After four centuries of bondage, the nineteenth century marked the long-awaited release of millions of black slaves. Subsequently, these former slaves attempted to reconstruct the basis of American democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the greatest intellectual leaders in United States history, evaluates the twenty years of fateful history that followed the Civil War, with special reference to the efforts and experiences of African Americans. Du Bois’s words best indicate the broader parameters of his work: "the attitude of any person toward this book will be distinctly influenced by his theories of the Negro race. If he believes that the Negro in America and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings, then he will read this story and judge it by the facts adduced." The plight of the white working class throughout the world is directly traceable to American slavery, on which modern commerce and industry was founded, Du Bois argues. Moreover, the resulting color caste was adopted, forwarded, and approved by white labor, and resulted in the subordination of colored labor throughout the world. As a result, the majority of the world’s laborers became part of a system of industry that destroyed democracy and led to World War I and the Great Depression. This book tells that story.

In these essays, distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher argues for a reconstruction of philosophy along the lines of classical Pragmatism

“Gripping and essential.”—Jesse Wegman, New York Times An authoritative history by the preeminent scholar of the Civil War era, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them up.

Sri Lanka’s conflict and peace processes have gained global attention during recent years. This book presents a comprehensive insight into the politics of reconstruction and development in Sri Lanka, focussing on the ceasefire which was negotiated between the Government of Sri Lanka and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2002 and which lasted until 2006. Based on extensive empirical fieldwork, the book provides a unique ethnographic account of this specific historical period of peace. It explains how development was shaped by interplay and cooperation, but also by the disparities and conflicts between a variety of local and intervening actors, including local organizations and civil society, LTTE, Government of Sri Lanka, international development cooperation and the Tamil diaspora. Starting from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, the author integrates findings from development sociology with new perspectives on transnationalization and the migration-development-nexus. This provides a fine grained analysis of the emerging development visions and perspectives in relation to transnationalization and global interconnectedness. Making an innovative contribution by linking the analysis of local reconstruction with contemporary phenomena of transnationalization, diasporization, and globalization, this book will appeal to those with an interest in Sociology, Social Anthropology and Political Science.

Living with History focuses on a particular aspect of heritage preservation in the twentieth century: destruction and postwar reconstruction in Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and The Netherlands. This book establishes a status quaestionis for the historiography of wartime and postwar preservation, and sets these particular developments in preservation history in the context of the general evolution of architecture and urbanism. The authors investigate the specific role of conservationists and heritage institutions and administrations in the overall reconstruction and examine the part played by architects and planners in heritage preservation.

This SpringerBrief presents novel methods of approaching challenging problems in the reconstruction of accurate 3D models and serves as an introduction for further 3D reconstruction methods. It develops a 3D reconstruction system that produces accurate results by cascading multiple novel loop detection, sifting, and optimization methods. The authors offer a fast point cloud registration method that utilizes optimized randomness in random sample consensus for surface loop detection. The text also proposes two methods for surface-loop sifting. One is supported by a sparse-feature-based optimization graph. This graph is more robust to different scan patterns than earlier methods and can cope with tracking failure and recovery. The other is an offline algorithm that can sift loop detections based on their impact on loop optimization results and which is enabled by a dense map posterior metric for 3D reconstruction and mapping performance evaluation works without any costly ground-truth data. The methods presented in Towards Optimal Point Cloud Processing for 3D Reconstruction will be of assistance to researchers developing 3D modelling methods and to workers in the wide variety of fields that exploit such technology including metrology, geological animation and mass customization in smart manufacturing.

The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda. Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze's and Irigaray's respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with 'the flesh' in the age of techno-bodies. This highly original contribution to current debates is written for those who find changes and transformations challenging and necessary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, social theory and cultural studies.