A Cultural Symbiosis

The history of the Florentine patriciate did not end with the establishment of the Medici Duchy and Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Proud and self-confident, these patricians were not subservient courtiers; on the contrary, they continued to exert a considerable influence on Florentine culture and politics for centuries. The patrician class in sixteenth-century Florence were the descendants of wealthy, sophisticated and politically savvy families who, while acquiring noble titles, estates, and villas, retained their long-standing urban identity. The mark they left on the city’s cultural and artistic life was embraced by the Medici, who used their political and diplomatic knowhow, eleborate artistic commissions, and European networks to enhance their power and prestige. A Cultural Symbiosis highlights the contributions to Florentine art and culture of eight patricians, focusing on the Valori, Pucci, Ridolfi, Vecchietti, del Nero, Salviati, Guicciardini, and Niccolini families.

"In a provocative and thoughtful essay, Estonia's preeminent poet and cultural critic, Juri Talvet, investigates the role of culture in the postmodern world. Against the large background of historical values in western and world culture, Talvet inveighs against monologues and grand narratives launched by Western centers, envisaging instead a cultural symbiosis that would create a new and fertile dialogue between the centers, borders, and peripheries of the world, enrich cultural sensibility, and broaden concern for the Other."--BOOK JACKET.

The book deals in detail with previously understudied language contact settings in the Balkans (South East Europe) that present a continuum between ethnic and linguistic separation and symbiosis among groups of people. The studies in this volume achieve several aims: they critically assess the Balkan Sprachbund theory; they analyse general contact theories against the background of new, original, representative field and historical Greek, Albanian, Romance, Slavic and Judesmo data; they employ and contribute to recent methods of research on linguistic convergence in bilingual societies; they propose new general assessments of extra- and intralinguistic factors of Balkanization over the centuries; and they outline prospects for future research. The factors relevant to contact scenarios and linguistic change in the Balkans are identified and typologized through models such as those related to a balanced or unbalanced (socio)linguistic situation.

These essays, written by experts in their fields, demonstrate how necessary it is in the study of the humanities and social sciences to realize the interdependency of the fields and how rich the resulting study can be.

Some trees and birds are made for each other. Take, for example, the whitebark pine, a timberline tree that graces the moraines and ridgetops of the northern Rockies and the Sierra Nevada-Cascades system. This lovely five-needled pine, long-lived and rugged though it is, cannot reproduce without the help of Clark's nutcracker. And the nutcracker, though it captures insects in the summer and steals a bit of carrion, cannot raise its young in these alpine habitats without feeding them the nutritious seeds of the whitebark pine. Between them, these dwellers of the high mountains provide for each others' posterity, which leads biologists to label their relationship symbiotic, or mutualistic. But there is more to it than that, because in playing out their roles these partners change the landscape. The environment they create provides life's necessities to many other plants and animals. Working in concert, Clark's nutcracker and the whitebark pine build ecosystems. In Made for Each Other: A Symbiosis of Birds and Pines, Ronald M. Lanner details for the first time this fascinating relationship between pine trees and Corvids (nutcrackers and jays), showing how mutualism can drive not only each others' evolution, but affect the ecology of many other members of the surrounding ecosystem as well. Lanner explains that many of the world's pines have seeds not adapted to wind dispersal. Fortunately, their seeds are harvested from the cone and scattered over many miles by seed-eating jays and nutcrackers who bury millions of seeds in the soil as a winter food source. Remarkably, these "pine nut" dependent birds can find their caches even through deep snow. Seeds left in the soil germinate, perpetuating the pines and guarantee future seeds for future birds. Moreover, the newly "planted" whitebark pine groves encourage further tree growth, such as Engelmann spruce, and eventually the patches of open-grown woodland coalesce, forming a continuous forest. Large forest stands offer cover for large animals like bear, elk, and moose, and provide territories for Red Squirrels. These squirrels also depend on pine seeds as a food source, storing large quantities of seeds on the ground, piled up against fallen logs or stumps, or buried in the forest litter. In the fall both black and grizzly bears are preparing to hibernate and must increase their stores of body fat. The seeds of whitebark pine are large and very rich, containing sixty to seventy percent fat, and are an ideal food for this purpose. The large seed reserves created by the squirrels become a feasting ground for these bears. Meanwhile, the sun-loving trees shaded out by the maturing decay offer housing for cavity-nesters like woodpeckers and nuthatches, as well as a breeding ground for fungi which are eagerly devoured by mule deer and red squirrels in search of protein. Eventually, when the forest is ignited in one of the thunderstorms so common and so violent in the high country, an open area is created, attracting nutcrackers in need of a new cache site, and the cycle begins again. Focusing on the Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, and ranging as far afield as the Alps, Finland, Siberia, and China, this beautifully illustrated and gracefully written work illuminates the phenomenon of co-evolution.

"Don't be alarmed - that dizzy pleasurable sensation you're experiencing is just your brain slowly exploding from all the wild magnificent worldbuilding in Nicky Drayden's Escaping Exodus. I loved these characters and this story, and so will you." - Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving and Blackfish City The Compton Crook award–winning author of The Prey of Gods and Temper returns with a dazzling stand-alone novel, set in deep space, in which the fate of humanity rests on the slender shoulders of an idealistic and untested young woman—a blend of science fiction, dark humor, and magical realism that will appeal to fans of Charlie Jane Anders, Jeff VanderMeer, and Nnedi Okorafor. Earth is a distant memory. Habitable extrasolar planets are still out of reach. For generations, humanity has been clinging to survival by establishing colonies within enormous vacuum-breathing space beasts and mining their resources to the point of depletion. Rash, dreamy, and unconventional, Seske Kaleigh should be preparing for her future role as clan leader, but her people have just culled their latest beast, and she’s eager to find the cause of the violent tremors plaguing their new home. Defying social barriers, Seske teams up with her best friend, a beast worker, and ventures into restricted areas for answers to end the mounting fear and rumors. Instead, they discover grim truths about the price of life in the void. Then, Seske is unexpectedly thrust into the role of clan matriarch, responsible for thousands of lives in a harsh universe where a single mistake can be fatal. Her claim to the throne is challenged by a rival determined to overthrow her and take control—her intelligent, cunning, and confident sister. Seske may not be a born leader like her sister, yet her unorthodox outlook and incorruptible idealism may be what the clan needs to save themselves and their world.