Marie Lauran is a young medical school graduate desperately looking for a job. Just as her savings are about to run out, she lands an assistant position with the famous surgeon, Professor Kern. The terms of her contract are somewhat strange, but the pay is spectacular, and Marie is the sole breadwinner in her household. When she takes the job and steps through the door of Professor Kern's laboratory, Marie enters a nightmare world she realizes she cannot escape. Instead of a promising medical career, she ends up in the middle of a fight for her life and sanity, where she can trust no one and where everything she believed in is put into question.
It is Paris in the 1920s, that frothy heyday between the World Wars. Hidden among the opulent cabarets, cafes, and theaters, a mad scientist toils away in his own private hospital, illegally performing grotesque experimental head transplants and reanimations on bodies stolen from the morgue. Under the tutelage of the disembodied head of a former colleague, the madman is well on his way to presenting the first-ever human head transplant to the scientific community, thereby achieving professional glory and securing his legacy as the greatest scientific mind of his generation. However, when one of his test subjects escapes, he risks being exposed to the authorities as a deranged criminal, before he has a chance to prove that he is exceptional and above the law. Can he find her before she alerts the police? Can he replicate the experiment before his illegal laboratory of living heads is discovered? Will his staff remain loyal as the pressure to save themselves builds? For nearly a century, the answers to these questions have captured the imaginations of countless readers in author Alexander Belyaev's native Russia, where this bestselling novel has sold millions of copies, it has been adapted into films and other media, and it has influenced a generation of science-fiction writers. They are now brought to Anglophone readers in this smart new translation of Professor Dowell's Head from writer Carl Engel.
"This story of hope for both immigrants and native-born Americans is a well-researched, insightful, and illuminating study that provides compelling evidence to support a policy of homegrown human investment as a new priority. A timely, valuable addition to demographic and immigration studies. Highly recommended." —Choice Virtually unnoticed in the contentious national debate over immigration is the significant demographic change about to occur as the first wave of the Baby Boom generation retires, slowly draining the workforce and straining the federal budget to the breaking point. In this forward-looking new book, noted demographer Dowell Myers proposes a new way of thinking about the influx of immigrants and the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers. Myers argues that each of these two powerful demographic shifts may hold the keys to resolving the problems presented by the other. Immigrants and Boomers looks to California as a bellwether state—where whites are no longer a majority of the population and represent just a third of residents under age twenty—to afford us a glimpse into the future impact of immigration on the rest of the nation. Myers opens with an examination of the roots of voter resistance to providing social services for immigrants. Drawing on detailed census data, Myers demonstrates that long-established immigrants have been far more successful than the public believes. Among the Latinos who make up the bulk of California's immigrant population, those who have lived in California for over a decade show high levels of social mobility and use of English, and 50 percent of Latino immigrants become homeowners after twenty years. The impressive progress made by immigrant families suggests they have the potential to pick up the slack from aging boomers over the next two decades. The mass retirement of the boomers will leave critical shortages in the educated workforce, while shrinking ranks of middle-class tax payers and driving up entitlement expenditures. In addition, as retirees sell off their housing assets, the prospect of a generational collapse in housing prices looms. Myers suggests that it is in the boomers' best interest to invest in the education and integration of immigrants and their children today in order to bolster the ranks of workers, taxpayers, and homeowners America they will depend on ten and twenty years from now. In this compelling, optimistic book, Myers calls for a new social contract between the older and younger generations, based on their mutual interests and the moral responsibility of each generation to provide for children and the elderly. Combining a rich scholarly perspective with keen insight into contemporary political dilemmas, Immigrants and Boomers creates a new framework for understanding the demographic challenges facing America and forging a national consensus to address them.
What begins with a bored millionaire looking for a new hobby, develops into a great international project, uncovering lives, mysteries, and tragedies of a long lost civilization.
While Indigenous media have gained increasing prominence around the world, the vibrant Aboriginal media world on the Canadian West Coast has received little scholarly attention. As the first ethnography of the Aboriginal media community in Vancouver, Sovereign Screens reveals the various social forces shaping Aboriginal media production including community media organizations and avant-garde art centers, as well as the national spaces of cultural policy and media institutions. Kristin L. Dowell uses the concept of visual sovereignty to examine the practices, forms, and meanings through which Aboriginal filmmakers tell their individual stories and those of their Aboriginal nations and the intertribal urban communities in which they work. She explores the ongoing debates within the community about what constitutes Aboriginal media, how this work intervenes in the national Canadian mediascape, and how filmmakers use technology in a wide range of genres--including experimental media--to recuperate cultural traditions and reimagine Aboriginal kinship and sociality. Analyzing the interactive relations between this social community and the media forms it produces, Sovereign Screens offers new insights into the on-screen and off-screen impacts of Aboriginal media.
The ômade in Chinaö label has long dominated the lower end of the US manufacturing industry, effectively squeezing it out of existence. That's old news. What most people don't know is that China's global reach now extends much further. Chinese companies have entered higher-end marketsùtechnology, financial services, transportation, energyùand are emerging as powerhouse multinationals. In the Shadow of the Dragon is a meticulously researched exposT of the most competitive companies in China. Based on interviews with Chinese business leaders and original case studies, the book provides: ò Profiles of key players ò Insights into subtle yet powerful strategies used to gain market dominance ò An understanding of the Chinese approach to going global ò Analysis of the Chinese way of innovation ò Advice on competing head-to-head or forming alliances with Chinese partners Part primer, part survival guide, In the Shadow of the Dragon is the first book to lay bare the challenges looming ahead.
Highly Commended in Psychiatry, 2011 BMA Medical Book Awards. British Medical Association Addiction to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs is one of the major public health issues of our time. It accounts for one of every five deaths in the United States and costs approximately one-half trillion dollars per year in health care expenditures and lost productivity. Its human costs are untold and perhaps uncountable. Addiction and Art puts a human face on addiction through the creative work of individuals who have been touched by it. The art included here presents unique stories about addiction. Many pieces are stark representations of life on the edge. Others are disturbing contemplations of life, meaning, and death. Some even reflect the allure of addiction and a fondness for substance abuse. A panel of addiction scientists, artists, and professionals from the art world selected the 61 pieces included here from more than 1,000 submissions. Accompanied by a written statement from the artist, each creation is emblematic of the destructive power of addiction and the regenerative power of recovery. Stunning and occasionally unsettling, this unique portfolio reveals addiction art as a powerful complement to addiction science.
The Bram Stoker Award–winning short story collection. “These solidly crafted tales consistently evoke an enjoyably unsettling mood of horror.” —Publishers Weekly Thomas F. Monteleone displays his mastery of the horror genre in the selected short fiction of Fearful Symmetries, collected works spanning more than twenty years of his career. Revel in the deftly deployed classic horror tropes of these twenty-six stories, from their Lovecraftian monsters and archetypal vampires to Bradbury-esque mysteries and Twilight Zone-type tales. In “The Night Is Freezing Fast,” a mysterious hitchhiker emerges from a white-out winter storm, following a boy and his grandfather into an ever-more dangerous evening. “Love Letters”—written as a series of letters from a backwoods Pennsylvanian farmer, a private investigator, and an adult pen pal service—subtly instills psychological suspense into the epistolary form. From celebrity-hunting vampires in “Triptych di Amore” to Lovecraftian behemoths in “Yog Sothoth, Superstar,” there’s a skillfully told trope for every horror reader. With a wry author’s note accompanying each story, and an introduction from the late Rick Hautala, the Bram Stoker Award–winning Fearful Symmetries thrills and disturbs with its twisted tales. Praise for Thomas F. Monteleone “Monteleone has a dark imagination, a wicked pen, and the rare ability to convey an evil chill with words.” —Dean Koontz, New York Times–bestselling author “Tom’s an expert storyteller.” —F. Paul Wilson, author of The Keep and Deep as the Marrow “A vastly entertaining novel of horror and suspense [that poses] difficult questions about the nature of man, God and the devil.” —Los Angeles Daily News “The story is irresistible, moving to a mighty climax.” —The New York Times
""Describes the emerging use of collaborative scenario planning practices in urban and regional planning, and includes case studies, an overview of digital tools, and a project evaluation framework. Concludes with a discussion of how scenarios can be used to address urban inequalities. Intended for a broad audience"--Provided by the publisher"--
