But it underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not only have Jews adapted better than many other groups to living in the modern world, they have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere.Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among the world's first free agents. They traditionally belonged to a social and anthropological category known as service nomads, an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods and services. Their role, Slezkine argues, was part of a broader division of human labor between what he calls Mercurians-entrepreneurial minorities--and Apollonians--food-producing majorities.Since the dawning of the Modern Age, Mercurians have taken center stage. In fact, Slezkine argues, modernity is all about Apollonians becoming Mercurians--urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. Since no group has been more adept at Mercurianism than the Jews, he contends, these exemplary ancients are now model moderns.The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian Jews, including �migr�s and their offspring in America, Palestine, and the Soviet Union. But Slezkine has as much to say about the many faces of modernity--nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and liberalism--as he does about Jewry. Marxism and Freudianism, for example, sprang largely from the Jewish predicament, Slezkine notes, and both Soviet Bolshevism and American liberalism were affected in fundamental ways by the Jewish exodus from the Pale of Settlement.Rich in its insight, sweeping in its chronology, and fearless in its analysis, this sure-to-be-controversial work is an important contribution not only to Jewish and Russian history but to the history of Europe and America as well.

    And no two seem to have communicated less. People Like Us confronts the themes that define this chasm head-on: women, jihad, secularism, terrorism, Reformation and modernity. Its piercing examination of these subjects reveals our thoughtless and destructive tendency to assume that the world's problems could be solved if only everyone became more like us. The result is deep mutual ignorance and animosity, reinforced by both Muslim and Western commentators.As a Muslim born and raised in Australia, Waleed Aly stands at the intersection of these two civilisations. In this book, he draws on his knowledge of Western and Islamic intellectual traditions to present an analysis that is surprising and challenging, but always enlightening.

    He is born in a new world, one filled with monsters and magic. Pyromancers decimate jungles, Cryomancers walk over frozen oceans, Electromancers kill behemoths in seconds, Geomancers build castles in hours, Aeromancers soar through the skies, Sciomancers blacken the sun, and Biomancers grow fields of crops in mere days. However, this man can't use any of these magical elements; he can only use the weakest of the magical elements: Photomancy - light.

    Some are hard to break, while others can be stopped cold turkey. But what happens when your bad habit gets you in some shit you can’t get out of? Andrea has just returned home after her other half’s passing. She reunites with her childhood friends; however, while navigating the road to living life to the fullest, she encounters speed bumps, potholes, and detours along the way. Andrea's always been closest to Caiden, but now he seems to want nothing to do with her. While trying to mend that friendship, she finds herself slowly falling for Leonard “Lynx” King, the boy who bullied her every day as a child. The only thing is, he has no idea who she is. Meet Pascha, mother of two, who has too many struggles to count. Her baby daddy, Gunz, cares more about his bike club than being at home providing for her and their kids. She needs change, because she finds herself sinking into her own pity; that is, until Solomon “Solo” King comes into the picture and forces her to reevaluate her self-worth. But you know that saying, “When something is too good to be true, it usually is”; well, she’s about to find out, one way or the other, if that old adage holds any weight. Romyn seems to have his hands full with all of these down low men that don’t know how to treat him. Between his present, Ethan, and his past, Lonzo, Romyn doesn’t seem to realize he’s deserving of so much more. That’s where Kreme comes into the picture. But something's preventing Romyn from fully giving himself to Kreme. Is it the fear of possibly having a successful relationship? Or is he still stuck on wanting to make things work with Lonzo? Life would be perfect if only Lonzo would come out about who he really is. So come indulge in the 'vicious cycles' of Bad Habitzz as we follow this not-so-merry band of misfits and their insignificant-significant others, as they cross paths, weave webs of betrayal and unearth hidden truths that could destroy their newfound happiness. Welcome to Jewel City!

    The collected teachings of The Golden One.Dauntless: The Wild Hunt Edition (2021) is a greatly updated version of this book.

    

    Reeling from a painful childhood, Raz longs for freedom. Desperate to find escape, at night Razelle helps bring healing to those living nearby at a camp for the homeless. When she finds Luke with a leg wound, Raz helps him heal. Her mother finds out and places new restrictions on Raz. Now, not only is her freedom in jeopardy but so is her heart. Luke comes up with a plan to protect her with a marriage-in-name-only. Razelle agrees.  Will being forced together steer them towards love or pull them farther apart? If you like strong but wounded heroes and feisty but scarred heroines, you'll adore this love story. This is a marriage-of-convenience, sweet romance with a happily ever after that's sure to make you fall in love all over again!

    A lively account of our age-old quest for brighter colors, which changed the way we see the world, from the best-selling author of Proof: The Science of Booze

    In a tour of Western culture that is at once exhilarating and alarming, Nelson shows us the distorted forms in which the spiritual resurfaced in high art but also, strikingly, in the mass culture of puppets, horror-fantasy literature, and cyborgs: from the works of Kleist, Poe, Musil, and Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick and virtual reality simulations. At the end of the millennium, discarding a convention of the demonized grotesque that endured three hundred years, a Demiurgic consciousness shaped in Late Antiquity is emerging anew to re-divinize the human as artists like Lars von Trier and Will Self reinvent Expressionism in forms familiar to our pre-Reformation ancestors. Here as never before, we see how pervasively but unwittingly, consuming art forms of the fantastic, we allow ourselves to believe.

    Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.

    Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods--designing objects with rather than for excluded users--can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all.Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his "Wall of Exclusion," which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called "sonification" so she can "listen" to the stars.Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.

    Based on selective breeding of human beings, eugenics began in laboratories on Long Island but ended in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Cruel and racist laws were enacted in 27 U.S. states, while the supporters of eugenics included progressive thinkers like Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Ultimately, over 60,000 "unfit" Americans were coercively sterilized, a third of them after Nuremberg had declared such practices crimes against humanity. This is a timely and shocking chronicle of bad science at its worst—with many important lessons for the genetic age in which an interest in eugenics has been dangerously revived.

    Prevailing classifications have sometimes assigned Jews to the white race and at other times have created an off-white racial designation for them. Those changes in racial assignment have shaped the ways American Jews of different eras have constructed their ethnoracial identities. Brodkin illustrates these changes through an analysis of her own family's multi-generational experience. She shows how Jews, in her opinion, experience a kind of double vision that comes from racial middleness: on the one hand, marginality with regard to whiteness; on the other, whiteness and belonging with regard to blackness.

    Only one man knew everything about Ronnie and Reggie Kray and that was their brother Charlie. Until now nobody has ever revealed the truth about the Firm.- Gossip and rumor have been rife, fact has blended into fiction and the unwritten law of the street meant that the real story was buried. But before his death, the eldest Kray brother, Charlie, decided to set the record straight once and for all. Revealing everything to Colin Fry, his co-author, he finally told his incredible story. By the man who knew them best, this is the ultimate history of the twins who ruled the East End with their peculiar blend of seductive glamour and terrifying violence.