The Middle

On 1 January 1999, Travis Gale (aged 17) and Stephen Bonaconsa (aged 27) left Johannesburg on a mission to cycle across four continents and raise R1 million for children living with, and affected by HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal. They pedalled out of Johannesburg, riding mountain bikes equipped with panniers, carrying the basic requirements for an adventure. They rode unsupported. No Instagram or Facebook. It was just the two of them and the open road. The pair successfully cycled over 16 000 kilometres, across four continents, through 16 countries, raising R1.7 million for their cause. When asked to share about his experience, Travis very rarely spends time talking about the start or the finish of the tour. The stories Travis shares are from The Middle. It's The Middle that tests us with challenges, yielding a multitude of emotions. It's The Middle that involves the raw and often painful need to dig deep, to push through the barriers that stand in our way, and show ourselves what we are capable of. The Middle is what we, as human beings, were designed for. We can all pitch up at start lines. We can all celebrate a finish. But no finish is without a Middle and every Middle is where WHO WE ARE is revealed. This book, The Middle, includes eight stories, drawn from eight key days of a world cycle tour, which will encourage and equip people through The Middle, the territory we must navigate in pursuit of our goals. Keep going. Increase momentum towards meaningful goals. Develop grit and resilience in the midst of tough terrain. Push through barriers that consistently get in the way. Learn practical frameworks for making things happen. Stretch yourself to do more than you thought possible. Finish well!

Fifteen-year-old Noah leaves Montreal to spend a school term with his dad, a teacher in a small Inuit village in northern Quebec, and is quickly immersed in Inuit culture on an exhilarating winter camping trip.

This volume delves into the study of the world’s emerging middle class. With essays on Europe, the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the book studies recent trends and developments in middle class evolution at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It reconsiders the conceptualization of the middle class, with a focus on the diversity of middle class formation in different regions and zones of world society. It also explores middle class lifestyles and everyday experiences, including experiences of social mobility, feelings of insecurity and anxiety, and even middle class engagement with social activism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book provides a sophisticated analysis of this new and rapidly expanding socioeconomic group and puts forth some provocative ideas for intellectual and policy debates. It will be of importance to students and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, political studies, Latin American studies, and Asian Studies.

In 1895–96, William Matthew Flinders Petrie and James Edward Quibell discovered a shaft-tomb below the ‘Ramesseum’, the funerary temple of Ramses II at Thebes, Egypt. This is most famous for having the largest group of Middle Kingdom papyri – also known as the Ramesseum Papyri – found in a single spot together with a number of distinctive objects, such as carved ivory tusks and miniature figurines in various materials dated around XVIII century BC. Gianluca Miniaci attempts to thoroughly reconstruct the archaeological context of the tomb: the exact find spot (forgotten afterwards its discovery), its architecture, the identity of its owner(s) and recipient(s) of the assemblage of artifacts. A detailed analysis of the single artifacts – provided for the first with full color photographic records and drawings – and their network of relations gives new life to the Ramesseum assemblage after more than a century from its discovery.

The word "pietism" usually conjures up a host of ambivalent im pressions. It has seemed to me increasingly clear that many of the strengths of pietism have been swept aside by reactions against the excesses of the movement. To properly assess the structures of pietism, it is important to comprehend its matrix and to understand its ex ponents. In preparing this study, therefore, I have sought to recapture something of the person of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen as well as the gist of his thought; something of his environment as well as the institutions of his day. To achieve this I have traveled many by-paths and knocked on many doors. But the past has not always yielded its secrets; much is lost forever. Hagen in Westphalia, Frelinghuysen's birthplace, is now a modern city and only in a few isolated particulars is it reminiscent of Hagen in 1693. In the nearby village of Schwerte, however, the ancestral church of his forebears remains as it was nearly three hundred years ago. The gymnasium he attended in Hamm was destroyed in the bombings ofW orld War II, though the library he used during his study at Lingen is still largely intact. In the tiny East-Frisian village of Loegumer Voorwerk, Frelinghuysen's first parish, one can still stand in the pulpit where he first preached his awakening gospel. Yet oddly enough, in America, where his name is most remembered, most physical traces of his life have disappeared.

Medieval England was a time of great change and uncertainty. In this engaging book, readers will learn about various aspects of the Middle Ages in England including the feudal system, Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, and the bubonic plague. With detailed images, captivating facts and sidebars, and easy-to-read text, readers will enjoy an engaging reading experience that introduces them to such rulers as Henry II, Thomas Beckett, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Richard the Lion Hearted. This book also includes text features such as a table of contents, glossary, and index, as well as an in-class writing activity to further students' understanding of the Magna Carta.

Starting with an essay on the Renaissance as the concluding phase of the Middle Ages and ending with appreciations of Paul Oskar Kristeller, the great twentieth-century scholar of the Renaissance, this new volume by John Monfasani brings together seventeen articles that focus both on individuals, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, and Niccolò Perotti, and on large-scale movements, such as the spread of Italian humanism, Ciceronianism, Biblical criticism, and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy. In addition to entering into the persistent debate on the nature of the Renaissance, the articles in the volume also engage what of late have become controversial topics, namely, the shape and significance of Renaissance humanism and the character of the Platonic Academy in Florence.