An illuminating new history of World War II–era Smolensk, a region at the crossroads of the two great dictatorships of the twentieth century.During the Cold War, the Smolensk Archive held the only collection of Communist Party documents available to Western scholars, becoming the foundation for generations of scholarship on Soviet history. Crucibles of Power returns to the Smolensk Region with fresh eyes and fresh sources. Prizewinning historian Michael Da...

Crossing Borders deconstructs contemporary theories of Soviet history from the revolution through the Stalin period, and offers new interpretations based on a transnational perspective. To Michael David-Fox, Soviet history was shaped by interactions across its borders. By reexamining conceptions of modernity, ideology, and cultural transformation, he challenges the polarizing camps of Soviet exceptionalism and shared modernity and instead strives for a theoretical and empirical mi...

During the 1920s and 1930s thousands of European and American writers, professionals, scientists, artists, and intellectuals made a pilgrimage to experience the "Soviet experiment" for themselves. Showcasing the Great Experiment explores the reception of these intellectuals and fellow-travelers and their cross-cultural and trans-ideological encounters in order to analyze Soviet attitudes towards the West. Many of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers, including The...

Prizewinning historian Michael David-Fox traces the experiences of Smolensk residents between the interwar years and the end of World War II, a period during which the city and region passed from Stalinist rule to Nazi occupation and back. The result is a revelatory examination of choice and power under dueling forms of murderous totalitarianism.Exploring the life-and-death decisions of a fascinating cast of characters, David-Fox shows how deeply the Stalinist and Nazi regimes reli...

Approaching the early decades of the “Iron Curtain” with new questions and perspectives, this important book examines the political and cultural implications of the communists’ international initiatives. Building on recent scholarship and working from new archival sources, the seven contributors to this volume study various effects of international outreach—personal, technological, and cultural—on the population and politics of the Soviet bloc. Several authors analyze lesser-known complica...

Conversations on sustainability, renewable energy, and other pressing issues: "A level of intellectual discussion all too absent in our national discourse." — BooklistA co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, named one of the most influential women of the twentieth century by the Smithsonian Institute, Helen Caldicott presents a valuable collection of her interviews with prominent figures and environmentalists—in which she:*Scrutinizes ...

Using archival materials never previously accessible to Western scholars, Michael David-Fox analyzes Bolshevik Party educational and research initiatives in higher learning after 1917. His fresh consideration of the era of the New Economic Policy and cultural politics after the Revolution explains how new communist institutions rose to parallel and rival conventional higher learning from the Academy of Sciences to the universities. Beginning with the creation of the first ...

The writers behind New Scientist explore the baffling concept of nothingness from the fringes of the universe to our minds' inner workings.It turns out that nothing is as curious or as enlightening as nothingness itself. What is nothing? Where can it be found? The writers of the world's top-selling science magazine investigate—from the big bang, dark energy, and the void, to superconductors, vestigial organs, hypnosis, and the placebo effect. And they disco...

This ground-breaking book explores the theoretical, clinical and training application of integrating mindfulness with all of the arts therapies, and includes cutting-edge contributions from neuroscience. Written by pioneers and leaders in the arts therapies and psychology fields, the book includes 6 sections that examine mindfulness and the arts therapies from different perspectives: 1) the history and roots of mindfulness in relation to spirituality, psychotherapy and the arts therapies; ...

This collection, edited by Jim A. Kuypers, analyzes genres of public communication to examine how the pandemic has impacted specific areas of scholarship within the communication discipline. Contributors begin each chapter by acknowledging the parameters of their sub-discipline and then discussing key elements being affected by the pandemic and pandemic responses. Viewing the pandemic through the eyes of their sub-disciplines, contributors offer unique insights on the effects of the pandem...

Whether you’re in the mood for a Chicago-style deep dish of darkness, or prefer a New York wide slice of thin-crusted carnage, or if you just have a hankering for the cheap, cheesy charms of cardboard-crusted, delivered-to-your-door devilry; we have just the slice for you.Bring your most monstrous of appetites, because we’re serving suspense and horrors both chillingly cosmic and morbidly mundane from acclaimed horror authors such as Brian Evenson, Jessica McHugh, and Cody Goodfell...

This anthology collects all 25 original stories from the fourth year of Diabolical Plots, an online magazine of science fiction and fantasy. Manuals for memory tourism, a secret order of monks that tries to use a scriptural technicality to put off the end of the world indefinitely, a friendly nonbinary tank at a science fiction convention, a questionable academic paper published at a university of magic, living fossils awakened when the coal formed of them burns. The stories vary from humo...