Chapters presented in this volume identify the commonalities of water management in societies across a wide range of ecological and cli-mate zones. This constructs a solid step towards the development of effective solutions to some acute water-related problems. A constant theme across time is the need for water, to fulfil which technologies have change…
In 221 B.C. the First Emperor of Qin unified what would become the heart of a Chinese empire whose major features would endure for two millennia. In the first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, Lewis highlights the key challenges facing the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity.
This volume explores the concept of humour and its relationship with human behaviour. The interdisciplinary essays in this book cover a wide range of time, from the sixteenth century to the present day. They delve into various cultural contexts, challenging social norms and prompting readers to reflect on the ethical implications of humour. The collection highlights the varied metaphors of hero…
Learn Old English (Anglo-Saxon) with this best-selling course from Teach Yourself - the No. 1 brand in language learning. Equally suited to general reader, historian and student of literature, this new edition teaches vocabulary and grammar through original texts, with audio support, traces the roots of modern English words, and explores the Anglo-Saxon cultural context through poems, prose and…
The only up-to-date frequency dictionary of Spanish currently available, this is an invaluable tool for all learners of Spanish that provides a list of the 5,000 most commonly used words in the language. Based on a twenty million word corpus evenly divided between spoken, fiction and non-fiction texts from both Spain and Latin America, the Dictionary provides a detailed frequency-based list,…
In his introduction to Irish Drama and Theatre since 1950 (2019), Patrick Lonergan outlines the genealogy of the #WakingTheFeminists movement, which began as a contestation of how the Abbey’s 2016 Waking the Nation programme marginalised female playwrights and directors, but quickly expanded to raise awareness about the precarious position of women in …
This book argues that Plato’s Republic must be understood as developing out of a 5th Century sophistic debate. In Part One the author presents a new analysis of the sophists and their extant texts addressing the important topics of justice and its value. This part shows that already in the 5th Century there was a robust debate about whether the just or unjust life was better for the self-inte…
Though the guitar as we know it is only about a century and a half old, its roots as a plucked stringed instrument go back deep into history. Many ancient folk instruments have followed the basic strings-stretched-overfretboard-and-played-with-fingers design for thousands of years, and the guitar is in some ways the culmination of that legacy. It seems humans have always had something like the …
Depth of focus describes the image location range where the image is clear when focused by an optical system. Outside this range, the image will be significantly blurry. However, within this few millimeter range, the image appears quite sharp. When working with a multiple lens system, it is essential to first calculate the position of the image formed by the first lens. Only after locating the …
Albers advanced the idea that colour is continually deceptive, and that the exact same colour can evoke innumerable responses depending on how it is seen against other colours. He argued against ‘mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of colour harmony’, because of the subjective nature of perception – it is almost impossible to see a colour by itself and not interacting …