Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
3,532
result(s) for
"quarantine books"
Sort by:
Rescue party : a graphic anthology of COVID lockdown
\"Over a hundred page-long comics from around the world, documenting humanity's retreat into COVID-19 lockdown and imagining our eventual, boisterous reemergence, from the founder of the Brooklyn Comic Arts festival and owner of beloved indie comic shop Desert Island. On April 1, 2020, the Instagram account of Desert Island, Brooklyn's celebrated alternative comics shop, put out a call. By then, the shop had shuttered indefinitely, and the world's major cities had locked down as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic took hold: \"We all need something positive to think about, and a lot of us have time on our hands,\" the post read. \"Who wants to make something?\" Hundreds of short comics from over fifty countries poured into Desert Island's inbox. Some came from notable cartoonists. Most, astonishingly, came from amateur artists just looking for an outlet to create in the midst of tragedy--for a chance to join the rescue party that leads us out of isolation. Collected here are one hundred fifty notable entries from the Rescue Party project, capturing the loneliness and the surprising comforts of early lockdown; the mania of its middle days as the mind begins to fray; and the branching paths of humanity's future, as we re-enter a world wracked with injustice. Bracing, beautiful, and conspicuously optimistic, Rescue Party is part graphic diary, part time capsule, and part field guide: a grassroots project that tells the collective story of lockdown from a chorus of global voices, and charts a course to a more just future.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Is it safe?
We are all just a little bit plastic. Traces of bisphenol A or BPA, a chemical used in plastics production, are widely detected in our bodies and environment. Is this chemical, and its presence in the human body, safe? What is meant by safety? Who defines it, and according to what information? Is It Safe? narrates how the meaning of the safety of industrial chemicals has been historically produced by breakthroughs in environmental health research, which in turn trigger contests among trade associations, lawyers, politicians, and citizen activists to set new regulatory standards. Drawing on archival research and extensive interviews, author Sarah Vogel explores the roots of the contemporary debate over the safety of BPA, and the concerns presented by its estrogen-like effects even at low doses. Ultimately, she contends that science alone cannot resolve the political and economic conflicts at play in the definition of safety. To strike a sustainable balance between the interests of commerce and public health requires recognition that powerful interests will always try to shape the criteria for defining safety, and that the agenda for environmental health research should be protected from capture by any single interest group.
eBook
Caesar in the USA
The figure of Julius Caesar has loomed large in the United States since its very beginning, admired and evoked as a gateway to knowledge of politics, war, and even national life. In this lively and perceptive book, the first to examine Caesar's place in modern American culture, Maria Wyke investigates how his use has intensified in periods of political crisis, when the occurrence of assassination, war, dictatorship, totalitarianism or empire appears to give him fresh relevance. Her fascinating discussion shows how—from the Latin classroom to the Shakespearean stage, from cinema, television and the comic book to the internet—Caesar is mobilized in the U.S. as a resource for acculturation into the American present, as a prediction of America’s future, or as a mode of commercial profit and great entertainment.
eBook
Redacted
At the height of state censorship in Japan, more indexes of banned books circulated, more essays on censorship were published, more works of illicit erotic and proletarian fiction were produced, and more passages were Xed out than at any other moment before or since. As censors construct and maintain their own archives, their acts of suppression yield another archive, filled with documents on, against, and in favor of censorship. The extant archive of the Japanese imperial censor (1923-1945) and the archive of the Occupation censor (1945-1952) stand as tangible reminders of this contradictory function of censors. As censors removed specific genres, topics, and words from circulation, some Japanese writers converted their offensive rants to innocuous fluff after successive encounters with the authorities. But, another coterie of editors, bibliographers, and writers responded to censorship by pushing back, using their encounters with suppression as incitement to rail against the authorities and to appeal to the prurient interests of their readers. This study examines these contradictory relationships between preservation, production, and redaction to shed light on the dark valley attributed to wartime culture and to cast a shadow on the supposedly bright, open space of free postwar discourse. (Winner of the 2010-2011 First Book Award of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University ).
eBook
The thrill makers
Well before Evel Knievel or Hollywood stuntmen, reality television or the X Games, North America had a long tradition of stunt performance, of men (and some women) who sought media attention and popular fame with public feats of daring. Many of these feats—jumping off bridges, climbing steeples and buildings, swimming incredible distances, or doing tricks with wild animals—had their basis in the manual trades or in older entertainments like the circus. In The Thrill Makers, Jacob Smith shows how turn-of-the-century bridge jumpers, human flies, lion tamers, and stunt pilots first drew crowds to their spectacular displays of death-defying action before becoming a crucial, yet often invisible, component of Hollywood film stardom. Smith explains how these working-class stunt performers helped shape definitions of American manhood, and pioneered a form of modern media celebrity that now occupies an increasingly prominent place in our contemporary popular culture.
eBook
Herbert Eugene Bolton
This definitive biography offers a new critical assessment of the life, works, and ideas of Herbert E. Bolton (1870–1953), a leading historian of the American West, Mexico, and Latin America. Bolton, a famous pupil of Frederick Jackson Turner, formulated a concept—the borderlands—that is a foundation of historical studies today. His research took him not only to the archives and libraries of Mexico but out on the trails blazed by Spanish soldiers and missionaries during the colonial era. Bolton helped establish the reputation of the University of California and the Bancroft Library in the eyes of the world and was influential among historians during his lifetime, but interest in his ideas waned after his death. Now, more than a century after Bolton began to investigate the Mexican archives, Albert L. Hurtado explores his life against the backdrop of the cultural and political controversies of his day.
eBook
Usable social science
This volume is a one-of-a-kind contribution to applied social science and the product of a long collaboration between an established, interdisciplinary sociologist and a successful banking executive. Together, Neil Smelser and John Reed use a straightforward approach to presenting substantive social science knowledge and indicate its relevance and applicability to decision-making, problem-solving and policy-making. Among the areas presented are space-and-time coordinates of social life; cognition and bias; group and network effects; the role of sanctions; organizational dynamics; and macro-changes associated with economic development. Finally, the authors look at the big picture of why society at large demands and needs social-science knowledge, and how the academy actually supplies relevant knowledge.
eBook
Into the land of bones
The so-called first war of the twenty-first century actually began more than 2,300 years ago when Alexander the Great led his army into what is now a sprawling ruin in northern Afghanistan. Frank L. Holt vividly recounts Alexander's invasion of ancient Bactria, situating in a broader historical perspective America's war in Afghanistan.
eBook
Anyuan
How do we explain the surprising trajectory of the Chinese Communist revolution? Why has it taken such a different route from its Russian prototype? An answer, Elizabeth Perry suggests, lies in the Chinese Communists' creative development and deployment of cultural resources – during their revolutionary rise to power and afterwards. Skillful \"cultural positioning\" and \"cultural patronage,\" on the part of Mao Zedong, his comrades and successors, helped to construct a polity in which a once alien Communist system came to be accepted as familiarly \"Chinese.\" Perry traces this process through a case study of the Anyuan coal mine, a place where Mao and other early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party mobilized an influential labor movement at the beginning of their revolution, and whose history later became a touchstone of \"political correctness\" in the People's Republic of China. Once known as \"China's Little Moscow,\" Anyuan came over time to symbolize a distinctively Chinese revolutionary tradition. Yet the meanings of that tradition remain highly contested, as contemporary Chinese debate their revolutionary past in search of a new political future.
eBook
Modeling human activity-related spread of the spotted lanternfly
The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) has recently spread from its native range to several other countries and forecasts predict that it may become a global invasive pest. In particular, since its confirmed presence in the United States in 2014 it has established itself as a major invasive pest in the Mid-Atlantic region where it is damaging both naturally occurring and commercially important farmed plants. Quarantine zones have been introduced to contain the infestation, but the spread to new areas continues. At present the pathways and drivers of spread are not well-understood. In particular, several human activity related factors have been proposed to contribute to the spread; however, which features of the current spread can be attributed to these factors remains unclear. Here we collect county level data on infestation status and four specific human activity related factors and use statistical methods to determine whether there is evidence for an association between the factors and infestation. Then we construct a network model based on the factors found to be associated with infestation and use it to simulate local spread. We find that the model reproduces key features of the spread 2014 to 2021. In particular, the growth of the main infestation region and the opening of spread corridors in the westward and southwestern directions is consistent with data and the model accurately forecasts the correct infestation status at the county level in 2021 with 81% accuracy. We then use the model to forecast the spread up to 2025 in a larger region. Given that this model is based on a few human activity related factors that can be targeted, it may prove useful to incorporate it into more elaborate predictive forecasting models and in informing management efforts focused on interstate highway transport and garden centers in the US and potentially for current and future invasions elsewhere globally.
Journal Article