An inviting collection of Greek and Roman advice on letter writing-plus a gathering of illuminating and intimate letters from Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny

Email, texting, and AI appear to be sending the ancient art of letter writing to the verge of extinction. But this valuable skill doesn't have to become a dead letter. In a world drowning in generic and impersonal communication, now is a perfect time to rediscover the beauty of the personal letter-thoughtful, deliberate, and capable of building and strengthening friendships, romantic relationships, and family, social, and business ties. For inspiration and instruction on how to write a great letter, there are few better guides than the ancient Greeks and Romans, for whom letters were an essential, distinctive, and flexible form. In How to Write a Letter, Yelena Baraz presents lively new translations of selections from Greek and Roman letter-writing manuals and rhetorical treatises, plus a gathering of letters by three great Roman letter writers-Marcus Tullius Cicero, Seneca the Younger, and Pliny the Younger-and the original Greek and Latin on facing pages.

The letter-writing manuals sampled here provide convenient classifications and formulas to their users while the rhetorical treatises offer instructions on tone, register, and length. The featured letters by Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny are tailored to different kinds of recipients, situations, and purposes-including consolation, invitation, recommendation, and to make or strengthen a connection-illustrating how to make every letter fit its occasion and addressee.

Filled with timeless insights about the epistolary art, How to Write a Letter is an instructive and enlightening reminder of why letters still offer us a uniquely personal means of engaging with each other.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banks have seen recent regulatory shifts, evolving prominence and growing international scrutiny over governance practices; these recent developments have caused a gap in the literature. The research here fills in these gaps by integrating Islamic perspectives on governance and disclosure, a dimension often underexplored in empirical banking studies, in addition the author systematically explores both corporate governance (including board structure, audit committees, and internal controls) and Shariah governance (such as the structure of Shariah boards and the audit mechanisms used in Islamic banks). It further evaluates how these elements influence financial disclosure, stakeholder trust, and institutional resilience.

The text offers a unique blend of theoretical insight, empirical analysis, and practical policy recommendations, making it valuable for academics, policymakers, financial regulators, and banking professionals.

Emerald Studies in Islamic Economy and Finance (ESIEF) is a ground breaking series dedicated to advancing the knowledge and understanding of Islamic economics and finance. In an era where the global economic landscape is constantly evolving this will series seeks to contribute significantly to the academic discourse surrounding Islamic economy and finance building on the rich heritage of Islamic economic thought while embracing contemporary perspectives and challenges.

This book offers a clear, comparative perspective on how leading jurisdictions are responding to the rapid rise of financial technologies. Through jurisdiction-specific chapters, it highlights practical regulatory strategies, emerging legal trends, and the balance between innovation and financial stability across 11 key markets.

What sets this work apart is its focus on real-world applications and collaborative regulatory approaches, providing insights that are both globally informed and locally grounded. Covering developments in digital assets, cross-border payments, CBDCs, and data governance, the volume brings together perspectives from experts embedded in each legal system.

Written for policymakers, legal practitioners, scholars, and advanced students, the content is accessible yet analytically rigorous.

Key benefits include:

? A unique, side-by-side comparison of global FinTech regulatory ecosystems

? Forward-looking analysis that supports international dialogue and policy alignment

This book provides practitioners with an overview of human resource management from an evidence-based perspective including practical examples. It is structured to align with the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) curriculum for HR professional certifications. The book begins by providing an understanding of workforce dynamics covering globalization, risk management, law and regulation, corporate social responsibility, and organizational strategy. From there the remainder of the book goes into the modern complex HR functions through the three-pillar model of human resource management detailing people resources, HR functions, and people-oriented approaches. The book also discusses current trends and the future of human resources, including the use of data and technology. Featuring data-driven insight, best practices and examples, this book is appropriate for professionals, practitioners, and MBA students in human resource management.

The book studies the regulation of the food and beverage industry (F&B) in and by all leading regional trade agreements (RTAs) in the world. It critically evaluates the institutions, rules, and dispute settlement processes used to regulate F&B in older RTAs, such as United States-Mexico-Canada USMCA, Southern Common Market Mercosur/Mercosul, European Union EU, and Europe-Asia Economic Union EAEU, and also focuses on rapidly evolving or more recently established RTAs, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area AfCFTA, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership RCEP, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN. It discusses specific examples of major F&B companies to see if they comply or purport to comply with three indicators of healthy food: front-of-pack labelling; environmental, social and governance ESG compliance and the UN Sustainable Development Goals; and the avoidance of highly processed food HPF. It advances specific proposals to companies and to consumers to help achieve the goal of healthy food. The book marshals a sophisticated legal perspective, detailed economic knowledge of major F&B multinational companies worldwide, and constructive and cutting-edge proposals to such companies about providing consumers with up-to-date information to enable them to choose healthy food.

This book offers a more comprehensive exploration of Pliny the Elder's contribution to ancient medicine as preserved in his Natural History, reassessing its role within Greek and Roman medical traditions and tracing the transmission of Pliny's medical material across antiquity, late antiquity, the middle ages, and the Renaissance. Bringing together scholars in classics, ancient medicine, pharmacology, philology, and the history of science, the book investigates Pliny's methodological approaches, his engagement with natura, and his use of both Greek and Latin sources, situating his encyclopaedic project within broader medical and scientific cultures.

Divided into three parts, this book examines Pliny's position within the medical world of antiquity, analysing his dialogue with Greek medical thought, his treatment of materia medica, herbal knowledge, toxicology, and medical amulets, and his wider influence on Roman medical theory and practice. It then considers the reception and adaptation of Plinian medicine in later centuries, showing how epitomes, medical compendia, poetic reworkings, humanist scholarship, and Renaissance therapeutic writing reframed his ideas for new intellectual contexts. Together, these studies demonstrate Pliny's enduring significance for the development of medical literature, pharmacology, and early scientific thought, and provide an essential resource for researchers in classics, ancient medicine, and the history of science.

Today's Supreme Court justices bristle at the label "politicians in robes," insisting that they operate above the fray of partisan politics. But for the first century of the nation's history, the Court was unmistakably a political institution, both by design and in practice. Justices were fully expected to engage in partisan politics-there was no concern that such engagement would lead to corruption or undue bias-and they remained deeply involved in civic debate and the electoral process while on the bench. In addition to hearing cases in the capital, each justice spent much of his time "riding circuit" and presiding over federal trial courts. On circuit and in Washington, nineteenth-century justices wrote for partisan newspapers, drafted legislation, advised partisan allies, campaigned for colleagues, and even ran for political offices from the bench. Through these political interactions, members of the Court helped shape debates about the Constitution's meaning at a time when most Americans did not believe in judicial supremacy.

In this sweeping history, Rachel A. Shelden, one of America's leading voices on the history of the Court, brings readers inside the social and political world of its justices, recovering their essential role in the era's turbulent politics. She also charts shifts at the turn of the twentieth century, when members of the Court and the legal community refashioned the judiciary as an apolitical institution, setting the stage for an increasingly more powerful-and more isolated-modern Court. The Political Supreme Court is required reading for anyone interested in the legal and political underpinnings of today's judicial power.

Why supporting big government, trade barriers, and unchecked executive power is still conservative-and why MAGA's worldview is far more coherent than its critics think

When Donald Trump surged to the lead in the 2015 fight for the GOP presidential nomination, bewildered political watchers struggled to understand why, because his policy positions were often at odds with what had been Republican orthodoxy since the days of Ronald Reagan. The Right Way reveals what these political observers missed, presenting a multidimensional understanding of the conservative worldview that explains why Trump has succeeded in both building up and tearing down what conservatives have traditionally embraced.

Marc Hetherington, Andrew Engelhardt, and Jonathan Weiler argue for a reimagining of conservatism that lends clarity to partisan paradoxes that otherwise seem inconsistent with the brand of conservatism most of us grew up with. Drawing on in-depth surveys from across America, they show how conservative voters rely on their general view of the world and human nature more broadly to understand the political world around them. Rather than preferences for limited government, conservative outlooks and dispositions explain why ordinary people who identify as conservatives vote the way they do on issues ranging from racial and gender equality to LGBTQ rights, immigration, redistribution, and foreign policy. They also tackle puzzles such as the willingness of today's conservatives to support politicians who bend or even break norms and rules that have been central to democratic functioning throughout American history.

Essential reading for polarized times, The Right Way demonstrates that while the politics of the moment may be in flux, worldviews about authority, tradition, community, and personal responsibility consistently shape how conservative voters evaluate public policies and choose their leaders.

A revelatory history of how the Federal Reserve finances American power.

Central banks, we are told, are economic superpowers that must remain independent of modern democratic governments. The US Federal Reserve's presumed insulation from politics affords it autonomy and credibility to control inflation and promote economic stability-or so the story goes.

In The Fiscal Fed, Will Bateman offers a deeply sourced, empirical history that shows the Fed's primary function is actually, and has always been, fiscal-sustaining the market for Treasury borrowing that makes up the difference between federal spending and federal revenue. Bateman combs Fed meeting transcripts, staff notes, financial accounts, and legal documents to trace loans and public-debt purchases since the central bank's founding. The result is a milestone work that reveals how, for most of the Fed's history, its transactions were aimed at government financing-either by providing cheap credit to close budget gaps or by manipulating yields on government debt. The Fed's support for government finance is a feature, not a bug, of American economic institutions.

This multidisciplinary volume explores the multifaceted nature of inequality in Jamaica and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, offering nuanced solutions to address the persistently high inequality in the Global South. With a critical focus on Jamaica given its high levels of inequality linked to crime, social discontent, and persistent poverty, the collection also considers the broader context of Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighting the region's heterogeneity and the unique challenges faced by different countries.

The book demonstrates that inequality is not confined to the distribution of income (which largely dominates the literature), but also affects access to technological advancement, gender justice, time allocation in the household between men and women, and human rights consideration for young people. The contributors offer evidence-based solutions to address inequality in the Global South.

By examining the intersection of various domains such as human rights, youth empowerment, technology, and gender disparity, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of how these dimensions interact and affect different demographic groups. Intersecting Inequalities in Jamaica and Beyond is essential reading for policymakers, academics, and anyone interested in understanding and addressing the root causes of inequality in the Global South.

International public procurement sits at the intersection of global development, public policy, and competitive business, yet for many it remains opaque and intimidating. It is one of the world's largest marketplaces, where governments buy goods, works, and services through open competition among firms from around the globe.

Demystifying International Public Procurement explains how procurement works in projects financed by major development partners, such as the World Bank. The authors walk readers through the full procurement life cycle-how projects are designed, solicitations prepared, bids evaluated, contracts awarded, and disputes handled-using clear language and real-world examples.

Rather than relying on textbook descriptions, the book shows what happens in practice, including common bidder mistakes, institutional breakdowns, fraud and corruption risks, and the informal norms that often influence decisions. It is a practical guide for private sector firms, government officials, development practitioners, and students who want to understand the system, prepare stronger submissions, and pursue opportunities in the field.

This book, the fourth edition of Supply Chain Management: A Learning Perspective, was revised to appeal to a wider readership besides students taking SCM courses. Global supply chain managers and researchers in the fields of SCM and operations strategy would find it a useful reference. Rather than discuss the technical issues of SCM, the book focuses on the strategic perspectives and approaches of SCM. Students learn to identify SCM issues from the top management's perspective. The book also presents real-world managerial problems and incorporates case studies for connecting theories with practices. By exploring the fundamental issues of SCM, managers acquire a new learning perspective that enables them to solve problems in a more sustainable and innovative manner rather than use short-term, ad hoc solutions. Finally, it distils various theoretical concepts to allow researchers to observe real SCM issues in a managerial context which allows for practical, meaningful and impactful research to be carried out.

This book presents advances in the research of various entities in management in tourism. Indeed, one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic was tourism, likewise one of the post-pandemic effects is the rapid recovery of the sector, but more importantly is the great innovation that has occurred in marketing strategies for tourism and applying management strategies not only to be more profitable but to have the best customer satisfaction. Featuring selected papers that presented at the 2025 International Conference on Management, Tourism, and Technologies (ICMTT) held in San Carlos, Costa Rica, this book features empirical studies and case analyses on sustainable tourism development. This book is valuable to scholars, academics, and students that seek to innovate, gain insight and establish a knowledge base in management in tourism.

Rigorous, careful, and nonpartisan research with a high policy impact on environmental and energy economics.

Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy focuses on the effective and efficient management of environmental and energy challenges. Research papers offer new evidence on the intended and unintended consequences, the market and nonmarket effects, and the incentive and distributional impacts of policy initiatives and market developments.

This volume presents six new papers on environmental and energy economics and policy. Judson Boomhower and Meredith Fowlie illustrate the distributional consequences of improving risk pricing efficiency in wildfire insurance markets. Claire Brunel and Arik Levinson develop a conceptual framework for understanding the economic and environmental consequences of taxes on imports of goods based on their carbon content. Karen Clay, Danae Hernandez-Cortes, Akshaya Jha, Joshua Lewis, Noah Miller, and Edson Severnini study the long-run distributional implications of US power plant sitings over more than a century. Todd Gerarden, Mar Reguant, and Daniel Xu provide a comprehensive overview of industrial policy in the renewable energy sector, with comparisons across the US, EU, and China. Jamie Hansen-Lewis and Michelle Marcus show how failure to account for behavioral responses can affect policy predictions regarding maritime emissions. Finally, Richard Sweeney and Joseph Wilske estimate the externalities associated with correlated intermittency in electricity generation from US wind power investments.

This book explores how gender-responsive budgeting, well-being budgeting, and feminist democratic innovation can transform public finance into a tool for equality and social justice.

Bringing together scholars and practitioners, it examines how governments and civil society in the southern Europe integrate gender equality into fiscal policy and decision-making. The chapters trace the evolution of gender budgeting from a technical exercise in expenditure tracking to a broader agenda that links care, well-being, and participation in democratic governance. Case studies from Albania, Croatia, France, Italy, Macedonia, Spain, and Serbia illustrate how inclusive budgeting practices enhance transparency, accountability, and trust in institutions. The volume bridges theory and practice, drawing on the experience of reformers working with ministries of finance, municipalities, and international organizations. It provides timely insights for policymakers, academics, and advocates seeking to align budgets with the Sustainable Development Goals and to build more equitable, resilient, and caring economies.

The book is designed to show that the public and professional understanding of science is somewhat biased, and error, failure and mistake play a more substantial role than usually conceived. Trust in science should be grounded in acknowledging that only through repeated experiments, trial and error, research and development scientists can produce reliable knowledge. This book presents cases that are considered dead ends, failures, and not only points out the heuristic value of failure but also emphasizes the nonlinearity of knowledge production in different domains and perspectives. It focuses on the epistemic, philosophical, practical, theoretical, and institutional consequences of error and fosters dialogues between philosophers, historians, and scientists, representing contemporary thinking about science. This book is thus of great interest to philosophers, sociologists, and historians.

This monograph discusses the contemporary role of sea basins in global politics. It highlights their economic and political importance, especially how countries use them to achieve regional and global goals. It also examines how these policies affect political and economic relations in different regions, considering international sea laws. The book also covers regional conditions around various sea basins and how they influence the maritime strategies of global and regional powers. It discusses specific maritime policies of key countries and how these policies fit into their overall international activities. Additionally, it looks at inter-state disputes and their impact on regional peace, as well as the legal status of different sea basins and their role in shaping the international order.

The volume begins with an exploration of the historical determinants shaping maritime activity and the status of sea powers. It examines the evolution of sea power concepts from the 19th century to the 20th century, highlighting the impact of technological advancements and legal regulations like the Montego Bay Convention. The emergence of non-state players and their influence on maritime strategies is also discussed. The subsequent chapters analyze the maritime policies of supra-regional players such as the USA, PRC, Russia, and the EU, emphasizing the strategic assumptions and naval capabilities required to achieve their maritime goals.

Further chapters focus on the geopolitical significance of specific sea basins, including the polar oceans, the Indo-Pacific, and the Atlantic. The book examines the strategic importance of these regions, the role of regional and global powers, and the impact of climate change and international regulations. It also highlights the unique maritime policies of regional powers like India, Japan, and Australia, and their interactions with major players. The final chapters address the strategic importance of the waters surrounding Europe, particularly the Black Sea, and the interplay between regional stability and the interests of major powers like Russia, China, and Turkey.

This approach will enable readers to understand the importance of sea basins both in the policy of global and regional state maritime players, and the impact of their maritime activity on the shape of the international system. As such this book will be an excellent resource for researchers and students of international relations, geopolitics and geostrategy as well as decision-makers and practitioners dealing with the analysis of maritime activity of states, their use in the implementation of state policy and the role of individual sea basins in global politics.

This Open access book explores the connections between everyday life, institutional politics, and social hierarchies that underlie the disputes between progressive forces and the radical right. It studies the case of Brazil, which is especially suggestive, given the particular combination of political choices and variables of class, gender, race, region and religion as well as the different transitions in a short period of time. The book's central thesis is that political choices reflect the potential of different political discourses-whether from the left or the (extreme) right-to articulate sufferings, anxieties, and expectations generated by shifts in peoples' intersectional situation. Starting from this perspective, it studies how both institutional politics and real and virtual everyday spaces have been transformed into arenas where those who have lost or fear losing privileges and positions confront those who have gained or hope to gain new rights and standing within existing hierarchies.

The book combines timely themes and approaches: critical research on social inequalities, relations between capitalism and democracy, political activism. Politically, it presents a comprehensive diagnosis of the advance of the far right and can contribute to nurturing progressive strategies to react to these threats. Although based on cutting-edge theoretical debates, the book is written in easily accessible language that can be understood by a broad readership.

This book covers the low fertility in China that has drawn wide attention and exerts a far-reaching influence on the population development. In this book, with population census and sample survey data, and mathematical demographic methods and statistical methods, the authors systematically examined China's fertility levels over the past decades, fertility patterns, changes in birth numbers, projected the future population and simulated the 4-2-1 family structure and families bereaved of their only child. The authors developed a series of models and methods, got some important results, and drew some important conclusions, which provides reference for understanding the changing trend in China's fertility levels and patters, and for further relaxing China's fertility policy.

Advancement in Medical and Wellness Tourism, Volume 2 delves into how innovation and human creativity are reshaping the way of travel for health care. This book explains how technology, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit are transforming the way people seek wellness beyond borders. The edited book highlights new opportunities, challenges, and solutions shaping the medical tourism industry today.

This volume offers a comprehensive exploration of medical tourism, covering evolving consumer behavior, digital transformation, sustainability, and emerging technologies like AI and robotics. It brings together global perspectives on healthcare, entrepreneurship, and patient experience, shaping the industry across diverse cultural and economic contexts.

This book, based on extensive first-hand research conducted between 2020 and 2024, places "Russian antiquity" in the center of analysis, and addresses memory-making in the regions. The author seeks to examine how public history is managed in Old Russian cities, who the mnemonic actors are, which narratives are institutionalized, how cultural heritage is reinterpreted, and how federal and regional historical narratives interact. How did existing approaches to the past contributed to legitimization of aggressive wars and the federal government's assumed right to arbitrarily initiate conflicts and compel citizens to participate in them? The book focuses on the period from 2012 to 2022, which saw the strengthening of personalist authoritarianism in Russia accompanied by a "conservative turn" whose roots lie in nineteenth-century nationalism. The book includes case studies of 12 regional capitals founded before 1584 (the year of Ivan the Terrible's death, his rule marked the emergence of the centralized Russian state).

With more than 180 million migrants worldwide, roughly 2.3 percent of the global population, migration is a global phenomenon, characterized by cross-border movements that are strikingly varied. This book discusses the current state of migration as a question of governance rather than crisis, examining contemporary migration movements within the legal, political, and economic structures that shape who may move, and why. The book focuses on Latin America, a region shaped by long histories of mobility, and the immigration policy frameworks of the United States, the European Union, and Latin America and the Caribbeans, tracing how different institutional architectures face similar migratory pressures but obtain markedly different outcomes. Ultimately, the book argues that migration functions as a governance barometer, by introducing the concept of policy elasticity, and exploring the limitations of existing "one-size-fits-all" approaches.