David Ball – författare

Nico and Maria, Maltese brother and sister, are separated when young Nico is abducted by Moorish slavers. Taken to Algiers to be the personal slave of a wealthy merchant, he becomes a pawn in household politics and sets out to escape. Extraordinary events lead him to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottomans. Stranded alone on Malta, Maria must learn to survive helped only by a group of Jewish refugees. A sweeping historical epic set against the backdrop of the desperate conflict between Christian Europe and the Islamic Ottoman Empire, The Sword and the Scimitar vividly portrays an irresistible and fast-moving world of adventure, war, treachery and love.

Jean Guehenno's Diary of the Dark Years 1940-1945 is the book historians love to quote to describe both ordinary daily life and literary life in Paris under Nazi occupation. While it is a sharply observed record of day-to-day life in occupied Paris, this diary is far more than that: it is "a remarkable essay on courage and cowardice." (Caroline Moorehead, Wall Street Journal.) At the time, Guehenno was a well-known political and cultural critic, left-wing but not Communist, and uncompromisingly anti-fascist. Unlike most French writers during the Occupation, he refused to pen a word for a publishing industry under Nazi control. He expressed his intellectual, moral and emotional resistance in this diary: his shame at the Vichy government's collaboration with Nazi Germany, his contempt for its falsely patriotic reactionary ideology, his outrage at its anti-Semitism and its vilification of the Republic it had abolished, his horror at its increasingly savage repression and his disgust with his fellow intellectuals who kept on blithely writing about art and culture as if the Occupation did not exist-not to mention those who praised their new masters in prose and poetry. Guehenno was a teacher of French literature, and he constantly observes the young people he taught, sometimes saddened by their conformism but always passionately trying to inspire them with the values of the French cultural tradition he loved-from Montaigne to Voltaire and Rousseau and the democratic thinkers of the nineteenth century. He often sets down his reflections on the great texts he is teaching in this diary; they take on a special meaning in the context of the Occupation. The notes and biographical index in this edition will help the reader to understand both the diarist's cultural allusions and the dramatic current events he records.

Well-publicised cases of child abuse have brought heavy media criticism of the social work role in prevention and child protection. This book attempts to bring a sense of perspective to allay the anxieties and fears felt by many social workers. The authors resist the idea that child abuse is a special 'disease' and develop a broad based strategy encompassing both individual therapy and environmental approaches.'Cooper and Ball's short introduction to child abuse in the Practical Social Work Series is a remarkable achievement in that it provides local authority social workers and general social work students with a concise overview of issues related to working in child abuse.' - Issues in Social Work Education.

The best-selling script analysis book for thirty-five years Considered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts. Ball developed his method during his work as literary director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stageworthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. Also included are guides for discovering what the playwright considers a play’ s most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details. Using Shakespeare’s Hamlet as illustration, Ball assures a familiar base for clarifying script-reading techniques as well as exemplifying the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards & Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.

With its easy-to-read approach and focus on core topics, PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY, 2e provides a concise, yet thorough examination of calculus-based physical chemistry. The Second Edition, designed as a learning tool for students who want to learn physical chemistry in a functional and relevant way, follows a traditional organization and now features an increased focus on thermochemistry, as well as new problems, new two-column examples, and a dynamic new four-color design. Written by a dedicated chemical educator and researcher, the text also includes a review of calculus applications as applied to physical chemistry.

The extraordinary life of Zhuang Zhou sits halfway between fable and philosophy.“It was twenty-five centuries ago in the land of Song, between the Yellow River and the River Huai: Zhuang Zhou was born without a cry with his eyes wide open.”  Welcome to China in the fifth century BCE, a colorful, violent, unstable world into which Zhuang is born. Here royals raise huge armies, constantly waging wars against one another. They have slaves, concubines. Gold is everywhere. And so is hunger. Born rich and entitled, Zhuang learns to refuse any official function. His travels bring him closer to ordinary people, from whom he learns how to live a simple and useful life. This is how he will become one of the greatest Chinese philosophers who gave his name to his legendary book, the Zhuangzi, one of the two foundational texts of Taoism—a magnificent procession of lively stories in which we meet dwarfs, virtuous bandits, butchers, powerful lords in their castles, turtles, charming concubines, and false sages. In this remarkable bildungsroman, award-winning French novelist Patrick Rambaud spins out the extraordinary life of Zhuang Zhou—a poetic, cruel, and often humorous tale, halfway between fable and philosophy.