"Long-distance oceanic and overland trade along the Eurasian landmass in the 1400s was largely dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders and predominantly conducted over short trajectories by sole traders or organized around small-scale enterprises. Yet, within two centuries of Europeans' arrival in the Indian Ocean in 1498, long-distance trade throughout Eurasia was mainly taken over by them. By 1700, they had formed new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations, primarily a joint-stock business corporation between English East India Company (EIC) and Dutch East India Company (VOC). This allowed them to transform trade from an enterprise dominated by many small traders moving goods over short segments to a vertically integrated firm that was able to control goods from their origin to the end consumers. This rise of the business corporation proved essential for the economic rise of Europe. Why did the corporation arise indigenously only in Europe, and given its effective organization of long-distance trade, why wasn't it mimicked by other Eurasian civilizations for 300 years? Harris closely examines the role played by forms of organization in the transformation of Eurasian trade between 1400 and 1700, comparing the organizational forms that were used in four major civilizations: Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Western European. Through this comparative perspective, he argues that the organizational design of the EIC and VOC, the first long-lasting joint-stock corporations, enabled large-scale multilateral impersonal cooperation for the first time in human history. He also argues that this new organizational form enabled the English and Dutch to deploy more capital, more ships, more voyages, and more agents than other organizational forms"--

What if Meg had to become a Greek god? After Hercules proves hes a true hero and regains his godship, all seems right in the world. That is, until Zeus tells Meg that she cant be with Hercules because shes, well, mortal. Luckily, Hera has a solution, o?ering Meg a chance to prove herself worthy of a spot on Mt Olympusas a god. All Meg has to do is complete a mysterious quest. The mission? Oh, just to rescue her exs current wife from the Underworld. The ex-boyfriend she saved by selling her soul to Hades. The ex-boyfriend who immediately moved on to someone else while she was stuck in the Underworld. Can Meg put her past behind her and use her quick-wit to defeat monsters and gods alike, including the nefarious Hades? Will she finally figure out her place and contribution to the world? Or will her fear of commitment have her running away from an eternity of godhood with Herc? The next instalment in the Twisted Tales series, Go the Distance features sardonic Meg, a frequent favourite female icon of the Disney catalogue, venturing o? on her own journey for the very first time.

Olivia Clarke’s fall from pretty, perfect, and popular happened in an instant. With her life in tatters, she impulsively accepts a teaching job in the small city of Lazhou, China. Three months in, she’s ready to admit she made a huge mistake. She doesn't speak Mandarin, the teachers at her school refuse to include her in anything, and she spends her nights watching counterfeit DVDs in her twin bed. Alone. Jarek McLean is a loner. He’s not looking for friends, and he’s definitely not looking for love. The former army interrogator now works as a carpenter for a small construction company rebuilding a travel office in Lazhou. When he meets Olivia he knows immediately she’s too wholesome to be his type, but when he discovers the pretty kindergarten teacher is hiding a secret, his inquisitive side rears its nosy head and demands answers. Olivia isn't interested in a one-sided interrogation, and makes her position clear: if Jarek wants to ask questions, he’ll have to answer some, too. Jarek’s never let anyone in—not into his apartment, not into his life, certainly not into his heart. But the closer he gets to Olivia, the more he falls for her, and suddenly the man who doesn't do relationships finds himself in a most unexpected one. When he reluctantly admits that this could be love, he’s faced with the most terrifying question of all: What the hell does he do now?

This bold new theoretical study explores dissident subjectivity, that is, the struggle for unique authorial identity in American literary discourse that has existed, according to David Jarraway, since the Romantics. From Emerson’s “Experience” remarking upon the “focal distance within the actual horizon of human life” to Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize address sanctifying the artist’s “sophisticated privileged space,” American literature has continuously recognized a necessary “distance”—the gap between culturally accepted ideas of selfhood and the intractable reality of the self’s never-completed construction in time. Jarraway’s fascinating examination of modernist poets shows that engaging with this artistic space, or “going the distance,” empowers writers and their readers to create and perceive identities that resist the frozen certainties of conventional gender, sexual, and social roles. Employing this theory with grace and precision, Jarraway ranges through the dissident process in Gertrude Stein, the cultural criticism of William Carlos Williams, the deferred racialism of Langston Hughes, the queer perversities of Frank O’Hara, and the spectral lesbian poetics of Elizabeth Bishop. Bolstered further by insights from the pragmatism of William James through the cultural critique of Theodor Adorno to the queer theory of Judith Butler, the author challenges his audience with politically engaged insistence on the life-affirming potentialities of human subjectivity in literature. His passionate conclusion demonstrates the liberating fluidity of self made possible by feminist chartings of modern identity’s depths. Lucidly composed, theoretically sophisticated and up-to-the-minute, Going the Distance painstakingly recovers the dissident American subjective in modernist literary discourse within its fullest cultural context. Jarraway’s readings are a major contribution to poetry scholarship and to cultural studies that will provoke further investigations into the history of subjectivity in American literature as a whole.

It's the last semester of college for Chloe. All she needs is four months of studying hard and no distractions. And then she meets Kyle, a charmer by nature with a unique lifestyle. A lifestyle that she never desired nor anticipated, considering her past experiences. Chloe has already made up her mind about Kyle. She knows the choice she needs to make to keep herself from getting hurt. But Chloe's best friend, Sam, is starting to convince Chloe that maybe the choice isn't as simple as she hopes. With the help of her friends and family, Chloe is starting to believe that taking a chance could be worth the risk. Could what she has to gain be worth the risk of all she has to lose?