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 Free Download Anthony B. Pinn, "What Is African American Religion?: Facets series" English | ISBN: 0800698460 | 2011 | 128 pages | EPUB | 206 KB Is there really a monolithic "black church"? Distilling the arguments of Pinn's important and provocative work in Terror and Triumph, this brief work asks the central question: What really is African American religion?  Free Download What Good Is Grand Strategy?: Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush By Hal Brands 2014 | 288 Pages | ISBN: 0801470285 | PDF | 1 MB Grand strategy is one of the most widely used and abused concepts in the foreign policy lexicon. In this important book, Hal Brands explains why grand strategy is a concept that is so alluring-and so elusive-to those who make American statecraft. He explores what grand strategy is, why it is so essential, and why it is so hard to get right amid the turbulence of global affairs and the chaos of domestic politics. At a time when "grand strategy" is very much in vogue, Brands critically appraises just how feasible that endeavor really is.Brands takes a historical approach to this subject, examining how four presidential administrations, from that of Harry S. Truman to that of George W. Bush, sought to "do" grand strategy at key inflection points in the history of modern U.S. foreign policy. As examples ranging from the early Cold War to the Reagan years to the War on Terror demonstrate, grand strategy can be an immensely rewarding undertaking-but also one that is full of potential pitfalls on the long road between conception and implementation. Brands concludes by offering valuable suggestions for how American leaders might approach the challenges of grand strategy in the years to come.  Free Download Thomas Gregory, "Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan" English | ISBN: 0198897383 | 2025 | 368 pages | PDF | 33 MB Weaponizing Civilian Protection exposes how coalition efforts to minimize and mitigate civilian casualties during the recent conflict in Afghanistan also worked to rationalize the harm inflicted upon Afghan civilians. Drawing on declassified documents and interviews with coalition officials, it traces how civilian protection was reimagined as a martial tactic rather than a humanitarian imperative, with coalition officials reframing civilian casualties as strategic setbacks that could imperil the entire mission.  Free Download Robert A. Pratt, "We Shall Not Be Moved: The Desegregation of the University of Georgia" English | 2002 | pages: 222 | ISBN: 0820327808, 0820323993 | PDF | 0,7 mb In September 1950, Horace Ward, an African American student from La Grange, Georgia, applied to law school at the University of Georgia. Despite his impressive academic record, Ward received a reply―in reality, a bribe―from one of the university's top officials offering him financial assistance if he would attend an out-of-state law school. Ward, outraged at the unfairness of the proposition and determined to end this unequal treatment, sued the state of Georgia with the help of the NAACP, becoming the first black student to challenge segregation at the University of Georgia.  Free Download Warlords: Strong-arm Brokers in Weak States By Kimberly Marten 2012 | 280 Pages | ISBN: 0801464110 | PDF | 1 MB Warlords are individuals who control small territories within weak states, using a combination of force and patronage. In this book, Kimberly Marten shows why and how warlords undermine state sovereignty. Unlike the feudal lords of a previous era, warlords today are not state-builders. Instead they collude with cost-conscious, corrupt, or frightened state officials to flout and undermine state capacity. They thrive on illegality, relying on private militias for support, and often provoke violent resentment from those who are cut out of their networks. Some act as middlemen for competing states, helping to hollow out their own states from within. Countries ranging from the United States to Russia have repeatedly chosen to ally with warlords, but Marten argues that to do so is a dangerous proposition.Drawing on interviews, documents, local press reports, and in-depth historical analysis, Marten examines warlordism in the Pakistani tribal areas during the twentieth century, in post-Soviet Georgia and the Russian republic of Chechnya, and among Sunni militias in the U.S.-supported Anbar Awakening and Sons of Iraq programs. In each case state leaders (some domestic and others foreign) created, tolerated, actively supported, undermined, or overthrew warlords and their militias. Marten draws lessons from these experiences to generate new arguments about the relationship between states, sovereignty, "local power brokers," and stability and security in the modern world.  Free Download Waging War, Planning Peace: U.S. Noncombat Operations and Major Wars By Aaron Rapport 2015 | 280 Pages | ISBN: 0801455642 | PDF | 1 MB As the U.S. experience in Iraq following the 2003 invasion made abundantly clear, failure to properly plan for risks associated with postconflict stabilization and reconstruction can have a devastating impact on the overall success of a military mission. In Waging War, Planning Peace, Aaron Rapport investigates how U.S. presidents and their senior advisers have managed vital noncombat activities while the nation is in the midst of fighting or preparing to fight major wars. He argues that research from psychology-specifically, construal level theory-can help explain how individuals reason about the costs of postconflict noncombat operations that they perceive as lying in the distant future.In addition to preparations for "Phase IV" in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Rapport looks at the occupation of Germany after World War II, the planned occupation of North Korea in 1950, and noncombat operations in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. Applying his insights to these cases, he finds that civilian and military planners tend to think about near-term tasks in concrete terms, seriously assessing the feasibility of the means they plan to employ to secure valued ends. For tasks they perceive as further removed in time, they tend to focus more on the desirability of the overarching goals they are pursuing rather than the potential costs, risks, and challenges associated with the means necessary to achieve these goals. Construal level theory, Rapport contends, provides a coherent explanation of how a strategic disconnect can occur. It can also show postwar planners how to avoid such perilous missteps.  Free Download Sergey Kosarevsky, "Vulkan 3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook: Implement expert-level techniques for high-performance graphics with Vulkan Ed 2" English | ISBN: 1803248114 | 2025 | 714 pages | PDF | 28 MB Master Vulkan 1.3 with practical recipes for building, rendering, and optimizing stunning 3D graphics, guided by AR and rendering experts Sergey Kosarevsky and Alexey Medvedev  Free Download Visualising War across the Ancient Mediterranean: Interplay between Conflict Narratives in different Media and Genres by Alice König, Nicolas Wiater English | 2025 | ISBN: 1032977981 | 341 Pages | True PDF | 4.6 MB  Free Download Jörg Thomas Engelbert, "Vietnam's Ethnic and Religious Minorities:: A Historical Perspective" English | ISBN: 3631660421 | 2016 | 230 pages | PDF | 975 KB The book deals with Vietnam's ethnic and religious minorities in a historical perspective. The time frame stretches from the pre-colonial era to contemporary times. Except for one paper on the situation of the Vietnam-China border area, the authors focus on South or Southern Central Vietnam. The Chinese, the Cham and the Bahnar represent three different categories of ethnic minorities: the so-called Foreign Asians, the highly developed nationalities and the former tribal populations, who once lived at the margins. The Vietnamese and Highland Catholics as well as the French Protestants are two prominent religious minorities. The aim of this book is to contribute to a discussion about common features, categories and tasks, which transcend regional, ethnic or religious particularities and the familiar lowland-highland divide.  Free Download Victorian Interpretation By Suzy Anger 2011 | 222 Pages | ISBN: 080146479X | PDF | 1 MB Suzy Anger investigates the relationship of Victorian interpretation to the ways in which literary criticism is practiced today. Her primary focus is literary interpretation, but she also considers fields such as legal theory, psychology, history, and the natural sciences in order to establish the pervasiveness of hermeneutic thought in Victorian culture. Anger's book demonstrates that much current thought on interpretation has its antecedents in the Victorians, who were already deeply engaged with the problems of interpretation that concern literary theorists today.Anger traces the development and transformation of interpretive theory from a religious to a secular (and particularly literary) context. She argues that even as hermeneutic theory was secularized in literary interpretation it carried in its practice some of the religious implications with which the tradition began. She further maintains that, for the Victorians, theories of interpretation are often connected to ethical principles and suggests that all theories of interpretation may ultimately be grounded in ethical theories.Beginning with an examination of Victorian biblical exegesis, in the work of figures such as Benjamin Jowett, John Henry Newman, and Matthew Arnold, the book moves to studies of Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde. Emphasizing the extent to which these important writers are preoccupied with hermeneutics, Anger also shows that consideration of their thought brings to light questions and qualifications of some of the assumptions of contemporary criticism. |
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