The Accord


Book Description

"One of the finest novels of virtual reality yet written" (SF Site) The Accord, a virtual utopia where the soul lives on after death and your perceptions are bound only by your imagination. This is the setting for a tale of love, murder and revenge that crosses the boundaries between the real world and this virtual reality. When Noah and Priscilla escape into the Accord to flee Priscilla's murderous husband, he plots to destroy the whole Accord and them with it. How can they hope to escape their stalker when he can become anything or anyone he desires and where does the pursuit of revenge stop for immortals in an eternal world? "The emotion-driven love triangle neatly complements the tech- and philosophy-heavy nature of the Accord, making this rumination on posthumous, posthuman love a rare treat." Publishers Weekly 5* review "Brooke's fifth science-fiction novel is an intelligent examination of the technological possibilities of VR and a brilliant dissection of how individuals and society will change when freed from material bounds. The Accord is not only Brooke's best novel to date, but one of the finest to broach the subject of virtual reality." The Guardian "A truly major sf work that should be considered for all eligible awards." SFF World "Keith Brooke's take on posthumanism is one of the best approaches of the subject I've ever seen." SF Signal "As well as being a masterful story, The Accord is a feat of daring and accomplished composition... Romantic, edgy, moving, tight and fast, The Accord is Keith Brooke on incandescent form and in an angry, sweary mood. The Accord offers a sense of obscene wonder the likes of which this reviewer might not have felt since Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden. This is Keith Brooke at his absolute best." Interzone "One of my favourite headfuck metaphysical sci-fi novels." James Everington, author of Falling Over




Of Their Own Accord


Book Description

Based on real incidents, this is a Vietnam war novel about the role Army Ranger units played conducting raids by small teams on the ground and directed by their officers in the air. This book tracks the experiences of a young West Point graduate who volunteers for a Ranger unit in-country, learns his trade, and accomplishes his missions.




After the Accord


Book Description

A contribution to the history of the institutional evolution of the market that finances the US government in war and peace.




After the Accord


Book Description

In this book Garbade, a former analyst at a primary dealer and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, traces the evolution of open market operations, Treasury debt management, and the microstructure of the US government securities markets following the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve. This volume examines how these operations evolved, responding both to external forces and to one another. Utilising a vast scope of primary material, the work provides insight into how officials fashioned the instruments, facilities, and procedures needed to advance their policy objectives in light of their novel freedoms and responsibilities. Students and scholars of macroeconomics, financial regulation, and the history of central banking and the Federal Reserve will find this volume a welcome addition to Garbade's earlier studies of Treasury debt operations during World War I, the 1920s, and the Great Depression and since 1983.




Tribe of the Accord


Book Description

Adira knows only life alone in the wilderness with her father, Torion. Surviving the wild is bearable with him. That’s until a mysterious clan known as the Ursa abduct him. On the run from the aggressors, she must flee to unfamiliar lands and put her survival skills to the test. Along the way, she forms friendships and joins a tribe in the hope of finding her father. Will she conquer the challenges set before her to become a member of this society and rescue Torion, or will the terrifying Ursa clan bring doom to them all? Beta Readers "A well-structured and paced YA prehistoric drama with a solid central character arc." "This is a great exploration of themes around family, friendship, loyalty, and trust. The Protagonist working to find her place in the tribe does a great job of exploring the idea of having to prove one’s worth but also the value of contributing to a family or society to become a productive member of it." "The tone is immersive and detailed with a very down-to-earth approach, which fits the setting very well. There’s a sense of mystery and wonder, but nothing that draws us too far away from the nitty-gritty of Adira’s everyday survival in the beginning, her travels as we progress, and the hardships she faces later on. There’s a great use of tension throughout, both with physical danger and emotional crises." "I absolutely loved Adira’s journey. She was very well-developed and thoughtful. Her goals and dreams were established right from the beginning. Her strengths and weaknesses, also, were defined and explored early on. These were challenged throughout. She gradually became more skilled at certain things, like communicating with the tribe, but her inner drive, fortitude, loyalty, and a kind heart all were her greatest strengths. She had a great internal conflict because she didn’t realise this at first, and had to go through a lot of strife before coming to accept her own value." "It’s very well-paced and structured. Adira’s gradual understanding of what it means to have a meaningful relationship with a peer, as well as how to fit into a group structure, are both plausible and strong parallels to her transition to adulthood in general."




International Monetary Cooperation


Book Description

In September 1985, emissaries of the world's five leading industrial nations—the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan—secretly gathered at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and unveiled an unprecedented effort to correct the largest set of current account and exchange rate imbalances that had ever threatened the world economy. The Plaza Accord is credited with sharply realigning exchange rates, significantly reducing current account imbalances, and countering protectionist pressures in the United States. But did the Accord provide a foundation for ongoing international financial stability and policy coordination? Or was it simply a unique one-time coincidence of national interests? The Plaza experience continues to inform today's debates about the limits and possibilities of international monetary cooperation. In late 2015, leading policymakers and economists—including those who were involved in the Accord's design, negotiation, and implementation—held a Plaza Retrospective conference at the Baker Institute for Public Policy to evaluate the Accord's legacy and how its collaborative spirit can be applied today. This volume presents their views and analyses to provide guidance for a time when the world again faces the prospect of currency disequilibria, growing imbalances, trade policy reactions, and thus uncertainty for both the global economy and world politics.




The Wauchula Woods Accord


Book Description

WHILE TRAVELING AROUND THE COUNTRY to report on the conditions in which captive chimpanzees in America live, Charles Siebert visited a retirement home for former ape movie stars and circus entertainers in Wauchula, Florida, known as the Center for Great Apes. There Siebert encountered Roger, a twenty-eight-year-old former Ringling Bros. star who not only preferred the company of people to that of his fellow chimps but seemed utterly convinced that he knew the author from some other time and place. "Mostly I was struck by Roger's stare," writes Siebert, "his deep-set hazel eyes peering out at me with what, to my deep discomfort, I'd soon realize is their unchanging expression. It is a beguiling mix of amazement and apprehension, the look, as I've often thought of it since, of a being stranded between his former self and the one we humans have long been suggesting to him. A sort of hybrid of a chimp and a person. A veritable 'humanzee.'" Haunted by Roger's demeanor, Siebert promptly moved into a cottage on the grounds of the Center for Great Apes, spending day after day with Roger, trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious connection between them. And then late one night, awakened by the cries of chimpanzees, a sleepless and troubled Siebert suddenly began to conjure a secret, predawn encounter with his new cross-species confidant, an apparently one-sided conversation that, in fact, takes us to the very heart of the author's relationship with Roger and of our relationship with our own captive primal selves. The result is The Wauchula Woods Accord, a strikingly written, wide-ranging physical and metaphysical foray out along the increasingly fraught frontier between humans and animals; a journey that encompasses many of the author's encounters with chimpanzees and other animals, as well as the latest scientific discoveries that underscore our intimate biological bonds not only with our nearest kin but with far more remoteseeming life-forms. By journey's end, the reader arrives at a deeper understanding both of Roger and of our numerous other animal selves, a recognition -- an accord -- that carries a new sense of responsibility for how we view and treat all animals, including ourselves.




The Limits of Regionalism


Book Description

Assessing the effectiveness of the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation, this interview-based study examines the operation of the core institutions (the Secretariat and National Administrative Offices) over the past seven years.




The Storyworld Accord


Book Description

“Storyworlds,” mental models of context and environment within which characters function, is a concept used to describe what happens in narrative. Narratologists agree that the concept of storyworlds best captures the ecology of narrative interpretation by allowing a fuller appreciation of the organization of both space and time, by recognizing reading as a process that encourages readers to compare the world of a text to other possible worlds, and by highlighting the power of narrative to immerse readers in new and unfamiliar environments. Focusing on the work of writers from Trinidad and Nigeria, such as Sam Selvon and Ben Okri, The Storyworld Accord investigates and compares the storyworlds of nonrealist and postmodern postcolonial texts to show how such narratives grapple with the often-collapsed concerns of subjectivity, representation, and environment, bringing together these narratological and ecocritical concerns via a mode that Erin James calls econarratology. Arguing that postcolonial ecocriticism, like ecocritical studies, has tended to neglect imaginative representations of the environment in postcolonial literatures, James suggests that readings of storyworlds in postcolonial texts helps narrative theorists and ecocritics better consider the ways in which culture, ideologies, and social and environmental issues are articulated in narrative forms and structures, while also helping postcolonial scholars more fully consider the environment alongside issues of political subjectivity and sovereignty.




Assam


Book Description