The Geography of Risk

The Geography of Risk PDF Author: Gilbert M. Gaul
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374718520
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history—but who bears the brunt of these monster storms? Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert M. Gaul reveals in The Geography of Risk to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk. These federal incentives, Gaul argues, have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. We have become responsible for a shocking array of coastal amenities: new roads, bridges, buildings, streetlights, tennis courts, marinas, gazebos, and even spoiled food after hurricanes. The Geography of Risk will forever change the way you think about the coasts, from the clash between economic interests and nature, to the heated politics of regulators and developers.

The Geography of Risk

The Geography of Risk PDF Author: Gilbert M. Gaul
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374718520
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history—but who bears the brunt of these monster storms? Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert M. Gaul reveals in The Geography of Risk to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk. These federal incentives, Gaul argues, have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. We have become responsible for a shocking array of coastal amenities: new roads, bridges, buildings, streetlights, tennis courts, marinas, gazebos, and even spoiled food after hurricanes. The Geography of Risk will forever change the way you think about the coasts, from the clash between economic interests and nature, to the heated politics of regulators and developers.

Epic

Epic PDF Author: Herbert F. Tucker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199232997
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
Literary history has conventionally viewed Milton as the last real practitioner of the epic in English verse. Herbert Tucker's spirited book shows that the British tradition of epic poetry was unbroken from the French Revolution to World War I.

The Epic

The Epic PDF Author: Anthony Welch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192514326
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The epic is an ancient and universal form of artistic expression. Storytellers around the globe have long told of heroes who are touched by greatness and win lasting fame. These sprawling heroic tales convey the grandeur and pain of human life. They have been preserved for millennia in Sumerian clay tablets, Egyptian papyrus rolls, fragmentary manuscripts salvaged from European monasteries, oral traditions in Africa and Central Asia, and contemporary poetry and film. In this Very Short Introduction, Anthony Welch places the Western epic canon alongside traditional heroic poetry from Asia, Africa, and the Near East. Tracing shared themes and practices that unite the world's epic literature, the author asks what roles epic poets serve in society and how do they differ from other narrative forms. Welch argues that the epic confronts key aspects of the human condition - heroism, community, sacrifice, death - with special force and urgency. Ranging widely from Gilgamesh to Derek Walcott's Omeros, this book acquaints readers with some of the world's greatest literary works and asks why the epic holds such power over our imaginations. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Geography, Topography, Landscape

Geography, Topography, Landscape PDF Author: Marios Skempis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110315319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
By introducing a multifaceted approach to epic geography, the editors of the volume wish to provide a critical assessment of spatial perception, of its repercussions on shaping narrative as well as of its discursive traits and cultural contexts. Taking the genre-specific boundaries of Greco-Roman epic poetry as a case in point, a team of international scholars examines issues that lie at the heart of modern criticism on human geography. Modern and ancient discourse on space representations revolves around the nation-shaping force of geography, the gendered dynamics of landscapes, the topography of isolation and integration, the politics of imperialism, globalization, environmentalism as well as the power of language and narrative to turn space into place. One of the major aims of the volume is to show that the world of the Classics is not just the origin, but the essence of current debates on spatial constructions and reconstructions.

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales PDF Author: Juwen Zhang
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691225060
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A delightful collection of modern Chinese tales The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales brings together forty-two magical Chinese tales, most appearing for the first time in English. These stories have been carefully selected from more than a thousand originally published in the early twentieth century under the pseudonyms Lin Lan and Lady Lin Lan—previously unknown in the West, and now acclaimed as the Brothers Grimm of China. The birth of the tales began in 1924, when one author, Li Xiaofeng, published a set of literary stories under the Lin Lan pen name, an alias that would eventually be shared by an editorial team. Together, this group gathered fairy tales (tonghua) from rural regions across China. Combining traditional oral Chinese narratives with elements from the West, the selections in this collection represent different themes and genres—from folk legends to comic tales. Characters fall for fairies, experience predestined love, and have love/hate relationships with siblings. Garden snails and snakes transform into cooking girls, and dragon daughters construct houses. An introduction offers historical and social context for understanding the role that the Lin Lan stories played in modern China. Appendixes include information on tale types and biographies of the writers and contributors. The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales is a captivating testament to the power of storytelling.

The Epic World

The Epic World PDF Author: Pamela Lothspeich
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000912167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 661

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Book Description
Reconceptualizing the epic genre and opening it up to a world of storytelling, The Epic World makes a timely and bold intervention toward understanding the human propensity to aestheticize and normalize mass deployments of power and violence. The collection broadly considers three kinds of epic literature: conventional celebratory tales of conquest that glorify heroism, especially male heroism; anti-epics or stories of conquest from the perspectives of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the despised, and the murdered; and heroic stories utilized for imperialist or nationalist purposes. The Epic World illustrates global patterns of epic storytelling, such as the durability of stories tied to religious traditions and/or to peoples who have largely "stayed put"; the tendency to reimagine and retell stories in new ways over centuries; and the imbrication of epic storytelling and forms of colonialism and imperialism, especially those perpetuated and glorified by Euro-Americans over the past 500 years, resulting in unspeakable and immeasurable harms to humans, other living beings, and the planet Earth. The Epic World is a go-to volume for anyone interested in epic literature in a global framework. Engaging with powerful stories and ways of knowing beyond those of the predominantly white Global North, this field-shifting volume exposes the false premises of "Western civilization" and "Classics," and brings new questions and perspectives to epic studies.

James Joyce’s Judaic Other

James Joyce’s Judaic Other PDF Author: Marilyn Reizbaum
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804734738
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
How does recent scholarship on ethnicity and race speak to the Jewish dimension of James Joyce’s writing? What light has Joyce himself already cast on the complex question of their relationship? This book poses these questions in terms of models of the other drawn from psychoanalytic and cultural studies and from Jewish cultural studies, arguing that in Joyce the emblematic figure of otherness is "the Jew.” The work of Emmanuel Levinas, Sander Gilman, Gillian Rose, Homi Bhabha, among others, is brought to bear on the literature, by Jews and non-Jews alike, that has forged the representation of Jews and Judaism in this century. Joyce was familiar with this literature, like that of Theodor Herzl. Joyce sholarship has largely neglected even these sources, however, including Max Nordau, who contributed significantly to the philosophy of Zionism, and the literature on the "psychobiology” of race--so prominent in the fin de siècle--all of which circulates around and through Joyce’s depictions of Jews and Jewishness. Several Joyce scholars have shown the significance of the concept of the other for Joyce’s work and, more recently, have employed a variety of approaches from within contemporary deliberations of the ideology of race, gender, and nationality to illuminate its impact. The author combines these approaches to demonstrate how any modern characterization of otherness must be informed by historical representations of "the Jew” and, consequently, by the history of anti-Semitism. She does so through a thematics and poetics of Jewishness that together form a discourse and method for Joyce’s novel.

Illmatic the Epic

Illmatic the Epic PDF Author:
Publisher: Nick Yeretsian
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description


The Kushnameh

The Kushnameh PDF Author: Iranshah
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520385306
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The first English translation of a strange and unusual Persian epic, this action-packed tale of an evil, monstrous king explores questions of nature and nurture and brings the global middle ages to life. The great Persian epic known as the Kushnameh follows the entangled lives of Kush the Tusked––a monstrous antihero with tusks and ears like an elephant, descended from the evil emperor Zahhak––and Abtin, the exiled grandson of the last true Persian emperor. Abandoned at birth in the forests of China and raised by Abtin, Kush grows into a powerful and devious warrior. Kush and his foes scheme and wage war across a global stage reaching from Spain and Africa to China and Korea. Between epic battles and magnificent feasts are disturbing, sometimes realistic portrayals of abuse and oppression and philosophical speculation about nature and nurture and the origins of civilization. A fantastical adventure story stretching across the known world and a literary classic of unparalleled richness, this important work of medieval Persian literature is a valuable source for understanding the history of racism and constructions of race and the flows of lore and legend from the Central Asian Silk Road and the Sahara to the sea routes of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The Kushnameh is a treasure trove of Islamic and pre-Islamic Persian cultural history and a striking contemporary document of the “global middle ages,” now available to English-speaking readers for the first time.

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic PDF Author: Václav Paris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192638653
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Modernist epic is more interesting and more diverse than we have supposed. As a radical form of national fiction it appeared in many parts of the world in the early twentieth century. Reading a selection of works from the United States, England, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and Brazil, The Evolutions of Modernist Epic develops a comparative theory of this genre and its global development. That development was, it argues, bound up with new ideas about biological evolution. During the first decades of the twentieth century--a period known, in the history of evolutionary science, as 'the eclipse of Darwinism'--evolution's significance was questioned, rethought, and ultimately confined to the Neo-Darwinist discourse with which we are familiar today. Epic fiction participated in, and was shaped by, this shift. Drawing on queer forms of sexuality to cultivate anti-heroic and non-progressive modes of telling national stories, the genre contested reductive and reactionary forms of social Darwinism. The book describes how, in doing so, the genre asks us to revisit our assumptions about ethnolinguistics and organic nationalism. It also models how the history of evolutionary thought can provide a new basis for comparing diverse modernisms and their peculiar nativisms.