How much faith should we place in what scientists tell us? Is it possible for scientific knowledge to be fully 'objective'? What, really, can be defined as science? In the second edition of this Very Short Introduction, Samir Okasha explores the main themes and theories of contemporary philosophy of science, and investigates fascinating, challenging questions such as these. Starting at the very beginning, with a concise overview of the history of science, Okasha examines the nature of fundame...

With over 5,500-including 150 new-accessible entries, this sixth edition of the bestselling Dictionary of Finance and Banking has been fully revised and updated to take into account the ever-developing financial landscape of the last five years. This comprehensive A-Z defines terms from all aspects of personal and international finance, including money markets, private investments and borrowing, central banking, foreign exchanges, monetary policy, andpublic and government finance. Now with ex...

On October 1, 2009, the People's Republic of China (PRC) celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding. And what an eventful and tumultuous six decades it had been. During that time, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China was transformed from one of the world's poorest countries into the world's fastest growing major economy, and from a weak state barely able to govern or protect its own territory to a rising power that is challenging the United States for global i...

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his `most finely worked' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling...

Frederick Douglass's Narrative recounts his life as a slave in Maryland and escape to freedom in 1838. An important slave autobiography, it is significant both for what it tells us about slave life and about its author. It is here reprinted with contexualizing source material and other writings by Douglass, as well as an introduction discussing its literary and historical significance.

Civil engineering produces the structures of all human settlements worldwide and is a vital discipline for many aspects modern life, underlying housing, transport, and our major areas and buildings related to work, study, and leisure. In this Very Short Introduction, David Muir Wood demonstrates the nature and importance of civil engineering not only in the history of civilization and urbanization, but its range of facets today, and its challenges for the future. Beginning with the challenge ...

Andrew Harrison has expertly authored this engaging text on the business environment, offering theoretical rigour, along with a truly global focus, and an understanding of the economic dimensions of the subject. The text takes a unique approach exploring the business environment at different spatial levels (global, international, national, and regional), in different dimensions (culture, ethics, internationalization, markets, technology, and risk) and in the maingeopolitical regions (Europe, ...

The most famous designs of the twentieth century are not those in museums, but in the marketplace. the Coca-Cola bottle and the McDonalds logo are known all over the world, and designs like the modernistic Frankfurt Kitchen of 1926, or the 1954 streamlined and tail-finned Oldsmobile, or Blow, the inflatable chair ubiquitous in the late sixties, tell us more about our culture than a narrowly-defined canon of classics. Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship (not only in design history but a...

This acknowledged masterpiece has been abridged to make it more accessible to students. In her introduction, Eva Gillies presents the case for the relevance of the book to modern anthropologists.

The most comprehensive resource for students on EU competition law; extracts from key cases, academic works, and legislation are paired with incisive critique and commentary from an expert author team.