{"title":"Cambria Press","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781621966241","title":"Resourcing the National Security Enterprise","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew military officers can ascend to the ranks of senior leadership without eventually being assigned to Washington, DC, where newcomers navigating the system inevitably become emmeshed, flabbergasted, and stymied by entrenched bureaucratic processes they had no idea existed. A career in diplomacy or working on the Hill often involves the process-oriented work necessary to keep departments funded and the government functional. In order to succeed, one must understand these rules, especially as they apply to resourcing. Without funding, strategies and policies are merely interesting ideas. Getting an idea or a program resourced requires a thorough understanding of the process.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConsidering the national security enterprise from the standpoint of strategic resourcing is neither simple nor straightforward. To succeed requires a multidisciplinary approach; a team with substantial background knowledge on such diverse and byzantine topics as the Department of Defense acquisition system, the president's budget submission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Preparedness Frameworks, in addition to a basic understanding of macroeconomics. Further, the development of a cohesive and logical narrative is difficult because the Framers' intended checks and balances among the executive and legislative branches effectively preclude the possibility of seamless integration among national security priorities. Anyone aspiring to have a career in national security must understand the process in order to be effective.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGraduate school programs in security studies, public policy, and political science offer multiple courses that consider bureaucracy from academic and theoretical perspectives, but these classes generally do not attempt to offer a practitioner's view of surviving and thriving within the Washington bureaucracy. And although individual government departments and agencies such as the Department of Defense's Joint Staff and the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) offer courses for personnel newly assigned to Washington, the majority of the learning occurs through on-the-job training.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book fills the gap and provides a much-needed, theoretically grounded, and practical guide. Each chapter in this volume is by a practitioner with decades of experience working on resourcing issues in Washington. Their perspectives are informed by the cultures of the agencies in which they have worked and the positions they have held. Many currently teach in DC-based graduate degree programs in a variety of disciplines, including strategy, economics, and organizational leadership. \u003cem\u003eResourcing the National Security Enterprise\u003c\/em\u003e will be a valuable resource for aspiring practitioners who are beginning or seeking careers in the American federal government and to those who wish to learn more about the inner workings of resourcing the national security enterprise.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e*This book is in the Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security (RCCS) Series (General Editor: Dr. Geoffrey R.H. Burn).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301941195125,"sku":"9781621966241","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781621966241_781f00e4-0232-47d5-b2a9-620fc9082ffa.jpg?v=1786023283"},{"product_id":"9781621964773","title":"A History of Taiwan Literature","description":"\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301990805877,"sku":"9781621964773","price":95.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781621964773_b2de664d-f7b2-40d1-91bc-969672e8f400.jpg?v=1786023283"},{"product_id":"9781604979411","title":"Spatial Imaginaries in Mid-Tang China","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book explores a new and innovative topic—the relationship between geographical advancements in the Mid-Tang period (790s to 820s) and spatial imaginaries in contemporaneous literature. Historically and politically, the Mid-Tang period is generally considered to be a period of imperial reconstruction following the chaos of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763), a rebellion that had a profound impact not only on the Tang empire but also on all of Chinese history. On the one hand, this era witnessed a heightened geographical awareness and a rapid development and accumulation of geographical knowledge, as was manifested in the governmental production of local map-guides and the invention of some monumental world maps. On the other hand, Mid-Tang literature represents one of the peaks of traditional Chinese literature and is known for its diversity of genres and innovative and imaginative engagement with space.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor the first time in Tang scholarship, this study identifies the epistemological and aesthetic interplay between geography and literature in medieval China and investigates how this thus-far neglected interplay shaped the Mid-Tang literary imagination. This interdisciplinary investigation uncovers a rich cultural history of human exploration of the world on both fronts and provides a fresh reading of some of the most famous works of Tang literature, for example Li He’s poetry and Liu Zongyuan’s landscape essays. This study reveals some unique phenomena in genre development and individual creation in Mid-Tang literature and deepens our understanding of the inner workings and internal drive of traditional Chinese literature in general.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book expands and deepens the exploration of the interactions between literature and geography. Literary geography has been an active interdisciplinary field ever since the 1970s. In the early years as the field was taking shape, it was widely criticized for its instrumentalization of literary texts as unproblematic sources for empirical geographical study. In recent years, however, literary scholars have become increasingly interested in treating literary texts as another form of geography, or spatial organization, as many key literary elements, such as setting and milieu in fiction and imagery arrangement in poetry, involve spatial understanding on a fundamental level.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis study takes two important approaches regarding the ongoing debates in the field of literary geography. Inasmuch as traditional Chinese intellectual culture prioritized broad learning over specialization, disciplinary boundaries were unclear and literati were often multitalented. Accordingly, in the cases examined in this book, these literary masters were also cartographers, geographical writers, or at least experienced readers of geographical works. Therefore, the study’s approach does not treat either literature or geography as instrumental to the other, but rather examines how these two interrelated fields formed a shared intellectual horizon among the literati and found entrance to each other to create new knowledge, perspectives, and metaphors. This study also does not regard literature as a metaphorical geography in a generalized sense, but is specifically focused on how the geographic proficiency of literary authors informed their literature. Together, these two approaches suggest new possibilities of interdisciplinary exchange and offer a new perspective on the results of such exchanges as embodied in literary creation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSpatial Imaginaries in Mid-Tang China\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e will be a welcome resource for scholars and students in Chinese literature, historical geography, cultural history, and art history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305121657205,"sku":"9781604979411","price":75.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781604979411_f80848e4-d0e8-4b1d-a292-112af21079cf.jpg?v=1786023328"},{"product_id":"9781604976731","title":"J.M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative","description":"This book is a consideration of various themes and techniques ranging across famous South African writer J. M. Coetzee's whole oeuvre. It aims to discover the \"how\" rather than \"what\" or \"why\": where does Coetzee's work derive its power? A discussion of themes, influences, and allegorical meanings tends to bleach out the experience of reading; and this experience is surely the only reason for choosing Coetzee's narratives over anyone else's. It examines the type of resistance to be found in his work, a resistance which seems to have little basis in a political belief or a rational philosophy of justice. The book also traces the effects of Coetzee's choice of point of view in each of his books--how it interacts with questions of complicity and impressions of realism, as well as how it relates to the subject matter and characters he is dealing with in each case. It is also an exploration of the place of the comic arts in Coetzee's work. This is a subject which has routinely been dismissed by critics who have failed to discern any humor in the novels. The contention is that a sense of the ridiculous and absurd is implicit in much of Coetzee's narrative prose and can be seen in the underlying structure of all his books. This study delves into his use of language and languages: the choice of tenses, the surprising flights of imagery to be found amidst the taut elegance of his narrative style; and also the multilingual sensibilities he shares with many of his characters, not excluding the non-verbal language of music.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305122247029,"sku":"9781604976731","price":61.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781604976731_0441aac5-09d9-47d5-88d2-334acf383585.jpg?v=1786023327"},{"product_id":"9781604975208","title":"Music in Ancient China","description":"Many tombs dating to the Eastern Zhou (770-221 BCE) and Han (206 BCE-220 AD) periods contain musical instruments or their visual representations in the form of wood, stone, and ceramic figures, tomb tiles, and engravings. These finds suggest that music was viewed as an important part of the afterlife. While bells have survived more frequently than wooden instruments, and therefore have received the most scholarly attention, strings, winds, and drums are the focus of discussion in this book. The book examines the use of these three instrument types in both solo and ensemble music, as well as the social, ritual, and entertainment functions of each. When combined with bells (and chime stones), strings, drums, and winds appear to have been associated with formal ritual ceremonies. However, when appearing alone or in assemblages with other wooden instruments during Zhou, they appear to be connected with warfare and entertainment. By Han times, strings, winds, and drums seem to be associated almost exclusively with entertainment, pointing to a shift in the social life of the times. Another topic explored in this book is the association of musical instruments with wealth. When combined with bells and chime stones, they are only found in the wealthiest tombs. However, when found by themselves, strings, winds, and drums appear in small to large, modest to wealthy tombs, suggesting that they were available to a broad range of peoples in early Chinese elite society. This book analyzes an often disregarded aspect of early Chinese music, the role of strings, winds, and drums. Music in Ancient China will be a valuable book for those interested in ethnomusicology and music history, Asian art history and archaeology, and Asian studies.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312649318773,"sku":"9781604975208","price":139.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781604975208_551ccf4e-f5b4-48e0-8b82-1ea55a45d512.jpg?v=1786023325"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/publisher-cambria-press.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}