bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Simple approaches for environmental and mechanical management of the Varroa mite, Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman (Parasitiformes: Varroidae), on the honey bee, Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Egypt
Authors: Allam Sally F. M. , Hassan Mourad F. , Hassan Ahmed S. , Abada Mahmoud K. A.
Published: January 2021

Background

Varroa mite, Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman (Parasitiformes: Varroidae), is an ectoparasitic mite of the honey bee, Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with a great economic importance. It is the major deadlock of apiculture development all over the world.

Results

This work aimed to assess the effect of bee house and dark bee house on numbers of Varroa mite on white card board sheets, worker broods, and alive bees during spring and autumn of 2018 and 2019. Two types of card board for sticking the fallen Varroa mite were evaluated through winter of 2019. Keeping honey bee hives in a dark room during March and September of 2018 and 2019 for a successive 3 days resulted in a great reduction in the number of Varroa inner bee hive, i.e., on the white card board sheets, area of broods, and alive honey bee. Highest number of fallen Varroa mite on the white card board sheets was obtained in the case of using the dark bee house during March and September in 2018 and 2019, followed by keeping in a normal bee house then those fallen in the case of the open apiary.

Conclusion

The dark bee house grooming behaviour increased through 3 days of dark. Environmental management of bee house and dark bee house can be promising in colony collapse disorder. Modified adhesive sheets were more efficient in this regard than the normal ones.
Depends Who's Asking: Interviewer Effects in Demographic and Health Surveys Abortion Data
Authors: Leone Tiziana , Sochas Laura , Coast Ernestina
Published: January 2021

Responses to survey questions about abortion are affected by a wide range of factors, including stigma, fear, and cultural norms. However, we know little about how interviewers might affect responses to survey questions on abortion. The aim of this study is to assess how interviewers affect the probability of women reporting abortions in nationally representative household surveys: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). We use cross-classified random intercepts at the level of the interviewer and the sampling cluster in a Bayesian framework to analyze the impact of interviewers on the probability of reporting abortions in 22 DHS conducted worldwide. Household surveys are the only available data we can use to study the determinants and pathways of abortion in detail and in a representative manner. Our analyses are motivated by improving our understanding of the reliability of these data. Results show an interviewer effect accounting for between 0.2% and 50% of the variance in the odds of a woman reporting ever having had an abortion, after women's demographic characteristics are controlled for. In contrast, sampling cluster effects are much lower in magnitude. Our findings suggest the need for additional effort in assessing the causes of abortion underreporting in household surveys, including interviewers' skills and characteristics. This study also has important implications for improving the collection of other sensitive demographic data (e.g., gender-based violence and sexual health). Data quality of responses to sensitive questions could be improved with more attention to interviewers—their recruitment, training, and characteristics. Future analyses will need to account for the role of interviewer to more fully understand possible data biases.
“To Understand All Life as Fragile, Valuable, and Interdependent”
Authors: Katz Stephen , Sivaramakrishnan Kavita , Thane Pat
Published: January 2021

As old age garners more attention in the time of COVID-19, this roundtable discussion brings together scholars from three different areas within aging studies to define the field’s terms and map out some of its contours and potential future directions. Stephen Katz draws on poststructuralist theory, feminism, and theories of materiality and embodiment in his historically informed work in critical gerontology. Kavita Sivaramakrishnan’s research in global public health and South Asian history brought her to the study of physiological old age as it intersects with social histories in the global South, thus critiquing Eurocentric epistemologies of aging. Pat Thane is a social historian interested in old age in relation to gender, labor, inequality, and welfare states, as well as the long arc of the meaning of old age in the West.
Old-Age Justice and Black Feminist History
Authors: Field Corinne T.
Published: January 2021

This essay outlines Sojourner Truth’s and Harriet Tubman’s articulations of an intersectional black feminist agenda for old-age justice. The two most famous formerly enslaved women in the nineteenth-century United States, Truth and Tubman in their speeches, activism, and published Narratives revealed the mechanisms of domination through which enslavers and employers of domestic servants extracted productive and reproductive labor from black women, who in turn faced premature debility and immiseration at the end of life. Truth and Tubman linked what is now called necropolitics—“subjugation of life to the power of death,” in Achille Mbembe’s phrase—to the coercive organization of care work, what Evelyn Nakano Glenn refers to as being “forced to care.” They point to the importance of gendered and racialized labor to the history of old age in America.
“Until the Day of His Death”
Authors: Lima Henrique Espada
Published: January 2021

This article examines postmortem inventories and notarial records from Brazilian slaveholders in southern Brazil in the nineteenth century. By discussing selected cases in detail, it investigates the relationship between “precarious masters” (especially the poor and/or disabled, widows without family, and single elderly slaveholding women and men) and their slaves and former slaves to whom they bequeathed, in their testaments and final wills, manumission and property. The article reads these documents as intergenerational contractual arrangements that connected the masters’ expectations for care in illness and old age with the slaves’ and former slaves’ expectations for compensation for their work and dedication. Following these uneven relationships of interdependence and exploitation as they developed over time, the article suggests a reassessment of the role of paternalism in Brazil during the country’s final century of slavery. More than a tool to enforce relations of domination, paternalism articulated with the dynamics of vulnerability and interdependency as they changed over the life courses of both enslaved people and slave owners. This article shows how human aging became a terrain of negotiation and struggle as Brazilian slave society transformed throughout the nineteenth century.
The Natural Profits of Their Years of Labor
Authors: Winant Gabriel
Published: January 2021

This article uses the politics of old age to help explain the moral conservatism of the American welfare state. It argues that the onset of Fordism caused both uneven economic displacement of old workers and broader anxiety among social reformers about dependency and the forms of social disorder it produced by disturbing normative families. The management of this disturbance became a key promise of the movement for old-age pensions in the 1920s, in which Progressive labor reformers and conservative workers’ and fraternal organizations combined in an effort to support and rehabilitate the patriarchal family form through social policy. This logic ultimately became embedded in Social Security. Grasping this helps clarify the conservative dimensions of the New Deal as a moment of class, state, and racial formation.
“Based upon New Principles”
Authors: Zdencanovic Ben
Published: January 2021

This essay examines the early life and work of the Russian American social reformer Abraham Epstein, an advocate for old-age pensions and compulsory social insurance whose work as head of the American Association for Social Security helped lead to the passage of the 1935 Social Security Act. The essay traces a young Epstein’s 1921–22 journey to Russia to study the Soviet government’s radical experiments in social welfare policy. Although Epstein was disillusioned with the Soviet system on the whole, his experiences in Soviet Russia informed his later idea of “social security”: a unified system of social insurance and social assistance to protect the entire population from social risk while functioning as a powerful tool of income redistribution. Epstein’s early interest in Soviet social welfarism adds new insight into the development of the broader concept of “social security,” an important but understudied link between Progressive Era “workingmen’s insurance” and the postwar welfare state.
“Do Not Relinquish Your Offspring”
Authors: Kennedy Amelia
Published: January 2021

This article explores issues of labor, community, and authority in medieval Europe through an examination of older Cistercian abbots and the practice of abbatial “retirement.” While historians typically associate the Cistercians with greater acceptance of abbatial resignation, this article focuses on the fervent twelfth-century opposition to the practice. Many Cistercians asserted that abbatial retirement harmed the reputation of the monastic community and constituted a form of self-indulgence on the part of the abbot, whose soul would consequently be jeopardized as he prepared for death. This article argues that these attitudes reflected the importance of service and labor in later life, as well as the abbot’s continued importance within the community. Medieval monasticism thus offers a concept of “active aging” focused on community and care of others. The thirteenth-century trend in favor of retirement stemmed from increasing institutionalization and new understandings of what constituted the “common good” for a monastic community.
Fighting for the Working-Class City
Authors: Martin Laura Renata
Published: January 2021

This article examines the opposing sides taken by elderly tenants and labor unions over a major urban renewal project in 1970s San Francisco. Tenant activists sought to block the construction of the Yerba Buena Center and the resulting relocation of thousands of elderly residents of residential hotels. City labor unions lined up in support of the project, even though some of the displaced residents were former industrial workers and union members. By examining the path taken by both sides in the redevelopment struggle, this article grapples with their competing visions of working-class identity and interests. Ultimately, it argues that the position taken by labor leaders narrowed the labor movement’s vision of its constituents and its mission. This narrowed vision led them to view impoverished retired union workers as their opponents rather than as comrades in a shared struggle for working-class dignity and self-determination.
Failure to Cure in Patients Undergoing Surgery for Gastric Cancer: A Nationwide Cohort Study
Authors: Voeten Daan M. , van der Werf Leonie R. , Wilschut Janneke A. , Busweiler Linde A. D. , van Sandick Johanna W. , van Hillegersberg Richard , van Berge Henegouwen Mark I. ,   on behalf of the Dutch Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer Audit Group
Published: January 2021

Background

This study aimed to describe the incidence of failure to cure (a composite outcome measure defined as surgery not meeting its initial aim), and the impact of hospital variation in the administration of neoadjuvant therapy on this outcome measure.

Methods

All patients in the Dutch Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer Audit undergoing curatively intended gastric cancer surgery in 2011–2019 were included. Failure to cure was defined as (1) ‘open-close’ surgery; (2) irradical surgery (R1/R2); or (3) 30-day/in-hospital mortality. Case-mix-corrected funnel plots, based on multivariable logistic regression analyses, investigated hospital variation. The impact of a hospital’s tendency to administer neoadjuvant chemotherapy on the heterogeneity in failure to cure between hospitals was assessed based on median odds ratios and multilevel logistic regression analyses.

Results

Some 3862 patients from 28 hospitals were included. Failure to cure was noted in 22.3% (hospital variation: 14.5–34.8%). After case-mix correction, two hospitals had significantly higher-than-expected failure to cure rates, and one hospital had a lower-than-expected rate. The failure to cure rate was significantly higher in hospitals with a low tendency to administer neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Approximately 29% of hospital variation in failure to cure could be attributed to different hospital policies regarding neoadjuvant therapy.

Conclusions

Failure to cure has an incidence of 22% in patients undergoing gastric cancer surgery. Higher failure to cure rates were seen in centers administering less neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which confirms the Dutch guideline recommendation on the administration of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Failure to cure provides short loop feedback and can be used as a quality indicator in surgical audits.
Attitudes and habits regarding brain training applications and games among Japanese consumers: a cross-sectional study
Authors: Robb Nigel
Published: January 2021

Background: While there is now a large amount of research investigating whether brain training applications and games are effective or not, there is less research on the expectations, attitudes, and habits of potential users of brain training programs. Previous research suggests that people generally have positive beliefs about the effectiveness of brain training which are not dependent on their level of experience of brain training. However, this research has primarily focused on western participants.

Methods: In the present study, a questionnaire was used to investigate the attitudes and habits of Japanese consumers towards brain training. The final sample contained responses from 818 people. In addition to descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients were calculated to determine if there were relationships between variables relating to participants' beliefs about brain training and experience of using brain training.

Results: Participants had positive beliefs about the effectiveness of brain training. However, these beliefs were only weakly correlated with their level of experience of using brain training, both in terms of the number programs used (Pearson's r = 0.163) and duration of use (Pearson's r = 0.237). The most widely used brain training program (used by 52.93% of participants) was made by Nintendo for the handheld Nintendo DS games console.

Conclusions: The research presented here supports previous findings which suggest that people's beliefs about the effectiveness of brain training software are not strongly related to their experience of using such software.
Nahmanides
Authors: Halbertal Moshe
Published: January 2021

A broad, systematic account of one of the most original and creative kabbalists, biblical interpreters, and Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced, Rabbi Moses b. Nahman (1194-1270), known in English as Nahmanides, was the greatest Talmudic scholar of the thirteenth century and one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters. Beyond his monumental scholastic achievements, Nahmanides was a distinguished kabbalist and mystic, and in his commentary on the Torah he dispensed esoteric kabbalistic teachings that he termed “By Way of Truth.” This broad, systematic account of Nahmanides's thought explores his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, including notions of God, history, revelation, and the reasons for the commandments. The relationship between Nahmanides's kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them, as well as the legal and exoteric aspects of his thinking, are at the center of the book's portrayal of Nahmanides as a complex and transformative thinker.
Introduction
Authors: Halbertal Moshe
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides a broad, systematic account of Nahmanides's thought. It analyzes Nahmanides's conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, including his conception of God, history, revelation, and the reasons for the commandments. It discusses Nahmanides's ideas and positions on a range of matters that emerges out of conversation with the work of other scholars on particular aspects of his thought, such as Chayim Henoch's book Nachmanides: Philosopher and Mystic. The chapter looks into Haviva Pedaya's book Nahmanides: Cyclical Time and Holy Text, which explores Nahmanides's conception of time and the Torah. It also explores Nahmanides's Talmudic novellae and Bible commentary, which is a direct result of his extraordinary cultural positioning.
Death, Sin, Law, and Redemption
Authors: Halbertal Moshe
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the existential foundations of Nahmanides's worldview. It analyzes the primary elements of the human condition: death, sin, and redemption. It talks also about Nahmanides's view that humanity's fate and existential condition reflect the divine drama itself. The chapter clarifies Nahmanides's conception of the Godhead, the chain of being, and the universe. It talks about Nahmanides's Talmudic novellae that provide two references to his kabbalistic traditions. One reference concerns the difference between a vow and an oath, while the other discusses the theory of prophecy in an aggadic context. It also explains how Nahmanides's kabbalistic ideas do not shape his particular halakhic determinations, even if kabbalah more broadly supplies the internal meaning of religious praxis.
The Reasons for the Commandments
Authors: Halbertal Moshe
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes the meaning of halakhah and religious praxis as a signal indicator of the originality, profundity, and influence of a particular mode of thinking in the history of Jewish thought. It looks at Nahmanides's insights into the realm of the Godhead and into the process of emanation from within Absolute Privation. It also explores Nahmanides's ideas about humanity's place in the cosmos and his theories of prophecy and the miraculous. The chapter discusses how Nahmanides invested much energy into supplying reasons for the commandments. It points out Nahmanides's intention to translate his metaphysical and anthropological ideas into a meaningful framework for the performance of the commandments.
Overcoming Necessity
Authors: Crocker Thomas P.
Published: January 2021

Using emergency as a cause for action ultimately leads to an almost unnoticed evolution in the political understanding of presidential powers. The Constitution of the United States, however, was designed to function under “states of exception,” most notably through the separation of powers, and provides ample internal checks on emergency actions taken under claims of necessity. This book urges the United States Congress, the courts, and other bodies to put those checks into practice. The book analyzes the constitutional norms that fail to guide and constrain the choice of action through an analysis of what is appropriate. It explores how constitutional norms always apply as unavoidably normative constitutional questions during an emergency. It explains how necessity can produce dictatorship, because the people are willing to allow whatever it takes to solve their immediate needs, and it looks into the theory that a president might suspend the constitutional order in order to post hoc political accountability. It then talks about necessity that enables presidential discretion, and responds to arguments regarding the president having all the power that necessity confers. The book considers the scope of implied presidential power, arguing that even if there is power to do what is necessary, it is still constrained by conceptions of what is proper. It emphasizes how deference to the president is inconsistent with a constitutional tradition that preciously guards decisions about liberty. The book concludes with a review of the commitment to constitutional values as a constitutive feature of political identity in American constitutionalism.
Introduction
Authors: Crocker Thomas P.
Published: January 2021

This chapter does not focus on the common-law or international doctrines of necessity but discusses the family of justificatory arguments that arise within liberal constitutionalism to the effect that “necessity knows no law.” It analyzes the constitutional norms that fail to guide and constrain the choice of action through an analysis of what is appropriate. It explores how constitutional norms always apply as unavoidably normative constitutional questions during an emergency. The chapter also looks into post-9/11 counterterrorism practices of surveillance, detention, interrogation, and targeted killing. It observes the scope of the argument that transcends specific 9/11 terrorist practices in order to encompass the structure of constitutional thought of which policy choices arise.
Normalizing Necessity: From Scrutiny to Exigency
Authors: Crocker Thomas P.
Published: January 2021

This chapter investigates the concept of the greater the governmental need the better the justification for intruding upon baseline rights and liberties. As an example, it explains that a legislature may have license to pursue a compelling need by means claimed necessary even while deviating from strict protection of a constitutional right. It explains how necessity can enhance or diminish the scope of pre–existing powers of a defined government office, such as granting a president confronting a military emergency with wide discretionary latitude to act with enhanced executive powers without having to claim new ones. The chapter also assesses how channeling executive discretion into a judicial doctrine of “exigency” enhances the scope of government action in relation to a protected right. It focuses on counterterrorism surveillance practices, which argues that the existence of exigency doctrines provides ways to normalize necessity in everyday governing practice.
Who Decides? Interpretation, Balance, and the Role of Courts
Authors: Crocker Thomas P.
Published: January 2021

This chapter highlights arguments on the trade-off thesis, which is fundamentally flawed. It emphasizes how deference to the president is inconsistent with a constitutional tradition that preciously guards decisions about liberty. It analyzes the core idea of constitutional trade-off that lacks a conception of how to compare values or how to describe what specific liberties must give way for something to gain in security. The chapter also illustrates the extent of gains and losses that are made in liberty or security and through processes of democratic deliberation that comport with American constitutionalism rather than reflexive claims that necessity requires a trade-off. It points out the ways of justifying extreme counterterrorism policy, which argues that necessitous circumstances require trade off in liberty for greater security.
The Jews and the Reformation
Authors: Austin Kenneth
Published: January 2021

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.
Caught in the Crossfire
Authors: Austin Kenneth
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century, which was the era of the Thirty Years War. It highlights the conflict of the Thirty Years War that provided the backdrop to further religious and political developments that shaped Jewish experiences. The chapter describes how the combative form of Catholicism took shape in the wake of the Catholic Reformation in various places, including the Holy Roman Empire. It looks into parts of northern Europe, particularly Germany and the Low Countries, that began to be more welcoming to Jewish populations. It also illustrates the contrast between repressive Catholicism and a more welcoming form of Protestantism.
Conclusion
Authors: Austin Kenneth
Published: January 2021

This chapter summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It points out how Spain had still not reversed its policy on Jews while most parts of Europe had become rather more welcoming to Jews in the interim. It also looks into the Jewish communities of Amsterdam, Frankfurt am Main, Prague, and Venice that exceeded 2,000 people for the first time in the seventeenth century, joining other cities, such as Rome that had already achieved that population in the sixteenth century. The chapter recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe. It talks about England and France, which had been the first territories to expel their Jewish populations back in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries but had begun to reverse that policy in the seventeenth century.
Introduction
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides a cultural and intellectual history of the era in which the shaping of the Soviet nation was completed. It talks about the era when mental and cultural dominants that determined the character of Russia were definitively affirmed. It also looks into cultural texts of literature, theater, cinema, art, music, scientific and historical texts, and popular literature through which history reveals its internal logic. The chapter analyzes Stalinism that communicated the new agenda, gave the new political course form through media, and inculcated the new ideological modulations. It explores the prism of Soviet art in order to trace the political and ideological transformation of the Stalinist regime from revolutionary international utopianism to conservatively patriarchal national Bolshevism.
Victory over the Revolution
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes how the poetry from the first year after the war, the theme of the Leningrad blockade, and the postwar films about the war have passed into postwar culture. It recounts the Soviet nation's transition to normalcy after being scorched by revolutions and civil war, the ravages of collectivization and accelerated urbanization, and the Great Terror and the horrors of war. It also reviews the urgent task of the Soviet regime to refashion the past into a “usable past,” in which a new basis of legitimacy had to be forged and a definitive shaping of the new Soviet nation had to take place. The chapter explains how Stalinism repudiated the formula of Mikhail Pokrovskii that history is politics projected into the past. It also points out how the content of historicism determined by Joseph Stalin compliments current political goals.
Three Resolutions about Beauty
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on the historical narrative that is part of the wider process of reformatting the representational regime for Soviet reality. It shows how reformatting was the main goal of the three Central Committee resolutions adopted in August 1946 regarding the most popular forms of art that were also most important to the Stalinist Regime: literature, cinema, and theater. It explains how the three resolutions are considered to be the starting point of the “Zhdanov era.” The chapter looks into the inaccurate portrayal of the postwar Donbass in the second part of Leonid Lukov's film “A Great Life.” It talks about the demand to stop the domination of foreign plays on the Soviet stage and Soviet plays. It also discusses “Communist conscientiousness” that was aimed to replace the nineteenth-century concept of “tendentiousness.”
Introduction
Authors: Licence Tom
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides a background on the reign of Edward the Confessor, which was followed by the Norman Conquest that intensified the spotlight on his performance. It confirms whether Edward was a weak king who doomed England by promising it first to William then Harold. The chapter begins with events on how Edward obtained the throne in ruthless times and held it almost twenty-four years from 1042 to 1066. The chapter also analyzes whether Edward's survival was due more to luck or judgement or whether he merely occupied the throne or made his reign a success. It describes the era of Edward, when a king was regarded as successful if he ruled justly enough not to be called a tyrant, held his kingdom in relative peace, and passed it safely to an heir.
Conflict
Authors: Licence Tom
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on the years from 1049 to 1053, a delineated a period of political struggle which reconfigured Edward the Confessor's alliances. It explains how Edward had to contend with the developing threats from Flanders to the east and Gruffudd ap Rhydderch to the west. It also talks about Edward's installation of his own candidates in the archbishoprics in several important offices, which collided with other powerful agents who sought to install theirs. The chapter analyzes how Edward had to raise his political game to become a European player abroad and how he had to integrate newcomers into a small and jealous circle of lords without somehow upsetting the balance. It also assesses how Edward would negotiate the first rebellion of his reign.
Conclusion
Authors: Licence Tom
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes how Edward the Confessor strived for the throne and how he was ruled by his in-laws. It points out that Edward regarded the throne as a birthright that he strived for and obtained. It talks about the decades spent awaiting Edward's inheritance that translated into a conscientious ethic of service. The chapter explains Edward's preference for peace for himself and his neighbors, which is an indication of how suffering left him with little appetite for harshness and with a need to cling to favourites. It mentions the innovative systems he implemented for defending the coast and the Welsh march as well as the work he has done for the military and spiritual safeguarding of his subjects. It also looks into Edward's response to reform the papacy with practical initiatives.
Newfoundland and Labrador 1766
Authors: Musgrave Toby
Published: January 2021

This chapter describes Joseph Banks' life, in which he displayed a talent for recognising advantageous opportunities, grasping initiatives, and melding outcomes to his advantage. It talks about Banks' voyage in the HMS Niger, which was sent as a vessel of the Fishery Protection Squadron in order to take Marines to Newfoundland and Labrador. It also looks at Constantine Phipps, who joined Banks at the Niger and listed on the ship's manifest as supernumeraries. The chapter highlights Banks' voyage at the Niger as the first big test of his abilities, where he would put all his theoretical knowledge into practice and conduct scientific research in the field, without the network of academics in London. It also mentions Peter Ellis who had explored the West Indies and undertaken two plant hunting expeditions in Lapland.
HMS Endeavour 1768–71
Authors: Musgrave Toby
Published: January 2021

This chapter points out Joseph Banks's participation in determining the places to properly observe the ensuing transit of Venus. It explains that the transit of Venus is a rare astronomical event during which the planet passes across the face of the sun. It also describes the twenty-five-year-old Banks who desperately wanted the opportunity to collect, study, and record both natural history specimens and knowledge from mostly unexplored part of the world, the South Seas. The chapter highlights Banks's preparation for the first southern circumnavigation of HMS Dolphin and take full advantage of the voyage's natural history potential. It also talks about Alexander Dalrymple, a distinguished hydrographer who joined Banks in the South Seas.
To Iceland: The Independent Explorer
Authors: Musgrave Toby
Published: January 2021

This chapter talks about Joseph Banks's expedition from Iceland to a part of the Danish kingdom, which was suggested by Daniel Solander or Uno von Troil, a Swedish gentleman antiquarian and scientist. It discusses how popularity of vulcanology has possibly influenced Banks's decision for the expedition. It also mentions Bank's meeting with Johann Gerhard König, a Baltic–German botanist and physician, who botanised extensively in the same island as Bank's expedition. The chapter discusses naturalist-surgeon Bjarni Pálsson and Eggert Ólafsson who made a detailed study of the natural history of Iceland between 1752 and 17572. It describes Bank's visit to the Islay in the Hebridean island where he focused his expedition on antiquaries, culture and geology.
The Scientist-Enabler
Authors: Musgrave Toby
Published: January 2021

This chapter talks about the most prestigious office Joseph Banks held, which was president of the Royal Society for an unbroken forty-one and a half years from November 1778. It points out that the Royal Society was founded on 28 November 1660 by a committee of twelve natural philosophers following a lecture by Sir Christopher Wren at Gresham College. The chapter recounts how Banks devoted his presidency to the “Scientific Service of the People.” It explores Bank's advocacy of the Baconian ideal about a strong partnership between government and science. It also highlights Banks's efforts to advance governmental patronage of science by demonstrative applications of the usefulness of science to the state's advantage.
The Last Two Decades
Authors: Musgrave Toby
Published: January 2021

This chapter recounts the last two decades of Joseph Banks's life since his 75th birthday in 1800. It describes how Banks was getting older and suffered the incapacities and endured the torments of chronic gout. It talks about Banks's management of his estates and land interests, as well as the overall management of the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew and supervision of his scientific and engraving teams in the rooms behind 32 Soho Square. The chapter describes how it became painful and hard for Banks to write and how he was forced to dictate to his ever-faithful assistant, Robert Brown. It mentions Banks's last purchase for his collection and acquisition of the herbarium that Jean François Berger made in 1814.
Overture and Beginners 1899–1918
Authors: Nichols Roger
Published: January 2021

This chapter introduces Francis Poulenc's parents. It begins with Poulenc's mother, Jenny Zoé Royer, who was born on 20 June 1864 and played a large part in his musical life. Jenny gave Poulenc his first lessons on the piano in 1904 and then appeared first in the list of dedicatees for his opera Dialogues des Carmélites. The chapter then talks about Émile Poulenc, Poulenc's father who was born on 5 July 1855 and took over the family chemical firm under the name “Poulenc Frères.” It describes how the chemical firm flourished throughout Poulenc's youth and beyond, bringing in a comfortable income for the family, and eventually morphed into the current enterprise Rhône–Poulenc. It also explains the contrast made between Poulenc's parents, between his mother's free–thinking, agnostic family and the committed Roman Catholic one of his father's.
‘Now we are Six’ 1919–1924
Authors: Nichols Roger
Published: January 2021

This chapter explains how Francis Poulenc exorcized the influence of Claude Debussy's piano music through his multi-stave preludes. It also analyzes Poulenc's modelling of his solo piano music in that of Igor Stravinsky, although the eight little piano duets were more interesting with the imaginative use of ostinato. It looks at Poulenc's three pieces called Mouvements perpétuels, which was acclaimed by virtuosos and by amateurs and reflected a sense in which the “war had created a new world.” The chapter looks at the performing instructions on Mouvements perpétuels, such as the second piece that must be played three times consecutively: the first time in a casual manner, second with plenty of rubato, and third with fury. It also mentions how Poulenc described Mouvements perpétuels as no more than three simple little touches of colour on a ground of white paper.
Dreaming of Maturity 1924–1928
Authors: Nichols Roger
Published: January 2021

This chapter looks at the triumph of Francis Poulenc's Les Biches, in which he took some time to fully absorb it and what it meant for him as a composer. It clarifies the significance of triumphs for composers and how they pose the problem of acting as markers against which anything a composer writes thereafter will be judged. The chapter looks into Poulenc's two new works in the whole of 1924 that was given the title of a piano concerto: Trio for oboe in May and Poèmes de Ronsard in December. It mentions Poulenc's work on the third movement of Napoli and revision of the Impromptus. It also describes the Violin Sonata for Jelly d'Aranyi that ultimately met the familiar fate of most of Poulenc's works for strings.
The Years of Darkness 1939–1944
Authors: Nichols Roger
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on Francis Poulenc's military service during the Second World War, in which his creativity, in sympathy, became muted and would remain so for at least three years. It analyzes Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin's departure with her husband for his castle in Hungary that became Poulenc's emotional motivation behind Fiançailles pour rire. It analyzes Poulenc's first musical recognition of war in the song Bleuet and to a poem by Apollinaire that records the imagined thoughts of a squaddy who is to “go over the top.” The chapter analyzes Mélancolie as one of Poulenc's most touching piano pieces, which Wilfrid Mellers observed that it has a mood of resignation and fragility that is immanent in its continual modulations. It also describes how Poulenc tried to take Maurice Ravel's belief in making the different departments of the orchestra as far as possible self-sufficient into his score of Les Animaux modèles.
Joy, Suffering and Farewell 1957–1963
Authors: Nichols Roger
Published: January 2021

This chapter talks about Francis Poulenc's return to Paris, where he spent some weeks putting final corrections to the score of Carmélites and continuing his project on the Flute Sonata. It mentions Poulenc's relationship with former soldier Louis Gautier, which followed the pattern of metamorphosing from lover to friend and remained close until his death. It also explores the Paris press' symphony of admiration for Poulenc, stating how he has invented a new kind of opera with intimate, psychological drama that has no reference but itself. The chapter provides a summary of Poulenc's harmonic and melodic preferences all throughout the years. It also talks about Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux's diary in which she had written that Poulenc sang his Chansons gaillardes and played his Napoli well and that he didn't lack talent, but he wasn't a genius.
Substate Dictatorship
Authors: Gorlizki Yoram , Khlevniuk Oleg
Published: January 2021

How do local leaders govern in a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? This book examines these questions by looking at one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking the story through to the 1970s, the book charts the strategies of Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and evolution of local trust networks. The book begins with an explanation of what dictatorship is and how it works, and it analyzes how countries move from one form of dictatorship to another. It also looks at the most important dictatorships of the modern era in a new perspective. It focuses on the personal dictatorship that formed in the Soviet Union from the 1930s that center on the supreme leader, Joseph Stalin, and talks about substate dictators that were nested in Stalin's statewide dictatorship. The book builds on recent developments in the theory of dictatorship, such as the distinction between the dictator's problem of controlling threats from the masses, the problem of authoritarian control, and the problem of authoritarian power sharing. It discusses the challenges that substate leaders faced after the war and the party-based tools they used to forge networks. The book moves on to examine the stabilization of hierarchies and the changing balance between co-optation and political exclusion after the war, and explores the various ways in which substate leaders responded to new impulses at a regional level. It looks at the succession struggle in Moscow and its effects on the environment in which substate leaders operated. The book's conclusion suggests how a public discursive framework can help provide a benchmark for comparing the Soviet Union with other regimes, including that of contemporary post-communist Russia. It summarizes how substate leaders and their strategies can shed light on dictatorship and on how it changes over time. It also explains that the Soviet case falls into two broad categories, one empirical and historical, the other comparative and theoretical. The chapter draws attention to a parallel act of delegation at the regional level. It also recounts how Joseph Stalin handed over power on a provisional basis to regional leaders due to his inability to penetrate the inner recesses of local administration.
Substate Dictators
Authors: Gorlizki Yoram , Khlevniuk Oleg
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses the challenges that substate leaders faced after the war and the party-based tools they used to forge networks. It analyzes how substate leaders subjugate rank-and-file officials and explores the four mechanisms that were deployed by regional leaders as they sought to secure competent and loyal colleagues. It also looks at the ability of kompromat, informal exclusion, overpromotion, and political exclusion in fostering strange and often unexpected forms of solidarity. The chapter discusses the Soviet Constitution that differentiated national territories between the republics and nonnational ones, which are referred to as regions. It also highlights the notable differences between leaders of the two types of territory that were closely bound up with the evolution of Soviet nationalities policy.
Inside the Nomenklatura
Authors: Gorlizki Yoram , Khlevniuk Oleg
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines the stabilization of hierarchies and the changing balance between co-optation and political exclusion after the war. It looks into the subsidence of the Bolsheviks' fixation on the class struggle and former practices of class discrimination that were progressively dismantled when Joseph Stalin declared the ceasing of class exploitation and the inclusion of “nonantagonistic” classes in the population by mid-1930s. It also describes the Soviet regional party cadres in the late 1940s that still inhabited a resolutely ideological world. The chapter investigates the state of affairs in Russia that reflected an increasingly bitter ideological conflict with the West. It also talks about the massive campaign against “theft of socialist property,” campaigns against “speculation,” and against the enlargement of private plots on collective farms.
The New Art of Survival
Authors: Gorlizki Yoram , Khlevniuk Oleg
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the various ways in which substate leaders responded to new impulses at a regional level. It reviews the strategies pursued by substate dictators in the late Stalin era. The chapter discusses the new leadership that began to deemphasize a primary form of political exclusion or expulsions from the party. It describes how expulsions began a steady decline from 1953 and then by the early 1960s, expulsions had fallen to a quarter of the levels in the late Stalin era. It also highlights Joseph Stalin's agency problem from the center's perspective and reviews how it was dealt within the regions.
Substate Nationalism
Authors: Gorlizki Yoram , Khlevniuk Oleg
Published: January 2021

This chapter shows how formal recognition by the Soviet state of ethnolinguistic elites and cultures created opportunities for republican leaders to negotiate the problems of authoritarian control and authoritarian power sharing through ethnic mobilization. It looks at the early post-Stalin era that witnessed various campaigns to raise the political or cultural autonomy of national groups. The chapter describes the campaigns that rode on the coattails of the center's policy of reinvigorated indigenization and designed to promote ethnoterritorial elites and cultures. It talks about the litmus test of nationalism, in which an ethnoterritorial elite presented its interests as being opposed not only to those of other ethnoterritorial groups but also to those of the Soviet Union as a whole. It also explains ethnic mobilization that meant going over the heads of the party membership and appealing to the wider titular ethnic group.
Scandal in Riazan
Authors: Gorlizki Yoram , Khlevniuk Oleg
Published: January 2021

This chapter assesses how Nikita Khrushchev's solution to the dictator's agency problem led to an epidemic of data falsification and the most radical purge of the post-Stalin era. It points out how the purge of 1960 to 1961 marked a break between the high-pressure approach practiced by both Nikita Khrushchev, Joseph Stalin, and the more accommodating stance of Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev. It also discusses the key turning point in relations between the authoritarian leadership in Moscow and their principals in the regions that was caused by a rupture that took place toward the end of 1960. The chapter draws attention to the mass replacement and dismissal of provincial leaders that turn out to be a purge of regional leaders unprecedented in its proportions in the post-totalitarian era. It investigates the scandal that blew up in Riazan, a medium-sized agricultural region, which was chosen as Khrushchev's standard-bearer for new agricultural policies.