Provides an overview of organized crime and examines the characteristics, resources, strategies, and history of the criminal underworld from a social, political, and economic context, as well as the efforts of law enforcement.
Imagine your average day without zippers, airplanes, vacuum cleaners, without your personal stereo, without photocopiers. All of these devices were invented within the last hundred years and have since transformed our daily landscape. Drawing on the British Library's vast and comprehensive collection of patents, this handsomely illustrated book recounts the history of one hundred of the most significant inventions of the century, decade by decade. Many of these inventions changed the world, others radically changed our daily lives. By combining a brief history of each patent with a copy of the original -- and often entertaining -- patent application (the zipper is a "hookless fastener," the Post-It note an "inherently tacky, elastomeric polymer"), Inventing the 20th Century reveals the ways in which many of the most basic aspects of our material existence -- our clothes (nylon, Velcro), our leisure (Monopoly, Scrabble), our homes (Tupperware, teflon) -- have been revolutionized through specific objects. From the photocopier to the Slinky, from genetic fingerprinting to the Lava Lamp, from the ballpoint pen to the fuel cell, Inventing the 20th Century is an informative, illuminating window onto the technology of the twentieth century. - Jacket flap.
Pazair es un joven juez en una provincia del sur del antiguo Egipto. Neferet es médico en Menfis, la gran ciudad del norte, adonde Pazair es llamado. Conforme a las predicciones de un viejo visionario, un monstruoso complot ha sido maquinado para derrocar a Ramsés el Grande. Nada podrá evitarlo, nada excepto un insignificante juez que se niega a firmar un documento administrativo que no entiende. Con la ayuda de su hermano de sangre, Suti, el juez Pazair busca la verdad. En el camino se encuentra con Neferet, bellísima doctora que ha logrado triunfar en su carrera a pesar de la oposición del jefe de los médicos de la corte. El juez se enamora de ella y llega a descubrir la traición de un importante general del ejército egipcio. Pero los implicados en el complot están decididos a acabar con Pazair. Éste es el motivo por el que el juez es detenido y por lo que hacen creer a Neferet que él ha muerto. La pirámide asesinada es la primera novela de la trilogía El juez de Egipto. Los títulos siguientes son La ley del desierto y La justicia del visir.
Caudillismo, the personality cult of the "great man," has been a primary catalyst in Central American politics since the Spanish Conquest. In Guatemala, where this passion for charismatic and forceful leaders is especially strong. Rafael Carrera is unrivaled in the length of his domination and the depth of his popularity. Based on extensive research in Central American archives, this monumental, revisionist narrative provides the most balanced and detailed account to date of Carrera's times and of his conservative legacy. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., explains the political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances that preceded and then facilitated Carrera's ascendancy and also shows how Carrera in turn fomented changes that persisted long after his death and far beyond the borders of Guatemala. An illiterate drifter of mixed blood, Rafael Carrera began his rise to power in 1837, on the eve of a conservative backlash against years of liberal rule in Guatemala.^ For more than a decade reforms aimed at rapid modernization and development had chipped away at the country's old Spanish institutions and customs - alienating and finally galvanizing the country's creole patriarchy, the Catholic Church, and the devout, tradition-bound peasantry. Carrera first led a small revolt in a mountainous rural district of eastern Guatemala, and as similar isolated uprisings escalated into a bloody, full-scale, reactionary revolution, he advanced quickly through the insurgents' ranks. A brilliant military strategist and tactician and an intuitive problem solver, Carrera knew how to charm people even as he exploited them, and he regarded brutality as a legitimate political tool. By 1839, at age twenty-five, he commanded the Guatemalan army; he was to remain the dominant caudillo on the isthmus, almost without interruption, until his death in 1865. Woodward establishes Carrera as an aberration of regional politics.^ He emerged from the revolution as something of a rural populist, able to mobilize Indians, Ladinos, and other segments of society that were disdained and feared by elites of all political leanings. His sway over the common people forced the elite factions to lay aside political differences in the interest of preserving their social status. Carrera himself thrived amid the resulting intrigue and ideological bickering, so secure at home that he often sent troops into neighboring countries to oust liberal elements. In this context of turmoil, Woodward traces many of Central America's present-day characteristics to Carrera's time: the region's reputation for economic and political instability, its minimal contributions to hemispheric trade, the prevalence of self-interest in politics, the dismaying similarities of liberal and conservative rhetoric and tactics, shortsighted alliances and agreements with foreign powers, and the rise of a powerful and arbitrary military class.^ Contradicting widely held notions, Woodward presents evidence that Guatemala enjoyed stable growth and an increase in agricultural exports during Carrera's reign. In addition, Woodward reassesses Carrera's administrative capabilities as well as the effects of his attitude of benign neglect toward his lower-class constituencies. Conveying the full sweep of events during the tumultuous first half-century of Central American independence, yet encyclopedic in rendering details of everyday life, this is a landmark work in the history of the Americas.
The story of a well-educated slave girl who exchanges learning for riches was composed in Arabic in Islamic Baghdad between the ninth and eleventh centuries and retold in three other languages and cultures during the next eight centuries. Remarkable for its longevity, popularity and the positive way it presents its eponymous heroine, it describes the way in which she rescues her master from poverty by defeating several learned men in public debate in front of the caliph or king. The tale is extant in some editions of The Thousand and One Nights, Arabic and Castilian manuscripts from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, numerous Spanish and Portuguese prints from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and later chapbook versions. In America it was incorporated into some of the Maya books of Chilam Balam, and in Brazil it was adapted to the popular Iibro de cordel verse format. . This study presents Castilian manuscript and printed versions of the text and a Brazilian verse version, along with English translations. It also explores the complex transmission history of the story; develops a theory for its reception and popularity in several cultures; and considers it for the first time in the context of the Thousand and One Nights and Spanish and Portuguese popular literature.
Organized Crime by Paul Lunde | Literally Just Books
