Serpentine Books
Independent publisher of crime, thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries, romantic comedies and mash-ups.
View Rights PortalIndependent publisher of crime, thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries, romantic comedies and mash-ups.
View Rights PortalAbout E-planet E-planet Educational Services is an international organisation created by a dedicated and enthusiastic team of experts on education, marketing and development. Our goal is to provide our partners, students and customers with top-level services and products. That is why we have developed a unique, fully integrated company for ESL (English as a Second Language) educational services and business training. We combine traditional methods with cutting-edge technology to achieve a variety of purposes!
View Rights Portal“There is no Planet B!” More and more young people are worried about the future of Planet Earth. Climate change is heating not only the planet but also people’s emotions. But what exactly is climate? And why are the changes threatening the lives of both polar bears and us humans. In simple language but with solid science, the authors explain the most important aspects of climate, from the greenhouse effect to the Gulf Stream. Current developments are described as well, and the scientific background is supplemented by gripping reports. The book also offers a glimpse of the future: what will happen if we go on in the same way as now? How can climate change be halted? This makes for riveting reading – and not just for young activists.
Throughout the 1990s, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was forced to face the challenges posed by the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis and a succession of outbreaks of political violence in Rwanda and its neighbouring countries. Humanitarian workers were confronted with the execution of almost one million people, tens of thousands of casualties pouring into health centres, the flight of millions of people who had sought refuge in camps and a series of deadly epidemics. Drawing on various hitherto unpublished private and public archives, this book recounts the experiences of the MSF teams working in the field. It is intended for humanitarian aid practitioners, students, journalists and researchers with an interest in genocide and humanitarian studies and the political sociology of international organisations.
Early modern dietaries are prose texts recommending the best way to maintain physical and psychological well-being. Three sixteenth-century dietaries contains Thomas Elyot's Castle of Health, Andrew Boorde's Compendious Regiment and William Bullein's Government of Health, all popular and influential works that were typical of a genre advising the reader on how best to maintain physical and psychological health. They are here introduced, contextualized and edited for the first time in a modern spelling edition. Introductory material explores the dietary genre, its relationship to humanism, humoral theory, and the wide range of authorities with which the dietary authors engaged. The volume includes an examination of the bibliographical and publication history of each work, comprehensive explanatory notes and appendices that provide prefaces to earlier editions, a glossary, and a list of authorities and works cited or alluded to in the dietaries.
The stadium century traces the history of stadia and mass spectatorship in modern France from the vélodromes of the late nineteenth century to the construction of the Stade de France before the 1998 soccer World Cup. As the book demonstrates, the stadium was at the centre of debates over public health and urban development and proved to be a key space for mobilising the urban crowd for political rallies and spectator sporting events alike. After 1945, the transformed French stadium constituted part of the process of postwar modernisation but also was increasingly connected to global transformations to the spaces and practices of sport. Drawing from a wide range of sources, the stadium century links the histories of French urbanism, mass politics and sport through the stadium in an innovative work that will appeal to historians, students of French history and the history of sport, and general readers alike.
This book examines the links between major contemporary public sector reforms and neoliberal thinking. The key contribution of the book is to enhance our understanding of contemporary neoliberalism as it plays out in the public administration and to provide a critical analysis of generally overlooked aspects of administrative power. The book examines the quest for accountability, credibility and evidence in the public sector. It asks whether this quest may be understood in terms of neoliberal thinking and, if so, how? The book makes the argument that while current administrative reforms are informed by several distinct political rationalities, they evolve above all around a particular form of neoliberalism: constructivist neoliberalism. The book analyses the dangers of the kinds of administrative power seeking to invoke the self-steering capacities of society and administration itself.
Y, De Qué Se Trata? – Acertijos gráficos (teasers) para lectores jòvenes por Gideon Bar-Sinai Como muchos adultos, los niños son muy curiosos por naturaleza. Captan principios con facilidad, encuentran desafíos y disfrutan resolviéndolos pero, ?cómo fomentar su curiosidad? Al encontrarse con un libro tan original, que es como el cofre de un tesoro de sorpresas: colorido, inteligente y fascinante. Se trata de un concepto único, cuyo objetivo primordial es entretener igualmente a lectores jóvenes y adultos. La utilización y el fomento de su curiosidad natural aumenta el disfrute del libro. Toda la serie contiene 81 acertijos gráficos (“teasers”) multicolores que cubren una amplia y diversa gama de acontecimientos. Cada “teaser” oculta un acertijo cuyo descubrimiento constituye en sí un desafío. En su intento de revelar el misterio, el lector desarrolla una capacidad de pensamiento creativo e investigador, así como abstracción, percepción espacial e imaginación. El autor Gideon Bar-Sinai explica: “La obra va más allá de la estimulación de la curiosidad de los lectores y busca investigar, enfrentándolos a la complejidad de nuestro mundo. El libro pone en claro que el mundo no es tan sencillo y estructurado como lo sugieren todos los manuales psicométricos, que son la antítesis dogmática y monodimensional de ?Y, de qué se trata?” Esta brillante serie amplía la imaginación del lector con la vistosidad y el humor que se ha invertido en ella. Aun cuando contiene pocas palabras, permite a los jóvenes lectores y a padres que aún no han perdido su curiosidad natural, entretenerse, aprender, discernir y disfrutar. En su calidad de libro universal sin palabras, supera las barreras de edad, idioma y cultura y es un regalo ideal. Próximamente saldrá a la luz una continuación, con 27 acertijos gráficos adicionales. Gideon Bar-Sinai, de 49 años, casado y padre de tres hijos, es expiloto y licenciado en ciencias informáticas. Trabajó durante muchos años en el desarrollo de programas de software y ocupó altos cargos directivos en varias empresas de alta tecnología. ?Y, de qué se trata? es el primer volumen de esta original serie de libros de acertijos gráficos.
Recent decades have witnessed major changes in gender roles and family patterns, as well as a falling birth rate in Ireland and the rest of Europe. While the traditional family is now being replaced in many cases by new family forms, we do not know the reasons why people are making the choices they are and whether or not these choices are leading to greater well-being. While demographic research has attempted to explain the new trends in family formation and fertility, there has been little research on people's attitudes to family formation and having children. This book presents the results of the first major study to examine people's attitudes to family formation and childbearing in Ireland. Based on a nationwide representative sample of 1,404 men and women in the childbearing age group, the study was carried out against a backdrop of changing gender role attitudes and behaviour as well as significant demographic change.
This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series explores the arguments between critical theory and epistemology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the first and second generations of critical theorists and Luhmann's systems theory, the book examines how each approaches epistemology. It opens by looking at twentieth-century epistemology, particularly the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt). It then moves on to discuss structuralism, poststructuralism, critical realism, the epistemological problematics of Foucault's writings and the dialectics of systems theory. This unique work takes a comparative look at structuralism and post-structuralism's epistemological theory with special reference to scientific reason. It also investigates Luhmann's works in epistemology. The aim is to explore whether the focal point for epistemology and the sciences remain that social and political interests actually form a concrete point of concern for the sciences as well.
This book thinks through modernity and its representations by drawing in critical considerations of time and space. It explores the oppositions and enchantments, the contradictions and contentions, and the identities and ambivalences spawned under modernity as constitutive of our worlds. Instead of assuming a straightforward, singular trajectory of the phenomena, it discusses modernity as involving checkered, contingent and contended processes of meaning and power over the past five centuries. Subjects of modernity considers the overlaps yet distinctions between modernity, modernism and modernisation, further imaginatively exploring the relationship between history and anthropology. Critically engaging historical anthropology, subaltern studies, de-colonial understandings, and post-colonial procedures, it at once offers an innovative understanding of cultural identities and imaginatively reassess critical perspectives, from South Asia to Latin America. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, history, sociology, post-colonial studies and cultural geography, among other subjects, finding adoption in different courses/seminars across disciplines.
What is autism and where has it come from? Increased diagnostic rates, the rise of the 'neurodiversity' movement, and growing autism journalism, have recently fuelled autism's fame and controversy. The metamorphosis of autism is the first book to explain our current fascination with autism by linking it to a longer history of childhood development. Drawing from a staggering array of primary sources, Bonnie Evans traces autism back to its origins in the early twentieth century and explains why the idea of autism has always been controversial and why it experienced a 'metamorphosis' in the 1960s and 1970s. Evans takes the reader on a journey of discovery from the ill-managed wards of 'mental deficiency' hospitals, to high-powered debates in the houses of parliament, and beyond. The book will appeal to a wide market of scholars and others interested in autism, neurodiversity and how this relates to wider theories of children's psychological development.
Fred Flintstone lived in a sunny Stone Age American suburb, but his ancestors were respectable, middle-class Victorians. They were very amused to think that prehistory was an archaic version of their own world because it suggested that British ideals were eternal. In the 1850s, our prehistoric ancestors were portrayed in satirical cartoons, songs, sketches and plays as ape-like, reflecting the threat posed by evolutionary ideas. By the end of the century, recognisably human cave men inhabited a Stone Age version of late-imperial Britain, sending-up its ideals and institutions. Cave men appeared constantly in parades, civic pageants and costume parties. In the early 1900s American cartoonists and early Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton adopted and reimagined this very British character, cementing it in global popular culture. Cave men are an appealing way to explore and understand Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
England and the 1966 World Cup presents a cultural analysis of what is considered a key 'moment of modernity' in the nation's post-war history. Regarded as having an importance beyond its primary sporting purpose, the World Cup in England is examined within the complexity of the cultural, social and political changes that characterised the mid-1960s. Yet, although addressing the importance of non-sport related connections, the book maintains a focus on football, discussing it as a 'cultural form' and presenting an original perspective on the aesthetic accomplishment in football tactics by England's manager, Alf Ramsey. The study considers the World Cup in relation to the cup tradition, England as the World Cup host nation, the England squad and masculinity, the modernism of England's manager Alf Ramsey, design and commercial aspects of the World Cup, a critical engagement within existing academic accounts, and an examination of how England's victory has been remembered and commemorated.
Embryo research, cloning, assisted conception, neonatal care, saviour siblings, organ transplants, drug trials - modern developments have transformed the field of medicine almost beyond recognition in recent decades and the law struggles to keep up. In this highly acclaimed and very accessible book, now in its sixth edition, Margaret Brazier and Emma Cave provide an incisive survey of the legal situation in areas as diverse as fertility treatment, patient consent, assisted dying, malpractice and medical privacy. The book has been fully revised and updated to cover the latest cases, from assisted dying to informed consent; legislative reform of the NHS, professional regulation and redress; European regulations on data protection and clinical trials; and legislation and policy reforms on organ donation, assisted conception and mental capacity. Essential reading for healthcare professionals, lecturers, medical and law students, this book is of relevance to all whose perusal of the daily news causes wonder, hope and consternation at the advances and limitations of medicine, patients and the law.
When we think about Victorian factories, 'Dark Satanic Mills' might spring to mind - images of blackened buildings and exhausted, exploited workers struggling in unhealthy and ungodly conditions. But for some employees this image was far from the truth, and this is the subject of 'The Factory in a Garden' which traces the history of a factory gardens movement from its late-eighteenth century beginnings in Britain to its twenty-first century equivalent in Google's vegetable gardens at their headquarters in California. The book is the first study of its kind examining the development of parks, gardens, and outdoor leisure facilities for factories in Britain and America as a model for the reshaping of the corporate environment in the twenty-first century. This is also the first book to give a comprehensive account of the contribution of gardens, gardening and recreation to the history of responsible capitalism and ethical working practices.
The Gothic and death offers the first ever published study devoted to the subject of the Gothic and death across the centuries. It investigates how the multifarious strands of the Gothic and the concepts of death, dying, mourning and memorialisation ('the Death Question') - have intersected and been configured cross-culturally to diverse ends from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Drawing on recent scholarship in such fields as Gothic Studies, film theory, Women's and Gender Studies and Thanatology Studies, this interdisciplinary collection of fifteen essays by international scholars combines an attention to socio-historical and cultural contexts with a rigorous close reading of works, both classic and lesser known. This area of enquiry is considered by way of such popular and uncanny figures as corpses, ghosts, zombies and vampires, and across various cultural and literary forms such as Graveyard Poetry, Romantic poetry, Victorian literature, nineteenth-century Italian and Russian literature, Anglo-American film and television, contemporary Young Adult fiction and Bollywood film noir.
Thomas May's The Tragedy of Antigone (1631), edited by Matteo Pangallo, is the first English treatment of the story made famous by Sophocles. This edition contains a facsimile of the copy held at the Beinecke Library of Yale University, making the play commercially available for the first time since its original publication. The extensive introduction discusses, among other things, the ownership history of existing copies and their marginal annotations, and of the play's topical political implications in the light of May's wavering between royalist and republican sympathies. Writing during the contentious early years of Charles I's reign, May used Sophocles' Antigone to explore the problems of just rule and justified rebellion. He also went beyond the scope of the original, adding content from a wide range of other classical and contemporary plays, poems and other sources, including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. This volume will be essential reading for advanced students, researchers and teachers of early English drama and seventeenth-century political history.
The mineral nutrients of plants play key roles in plant growth and development, forming the underpinnings of the past, present, and future of agriculture. Plants with insufficient nutrients exhibit symptoms of sickness that can be confused with infectious plant diseases. The nutrients needed by plants are taken from the soil by the roots, and in many plants, the roots also form associations with other organisms that help them more efficiently colonize the soil or provide nutrients to the plant. All facets of plant nutrition, from the effect of nutrients on the plant to the role of plants in the global cycling of nutrients, impact the ways in which humans use and depend on plants for most aspects of our existence. Plant Nutrition, Second Edition addresses the basic chemistry, biology, physiology, and ecology of plant nutrition and shows how these topics relate to humans on a personal, social, and global scale.