Participatory Governance, Social Work and Social Policy in Times of AI explores the intersection of participatory governance, inclusive social welfare, social work, and artificial intelligence in the transformation of social services systems worldwide.Rooted in the experiences and insights of professionals such as experts, policy practitioners, and civic innovators, this book provides a timely examination of how digital tools, especially AI, are reshaping civic engagement...

Vivid vignettes of life, art, and antifascism in interwar Europe by an influential (but nearly forgotten) member of the Soviet avant-garde, a friend of Bertolt Brecht, John Heartfield, and Sergei Eisenstein.Comrades in Fire is a portrait of interwar Europe by one of the most stylish and underappreciated writers of the Soviet avant-garde, the Latvian-born Sergei Tretyakov. From 1930 to 1931, Tretyakov travelled in Germany, Austria, and Denmark, meeting like...

A science fiction thriller by the author of Night Watch, the hit novel that inspired two major motion picturesFive months after the horrific accident that left him near death and worried that he'd never fly again, master-pilot Alex Romanov lands a new job: captaining the sleek passenger vessel Mirror. Alex is a spesh—a human who has been genetically modified to perform particular tasks. As a captain and pilot, Alex has a genetic imperative to care ...

Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are the Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy parallel world existing in parallel to our own, each Other owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light.The Night Watch, first book in the Night Watch series, follows Anton, a young Other owing allegiance to the Light. As a Night Watch agent he must patrol the streets and metro of the city, pr...

They trust him with their words. They shouldn’t.Anton Volkov has spent a decade interpreting for the world’s most powerful leaders: bridging languages, hiding secrets, and surviving the invisible war that plays out behind closed doors. But when a subtle phrase in a Kremlin–Zhongnanhai meeting triggers a hidden memory, Anton realizes the speeches he’s translating may be carrying more than diplomacy. They may be carrying coordinates.When the coded messages le...

What happens when you decide to learn to surf later in life? SUP can really help achieve this goal!A terrifying near-drowning incident in France should have ended the dream before it even started. Instead, it became the beginning of an extraordinary life transformation.From the beaches of Lacanau to the surf breaks of Hawaii, Fiji, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica, the author takes readers on an unforgettable journey into the world of stand-up paddleboarding a...

He was called a fanatic, a prophet, a dangerous zealot, and ultimately a traitor to the very empire he once helped sustain. Sergei Michailovich Trufanoff, the firebrand Russian Orthodox monk who operated under the infamous name Iliodor, burned through the final years of Tsarist Russia like a torch held too close to a powder keg. In this extraordinary first-person account, published in 1918 at the precise moment the old world was collapsing into ash, Iliodor pulls back the curtain on one of...

"Loud Sounds at the Piano" captures the passionate energy of famous piano works in a simplified form. This edition from the Classicato series contains five stirring pieces: Rachmaninoff's Prélude Op. 2 No. 3, Liszt's Chapelle de Guillaume Tell, Mussorgsky's Promenade, Schumann's Papillons Op. 2 and Verdi's Triumphal March. Ideal for beginners and intermediate pianists, the clearly structured arrangements are quick and easy to play and are perfect for spirited performances, lively piano les...

This simplified version of the piano score for Sergei Rachmaninoff's 'Prelude Op. 2 No. 3' allows intermediate pianists to grasp the essence of this impressive work more easily and play it with less practice. This version retains the characteristic melodies and harmonies of the original, but is more accessible to players with basic to intermediate technical experience. It offers a wonderful opportunity to experience Rachmaninoff's emotional depth and musical expressiveness, and is ideal fo...

Sergei Mikhailovich Goriainov (1849-1918) was a Russian historian, journalist, and Imperial Archivist at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.His publications, primarily essays and articles, are based on his research in diplomatic archives and address issues of Russian history and foreign policy. His best-known work, The Bosphore and the Dardanelles, is a historical study of the Straits Question, based on diplomatic correspondence preserved in the St. Petersburg archives....

Have you ever experienced coincidences that cannot be logically explained? This book helps the readers understand the meaning of synchronicity, or remarkable coincidences in people's lives. This work not only explains the mystery of synchronicity, originally introduced by Carl Jung, but it also shows how to make simple calculations to estimate the chances that coincidences are not due to mere randomness. The reader will learn how to prove that the coincidences in their lives have meaning, ...

Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain was neither a great man nor a lofty spirit like Poussin. His genius cannot, however, be denied and he was, like Poussin, a profoundly original inventor within the limitations of a classical ideal. He too spent most of his life in Rome though the art he created was not specifically Italian, but French. For more than two centuries afterwards everyone in France who felt called upon to depict the beauties of nature would think of Lorrain and study his works...