Bøger i Very Short Introductions serien

An exploration of the life and political essays of 20th century philosopher, Hannah Arendt. Dana Villa analyses Arendt's pathbreaking studies on totalitarianism, power, evil, and political theory.

It is often claimed that the French invented cinema, and although their prominence may have been supplanted by Hollywood today, the French film industry remains both prolific and highly lauded. Exploring the entire French cinematic oeuvre, Andrew teases out the distinguishing themes, to bring the defining features of French cinema to light.

With the media bringing us constant tales of terrorism and violence, questions regarding the nature of evil are highly topical. Luke Russell explores the philosophical thinking and psychological evidence behind evil, alongside portrayals of fictional villains, considering why people are evil, and how it goes beyond the normal realms of what is bad.

This Very Short Introduction describes anarchism as a lived set of practices, with a rich historical legacy, and shows how anarchists have inspired and criticised some of our most cherished values, from the ideals of freedom, participatory education, federalism, and climate change, to science fiction.

This book traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. It draws on examples from across our culture to explain how poststructuralism explores the relationship between human beings, the world, and the practice of making and reproducing meanings.

Negotiation is essential for peace and international relations, but also for economically efficient trades and bargains in business, and for problem solving skills in workplaces, families and interpersonal interactions. Menkel-Meadow illustrates different models, approaches, and styles of negotiation, which are both conceptual and behavioral.

This Very Short Introduction discusses the central events, machines, and people that feature in established accounts of the history of computing. It then recontextualises them, critically examining received perceptions and providing a fresh look at the nature and development of the modern electronic computer.

Solid, liquid, and gas are not the only states of matter. Others include liquid crystal, magnet, glass, and superconductor. New states are continually, and unexpectedly, being discovered. Condensed matter physics seeks to understand how states of matter and their distinct physical properties emerge from the atoms that compose a material.

Few Americans and even fewer citizens of other nations understand the electoral process in the United States. The second edition of this Very Short Introduction offers an up-to-date overview of American political parties and elections, providing an insider's view of how the system actually works while shining a light on some of its flaws.

With a full scope of financial services, ranging from banking and capital markets to insurance and microfinance, Islamic finance has now become the most prominent form of faith-based finance in the world. This book sheds light on its core principles and practices, and considers its performance and potential compared with conventional finance.

Travel writing goes back thousands of years and is found in many cultures. Tim Youngs examines its various forms, including diaries, letters, adventure narratives, and blogs, and outlines their uses. He shows how in describing places and their journeys to them, travel writers also reveal something of their own values and preoccupations.

This Very Short Introduction explores the nature of bacteria, their origin, evolution, and relationship to the environment to demonstrate the fundamental role they play in our existence. This new edition examines the symbiotic relationship between the human body and bacteria, including their role in disease, wellness, and evolutionary development.

This book gives an overview of the main kinds of employment rights and labour laws found in many countries. It evaluates some of the assumptions underpinning contemporary attitudes to such rights and laws in order to measure whether they are warranted. It also considers economic, political, and social justifications for employment rights and laws.

Adorno was a German philosopher, and social and cultural theorist whose work is seen as increasingly relevant to understanding the pathologies of contemporary society. This book considers his life and work, from the philosophical tradition he worked from to his explorations of reason and social theory, and critical assessments of modern culture.

Proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by understanding his music as an expression of his entire self, not just the iconic scowl Despite the ups and downs of his personal life and professional career - even in the face of deafness - Beethoven remained remarkably consistent in his most basic convictions about his art. This inner consistency, writes the music historian Mark Evan Bonds, provides the key to understanding the composer''s life and works. Beethoven approached music as he approached life, weighing whatever occupied him from a variety of perspectives: a melodic idea, a musical genre, a word or phrase, a friend, alover, a patron, money, politics, religion. His ability to unlock so many possibilities from each helps explain the emotional breadth and richness of his output as a whole, from the heaven-storming Ninth Symphony to the eccentric Eighth, and from the arcane Great Fugue to the crowd-pleasingWellington''s Victory. Beethoven''s works, Bonds argues, are a series of variations on his life. The iconic scowl so familiar from later images of the composer is but one of many attitudes he could assume and project through his music. The supposedly characteristic furrowed brow and frown, moreover, came only after his time. Discarding tired myths about the composer, Bonds proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by hearing his music as an expression of his entire self, not just hisscowling self.

Technology does not stand apart from music, influencing it from the outside--it is a part of music, integral to every aspect of musical activity and musical life.

Fluid mechanics is an important branch of physics concerned with the way in which fluids, such as liquids and gases, behave when in motion and at rest. Starting from the fundamental underlying physical principles, Eric Lauga highlights the role of fluid motion in both the natural and industrial world, and considers future applications.

This book explains the philosophical and historical concepts that shape current debates about science and religion. It also considers some of the themes and issues that have become more prominent in the past decade, such as science denial, climate change and environmentalism, and religion and public health - including responses to Covid-19.

This book provides a fresh modern introduction to geometry, an ancient branch of mathematics with important applications. It takes readers from Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, to curved spaces, and the geometry of space-time inside a black hole, and outlines the role geometry plays in the broader context of science and art.

Violence is part and parcel of both human history and nature. It is the one thing that all cultures and societies share in common. This book considers violence in the modern world, examining the ideas underpinning it, and the cultural context for violence over the last two centuries. It also asks if we are becoming more or less violent.

CBT is a form of psychological therapy with a range of approaches that share a common underpinning model of the importance of cognition and behaviour in alleviating psychological distress. This book gives an overview of what CBT is, what it does, when it can be used, and the ways in which the field can adapt to meet future challenges.

John Stuart Mill (1806-73) is widely regarded as the leading liberal philosopher, economist, and political theorist of nineteenth century Britain. This book offers a brief survey of his life and ideas, highlighting the philosophical context for his work, exploring the key themes in his writings, and analysing their lasting influence.

Famous for her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was also infamous in her own time for breaking social and literary conventions, and taking a political and philosophical stance advocating for the rights of women. Charlotte Gordon explores the context and key themes in the life and work of this courageous, complicated, and accomplished woman.

Elizabeth Bishop has been described as the 'best-loved' poet in English of the second half of the twentieth century. This book explores the published poems at the core of her remarkable canon of verse, along with her letters and other writings, and draws out key themes of the environment, balance, and ideas of love and loss.

Adrian Wilkinson reviews the historical development of human resource management, showing how the changes in political, legal, and macroeconomic spheres have shaped how human resources are managed. Considering HRM in a global world, he considers how it is adapting to a very different work landscape.

Evangelicalism has rapidly become one of the most significant religious movements in the modern world. An umbrella term that encompasses many Protestant denominations that share core tenets of Christianity, evangelicalism is foremost defined by its disciples'' consideration of the Bible as the ultimate moral and historical authority, the desire to evangelize or spread the faith, and the value of religious conversion known as being ΓÇ£born again.ΓÇ¥As the Evangelical movement has grown rapidly, so has its influence on the political stage. Evangelicals affect elections up and down the Americas and across Africa, provoke governments throughout Asia, fill up some of the largest church buildings, and possess the largest congregations of any religion in the world. Yet evangelicals are wildly diverse- from Canadian Baptists to Nigerian Anglicans, from South Sea Methodists to Korean Presbyterians, and from house churches in Beijing tomegachurches in Sa├╡ Paulo.This Very Short Introduction tells the evangelical story from the preacher-led revivals of the eighteenth century, through the frontier camp meetings of the nineteenth, to the mass urban rallies of the twentieth, and the global megachurches of the twenty-first. More than just a sketch of where evangelicals have come from, this volume aims to clearly examine the heart of evangelical phenomenon. Is there such a (single) thing as evangelicalism? What is its basic character? Where are theevangelicals going? And what in the world do they want?

Jane Austen is one of the most widely-read novelists in the English language, and one of very few pre-Victorian writers to have a large popular following. This book situates Austen in the literary and historical context of her time, and combines critical introductions to each of her six major novels with the exploration of key themes of her work.

This book explores the extraordinarily diverse and beautiful world of insects, from tiny wasps to giant beetles. It analyses insect evolution, and describes their behaviour, their environments, and the interactions they have with other animals. It also discusses their vital role in all land ecosystems, and their importance for our own survival.

For many decades, we were only familiar with our own system of planets, the Solar System, orbiting our Sun. Now we know that it is just one among a vast range of planetary systems around distant stars. This book explores the nature and variety of planetary systems, how they are formed, and how they die.

Drawing on examples from across the globe and throughout history, Andrew Kahn explores the key characteristics of the short story. He shows how its rise was intertwined with international print culture, and discusses the essential techniques within this thriving literary genre, as well as the ways in which it is constantly innovated, even today.