كتب سياسية Politics

Cities of the World, 4 Volume Set, 6th edition, 2002-08
by Gale Group

Cities of the World: Africa (Cities of the World Vol 1: Africa) By: Gale Group
ISBN: 0787639133 - Volume 1
Publisher: Thomson Gale - 2002-08
Hardcover | 6th Edition | List Price: $115.00 (USD)

Cities of the World: Western Hemisphere (Cities of the World Vol 2 Western Hemisphere) By: Gale Group
ISBN: 0787639141 - Volume 2
Publisher: Thomson Gale - 2002-08
Hardcover | 6th Edition | List Price: $115.00 (USD)

Cities of the World: Europe and the Mediterranean Middle East (Cities of the World Vol 3 Europe and the Mediterranean Middle East) By: Gale Group
ISBN: 078763915X - Volume 3
Publisher: Thomson Gale - 2002-08
Hardcover | 6th Edition | List Price: $115.00 (USD) | Sales Rank: 4024812

Cities of the World: Asia, the Pacific, and the Asiatic Middle East (Cities of the World Vol 4 Asia, the Pacific, and the Asiatic Middle East) By: Gale Group
ISBN: 0787639168 - Volume 4
Publisher: Thomson Gale - 2002-08
Hardcover | 6th Edition | List Price: $115.00 (USD)

Amazon CategoriesSubjects > History > Cultural History > Local & Urban History
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Cities and towns
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excerpt:

Cities of the World represents a compilation of government
reports and original research on the social, cultural,
political, and industrial aspects of the nations
and cities of the world. Most of the country profiles
included here are based on official personnel briefings
issued as Post Reports by the U.S. Department of
State. The Post Reports are designed to acquaint
embassy personnel with life in the host country. Consequently,
the reports concentrate on cities in which
the U.S. government has embassies or consulates. To
increase coverage of other important cities, the editors
have added information on a large number of cities—
31 of which are new to this edition—not reported on by
the Department of State.

Size: 53.71 MB

Authority for Authority (Pere Marquette Series)
By Quentin Quesnell

Publisher: Marquette Univ Pr
Number Of Pages:
Publication Date: 1980-06
Sales Rank: 3204922
ISBN / ASIN: 0874625173
EAN: 9780874625172
Binding: Hardcover
Lecture at Marquette University Theology Department, Milwaukee 1973

PREFACE

To celebrate the Tercentenary of the missions and explorations of Jacques Marquette, S.J., the Marquette University Theology Department planned a symposium for the Spring of 1969 which would bring together several distinguished theologians to discuss the topic of authority in the Church. For various reasons, the symposium did not take place. But one of the papers scheduled for the symposium was presented alone as a major public lecture on Sunday, April 20th, 1969 in the auditorium of Brooks Memorial Union. The event was a success, and an annual series was born. Since then, lectures by John Macquarrie ( 1970), Bernard Lonergan ( 1971), George Lindbeck ( 1972), and Richard McCormick ( 1973) have been given and the last three of them published. To complete the printed series as well as to comply with frequent requests, we here present the first two Pere Marquette Theology Lectures without change.

Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied
by Toby Dodge

Publisher: Columbia University Press
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2003-11
Sales Rank: 343438
ISBN / ASIN: 0231131666
EAN: 9780231131667
Binding: Hardcover
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
Studio: Columbia University Press
Average Rating: 4.5
Total Reviews: 6





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Book Description:

If we think there is a fast solution to changing the governance of Iraq, warned U.S. Marine General Anthony Zinni in the months before the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, "then we don't understand history." Never has the old line about those who fail to understand the past being condemned to repeat it seemed more urgently relevant than in Iraq today, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the Iraqi people, the Middle East region, and the world. Examining the construction of the modern state of Iraq under the auspices of the British empire -- the first attempt by a Western power to remake Mesopotamia in its own image -- renowned Iraq expert Toby Dodge uncovers a series of shocking parallels between the policies of a declining British empire and those of the current American administration.

Between 1920 and 1932, Britain endeavored unsuccessfully to create a modern democratic state from three former provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which it had conquered and occupied during the First World War. Caught between the conflicting imperatives of controlling a region of great strategic importance (Iraq straddled the land and air route between British India and the Mediterranean) and reconstituting international order through the liberal ideal of modern state sovereignty under the League of Nations Mandate system, British administrators undertook an extremely difficult task. To compound matters, they did so without the benefit of detailed information about the people and society they sought to remake. Blinded by potent cultural stereotypes and subject to mounting pressures from home, these administrators found themselves increasingly dependent on a mediating class of shaikhs to whom they transferred considerable power and on whom they relied for the maintenance of order. When order broke down, as it routinely did, the British turned to the airplane. (This was Winston Churchill's lasting contribution to the British enterprise in Iraq: the concerted use of air power -- of what would in a later context be called "shock and awe" -- to terrorize and subdue dissident factions of the Iraqi people.)

Ultimately, Dodge shows, the state the British created held all the seeds of a violent, corrupt, and relentlessly oppressive future for the Iraqi people, one that has continued to unfold. Like the British empire eight decades before, the United States and Britain have taken upon themselves today the grand task of transforming Iraq and, by extension, the political landscape of the Middle East. Dodge contends that this effort can succeed only with a combination of experienced local knowledge, significant deployment of financial and human resources, and resolute staying power. Already, he suggests, ominous signs point to a repetition of the sequence of events that led to the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein's murderous tyranny.


1.29MB PDF

World in Transition, Volume Two: New Structures for Global Environmental Policy (World in Transition)
by German Advisory Council on Global Change

Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2001-12
Sales Rank: 5157690
ISBN / ASIN: 1853838527
EAN: 9781853838521
Binding: Hardcover
Manufacturer: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
Studio: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
Average Rating:
Total Reviews:





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Book Description:

International institutions and structures are crucial to the management of the global environment. The present arrangements are failing to cope adequately with the scale of the task and the demands placed on them and alternatives are urgently needed. In this second volume of "World in Transition", experts in the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WGBU) analyze the current problems and set out comprehensive and very persuasive policies for a successful future regime. Central to the future will be a strengthened and more effective UN Environment Program within an alliance organized around three main objectives of assessment, organization and funding.
File-Size: 1.99 MB

Our Brave New World: Essays on the Impact of September 11 (Hoover Institution Press Publication)
by WLADYSLAW PLESZCZYNSKI

By

Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Number Of Pages: 356
Publication Date: 2002-07
Sales Rank: 1748092
ISBN / ASIN: 0817939024
EAN: 9780817939021
Binding: Paperback
Manufacturer: Hoover Institution Press
Studio: Hoover Institution Press
Average Rating:
Total Reviews:



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Book Description:



The military side of the war on terrorism, says Adam Garfinkle, is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of the solution. Weapons of mass destruction are activated by ideas of mass destruction, and these ideas arise from complex historical and social factors. A Practical Guide to Winning the War on Terrorism offers concrete steps for undermining the very notion that terrorism is a legitimate method of political struggle—and for changing the conditions that lead people to embrace it. Adam Garfinkle and his expert contributors—all intimately familiar with Middle Eastern social settings and political cultures—examine the diplomatic, educational, and religious aspects of the problem. They show how we can—and must—stigmatize the idea of murdering civilians for any political cause, identify and stop the flow of money and other resources to those who carry out terrorism, refute the distortions of U.S. motivations that are promulgated by Islamic propagandists, and work patiently at social, economic, and political reform in Muslim countries.
F | 498 KB

Lecture Notes on Cryptography
By Shafi Goldwasser, Mihir Bellare

Publisher: MIT Laboratory of Computer Science
Number Of Pages: 283
Publication Date: 2001-08
Binding: pdf


This is a set of lecture notes on cryptography compiled for 6.87s, a one week long course on cryptography taught at MIT by Shafi Goldwasser and Mihir Bellare in the summers of 1996{2001. The notes were formed by merging notes written for Shafi Goldwasser's Cryptography and Cryptanalysis course at MIT with notes written for Mihir Bellare's Cryptography and network security course at UCSD. In addition, Rosario Gennaro (as Teaching Assistant for the course in 1996) contributed Section 9.6, Section 11.4, Section 11.5, and Appendix D to the notes, and also compiled, from various sources, some of the problems in Appendix E.


Cryptography is of course a vast subject. The thread followed by these notes is to develop and explain the notion of provable security and its usage for the design of secure protocols. Much of the material in Chapters 2, 3 and 7 is a result of scribe notes, originally taken by MIT graduate students who attended Professor Goldwasser's Cryptography and Cryptanalysis course over the years, and later edited by Frank D'Ippolito who was a teaching assistant for the course in 1991. Frank also contributed much of the advanced number theoretic material in the Appendix. Some of the material in Chapter 3 is from the chapter on Cryptography, by R. Rivest, in the Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science. Chapters 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10, and Sections 9.5 and 7.4.6, were written by Professor Bellare for his Cryptography and network security course at UCSD.

1.46 MB

China and the Major Powers in East Asia
by A. Doak Barnett

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: 1977-12-01
Sales Rank: 1875082
ISBN / ASIN: 0815708238
EAN: 9780815708230
Binding: Paperback

Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan (National Foreign Language Center Technical Reports)
by Hajime Nakamura [img][/img]


Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Number Of Pages: 732
Publication Date: 1964-06
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0824800788
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780824800789
Binding: Paperback


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Product Description:

A landmark comparative study, this volume analyzes the characteristic thought patterns of four Asian peoples--the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Tibetans--as these are revealed in their language, their logic, and their cultural products. Hajime Nakamura focuses particularly on the impact of Buddhism, seeking to clarify the ways in which Buddhism and Indian logic were introduced from India into China, Japan, and Tibet, and how this universal religion and logic has become modifed according to the native characteristics of each people.




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Summary: Still Among the Very Best!
Rating: 5

Professor Hajime NAKAMURA (1912-99) of Tokyo University, one of the leading and most productive scholars of Buddhism in post-war Japan, in 1947 completed the first draft of this study, an English translation of which was which was printed under UNESCO auspices in 1960. It was subsequently revised and expanded as a result of Nakamura's interaction with a number of prominent Western scholars such as Yale's Arthur F. Wright (Buddhism in Chinese History, 1959), and Hawaii's Philip O. Wiener, who edited the revised English translation published by the University of Hawaii Press in 1964.

In his preface to the 1960 edition Wright describes Nakamura's project: ". . . No people in the world today is isolated from those world-wide movements of thought and belief which are tending to transform the lives of all peoples. But each people accepts or rejects, adapts and modifies the universal ideologies which reach them. What governs this process, and what is it which produces within each culture an amalgam which is at once part of a world-wide movement and distinctively its own? Mr. Nakamura considers the spread of the universal religion of Buddhism; and in Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan responses to Buddhism -- as well as in the history of Buddhism in India -- Mr. Nakamura finds clues to certain fundamental and persisting characteristics of their differing modes of thought. These characteristics in turn help to explain their fundamental historical and cultural differences one from another and their variant responses to Western culture in our time."

Ways of Thinking is subdivided into four major parts: INDIA, CHINA, TIBET, and JAPAN; and it may be helpful to point out that Professor Nakamura's wide range of interests and study qualified him to attempt such an ambitious project -- as indicated by the fact that early in his career he was awarded a special prize for his four volume history of early (Indian) Vedanta philosophy.

Perhaps some sense of the issues and problems involved in Ways of Thinking can be gleaned from the table of contents for the section on Japan. It must be noted, however, that these not sound-bites to conjure up a social stereotype. Rather, they are serious topics which Professor Nakamura addresses at length with many examples and notes. And we are free to agree or disagree with his conclusions only after we have carefully read what he has to say.

PART IV: JAPAN

34. The Acceptance of Phenomenalism
The Phenomenal World As Absolute -- This-Worldliness -- The Acceptance of Man's Natural Dispositions -- Emphasis on the Love of Human Beings -- The Spirit of Tolerance -- Cultural Multiplicity (Consisting of Several Strata Still Preserved) and Weakness of the Spirit of Criticism

35. The Tendency to Emphasize a Limited Social Nexus Overstressing of Social Relations -- Social Relationships Take Precedence over the Individual -- Unconditional Belief in a Limited Social Nexus -- Observance of Family Morals -- Emphasis on Rank and Social Position -- Problems of Ultra-Nationalism -- Absolute Devotion to Specific Individual Symbolic of the Social Nexus -- Emperor Worship -- Sectarian and Factional Closedness -- Defense of a Human Nexus by Force -- Emphasis upon Human Activities -- Acuteness of Moral Self-Reflection -- Weak Awareness of Religious Values

36. Non-Rationalistic Tendencies
Indifference to Logical Rules -- Lack of Interest in Formal Consistency -- Slow Development of Exact Logic in Japan -- Hopes for Development of Exact Logical Thinking in Japan -- Intuitive and Emotional Tendencies -- Tendency to Avoid Complex Ideas -- Fondness for Simple Symbolic Expressions -- The Lack of Knowledge Concerning the Objective Order

37- Problem of Shamanism

For me Ways of Thinking easily deserves five stars: it is a great work by a great scholar. How does it compare with that well-known work on a similar theme, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture by Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)? Check it out.

Professor Nakamura has long since dropped off the best-seller lists, along George Sansom (the great historian of Japan), Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank (authors of the solid 2-volume set, East Asia: The Great Tradition), T.R.V. Murti (The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamika system), and many others who wrote just a few decades ago. Have their ideas and books been superseded and replaced by something better? No, they have just been blown away by the winds of fashion, just as the fashions of today will be replaced in turn. But if you are looking for a good read, they are names to keep in mind.



Summary: a window into the development of asian studies
Rating: 3

This formidable volume has become a classic of sorts for those interested in Asian/Buddhist Studies. It was written in the mid-1940s by Nakamura, who is a Japanese scholar of Indian Buddhism, and was revised in 1962-3 through a series of conferences with the assistance of Western scholars. The volume is a comparative
work attempting to outline differences between `ways of thinking` (an ambiguous term throughout the book) in India, China, Tibet and Japan. His means for accomplishing this dubious task mainly rely on linguistic analysis, and the development of Buddhism in each country, as well as an `assessment` of their cultural products. Nakamura`s goal is to debunk the notion of a homogenous `Oriental` or Eastern cultural set of values in opposition to `Occidental` or Western ones. Nakamura feels that this is a misleading dichotomy which needs to be dissolved or problematized, however, his work contains many idiosyncracies and outdated assumptions derived in part from the author`s own historical/intellectual context. It is definitely a more enriching read if one bears in mind that the book was written in Japan during and after the war, and was affected later by the largely Orientalist discourse still prevalent in Western scholarship. Furthermore, with half of the book devoted to Japan, one wonders what Nakamura`s justification or motivation for this might be, as he does not make it explicit in the text. With these considerations taken into account, the book stands on its own as a historical document in its own right. Definitely not for the faint of heart, this volume is recommendable mostly for those interested in the history of Asian studies, being indicative of some of the currents and trends that shaped the development of this area of study in the 20th century.

Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism [Prepublication Copy]
by National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press
Number Of Pages: 164
Publication Date: 2004-02-06
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0309089778
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780309089777
Binding: Paperback

Publisher: National Academies Press
Number Of Pages: 164
Publication Date: 2004-02-06
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0309089778
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780309089777
Binding: Paperback

122 page non-archived pdf
1.49 MB

Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise & Decline.
By Leo A. Loubere