Deep within the Library of Doom, thieves capture one of the Silent Ones and order him to guide them to the Lost Archives, but he refuses to betray the Librarian and his secrets.

A compelling look at the Fatimid caliphate's robust culture of documentation The lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909–1171) survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by medieval Jews. Marina Rustow tells the story of this extraordinary find, inviting us to reconsider the longstanding but mistaken consensus that before 1500 the dynasties of the Islamic Middle East produced few documents, and preserved even fewer. Beginning with government documents before the Fatimids and paper’s westward spread across Asia, Rustow reveals a millennial tradition of state record keeping whose very continuities suggest the strength of Middle Eastern institutions, not their weakness. Tracing the complex routes by which Arabic documents made their way from Fatimid palace officials to Jewish scribes, the book provides a rare window onto a robust culture of documentation and archiving not only comparable to that of medieval Europe, but, in many cases, surpassing it. Above all, Rustow argues that the problem of archives in the medieval Middle East lies not with the region’s administrative culture, but with our failure to understand preindustrial documentary ecology. Illustrated with stunning examples from the Cairo Geniza, this compelling book advances our understanding of documents as physical artifacts, showing how the records of the Fatimid caliphate, once recovered, deciphered, and studied, can help change our thinking about the medieval Islamicate world and about premodern polities more broadly.

Lavishly Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, this treasury captures the remarkable imagery, as well as the wonder, of the Lucasfilm Universe.

Within the context of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and his influence on Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Puig and Gabriel Marquez, Paul Kong brings a variety of theoretical perspectives to bear as he analyzes the concepts of the archive and the manuscript. Setting the stage with an exploration of the intricate and intriguing relationship between the archive and the manuscript, Kong questions the apparently natural association between the two. In the light of Kong's historically contextualized and patient exegesis, the ideological nature of the archive, evident in its charge to serve as a totalizing habitat, stands in contrast with the manuscript that resists attempts to contain it. The playful responses of Borges, Puig and Marquez as they mine the "archive" of Cervantes' works support the anti-colonial dimension of Latin American literature and further problematize the relationship between archive and manuscript. The book concludes with a discussion of the future of archival discourse, especially in the setting of the virtual reality of the Internet and of globalization. Carefully grounded by Kong's close readings and supported by a wealth of astute references and allusions to writers as diverse as Virgil, Wordsworth, and Dickens, The Raiders and Writers of Cervantes' Archive is sure to provoke and intrigue Latin American scholars, narrative theorists, archivists, and those interested in issues related to cultural domination, ideology, and cyberspace.

Value Learning Trajectories: Theory, Method, Context provides a theoretical, methodological and contextual framing of value learning alongside individual life trajectories in a diverse range of international educational settings. It brings together philosophical approaches on value learning with empirical research findings from Australia, Austria, Ethiopia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iran, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. A critical interdisciplinary bridge between value learning and life trajectory research, the volume gathers together contributions from leading and emergent researchers to facilitate evidence-informed insights and future collaborations in the field.

What happened to the documents captured in the Alamo? Does a ghost actually haunt the state capitol in Austin? Was John Wilkes Booth killed or did he escape and flee to Central Texas? The authors present the known facts and circumstances of these and other mysteries.

This book ‘plays up’ stories of mostly unknown figures and their journeys through a life affected by movement, and a search for home. It engages with individuals and groups whose passions have carried the subjects through ‘uncharted’ or unhomely territories, here told in a series of ‘tracks’ depicting their roles in community memories and histories. Side A engages with individual journeys, such as Lewis, the American black literature book seller; the civil rights activist, Izzy, an American-Swedish folklorist; Eugene, a black classical pianist; and Pi, the Jew transported to Sweden during WWII. Side B focuses on communal histories and alternative educational and artistic spaces, addressing life writing and memory in German comic books; alternative educational spaces in Israel-Palestine and Africa, and ‘small press passions’ of zines/newsletter culture. Tellers and their interpreters are mediating identities where nationality, race, and class (and other markers of identity) have influenced selfhood and collective belonging - revealing how individuals and outsider cultures have the power to influence dominant cultures and inspire societal change.