"When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.Tess's life becomes entangled with the manipulative Alec d'Urberville, the son of Mrs. d'Urberville. One night, Alec takes her...

In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. ...

Machiavelli needs to be looked at as he really was. Hence: Can Machiavelli, who makes the following observations, be Machiavellian as we understand the disparaging term? 1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people. 2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him. 3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their...

The Grimm brothers were early 19th-century writers best known for their fairy tales coming from Scandinavian, Icelandic and Germanic origins. By 1807 there was a growing interest in German folk tales. The Grimm brothers were academics who invited friends to their home and asked them to relate stories they had heard. They soon published their first collection of tales and from there several more volumes followed. Support us at https://manifoldmedia.net/donate

It's London, 1907. Journalist Edward Malone, rejected by the woman he loves because he is too prosaic, decides to go in search of adventure and fame to prove himself worthy of her. Soon after, he meets Professor George Challenger, a scientist who claims to have discovered a 'lost world' populated by pterodactyls and other prehistoric monsters. Support us at https://manifoldmedia.net/donate

In tropical latitudes, monsoons trigger regimes of strong seasonal rainfall over the continents. Over the West African region, the rainfall has shown a strong variability from interannual to decadal time scales. The atmospheric response to global sea surface temperatures is the leading cause of rainfall variability in the West African Sahel. This thesis explores changes in the leading ocean forcing of Sahelian rainfall interannual variability. It anaylzes the dynamical mechanisms at work t...

The current drug trafficking crisis between the US and Mexico is a perfect storm that has caused deaths, disappearances, and widespread fear of violence and insecurity in the border area between these two countries. Current US drug control policies with Mexico are based on a militarized system of border control and characterized by domestic gridlock over drug control and immigration reform. However, because drug trafficking and other underlying issues have both domestic and international c...

Gotham Express magazine founder and editor Jonathan Daly had it all. Talent, money, fame, charm, good looks, and success. But he also had a huge ego, tremendous arrogance, a volcanic temper, and the ability to alienate even those closest to him. So there is no shortage of suspects when Jonathan is brutally murdered. And no shortage of danger when Jonathan’s estranged spouse and widow, Ellen Foley, is threatened with the same fate. It’s up to former Gotham Express star inv...

The consumption of drugs and alcohol, and the pleasures and problems arising from this consumption, can be understood as embedded and constitutive elements of social, family, and recreational life. At the same time, they are key sites of intervention for a broad array of state and non-state actors focused on regulation, treatment, and recovery.This edited volume showcases current research on the complex social and cultural geographies of drugs and alcohol. Taking an avowedly critic...

This three part LNCS volumes constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computer-Aided Systems Theory, EUROCAST 2024, held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, during February 25 to March 1, 2024.The 104 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 150 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows :Part I : Systems Theory, Applications, Pioneers, and Landmarks; Theory and Applications of Met...

This volume constitutes the papers presented at the 15th International Conference on Computer Aided Systems Theory, EUROCAST 2015, held in February 2015 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.The total of 107 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The contributions are organized in topical sections on Systems Theory and Applications; Modelling Biological Systems; Intelligent Information Processing; Theory and Applications of Metaheuristic Alg...

The two-volume set LNCS 12013 and 12014 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Aided Systems Theory, EUROCAST 2019, held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, in February 2019.The 123 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 172 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections:Part I: systems theory and applications; pioneers and landmarks in the development of informatio...