In the early 1980s I was sitting in the coffee shop of the Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur, reflecting on the strange fact that Dutch troops had come ashore nearby, less than 80 years previously, on their way to perpetrate one of the more extraordinary massacres in the history of colonialism. I did not know that the Japanese had also landed in this same area in 1942, or that the Dutch had returned he…
My class was scheduled from ten until noon. Many students came late. Several arrived after 10:30. A few showed up closer to eleven. Two came after that. All of the latecomers wore the relaxed smiles I later came to enjoy. Each one greeted me, and although a few apologized briefly, none seemed terribly concerned about being late. They assumed that I understood. That Brazilians would arrive late …
Readers of this volume will be able to tell from the Introduction andnotes throughout the book how great a debt I owe to many distin-guished scholars past and present. Without them, this work would havebeen impossible. Here I want to express my gratitude to a number ofpeople who have influenced this project more directly. The book isdedicated to David R. Knechtges, wh…
A personal word: many years ago, when we were first developing the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum, we struggled with the issue of how to end the perma-nent exhibit. We had come up with an appropriate beginning that would serve thefunction of taking visitors off the National Mall, taking them back what was thenfifty years in time, moving them a continent away and introducing them to a Eu…
What is it like to write poetry right now at this moment in world history? What is it unlike? Or, to avoid comparisons at all, what is poetry now? Fascists and an “alt-right” search for platforms, opposed but not often enough; global warming renders laugh-able our comfortable and anachronistic sense of cyclical change; secular stagnation mocks the entire program of austerity; a fra…
The web has been with us for more than a quarter of a century. It has become a daily and ubiquitous source of information in many peoples’ lives around the globe. But what does it tell us about historical and social change? For a researcher in the twenty-second century, it will seem unimaginable that someone studying the twenty-first c…
Today in the world of 24-hour news, we cannot help but be aware of the brutality and human cost of war. It is difficult to imagine the festive atmosphere of parades and cheering as local regiments marched off to fight in the American Civil War, or even in the early days of World War I. Yet in spite of our lack of illusion about the reality of war, the idea of war still holds an enduring fascina…
The insurance industry safeguards the assets of its policyholders by transferring risk from an individual or business to an insurance company. Insurance companies act as financial intermediaries in that they invest the premiums they collect for providing this service. Insurance company size is usually measured by net premiums written, that is, premium revenues less amounts paid for reinsurance.…
In this book we will be concerned with the basics of the macromolecular interactions that affect cellular processes. The basic tools for such studies are genetics, chemistry, and physics. For the most part, we will be concerned with understanding processes that occur within cells, such as DNA synthesis, protein synthesis, and regulation of gene activity. The initial studies of these processes u…