A novel about life under enlightened totalitarianism in the twenty-third century and the efforts of a mild-mannered junk dealer to change the human condition. Primitive literacy is redundant. Mere words are expelled. We inaugurate a world of pure presence. The mind, that intrudes itself between ourselves and those memories too terrible to know, must keep us moving beyond the grasp of their claw. To control the flow, it will be necessary that political order be imposed always temporarily. The state shall enjoy direct, creative access to the real. It's the end of the twenty-third century. Earth has violently self-destructed. Venusia, an experimental off-world colony, survives under the enlightened totalitarianism of the Princeps Crittendon regime. Using industrialized narcotics, holographic entertainment, and memory control, Crittendon has turned Venusia into a self-sustaining system of relative historical inertia. But when mild-mannered junk dealer Rogers Collectibles finds a book about early Venusian history, the colony—once fully immersed in the present—begins losing its grip on the real. With his Reality-V girlfriend Martha Dobbs, neuroscop operator Sylvia Yang, his midget friend Niftus Norrington, and a sentient plant, Rogers wages a war to alter the shape of spacetime, and in the process, revisions the whole human (and vegetable) condition.

The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9788788757293).

In this volume 268 species of the Larentinae are covered. Many of the genera have caused serious problems in identification, but based on the larger number of specimens illustrated on the 25 colour plates, the species can now be identified much more easily. In additional black and white photos for species which are difficult to identify, differential characters are pointed out with arrows. As in the previously published volumes 1,2 and 4, maps with the European distribution are given with dots for verified specimens. There are photographs of male and female genitalia of all species and this volume also contains a systematic catalogue of the European species including those of the neighbouring regions of North Africa, Macaronesia, Turkey and the Middle East. This is the first volume including genetic information from DNA barcoding which proved to be a useful, additional tool in identification, taxonomy and species delimitation.

Hannibal invaded Italy with the hope of raising widespread rebellions among Rome's subordinate allies. Yet even after crushing the Roman army at Cannae, he was only partially successful. Why did some communities decide to side with Carthage and others to side with Rome? This is the fundamental question posed in this book, and consideration is given to the particular political, diplomatic, military and economic factors that influenced individual communities' decisions. Understanding their motivations reveals much, not just about the war itself, but also about Rome's relations with Italy during the prior two centuries of aggressive expansion. The book sheds new light on Roman imperialism in Italy, the nature of Roman hegemony, and the transformation of Roman Italy in the period leading up to the Social War. It is informed throughout by contemporary political science theory and archaeological evidence, and will be required reading for all historians of the Roman Republic.