Alan S. Weber - Böcker

Almanacs were highly influential on popular opinion during the early modern period. They were the least expensive kinds of books and had a practical use as a calendar, literary miscellany, weather guide and advertising medium. The almanacs in this volume contribute to our understanding of women's participation in popular culture, astrology, medicine and prophecy. Sarah Jinner's almanacs for the years 1658, 1659 and 1664, and Mary Holden's almanacs for 1688 and 1689 show a conscious effort to distance themselves from other female religious prophets of the period by relying on the status of astrology as a rational science. The other works in the volume are all attributed to writers who were probably pseudonymous. Dorothy Partridge's The Woman's Almanack for the Year 1694 includes several short articles on chiromancy. The Prophesie of Mother Shipton concerns the prediction of the deaths of Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. The final works in the volume comprise two texts by Shinkin ap Shone which satirize the Welsh people and language, and The Woman's Alamanack by Sarah Ginnor which uses sexual humour to parody the medical advice offered in Jinner's almanacs.

Tourism is one of the world's largest as well as fastest growing industries and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states are expected to be increasingly important engines of such growth, and tourism promotion is often considered an integral element of their economic strategies. The sector is generally publicized as a vital source of employment, revenue, foreign exchange benefits, public infrastructure, diversification and inducement in reviving national pride. Nevertheless tourism as a catalyst for economic development can be a controversial device. While certain short term economic benefits clearly arise from an expanding tourism industry in the Gulf economies, its unsustainable rapid development has had detrimental environmental, socio-cultural and security impacts, particularly because this industry is dependent on and a major user of natural resources and habitually collides with the values, skills, and aspirations of GCC nationals. This book develops new strategies to avoid past errors and proposes remedial actions to those currently unsustainable development pathways. In consideration of the fact that all types of tourism will eventually have a negative impact on the fragile environments of the GCC, we will take a closer look at the net social benefit of tourism development, to encapsulate economic, social and environmental benefits and costs, and ask whether benefits outweigh costs overall. Such an approach will include nonmonetary values and will allow the necessary trade-offs across economic, social and environmental domains. Concurrently, research indicates that in their aggressive pursuit of tourism development, Gulf governments either failed to address or deliberately ignored the critical question of local employment, ergo it is also crucial to assess the status quo, discuss why tourism has or has not been able to succeed with the set policy goals and especially elaborate the political rationale behind these deficiencies.

In the last decade, due to factors of ICT infrastructural and broadband maturation, rising levels of educational attainment and computer literacy, and diversification strategies, e-learning has exploded in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. However, significant barriers remain in the region’s e-learning development: lack of research on outcomes and effectiveness, paucity of Arabic language learning objects, monopolies and high cost of telecommunications, cultural taboos, accreditation, censorship, and teacher training.This unique volume is the first comprehensive effort to describe the history, development, and current state of e-learning in each of the 20 MENA countries from Algeria to Yemen. Each entry is expertly written by a specialist who is acutely familiar with the state of e-learning in their respective country, and concludes with a bibliography of key reports, peer-reviewed books and articles, and web resources.E-Learning in the Middle East andNorth Africa (MENA) proves itself as a vital compendium for a wide readership that includes academics and students, transnational program directors, international education experts, MENA government departments, commercial vendors and investors, and ICT development and regulatory agencies involved in e-learning in the Middle East.