How can a decade of brilliant engineering and 370 million dollars of scientific equipment be completely vaporized in exactly 37 seconds due to a single line of faulty computer code? The explosive maiden voyage of the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 rocket in 1996 remains the most infamous and costly software bug in the history of aerospace engineering. The rocket's catastrophic failure was entirely self-inflicted. Engineers had lazily reused the inertial reference software from the older,...

It took the Romans almost exactly 200 years to conquer the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). The skillful and tenacious resistance of the various inhabitants, utilizing superior mobility in the rugged terrain to wage a guerrilla war, made the region the graveyard of many a Roman army. But the lessons, though painful, were eventually learnt and the heat of this socalled fiery war forged the legions into a more effective force. Daniel Varga analyzes the strategies and tactics of...

Includes Guadalupe Rivera Marín´s voice.Mesmerized for days outside Posada´s shop, watching as the master gave form to his figures, the boy Diego Rivera was invited in by the artist himself, to see how he worked. Since that moment, Rivera recognized Posada as one of his greatest teachers.In this book, an homage to the mexican engraver, we present a text in which Rivera the muralist speaks passionately about influence that Posada the lithographer and caricaturist had on his work: “Surely no...

This new edited collection brings together historians and social scientists to engage with the global history of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and offer historically-rich perspectives on contemporary debates about the future of work. In particular, the book goes beyond a genealogy of a seemingly utopian idea to explore how the meaning and reception of basic income proposals has changed over time. The study of UBI provides a prism through which we can understand how different intellectual tr...

It may be the most interesting and yet loneliest spot on earth: a volcanic rock surrounded by a million square miles of ocean, named for the day Dutch explorers discovered it, Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722. Here people created a complex society, sophisticated astronomy, exquisite wood sculpture, monumental stone architecture, roads, and a puzzling ideographic script. And then they went about sculpting amazing, giant human figures in stone.This richly illustrated book of the history,...

Al abrir este libro prepárate para adentrarte en un abismo que te confrontará con tu propia insignificancia. Los ecos del infinito resuenan en estas páginas, invitándote a explorar los límites de la cordura, a mirar cara a cara a lo inefable y aceptar que, quizás, hay secretos que es mejor no desvelar. Este es el espíritu de “Grimorio cósmico: Ecos del infinito”: un viaje por lo desconocido que, aunque aterrador, resulta imposible de resistir.El terror cósmico, popularizado por H.P...

Borderlands: they stretch across national boundaries, and they create a unique space that extends beyond the international boundary. They extend north and south of what we think of as the actual “border,” encompassing even the urban areas of San Antonio, Texas, and Monterrey, Nueva León, Mexico, affirming shared identities and a sense of belonging far away from the geographical boundary.In Bridging Cultures: Reflections on the Heritage Identity of the Texas-Mexico Borderlands

From a National Book Award finalist, this hilarious and profound first novel captures the experience of the young American abroad while exploring the possibilities of art and authenticity in our time.Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam’s “research” becomes a meditati...

In this generously illustrated book, world-renowned Yale art historian Robert Farris Thompson gives us the definitive account of tango, "the fabulous dance of the past hundred years–and the most beautiful, in the opinion of Martha Graham.”Thompson traces tango’s evolution in the nineteenth century under European, Andalusian-Gaucho, and African influences through its representations by Hollywood and dramatizations in dance halls throughout the world. He shows us tango not o...

With the release of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives in 1998, journalist Monica Maristain discovered a writer “capable of befriending his readers.” After exchanging several letters with Bolaño, Maristain formed a friendship of her own, culminating in an extensive interview with the novelist about truth and consequences, an interview that turned out to be Bolaño’s last.Appearing for the first time in English, Bolaño’s final interview is accompanied by a collection of ...

Mass-murdering authors. Writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring. A pilot who crafts his poetry in the sky.A tour de force of black humour and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of pan-American writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.Terrifyingly witty and remarkably inventive, this is the virtuosic, one-of-a-kind masterpiece which brough...

With a rare blend of grace, warmth, and scholarship, Leslie Stainton raises the stakes of our appreciation for the greatest of Spain's modern poets, Federico Garca Lorca. Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters unknown to prior biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and dozens of newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to life as few writers can. She describes his carefree childhood in rural...