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"Harris, William W., author"
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Quicksilver War : Syria, Iraq and the Spiral of Conflict
\"'Quicksilver war' is a panoramic political history of the wars that coursed through Syria and Iraq in the wake of the 'Arab Spring' and eventually merged to become a regional catastrophe: a kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting conflict involving many different parties and phases. William Harris distils the highly complex dynamics behind the conflict, starting with the brutalising Ba'athist regimes in Damascus and Baghdad. He charts the malignant consequences of incompetent US occupation of Iraq and Bashar al-Assad's self-righteous mismanagement of Syria, through the implosion of Syria, and the emergence of eastern and western theatres of war focused respectively on future control of Syria and the challenge of ISIS. Beyond the immediate arena of conflict, geopolitical riptides have also been set in motion, including Turkey's embroilment in the war and the shifting circumstances of the Kurds. This history addresses urgent questions for our time.\"--Front jacket flap.
Book
Lebanon
The book explores the affairs of Mount Lebanon and its surrounds through fourteen centuries, beginning with the emergence of its Christian, Muslim and Islamic-derived communities between the sixth and eleventh centuries. Against this backdrop, it interprets the modern republic of Lebanon from Ottoman antecedents to present day crises.
eBook
Slouching towards Gaytheism
Slouching towards Gaytheism brings together two intellectual traditions—the New Atheism and queer theory—and moves beyond them to offer a new voice for gay Americans and atheists alike. Examining the continued vehemence of homophobia in cultural and political debate regarding queer equality, this unabashed polemic insists that the needs met by religion might be met—more safely and less toxically—by forms of community that do not harass and malign gay and lesbian Americans or impede collective social progress. W. C. Harris argues that compromises with traditional religion, no matter how enlightened or well intentioned, will ultimately leave heteronormativity alive and well. He explores a range of recent movements, such as Dan Savage's \"It Gets Better\" project, reparative \"ex-gay\" therapy, Christian purity culture, and attempts by liberal Christians to reconcile religion with homosexuality, and shows how these proposed solutions are either inadequate or positively dangerous. According to the author, the time has come for \"gaytheism\": leaving religion behind in order to preserve queer dignity, rights, and lives.
eBook
E Pluribus Unum
\"Out of many, one.\" But how do the many become one without sacrificing difference or autonomy? This problem was critical to both identity formation and state formation in late 18th- and 19th-century America. The premise of this book is that American writers of the time came to view the resolution of this central philosophical problem as no longer the exclusive province of legislative or judicial documents but capable of being addressed by literary texts as well.The project ofE Pluribus Unumis twofold. Its first and underlying concern is the general philosophic problem of the one and the many as it came to be understood at the time. W. C. Harris supplies a detailed account of the genealogy of the concept, exploring both its applications and its paradoxes as a basis for state and identity formation.Harris then considers the perilous integration of the one and the many as a motive in the major literary accomplishments of 19th-century U.S. writers. Drawing upon critical as well as historical resources and upon contexts as diverse as cosmology, epistemology, poetics, politics, and Bible translation, he discusses attempts by Poe, Whitman, Melville, and William James to resolve the problems of social construction caused by the paradox of e pluribus unum by writing literary and philosophical texts that supplement the nation's political founding documents.Poe (Eureka), Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Melville (Billy Budd), and William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience) provide their own distinct, sometimes contradictory resolutions to the conflicting demands of diversity and unity, equality and hierarchy. Each of these texts understands literary and philosophical writing as having the potential to transform-conceptually or actually-the construction of social order.This work will be of great interest to literary and constitutional scholars.
eBook
The Ancient Mediterranean Environment between Science and History
The product of a collaboration between scientists, historians and archaeologists, this book breaks new ground in the study of the long-term interaction between environmental factors, including climate, and human beings.
eBook
Moses Finley and Politics
Marking the centenary of the birth of M.I. Finley, the famous historian of the ancient world and a refugee from McCarthyism, a combined group of ancient and American historians here set out to analyse his political and intellectual evolution.
eBook
Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
From the Iliad to Aristophanes, from the gospel of Matthew to Augustine, Greek and Latin texts are constellated with descriptive images of dreams. This cultural history of dreams in antiquity draws on both contemporary post-Freudian science and careful critiques of the ancient texts. Harris takes an elusive subject and writes about it with rigor and precision, reminding us of specificities, contexts, and changing attitudes through history.
eBook
Ancient Alexandria Between Egypt and Greece
This volume approaches the history of the great city of Alexandria from a variety of directions: its demography, the interaction between Greek and Egyptian and between Jews and Greeks, the nature of its civil institutions and social relations, and its religious, and intellectual history.
eBook
Military Quantitative Physiology
This book is written for military clinicians, and medical researchers who may be reasonably expected to explain some of the background, as well as those who will extend the research. Many people will find this book interesting because it details research on topics that affect everyone in everyday life, including how we sleep, eat, and exercise, as well as more specific topics such as the effects of caffeine on performance, risks associated with laser pointers, and even Army blast models that have influenced safety thresholds for car airbag deployments.
eBook