Modern Spain is a revelation in this up-to-date overview. Stanton vibrantly describes the startling variety of landscape, people, and culture that make up Spain today. Included are a context chapter and others on religion, customs, media, cinema, literature, performing arts, and visual arts. Students of Spanish and a general audience will be rewarded with engrossing insights into what writer Ernest Hemingway called the very best country of all. Spain is a modern European nation, yet Spaniards are fiercely tied to their individual towns and regions—with their distinct social customs, dialects or languages, foods, landscape, and lifestyles—more than to a united country. Culture and Customs of Spain conveys the extremes, such as the hard-working Catalan contrasted to the leisurely paced Castilian, coexisting in first and third world conditions, and the love/hate relationship with the Catholic Church. Spain's institutions are described, and its contributions to the world—from unparalleled literature and cuisine to flamenco and filmmaker Pedro Almodovar—are celebrated. A chronology and glossary complement the text.
Providing a social, economic and political study of field sports and those other activities and customs labelled as rural sports, from the earliest of times to the present day in all of the United Kingdom and Ireland. This book brings together several distinct types of traditional rural sports with particular emphasis on the social history and 'traditional' aspects. It contains several hundred entries focusing on individual sports and others providing analysis of key concepts, themes and terminologies. The Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports is an invaluable reference that provides students, scholars and sports enthusiasts with a focussed and authoritative source of information on the history and culture of rural sport in Britain.
This is the first book in English to offer an overview of the development of the sport industry in Spain and Portugal, examining the social, economic, cultural, and political impact sport has had in this region and on world sport more broadly. Drawing on sources in Spanish and Portuguese, the book presents important new perspectives and empirical material not previously available to English-speaking audiences. With a strong focus on management, development, economics, governance and law, set in a broader historical and socio-cultural context, the book explains the unique characteristics of the sport industry in the Iberian Peninsula. It takes a deep dive into Spanish and Portuguese football - in many ways the centre of gravity of Iberian sport – and into sport tourism, a hugely significant component of the broader economy of the region. The book also considers important emerging themes in Iberian sport, from the development of women’s sport to the global profile of Cristiano Ronaldo and Rafael Nadal, and considers the wider influence of Iberian sport across the wider Hispanic diaspora. This is fascinating and illuminating reading for anybody with an interest in sport business and management, global sporting cultures, international business, or Hispanic or Latin American studies.
In a tropical island empire where wealth defines worth, a troubled mercenary and a dying magnate's nightmares hold the keys to preventing a catastrophe.
Hayden Quinn's entire life has been about listening. He is the first to hear the signal, a distress call from the stars that answers the ultimate question once and for all: we are not alone. The Commonwealth of Man is divided by his discovery. Some see it as salvation for their dying world, others insist that answering the call will expose them to advanced alien species and a future of slavery in their thrall. Some are willing to go to extreme lengths to make sure that doesn't happen. The first mission is a catastrophic failure, huge ark ships burning in the skies over Unity Prime. The brightest and best-scientists, warriors, historians-are all lost in the fires. The mission is set back years, and the grim truth is that any new crew Unity can muster will always be second best. But they can't give up. The signal is still strong. Carson Devolo, captain of the colony ship Terella, has a simple mission objective: find the Source. But can he trust his crew? And what discoveries await if they reach their final destination? Infinite Frontiers is a novel based on the Stellaris computer game by Paradox Interactive, written by bestselling author Steven Savile.