Academica Press – förlag

In Freedom's Anchor, famed legal commentator Judge Andrew P. Napolitano makes the case for using natural law principles to restrain government. Going back to Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, Judge Napolitano identifies the origins of Natural Law Theory and explains its growth and development in English and American law. He argues compellingly that the idea that our rights come from our humanity – and not from social consensus or government – is enshrined in the Ninth Amendment, authored by none other than James Madison himself, the scrivener of the Constitution, and is binding on the courts today.Freedom's Anchor is essentially a history of law and power in the United States as seen through the lens of Natural Law Theory. This work traces the Supreme Court's explicit acceptance and explicit rejection of these principles. For the first time in one volume, Judge Napolitano gives us the universe of all published works in English (and some in Latin and in Spanish) on Natural Law Theory. He has scoured the Supreme Court's writings and examined all that reflect favorably or unfavorably upon the principles of innate human freedom.After having published nine previous books on the U.S. constitutional history, this is Judge Napolitano's magnum opus. It reflects a lifetime of thinking and understanding by one of America's preeminent legal thinkers. Scholars, judges, and law students will love this book. And non-lawyers who read this book – interested in the courts' historical treatment of fundamental human freedoms and how we lost them – will say to each other: "Wow. I didn't know that! There is still hope.

On The Warpath is an autobiographical account of controversial anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss's storied career on the front lines of the culture war in our colleges and universities. Her opposition to the reburial of Native American skeletal remains, her insistence that indigenous knowledge is not science but myth, and her fight against wokeism and political correctness in academia exposed her to numerous controversies and cancel culture campaigns, and a court case. A photograph of Weiss with a skull - as natural to anthropologists as a doctor being pictured with a stethoscope - led to her university shutting her out of the collection and changing the locks. This became an international news story, as did the American Anthropological Association canceling one of her presentations because she explained that a skeleton's sex is binary and not gender fluid. This hard-hitting and often humorous book tells the story of Dr. Weiss's fight for science against superstition, and her attempts to promote free speech and academic freedom. It also exposes the current rot in today's universities, through the lens of her battles against day-to-day absurdities. These include an attempt to bar "menstruating personnel" (formerly known as women) from the curation facility, a campaign to ban research on ancient Carthaginian remains because the individuals concerned never consented to photography, and a plan to declare X-rays sacred, so that they can be repatriated to Native Americans (who may actually be Mexicans), prior to being burned or buried.

The unique and diverse hair and eye colours often found in northern and eastern Europe are relatively new and have emerged over a short span of evolutionary time—less than ten thousand years. Why? How? This work explores the latest science to answer these puzzling questions.

This book by dynamic scholars James Whisker and John Coe examines the short life of the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, one of the most overlooked individuals in the pantheon of leaders in the Third Reich. Born to German mercantile parents in the Baltic region of the Russian Empire, he was a student in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. Deeply influenced by the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a propaganda pamphlet distributed by the tsar’s secret police, he carried it to Germany, where he introduced it to Adolf Hitler.Rosenberg leaned heavily on heterodox Christian writings that challenged mainstream Christian thought. He revived interest in a variety of philosophies and individuals long forgotten, such as the cosmic dualistic Cathars and the mystic Master Eckart von Hochheim. Rosenberg came to view history from a perspective often called “Scientific Racism,” which held that the history of humankind had been marked by a struggle between the Aryan race and their supposed inferiors. Race was the newest subject for the application of cosmic dualism, which is the spiritual belief that two fundamental concepts exist. Rosenberg identified the Nazis’ task as creating a bulwark against Semitic influences from Europe generally and Germany in particular, and to do so by any means necessary.Rosenberg figured in a long anti-Jewish tradition in Germany, a tortured legacy that began with Martin Luther and continued through many of the prominent German figures of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Rosenberg considered his magnum opus, The Myth of the 20th Century, to be the logical successor work to Foundations of the 19th Century by the composer Richard Wagner’s son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

In The Warsaw Pact, 1969-1985, young Czech scholar Mat?j Bílý analyzes the internal tensions of the Soviet-led Cold War alliance as its careened toward its end. Starting with the peak of the alliance’s power under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the book follows its ossification to its increasing haplessness under Brezhnev’s successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Rooted in detailed research in Czech, Polish, and German archives, this book presents much previously unknown information about the alliance’s mechanisms as it served as one of the Kremlin’s increasingly ineffective tools for managing the Eastern Bloc.Bílý’s findings prove that the Warsaw Pact never became an initiator of political processes within the Soviet sphere of interest and only reactively addressed military issues. The alliance's framework did not allow it to become an incubator or agent of any independent development in the Soviet sphere of influence. To the contrary, events within the Warsaw Pact reflected the overall dismal situation in the Eastern Bloc and the changing policy of the Kremlin toward its East European satellites. Because of the alliance’s lack of flexibility and cumbersome internal mechanisms, it was unable to react to the dynamic challenges of the 1980s and helplessly followed a path to its own end.

What the World Can Learn from the Fall of the West is a dramatic title for a profound unease that has been festering for some time. In the Age of Brexit, Trump, and the surge of international populism, the West has been plagued by questions relating to identity, multiculturalism, social mobility, and the influence of Big Tech and social media on representative democracy. With a growing divide between “winners” of globalization and the “losers,” a question unfolds: Are the days of the West numbered? In this scholarly study, Dr. Sid Lukkassen, a notable Dutch scholar and politician, describes how the West masochistically mistreats itself by weakening national democracies and replacing its own culture and values with cultural Marxism. The rest of the world beholds this Western self-mutilation in shock and wonder – will China and Islam be the beneficiaries on the world stage?

When Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in 2000, his first priority was to reestablish the intelligence agencies' grip on the country by portraying himself as a strongman protecting Russian citizens from security threats. Despite condemnation by the United Nations, the European Parliament, and European Union, the policy of brutal "ethnic cleansing" in Chechnya continued. For Putin, Islamist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, were a welcome opportunity to rebrand the war against Chechen independence, not as the crushing of a democracy, but as a contribution to President George W. Bush's "War on Terror." In the years that followed, Putin's regime covertly supported and manipulated extremist factions in Chechnya and stage-managed terrorist attacks on its own citizens to justify continuing aggression. US and European condemnation of Russian atrocities in Chechnya dwindled as Russia continued to portray Chechen independence as an international terrorist threat. Chechnya's Prime Minister-in-Exile Akhmed Zakaev, who had to escape Chechnya, faced Russian calls for his extradition from the United Kingdom, which instead granted him political asylum as Russia's increased its oppressive operations.

Women and Art surveys the history of women in art and addresses the effects of feminist art history and art production. This book is among the first to offer a critical assessment of the role of feminism in art history and how it has presented and misrepresented women's roles in art. Seeking to counterbalance overwhelmingly pro-feminist narratives, it relies on evidence from artists, statisticians, and historians to support individual women artists while remaining critical of feminism. Cogent and persuasive, Women and Art stands as a key for students and researchers interested in art history, gender studies, feminism, and cultural studies.

The death of Spain's Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias, on July 24, 1568, remains an enigma. Several accounts insinuated that the Spanish Crown Prince was murdered while incarcerated by order of his father, King Philip II. The mystery of Don Carlos's death, supported by ambassadorial accounts that implied foul play, became a fertile subject for defamation campaigns against Philip, fostering an extraordinary fluidity between history and fiction. This book investigates three treatments of the Don Carlos legend on which this fluidity had a potent, transformational impact: Cesar Vichard de Saint-Real's novel, Dom Carlos, nouvelle historique (1672), Friedrich Schiller's play, Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien (1787), and Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Don Carlos (1867). Through these cultural variations on a historical theme, the authors and composer contributed innovative elements to their genres. In The Don Carlos Enigma, the exciting young scholar Maria-Cristina Necula explores how the particular blend of history and fiction around the personage of Don Carlos inspired such artistic liberties with evolutionary outcomes. Saint-Real advanced the nouvelle historique genre by developing the element of conspiracy. Schiller s play began the transition from the Sturm und Drang literary movement towards Weimar Classicism. Verdi introduced new dramatic and musical elements to bring opera closer to the realism of dramatic theatre. Within each of these treatments, pivotal points of narrative, semantic, dramatic, and musical transformation shaped not only the story of Don Carlos, but the expressive forms themselves. In support of the investigation, selected scenes from the three works are explored and framed by an engagement with studies in the fields of French literature, German theatre, French and Italian opera, and Spanish history. The enigma of the Spanish prince may never be solved, but Saint-Real, Schiller, and Verdi have offered alternatives that, in a sense, unburden history of truth that it could never bear alone. In the case of Don Carlos, history is in itself an encyclopedia of variations

The rise of Ottoman Sarajevo in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is emblematic of a unified new Muslim community whose conversion to Islam and booming social and economic growth unified both the city and its hinterland. Primarily based on a wide array of Ottoman administrative sources, this monograph builds on earlier studies of Sarajevo and other Ottoman cities to analyze the critical social and economic factors behind these developments.Numerous references to manumitted slave converts to Islam can be found among Sarajevo’s pious foundations. Many of these manumitted slaves held hereditary posts in the pious foundations, thus becoming part of the urban elite. In the countryside, Muslims dominated rural elites from the initial Ottoman conquest onwards. The peasants and petty nobility converted much more gradually. Their steady conversion can be partially tied to the practice of disproportionately distributing privately-held arable land to Muslims and Muslim converts.These new converts became critical participants in the city’s newly emerging economy. The manumitted slaves who staffed the pious foundations often distributed cash credit at interest to the merchantry and urban notables, helping fuel further economic development. Arable land holders often used their privileges to sell their lands to the highest bidder. The state, which often sanctioned such purchases, helped promote higher grain production and the expansion of urban elites into the countryside.

This book uncovers in the works of Plato and Nietzsche, not some royal road to truth, but rather the intensity of their love and commitment to the life of thought, whatever it discovers and wherever it might lead. Plato explored this in his ubiquitous absence from the adventures of thought depicted in his Dialogues. Nietzsche followed suit with his unrelenting presence as the grim and forceful conscience behind all the masks through which he spoke in his chaotic oeuvre. It is not a matter of biography or of shared doctrine, some favourite thoughts by which their lesser exegetes can keep them in their respective stables and move on to others with other favourite thoughts. To discover Plato and Nietzsche's kinship required something more, an intensive, lifelong philosophical engagement that Monique Dixsaut's students witnessed in her teaching at the Sorbonne, now available in English via this translation, which is suitable for academics, intellectuals and general readers alike. The ‘other way’ to philosophise proves to be the practice of philosophy itself.

This book explores images of Venice in the written and visual art of the multitalented American writer, painter, lecturer, and engineer Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). A successful artist and intrepid traveller, F. Hopkinson Smith spent every summer in Venice for almost twenty years: his stays in the Italian city resulted in a large output of watercolours and writings, including his popular travelogue Venice of To-Day (1895), which featured over 200 illustrations by Smith himself.Despite Smith’s popularity during his lifetime, his reputation as a writer and painter faded after his death and has occupied only a modest place in the American canon. This is the first scholarly work to examine the life and work of this unique American artist, whose legacy spans two centuries and was grounded in the enduringly popular fin-de-siècle. This book examines Smith’s literary and visual perception of Venice while illuminating the life and works of this multifaceted artist, whose works are highly illustrative of the era's mainstream American culture and its perception of foreign spaces.

In this groundbreaking study, international relations scholar Hicham Tohme offers a critique of current academic, scholarly, and public understandings of Russia’s geostrategic outlook through the lens of the ongoing Syrian crisis. This critique is based on a reassessment of four key concepts that shape our knowledge of Russia’s foreign policy. First, the Westphalian state system is an inadequate a point of reference when applied to a country that still perceives itself and behaves as an empire. Second, justifying aggressive foreign policy as a counterweight to a perceived deficiency in the legitimacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership oversimplifies Russian political culture and public values, which do not overlap with Western norms and institutions. Third, analysis of Russian foreign policy, as well as of Russia’s global role, remains restricted to what can be best described as a ‘post-Cold War framework’, a static image of global history for the past thirty years. Finally, most geopolitical and foreign affairs analyses focus on diplomatic and foreign policy rhetoric, rather than foreign policy praxis, as the primary data on which to draw conclusions.Offering an alternate explanation, this study examines Russia’s intervention in the Syrian crisis to reveal practices that have come to characterize its global strategy and outlook for the past decade. As such, Russian policy in Syria will be presented as part of a praxis that can describe many facets of Russian global disposition. This clearly places geopolitical practices, not rhetoric, at the heart of the analysis.Further, this book relies on the concept of habitus to explain how these practices inhere in a long tradition of Russian behavior, advancing the notion that they must be understood as part of a historical continuum of Russia’s political culture, mainly when it comes to its perception of its neighbors. By adopting a non-Westphalian framework and escaping the epistemological and methodological foundations of traditional foreign policy analysis, this book seeks to answer two key questions: How can we best describe Russia’s geostrategic predispositions? And how can we understand Russia’s involvement in the Syrian crisis in light of this analysis?

Subjugate or Exterminate! is an authoritative first-hand account of the Russo-Chechen conflict by a Chechen leader who played a central role in all the main events. Akhmed Zakayev rose rapidly from an actor of Shakespearean roles to Commander of the Western Group for the Defense of Ichkeria, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya and, in exile, as Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). It describes how the Kremlin set about discrediting and destroying a democratic government by interacting with criminal gangs and fomenting Islamist forces to split the Chechen independence movement in a perverse reversal of the “War on Terror.”Akhmed Zakayev’s memoir begins with a historical survey of the fraught relations between the Chechens and the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, up to the collapse of the USSR. The advent of Gorbachev’s Perestroika raised hopes that independence might enable Chechnya to end centuries of oppression and exploitation.Russia’s first war against Chechnya (1994-1996), initially conceived by the military as a way of disguising the large-scale theft and embezzlement of funds from illegal sales of Soviet armaments during the withdrawal from East Germany, ended in humiliating defeat for Russia. Thereafter, Russia set about subverting the democratically elected government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by instigating the gruesome murder of Western humanitarian aid workers and business partners, and by financing criminal gangs and anti-democratic Islamist groups that the ChRI police were unable to subdue. Interference by nationals of countries in the Middle East caused further disruption. In August 1999, Russia launched a brutal second war in Chechnya, on grounds widely believed to be fabricated and characterized by widespread war crimes. The West did not intervene. This is an eyewitness account of the dangers faced by the Chechen leaders as they tried to resist and negotiate with a treacherous opponent. It ends in the year 2000, with Vladimir Putin’s election as Russia’s president.

In 2020, Steven Greer, an internationally-renowned human rights scholar, was falsely and publicly accused of Islamophobia by the University of Bristol Islamic Society (BRISOC). In July 2021, he was officially exonerated without equivocation or reservation from all of BRISOC's allegations. Nevertheless, the University of Bristol, cancelled the Islam, China and the Far East module of his human rights course just as BRISOC demanded. In an almost unbelievable twist of fate, in January 2022 Professor Greer was appointed the first Visiting Research Fellow, and later Research Director, at the Oxford Institute for British Islam, a newly established progressive Muslim think tank and research academy. In this book, Greer documents his struggle to avoid physical harm, resist dismissal, salvage his reputation and career, maintain his livelihood, regain the trust and respect of his colleagues, and counter betrayal by the very institutions he had every right to expect would leap to his defense. His inspirational story will encourage many others to take a similar stand for free inquiry and debate in an age of cruel, shameless, unaccountable, and groundless censorship, vilification, and victimization.

More than 13,000 people lost their lives and many others suffered in other ways during the Maoist-led armed conflict that lasted for ten years (1996-2006) in Nepal. Many people are still missing and many more have been displaced. The lives of women in particular have been affected, with a heightened prevalence of gender-based violence during the armed conflict and post-conflict transition period. The warring sides used gendered strategies of the war wage war against each other and this book deals about the implications of such tactics. The implications of the cantonment camps in which the Maoist combatants were placed illuminate unintended consequences of this temporary provision. By recording the implications and subjective experiences of some of the victims of this war, often regarded as a low-intensity conflict, this book portrays the agony of women who endured the conflict. It shows how the conflict exacerbated the prevailing gender inequality suffered by women. Narratives of victims themselves and their portrayal in some newspapers during the conflict period have been taken in account in developing this book. The book also highlights the agentive strategies women devised to cope with the unwanted situation appropriate in their social, cultural, and political contexts. This book presents the social history of certain segment of people, especially women and displaced people, whose traumatic experiences, agonies, or efforts to come out of that often gets shadowed in the portrayal of macro level picture of the society, polity or even a war.

In this stimulating and timely book, Scott Bailey, an American teaching Russian and Eurasian history in Japan, traces the history of the dynamic Russian Geographical Society, which carried out major research expeditions to Central Eurasia during the second half of the nineteenth century. The immediate goal of its expeditions was to collect ethnographic, geographic, and natural-scientific information on these regions and their peoples. Their wider benefits established and extended Russia’s imperial control in Central Eurasia, including some regions under direct or indirect Chinese control. These expeditions served the acquisition of social and scientific information to benefit the Russian Empire’s colonization efforts. Their leaders were often elites trained in ethnography, geography, and natural science subjects, and a major objective of this book is to give a fuller picture of the diverse biographies of these figures, not all of whom were Russian or European males.In the ‘Wild Countries’ moves chronologically from the founding of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845 to the beginning of the revolutionary period in Russia in 1905. During these decades, research missions became more overtly “imperial” and coincided with the consolidation of Russian hegemony over Central Eurasia and an increasing Russian interest in territories in the western and northern regions of the Chinese Q’ing Empire. The book also addresses wider moves toward imperial projects worldwide.

Subjugate or Exterminate! is an authoritative first-hand account of the Russo-Chechen conflict by a Chechen leader who played a central role in all the main events. Akhmed Zakayev rose rapidly from an actor of Shakespearean roles to Commander of the Western Group for the Defense of Ichkeria, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya and, in exile, as Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). It describes how the Kremlin set about discrediting and destroying a democratic government by interacting with criminal gangs and fomenting Islamist forces to split the Chechen independence movement in a perverse reversal of the “War on Terror.”Akhmed Zakayev’s memoir begins with a historical survey of the fraught relations between the Chechens and the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, up to the collapse of the USSR. The advent of Gorbachev’s Perestroika raised hopes that independence might enable Chechnya to end centuries of oppression and exploitation.Russia’s first war against Chechnya (1994-1996), initially conceived by the military as a way of disguising the large-scale theft and embezzlement of funds from illegal sales of Soviet armaments during the withdrawal from East Germany, ended in humiliating defeat for Russia. Thereafter, Russia set about subverting the democratically elected government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by instigating the gruesome murder of Western humanitarian aid workers and business partners, and by financing criminal gangs and anti-democratic Islamist groups that the ChRI police were unable to subdue. Interference by nationals of countries in the Middle East caused further disruption. In August 1999, Russia launched a brutal second war in Chechnya, on grounds widely believed to be fabricated and characterized by widespread war crimes. The West did not intervene. This is an eyewitness account of the dangers faced by the Chechen leaders as they tried to resist and negotiate with a treacherous opponent. It ends in the year 2000, with Vladimir Putin’s election as Russia’s president.

Soon after a series of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, African-American protestors there and Palestinian protestors in the West Bank began to include the slogan “From Ferguson to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime” in their public statements. In Neither Thugs nor Terrorists, Randa Serhan uses cutting edge first-hand research to explore how these two distant communities found common cause in protesting the militarization of the forces that policed and criminalized them.Activists believed they had sparked a new organic connection between African-Americans and Palestinians, but they were actually rediscovering links made decades before by an earlier generation of activists operating in the 1960s, the most notable of whom was Malcolm X. Since 2014, they have also (re-)discovered the cost of such an alliance as many of the most vocal among them have been privately and publicly attacked. This has not, however, stopped the spread of such alliances in varying size and degree across the United States, including among such groups as Black-Palestinian Solidarity, the U.S. Campaign for Palestine, Muslims for Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, Adalah-NY: The Campaign for the Boycott Israel, the Jewish Voice for Peace, and the If Not Now Movement. Neither Thugs nor Terrorists builds on the oral histories and personal stories of eight individual activists, four who were active in the earlier period (1960s-1980s) and four who are currently active. Through the experiences of each activist, a common story emerges, relating the continuities and discontinuities of working for a seemingly impossible alliance. In some instances, the earlier activists paved the way for younger activists to find their strategies and know the challenges ahead. At other times, the more sophisticated surveillance state has produced obstacles unimaginable in the past. This book brings to light the everyday lives of activists, the stories that remain untold about shared Black-Palestinian activism, and the costs paid by those who find a common humanity in rejecting the labels of thugs and terrorists.

This book offers broad-gauged analyses of the causes, nature, and changing patterns of armed conflict in Africa as well as the reasons for these patterns. It also situates conflicts that have been haunting the African continent since the time of decolonization within the various theoretical schools such as “new war,” “economic war,” “neo-patrimonial,” and “globalization.” It begins with the premise that conflict constitutes one of the major impediments to Africa’s socio-economic development and has made the continent’s future looks relatively bleak. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the international community has, once again, treated Africa as a hopeless continent. This is due, in part, to a number of political, military, and socio-economic problems, which have made the continent miss the path towards sustainable development. From the period of political independence in the 1960s to the immediate post-Cold War period, the African political landscape was dotted with many conflicts of different natures and intensity (low-intensity conflicts, civil wars, mass killings, and large-scale political violence). During the first four decades of political independence, there were about 80 forceful changes of government in Sub-Saharan Africa, while a large number of countries in that region witnessed various forms of conflicts. This collection assembles the work of distinguished African scholars who offer valuable new insights into the problem of political instability.

In volume, an emerging generation of African scholars examines specific states in Africa where instability is the order of the day. Considerations of African instability are highly relevant in today’s world, where one examines the types of regimes that were put in place after the Cold War and their effects on Africa. Multiparty systems introduced in Africa, rather than bringing about inclusive governance, allowed for the emergence of religious strife, ethnic conflict, and cronyism inscribed in the continent’s “politicalscapes.” The economics of exclusivity fueled by globalization have decisively contributed to the emergence of non-state actors claiming sovereignty in sovereign states. From Libya’s implosion to the low-key war in Mozambique to the crisis of climate change, there are many variables that make stability a mirage on the continent. Widespread terrorism implies that for the foreseeable future, the continent may be a theater of crises. Regime change, as seen in Libya, Ivory Coast, and Liberia, not only increases instability in the states concerned, but has and will have spill over effects in adjacent states. Boko Haram’s activities in Nigeria, which ought to be an internal matter of the Abuja government, for instance, are having negative effects in Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The effect on food production, disputed access to farmland, and daily challenges faced by food producers are instances of underdevelopment perpetuated by climate change and other challenges considered in this timely book.

In this provocative new book, Shritha Vasudevan argues that feminist international relations (IR) theory has inadvertently resulted in a biased worldview, the very opposite of what feminist IR set out to try to rectify. This book contests theoretical presumptions of Western feminist IR and attempts to reformulate it in contexts of non-Western cultures. Vasudevan deftly utilizes the theoretical constructs of IR to explore the ramifications for India. This hypothesis argues that the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has predictive validity and is not a top-down norm but derived from the material and contingent experiences of nation states. This book enters the debate between feminist qualitative and quantitative IR through the lens of gender-based violence (GBV) under the CEDAW.

Presented by Russian author and attorney Ilya Milyukov, Chronicles of the First and Second Chechen War presents the main events of the First (1994-1996) and Second (1999-2009) Wars in Chechnya, Russia’s deadliest conflicts since World War II.The First War began in December 1994 and lasted for one year and nine months, ending in August 1996. There were two major urban battles – the Battle of the Chechen capital of Grozny from December 1994 to March 1995 and the Battle of Grozny in August 1996 – and two major battles in the rural areas, the Russian offensive in the Southern Chechnya in May and June 1995, and fighting in the foothills part of the Republic from February to May 1996.The Second War began in August 1999 and lasted much longer – until mid-April 2009, for almost ten years. It also included a major urban battle, and it again occurred in New Year’s Eve – the Battle of Grozny in December 1999 – February 2000. There was also a major battle in the countryside – the Battle for the village of Komsomolskoye, located in Urus-Martanovsky District, in March 2000. And there were also two large attacks outside Chechnya –in Moscow in October 2002, and in the North Ossetian town of Beslan in September 2004. During these war, Russian federal troops took heavy losses, while the number of civilian deaths reached nearly 400,000 people.Milyukov’s expert and meticulous chronicle lists the major events of these conflicts soberly and without editorial comment to document their events in all their brutality and horror.

The present work examines the economics and legal doctrine of private equity. After a consideration of private equity’s origins, the book will explore the evolution of private equity in the United States and Europe. The reference economic model then will be reconstructed, with particular attention to financial flows to and from private equity firms and funds. This reconstruction will be instrumental for the subsequent analysis of remunerative policies and practices of private equity firms and the illustration of recommendations to improve them, especially following the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. The book concludes with critical points for operators, legislators, and regulatory authorities in the light of the results of the economic analysis of private equity and of comparative regulatory analysis.

This original book is the first serious study investigating the crowdfunding phenomenon, which has developed deep meaning for various stakeholders benefiting from this funding collection mechanism and its innovative new role, especially in the processes of business creation and spread of entrepreneurship. The actors involved —promoters, supporters, and the platforms through which the campaigns are launched — constitute an ecosystem in continuous evolution, which has grown dramatically and allows for its further development.Irini Liakopoulou has conducted with the “multiple paper thesis” method in which original and innovative contributions are presented, applying new techniques and methodologies. The book’s goal is to foster debate about crowdfunding, an under-researched topic whose implications are not fully understood but will be a vital part of social and economic life in the future.

Speaking of Wagner compiles in a new and highly accessible format celebrated author, lecturer, and Metropolitan Opera commentator William Berger’s collection of talks and presentations about Richard Wagner, the most controversial, and perhaps the most widely influential, artist in history. These talks have been successful with diverse audiences, ranging from newcomers to the field to the most exacting experts, often at the same time! Berger’s book preserves that wide range of tone: erudite but engaging, from lofty to startlingly coarse (as the subject requires), and connecting the subject to references from mythology to psychology and even (and especially) to cutting-edge pop culture.

At the onset of the American Revolution, Britain’s North American colonies sought political independence but remained culturally dependent upon Europe. Among the many vast contributions of Thomas Jefferson, one of the most celebrated Founding Fathers, was a continuing admiration and lifelong affinity for all things Italian. Jefferson believed that the genesis of liberty followed a path from Ancient Rome, through the Italian Renaissance and Enlightenment, and toward a progressive future for the new American nation.While Jefferson’s affinity for Italy is well known, studying his role in assimilating Italian culture into the American project is a new venture. Surveying Jefferson as an Italophile reveals a wide spectrum of cultural appreciation. Ralph Giordano’s innovative new book will certainly appeal to those interested in American History and America’s emergence as a developing nation.

This critical volume of essays explores how texts and literary theories interrelate and interconnect different principles of critical evaluation. Reading for pleasure is different from reading for aesthetic sensibility. To read literature is to seek experience but interpreting the text is to add perspective. A skilled reader will apply multiple lenses to the same text to explore how different texts and theories interact with each other. The Mirror and the Reflections collects various approaches to literary theory from a postcolonial perspective. It offers an invaluable resource for those who wish to familiarize themselves with multifaceted approaches to literature.