, Sylvia Hanika, Virginia Ruzici, and Pam Shriver. She later coached Martina Navratilova to two Wimbledon titles. The following arecordings are from interviews in 1976, 1977 and 1980.

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  Legal Plunder - The Predatory...

  Joshua Page, Joe Soss

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  A searing, historically rich account of how US policing and punishment have been retrofitted over the last four decades to extract public and private revenues from America’s poorest and most vulnerable communities.
   
  Alongside the rise of mass incarceration, a second profound and equally disturbing development has transpired. Since the 1980s, US policing and punishment have been remade into tools for stripping resources from the nation’s most oppressed communities and turning them into public and private revenues. Legal Plunder analyzes this development’s origins, operations, consequences, and the political struggles that it has created.
   
  Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, including original ethnographic research, Joshua Page and Joe Soss examine the predatory dimensions of criminal legal governance to show how practices that criminalize, police, and punish have been retrofitted to siphon resources from subordinated groups, subsidize governments, and generate corporate profits. As tax burdens have declined for the affluent, this financial extraction—now a core function of the country’s sprawling criminal legal apparatus—further compounds race, class, and gender inequalities and injustices. Legal Plunder shows that we can no longer afford to overlook legal plunder or the efforts to dismantle it.

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  The Varieties of Religious...

  William James

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  There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are "geniuses" in the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence.

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  Scent - A Natural History of...

  Elise Vernon Pearlstine

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  A fascinating exploration of the natural history of scent and human perceptions of fragrance from the viewpoint of plant and pollinator 
   
   
   
  Plants have long harnessed the chemical characteristics of aromatic compounds to shape the world around them. Frankincense resin from the genus Boswellia seals injured tissues and protects trees from invading pathogens. Jasmine produces a molecule called linalool that attracts pollinating moths with its flowery scent. Tobacco uses a similarly sweet-smelling compound called benzyl acetone to attract pollinators. Only recently in the evolutionary history of plants, however, have humans learned to co-opt their fragrances to seduce, heal, protect, and alter moods themselves. 
   
   
    
  In this wide-ranging and accessible new book, biologist-turned-perfumer Elise Vernon Pearlstine turns our human-centered perception of fragrance on its head and investigates plants' evolutionary reasons for creating aromatic molecules. Delving into themes of spirituality, wealth, power, addiction, royalty, fantasy, and more, Pearlstine uncovers the natural history of aromatic substances and their intersection with human culture and civilization.

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  Sub Culture - The Many Lives of...

  John Medhurst

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  A deep dive into the significance of submarines, across everything from warfare and politics to literature and film. 
   
   
    
  Sub Culture explores the crucial role of the submarine in modern history, its contribution to scientific progress and maritime exploration, and how it has been portrayed in art, literature, fantasy, and film. Ranging from the American Civil War to the destruction of the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000, the book examines the submarine's activities in the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and in covert operations and marine exploration to the present day. Citing the submarine, particularly the nuclear submarine, as both ultimate deterrent and doomsday weapon, Sub Culture examines how its portrayal in popular culture has reinforced, and occasionally undermined, the military and political agendas of the nation-states that deploy it.

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  New England Fairies - A History...

  Andrew Warburton

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  Tales of fairies and bewitching Little People have amazed and horrified New Englanders for over four hundred years. 
   
   
   
  In the nineteenth century, residents of Marblehead, Massachusetts, reported malicious pixies leading them in circles at dusk. In Aroostook County, Maine, elves called lutins exasperated farmers with their mischievous tricks and games. In Uncasville, Connecticut, beguiling creatures emerged for centuries at twilight to collect corn-filled baskets from members of the Mohegan Tribe. And in Harrisville, Rhode Island, a vision of fearful banshees augured death to an Irish seer. 
   
   
   
  From the ancient tales of Algonquian elders to the fireside stories of European immigrants, Andrew Warburton scours New England folklore to uncover the secrets of the region's Fair Folk and the storytellers who've encountered them through the years.

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