Showing results by narrator "Doug McDonald" in All Categories

Vindicta picks up where Omega ended, pitting General Sanderson's surviving Black Flagged operatives, backed by a motley collection of allies, against a monstrous plot to reshape America in the warped image of a recently elected national populist administration—True America.

We live in an age of the mobile image. This recent kinetic revolution of the image has enormous consequences not only for the way we think about contemporary art and aesthetics but also for art history as well. Responding to this historical moment, Theory of the Image offers a fresh new theory and history of art from the perspective of this epoch-defining mobility. The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion.

More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; yet, we lack a unifying theory which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time.

The United States is addicted to crude oil. In this book, Andrew Price-Smith argues that this addiction has distorted the conduct of American foreign policy in profound and malign ways, resulting in interventionism, exploitation, and other illiberal behaviors that hide behind a facade of liberal internationalism. The symbiotic relationship between the state and the oil industry has produced deviations from rational foreign energy policy, including interventions in Iraq and elsewhere.

Do you wish your parents had been more nurturing and supportive? Are you wondering if you’ll ever find your perfect soul mate and dream boss? No one gets to sail through life free of turbulence. What separates people who shake it off, bounce back, and stay positive from the bitter, never satisfied, and defeated? The Gifts of Acceptance offers insights, intentions, and strategies for practicing acceptance of family, coworkers, friends, and foes; of life’s adversities; and, perhaps toughest of all, of yourself.

Should we draw an analogy between Shakespeare’s tyrants—Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and King Lear—and Donald Trump? In Shakespeare and Trump, Jeffrey Wilson applies literary criticism to real life, examining plot, character, villainy, soliloquy, tragedy, myth, and metaphor to identify the formal features of the Trump phenomenon, and its hidden causes, structure, and meanings.

They stick out. They change the conversation. They challenge the traditional narrative. They are outcasts - isolated, different, misunderstood. Being normal is nice. But being an outcast is a real part of the human experience. Have you have ever had the feeling of being alone in some way, of being on the outside looking in? If so, then the characters in these short stories will move you - sometimes by their depravity, sometimes by their sorrow...and sometimes by their joy.

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment.

This collection of 29 short stories, poems, and essays will take your breath away, break your heart, and even inspire transformation in your life. Because there’s no time like the present to break out of your shell, spread your wings, and embrace your own metamorphosis.

Dangerous Theatre records the activities of the various organizations of the Federal Theatre Project involved with fostering the writing and production of new plays during the FTP's existence (1935-39). It presents a comprehensive and thorough picture of how playwrights actually worked and how their work was received by general audiences and critics.

Timothy R. White begins his history of the theater industry with the dispersed pre-Broadway era, when components such as costumes, lights, and scenery were built and stored nationwide. Subsequently, the majority of backstage operations and storage were consolidated in New York City during what is now known as the golden age of musical theater. Toward the latter half of the 20th century, decentralization and deindustrialization brought the emergence of nationally distributed regional theaters and performing arts centers.

The Kingdom of Kush and the ancient Nubian civilization, in general, are important not only for their achievements, but also for what these achievements represent in the abstract. The existence of such civilizations challenges many traditional, Eurocentric views of the world and its history. Of course, ancient Egypt is impressive enough on its own, but Nubia is even further south and further away from European influence and, in that sense, more African.

George P. McClelland, a member of the 155th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Civil War, witnessed some of the war’s most pivotal battles during his two and a half years of Union service. Throughout his time at war, McClelland wrote to his family, keeping them abreast of his whereabouts and aware of the harrowing experiences he endured in battle. McClelland’s letters offer fresh insights into camp life, battlefield conditions, perceptions of key leaders, and the mindset of a young man who faced the prospect of death nearly every day of his service.

City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600's to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city - from the tycoons and the politicians, to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the 21st century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past.

Every factory eventually runs into choppy waters and turbulence. Systems and processes that used to work suddenly struggle, and customer complaints pile up out of nowhere. It’s not for a lack of effort or desire, but something goes wrong with the old formula for running the plant. What can you do to navigate the trouble and help your manufacturing business get back on the right track? In How to Fix a Factory, Rob Tracy shows there’s always a way to fix the problem, once you know what the problem is.

In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America’s so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university - in states from California to Maine - Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation’s founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good?

Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens now explores that era through the lens of Harrison’s career, providing a new synthesis of his role in the political development of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian policy in the Old Northwest.

A hundred and fifty years ago, naval warfare entered a new phase with the introduction of ironclad vessels. On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor, prototype of this new class of warships, fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia, after the Virginia had ravaged the Union fleet blockading the James River, sinking larger, seemingly more powerful wooden warships in a potent demonstration of the power of an armored, heavily-gunned, steam-powered warship.

The first oceangoing yacht ever built in America, Cleopatra’s Barge, endured many incarnations over her eight-year life, from Mediterranean pleasure cruiser to a Hawaiian king’s personal yacht. The famed ship, at times also a Christian missionary transport, pirate ship, getaway vehicle, instrument of diplomacy, and racing yacht, wrecked on a reef in Hanalei Bay on April 6, 1824. Shipwrecked in Paradise tells the story of the ship’s life in Hawaii, from her 1820 sale to Liholiho to her discovery and excavation.

Borders can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place.