Najnovšie - Encyklopédie populárno-náučné strana 126 z 148
História 
Príroda 
Vesmír, veda a technika 
Ľudské telo, človek 
Encyklopédie - ostatné
zobraziť:
Let the Dead Speak
This book explores the historical and social dynamics of Spiritualism - a religious movement associated in the popular imagination with nineteenth-century parlour séances and ghost photography. It continues to be practised actively today in Australia, the UK, and USA. The authors draw on their deep fieldwork, interviews, and archival research to analyse Spiritualism?s resilience and the enduring popular appeal of mediumship.There are three key contributions of the book: the first is that the scholarly study of ?belief? should be rehabilitated. The authors propose a model of belief as a dialogue between claims to truth and commitments to institutions supporting those claims. The second is women?s agency in Spiritualism. From the movement?s beginnings, strong female leaders have decisively shaped its religious and political profile. The third is the need to analyse Australian Spiritualism as a distinct variant of a transnational Anglophone family of ritual practice.
Elusive Histories
At the heart of Elusive Histories is a long-neglected story of the clandestine journeys of Mozambican migrant laborers and their families to Rhodesia. Drawing from oral histories, court records, archives, newspapers, and popular magazines, the authors chronicle Mozambican migration, work experiences, and settlement in Rhodesia. Thousands of men, women, and children traveled long distances, often on foot, to reach Rhodesia. Starting with a trickle of workers seeking to avoid chibharo, a Mozambican agricultural forced-labor system, the number of migrants peaked in the 1950s. In 1958, the Rhodesian government passed legislation to bar new Mozambican migrants from entering large cities, redirecting them toward agriculture and mining. When Black Rhodesian laborers began to complain about losing jobs to Mozambicans, the restrictions became an outright ban to prevent further migrants from entering the country. Contrary to previous assumptions, Mozambican labor in Rhodesia was not contract labor derived from bilateral negotiations between the Mozambican colonial and Rhodesian governments. In fact, many Mozambicans who came to work and live in Rhodesia arrived as illegal migrants. The book also demystifies the widely held notion that all foreign migrant workers in Rhodesia who spoke Nyanja were Nyasalanders. Because Nyanja is widely spoken at the confluence of Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique, many Mozambicans who came to work in Rhodesia were fluent. Despite the national, racial, and cultural differences and the discrimination in job placement, promotion, and housing, Mozambican migrant laborers creatively adapted and made Rhodesia home for the duration of their lives.
In Hitler's Munich
From acclaimed historian Michael Brenner, a mesmerizing portrait of Munich in the early years of Hitler's quest for powerIn the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918–19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his antisemitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution. In an electrifying narrative that takes readers from Hitler's return to Munich following the armistice to his calamitous Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Brenner demonstrates why the city's transformation is crucial for understanding the Nazi era and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Brenner describes how Hitler and his followers terrorized Munich's Jews and were aided by politicians, judges, police, and ordinary residents. He shows how the city's Jews responded to the antisemitic backlash in many different ways—by declaring their loyalty to the state, by avoiding public life, or by abandoning the city altogether. Drawing on a wealth of previously unknown documents, In Hitler's Munich reveals the untold story of how a once-cosmopolitan city became, in the words of Thomas Mann, "the city of Hitler."
In Search of Amrit Kaur
A lost princess and a vanished world: a remarkable true story that moves from the Punjab of the Raj to 1930s Paris and the Second World War‘Remarkable and compelling’ Edmund de Waal‘Thoroughly engaging’ Kamila ShamsieIn a Mumbai museum in 2007, Livia Manera Sambuy encounters a photograph that will change her life forever.The caption claims that the Punjabi princess Amrit Kaur sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp where she died within a year.For Livia, this marks the beginning of a compulsive search for the truth as she delves into the history of the British Raj, the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, and the lives of extraordinary figures: bankers, jewellers, explorers and spies.‘An ambitious, absorbing work that peels back the layers of its enigmatic subject and digs deeply into the author''s own emotional vicissitudes’ Jhumpa Lahiri‘A tantalizing true story . . . In Search of Amrit Kaur plunges into the glittery world of Indian royalty’ New York Times Book Review
The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York
Original and deeply researched, this book provides a new interpretation of Dutch American slavery which challenges many of the traditional assumptions about slavery in New York. With an emphasis on demography and economics, Michael J. Douma shows that slavery in eighteenth-century New York was mostly rural, heavily Dutch, and generally profitable through the cultivation of wheat. Slavery in Dutch New York ultimately died a political death in the nineteenth century, while resistance from enslaved persons, and a gradual turn against slavery in society and in the courts, encouraged its destruction. This important study will reshape the historiography of slavery in the American North.
Reconstructing the Human Population History of East Asia through Ancient Genomics
East Asian population history has only recently been the focus of intense investigations using ancient genomics techniques, yet these studies have already contributed much to our growing understanding of past East Asian populations, and cultural and linguistic dispersals. This Element aims to provide a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of the population history of East Asia through ancient genomics. It begins with an introduction to ancient DNA and recent insights into archaic populations of East Asia. It then presents an in-depth summary of current knowledge by region, covering the whole of East Asia from the first appearance of modern humans, through large-scale population studies of the Neolithic and Metal Ages, and into historical times. These recent results reflect past population movements and admixtures, as well as linguistic origins and prehistoric cultural networks that have shaped the region''s history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Harrogate Past
Harrogate began as a tiny hamlet in the Royal Forest of Knaresborough and owes its rise to prominence almost entirely to the exploitation of its mineral springs. Doctors recommended their patients to drink the sulphur-laden water and the first English ‘watering place’ distinguished by the name ‘spa’ became a fashionable retreat for the nobility and gentry. In the Season, in addition to the many private carriages of the well-to-do, no less than 19 coaches ran daily from all parts of the land. The numbers arriving to ‘take the cure’ rose from 20,000 in 1848, when the railway came, to 60,000 a year by the end of the century.The enclosure of the Royal Forest in the 18th century and the gain of 200 acres of open ground, known as the Stray, gave perpetual access to the famous springs and ensured that Harrogate would have space as well as style. The Victorians added many fine buildings to impress their visitors, including the Royal Baths Assembly Room, Opera House and the Kursaal – the name of which was hastily changed to Royal Hall at the outbreak of the First World War. The town enjoyed its social heyday in Edwardian times but, with changes in medical practice, the spa declined.However, the trains that had boosted visitor numbers in the 19th century also brought better-off commuters from the industrial West Riding, to enjoy its strong cultural life and up-market image. Harrogate re-invented itself as a floral resort and conference centre. The publicity manager in 1953 had the bright idea of twinning the town with Luchon in the French Pyrenees, which was the start of the now widespread town-twinning scheme, and Harrogate became the permanent home of the Great Yorkshire Show.In this well-researched and very readable book, a well-known local historian provides a chronological account of Harrogate’s past.
They Flew
An award-winning historian’s examination of impossible events at the dawn of modernity and of their enduring significance“Historically rich and superbly written.”—David J. Davis, Wall Street JournalShortlisted for the International Society for Science and Religion Book PrizeAccounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era—tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft—even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos M. N. Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals. Eire observes how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early modern life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton’s scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supernatural that marked the transition to modernity. Using as his case studies stories about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Ágreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges readers to imagine a world animated by a different understanding of reality and of the supernatural’s relationship with the natural world. The questions he explores—such as why and how “impossibility” is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science—have resonance and lessons for our time.
Vigil
The rise of Hong Kong is the story of a miraculous post-War boom, when Chinese refugees flocked to a small British colony, and, in less than 50 years, transformed it into one of the great financial centres of the world. The unravelling of Hong Kong, on the other hand, shatters the grand illusion of China ever having the intention of allowing democratic norms to take root inside its borders. Hong Kong''s people were subjects of the British Empire for more than a hundred years, and now seem destined to remain the subordinates of today''s greatest rising power. Although we have witnessed the end of the mass protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019-20, the political struggle for Hong Kong continues to be one of the biggest challenges to China''s authoritarianism in 30 years. Activists who are passionately committed to defending the special qualities of a home they love continue to fight against Beijing''s crafty efforts to bring the city into its fold and erase its recent past. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, one of the world''s leading China specialists, draws on his many visits to the city, and knowledge of the history of repression and resistance, to help us understand the deep roots and the broad significance of the large protests that took place in Hong Kong five years go. The result is a riveting tale of tragedy but also heroism - one of the great David-versus- Goliath battles of our time, pitting determined street protesters against the intransigence of Xi Jinping, the most ambitious leader of China since the days of Mao.
Postcards from Absurdistan
A sweeping history of a twentieth-century Prague torn between fascism, communism, and democracy—with lessons for a world again threatened by dictatorshipPostcards from Absurdistan is a cultural history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia’s artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the country’s socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of communist party rule. Derek Sayer shows that Prague’s twentieth century, far from being a story of inexorable progress toward some “end of history,” whether fascist, communist, or democratic, was a tragicomedy of recurring nightmares played out in a land Czech dissidents dubbed Absurdistan. Situated in the eye of the storms that shaped the modern world, Prague holds up an unsettling mirror to the absurdities and dangers of our own times. In a brilliant narrative, Sayer weaves a vivid montage of the lives of individual Praguers—poets and politicians, architects and athletes, journalists and filmmakers, artists, musicians, and comedians—caught up in the crosscurrents of the turbulent half century following the Nazi invasion. This is the territory of the ideologist, the collaborator, the informer, the apparatchik, the dissident, the outsider, the torturer, and the refugee—not to mention the innocent bystander who is always looking the other way and Václav Havel’s greengrocer whose knowing complicity allows the show to go on. Over and over, Prague exposes modernity’s dreamworlds of progress as confections of kitsch. In a time when democracy is once again under global assault, Postcards from Absurdistan is an unforgettable portrait of a city that illuminates the predicaments of the modern world.
Under the Nuclear Shadow
How and why China has pursued information-age weapons to gain leverage against its adversariesHow can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? Among the states facing this dilemma of fighting limited wars, only China has given information-age weapons such a prominent role. While other countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on offensive cyber operations, counterspace capabilities, and precision conventional missiles to coerce its adversaries. In Under the Nuclear Shadow, Fiona Cunningham examines this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War deterrence strategy, developing an original theory of “strategic substitution.” When crises with the United States highlighted the inadequacy of China’s existing military capabilities, Cunningham argues, China pursued information-age weapons that promised to rapidly provide credible leverage against adversaries. Drawing on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with security experts in China, Cunningham provides a rare and candid glimpse from Beijing into the information-age technologies that are reshaping how states gain leverage in the twenty-first century. She offers unprecedented insights into the trajectory of China’s military modernization, as she details the strengths and weaknesses of China’s strategic substitution approach. Under the Nuclear Shadow also looks ahead at the uncertain future of China’s strategic substitution approach and briefly explores too how other states might seize upon the promise of emerging technologies to address weaknesses in their own military strategies.
Chile Underground
A fascinating historical examination of the Santiago Metro system as a microcosm of Chilean national identity during the twentieth century The Santiago Metro, the largest urban infrastructure project in Chile’s history, was designed in the 1960s in response to rapid urban growth. Despite the upheavals of Salvador Allende’s democratic socialism (1970–1973) and Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship (1973–1990), the project survived and is now the largest metro system in South America. What explains its success? How did its meaning shift under democracy and dictatorship? What does its history reveal about struggles for a more just city? Drawing on Chilean and French archives, Andra B. Chastain demonstrates that Chilean-French relations and French financing were crucial to the project’s survival during the Cold War. The Metro’s history also illuminates the contested process of implementing neoliberalism and the unexpected continuities of state planning and visions for a rational city that persisted despite free-market reforms. Most important, this story shows that the Metro came to symbolize the nation and became a critical site where planners, workers, and urban residents contested Chile’s path to modernity.
HOTOL: Britain's Spaceplane
The start of Space Shuttle operations in 1981 marked a new era in spaceflight – with the five orbiters launching numerous satellites, interplanetary probes and the Hubble Space Telescope. But Shuttle was only partially reusable, its external fuel tank being expendable and its solid rocket boosters having to be recovered from the ocean and refurbished. Putting a satellite into orbit using a rocket was even more wasteful – with boosters such as Ariane being one-shot only. The costs were literally astronomical.So when rocket scientist Alan Bond met propulsion and systems specialist Bob Parkinson at the British Interplanetary Society in 1982 during a lecture on Ariane 5, they got to talking about alternatives to the expendable rocket and concluded that the solution was… an aerospaceplane.The concept was deceptively simple – a vehicle able to take off from a conventional runway, fly up into space, complete its mission, then fly back down and land. Bond and Parkinson believed it could be done and HOTOL – HOrizontal Take-Off and Landing – was born.By 1985 both British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce were backing the project. A television news broadcast in 1987 made HOTOL famous overnight, with the whole nation now aware of its existence. The Government agreed to provide yet more financial backing and the work ramped up into high gear, with some of Britain’s best engineers engaged in making this remarkable vehicle a reality.Just a year later, Minister of State of Trade and Industry Kenneth Clarke, under pressure from Margaret Thatcher, withdrew funding – signalling the beginning of the end of HOTOL. Decades later, Elon Musk and SpaceX would finally corner the market in reusable space transportation with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, putting an end to any hope of a HOTOL revival.HOTOL: Spaceplane of the Future by Dan Sharp covers the full story of HOTOL’s development in detail from beginning to end drawing on both the BAE Systems archive and the personal archives of the project’s creators. It includes hundreds of previously unseen diagrams and illustrations, ranging from full colour brochures and publicity material – both used and unused – to schematics of all of HOTOL’s numerous configurations.
Bold, Brilliant and Bad
From every county in Ireland Bold, Brilliant & Bad draws together the stories of over 120 amazing Irish women. Marian Broderick is back to explore the histories of remarkable Irish Women in history. From creative craftswomen to singing sensations, poets to sporting champions. From Lilian Bland to Maeve Binchy and from Anne O''Brien to Professor Sheila Tinney, these women paved the way for the future and made massive changes in their various fields.Meet the women from history who went against the grain and challenged the expectations of the world. There were and are a force to be reckoned with.
Watching the Jackals
The untold history of Czechoslovakia's complex relations with Middle Eastern terrorists and revolutionaries during the closing decades of the Cold WarIn the 1970s and 1980s, Prague became a favorite destination for the world's most prominent terrorists and revolutionaries. They arrived here to seek refuge, enjoy recreation, or hold secret meetings aimed at securing training, arms, and other forms of support. While some were welcome with open arms, others were closely watched and were eventually ousted. Watching the Jackals is the untold history of Czechoslovakia's complex relations with Middle Eastern terrorists and revolutionaries during the closing decades of the Cold War. Based on recently declassified intelligence files, Richterova unveils the story of Prague's engagement with various factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization, along with some of the era's most infamous terrorists, including Carlos the Jackal, the Munich Olympics massacre commander Abu Daoud, and the Abu Nidal Organization. In this gripping account, Richterova explains why "Cold War Jackals" gravitated toward Prague and how the country's leaders reacted to their visits, and she uncovers the role Czechoslovakia's security and intelligence apparatus – the StB (Státní bezpecnost) played in these, at times, dangerous liaisons. Drawing on interviews and remarkably detailed records from the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic), Richterova offers readers interested in the intelligence world a fascinating account of how states use their spies to pursue covert policies with violent nonstate actors. The book also introduces new evidence and nuances into old debates about whether the Communist Bloc supported terrorism.
The Warren Court and the Democratic Constitution
A timely history of the profound impact of Earl Warren''s Supreme Court on many areas of modern American government and societyFrom 1953 to 1969, Earl Warren served as chief justice of the US Supreme Court. During that time, the Warren Court made a number of historically important decisions involving anti-miscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia), the right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), and, perhaps most important, racial segregation (Brown v. Board of Education).In The Warren Court and Democratic Constitution, Horwitz highlights the radical shift in traditional jurisprudential ideas that occurred during Earl Warren''s tenure as chief justice. He details how Brown v. Board of Education exerted a powerful influence on the agenda of the Warren Court and reshaped almost every subject area in constitutional law. With this decision, the concept of a "living Constitution," the idea that the Constitution ought to develop to accommodate social change, emerged and was institutionalized by the Court. Brown inspired a more active reading of the Equal Protection Clause, and the Court soon applied this expanded notion of "equal protection" to legislative apportionment, recognized the rights of supposed "outsiders" (e.g., undocumented peoples and children born out of wedlock), and initiated a new era of legal attacks on gender discrimination.The Warren Court''s jurisprudence is radically opposed to the current Supreme Court''s emphasis on originalism, the approach of interpreting the Constitution according to its meaning at the time of writing. Readers interested in an alternative to originalism, as well as Supreme Court history and civil rights, will gain a deeper understanding of the profound impact of the Warren Court on many areas of modern American government and society.
Pedigrees, Power and Clanship
This book brings together the major writings of David Sellar (1941–2019) on the genealogies (pedigrees) claimed by some of the major clans of medieval Highland and Island Scotland, especially the descendants of their twelfth-century king Somerled.The claimed pedigrees in the medieval Gaelic 1467 manuscript and the Irish genealogies are critically analysed in relation to each other, and their historical authenticity tested against other evidence, including the Gaelic or Norse quality of their recorded names. Contemporary literary material is considered alongside later recorded traditions descending from the seanchaidh, whose work was to hand down to posterity the valorous actions, conquests, battles, skirmishes, marriages and relations of the chiefly ancestors by relating and singing them at births, baptisms, marriages, inaugurations, feasts and funerals. The family pedigrees offer crucial insights into the nature of medieval society, supporting and sometimes explaining a family’s socio-political position. As an exercise in propaganda, a pedigree was susceptible to fabrication and not to be trusted uncritically.David Sellar’s meticulous analysis reveals the social and political realities of medieval Celtic Scotland, making use of heraldic evidence as well as his legal expertise, in a fluent and reader-friendly style.
Leyte Gulf
''A worthy addition to any bookshelf.'', The Naval Review A fascinating re-examination of the battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval encounter in history and probably the most decisive naval battle of the entire Pacific War.Leyte was a huge and complex action, actually consisting of four major battles, each of which are broken down in detail in this book, using original sources. The plans of both sides, and how they dictated the events that followed, are also examined critically.So much of the accepted wisdom of the battle has developed from the many myths that surround it, myths that have become more firmly established over time. In this new study, Pacific War expert Mark Stille examines the key aspects of this complex battle with new and insightful analysis and dismantles the myths surrounding the respective actions and overall performances of the two most important commanders in the battle, and the “lost victory” of the Japanese advance into Leyte Gulf that never happened.
The Little Book of Scotland
Did You Know? One of the biggest battles between the Scots and the English was fought in France. The success of his first book of poems saved Robert Burns from working on a slave plantation. Six craters on Mars are named after places in Scotland. The Little Book of Scotland is a funny, fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange information that no one will want to be without.Discover the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, famous sons and daughters and literally hundreds of other wacky facts. A reliable reference and quirky guide, this book can be dipped into time and tagain to reveal something you never knew.
V kategórii populárno - náučné encyklopédie nájdete široký výber kníh, ktoré vám poskytnú poznatky z rôznych oblastí zaujímavým a zrozumiteľným spôsobom. Encyklopédie vám pomôžu získať komplexný prehľad o rôznych témach, ako ľudské telo a človek, príroda, vesmír, veda a technika a história.
Naša ponuka encyklopédií populárno-náučného charakteru vám umožní objaviť fascinujúci svet poznania a rozšíriť svoje vedomosti o rôznych témach.
