Ukraine's Revolt, Russia's Revenge
Ukraine's Revolt, Russia's Revenge

Author: Christopher M. Smith

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0815739257

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“This firsthand account of contemporary history is key to understanding Russia's latest assault on its neighbor."—USA Today An eyewitness account by a U.S. diplomat of Russia’s brazen attempt to undo the democratic revolution in Ukraine Told from the perspective of a U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, this book is the true story of Ukraine’s anti-corruption revolution in 2013—14, Russia’s intervention and invasion of that nation, and the limited role played by the United States. It puts into a readable narrative the previously unpublished reporting by seasoned U.S. diplomatic and military professionals, a wealth of information on Ukrainian high-level and street-level politics, a broad analysis of the international context, and vivid descriptions of people and places in Ukraine during the EuroMaidan Revolution. The book also counters Russia’s disinformation narratives about the revolution and America’s role in it. While focusing on a single country during a dramatic three-year period, the book’s universal themes—among them, truth versus lies, democracy versus autocracy—possess a broader urgency for our times. That urgency burns particularly hot for the United States and all other countries that are the targets of Russia's cyber warfare and other forms of political skullduggery. From his posting in U.S. Embassy Kyiv (2012–14), the author observed and reported first-hand on the EuroMaidan Revolution that wrested power from corrupt pro-Kremlin Ukrainian autocrat Viktor Yanukovych. The book also details Russia’s attempt to abort the Ukrainian revolution through threats, economic pressure, lies, and intimidation. When all of that failed, the Kremlin exacted revenge by annexing Ukraine's territory of Crimea and fomenting and sustaining a hybrid war in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people and continues to this day. Ukraine's Revolt, Russia’s Revenge is based on the author’s own observations and the multitude of reports of his Embassy colleagues who were eyewitnesses to a crucial event in contemporary history.

Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain
Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain

Author: Allyson M. Poska

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2005-12-08

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0191514748

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While scholars have marvelled at how accused witches, mystical nuns, and aristocratic women understood and used their wealth, power, and authority to manipulate both men and institutions, most early modern women were not privileged by money or supernatural contacts. They led the routine and often difficult lives of peasant women and wives of soldiers and tradesmen. However, a lack of connections to the typical sources of authority did not mean that the majority of early modern women were completely disempowered. Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain explores how peasant women in Galicia in north-western Spain came to have significant social and economic authority in a region characterized by extremely high rates of male migration. Using a wide array of archival documentation, including Inquisition records, wills, dowry contracts, folklore, and court cases, Poska examines how peasant women asserted and perceived their authority within the family and the community and how the large numbers of female-headed households in the region functioned in the absence of men. From sexual norms to property aquisition, Galician peasant women consistently defied traditional expectations of women's behaviour.

Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French
Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French

Author: D. E. Ager

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990-12-13

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780521397308

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This book deals with the ways in which French is used in different circumstances and settings in France and abroad, with the language attitudes of French speakers and with language policy. It is concerned to examine not only the linguistic data, but also the social, political and economic environment in which contemporary French is used. At the same time it offers an introduction to contemporary sociolinguistic theory, methods and results. After a brief historical introduction and a review of approaches to regionalism, Professor Ager looks at such questions as the conflicts between standard French and regional languages such as Breton, the changing role of French in the world; the distinctiveness of social and professional varieties such as the language of the working class, scientists or immigrants and language variation correlating with interactional factors such as formality or medium. A final chapter deals with language attitude, language policy and language planning. This volume sets language information in its social context and shows how to investigate and evaluate both language variation and the social and political reaction to it.

Analyzing Oppression
Analyzing Oppression

Author: Ann E. Cudd

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0195187431

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Analyzing Oppression presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? Cudd argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression. This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. Cudd argues that oppression is an institutionally structured harm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes the central feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears to absolve society from responsibility. While on Cudd's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. Cudd examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. She discusses strategies that groups have used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. In the concluding chapter Cudd proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual is only possible when we achieve freedom for all others.

Russian and West European Women, 1860D1939
Russian and West European Women, 1860D1939

Author: Marcelline J. Hutton

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2001-08-14

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1461666171

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This ambitious study provides a sweeping overview of the position of women in England, France, Germany, and Russia/USSR during a seminal period in world history. Comparing Russian and European women's quest for respectability, self-realization, justice, and simple survival from 1860-1939, the book illustrates their struggles to realize their dreams and their resourcefulness in coping with often dreary, hard, even horrifying lives. Deftly combining statistical data to underscore collective experiences and belles lettres to highlight the texture of individual women's lives, the book assesses the significance of gender, class, nationality, and religion. Through vivid description, this history conveys a comprehensive picture of women's social, educational, economic, and political position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This richly researched work traces common patterns and unique experiences in women's lives, showing how they defined themselves, coped with daily life, and confronted disaster with courage and resourcefulness.

Rumer Godden
Rumer Godden

Author: Dr Lucy Le-Guilcher

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-04-28

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1409475794

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From 1929 to 1997, Rumer Godden published more than 60 books, including novels, biographies, children's books, and poetry; this is the first collection devoted to this important transnational writer. Focusing on Godden's writing from the 1930s onward, the contributors uncover the breadth and variety of the literary landscape on display in works such as Black Narcissus, The Lady and the Unicorn, A Fugue in Time, and The River. Often drawing on her own experiences living in India and Britain, Godden establishes a diverse narrative topography that allows her to engage with issues related to her own uncertain position as an author representing such nomadic Others as gypsies, or taking up the displacements brought about by international conflict. Recognizing that studies of the transnational must consider the condition of enforced and elected exile within the changing political and cultural borders of postcolonial nations, the contributors position Godden with respect to different and overlapping fields of inquiry: modern literary history; colonial, postcolonial, and transnational studies; inter-media studies; and children's literature. Taken together, the essays in this volume demonstrate the richness and variety of Godden's writing and render the myriad ways in which Godden is an important critical presence in mid-twentieth-century fiction.

Global Trends 2040
Global Trends 2040

Author: National Intelligence Council

Publisher: Cosimo Reports

Published: 2021-03

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 9781646794973

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"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Author: John Perkins

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2004-11-09

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 1576755126

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Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.