Elite-level Soviet politics, privileged access to state secrets, knowledge about machinations inside the Kremlin—such is the environment in which Andrei A. Kovalev lived and worked. In this memoir of his time as a diplomat in key capacities and as a member of Mikhail Gorbachev’s staff, Kovalev reveals hard truths about his country as only a perceptive witness can. In Russia’s Dead End, Kovalev shares his intimate knowledge of political activities behind the scenes at the Ministry ...

Undertakes a thorough investigation of early Jewish theogonic and cosmogonic traditions found in the Enochic writings and their formative influence on subsequent Gnostic, Manichaean, and Kabbalistic developments.In Broken Vessels, Andrei A. Orlov offers a comprehensive examination of early Jewish theogonic symbolism as reflected in early Enochic texts and its subsequent influence on Gnostic, Manichaean, and later Kabbalistic traditions. Introducing a new m...

Authenticity is key for successful leaders—they remain true to themselves, drawing strength from their diverse constellation of experiences, perspectives, and heritages. Leadership invites you to challenge traditional norms about leader identity and develop your own positive leadership behaviors.This book’s transformational approach empowers you to critically examine your beliefs, values, and experiences, fostering a reflective self-knowledge base, an appreciation for multiple pers...

Supernal Serpent explores the development of the Leviathan tradition from its early roots in ancient West Asian and biblical accounts, up to the later rabbinic traditions. Concentrating on the theophanic features of Leviathan's appearances in Jewish biblical, pseudepigraphical, and rabbinic accounts, special attention is paid to the traditions found in the Book of Job and the Apocalypse of Abraham. Leading scholar Andrei Orlov argues that the Apocalypse of Abraham presents Leviath...

This book explores the early Jewish understanding of divine knowledge as divine presence, which is embodied in major biblical exemplars, such as Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses.The study treats the concept of divine knowledge as the embodied divine presence in its full historical and interpretive complexity by tracing the theme through a broad variety of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish sources, including Mesopotamian traditions of cultic statues, creational narratives of the Hebrew B...

This Element focuses on some core conceptual and ontological issues related to pantheistic conceptions of God by engaging with recent work in analytic philosophy of religion on this topic. The conceptual and ontological commitments of pantheism are contrasted with those of other conceptions of God. The concept of God assumed by pantheism is clarified and the question about what type of unity the universe must exhibit in order to be identical with God receives the most attention. It is argu...

Analytical Modelling of Fuel Cells, Second Edition, is devoted to the analytical models that help us understand the mechanisms of cell operation. The book contains equations for the rapid evaluation of various aspects of fuel cell performance, including cell potential, rate of electrochemical reactions, rate of transport processes in the cell, and temperature fields in the cell, etc. Furthermore, the book discusses how to develop simple physics-based analytical models. A new chapter is dev...

Vibrational Spectroscopy Applications in Biomedical, Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences synthesizes the latest research on the applications of vibrational spectroscopy in biomedical, pharmaceutical and food analysis. Suitable for graduate-level students as well as experienced researchers in academia and industry, this book is organized into five distinct sections. The first deals with the fundamentals of vibrational spectroscopy, with the second presenting the most important sampling methodo...

For the past forty years shamanism has drawn increasing attention among the general public and academics. There is an enormous literature on shamanism, but no one has tried to understand why and how Western intellectual and popular culture became so fascinated with the topic. Behind fictional and non-fictional works on shamanism, Andrei A. Znamenski uncovers an exciting story that mirrors changing Western attitudes toward the primitive. The Beauty of the Primitive explores how shamanism, a...

Ion Exchange Materials: Properties and Applications fills a "two-dimensional" gap in books currently available on the subject. Firstly, there is a lack of modern comprehensive publications on the chemistry of ion exchange materials and on the relationships between their properties and practical applications. Secondly, there are few books on ion exchange chemistry that are targeted to industrial R&D specialists and research students who (i) do not work with ion exchange on a daily basis, (i...

This book reflects on recent advances in the understanding of percolation systems to present a wide range of transport phenomena in inhomogeneous disordered systems. Further developments in the theory of macroscopically inhomogeneous media are also addressed. These developments include galvano-electric, thermoelectric, elastic properties, 1/f noise and higher current momenta, Anderson localization, and harmonic generation in composites in the vicinity of the percolation threshold.T...

The Apocalypse of Abraham is a vital source for understanding both Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism. Written anonymously soon after the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple, the text envisions heaven as the true place of worship and depicts Abraham as an initiate of celestial priesthood. Andrei A. Orlov focuses on the central rite of the Abraham story – the scapegoat ritual that receives a striking eschatological reinterpretation in the text. He demonstrates that the development o...