Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma (1553-1625) is the last major unknown statesman in modern European history. Patrick Williams brings him dramatically to life and challenges the assumptions that historians have made about him and about Spanish history at a time of profound crisis, inviting a re-evaluation of the phenomenon of government by favourites in this seminal period of European history.Lerma served Philip III as his favourite and first minister between 1598 and 1618. His power dazzled contemporaries; one petitioner telling Philip that he had come to see him 'because I could not get an appointment with the Duke of Lerma'. Within a decade of assuming office Lerma had raised his family from humiliating poverty to great riches and was the greatest patron of the arts in Europe. His use of power provoked intense debate about the nature of corruption in government. Yet Lerma remained deeply ambivalent about his position. Determined to follow family tradition and retire into religious life to secure the salvation of his soul, he secured a cardinalate in 1617, ending his life as a prince of the Church.

The main purpose of this book is to explain how (mainly) American, but also British and other Western, policy makers have planned and largely managed to create an international order in their own image, the so-called ‘New World Order’. It shows how this seismic shift in international relations has developed through the major global wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It uses a wide variety of historical archival material to give the background to the current and historical American obsession with creating the world order, one that both reflects the American national interest but also can be said to have established the major security, economic, organisational and normative pillars of our epoch. In addition it provides excellent background reading for the current debate about American foreign policy and the origins of ‘neo-conservatism’ in international relations. This edition updates a very successful first edition of the title, with additional material to take into account changes in the global order since 2001 and the beginning of the ‘War on Terror’.

"The sitting chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, who receives daily intelligence about threats materializing against America, depicts in real time the hazards that [he believes] are closer than we realize. From cyberwarriors who can cripple the Eastern seaboard to radicalized Americans in league with Islamic jihadists to invisible biological warfare, many of the most pressing dangers are the ones [he feels] we've heard about the least--and are doing the least about"--Amazon.com.

J.K. Rowling, one of the world's most inspiring writers, shares her wisdom and advice. In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, VERY GOOD LIVES presents J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.

In this insightful and life-affirming book, Albert Read puts the imagination back at the forefront of our lives as a “muscle” that is boundless in its potential, infinitely rewarding, and central to human achievement. This beautifully written book explores one subject, imagination, through the lens of history and memoir, with some prescriptive aspects to it as well. The author posits that imagination, while elusive, is not just for artists and creatives, it is a muscle—an essential faculty of the mind to be trained and developed over a lifetime. Spanning prehistoric times through to the twenty-first century, from the earliest cave paintings to Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions to Steve Jobs’s approach to office design, it touches on art, music, film, literature, science, and entrepreneurship, to examine how the imagination has evolved—in shape, power, and pace—through the millennia. Albert Read reveals how we can harness the imagination in our day-to-day lives and why, in the new age of technology, it is more pressing than ever that we do so. He explores where to find ideas, how to foster skills in observation and connection, and how to be more attentive to the fluxes of our own minds. After all, as Read expertly outlines, the imagination is our supreme gift, our biggest opportunity, our greatest source of fulfillment and our most vital asset for the future. The book is illustrated throughout with approximately 60 images.

Native American fiction writers have confronted Euro-American narratives about Indians and the colonial world those narratives help create. These Native authors offer stories in which Indians remake this colonial world by resisting conquest and assimilation, sustaining their cultures and communities, and surviving. In Muting White Noise, James H. Cox considers how Native authors have liberated our imaginations from colonial narratives. Cox takes his title from Sherman Alexie, for whom the white noise of a television set represents the white mass-produced culture that mutes American Indian voices. Cox foregrounds the work of Native intellectuals in his readings of the American Indian novel tradition. He thereby develops a critical perspective from which to re-see the role played by the Euro-American novel tradition in justifying and enabling colonialism. By examining novels by Native authors—especially Thomas King, Gerald Vizenor, and Alexie—Cox shows how these writers challenge and revise colonizers’ tales about Indians. He then offers “red readings” of some revered Euro-American novels, including Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and shows that until quite recently, even those non-Native storytellers who sympathized with Indians could imagine only their vanishing by story’s end. Muting White Noise breaks new ground in literary criticism. It stands with Native authors in their struggle to reclaim their own narrative space and tell stories that empower and nurture, rather than undermine and erase, American Indians and their communities.

This eloquent work speaks of the centrality of imagination in the life of the spirit. Ann and Barry Ulanov describe the imagination as a bridge between the psyche and the spirit. Using rich imagery drawn from literature, film, and their own experience as therapists, they unlock for us the healing power of our imagination. "Imagination heals by building a bridge sturdy enough to link us up, each of us, to the river of being already present in us, to the currents flowing through us and among us in our unconscious life." After describing this healing power of imagination, the authors go on to show how it is vital in the spiritual life: in preaching, prayer, teaching, counseling, and politics.