Living In Interesting Times Curse Or Chance

These are the memoirs and reflections on the most acute issues of the contemporary world by a boy from the Estonian countryside who, through accident and pure ambition, ended up as a professor at Moscow University and adviser to President Gorbachev on matters of international law. After a stint as head of Estonian diplomacy at crucial moments in the restoration of its independence, he later became a centennial professor at the LSE and chair of international law at King’s College London. This is not a traditional autobiography. Besides reflecting on issues he dealt with while advising Soviet leaders, such as Yakovlev in his speech on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the status of the Kuril Islands, and their repercussions in today’s world, the book analyses the roots of the crisis within liberal democracy, the upsurge of populism, the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia as a great power. A Marco Polo fellow at Jiaotong University in China and recently awarded the highest Russian Order for foreigners – the Friendship Order by President Putin, Professor Müllerson, who lives in London, feels equally at home discussing the renewal of great-power competition, the problems of the European Union including Brexit, the conflict in Ukraine, as well as the negative impacts of political correctness both in the former USSR and today’s West. Having lived equal thirds of his life in three different worlds and worked in and visited many countries as a UN diplomat, he is a man who understands small country mentality, though being ‘spoilt’ by great-power mindset.

Fate Choice and Chance recounts Ben Peters' quest to escape his family's traditions and poverty, the haunting memories of the past, and the limitations of the small town on the Canadian prairies where he lived as a child. His life could have gone in many different directions, but the interplay of fate and chance resulted in choices leading inexorably to the present. In retrospect, his most fateful choice was to marry the woman that he loved. Ultimately he achieves the American dream of financial success in New York City, but this is far removed from his youthful dreams of public service. The path from that small prairie town to New York City was treacherous and crooked, leading through Toronto, a city of broken dreams. His painful break with the past has left emotional scars, and he tries to deal with them by neatly compartmentalizing his life into two halves - the forgotten Canadian past and the American present. But then his chance encounter with a mysterious stranger on a business trip to Toronto and their conversation about a murder that occurred in the high school in that small prairie town of his childhood leads him to embark on a spiritual journey to reconciliation with the past and the healing power of forgiveness.

Twenty-one stories, mostly on women. In the title story a woman reminisces about her loves, Gone Fishing is on a romance by e-mail, while Bill Hilgendorf is a woman's reflections on her childhood sweetheart. A debut in fiction.

What could the Silk Road, the Sewers of Istambul, Marco Polo, Mongolia and Holy Land have in common? That's what the main characters of " The Last Cato", Ottavia Salina and Farag Boswell, will have to find out, putting their lives at risk yet again to solve a mystery that begins in the first century AD. Written with accuracy and a rhythm that keeps readers in suspense page after page, chapter after chapter until the very end, " Cato's Return" is an ingenious combination of adventure and history with which Matilde Asensi once again draws us in and doesn't let us go until the last word.

'There is a curse. They say: may you live in interesting times . . .' This is the worst thing you can wish on a citizen of Discworld. Especially for the magically challenged Rincewind, who has already had far too much excitement in his life. Unfortunately, the unlucky wizard always seems to end up in the middle of, well, absolutely everything. So when a request for a 'Great Wizzard' arrives from the faraway Counterweight Continent, it's obviously Rincewind who's sent. For one thing, he's the only one who spells wizard that way. Once again Rincewind is thrown headfirst into a dangerous adventure. For the oldest empire on the Disc is in turmoil and Chaos is building. And, for some reason, someone believes Rincewind will have a vital role in the coming war . . . 'Pratchett is a comic genius' Daily Express 'Funny, delightfully inventive, and refuses to lie down in its genre' Observer Interesting Times is the fifth book in the Wizards series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.

California State University, San Bernardino opened in 1965 in San Bernardino. This chronological history records the major and minor developments in the history of the campus, between 1960, when it was created by the California Legislature, to the end of the 2009/10 academic year. Includes tables of major administrators, plus a detailed index.

This eleventh volume in the series departs from the pattern of earlier volumes. Some of those volumes addressed research, design, and policy topics in terms of environmental settings, for example, homes, communities, neighborhoods, and public places. Others focused on environmental users, for example, chil dren and the elderly. The present volume examines the field of environment and behavior studies itself in the form of intellectual histories of some of its most productive and still visible senior participants. In so doing we hope to provide readers with a grand sweep of the field-its research and design content, methodology, institutions, and past and future trajectories-through the experiences and intellectual histories of its participants. Why intellectual histories? Several factors led to the decision to launch this project. For one, 1989 was an anniversary and commemorative year for the Environmental Design Research Association, perhaps the major and most long-standing interdisciplinary organization of environment and behavior re searchers and practitioners. Established in 1969, this organization has been the vehicle for generations of researchers and practitioners from many disciplines to come together annually to exchange ideas, present papers, and develop professional and personal relationships. It held its first and twentieth meetings in North Carolina, with the twentieth conference substantially devoted to dis cussions of the past, present, and future of the field-a taking stock, so to speak. Thus it seemed appropriate to launch a volume on intellectual histories at this significant juncture in the life of the field.

This “electrifying” collection of unpublished work demonstrates the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “great gift for tapping into the lifeblood of America” (Booklist). Millions of Studs Terkel fans have come to know the prize-winning oral historian through his landmark books—“The Good War”, Hard Times, Working, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs’s best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and fascinating writings for the first time. The pieces in P.S. reflect Terkel’s wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Terkel’s finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Terkel’s heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”); and the transcript of Terkel’s famous broadcast on the Depression, the moving chronicle that would later develop into Hard Times. A fitting postscript to a lifetime of listening, P.S. is a truly Terkelesque display of the author’s extraordinary range of talent and the amazing people he spoke to.