In villages and towns across Spain and its former New World colonies, local performers stage mock battles between Spanish Christians and Moors or Aztecs that range from brief sword dances to massive street theatre lasting several days. The festival tradition officially celebrates the triumph of Spanish Catholicism over its enemies, yet this does not explain its persistence for more than five hundred years nor its widespread diffusion.In this insightful book, Max Harris seeks to und...

For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women's clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing ...

Managing Priorities is your guide to prioritizing anything—anytime and anywhere. Harry Max digs into the best practices for prioritization at Apple, DreamWorks, NASA, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and beyond, and brings them together in a single, practical method that you can apply step by step.Who Should Read This Book?Every business person who is even remotely interested in prioritization should read Managing Priorities. Whatever you need to prioriti...

Piketty’s book is a bombshell, promising a Kuhnian scientific revolution. Geoff BertramPiketty erects a floodlight that illuminates the shadows ignored by economists for too long. Hautahi KingiFew books have had the global impact of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. An overnight bestseller, Piketty’s assessment that inherited wealth will always grow faster, on average, than earned wealth has energised debate. Hailed as ‘bigger than Marx’ (The Economist) or dismissed as ...

First published in 1986, Language Processing in Children and Adults provides a broad perspective on psychological research into language processing. The book has two main sections. The first deals with language processing in children and describes the processes involved in learning to produce and understand spoken language and the processes involved in learning to read. This section also includes a chapter on development disorders of spoken and written language. The second section...

By any measure, New Zealand must confront monumental issues in the years ahead. From the future of work to climate change, wealth inequality to new populism these challenges are complex and even unprecedented. Yet why does New Zealand’s political discussion seem so diminished, and our political imagination unequal to the enormity of these issues? And why is this gulf particularly apparent to young New Zealanders?These questions sit at the centre of Max Harris’s ‘New Zealand project...

With a riotous mix of saints and devils, street theater and dancing, and music and fireworks, Christian festivals are some of the most lively and colorful spectacles that occur in Spain and its former European and American possessions. That these folk celebrations, with roots reaching back to medieval times, remain vibrant in the high-tech culture of the twenty-first century strongly suggests that they also provide an indispensable vehicle for expressing hopes, fears, and desires that peop...

"Because time, attention, and resources are finite, wise prioritization lies at the heart of any flourishing organization or meaningful life. Yet there's surprisingly little actionable advice on how to do it well—and many seductive reasons to avoid it entirely. This approachable, psychologically astute, and deeply practical book has the potential to change all that. Reading it is well worth your time."—Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for M...

‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ Antonio GramsciIs New Zealand’s political settlement beginning to fray? And does this mean we’re entering the interregnum, that ambiguous moment between society-wide discontent and political change? In BWB’s latest book of essays, edited by Morgan Godfery, ten of New Zealand’s sharpest emerging thinkers gather to debate the ‘morbid symp...

The central character of this book is Max, a thirteen-year-old boy who has the courage of his conviction to dress as a girl and think differently to other boys his age. Max is an Adonis, with unmistakably stunning androgynous looks, captivating emerald green eyes, and mid-length blonde hair. Despite a loving, supportive family and their unconditional positive regard for him, his good looks both work for him and against him as he questions himself and his choices as he experiences the scorn...

Spain is an immemorial land like no other, one that James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and celebrated citizen of the world, came to love as his own. Iberia is Michener’s enduring nonfiction tribute to his cherished second home. In the fresh and vivid prose that is his trademark, he not only reveals the celebrated history of bullfighters and warrior kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards, he also shares the intimate, often hidden country he...

A leading environmental and political commentator draws a roadmap towards new politics—offering a rallying cry for a new vision of what a ‘good’ society can be—in this “dazzling command of science and relentless faith in people” (Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine)What does the good life—and the good society—look like in the 21st century?A toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism has come to dominate our world...