Dosso's Fate


Book Description

Dosso Dossi has long been considered one of Renaissance Italy's most intriguing artists. Although a wealth of documents chronicles his life, he remains, in many ways, an enigma, and his art continues to be as elusive as it is compelling. In Dosso's Fate, leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines examine the social, intellectual, and historical contexts of his art, focusing on the development of new genres of painting, questions of style and chronology, the influence of courtly culture, and the work of his collaborators, as well as his visual and literary sources and his painting technique. The result is an important and original contribution not only to literature on Dosso Dossi but also to the study of cultural history in early modern Italy.




Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe


Book Description

"This publication accompanies the exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, held at the Walters Art Museum from October 14, 2012, to January 21, 2013, and at the Princeton University Art Museum from February 16 to June 9, 2013."




Religion and Power


Book Description

This volume represents a collection of contributions presented during the Third Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, held at the Oriental Institute, February 23-24, 2007. The purpose of this conference was to examine more closely concepts of kingship in various regions of the world and in different time periods. The study of kingship goes back to the roots of fields such as anthropology and religious studies, as well as Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology. More recently, several conferences have been held on kingship, drawing on cross-cultural comparisons. Yet the question of the divinity of the king as god has never before been examined within the framework of a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary conference. Some of the recent anthropological literature on kingship relegates this question of kings who deified themselves to the background or voices serious misgivings about the usefulness of the distinction between divine and sacred kings. Several contributors to this volume have pointed out the Western, Judeo-Christian background of our categories of the human and the divine. However, rather than abandoning the term divine kingship because of its loaded history it is more productive to examine the concept of divine kingship more closely from a new perspective in order to modify our understanding of this term and the phenomena associated with it.




Central Banking in Developing Countries


Book Description

This is a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey which analyzes institutions, policies and issues of central banking in developing countries including interest-free Islamic and transition economies. It discusses objectives and functions; monetary, exchange, supervisory and developmental roles; financial liberalization; informal finance; causes and implications of central bank losses. It critically evaluates currency boards, central bank independence, ceilings on government credit and suggests radical organizational reforms, divestiture of quasi-fiscal activities and partial privatization of central banks.




Open Sources 2.0


Book Description

Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution . These essays explore open source's impact on the software industry and reveal how open source concepts are infiltrating other areas of commerce and society. The essays appeal to a broad audience: the software developer will find thoughtful reflections on practices and methodology from leading open source developers like Jeremy Allison and Ben Laurie, while the business executive will find analyses of business strategies from the likes of Sleepycat co-founder and CEO Michael Olson and Open Source Business Conference founder Matt Asay. From China, Europe, India, and Brazil we get essays that describe the developing world's efforts to join the technology forefront and use open source to take control of its high tech destiny. For anyone with a strong interest in technology trends, these essays are a must-read. The enduring significance of open source goes well beyond high technology, however. At the heart of the new paradigm is network-enabled distributed collaboration: the growing impact of this model on all forms of online collaboration is fundamentally challenging our modern notion of community. What does the future hold? Veteran open source commentators Tim O'Reilly and Doc Searls offer their perspectives, as do leading open source scholars Steven Weber and Sonali Shah. Andrew Hessel traces the migration of open source ideas from computer technology to biotechnology, and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger and Slashdot co-founder Jeff Bates provide frontline views of functioning, flourishing online collaborative communities. The power of collaboration, enabled by the internet and open source software, is changing the world in ways we can only begin to imagine.Open Sources 2.0 further develops the evolutionary picture that emerged in the original Open Sources and expounds on the transformative open source philosophy. "This is a wonderful collection of thoughts and examples bygreat minds from the free software movement, and is a must have foranyone who follows free software development and project histories." --Robin Monks, Free Software Magazine The list of contributors include Alolita Sharma Andrew Hessel Ben Laurie Boon-Lock Yeo Bruno Souza Chris DiBona Danese Cooper Doc Searls Eugene Kim Gregorio Robles Ian Murdock Jeff Bates Jeremy Allison Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona Kim Polese Larry Sanger Louisa Liu Mark Stone Mark Stone Matthew N. Asay Michael Olson Mitchell Baker Pamela Jones Robert Adkins Russ Nelson Sonali K. Shah Stephen R. Walli Steven Weber Sunil Saxena Tim O'Reilly Wendy Seltzer




Black Africans in Renaissance Europe


Book Description

This highly original book opens up the almost entirely neglected area of the black African presence in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Covering history, literature, art history and anthropology, it investigates a whole range of black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe, from various types of slavery to black musicians and dancers, from real and symbolic Africans at court to the views of the Catholic Church, and from writers of African descent to Black African criminality. Their findings demonstrate the variety and complexity of black African life in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by firmly held preconceptions relating to the African continent and its inhabitants, reinforced by Renaissance ideas and conditions. Of enormous importance both for European and American history, this book mixes empirical material and theoretical approaches, and addresses such issues as stereotypes, changing black African identity, and cultural representation in art and literature.




The Lost Secret of Speaking Perfect English


Book Description

Do you want to learn The Lost Secret of Speaking Perfect English? The Moving Mouth Dictionary technique provides a very simple approach to perfecting English speaking and pronunciation. The book takes a down-to-earth approach for speaking clear English, as it breathes some fresh air into the stuffy corridors of academic learning. It is geared to help students and business people speak impressive and naturally clear English, taking much of the guessing out of pronunciation and spelling. English will become more of a physical activity, rather than a cerebral academic subject. The key is in identifying and improving specifi c types of reverse and forward mouth movements, actions based on using simple vertical mouth movement notations that have simple associations with key phonetics sounds for specifi c letters. The technique’s forward and reverse mouth movements combined with a natural English rhythm also helps trigger and access vocabulary and verbs, while aiding in word retention, fl uency and auto correcting. The book features a dictionary of over 11,000 words, including some of the most diffi cult words in the English language, which have been broken down, putting these notations into “mouthables.” The process draws heavily on early humans’ natural ability to howl and growl, using their mouths vertically. Hence, the lost connection between our near ancestors can aid our ability to speak clear English, an ability we have lost and need to rediscover.




Circa 1492


Book Description

Surveys the art of the Age of Exploration in Europe, the Far East, and the Americas




INDIA'S NEW CAPITALISTS


Book Description

It?s no secret that certain social groups have predominated India?s business and trading history, with business traditionally being the preserve of particular `Bania? communities. However, the past four or so decades have seen a widening of the social base of Indian capital, such that the social profile of Indian business has expanded beyond recognition, and entrepreneurship and commerce in India are no longer the exclusive bastion of the old mercantile castes. In this meticulously researched book ? acclaimed for being the first social history to document and understand India?s new entrepreneurial groups ? Harish Damodaran looks to answer who the new `wealth creators? are, as he traces the transitional entry of India?s middle and lower peasant castes into the business world. Combining analytical rigour with journalistic flair, India?s New Capitalists is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the culture and evolution of business in contemporary South Asia.




Econophysics & Economics of Games, Social Choices and Quantitative Techniques


Book Description

The combined efforts of the Physicists and the Economists in recent years in analyzing and modelling various dynamic phenomena in monetary and social systems have led to encouraging developments, generally classified under the title of Econophysics. These developments share a common ambition with the already established field of Quantitative Economics. This volume intends to offer the reader a glimpse of these two parallel initiatives by collecting review papers written by well-known experts in the respective research frontiers in one cover. This massive book presents a unique combination of research papers contributed almost equally by Physicists and Economists. Additional contributions from Computer Scientists and Mathematicians are also included in this volume. The book consists of two parts: the first part concentrates on Econophysics problems and the second part stresses on various quantitative issues in Economics. Both parts specialize on frontier problems in Games and Social Choices.