The slowing down of international movement caused by the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic clearly reveals the ethical dilemma travel represents. Research shows that travel has demonstrable positive effects on human beings: It brings new per-spectives and knowledge, and gives a sense of freedom and pleasure that enhances the subjective quality of life and well-being.1 However, the sheer volume of tra…
Compiler correctness is an old idea [37,40,41] that has seen a significant revival in re-cent times. This new wave was started by the creation of the CompCert verified C com-piler [33] and continued by the proposal of many significant extensions and variants ofCompCert [8,9,12,23,29,30,42,52,56,57,61] and the success of many other mile-stone compiler verification projects, including Vellvm [64]…
In Marx: A Very Short Introdution, Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx's thought, enabling us to grasp Marx's views as a whole. He sees him as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist. In plain English, he explains alienation, historical materialism, the economic theory of Capital, and Marx's ideas of commun…
The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal--everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. Written by Peter Atkins, one of the world's leading authorities on thermodynamics, this powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible lan…
After surviving the fifth century fall of the Western European Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire flourished as one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe for a thousand years. In this Very Short Introduction Peter Sarris introduces the reader to the unique fusion of Roman political culture, Greek intellectual tradition and Christian faith that took place in t…
Written in simple and accessible language, this nontechnical introduction to cosmology, or the creation and development of the universe, explains the discipline, covers its history, details the latest developments, and explains what is known, what is believed, and what is purely speculative. In addition, the author discusses the development of the Big Bang theory, and more speculative modern is…
Hegel is regarded as one of the most influential figures on modern political and intellectual development. After painting Hegel's life and times in broad strokes, Peter Singer goes on to tackle some of the more challenging aspects of Hegel's philosophy. Offering a broad discussion of Hegel's ideas and an account of his major works, Singer explains what have often been considered abstruse and ob…
Global food demand is rising, and serious questions remain about whether supply can increase sustainably (FAO 2018). Land-based expansion is possible but may exacerbate cli-mate change and biodiversity loss, and compromise the delivery of other ecosystem services (Olsen 2011; Foley et al. 2005, 2011; Mbow et al. 2019; Amundson et al. 2015). As food from the sea represents…
Over recent years, Arabic popular culture has become a focal point of West Asian and North African studies. Most of the new research dealing with it concentrates on the ‘popular’ as opposed to an intellectual ‘high’ culture far from the harsh and hierarchically organized reality many Arabic-speaking societies face today. Popular cultural practices are thus seen as a rejection of the eli…
For thousands of years, Vikings have held a storied place in our culture—their distinct appearance, their mighty longships, their reputation for causing death and destruction. But who were these strange and mysterious folk? The Book of Viking Myths retells the stories of the Viking people, with myths of their gods and goddesses, monsters, and great heroes. From tales of the beautiful and p…