Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy


Book Description

The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - INTELLIGENCE, CREATIVITY AND FANTASY were compiled with the intent to establish a multidisciplinary platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. The aim is also to foster the awareness and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, and their importance and benefits for the sense of both individual and community identity. The idea of modernity has been a significant motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.




The Begum's Millions


Book Description

Verne's first cautionary tale about the dangers of science — first modern and corrected English translation. When two European scientists unexpectedly inherit an Indian rajah's fortune, each builds an experimental city of his dreams in the wilds of the American Northwest. France-Ville is a harmonious urban community devoted to health and hygiene, the specialty of its French founder, Dr. François Sarrasin. Stahlstadt, or City of Steel, is a fortress-like factory town devoted to the manufacture of high-tech weapons of war. Its German creator, the fanatically pro-Aryan Herr Schultze, is Verne's first truly evil scientist. In his quest for world domination and racial supremacy, Schultze decides to showcase his deadly wares by destroying France-Ville and all its inhabitants. Both prescient and cautionary, The Begum's Millions is a masterpiece of scientific and political speculation and constitutes one of the earliest technological utopia/dystopias in Western literature. This Wesleyan edition features notes, appendices, and a critical introduction as well as all the illustrations from the original French edition.




The Begum's Millions


Book Description

Verne's first cautionary tale about the dangers of science — first modern and corrected English translation. When two European scientists unexpectedly inherit an Indian rajah's fortune, each builds an experimental city of his dreams in the wilds of the American Northwest. France-Ville is a harmonious urban community devoted to health and hygiene, the specialty of its French founder, Dr. François Sarrasin. Stahlstadt, or City of Steel, is a fortress-like factory town devoted to the manufacture of high-tech weapons of war. Its German creator, the fanatically pro-Aryan Herr Schultze, is Verne's first truly evil scientist. In his quest for world domination and racial supremacy, Schultze decides to showcase his deadly wares by destroying France-Ville and all its inhabitants. Both prescient and cautionary, The Begum's Millions is a masterpiece of scientific and political speculation and constitutes one of the earliest technological utopia/dystopias in Western literature. This Wesleyan edition features notes, appendices, and a critical introduction as well as all the illustrations from the original French edition.




The Begum's Fortune


Book Description

Jules Verne's conceptions are as brilliant as ever. Dr. Sarrasin, a French savant, simple in taste and absorbed in science, delivers an address at the Brighton Scientific Association. The publication of it with his name in ' The Daily Telegraph' discovers him to a London lawyer as the lost heir of the Begum, whom his uncle had married in India. He inherits a moderate property of twenty-one millions sterling, all ready for him in the Bank of England. Dr. Schultz, a German professor, also a connection by marriage, threatens to dispute it. They settle the dispute by dividing it. Dr. Sarrasin founds in the Rocky Mountains a city of health, modelled on Dr. Richardson's lines. Dr. Schultz founds at thirty miles distance a stupendous cannon manufactory. One piece fires a shot with a velocity and force that give it perpetual motion. He resolves to destroy Dr. Sarrasin's city. How he fails and perishes by his own science the story must tell ; but it is prodigious. The magnificence and the verisimilitude are perfect.




The History of Pendennis


Book Description




A History of the New India


Book Description

Providing a different approach to the history of India than previously advocated, this textbook argues that there was constant interaction between peoples and cultures. This interactive, dialogic approach provides a clear understanding of how power and social relations operated in South Asia. Covering the history of India from Mughal times to the first years of Independence, the book consists of chapters divided roughly between political and thematic questions. Topics discussed include: Mughal warfare and military developments The construction of Indian culture Indian, regional and local political articulation India’s Independence and the end of British Rule Women and governmentality The rise of the Dalit movement As well as a detailed timeline that provides a useful overview of key events in the history of India, a set of background reading is included after each chapter for readers who wish to go beyond the remit of this text. Written in an accessible, narrative style, the textbook will be suitable in courses on Indian and South Asian history, as well as courses on world history and South Asian studies.







Women, Wealth and the State in Early Colonial India


Book Description

Few polities were more instrumental to the rise of the East India Company and the advent of British colonial rule in South Asia than the Mughal successor state of Awadh (c. 1722–1856). And few individuals influenced the making of the Awadh regime and its pivotal relationship with the Company more than the chief consorts (begams) of its ruling dynasty. Drawing on previously unexamined Persian sources, this book centres the begams of Awadh within a revised history of state-formation and conceptual change in pre- and early colonial India. In so doing, it posits the begams as essential, if contested, builders of both the Awadh regime and the Company state, and as ambivalent partners in forging evolving political economies and emerging conceptual languages of statehood and sovereignty in early colonial India.




Begums, Thugs and Englishmen


Book Description

Fanny Parkes, Who Lived In India Between 1822 And 1846, Was The Ideal Travel Writer Courageous, Indefatigably Curious And Determinedly Independent. Her Delightful Journal Traces Her Journey From Prim Memsahib, Married To A Minor Civil Servant Of The Raj, To Eccentric Sitar-Playing Indophile, Fluent In Urdu, Critical Of British Rule And Passionate In Her Appreciation Of Indian Culture. Fanny Is Fascinated By Everything, From The Trial Of The Thugs And The Efficacy Of Opium On Headaches To The Adorning Of A Hindu Bride. To Read Her Is To Get As Close As One Can To A True Picture Of Early Colonial India The Sacred And The Profane, The Violent And The Beautiful, The Straight-Laced Sahibs And The More Eccentric White Mughals Who Fell In Love With India And Did Their Best, Like Fanny, To Build Bridges Across Cultures.




Mining of Microbial Wealth and MetaGenomics


Book Description

The existence of living organisms in diverse ecosystems has been the focus of interest to human beings, primarily to obtain insights into the diversity and dynamics of the communities. This book discusses how the advent of novel molecular biology techniques, the latest being the next-generation sequencing technologies, helps to elucidate the identity of novel organisms, including those that are rare. The book highlights the fact that oceans, marine environments, rivers, mountains and the gut are ecosystems with great potential for obtaining bioactive molecules, which can be used in areas such as agriculture, food, medicine, water supplies and bioremediation. It then describes the latest research in metagenomics, a field that allows elucidation of the maximum biodiversity within an ecosystem, without the need to actually grow and culture the organisms. Further, it describes how human-associated microbes are directly responsible for our health and overall wellbeing.“/p>