This study of Japan's transformation by the economic crises of the 1930s focuses on efforts to overcome the effects of the Great Depression in rural areas, particularly the activities of local activists and Tokyo policymakers. Smith sheds light on how average Japanese responded to problems of modernization and how they re-created the countryside.

It was A.D. 284. Christians were enjoying a time of peace in the Roman Empire. But would it last?

The Korean peninsula, divided for more than fifty years, is stuck in a time warp. Millions of troops face one another along the Demilitarized Zone separating communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. In the early 1990s and again in 2002-2003, the United States and its allies have gone to the brink of war with North Korea. Misinterpretations and misunderstandings are fueling the crisis. "There is no country of comparable significance concerning which so many people are ignorant," American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood said of Korea some time ago. This ignorance may soon have fatal consequences. North Korea, South Korea is a short, accessible book about the history and political complexites of the Korean peninsula, one that explores practical alternatives to the current US policy: alternatives that build on the remarkable and historic path of reconciliation that North and South embarked on in the 1990s and that point the way to eventual reunification.

Dr. John Carvalho, former Harvard academician and winner of the United States National Research Service Award, is no stranger to the word crisis. As a scientist, scholar and statesman he has spent decades working on the front lines of biomedical and theoretical exploration, global health, and the worldwide, human rights movement. The Crisis of Our Time is the astonishing, partial memoir and discourse regarding his lifes career and philosophy concerning the planets most pressing problems. Written in a way accessible to everyone, Carvalho, beginning with his passionate, poetic, and provocative first chapter, challenges us to discover that the disastrous, external crises of our lives emanate from the unity of our conscious and subconscious experiences. Indeed, the great troubles afflicting humanitywar, infectious disease, economic recession, terrorism, family discord, psychological trauma, human rights violationsdilemmas that appear unsolvable, actually originate whenwithout truthful self-reflectionwe glorify mediocrity rather than strive to excel. Employing cutting-edge, scientific information; keen, historical insight; extensive, cultural experience; and profound, philosophical analysis; Carvalho dissects our crises to elucidate why they perpetuate. In so doing, he introduces his theory of causal circular systems to reveal how causes feed off and exacerbate effects, which, in turn, reinforce those same causes. Furthering his views, he explores global health, the example par excellence, as well as economics, political history, planetary climate change, and the most central crisis of allBeing or Nothingnessthe fears of the Selfthe dread of our mortality. Ultimately, this short but eye-opening book creates epic meaning while using an artistic, literary style that is virtually unseen in nonfiction. Anyone who genuinely seeks excellence over mediocrity, truth over falsity, meaning over purposelessness, and resolution over despair should read Crisis.

'Thoughtful, stimulating and even entertaining ... Lord Sumption's opinion is always worth listening to, even - or especially - if one disagrees with it.' Daily Telegraph 'Time spent on Law in a Time of Crisis is time spent in the company of a brilliant mind considering interesting things' The Times Brexit, the independence referendum, the pandemic: the UK is a country in crisis. And, in crises, we turn to the law to set the boundaries of what the government can and should do. However, in a country with no written constitution, what sounds like a simple proposition is in fact anything but. Based on his 2019 Reith lectures, former Supreme Court Judge Jonathan Sumption asks: what are the limits of law in politics? Is not having a constitution a hindrance or help in times of crisis? From referenda to the rise of nationalisms, Law in a Time of Crisis exposes the uses and abuses of legal intervention in British crises - past, present, and potential.

Nine short essays exploring the K’iche’ Maya story of creation, the Popol Vuh. Written during the lockdown in Chicago in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays consider the Popol Vuh as a work that was also written during a time of feverish social, political, and epidemiological crisis as Spanish missionaries and colonial military deepened their conquest of indigenous peoples and cultures in Mesoamerica. What separates the Popol Vuh from many other creation texts is the disposition of the gods engaged in creation. Whereas the book of Genesis is declarative in telling the story of the world’s creation, the Popol Vuh is interrogative and analytical: the gods, for example, question whether people actually need to be created, given the many perfect animals they have already placed on earth. Emergency uses the historical emergency of the Popol Vuh to frame the ongoing emergencies of colonialism that have surfaced all too clearly in the global health crisis of COVID-19. In doing so, these essays reveal how the authors of the Popol Vuh—while implicated in deep social crisis—nonetheless insisted on transforming emergency into scenes of social, political, and intellectual emergence, translating crisis into creativity and world creation.