Alexandros Kioupkiolis, "The Common and Counter-Hegemonic Politics: Re-Thinking Social Change"
English | ISBN: 1474446140 | 2019 | 272 pages | PDF | 937 KB
Alexandros Kioupkiolis re-conceptualises the common in tandem with the political. By engaging with key thinkers of community and the commons, including Nancy, Ostrom, Hardt and Negri, he harnesses the political thrust of a radical democratic politics of solidarity, equality and collective self-organisation. He calls into play poststructuralist conceptions of agonism and hegemony, put forward by thinkers such as Mouffe and Laclau, to remedy the failure of existing theories of the commons to address power relations and division.
Philip Robbins, "The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition "
English | ISBN: 0521848326 | 2008 | 526 pages | PDF | 9 MB
Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This is a state-of-the-art guide to this new movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research.
Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship "
English | ISBN: 1479809004 | 2021 | 256 pages | EPUB | 22 MB
A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers
The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney By Michael Barrier
2007 | 414 Pages | ISBN: 0520241177 | PDF | 4 MB
After much research on the reviews on this website on which Disney biography to read, I was led to believe this was the best written of the 3 major works on Disney's life. At the end, I did not enjoy this work at all and found myself wishing I had chosen either Thomas' or Gabler's book instead.It is apparent throughout this book Barrier had a substantial amount of material on Disney left over from his earlier work on the history of Hollywood animation and often lets stories about the Disney animators themselves runaway for pages at a time. There were points where I started to question if the appropriate title for this book was "Walt Disney Animators." The initial narrative of this book is choppy at best as Barrier spends the first quarter of this book quoting various sources to establish Disney pre-Snow White, then in the next sentence fast forwarding as much as 40 years to a different quote that refutes what was just previously said. It's like you are watching a documentary of multiple interviews being slices together of two people arguing the same point from different eras. This is very hard to follow and flows nothing like a good biography should, as shown in the excellent work on another cartoon mogul, Charles Shultz, done by David Michaelis.Barrier also side tracks the book with multiple personal critiques of both animated and life action features where he becomes more critic than biographer. A horrendous example was a very shallow effort at summarizing what the movie Mary Poppins meant to the studio. The author is states the movie is essentially a "shallow fantasy" although it succeeded in the launching of Julie Andrews as a major star and won multiple Academy Awards. Barrier has no sense that the movie was kept true to story by the author, P.L Travers, and he is more concerned about the casting of Van Dyke than acknowledging the strong musical score. He critiques the lack of strong central story "lurking as a failure" when ignoring this same premise when reviewing positively the feature Alice in Wonderland. At times, Barrier hits his stride when writing about Disney's work as overall mastermind behind the creation of Snow White, DisneyLand and his own personal miniature train hobby. However, these moments are rare and you spend a majority of the time skipping around to various points of view and personal opinions of the author. You also get a very two dimensional history of Disney as the author cannot look at some of the other aspects that made Disney's feature films great, such as there overall musical score. Overall, this is unfortunately one of the worst written biographies I've read and will now have to pick up another one to obtain a better perspective on Disney.
The Act of Thinking By Derek Melser
2004 | 305 Pages | ISBN: 0262134462 | PDF | 1 MB
For some reason, Amazon has not posted my review of this book (yet), though I submitted it almost four days ago. For those interested in my fairly lengthy review, it is at my blawg: veniaminov DOT blogspot DOT com, search for Melser.
Technical Drawing for Product Design: Mastering ISO GPS and ASME GD&T by Stefano Tornincasa
English | EPUB | 2021 | 310 Pages | ISBN : 3030608530 | 106.2 MB
This book is intended for students, academics, designers, process engineers and CMM operators, and presents the ISO GPS and the ASME GD&T rules and concepts. The Geometric Product Specification (GPS) and Geometrical Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) languages are in fact the most powerful tools available to link the perfect geometrical world of models and drawings to the imperfect world of manufactured parts and assemblies.
Tantric Sex: An Ultimate Guide for a Sex Life Which Transcends Time Itself (Tantra) by Victoria Lynx
English | October 6, 2018 | ISBN: 1726795721 | 60 pages | Rar (PDF, AZW3) | 0.69 Mb
SEX, WHATEVER ELSE IT IS, IS AN ATHLETIC SKILL YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO LEARN!
Willard Sunderland, "Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe"
English | ISBN: 0801442095 | 2004 | 264 pages | PDF | 9 MB
Stretching from the tributaries of the Danube to the Urals and from the Russian forests to the Black and Caspian seas, the vast European steppe has for centuries played very different roles in the Russian imagination. To the Grand Princes of Kiev and Muscovy, it was the "wild field," a region inhabited by nomadic Turko-Mongolic peoples who repeatedly threatened the fragile Slavic settlements to the north. For the emperors and empresses of imperial Russia, it was a land of boundless economic promise and a marker of national cultural prowess. By the mid-nineteenth century the steppe, once so alien and threatening, had emerged as an essential, if complicated, symbol of Russia itself.Traversing a thousand years of the region's history, Willard Sunderland recounts the complex process of Russian expansion and colonization, stressing the way outsider settlement at once created the steppe as a region of empire and was itself constantly changing. The story is populated by a colorful array of administrators, Cossack adventurers, Orthodox missionaries, geographers, foreign entrepreneurs, peasants, and (by the late nineteenth century) tourists and conservationists. Sunderland's approach to history is comparative throughout, and his comparisons of the steppe with the North American case are especially telling.Taming the Wild Field eloquently expresses concern with the fate of the world's great grasslands, and the book ends at the beginning of the twentieth century with the initiation of a conservation movement in Russia by those appalled at the high environmental cost of expansion.
Stargazing in the Atomic Age: Essays (Georgia Review Books) by Anne Goldman
English | January 15th, 2021 | ISBN: 0820358444 | 168 pages | True EPUB | 3.06 MB
During World War II, with apocalypse imminent, a group of well-known Jewish scientists and artists sidestepped despair by challenging themselves to solve some of the most difficult questions posed by our age. Many had just fled Europe. Others were born in the United States to immigrants who had escaped Russia's pogroms. Alternately celebrated as mavericks and dismissed as eccentrics, they trespassed the boundaries of their own disciplines as the entrance to nations slammed shut behind them.
Barbara L. Jordan, "Songwriters Playground: Innovative Exercises in Creative Songwriting"
English | ISBN: 1439207976 | 2008 | 110 pages | EPUB | 817 KB
A collection of provocative illustrated exercises designed to tickle and challenge your Inner Songwriter. Based on the highly successful workshops created by the television and film songwriter, Barbara L. Jordan.