This book explores the topic of proximity and its relations in the design of contemporary urban fabrics and public spaces. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflections on the future of cities have lately shed light on the concept of proximity, which is intended as the relationship between communities and urban functions and as relations among people, built spaces, and open spaces. The proximity is a historic and fertile field of interest for American and Northern European urban studies; it is a spatial and social program seemingly surpassed by the styles and rhythms of contemporary city life, but today it is back in vogue with different purposes. Meanwhile, the action research developed by the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Politecnico di Milano for the Municipality of Milan reached its conclusion (2018–2020). The research work focused on contextualizing the new M4 Metro line stations under construction, and jointed mobility flows and places, long-range networks and local ones, boosting the idea of metro stations as regenerative urban thresholds and urban platforms for enabling environmental, sustainable settlement, and active mobility systems. In other words, the action research for Milan shows how to achieve the concept of proximity in the urban design practice in a dense, stratified, and complex urban context.

Offshore outsourcing- the movement of jobs to lower-wage countries- is one of the defining features of globalization. Routine blue-collar work has been going offshore for decades, but the digital revolution beginning in the 1990s extended this process to many parts of the service economy too. Politically controversial from the beginning, "offshoring" is conventionally seen as a threat to jobs, wages, and economic security in higher-income countries, having become synonymous with the dirty work of globalization. Even though the majority of corporations make some use of offshore outsourcing, fearful of negative publicity most now choose to manage these activities in a discreet manner. Partly as a result, the global sourcing business, reckoned to be worth more than $120 billion, largely operates under the radar, its ocean-spanning activities in low-cost labour arbitrage being poorly documented and poorly understood. Offshore is the first sustained investigation of the workings of the global sourcing industry, its business practices, its market dynamics, its technologies, and its politics. The book traces the complex transformation of the worlds of global sourcing, from its origins in the new international division of labour in the 1970s, through the rapid growth of back-office economies in India and the Philippines since the 1990s, to the development of "nearshore" markets in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Recently, this evolving process of geographical and organizational restructuring has included experiments in "backshoring" within low-cost, ex-urban locations in the United States and a wave of software-enabled automation, which threatens to remove labour from many back offices altogether. In these and other ways, the offshore revolution continues.

An interdisciplinary approach to Stanislavsky's theatre practice in sociocultural and political contexts and its legacy in the twenty-first century.

Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015), one of the profoundest political thinkers of his time, is known most prominently for his pathbreaking work on Abraham Lincoln. Jaffa, who taught for 50 years at the Claremont Colleges and was a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, sought to produce a revolution in political philosophy by applying Strauss’s controversial thinking about natural right, Scripture, and human greatness to American politics. In these 10 essays, beginning in the 1980s, Jaffa rediscovered the moral and intellectual complexity of statesmanship, in particular that of Lincoln and the American founders. The essays reveal the profundity of the Declaration of Independence, in observations both theoretical (e.g., Aristotle and Aquinas) and practical (e.g., campus radicalism). Jaffa takes aim at the interpretations of America made by some of Leo Strauss’s students, chastising their imputation of radically liberal theorizing to the Declaration and their ignorance of the meaning of “all men are created equal.” The Declaration’s radicalism lies rather in its synthesis of ancient political philosophy and Scriptural authority on the good human life. Jaffa is particularly critical of Allan Bloom and, in previously unpublished essays, Irving Kristol and Harvey Mansfield for their errors about America. Jaffa’s essays recover political philosophy in its political and philosophic dimensions so that it can be a continuing guide for our politics today.

After nearly forty years of dictatorship and an abrupt transition to democracy in the twentieth century, Spain is now in a moment of great rediscovery. The Peninsular country’s precarious past, paired with its current situation of economic crisis (currently Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in the Eurozone) and movements to recover languages, literatures and cultures other than Spanish, creates a country where artists, authors and directors are exploring existential and social issues in new and revitalized ways. The chapters included in Collapse, Catastrophe, and Rediscovery: Spain’s Cultural Panorama in the Twenty First Century explore filmic, literary and cultural representations of modern-day Spain, and the contributing authors offer insight into how the past has affected the country’s artistic and literary production of today and how film and literature dialogue with the social and economic situation of Spain in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Anchored to current cultural and social trends, this collection presents a variety of perspectives and a wide range of analyses of some of the most pertinent contemporary Spanish texts and films with the goal of expanding conceptualizations of the cultural panorama of Spain today.

A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that * European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; * Native nations helped shape England's crisis of empire; * the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; * California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; * the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; * twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk's retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.