John Thornton – författare

This book tells the story of the Christian religious movement led by Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the Kingdom of Kongo from 1704 until her death, by burning at the stake, in 1706. Beatriz, a young woman, claimed to be possessed by St Anthony, argued that Jesus was a Kongolese, and criticized Italian Capuchin missionaries in her country for not supporting black saints. The movement was largely a peace movement, with a following among the common people, attempting to stop the devastating cycle of civil wars between contenders for the Kongolese throne. Thornton supplies background information on the Kingdom, the development of Catholicism in Kongo since 1491, the nature and role of local warfare in the Atlantic slave trade, and contemporary everyday life, as well as sketching the lives of some local personalities.

This book tells the story of the Christian religious movement led by Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the Kingdom of Kongo from 1704 until her death, by burning at the stake, in 1706. Beatriz, a young woman, claimed to be possessed by St Anthony, argued that Jesus was a Kongolese, and criticized Italian Capuchin missionaries in her country for not supporting black saints. The movement was largely a peace movement, with a following among the common people, attempting to stop the devastating cycle of civil wars between contenders for the Kongolese throne. Thornton supplies background information on the Kingdom, the development of Catholicism in Kongo since 1491, the nature and role of local warfare in the Atlantic slave trade, and contemporary everyday life, as well as sketching the lives of some local personalities.

This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics of colonization which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers, and he explains why African slaves were placed in roles of central significance. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors, transferring and transforming African culture in the New World.

This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics of colonization which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers, and he explains why African slaves were placed in roles of central significance. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors, transferring and transforming African culture in the New World.

What we want for schools reveals what we value as a society.“What’s the point of school?” Parents have a stock set of responses, but the question remains unsettled, even two centuries after the Prussians invented compulsory education. The Prussian idea of what a school is for – to mold the populace to serve the state – seems unacceptable today. In vogue, instead, are slogans like “acquiring marketable skills” and “realizing your full potential.” These ideas powerfully shape our culture. Ultimately, they boil down to pursuing one supreme value: individual success in a competitive world.Schools are a mirror of our society as a whole; what we want for schools makes plain what and whom we value in our common life. In the Christian tradition, the life of discipleship is also a school. In this educational community, under the instruction of our one Teacher, we learn not to seek empowerment, but to find strength in weakness; not to out-achieve others, but to serve them; not to pursue our passion, but to obey a call.Also in this issue: poetry by Christian Wiman; reviews of new books by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, Francisco Cantú, Leif Enger, Carol Anderson, Stephanie Land, and Susan Wise Bauer; and art by Margaret McWethy, Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Gérard David, Jackie Morris, Gustaf Tenggren, Sergey Dushkin, Anja Percival, Dmitry Samofalov, Christoph Wetzel, Sherrie York, Cathleen Rehfield, Paweł Kuczyński, and Jason Landsel.Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

The aim of this book is to present the modern design principles and analysis of lens antennas. It gives graduates and RF/Microwave professionals the design insights in order to make full use of lens antennas.  Why do we want to write a book in lens antennas? Because this topic has not been thoroughly publicized, its importance is underestimated. As antennas play a key role in communication systems, recent development in wireless communications would indeed benefit from the characteristics of lens antennas: low profile, and low cost etc.  The major advantages of lens antennas are narrow beamwidth, high gain, low sidelobes and low noise temperature. Their structures can be more compact and weigh less than horn antennas and parabolic antennas. Lens antennas with their quasi-optical characteristics, also have low loss, particularly at near millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths where they have particular advantages. This book systematically conducts advanced and up-to-date treatment of lens antennas.

This volume contains the papers presented at AI 2007: The 20th Australian Joint Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence held during December 2–6, 2007 on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. AI 2007 attracted 194 submissions (full papers) from 34 countries. The review process was held in two stages. In the ?rst stage, the submissions were assessed for their relevance and readability by the Senior Program Committee members. Those submissions that passed the ?rst stage were then reviewed by at least three Program Committee members and independent reviewers. After extensive disc- sions, the Committee decided to accept 60 regular papers (acceptance rate of 31%) and 44 short papers (acceptance rate of 22.7%). Two regular papers and four short papers were subsequently withdrawn and are not included in the proceedings. AI 2007 featured invited talks from four internationally distinguished - searchers, namely, Patrick Doherty, Norman Foo, Richard Hartley and Robert Hecht-Nielsen. They shared their insights and work with us and their contri- tions to AI 2007 were greatly appreciated. AI 2007 also featured workshops on integrating AI and data-mining, semantic biomedicine and ontology. The short papers were presented in an interactive poster session and contributed to a st- ulating conference. It was a great pleasure for us to serve as the Program Co-chairs of AI 2007.