Turning good ideas into marketable software quickly is now a business imperative for every enterprise. Delivering software features faster and with high quality is the first critical step. The subsequent step is to rapidly collect feedback from users to guide the next set of ideas for further improvements. Critical software development objectives such as these set the stage for The IT Manager’s Guide to Continuous Delivery: Delivering Software in Days, Instead of Months. The book champions...

How chartered company-states spearheaded European expansion and helped create the world’s first genuinely global orderFrom Spanish conquistadors to British colonialists, the prevailing story of European empire-building has focused on the rival ambitions of competing states. But as Outsourcing Empire shows, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, company-states—not sovereign states—drove European expansion, building the world’s first genuinely inte...

Eating is never a solitary act; each meal connects us profoundly to food chains, precious resources, human effort, a global ecology and graced provision. How does the food we eat affect the planet? What is a biblical response to environmental degradation, and how can we eat in a way that honours God? This book addresses the high environmental and social costs of modern food systems and provides theological reflections on the interconnected relationships between God, humanity and the non-hu...

An interfaith collection of prayers, blessings, and poems offering comfort and hope to the healthcare workers that give so much.The COVID-19 pandemic has left few of us unaffected, but our healthcare workers have borne the brunt of its impact. Chaplains and clergy across all lines of faith have ministered to those caregivers through prayers and blessings.This curated collection of interfaith prayers, blessings, and poems was written by those who minister to...

Few towns equalled Colchester in their role in the Great War. In this expert account, Colchester historian Andrew Phillips records four of the most dramatic years in the towns history.As Headquarters of Eastern Region, Colchesters garrison supplied many of the men who prevented the early defeat of France. The town then became a training area for at least 100,000 recruits. While training, guns on the Western Front could often be heard.At times Colchesters civilian population of 40,000 was e...

This ancient Gnostic text can be a companion for your own spiritual quest.The Gospel of Philip is one of the most exciting and accessible of the Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. The source of Dan Brown’s intriguing speculations about Mary Magdalene in his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, the Gospel of Philip draws on ancient imagery—the natural world, the relationships between women, men and family, the ancient distinctions between lord and...

The inspiration and insight of these Gnostic writings can become a companion on your own spiritual journey.Just what is a soul, exactly? Where did the idea come from? How do we experience our souls? Two ancient Gnostic texts—The Exegesis on the Soul and The Hymn of the Pearl, both presented here in all-new translations—hold important clues to the development of the soul as a concept and reveal inspiring ways your own soul can remember and return t...

Jesus’s words of wisdom can become acompanion on your own spiritual journey.The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not the only record we have of the words spoken by Jesus. Designed to challenge, enlighten and inspire, they are also quoted in a wide variety of other ancient sources—including the Qur’an, writings by early Christian church fathers, and fragments of lost gospels only recently discovered. Some of these sayings are familiar; many are sur...

How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the...

Jesuss words of wisdom can become a companion onyour own spiritual journey.The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not the only record we have of the words spoken by Jesus. Designed to challenge, enlighten and inspire, they are also quoted in a wide variety of other ancient sourcesincluding the Quran, writings by early Christian church fathers, and fragments of lost gospels only recently discovered. Some of these sayings are familiar; many are surprising; all expand our conventional u...

Understanding how cultural diversity relates to international order is an urgent contemporary challenge. Building on ideas first advanced in Reus-Smit's On Cultural Diversity (2018), this groundbreaking book advances a new framework for understanding the nexus between culture and order in world politics. Through a pioneering interdisciplinary collaboration between leading historians, international lawyers, sociologists and international relations scholars, it argues that cultural diversity...

International relations scholars typically expect political communities to resemble one another the more they are exposed to pressures of war, economic competition and the spread of hegemonic legitimacy standards. However, historically it is heterogeneity, not homogeneity, that has most often defined international systems. Examining the Indian Ocean region - the centre of early modern globalization - Andrew Phillips and J. C. Sharman explain how diverse international systems can emerge and...