Euphoric State University with its whitestone, sun-drenched campus and England's damp red-brick University of Rummidge have an annual professorial... exchange scheme, and as the first day of the last year of the tumultuous sixties dawns, Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp are the designated exchangees. They know they'll be swapping class rosters, but what they don't know is that in a wildly spiraling transatlantic involvement they'll soon be swapping students, colleagues, and even wives. Changing Places is a hilarious send-up of academic life, intellectual fashion, sex, and marriage by a writer Anthony Burgess has called "one of the best novelists of his generation."

America's preservation movement has long fought the destructive force of so- called urban renewal, where highways and shopping malls rise up on the... rubble of former thriving downtowns. Now communities are in the fight of their lives against urban sprawl- boundless development that devours the countryside and leaves cities and small towns in ruins-a fight that is as much about preserving our civic space as our landscape. In Changing Places, authors Richard Moe and Carter Wilkie give examples of how America's embattled towns are defing themselves against corporate giants and depressed economies, from community activists restoring pride in their innercities to municipalities breathing life back into historic downtowns. At once cautionary and redemptive, Changing Places has been hailed by David McCullough as "a call to arms that should be read by everyone alarmed by the rampant devastation of our cities, our towns, our history, and our way of life."

The National Book Award-winning author takes flight with this bestselling collection of speculative fiction where a woman visits fifteen... otherworldly—yet familiar—societies.

Climate change is now doing far more harm than marooning polar bears on melting chunks of ice--it is damaging the health of people around the world.... Brilliantly connecting stories of real people with cutting-edge scientific and medical information, Changing Planet, Changing Health brings us to places like Mozambique, Honduras, and the United States for an eye-opening on-the-ground investigation of how climate change is altering patterns of disease. Written by a physician and world expert on climate and health and an award-winning science journalist, the book reveals the surprising links between global warming and cholera, malaria, lyme disease, asthma, and other health threats. In clear, accessible language, it also discusses topics including Climategate, cap-and-trade proposals, and the relationship between free markets and the climate crisis. Most importantly, Changing Planet, Changing Health delivers a suite of innovative solutions for shaping a healthy global economic order in the twenty-first century.

Climate change is now doing far more harm than marooning polar bears on melting chunks of ice--it is damaging the health of people around the world.... Brilliantly connecting stories of real people with cutting-edge scientific and medical information, Changing Planet, Changing Health brings us to places like Mozambique, Honduras, and the United States for an eye-opening on-the-ground investigation of how climate change is altering patterns of disease. Written by a physician and world expert on climate and health and an award-winning science journalist, the book reveals the surprising links between global warming and cholera, malaria, lyme disease, asthma, and other health threats. In clear, accessible language, it also discusses topics including Climategate, cap-and-trade proposals, and the relationship between free markets and the climate crisis. Most importantly, Changing Planet, Changing Health delivers a suite of innovative solutions for shaping a healthy global economic order in the twenty-first century.

Changing Politics in Japan is a fresh and insightful account of the profound changes that have shaken up the Japanese political system and transformed... it almost beyond recognition in the last couple of decades. Ikuo Kabashima-a former professor who is now Governor of Kumamoto Prefecture-and Gill Steel outline the basic features of politics in postwar Japan in an accessible and engaging manner. They focus on the dynamic relationship between voters and elected or nonelected officials and describe the shifts that have occurred in how voters respond to or control political elites and how officials both respond to, and attempt to influence, voters. The authors return time and again to the theme of changes in representation and accountability.Kabashima and Steel set out to demolish the still prevalent myth that Japanese politics are a stagnant set of entrenched systems and interests that are fundamentally undemocratic. In its place, they reveal a lively and dynamic democracy, in which politicians and parties are increasingly listening to and responding to citizens' needs and interests and the media and other actors play a substantial role in keeping democratic accountability alive and healthy. Kabashima and Steel describe how all the political parties in Japan have adapted the ways in which they attempt to organize and channel votes and argue that contrary to many journalistic stereotypes the government is increasingly acting in the "the interests of citizens"-the median voter's preferences.

Latinos are the fastest growing population group in the United States.Through their language and popular music Latinos are making their mark on American... culture as never before. As the United States becomes Latinized, how will Latinos fit into America's divided racial landscape and how will they define their own racial and ethnic identity? Through strikingly original historical analysis, extensive personal interviews and a careful examination of census data, Clara E. Rodriguez shows that Latino identity is surprisingly fluid, situation-dependent, and constantly changing. She illustrates how the way Latinos are defining themselves, and refusing to define themselves, represents a powerful challenge to America's system of racial classification and American racism.

Over the last forty years, the number of American households with a stay-at-home parent has dwindled as women have increasingly joined the paid... workforce and more women raise children alone. Many policy makers feared these changes would come at the expense of time mothers spend with their children. In Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson, and Melissa Milkie analyze the way families spend their time and uncover surprising new findings about how Americans are balancing the demands of work and family. Using time diary data from surveys of American parents over the last four decades, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that--despite increased workloads outside of the home--mothers today spend at least as much time interacting with their children as mothers did decades ago--and perhaps even more. Unexpectedly, the authors find the increase in mothers' time at work has not resulted in an overall decline in sleep or leisure time. Rather, mothers have made time for both work and family by sacrificing time spent doing housework and by increased "multitasking." Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that the total workload (in and out of the home) for employed parents is high for both sexes, with employed mothers averaging five hours more per week than employed fathers and almost nineteen hours more per week than homemaker mothers. Comparing average workloads of fathers with all mothers--both those in the paid workforce and homemakers--the authors find that there is gender equality in total workloads, as there has been since 1965. Overall, it appears that Americans have adapted to changing circumstances to ensure that they preserve their family time and provide adequately for their children. Changing Rhythms of American Family Life explodes many of the popular misconceptions about how Americans balance work and family. Though the iconic image of the American mother has changed from a docile homemaker to a frenzied, sleepless working mom, this important new volume demonstrates that the time mothers spend with their families has remained steady throughout the decades.

Anthropologists and historians have shown us that 'male' and 'female' are variously defined historically and cross-culturally. The contributions to... this volume focus on the voluntary and involuntary, temporary or permanent transformation of gender identity. Overall, this volume provides powerful and compelling illustrations of how, across a wide range of cultures, processes of gender transformation are shaped within, and ultimately constrained by, social and political context. From medical responses to biological ambiguity, legal responses to cases brought by transsexuals, the historical role of the eunuch in Byzantium, the social transformation of gender in Northern Albania and in the Southern Philippines, to North American 'drag' shows, English pantomime and Japanese kabuki theatre, this volume offers revealing insights into the ambiguities and limitations of gender transformation. Alison Shaw is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Department of Public Health. Her research interests include medical anthropology, ethnicity, kinship and social aspects of genetics. Her publications include Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani families in Britain (Harwood/Routledge 2000); A Pakistani Community in Britain (Oxford: Blackwell 1888) and Get by in Hindi and Urdu (1989 BBC Books). Shirley Ardener is a Senior Associate of Queen Elizabeth House, the University of Oxford's International Development Centre. She was the Founding Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, now known as the International Gender Studies Centre, whose programme was recognised by her OBE, and of which she is an active honorary member. She has edited and contributed to many books on gender and is the editor of Berghahn's series Cameroon Studies.

What signals are you sending when you share the gospel? The importance of signs for communicating truth has been recognized throughout the ages.... Crystal L. Downing traces this awareness from biblical texts, through figures from church history like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, to more recent writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and C. S. Lewis. In the nineteenth century, this legacy of interest in the activity of signs brought about a new field of academic study. In this book, Downing puts the discipline of semiotics within reach for beginners through analysis of the movements key theorists, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin and others. She then draws out the implications for effective communication of the gospel of Jesus Christ within our shifting cultural landscape. Her fundamental thesis is that "Failure to understand how signs work--as effects of the cultures we seek to affect--inevitably undermines not just our political and moral agendas but, worse, the gospel of Jesus Christ." Writing with humor, clarity and flare, Downing lucidly explains the sophisticated thinking of leaders in semiotics for nonexperts. Of value to all those interested in communication in any context, this work will be of special interest to students majoring in communications or English or to students in evangelism and preaching courses at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Changing Society: A Social and Spiritual Vision for the Year 2020 and Beyond addresses the five traditional social institutions (marriage and family,... religion, education, politics, and economics) as well as other important social institutions (health care, race, ethnicity, and technology). The editor and contributors provide keen social insights as they consider the current dynamics as well as the historical and future issues of each of these social institutions. This book is unique in that each of the writers approaches their topic from vast professional expertise and from great spiritual awareness (that is, such things as values, essence, meaning, and purpose). With the intention of focus and clarity and by projecting into the year 2020, one can appreciate how Vision 2020 as part of the book's title captures a double entendre.

This thematic reader helps develop writers by exposing them to readings that are immediately relevant to their lives as students, consumers, and... citizens, and seeking to awaken social consciousness and encourage involvement.    Rich with discussion questions and writing prompts focusing on critical reading and rhetoric, this text explores not only how society is changing, but also how citizens can participate in changing it in the interests of social justice, peace, and preservation of communities and the environment.  

In Changing Stories: Postmodernism and the Arab-Islamic World some recent ideas current in postmodernist theoretical discourse are critically... investigated and pragmatically applied to concrete issues relating to the contemporary Arab-Islamic world. In particular Jean-François Lyotard's distinction between "grand narratives" (or master stories) and "small stories" (or local narratives) is taken by the authors as a starting-point and point of reference and in various ways they address the legitimacy and applicability of this distinction. After a general introduction nine separate articles deal with the predicament of Palestinian women in the occupied territories, Dutch development-aid discourse in Gaza and the West Bank, Islamism and modernism in Tunisia, modernist and postmodernist political discourse in Egypt, feminism in Egypt and, as a "travelling theory", in the Arab world as a whole, juridical and educational attitudes towards Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands, and the concept of the "Islamic city".The volume should therefore be of interest not only to those concerned with Middle Eastern studies but also to anyone wanting to keep abreast of the latest currents in critical and theoretical discourse.