When published in 1973, Gravity’s Rainbow expanded our sense of what the novel could be. Pynchon’s extensive references to modern science, history, and culture challenged any reader, while his prose bent the rules for narrative art and his satirical practices taunted U.S. obscenity and pornography statutes. His writing thus enacts freedom even as the book’s great theme is domination: humanity’s diminished “chances for freedom” in a global military-industrial system birthed and set...

The burgeoning field of 'visual social science' is rooted in the idea that valid scientific insight into culture and society can be acquired by observing, analyzing and theorizing its visual manifestations: visible behavior of people and material products of culture. Reframing Visual Social Science provides a well-balanced, critical-constructive and systematic overview of existing and emerging modes of visual social and cultural research. The book includes integrated models and conceptual ...

Luc Debieuvre is a French banker who between 2003 and 2005 wrote a fortnightly opinion column for the United Arab Emirate-based English-language daily "Gulf News". The period of Debieuvre's association with the newspaper has been among the most significant and memorable in recent history. The aftermath of America's War on Terror has unleashed forces that the world will have to contend with and endure long after the protagonists have left the stage. Now collated into book form for the first...

Spring of the year 1720...Young girl of the bourgeoisie, Blandine Veyre lives with her family in the majestic Phocaean city located in the South of the French Kingdom. On her sixteenth birthday, she receives a wonderful gift, a leisure voyage in the company of her brother, a naval Officer, onboard an impressive three-masted ship called ‘Lacydon’. However, very soon the first journey will turn into a series of unexpected and sometimes painful as well as solitary adventures. Finally, she wil...

Discover the truth behind AI's most dangerous myth: that machines can truly createIn The AI Illusion: Why Machines Aren't Creative, Luc Julia, co-creator of Siri and Chief Scientific Officer for the Renault Group, dismantles the hype surrounding generative AI by revealing what these technologies can actually do (as of today) versus what their promoters claim. Drawing on over 35 years' experience in the tech industry, Julia exposes the fundamental truth tha...

New Edition: Introduction to Earth Sciences (2nd Edition)Geophysics is concerned with the physical processes and properties of the Earth and its surrounding environment, and with the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. This book provides the general public, including students, faculties, and universities with a comprehensive presentation of geophysics suitable for first year undergraduate classes. The key focus is to familiarize readers with the concepts of elastic and electrom...

Hydraulic parameter identification is a crucial step in hydrogeological investigations. The book proposes a unique and generalized interpretation method for single and multiple pumping tests made in groundwater reservoirs with layered heterogeneity and with or without lateral anisotropy. This method eliminates the drawbacks of the numerous and frequently applied interpretation methods. The book also presents an introduction to inverse modeling, resulting in optimal parameter values with th...

"If you need motivation to ride, run, or just eat better, you'll find Carl to be an inspirational cheerleader for the healthy rock 'n' roll life." — Bicycling MagazineLüc Carl fit the part as a bar manager in New York City's gritty Lower East Side with his snakeskin spandex pants and hot rod. And life was good for this Omaha, Nebraska, transplant—a talented drummer who originally moved to the big city to pursue his rock 'n' roll dreams—unt...

In all of Commissaire Georges Dupin’s time living in Brittany, there has never been a murder on his home turf, until now, in Jean-Luc Bannalec's The Body by the Sea.A town on the sea, Concarneau’s nickname is Ville Bleue, or the Blue Town. With three harbors at its center, visitors can see enormous ships, sailors, fishermen, and the industry that goes alongside it. Because of its geographical location, Concarneau has shown it’s perfectly positioned to prot...

**"Roll over Maigret. Commissaire Dupin has arrived." —M.C. Beaton on Death in Brittany"Very satisfying…along the lines of Martin Walker’s novels set in Dordogne, or M.L. Longworth’s Aix-en-Provence mysteries." —Booklist on Murder on Brittany Shores**The Missing Corpse is internationally bestselling author, Jean-Luc Bannalec’s fourth novel in the Commissaire Dupin series. It’s picturesque, suspenseful, and the next best thing to a...

The first major study of the Great Leap Forward, this seminal volume has now been translated into English for a wider audience. Like no other work, it suggests compelling political and social answers to questions that have long plagued scholars: How could a party with such a successful rural base launch a movement so divorced from reality– especially in the countryside? Why was the movement pressed to the point of social chaos and economic collapse, giving rise to arguably the greatest fam...

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word philosophy means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of l...