bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
P396Impact of re-definition of paroxysmal and persistent atrial fibrillation in the 2012 and 2016 ESC atrial fibrillation guidelines on outcomes after cryoballoon pulmonary vein
Authors: Aktolga D , Weinmann K , Rattka M , Bothner C , Stephan T , Pott A , Rottbauer W , Dahme T
Published: June 2020

Introduction – In the 2016 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for the management of atrial fibrillation (AF) the definition of AF type has been modified compared to the 2010 guidelines and its 2012 focused update.

Purpose – Our aim was to compare the difference of single procedure outcomes using the definitions before and after 2016 on a cohort of patients with AF undergoing cryoballoon pulmonary vein isolation (PVI).

Methods – Consecutive PVI patients with paroxysmal or persistent AF were retrospectively reclassified applying the 2010, 2012 and 2016 ESC definitions on AF type.

Results – 628 patients were included in the analysis. Applying the 2010 ESC AF guidelines definition, 68% (425/628) of patients were categorized as paroxysmal and 32% (203/628) as persistent AF. According to the 2012 focused update 77% (485/628) are labeled paroxysmal and 23% (143/628) are persistent AF. Applying the 2016 ESC AF guidelines, the proportion of patients with paroxysmal AF increased to 87% (546/628) of patients and the patients with persistent AF decreased to 13% (82/628).

Comparing the 2010 and 2016 ESC AF type definitions, 123 patients shift from the 2010 persistent group to the 2016 paroxysmal group. Age, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), LA diameter and CHA2DS2-VASc Score differ significantly between paroxysmal and persistent AF patients according to the 2010, 2012, and 2016 AF type classification. Regarding outcomes, recurrence rates of paroxysmal and persistent AF patients differ significantly in Kaplan-Meier estimation applying the 2010 ESC guidelines definition (log-rank p < 0.001). Applying the 2012 focused update and the 2016 ESC AF guidelines recurrence rates do not differ significantly. Persistent AF has been shown repeatedly to be a predictor of arrhythmia recurrence in PVI studies. In a cox regression model applying the 2010 guidelines, persistent AF is the only independent predictor for AF recurrence in our cohort. However, when applying the 2016 guidelines persistent AF is no longer a predictor for AF recurrence.

Conclusion – The revised definition of AF types in the 2016 ESC AF guidelines leads to a marked shift from persistent to paroxysmal AF. It appears that the old definition was a better separator to predict rhythm outcome after PVI.
Predicting Vibrio cholerae Infection and Disease Severity Using Metagenomics in a Prospective Cohort Study
Authors: Levade Inès , Saber Morteza M , Midani Firas S , Chowdhury Fahima , Khan Ashraful I , Begum Yasmin A , Ryan Edward T , David Lawrence A , Calderwood Stephen B , Harris Jason B , LaRocque Regina C , Qadri Firdausi , Shapiro B Jesse , Weil Ana A
Published: June 2020

Background

Susceptibility to Vibrio cholerae infection is affected by blood group, age, and preexisting immunity, but these factors only partially explain who becomes infected. A recent study used 16S ribosomal RNA amplicon sequencing to quantify the composition of the gut microbiome and identify predictive biomarkers of infection with limited taxonomic resolution.

Methods

To achieve increased resolution of gut microbial factors associated with V. cholerae susceptibility and identify predictors of symptomatic disease, we applied deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing to a cohort of household contacts of patients with cholera.

Results

Using machine learning, we resolved species, strains, gene families, and cellular pathways in the microbiome at the time of exposure to V. cholerae to identify markers that predict infection and symptoms. Use of metagenomic features improved the precision and accuracy of prediction relative to 16S sequencing. We also predicted disease severity, although with greater uncertainty than our infection prediction. Species within the genera Prevotella and Bifidobacterium predicted protection from infection, and genes involved in iron metabolism were also correlated with protection.

Conclusion

Our results highlight the power of metagenomics to predict disease outcomes and suggest specific species and genes for experimental testing to investigate mechanisms of microbiome-related protection from cholera.
Observations and analysis of absorption lines including J = K rotational levels of CH3CN: the envelope of Sagittarius B2(M)
Authors: Araki Mitsunori , Takano Shuro , Kuze Nobuhiko , Minami Yoshiaki , Oyama Takahiro , Kamegai Kazuhisa , Sumiyoshi Yoshihiro , Tsukiyama Koichi
Published: June 2020

Molecules in diffuse and translucent clouds experience cooling as a result of radiation and less excitation from collisions. However, rotation around a molecular axis of acetonitrile, CH3CN, cannot be cooled by radiation, causing rotational populations to concentrate at the J = K levels. We aim to search for absorption lines of CH3CN having J = K level concentrations in diffuse and translucent clouds. The JK = 43–33 transition at 73.6 GHz was investigated toward Sgr B2(M) in the Galactic Centre region and other sources, using the Nobeyama 45-m telescope. Based on the absorption lines detected toward Sgr B2(M), a radiation temperature of 2.8 ± 0.5 K, kinetic temperature of 88 ± 29 K and column density of (1.35 ± 0.14) × 1014 cm−2 were derived for this molecule, revealing extremely concentrated J = K levels due to the lower excitation temperature and higher kinetic temperature. The absorption lines occurred at a velocity of 64 km s−1. The results confirm that CH3CN with J = K level concentrations exists in the envelope of Sgr B2(M).
Constraining X-ray reflection in the low-luminosity AGN NGC 3718 using NuSTAR and XMM–Newton
Authors: Diaz Y , Arévalo P , Hernández-García L , Bassani L , Malizia A , González-Martín O , Ricci C , Matt G , Stern D , May D , Zezas A , Bauer F E
Published: June 2020

One distinctive feature of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) is the relatively weak reflection features they may display in the X-ray spectrum, which can result from the disappearance of the torus with decreasing accretion rates. Some material, however, must surround the active nucleus, i.e. the accretion flow itself and, possibly, a flattened-out or thinned torus. In this work, we study whether reflection is indeed absent or undetectable due to its intrinsically weak features together with the low statistics inherent to LLAGNs. Here, we focus on NGC 3718 (L/LEdd ∼ 10−5) combining observations from XMM–Newton and the deepest to date NuSTAR (0.5–79 keV) spectrum of a LLAGNs, to constrain potential reflectors, and analyse how the fitted coronal parameters depend on the reflection model. We test models representing both an accretion disc (Relxill) and a torus-like (MYTorus and Borus) neutral reflector. From a statistical point of view, reflection is not required, but its inclusion allows to place strong constraints on the geometry and physical features of the surroundings: both neutral reflectors (torus) tested should be Compton thin (NH < 1023.2cm−2) and preferentially cover a large fraction of the sky. If the reflected light instead arises from an ionized reflector, a highly ionized case is preferred. These models produce an intrinsic power-law spectral index in the range [1.81–1.87], where the torus models result in steeper slopes. The cut-off energy of the power-law emission also changes with the inclusion of reflection models, resulting in constrained values for the disc reflectors and unconstrained values for torus reflectors.
Introduction
Authors: Joslyn Mark R.
Published: June 2020

The introduction to this book defines the gun gap, which refers to differences in political behavior and attitudes between gun owners and nonowners. In addition, the introduction establishes why the gun gap is important for understanding modern mass politics. Election analysts and scholars typically overlook the gun gap, but it is an essential explanation for an impressive range of political behaviors and attitudes, including voter choice and turnout, perceptions of personal and public safety, preferences for gun control policies, and support for the death penalty and other punitive measures. Finally, the introduction outlines the book chapters, discussing key theories and findings.
Feelings toward gun owners
Authors: Joslyn Mark R.
Published: June 2020

Chapter 5 examines the portrayal of gun owners and considers how this may impact people feelings toward them. Prior studies show that people consult their feelings when estimating risk—labeled the affect heuristic. Statistical analyses demonstrate that people’s feelings (favorable or unfavorable) toward gun owners powerfully determine their assessments of personal and public safety. If people favor gun owners, they believe concealed carry laws improve public safety and guns are not threats to personal security. If people dislike gun owners, they feel threatened by guns and disapprove of concealed carry policies. An interpretation of this finding suggests that people are not necessarily threatened by guns but rather by people who own guns.
“Peculiar ‘Til I D.I.E.”
Authors: Jones Alisha Lola
Published: June 2020

Focusing on Washington, DC’s gospel go-go music scene in the early 2000s, chapter 4 highlights the role of an understudied popular music in performances of socioculturally preferred black male homosociality. This chapter examines men’s performances against the stereotype of the softer, woman-like, flamboyant male vocalist through research on a percussion-heavy music from Washington, DC called gospel go-go. In essence, the go-go music band is a symbolic composite of perspectives associated with the unmarked male-dominant categories of the musicians’ pit and absentee men, who are talking back, providing musical contestation of the duplicitous preacher and choir director stereotypes. Chapter 4 aims to shed light on the musical and performative properties of male homomusicoenrapture and homosonoenrapture, the same-gender musical and sonic textures and visual dynamics that stimulate intense enjoyment while enveloping and propelling gospel go-go participants.
The Road to Armageddon
Authors: Compton John W.
Published: June 2020

This chapter examines the social and theological underpinnings of the large Protestant membership groups that helped build support for major Progressive Era reforms, including child labor restrictions, maternal health programs, and prohibition. It argues that the three factors were particularly important in motivating progressive religious activism in the early twentieth century. The first was the revival of a strand of Protestant social thought that stretched back to the Puritans—a prophetic tradition built on the interconnected ideas of stewardship, providential duty, and collective accountability for sin. The second was the sect dynamic observed by the sociologist Max Weber during his early twentieth-century visit to the United States—a social dynamic that incentivized upwardly mobile citizens to seek membership in Protestant churches and membership groups while also endowing church and group leaders with considerable influence over the beliefs and behaviors of their members. The third was the rise of an ecumenical infrastructure that promoted cooperation between elite reformers and average citizens, and also between believers of different social and denominational backgrounds.
The Brief Reign of Whirl
Authors: Compton John W.
Published: June 2020

This chapter examines how Protestant elites responded to the political and cultural turmoil of the 1920s. It argues that while the failure of prohibition and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan shattered Protestantism’s sense of unity, the mainline churches nonetheless emerged from the decade with their core ideals and institutions intact. The 1920s also witnessed the birth of several new ecumenical initiatives, including an extensive network of state and local church councils, that worked to direct believers’ energies toward urgent social problems. The church councils, in particular, would later play an important role in building support for New Deal-era economic programs and postwar civil rights reforms.
Assaulting the Citadel
Authors: Compton John W.
Published: June 2020

This chapter tells the story of how J. Howard Pew and a band of conservative activists attempted to infiltrate the National Council of Churches with the aim of undermining religious support for the welfare state. As with many odd pairings, financial considerations helped bring the parties together. The courtship began when the NCC’s architects hatched the idea of a National Lay Committee—a body of prominent laymen and women that would help the Council keep its finger on the pulse of lay opinion while also boosting the Council’s budget. From Pew’s perspective, the Lay Committee offered a potential backdoor into the citadel of the Social Gospel. The NCC needed money, and he was willing and able to supply it. In return, he asked only that the Council cease issuing pronouncements in favor of government aid to the less fortunate and instead transform itself into a champion of the free-enterprise system. The plan sounded simple enough on paper, yet it ultimately failed to accomplish its principal objective of prompting the NCC to abandon its commitment to a robust social welfare state. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was a group of prominent business leaders, not the alleged communists in the ranks of the clergy, who led the opposition to Pew’s short-lived Lay Committee.
Revolt in the Suburbs
Authors: Compton John W.
Published: June 2020

This chapter examines some of the forces that led to the decline of mainline Protestant religious authority in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, it argues that the waning of religious authority during these decades liberated upwardly mobile white Americans to follow their own inclinations and interests, not only in their personal lives but also in their thinking about politics and society. And it was at precisely this point that many of them developed a sudden affinity for the extreme libertarian view that the use of state power to correct systemic injustice or redirect resources to the less fortunate was fundamentally illegitimate. The chapter concludes with an account of mainline Protestant leaders’ failed campaign to defeat Proposition 14, a 1964 ballot measure that repealed California’s fair housing law.
Why the Prophetic Torch Wasn’t Passed
Authors: Compton John W.
Published: June 2020

This chapter examines the fate of liberal and moderate evangelicals from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. It argues that moderate evangelicals—an ascendant force in the 1970s—were marginalized less by the rise of so-called “values” issues than by economic anxieties and a broader white reaction against federal civil rights initiatives. That white evangelicals drifted to the political Right for essentially secular reasons—and often in the face of counterpressures from prominent evangelical leaders and institutions—provides further confirmation of religion’s limited ability to shape political behavior in an age of religious autonomy. In short, it is the weakness of evangelical institutions, not their strength, that best explains why the term “conservative evangelical” has come to seem redundant.
Law and Liberty, 1830–1860
Authors: Nieman Donald G.
Published: June 2020

This chapter examines the rise of radical abolitionism in the 1820s and 1830s as well as the emergence of the Colored Convention movement in the North that challenged slavery and discrimination against free blacks. African Americans as well as white abolitionists developed an interpretation of the Constitution that employed republicanism, due process of law, and equal citizenship to challenge slavery and discrimination. With the acquisition of vast territories in the Southwest from Mexico in the late 1840s, many northerners feared that slavery would expand and strengthen southern political power. New political groups, notably the Republican Party, grew in strength and embraced antislavery constitutional ideas. A southern-dominated Supreme Court responded in the Dred Scott case, ruling that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress lacked authority to exclude slavery from the territories. Republican victory in 1860 signaled the triumph of antislavery constitutional ideas and precipitated secession.
Equality Deferred, 1870–1900
Authors: Nieman Donald G.
Published: June 2020

This chapter argues that the revolutionary changes brought to the South by Reconstruction and black empowerment generated a sustained and violent reaction from southern whites that, by 1900, was successful in restoring white dominance because of restrictive Supreme Court decisions, congressional inaction, and waning public support for civil rights among white northerners. Republicans remained committed to civil rights and deployed federal power to break the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s, but white southern persistence and divided government in the late 1870s and 1880s compromised this effort. In the 1890s, white Democrats, in control of state and most local governments in the South and fearful of continued black resistance, enacted measures to disfranchise African Americans and impose segregation. Although African Americans continued to resist and enjoyed some successes in the North, by 1900, southern whites had created a repressive racial caste system.
The Civil Rights Movement and American Law, 1950–1969
Authors: Nieman Donald G.
Published: June 2020

This chapter shows that Brown v. Board of Education raised hope for fundamental change but produced few results. Massive resistance blocked school integration, and only the emergence of black-led organizations and massive grass-roots protests forced Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to support civil rights legislation and Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. The federal bureaucracy and courts aggressively enforced these laws to topple Jim Crow, bring African Americans into the political process, and open economic opportunities. Although change was dramatic, it bypassed many poor blacks, including those living in northern cities. As the 1960s ended, their anger sparked urban uprisings that shattered the illusion of progress and generated a white backlash.
The Elusive Quest for Equality, 1969–1989
Authors: Nieman Donald G.
Published: June 2020

Although the nation became more conservative in the 1970s and 1980s, civil rights advocates built on legislative and legal victories of the 1960s to create race-conscious remedies to challenge institutionalized racism. Their position was strengthened by a growing women’s movement that became an important element of the civil rights coalition. Affirmative action and remedies against practices that had a disparate impact on minorities and women expanded employment opportunities; renewal and broad interpretation of the Voting Rights Act dramatically increased the number of black and Hispanic elected officials; and busing offered a new remedy for school segregation. Claiming that the Constitution was color-blind, Republicans attacked race-conscious remedies as “reverse racism” and used race as a wedge to make inroads among traditional Democratic constituencies. They used their growing strength to restrict busing and affirmative action and launch a war on drugs that led to mass incarceration of African Americans.
The Color-Blind Challenge to Civil Rights, 1990–Present
Authors: Nieman Donald G.
Published: June 2020

Since 1990, civil rights advocates have lost ground to conservative attacks on color-conscious remedies for institutionalized racism. Insisting that the Constitution is color-blind, a conservative Supreme Court has limited affirmative action, declared a key provision of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, limited others, and affirmed state voter ID laws that limit minority voting. Despite electing the first black president in 2008, liberals have enjoyed limited success in defending civil rights protections. They secured passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1991 to reverse damaging Supreme Court decisions, renewed the Voting Rights Act in 2006, and won cases defending affirmative action. Groups like Black Lives Matter have sparked a new grass-roots activism to protest police violence and pressed for an end to mass incarceration. While their success is limited, they continue a tradition that has shaped the nation since its inception.
Terrorist in Search of Humanity
Authors: Devji Faisal
Published: June 2020

A global society has come into being, but possesses as yet no political institutions of its own. In his book, Faisal Devji argues that new forms of militancy, like that of Al Qaeda, achieve meaning in this institutional vacuum, while representing in their various ways the search for a global politics. From environmentalism to pacifism and beyond, such a politics can only be one that takes humanity itself as its object, hence militant practices are informed by the same search that animates humanitarianism, which from human rights to humanitarian intervention has become the global aim and signature of all contemporary politics. This is the search for humanity as an agent and not simply the victim of history. To the militant, victimized Muslims represent not their religion so much as humanity itself, and terrorism the effort to turn this humanity into an historical actor – since it is after all the globe’s only possible actor. For environmentalists and pacifists as much as for our holy warriors, a global humanity has in this way replaced the international proletariat as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ of history.
Frames
Authors: Whitmore Aleysia K.
Published: June 2020

Part III examines who world music audiences are and what draws them to Orchestra Baobab and AfroCubism. This chapter sets the scene by offering an ethnography of world music performance venues in Europe and North America. Orchestra Baobab and AfroCubism have performed at Bonaroo, Jazz à Marciac, and WOMAD. They have shared venues with Prince and fun., classic and avant-garde jazz, and Nigerian funk. Venues experiment with how performers can fit into and expand their market niche and image (e.g., cutting edge, worldly, charitable) as they look to attract the most (and right kind of) audiences. The chapter argues that heterogeneous performance frames do not just help redefine the world music genre culture. They offer a path to the label’s destruction—and the music’s reconstruction as a more mainstream genre culture.
Art Scents
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

This book offers an overview of the aesthetic and ethical issues raised by the contemporary olfactory arts, which range from gallery and museum sculptures and installations, through the enhancement of theater, film, and music with scents, to the ambient scenting of stores and avant-garde chefs’ use of scents in cuisine. Special attention is given to the aesthetics of perfume and incense and the question of their art status, as well as to the role of scent in the appreciation of nature and gardens. Ethical issues are discussed regarding ambient scenting, perfume wearing, and the use of smells in fast-food marketing. Because of the traditional neglect and denigration of the sense of smell and its aesthetic potential by philosophers from Kant and Hegel to the present, and by Darwin’s and Freud’s view of the human sense of smell as a nearly useless evolutionary vestige, the first parts of the book counter that tradition with both philosophical arguments and evidence from current evolutionary theory, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, history, linguistics, and literature. Although the focus is on Western olfactory arts, the book draws on non-Western examples throughout. The book is aimed at both philosophers and general readers interested in the arts, and develops positions that should stimulate further discussion.
The Neuroscience and Psychology of Smell I
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

Chapter 2 begins by exploring the biology of the human olfactory system, including the difference between orthonasal and retronasal smell, then surveys contemporary research on the characteristics of smell, as revealed by neuroimaging, that indicates its cognitive capacity for detection, discrimination, learning, and social communication. A special section on the “odor object” discusses debates within the current philosophy of perception on whether it is appropriate to speak of odors as “objects.” The sections on detection, discrimination, and learning show that current science indicates that humans have much sharper abilities in all these areas than is popularly believed. The topic of communication leads naturally to another brief interlude, “The Pheromone Myth.”
The Dialectic of Deodorization
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

Chapter 5 begins by recalling the central role that incense and perfumes once played in religion, medicine, and social relations throughout Western history, from ancient Egypt through the eighteenth century. The second part of the chapter looks at the “dialectic of deodorization” over the past two centuries, involving the narrowing of the uses of incense and the gradual discrediting of the medical uses of both incense and perfume, in part through the great sanitary campaigns to rid cities of the stench of human excrement and various noxious industries, leaving incense to mostly religious and perfumes to mostly aesthetic uses. The chapter concludes that this historical turn may have exacerbated our natural tendency to be unaware of smells and have encouraged intellectuals to view the sense of smell as of little importance, despite evidence of a certain “reodorization” from the mid-twentieth century on.
Toward a Total Work of Art
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

Chapter 9 begins with the idea of the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) and considers examples of odors in theater from the Renaissance to the present, arguing that the inclusion of odors in some types of theater production is appropriate. In the case of film, the chapter discusses the difficulties faced by the first serious attempts in the 1950s and the handful of recent efforts, arguing that the combination of images with sound is able to suggests odors, whereas actual odors are likely to create more puzzles than they are worth, except in the case of highly experimental “art house” films. In the case of music, the chapter focuses on Green Aria: A Scent Opera, presented at the Guggenheim in 2009, a work that combined narrative, odors, and an electronic music score and marked a decisive step toward the successful integration of actual smells with music and narrative.
Sublime Stenches
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

Chapter 10 discusses hybrids of odors with visual art genres or materials, works that are typically created by professional artists and presented in art galleries and museums under the rubric “olfactory art.” After surveying various types of olfactory or scent art, the chapter considers the question of whether “olfactory art” actually names a coherent category or art form, suggesting a tentative yes, based on historical parallels between olfactory or scent art and contemporary “sound art,” such as the fact that there are a number of artists who identify themselves as olfactory artists and have issued manifestoes promoting olfactory art and that some galleries and museums have recognized it as an art kind. The chapter then takes up some questions of ontology and interpretation, including the question of why “sublime stenches” are important in much of contemporary olfactory art.
Perfume between Art and Design
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

Chapter 12 explores two main ways out of the impasse reached in Chapter 11. The first way would adopt one of the current composite or disjunctive definitions of (fine) art; the second way would abandon the quest for defining (fine) art and consider instead what it would take to promote some perfumery practices to the status of art perfumes, parallel to the way some kinds of photography or quilt making have become art photography or art quilts. Since this solution to the impasse would mean that only certain types of perfumes could be considered art perfumes, leaving most standard perfumes part of design, a postlude to Part III, “Free Art versus Design Art,” answers the concern of perfume admirers that this would demote the finest perfumes for wear to “minor art” status.
Enhancing Flavors with Scents in Contemporary Cuisine
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

Chapter 15 considers the central role of both orthonasal and retronasal smell in the perception of flavor and its implications for a multisensory aesthetics of food. After discussing some avant-garde experiments with enhancing flavors through added scents and some parallels between the philosophical debate over whether fine cuisine is a fine art and the debate over the art status of perfumes, the chapter considers the aesthetics of aromas in everyday cooking. The chapter closes with an analysis of the place of food aromas in the health challenges posed by fast food and the use of “nudge” strategies to deal with them.
An Invitation to Discovery
Authors: Shiner Larry
Published: June 2020

The final chapter, An Invitation to Discovery, briefly draws together the threads of the arguments running through the preceding chapters, addresses the question of whether olfactory art can be “profound.” I suggest that although the olfactory arts have already been able to achieve works of considerable complexity, the limitations of the sense of smell are likely to prevent the creation of works of the scope of great novels or symphonies. Even so, the works of more moderate scope that have already been produced refute the claims of those like Beardsley, Scruton or Dutton who have denied scents could be used to make serious works of art. I also suggest that those of us interested in art and aesthetics need to cultivate both our knowledge of smell and our sense of smell if we are to appreciate to their fullest the sensory riches of our environment and the creative achievements of the olfactory arts.
Bach's Legacy
Authors: Stinson Russell
Published: June 2020

This book examines how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Edward Elgar—engaged with the legacy of the music of J. S. Bach. It investigates the various ways in which these individuals responded to Bach’s oeuvre, not as composers per se, but as performers, conductors, scholars, critics, and all-around ambassadors. In its detailed analyses of both musical and epistolary sources, the book sheds light on how Bach’s works were received within the musical circles of these composers. The book’s narrative also helps humanize these individuals as it reconstructs, with touching immediacy, and often by recounting colorful anecdotes, the intimate social circumstances in which Bach’s music was performed and discussed. Special emphasis is given to Mendelssohn’s and Schumann’s reception of Bach’s organ works, Schumann’s encounter with the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, Wagner’s musings on the Well-Tempered Clavier, and Elgar’s (resoundingly negative) thoughts on Bach’s vocal works.
In the Shadow of International Law
Authors: Poznansky Michael
Published: June 2020

This book investigates one of the most controversial forms of secret statecraft in international politics: the use of covert action to overthrow foreign regimes. The central question it asks is why leaders sometimes turn to the so-called quiet option when conducting regime change rather than using overt means. Whereas existing works prioritize the desire to control escalation or avoid domestic-political constraints to explain this variation, this book highlights the surprising role that international law plays in these decisions. When states cannot locate a legal exemption from the nonintervention principle—the prohibition on unwanted violations of another state’s sovereignty, codified in the United Nations Charter and elsewhere—they are more likely to opt for covert action. Concealing brazen violations of nonintervention helps states evade hypocrisy costs and avoid damaging their credibility. These claims are tested against four regime-change operations carried out by the United States in Latin America during the Cold War using declassified government documents, interviews with former government officials, and historical accounts. The theory and findings presented in this book shed light on the secret underpinnings of the liberal international order and speak to long-standing debates about the conduct of foreign-imposed regime change as well as the impact of international law on state behavior. The book also has important policy implications, including what might follow if America abandons its role as the steward of the postwar order, as well as the promise and peril of promoting new rules and norms in cyberspace.
Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures
Authors: della Porta Donatella , Castelli Gattinara Pietro , Eleftheriadis Konstantinos , Felicetti Andrea
Published: June 2020

This volume focuses on the debate that developed in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom after the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, in January 2015. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the unfolding of the public debate in terms of content of claims making, framing, and justifications as well as the quality (deliberativeness) of the discourses by a variety of actors in the public sphere. The volume features a threefold comparison that considers how the debate differs across countries; how it evolved over time; and how it varies when one looks at mainstream media compared to social movement arenas. Based on a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative analyses, the volume pays particular attention to radical left, radical right, and religious actors and to issues related to migration and integration, secularism and cultural diversity, security and civil rights. Taking its starting point from the infamous attacks of January 2015, this volume aims also at contributing to a theoretical innovation by reflecting on the ways in which transformative events trigger discursive critical junctures.
Come Over Here
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

Steiner’s promising career in Vienna was dealt a major blow when his father, Gabor, declared bankruptcy in 1908. With the family now hounded by creditors, 20-year-old Max embarked on a new life in London. This chapter follows Steiner from 1908 to 1914, charting another swift professional rise—his time as an orchestrator and musical director—that was again marred by events beyond his control. In 1912, Steiner’s return to Vienna to manage the Ronacher Theater, a failing venture of Gabor’s, ended in Max’s brief imprisonment. (Financial mismanagement would be a recurring motif in his life.) And in 1914, World War I changed the Austro-Hungarian composer’s status in Britain to that of “enemy alien.” But before he moved to yet another country, Steiner’s work in British theater would refine his ability to write supportive “underscore” for stage performers, which would serve him well years later in Hollywood.
Stairway to Paradise
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

In November 1914, Max Steiner arrived in New York City, with little money and few prospects. This chapter details another formative time in Steiner’s life: his ascent from a struggling Tin Pan Alley music copyist to successful Broadway conductor. It also details his first professional experience with cinema (then silent), as musical supervisor and composer for a chain of New York theaters owned by William Fox. Steiner’s gregariousness and his gift for quick problem-solving led to work with celebrated composer Victor Herbert. Steiner also formed friendships with rising talents like Jerome Kern, Oscar Levant, and George Gershwin. Stage hits like the Gershwin-scored George White’s Scandals expanded Steiner’s musical language, which was fundamentally European, to include American jazz. However, his own attempt to write a Broadway show—1923’s Peaches—was a failure, discouraging him for a time from further composition.
Roaring in the Twenties
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

Now established as a Broadway musical director, Steiner would spend the rest of the 1920s living large—and often beyond his means—with New York’s most celebrated stage talents. He also co-orchestrated and conducted the show often cited as a turning point in American musical comedy: the Gershwins’ Lady, Be Good! starring Fred Astaire. This chapter offers a wide-angle view of the evolution of American music in the 1920s, while focusing on Steiner’s continuing growth as a musical dramatist. Particularly noteworthy was his skill at orchestration: by hiring musicians who could play multiple instruments, Steiner made his Broadway pit ensembles sound larger than they actually were. In 1929 this gift drew the attention of RKO Studios in Hollywood. The chapter concludes with a recounting of cinema’s rocky transition from silent films to talkies, and with Steiner accepting an offer to head west to join RKO’s fledgling music department.
Where Does the Music Come From?
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

The dawn of sound film has been mythologized and misreported (for example, The Jazz Singer was not the first movie with sound). This chapter offers an extensively researched look at Hollywood’s approach to sound and music between 1929 and 1931. During this period, most filmmakers were reluctant to include any music in movies, unless it was clearly motivated by an onscreen performance (by a singer, jazz band, etc.). Contrary to this approach, Max Steiner believed that underscoring would not only be accepted by audiences but could improve a film’s emotion and pacing. Using much previously unpublished material, this chapter follows Steiner’s swift rise from RKO staff orchestrator to studio musical director, and his first attempts to include music that was not always tied to onscreen action—including his work on 1931’s Best Picture winner, Cimarron.
Revolution
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

By 1932, RKO was on the verge of collapse, due to a lack of quality films and industry-wide contraction caused by the Depression. But a new studio production chief—29-year-old David O. Selznick—would lead a dramatic course correction. Selznick commissioned better movies at RKO and encouraged Steiner to provide full dramatic scoring for as many of them as possible. This was the true beginning of film music in the sound era; and this chapter details Steiner and Selznick’s industry-changing innovations. Symphony of Six Million was the first Steiner score to employ separate leitmotivs (à la Wagner) for characters and extensive scoring under dialogue. Other important titles followed: Bird of Paradise, The Most Dangerous Game, and Katharine Hepburn’s screen debut, A Bill of Divorcement. By year’s end, Steiner’s scores were changing the way Hollywood approached music, paving the way for his first screen masterwork.
Startling, Unusual Sensation
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

Before leaving RKO in late 1932, David O. Selznick greenlit the studio’s most costly and ambitious production: King Kong. The result was a landmark in Hollywood special effects and storytelling; its influence continues today, in the fantasy/action films that dominate the industry. Just as significantly, Kong inspired a Steiner score that is still cited by many directors, screenwriters, and composers as the work that first made them aware of the power of film music. This chapter aims to provide a definitive account of the score’s creation, from Steiner’s use of lyrical melodies and startling dissonance to humanize and add credibility to the title character; through the challenges of recording music whose orchestral richness tested the limits of 1933 sound technology. King Kong’s box office success, at the height of the Depression, temporarily saved RKO. It also launched Steiner into a new era of creative experimentation.
Orchids in the Moonlight
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

After producing too many movie musicals at the dawn of sound, Hollywood had virtually abandoned the genre by 1932. Steiner was convinced that the public was eager to see a well-made musical—and after the success of Warner Bros.’ 42nd Street in March 1933, he had a chance to prove it. The visually extravagant Melody Cruise was only a modest hit, but it opened the door for a cinematic breakthrough at RKO: Flying Down to Rio, which paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for the first time. This chapter details the swift evolution of movie musical production and Steiner’s role in it, as he and his team experimented with pre-recording music to be used as “playback” during filming. During Rio’s making, the twice-divorced Steiner began a romance with studio harpist Louise Klos. It would become one of the most significant, and complicated, relationships in Max’s life.
Exodus
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

The year 1936 would bring the most significant changes in Steiner’s life since his arrival in Hollywood. He was eager to accept an offer to be musical director at David O. Selznick’s new studio—but RKO refused to let him go. After months of intransigence on both sides, Max got his way. Steiner was thrilled to reteam with a producer who emphasized quality over quantity, with each title under Selznick’s personal supervision. For his part, Selznick knew that while his own movies were being shot, Steiner could be loaned—at considerable mark-up—to other studios. This mutually beneficial arrangement led to the happiest year of Max’s life: an Oscar-nominated score for Selznick’s The Garden of Allah; and, most fatefully from a professional perspective, a loan-out to Warner Bros., for its biggest release of 1936.
Falling Star
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

This chapter dissects the demise of the Hollywood studio system, caused by several factors including the incursion of television. Warner Bros.’ legendary music department became, to quote Steiner, “a ghost town”; Max was among the few composers remaining on staff. Amid constant pressure to economize, Steiner continued to do fine work. He earned Ayn Rand’s praise for his musical depiction of nonconformity in The Fountainhead, created incendiary accompaniment for James Cagney’s valedictory gangster film White Heat; and devised an evocative “glass effect in music” for The Glass Menagerie. “Steiner has written a beautiful score,” Tennessee Williams wrote Jack Warner, “one that blends perfectly with the moods of the play.” Steiner also innovated as musical supervisor of the stereo-surround blockbuster This Is Cinerama, whose panoramic image foreshadowed IMAX. But most of his assignments were cheap, forgettable programmers, and his battles with Louise over Ronald grew increasingly bitter.
Götterdämmerung
Authors: Smith Steven C.
Published: June 2020

The strands of Steiner’s life emphasized in earlier chapters—his yearning for commercial success, his growing debts, and his emotional neglect of his son—reach their fulcrum here in ways both triumphant and tragic. After an anxious year of unemployment, Steiner found a sympathetic partner in director Delmer Daves. Daves’s 1959 film of a racy bestseller, A Summer Place, inspired 71-year-old Max to write a pastiche of dreamy ’50s rock ballads. Steiner had no commercial expectations for the tune, but a recording of the theme rose to Number One on the charts, won a Grammy (beating Elvis and Sinatra), and became the best-selling instrumental of the rock ’n’ roll era. Almost simultaneously, Steiner won his decades-long battle with ASCAP, which agreed to collect royalties on film music. Max would soon receive millions. But in 1962, Steiner received shattering news from which he’d never fully recover: his 22-year-old son, Ronald, had committed suicide.
Robert Kilwardby
Authors: Silva José Filipe
Published: June 2020

Robert Kilwardby is a central figure in late medieval philosophy and theology, but key areas of his thought have until now remained unexamined in a systematic way. Kilwardby taught Arts at the University of Paris and Theology at the University of Oxford around the mid thirteenth century. He is among the first in the Latin West to comment on the newly translated works of Aristotle and among the first Dominicans to comment on the Sentences of Peter Lombard at Oxford. Writing at that time, Kilwardby is both witness and actor in the emerging conflict between the traditions of Augustinianism and the new Aristotelianism. By offering a comprehensive overview of his works, ranging from topics in logic to theology, this book shows the development of those disciplines and traditions in a way that is accessible to nonspecialists and to anyone interested in medieval thought.
The Moabites
Authors: Doak Brian R.
Published: June 2020

The Moabites play one of the most nuanced roles of any of Israel’s close neighbors: The heroine of the book of Ruth has all of its action centered upon the person and identity of a woman, Ruth, who happens to be identified as “Moabite.” Much of the scholarly attention on the Moabites not filtered through the Bible focuses on the “Mesha Stele,” a long inscription commissioned by a Moabite king in the middle of the ninth century bce. Since it is the longest text of its type from this time period originating from one of the smaller polities in the Levant, the Mesha Stele offers an invaluable opportunity to look at a native text and the views of the king, Mesha, who produced it. The stele gives us native insight into Moabite religious and royal ideology, and at the same time provides a large percentage of what we know of the Moabite language and dialect.
The Phoenicians
Authors: Doak Brian R.
Published: June 2020

Often reviled in the Bible as overly wealthy traders and false worshipers, the Phoenicians appear in the biblical accounts under the label of their principal cities, Tyre and Sidon. Native inscriptions and new archaeological efforts provide information on Phoenician royal politics, religion, and colonial ambitions as far west as the south of Spain and the far northwestern African coast. The name “Phoenicians” first appears in the Homeric corpus in the eighth century bce, though it is never clear that any particular group called themselves “Phoenicians” during the Iron Age. Nevertheless, the cities of Sidon, Tyre, Byblos, and others constitute a coherent group of city-states that comfortably fit under the Phoenician label. Though excavation has been sparse at key sites, new research has revealed a plethora of data on Phoenician burial customs, art, and architecture.
Covering Emergency
Authors: Graham Aubrey P.
Published: June 2020

This chapter addresses the production of humanitarian photography in relation to spaces of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In particular, it addresses the changing trends in NGO image content from negative to positive and their relationship to the region’s social and political contexts. Drawing upon experiences as an anthropologist and as an NGO photographer, the author uses ethnographic vignettes to illustrate how image assignments and field logistics lead to photographic practice that often produces a rosy, controlled visual reality. As a result, such upbeat depictions render invisible the nearby emergencies that fuel the very challenges the population strives to overcome, although associated captions and other text bring the conflict back into the images. Ultimately, this chapter advocates for imagery that encompasses the “beauty and the mess” of the region, challenging both the mere marketing of smiles and the simplistic sale of visualized suffering and disaster.