Reaktion Books strana 9 z 9

Leonard Bernstein was one of twentieth-century music's most successful and recognizable figures. In a career spanning five decades he conducted many of the world's leading orchestras, and composed scores for landmark musicals such as Candide and West Side Story. Published to tie in with the 100th anniversary of Bernstein's birth, this engaging new biography provides a concise overview of the life and work of this prodigiously talented, fascinating and controversial musician. Drawing on over thirty years of study, leading scholar Paul R. Laird describes Bernstein's work as a conductor, composer, music educator and commentator, evaluating all his major compositions. Laird explores the impact of his complicated personal life on his professional work, including his homosexuality and many affairs with men, and his strong yet difficult marriage. The author also describes Bernstein's iron self-belief, which enabled him to negotiate risky and challenging musical situations that resulted in passionate, if sometimes mixed, reviews. Featuring original insights into Bernstein's life, including the author's interview with Bernstein in 1982, this is an ideal introduction to Bernstein's eclectic musical style, showing where it fits in the larger world of twentieth-century music.

The humble soybean is the world's most grown and most traded oilseed. But it is also a poorly understood crop that is often viewed in extreme terms as a superfood or poison. Christine M. Du Bois reveals its hugely significant role in human history, as she traces the story of soy from its domestication in ancient Asia to the promise and perils it offers in the twenty-first century. This illuminating book travels across the globe and includes a vast cast of fascinating figures who applaud, experiment with or despise soy, from Neolithic villagers, Buddhist missionaries, European colonialists, Japanese soldiers and Nazi strategists, to George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, Monsanto, Greenpeace, landless peasants, petroleum refiners and countless others. The story covers the impact of soy on international conflicts, its role in large-scale meat production and disaster relief, its troubling ecological impacts and the nutritional controversies swirling around soy today. It describes its genetic modification, the scandals and pirates involved in the international trade in soybeans and the use of soy as an intriguing renewable fuel. Featuring compelling historical and contemporary photographs, The Story of Soy reveals the importance of soy throughout history, and why it should never be underestimated.

The Danish philosopher, theologian and author Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is widely considered to be one of the most important religious thinkers of the modern age. He is known as the `father of existentialism', but his work was also influential on theories of modernism, theology, Western culture, church politics and the Christian faith. His wit, imagination and humour have inspired a generation of followers from Franz Kafka to Woody Allen. But how did this inattentive schoolboy rise to critique the work of great thinkers such as Hegel and the German Romantics? Who was the unusual person writing behind the many pseudonyms? And in what way are Kierkegaard's concepts still relevant today? In this absorbing new biography Alastair Hannay unravels the mystery of Soren Kierkegaard's short but momentous career. Kierkegaard's key concepts and major works are described alongside the major incidents in his private and public life, from his longing for selfhood expressed at the age of 22, to a verbal assault on the Church in the months prior to his early death at the age of 42. Soren Kierkegaard is a story of a man destined to become a thorn in the side of society.

What is dirt? What does it really mean to be dirty? Or clean? Dirt and cleaning are often associated with ideas of guilt, otherness and social control, but also with living responsibly and in harmony with the environment. In this learned, witty and groundbreaking study, Olli Lagerspetz offers a persuasive discussion of dirt and its ramifications in philosophy and culture. He argues that questions of dirt and soiling can neither be reduced to hygiene nor to ritual pollution. Instead, they are part and parcel of almost every human activity. As participants in material culture, we produce things and dispose of them but we also engage with them practically, aesthetically and morally. The book ranges through subjects and times, from Heraclitus of Ephesus, through the Renaissance, via Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger and Mary Douglas, to the hygienic products of modernity, ending with abject art. Lagerspetz constantly questions current thinking on the subject, and proposes a new view of dirt based on our physical engagement with the world. A Philosophy of Dirt is essential reading for scholars and students of philosophy, as well as all who feel soiled and want to know why.

One of the most important tools in the public health arsenal, vaccines are to thank for the global eradication of smallpox, and for allowing us to defeat the dire threat of infectious disease for more than one hundred years. Vaccine development is where scientists turn when faced with the frightening spread of new diseases like Zika, SARS, and Ebola. So if vaccines have proven to be such an effective tool, why are growing numbers of people questioning the wisdom of vaccinating children? Why have public-sector vaccine producers almost vanished? And can we trust the multinational corporations that increasingly dominate vaccine development and production? In this highly original and controversial new book, Stuart Blume argues that processes of globalization and unmet healthcare needs are eroding faith in the institutions producing and providing vaccines. He brings together short, readable histories of immunization practices over the past century, from the work of early pioneers such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch to the establishment of the World Health Organization and the introduction of genetic engineered vaccines. Focusing on today’s “vaccine hesitancy,” the book exposes the inadequacies of public health persuasion, and discusses what will be needed to restore parents’ confidence. This is a timely history, one that not only sheds new light on the origins of our global vaccine crisis, but also points a way forward.

During the first and second millennia bc large numbers of nomadic people known as Aryans migrated outwards into the Eurasian periphery from Central Asia. One particular branch of these Aryans made their home south of the Caspian Sea, and become known to history as Persians or Iranians. Their first dwellings were in an unpromisingly arid area, but from there these early settlers would go on to form one of the most powerful empires in history. The Persians tells the captivating story of this beguiling ancient civilization, tracing the unique features of Persian life and unraveling their influence throughout history. The book describes the difficulties early Persians encountered and how these contributed to their unique character, as well as the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire. It recounts the keenly fought conflicts with the Greeks for mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean, a contest which was to dominate the geopolitics of the ancient world, and it paints a vivid picture of the many great Persian cities and their spectacular achievements: an efficient road system that linked an empire together; respect for their subject peoples; and advances in irrigation techniques which created a ‘paradise’ envied by their neighbours. Providing an entertaining insight into the influence, traditions and history of ancient Persia, the book shows how the uniqueness of modern Iran in the Islamic world owes much to its ancient civilization.