This book offers a collection of essays on the history and background of the mechanization of natural philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries. It rewrites the history of mechanism and shows that the philosophical ideas present in Descartes and Newton's era have a history much longer and more complicated than previously thought. It presents new, original research on three aspects of the mechanical tradition, namely causal powers and laws of nature, conceptions of matter, and the concept of cause, especially final causes. Previous research has indicated that the development of mechanical philosophy in the 17th century is much indebted to the late Aristotelian philosophers of the 16th century. This book, however, takes a further step back in history and by studying the three aspects of the mechanical tradition, shows that philosophical reflection on these topics started in the 14th century and continued up to the time of Newton. The new insights gained by the editors and contributors ensures this book is of great interest to scholars in history of philosophy and historians of science interested in mechanization.

A multifaceted cultural history of pilgrimage and travel to the Holy Land from the Middle Ages to the dawn of the twentieth century

For countless pilgrims throughout history, the Holy Land was a destination unlike any other. Travelling there could free you of your sins, get you knighted or offer hope of being cured of illness. Above all, it brought you closer to the mystery surrounding places laden with religious meaning. But for Christians in particular, the journey was often very different from what they expected and the gap between expectation and reality plunged more than a few into deep crisis. They Came to the Holy Land tells the remarkable stories of those who undertook this taxing and often dangerous trip to Palestine.

Drawing on travel writings spanning the medieval era to the end of the Ottoman Empire, many newly translated and presented in English for the first time, Bernd Brunner reveals how the Holy Land was a place of both fulfillment and disappointment for Jews, Muslims and Christians who were drawn there by religious fervour, the thirst for knowledge or misinformation. We meet a host of fascinating characters, from German Templers and American missionaries to Zionist visionaries, Indigenous dragomans, scientists, aristocrats and pilgrims journeying alone. What they all had in common was a destination whose peoples, cultures and arid landscape often proved a source of profound disillusionment.

Historically insightful and richly told, They Came to the Holy Land brings to life the experiences of swashbucklers, true believers and border crossers of every kind, offering a vivid portrait of how the Holy Land was imagined, misunderstood and rediscovered over the centuries.

This book presents a comprehensive and strategic perspective on product management in today's dynamic and innovation-driven business environment. It examines how organizations design, develop, position, and manage products to create sustainable competitive advantage. Moving beyond traditional product management concepts, the book integrates strategic thinking, market analysis, innovation frameworks, and data-driven decision-making to help readers understand how successful products are conceived, developed, marketed and managed across their lifecycle.

The book begins with the foundations of product management, explaining the nature of products and product line strategies. It then explores the strategic architecture of value creation, value communication, and value delivery, providing a holistic framework for aligning products with market needs and organizational goals. Subsequent chapters discuss competitive product strategy including segmentation, positioning and product branding. The book also covers product innovation, design thinking, and product development processes. Contemporary approaches such as agile development, lean product management, and prototyping are also examined to help readers understand modern product development practices.

The book further integrates analytical tools and frameworks including product analytics, product pricing strategies, digital analytics, and emerging applications of artificial intelligence in product management. Real-world case studies in the book provide practical insights and encourage critical thinking.

This book will be particularly useful for courses such as Strategic Product Management, Product Strategy, Product Management, Product Innovation and

Development, Agile Product Management, Product Analytics offered in MBA, PGDM, Executive MBA and and advanced undergraduate management programs. It will also serve as a valuable reference for product managers, marketing professionals, and entrepreneurs seeking to strengthen their strategic product decision-making skills.

This edited volume tracks emerging perspectives to understanding contemporary and future-oriented trends relating to entrepreneurship in Africa. Following recent developments, such as the rising interest in Pan Africanism, and socio-economic developments with several African countries emerging as new regional hotspots for economic growth and entrepreneurship (e.g. Nigeria, Egypt), chapters provide case-based evidence and relevant theorisation in order to account for aspects of the emerging realities in Africa. While much of the existing literature takes an overarching economistic approach, in this book contributors do not overlook the necessity for constantly providing evidence and updating such frameworks. Instead, authors take an in-depth look at emerging perspectives to African entrepreneurship, which are currently overlooked and merit further investigation from a theoretical standpoint. Featuring context-based analysis, theoretical and conceptual approaches, case-based material as well as original interviews, the book is a vital resource for students, researchers and policy makers.

Music and Sound in Transpacific East Asia establishes transpacific circulation as a framework to understand the movement of music, sound, media, objects, texts, and people across East Asia and its diasporas. This collection of fourteen essays details a wealth of musical and sonic formations that emerged from neglected histories of transpacific circulations - from Cantonese opera in late-nineteenth-century San Francisco and Japanese tango musicians in 1930s Shanghai to church bells constructed from U.S. military oxygen tanks in post-Korean War South Korea. The essays explore such locations as transforming spaces of performance and sites of cultural negotiation, networked through migration, empire, war, and religion. Drawing from post/colonial history, anthropology, sound studies, memory studies, deaf studies, historical linguistics, and critical area studies, this collection offers new perspectives that challenge nation-, land-, and genre-based premises of musical authenticity.

This book provides a foundational study of bell hooks's groundbreaking theory of the oppositional gaze, which is first introduced in her book, Black Looks (1992), by placing the oppositional gaze on Marxist footing for the first time. While situating hooks's oppositional gaze within an intellectual tradition of the contemporary gaze emerging with French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault, The Marxist Foundations of the Oppositional Gaze intervenes in the dominant accounts of the gaze, as it appears in and proliferates Western thinking, which largely overlook racialized, gendered, and classed dynamics.

This book also foregrounds hooks's oppositional gaze as an intersectional concept attuned to hooks's conceptualization of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Through this foregrounding, Woodson allows the oppositional gaze to traverse cultural studies, black feminism, black studies, queer studies, and literary studies, putting the concept in conversation with how thinkers and scholars such as Jacques Derrida, Jose Esteban Munoz, Toni Morrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Cedric Robinson have all theorized looking, subjectivity, and power. In effect, this book repurposes hooks's Marxist theorization of the oppositional gaze as that which expands, retools, complicates, and transforms looking relations into a site of resistance and counter-agency, intent on questioning the capitalist moment.

"This Palgrave Handbook makes an important contribution to debates on the future of liberal democracy. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives and rich empirical analyses, it shows how liberal principles and practices are contested, reworked, and sometimes undermined across institutions, policies, and borders."

--Tanja Boerzel, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany

"This Palgrave Handbook provides invaluable insights into the most significant challenge to liberal democracy today, the dissensus from outside as well as from within Europe that has led to the disruption, destabilization, and in certain instances even destruction of democratic institutions and politics along with liberal norms and values."

--Vivien A. Schmidt, Boston University, USA, and the European University Institute, Italy

"The publication of this excellent book could not be more timely, at a moment when the contestation of liberal democracy in the European Union, both from within and from outside has reached its peak."

--Gabor Halmai, Eoetvoes Lorand University (ELTE), Hungary, and European University Institute (EUI), Italy

This open access handbook offers a comprehensive analysis of dissensus over liberal democracy in Europe. Moving beyond accounts that focus solely on democratic backsliding, it conceptualises dissensus as a structural conflict over the ideal, meaning and practice of liberal democracy, unfolding across EU institutions, member states, and key policy domains. It examines:

? What forms does dissensus over liberal democracy take within the European Union?

? How have EU institutions responded over recent decades to increasing challenges to its core values?

? How does dissensus reshape the EU's internal policies?

? What are the implications for the EU's capacity to act beyond its borders?

? And how do external state and non-state actors influence dissensus within the EU and its neighbourhood?

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the transformative power of green finance, circular economy principles, and digital technologies in driving sustainable urban development. Through global case studies and expert analysis, it explores how municipalities can leverage green bonds, how circular economy policies can be scaled, and how digital platforms-from AI to blockchain-can accelerate the shift to a greener, more resilient economy. Designed for policymakers, urban planners, investors, and sustainability professionals, the book offers actionable strategies and forward-looking roadmaps at the intersection of finance, technology, and environmental stewardship. Featuring a global cast of contributors from both academia and practice, it will be of particular interest to academics, investors, and policymakers engaged in green finance, sustainable development, and alternative financing.

Enhanced Cooperation Revisited offers a detailed and thought-provoking examination of one of the EU's most discussed yet rarely applied tools for differentiated integration. Situated between supranational ambition and national sovereignty, enhanced cooperation allows groups of Member States to adopt EU law among them when unanimity proves to be out of reach -without changing the Treaties or creating opt-outs. The book explores enhanced cooperation as a legal and political mechanism that enables integration through flexibility. Departing from a thorough, yet innovative legal analysis and incorporating interdisciplinary insights, the study presents a fresh typology of enhanced cooperation uses, proposes innovative interpretations of its legal framework, and explores options like fast-track procedures and conditional participation, as well as a field-map of legal areas suitable for enhanced cooperation. A novel proposal for "incentivised cooperation" suggests a targeted Treaty amendment to make the mechanism more promising as a facilitating tool in the most contested policy areas. Enhanced Cooperation Revisited casts new light on a little-used but powerful tool in the EU's integration arsenal-one that may yet help the European Union in reconciling unity and diversity in the years ahead.

An accessible reconstruction of Hegel's attempt to derive all reality from a single concept.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, G. W. F. Hegel came to believe that philosophy was finally in a position to achieve something it had striven for since ancient Greece: becoming an objective, demonstrative science. But to achieve this aim, he thought philosophical knowledge needed to be reconceived in a radically new way-as content contained in a single concept just as the oak tree is hidden in the acorn. In Hegel's Sole Idea, Mark Alznauer reads Hegel's mature philosophical system as the unprecedented attempt to comprehend the entire world as the full unfolding of that single concept, which he mysteriously calls "the absolute idea."

Ever since Hegel set out this program in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, Hegel's system has been regarded as the last best hope of philosophy as an autonomous, fully rational science. But while Hegel's followers regarded the Encyclopedia as the successful realization of the traditional aims of philosophy, his most influential successors thought it instead showed the exhaustion and collapse of that project. Hegel's Sole Idea offers a comprehensive interpretation of Hegelian philosophy that allows a fair confrontation with its most provocative and ambitious claims.

The Science of High-Performing Teams describes how leaders need to "be" to manage teams, what they need to understand about human behavior to create teams from groups of individuals, and how to think about some of the basic - and more advanced - types of leader behaviors and group dynamics that often result in successful teamwork. The book will help readers assess their surroundings and their team's environment to make good decisions in the moment. Everything in this book is grounded in decades of rigorous research on team success, drawing on insights from countless scholars across generations.

While "leadership" is all around us, most people in positions of authority or influence have little formal training or education in how to use that authority and influence to manage the teams for which they are responsible. The Science of High-Performing Teams explains and exemplifies the current state of research on team dynamics and leadership. It serves as a tool and training resource for aspiring leaders; new managers in professional settings; organizational consultants focusing on interpersonal dynamics; students enrolled in courses focused on those topics; and the secondary and post-secondary faculty who oversee those courses.

A timely investigation of what is at stake when AI takes legal decision-making out of human hands.

Artificial intelligence is proliferating in many professions, and the legal field is no exception. In The Rule of Law After Artificial Intelligence, Katie Szilagyi investigates the philosophical and practical implications of using AI in legal spaces, beginning with several fundamental questions: What is the law supposed to do, and from where does it derive its authority? Would law still achieve these aims if automated? How might automation affect the rule of law's integrity and democratic institutions' operations?

Blending legal philosophy, applied case studies, and insights from both critical legal scholarship and science and technology studies, Szilagyi argues that law and storytelling are deeply connected. Through creating and contesting the law, we make sense of the information around us and generate narratives about our collective world. These narratives are not static: legal precedent evolves, and legal deliberation on hard cases can help to resolve unclear or unprecedented social issues.

Szilagyi demonstrates that technological innovations make the rule of law vulnerable because large language models and machine learning undermine the visioning function of legal narratives, collapsing exercises of legal interpretation into mere administration. Datafication of law-built on the biased data of our cultural past-threatens longstanding legal ideals, lessens the constraints against abuses of power by private actors, and hamstrings society's ability to reach a more egalitarian future. Szilagyi argues instead for centering narratives within the law and, in turn, rediscovering the tales the law tells us about who we are.

This edited volume explores the prospects for entrepreneurship and digital transformation across the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf (Red Sea) economies. Through in-depth scholarly discussions, it highlights the significance of these twin forces in shaping economic and social development within a region that occupies a critical position in global trade and international interdependence.

Chapter contributions to this volume investigate diverse themes relevant to digital and entrepreneurial ecosystems in the PGAG (Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf) region. Topics include: consumer adoption of contactless payments; government initiatives supporting digital readiness; the role of emerging technologies in entrepreneurship education; challenges in digital entrepreneurship; comparative analyses of artificial intelligence practices; the impact of digital transformation on youth entrepreneurship; bibliometric insights into digital sports marketing; and sociological analyses of social exploitation and agency.

Together, these chapters offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of how entrepreneurship and digital transformation can advance regional development, economic resilience, and global partnership. As such it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation, development economics, Middle Eastern politics, and political economy, as well as practitioners and policymakers interested in strengthening entrepreneurial systems, advancing economic diversification, and promoting social inclusion in an era of rapid technological change.

An estimated 20% of humanity are neurodivergent. Their brains develop and function differently from those of the broader population.

In recent years, awareness of neurodiversity has grown. At the same time, organizations are facing questions that challenge traditional understandings of collaboration at work.

This book provides a foundation for anyone seeking basic knowledge or a new perspective on neurodivergence. Decision-makers, leaders, HR professionals, and consultants will find fresh insights to help their organizations gain a genuine competitive advantage in the labor market. In addition to theoretical background information, it includes both practical, research-based tips and solution-oriented approaches, addressing topics along the entire talent and employee journey.

The book also covers areas such as collaboration, communication and inclusive language, diversity and inclusion (DEIB), disruptive thinking, as well as leadership and self management for neurodivergent leaders and employees. Likewise, those who are neurodivergent themselves and looking for ways to collaborate without compromising their well being will find inspiration for their own professional practice.

An innovative study of medieval Chinese tombs that provides new insights into the history of Eurasian cultural contact and exchange

Silk Roads, Steppe Roads takes the reader on a journey to three sites in northwestern China and Mongolia to investigate medieval Chinese tombs containing evidence of Eastern Eurasian cultural contacts and exchanges. The construction, artifacts, and texts on paper and stone found at these tombs of the Sui (581-618) and early Tang (618-907) dynasties reveal glimpses of people, rituals, and objects that were in motion on the Silk and Steppe roads until being laid to rest over a millennium ago.

Jonathan Karam Skaff shows how the major transit hubs of the Silk and Steppe roads were particularly active sites of cultural contestation, experimentation, and mutual influence that had an impact on the historical development of China and Inner Asia. Challenging the idealized image of the Silk Road, he also examines travel permits and sales contracts that document the trade of enslaved people over the route.

Innovatively drawing on both textual and archaeological sources, Silk Roads, Steppe Roads shows how Eurasian peoples, despite believing their societies to be unique, spun overlapping and entangled webs of culture.

A Call to Action Part 2: Transforming Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Norms, Leadership Practices, and Mindset turns the spotlight from systems and policy levers to the human, cultural, and relational forces that determine whether DEI efforts thrive, stall, or collapse. In an era marked by backlash, polarization, and rapid organizational change, this volume brings together leading scholars to examine how leaders, teams, and institutions can cultivate the mindsets and practices needed to sustain meaningful progress.

Across its chapters, contributors explore the psychological, interpersonal, and cultural dynamics that shape DEI work on the ground. Authors offer evidence based insights on allyship, identity based safety, stereotype awareness, inclusive leadership, and the role of dialogue in bridging divides. They also confront emerging issues-from generational stereotypes to the implications of generative AI-while highlighting the strengths, creativity, and resilience that diversity brings to organizations.

This book speaks directly to researchers, educators, and organizational leaders seeking to navigate resistance with clarity and courage. It argues that transforming DEI requires more than policy; it demands intentional norms, reflective leadership, and a mindset oriented toward accountability, authenticity, and collective responsibility.

Together with A Call to Action Part 1: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Systems, Institutions, and Policy Levers, the two volumes offer a comprehensive roadmap for scholars and practitioners committed to defending, reimagining, and advancing DEI in an era of profound challenge and possibility. In a moment of heightened scrutiny and challenge, A Call to Action Part 2 provides the insight and resolve needed to lead with purpose and create workplaces where all people can thrive.

A thought-provoking examination of how AI might either spur or harm human economic progress.

What happens to an economy when machines can think as well as, or even better than, humans? The Economics of Transformative AI tackles this issue, which is one of the most consequential economic questions of our time. This book brings together sixteen research studies from top economists that look closely at how transformative AI reshapes everything from innovation and market structure to employment, inequality, and human purpose. They explore both opportunities, such as personalized algorithmic assistance, accelerated scientific discovery, and new forms of organization, and profound challenges, including potential labor displacement, rising concentration of power, changes in the information ecosystem, and even possible existential risks to humanity.

The studies in this volume develop economic frameworks for understanding the conditions under which AI might enhance or undermine human flourishing. They offer policymakers, researchers, and business leaders the analytical tools needed to prepare for the potential economic transformations ahead.

Event Planning Management explores the principles and practices essential to the planning and managing of events. Supported by real-world case studies that provide practical insights for evaluation and implementation, this contributed work systematically covers the crucial elements of event planning, beginning with core principles before advancing to more specialised areas. The chapters are structured to introduce past, as well as emerging challenges in event planning.

By emphasising the feasibility and adaptability of planning and design models, the book encourages critical evaluation and continuous improvement. It also highlights the importance of innovation, sustainability, and collaboration with local communities, businesses, and governing bodies. With contributions from a diverse range of global experts, this an essential resource for practitioners and scholars alike.

This book provides a comprehensive overview to the science of happiness research. It discusses scholarly definitions and measurements, and factors-personal, social and cultural-that reliably increase happiness throughout the life-span. Anchored in psychology, philosophy, economics and public health, the book distils hundreds of peer-reviewed studies into one lucid, teachable framework. Part I?traces the idea from classical eudaimonia to modern positive psychology, then untangles more than thirty related terms-well-being, flourishing, thriving, life satisfaction and others-into a working map of key distinctions. The discussion shows why happiness remains one of the most diversely interpreted phenomena in the social sciences and why no single definition yet commands unanimous agreement. Part II?presents a multilevel map of determinants, starting with personality and health, then progressing to relationships, income, culture, and the built and natural environments. The final chapter in this part evaluates evidence-based interventions, showing how current research can inform realistic, context-sensitive pathways to greater well-being-from gratitude practices and mindset trainings to policy levers aimed at housing affordability, neighborhood quality, institutional fairness, and life-course support. Each chapter weighs competing findings, flags methodological caveats and pinpoints areas of empirical convergence. Written for graduate students, researchers and reflective practitioners, this book offers conceptual rigour without sacrificing readability. Readers will finish equipped to design stronger studies, craft data-driven policies and pursue personal well-being grounded in evidence rather than myth.

This book critically examines recent interpretations of the Roman poet Lucretius by contemporary materialists. Inspired by his vision of matter in motion and the generativity of nature, political theorists, literary scholars and process philosophers today attribute ideas to Lucretius that anticipate their own innovative work in their respective fields. What should we make of this phenomenon? Why does Lucretius feature so prominently in recent materialisms, and what justifies treating him as a precursor or ancient double?

The New Lucretians, Contemporary Materialism and Historical Method focuses on four thinkers-Vittorio Morfino, Jacques Lezra, Jane Bennett, and Thomas Nail-and places them in a genealogy of interpreters going back over a century in spiritualist philosophy, poststructuralism, Marxism, and science studies. It also reflects on questions of historical method, testing how well various historiographic approaches fit their work and justify their use of Lucretius. These include approaches the new Lucretians explicitly endorse-such as radical ideas about nonlinear history and translation-and others that they do not-such as Straussian reading between the lines, motivated reasoning, analytic rational reconstruction, and creative experimentation with canons of philosophical heroes.

It is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students interested in forging links between contemporary and ancient philosophy and balancing the risks of that endeavour with its promises.

An eye-opening story of the people who make the census, the United States' largest and most consequential dataset, and the growing threats to their crucial work.

By many measures, the US census is the government's largest non-wartime operation, and one of the world's oldest and biggest data-making endeavors. The 2020 census required more than a decade of planning and technical work-not to mention managing nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers simultaneously-to collect data about the American public. That data was then processed to count each of 331,449,281 residents once-and only once-and in the right place. The operation is also one of the country's most consequential. Census data determine how political power and federal funding are allocated. Census data make politics, and consequently, politics make census data. In this urgent book, danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amidst a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians' methods.

With rare insider access to the Census Bureau, boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government civil servants who made the 2020 census. By documenting the perspectives of government workers, Data Are Made, Not Found provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy's data. Each chapter reveals a different challenge-ranging from the last-minute fights about a citizenship question to the not-so-helpful help of well-intended stakeholders to avoid undercounts-and shows how civil servants responded to each problem, controversy, and hurdle. Boyd shows how many of the challenges that the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of political operatives, data users, and various stakeholders playing what boyd calls "Jenga politics," weakening the administrative state for short-term political gains by removing support and adding more requirements.

Civil servants saved the 2020 census, but future censuses-and other data-making efforts related to elections, health, and the economy-are precarious. Boyd's message is clear and compelling: protecting democracy means protecting the people and institutions that produce this data.

This book presents cutting-edge research and practical insights from the Smart Service Summit 2025, exploring how smart services, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms enable sustainable value creation across industries. As service-driven business models become increasingly relevant, modular and data-driven service systems are transforming sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, mobility, smart cities, and finance.

Contributions address topics including AI-enabled maintenance, digital twins, circular economy strategies, urban digital transformation, resilient supply chains, and ESG reporting. Special attention is given to the ethical implications of AI, the governance of digital ecosystems, and compliance with emerging regulatory frameworks such as the EU AI Act.

With a focus on co-creation, adaptability, and future-readiness, this volume connects academic rigor with real-world application. It offers actionable knowledge for researchers, professionals, and policymakers working at the intersection of digital innovation, service design, and sustainability.

Advancing Project Management: Frameworks, Digital Transformation, Sustainability and Governance delivers research-driven insights into how modern frameworks, digital tools and governance practices transform project performance across sectors. Grounded in empirical research from Malaysia's defence, energy, construction and transportation industries, the book demonstrates how these elements work together to strengthen accountability, transparency, decision quality, and overall project outcomes.

Organised in four sections: methods and frameworks; digital transformation; sustainability and strategy; and risk and governance, the book integrates theoretical grounding with sector-specific analysis to show how established models such as PMBOK, the Technology Acceptance Model and Contingency Theory can be adapted for emerging economies. Findings highlight global challenges of digital readiness, governance capability and resource optimisation, and position Malaysia as a case study with lessons for both developed and developing contexts.

This volume is a companion to Advancing Leadership and Collaboration in Project Management: Culture, Knowledge, and Team Dynamics, which together offer a balanced perspective on technical and human dimensions of project success.

Essential for academics, practitioners, and policymakers, Advancing Project Management provides rigorous analysis and practical recommendations for organisations navigating digital transformation and sustainability pressures worldwide.

This book explores how artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and sustainability intersect in Africa and how they can reshape business practices, economic development, and environmental stewardship across the continent. Drawing on multidisciplinary perspectives, it analyses the role of emerging technologies in advancing sustainable business models, responsible governance, and inclusive growth. Case studies, data-driven analysis, and policy discussions illustrate how AI, blockchain, and digital platforms are influencing sectors such as finance, manufacturing, education, public administration, and entrepreneurship. The chapters explore themes such as technology adoption, sustainability education, and ethical technology governance while also addressing regulatory, capacity, and infrastructure challenges facing African economies. By combining empirical insight with practical policy reflection, the book offers guidance for business leaders, policymakers, researchers, and students seeking to understand how digital innovation can support sustainable development across Africa.

The story of a single nuclear bomb's deep origins, brief life during the Cold War, and lasting environmental and political legacies-as a fresh path to consider the entire sweep of the American nuclear enterprise. A grave reminder of the frightening truth about nuclear testing, as international norms waver.

As the US and Russia let one treaty after another falter and expire, this urgent book reminds us of the price of those tests. Frenchman Flat recounts the science, politics, and human experience of those who developed nuclear weapons, suffered the consequences, and fought for and against arms control between the 1940s and 1990s. The throughline of this vast, complex story is a 37-kiloton atomic bomb dubbed "Priscilla" that was exploded above a custom-built mini-civilization at Frenchman Flat, Nevada, in 1957. Jon Else uses Priscilla and the bombs that preceded and followed to highlight the terrifying ways we have stockpiled and tested nuclear weapons, how near and often we came to self-annihilation, how we managed to avoid it, and what we did to the planet and to our own bodies in the process, from wartime Los Alamos to the suspension of US and Soviet nuclear testing in 1992.

In the two decades after Hiroshima, a pair of dramatic stories unfolded alongside each other: the scramble to produce ever more powerful nuclear weapons, and the struggle to ban testing of those same weapons. The dramatic narrative takes in the physics of the megaton postwar bombs, the role of private industry, the near misses of the Cuban Missile Crisis and less well-known events, and the testimony of scientists, politicians, doctors, weapons developers, test-site workers, ranchers, and families downwind of test sites.

This powerful and persuasive book reminds us how we have-so far-prevented nuclear war by deterrence, diplomacy, and luck. It is for the moment a success story, and a warning.