Basic books feb 2022 (3 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - An 'incredibly timely' global history journeys from the Ukrainian steppe to the American prairie to showhow grain built and toppled the world's largest empires (Financial Times). To understand the rise and fall of empires, we must follow the paths traveled by grainalong rivers, between ports, and across seas. In Oceans of Grain, historian Scott Reynolds Nelson reveals how the struggle to dominate these routes transformed the balance of world power. Early in the nineteenth century, imperial Russia fed much of Europe through the booming port of Odessa, on the Black Sea in Ukraine. But following the US Civil War, tons of American wheat began to flood across the Atlantic, and food prices plummeted. This cheap foreign grain spurred the rise of Germany and Italy, the decline of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, and the European scramble for empire. It was a crucial factor in the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. A powerful new interpretation, Oceans of Grain shows that amid the great powers' rivalries, there was no greater power than control of grain.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - "The best history of free speech ever written and the best defense of free speech ever made." P.J. O'RourkeHailed as the "first freedom," free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech's many defendersfrom the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Razi, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activistsMchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes.Meticulously researched and deeply humane, Free Speech demonstrates how much we have gained from this principleand how much we stand to lose without it.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Forget the language instinctthis is the story of how we make up language as wegoLanguage is?perhaps humanity's?most astonishing?capacityand one that remains poorly understood. InThe Language Game,cognitivescientistsMortenH.Christiansenand Nick Chatershowus where generations of scientistsseekingthe rules oflanguagegot it wrong. Language isn't about hardwiredgrammarsbut about near-total freedom, something like a game of charades, with the only requirement being a desire tounderstand andbe understood.From this new vantagepoint,Christiansen and Chater?find compellingsolutions tomajormysterieslikethe origins of languagesandhow language learning is possible,and to long-running debatessuch as whetherhaving two words for "blue" changes what we see.?In the end,they showthatthe only realconstrainton communicationisourimagination.…