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In a first-season episode of The Sopranos, Tony Soprano is once again in conflict with his uncle Carrado "Junior" Soprano. Tony is in no mood for conciliation, but neither is Junior, who warns his nephew not to return unless he is armed: "Come heavy, " he insists, "or not at all." As a work of popular culture, a ground-breaking television series, and a cultural phenomenon, The Sopranos always "comes heavy, " not just with weaponry but with sig...

Taking inspiration from the heated discussions that preceded the birth of federal government in the United States, Larry Siedentop investigates what we can reasonably expect and what we have to fear from a united Europe. Despite the profound hostility between skeptics and proponents of a united Europe, the outlines of serious public debate have barely been sketched. While skeptics talk of national sovereignty and invoke the spirit of wartime r...

How much of sexual diversity is the result of nature versus nurture? Prevailing theories today lean heavily toward nature. Now a leading researcher in neuroscience and animal behavior shows how, in recent history, scientific claims about sex and gender differences have reflected the culture of the time. Although the conviction that genetics can explain everything is now widespread, the author demonstrates the interaction of culture and environ...

What does it mean to be modern in Iran today? Can one properly speak of modernity in relation to what many consider to be the paradigmatic Islamic state? Since its 1979 revolution seized the world's attention, the Islamic Republic of Iran has remained a subject of misunderstanding, passion, and polemic, making these questions difficult to answer -- or even to ask. This book -- a study of Iran's political culture in the broadest and deepest sen...

Though best known for his novels, Yukio Mishima published more than sixty plays, almost all of which were produced during his lifetime. Among them are kabuki plays and others inspired by No dramas -- two types used in classical Japanese theater. Of play-writing Mishima once observed, "I started writing dramas just as water flows toward a lower place. In me, the topography of dramas seems to be situated far below that of novels. It seems to be ...

Of all the major Hollywood stars, Katharine Hepburn was the least conventional, conforming to none of the stereotypes of female superstardom. She was not an exotic outsider in Hollywood like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, nor was she a victim of the studios like Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe, and she was certainly not a creature of the system like Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. Instead, she always appeared intelligent, willful and independe...

What is "New Hollywood"? The "art" cinema of the Hollywood "Renaissance" or the corporate controlled blockbuster? The introverted world of Travis Bickle or the action heroics of Indiana Jones, Buzz Lightyear, and Maximus the Gladiator? Innovative departures from the "classical" Hollywood style or superficial glitz, special effects, and borrowings from MTV? Wholesale change or important continuities with Hollywood's past? The answer suggested b...

Two of Virginia Woolf's most influential works, To the Lighthouse and The Waves reveal the quintessence of her experimentation with narrative technique in depicting the passage of time and the nature of human consciousness. This guide includes an outline of the critical reception of Woolf's work -- placing these two texts in the context of her oeuvre -- as well as extracts from her own writing on these novels and an exploration of the birth of...

Why do some people remain alert and vigorous at an age when others are declining mentally and physically? Does their apparent advantage have a biological basis, and, if so, could this success be transferred to others predisposed to age more quickly? If this is achievable, does brain aging then become the last obstacle to an extension of our useful life span? These are just some of the questions answered in this fascinating book by Lawrence Wha...

In the radically changed and highly charged political atmosphere that has overtaken the United States -- and to varying degrees the rest of the world -- since September 11, 2001, the notion that cultures can harmoniously and productively coexist has come to seem like little more than a quaint fiction. In this time of heightened animosity and aggression, have humanistic values and democratic principles become irrelevant? Are they merely utopian...

This book presents the basic truths of our faith in lively everyday language, interwoven with stories and anecdotes of the practice of Christian living in today's world. Preachers and teachers may find it helpful to have basic Christian truths presented in unclouded language. The many illustrations and anecdotes may prove helpful in preparing homilies or religion classes.

New York is not America, François Weil writes, "but what America promises, perhaps its greatest promise." It may be hard to believe, then, that the quintessential symbol of American enterprise and energy was once quite low in the political and social hierarchy. Weil takes on the New York of myth and offers a compelling chronicle of how it actually developed into a global city -- what some have called the capital of the twenty-first century. He...

As perhaps never before in its extraordinary history, New York has captured the American imagination. This major anthology brings together not only the best literary writing about New York -- from O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Paul Auster, and James Baldwin, among many others -- but also the most revealing essays by politicians, philosophers, city planners, social critics, visitors, immigrants, journalists, a...

For two centuries, according to Alain Dieckhoff, the Jews were remarkable experimenters. Reacting to the challenge of modernity, Jews followed two, often torturously contradictory paths -- the path of assimilation (bourgeois or socialist) and that of nationalism.This book provides a comprehensive overview of the various ideologies that have constituted Zionism, ranging from Marxist-Zionism to National Religious Zionism to that of the far-right...

The major player in the OPEC international oil industry cartel, Saudi Arabia is also the homeland of the Prophet Muhammad and the center of the Muslim world with the most sacred Islamic sites located in and around the cities of Mecca and Madina. To the non-Saudi, the kingdom appears remarkably calm and stable, at least by the standards of the Middle East. But the rise of a new type of international terrorism, personified by exiled Saudi Osama ...

Asserting that a history of shopping was, until recently, a history of women, Rachel Bowlby trains her eye on the evolution of the modern shopper. She uses a compelling blend of history, literary analysis, and cultural criticism to explore the rise of department stores and supermarkets of the United States, France, and Great Britain.Bowlby recalls the fascinating early days of these institutions. In the mid-nineteenth century, when department ...

If you're not a tree lover now, this pocket-sized gem -- dedicated to the idea that every species of tree has a story and every individual tree has a history -- will make you one. Produced in consultation with the City's Parks and Recreation department and the New York Tree Trust, this book is a reference to the stories of New York City's trees, complete with photographs, tree silhouettes, leaf and fruit morphologies, and charming and informat...

Igor Aleksander heads a major British team that has applied engineering principles to the understanding of the human brain and has built several pioneering machines, culminating in MAGNUS, which he calls a machine with imagination. When he asks it (in words) to produce an image of a banana that is blue with red spots, the image appears on the screen in seconds. The idea of such an apparently imaginative, even conscious machine seems heretical ...

Inside Al Qaeda examines the leadership, ideology, structure, strategies, and tactics of the most violent politico-religious organization the world has ever seen. The definitive work on Al Qaeda, this book is based on five years of research, including extensive interviews with its members, field research in Al Qaeda-supported conflict zones in Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and monitoring Al Qaeda infiltration of diaspo...

In day-to-day-life, people often act as if they know exactly what they mean by boys and girls, mamas and papas, masculine and feminine, butch and femme, stud and fluff. But what happens to gender in same-sex relationships? Can different women be differently gendered? If you accept that gender is as much about race and class and nation as it is about sexuality, what happens to commonly accepted "truths" about gender and identity? Render Me, Gen...