Drawing on history, anthropology, psychology, and science, the book reveals why the knowledge that we must die has influenced nearly everything humans have created.Travel across cultures and centuries to discover egyptian preparations for the afterlife, the philosophical teachings of epicurus and the stoics, medieval manuals for dying well, mexico’s día de los muertos, tibetan traditions surrounding death, the medicalization of dying, the hospice revolution, near-d...

Few figures in intellectual history have proved as notorious and ambiguous as Niccolò Machiavelli. But while his treatise The Prince made his name synonymous with autocratic ruthlessness and cynical manipulation, The Discourses (c.1517) shows a radically different outlook on the world of politics. In this carefully argued commentary on Livy’s history of republican Rome, Machiavelli proposed a system of government that would uphold civic freedom and security by instilling ...

This book has a unique approach to the Bible. High on a mountaintop, we see a magnificent Temple that intrigues us by its beauty and symmetry, registering upon our minds the fact that the architect and builder is the everlasting God, for the building is ablaze with His glory far outshining the glory of the sun.The Bible required almost seventeen centuries to complete this sanctuary where we fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit used about forty workmen from all walks of life, includ...

Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates addresses two frequently asked questions about narrative studies: “what is narrative theory?” and “how do different approaches to narrative relate to each other?” In engaging with these questions, the book demonstrates the diversity and vitality of the field and promotes a broader dialogue about its assumptions, methods, and purposes.In Part One, the co-authors explore the scope and aims of narrative from four distinct p...

Investigating the interrelationships between orality and writing in elite and popular textual culture in early modern Italy, this volume shows how the spoken or sung word on the one hand, and manuscript or print on the other hand, could have interdependent or complementary roles to play in the creation and circulation of texts. The first part of the book centres on performances, ranging from realizations of written texts to improvisations or semi-improvisations that might draw on written s...

This book studies the uses of orality in Italian society, across all classes, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, with an emphasis on the interrelationships between oral communication and the written word. The Introduction provides an overview of the topic as a whole and links the chapters together. Part 1 concerns public life in the states of northern, central, and southern Italy. The chapters examine a range of performances that used the spoken word or song: concerted shouts t...

Professional services marketing is a relatively new form of marketing that has been recogonized only since the late 1980s. Most of the attempts to write about marketing for professional services have been a regurgitation of the traditional marketing approach that has evolved since the 1960s and have concentrated on minor differences and adjustments. In many ways, what is needed is a fresh approach which takes into account the complex political, social, economic, legislative and cultural ba...

During the Italian Renaissance, laywomen and nuns could take part in every stage of the circulation of texts of many kinds, old and new, learned and popular. This first in-depth and integrated analysis of Italian women's involvement in the material textual culture of the period shows how they could publish their own works in manuscript and print and how they promoted the first publication of works composed by others, acting as patrons or dedicatees. It describes how they copied manuscripts...

Returns to fundamental questions of narrative to expose how authors play with and clarify the boundaries of narrative theory, thus transforming and expanding the study of story and plot.Story, in the largest sense of the term, is arguably the single most important aspect of narrative. But with the proliferation of antimimetic writing, traditional narrative theory has been inadequate for conceptualizing and theorizing a vast body of innovative narratives. In A P...

Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges offers a number of developments, refinements, and defenses of key aspects of unnatural narrative studies. The first section applies unnatural narrative theory and analysis to ideologically charged areas such as feminism, postcolonial studies, cultural alterity, and subaltern discourse. The book goes on to engage with and intervene in theoretical debates in several areas of both critical theory and narrative theory, inclu...

Brian McReynolds has finally graduated at the top of his class from the police academy as a detective. He lands a job with the New York Police Department in the Homicide division. Both good and bad come his way when he falls in love with a beautiful waitress at the local diner, but his best friend becomes involved in drugs. Now Brian must try to help his friend before it's too late.

Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates addresses two frequently asked questions about narrative studies: “what is narrative theory?” and “how do different approaches to narrative relate to each other?” In engaging with these questions, the book demonstrates the diversity and vitality of the field and promotes a broader dialogue about its assumptions, methods, and purposes.In Part One, the co-authors explore the scope and aims of narrative from four distinct p...