Over the past decade a quiet revolution has been gathering momentum in the fields of moral philosophy and Christian ethics. These disciplines are undergoing a decisive shift as duty, obligation, and decision yield their central role in the understanding of the moral life to the long neglected concepts of virtue, character, and action. Romanus Cessario presents here a general introduction to the study of Christian moral virtues that reflects the emergence of this new and compelling vision of the moral life. "The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics" provides an account of the nature of the moral virtues by explaining how the virtues work in our everyday lives. The book begins with a brief survey of the current work in theological ethics and the present state of virtue theory in contemporary theology. Cessario's account of the notion of "habitus", or disposition, introduces his discussion of virtue. This notion supplies the basis for his explanation of how the moral virtues enhance our psychological and spiritual capacities and how the virtue of prudence directs moral action. Finally, the author explicates the nature and grace of growth in the moral virtues, and of maturity in the life of the Holy Spirit. A feature of this book is that is presents a general theory of the virtues that a student can then apply to any particular moral virtue.

As medicine gains ever greater skill at 'correcting' the physical deficiencies of children, we are also acquiring the power to alter personal identity and change the meaning of normality. In Surgically Shaping Children, Erik Parens has collected a wonderful range of provocative and thoughtful essays that, while providing no easy answers, raise crucially important questions about when, why, and how we should 'fix' the appearance of our children. Doctors, patients, ethicists, and parents will all be enriched by its wisdom and empowered by its intelligent consideration of these thorny issues.

Linear Algebra and Its Applications, Second Edition presents linear algebra as the theory and practice of linear spaces and linear maps with a unique focus on the analytical aspects as well as the numerous applications of the subject. In addition to thorough coverage of linear equations, matrices, vector spaces, game theory, and numerical analysis, the Second Edition features student-friendly additions that enhance the book's accessibility, including expanded topical coverage in the early chapters, additional exercises, and solutions to selected problems.

Based on the Bloch Lectures given at the University of California at Berkeley, McClary's latest book continues her study of the ideas and issues surrounding the relationship between societal forces and music. Using examples of vocal and instrumental music from the 17th to the 20th centuries, McClary (musicology, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Feminine Endings) analyzes each within a cultural context and examines how that context has helped to define and challenge the concept of musical convention. She argues persuasively that what began as deviations from convention have, in turn, become conventional. In addition, her assertion that analysis focusing on the purely musical does not address the inherent complexities of music history will no doubt spark much debate.

Recovers the specifically medieval interpretation of the structure of the "The Divine Comedy". This work provides a useful tool for students interested in studying Dante's calculated use of poetry to overcome the limits of human understanding.

Learn to stop digital espionage-before it happens! Manage your way to security in an increasingly interconnected world. Network data has become increasingly valuable in today's public and private sectors, as has become painfully clear to those in Fortune 500 companies and to those in top branches of government who store information digitally. But exactly how safe is the informaton that is accessible from a network? According to the expert authors of Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies & Thieves and RSA Security, the most trusted name in e-security, NO data is safe. In fact, digital espionage, theft and destruction occur every day, and most attacks go undetected until it is too late.

With the War on Terror in full swing, the government's involvement in and influence over law enforcement has changed and, in some cases, expanded. While police forces remain under the jurisdiction of the cities and states they patrol, federal agencies have taken on a wider role in combating and prosecuting crime. Agencies such as the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and now the Department of Homeland Security have wide and varied responsibilities and powers in combating both terrorism and other crimes. But this wasn't always the case. This timely book examines the history of American federal law enforcement as well as its current state in all of its forms.

Iain Abernethy is the real deal. And I continue to wonder where and how he got so smart. And I'm not talking about all his credentials, including an advanced black belt and so on. Those are surprisingly common these days. But Iain brings rare insight to his study of karate. A lot of folks have studied karate for a long time, and gotten very good indeed in the kickee-punchee aspect of the discipline. But most dojos have taught the kata, discussed a few improbable applications, prepared the student to dance through the kata for an examination, and failed utterly to explore the actual use of the kata in self defense. And that's the case even though Gichen Funakoshi taught that kata was the core of karate training, and Choki Motobu pointed out that all you needed to know about fighting was contained in Tekki Shodan kata.

Our original purpose in writing this book was to provide a text for the undergraduate linear algebra course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This course was designed for mathematics majors at the junior level, although threefourths of the students were drawn from other scientific and technological disciplines and ranged from freshmen through graduate students. This description of the M.I.T. audience for the text remains generally accurate today. The ten years since the first edition have seen the proliferation of linear algebra courses throughout the country and have afforded one of the authors the opportunity to teach the basic material to a variety of groups at Brandeis University, Washington University (St. Louis), and the University of California (Irvine).

Cicero, one of the greatest orators of all time and an important politician at the time of the downfall of the Roman Republic, has left in his writings a first-hand view of the age of Caesar and Pompey. However, readers need to learn how to interpret these writings and, as with any politician or orator, not to believe too easily what he says. This book is a guide to reading Cicero and a companion to anyone who is prepared to take the long but rewarding journey through his works. It is not in itself a biography, but may help readers to construct their own biographies of Cicero or histories of his age.

In this eagerly anticipated book, Boris Gasparov gazes through the lens of music to find an unusual perspective on Russian cultural and literary history. He discusses six major works of Russian music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, showing the interplay of musical texts with their literary and historical sources within the ideological and cultural contexts of their times. Each musical work becomes a tableau representing a moment in Russian history, and together the works form a coherent story of ideological and aesthetic trends as they evolved in Russia from the time of Pushkin to the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s.

The rapid collapse of socialism has raised new economic policy questions and revived old theoretical issues. In this book, Joseph Stiglitz explains how the neoclassical, or Walrasian model (the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand), which has dominated economic thought over the past half century, may have wrongly encouraged the belief that market socialism could work. Stiglitz proposes an alternative model, based on the economics of information, that provides greater theoretical insight into the workings of a market economy and clearer guidance for the setting of policy in transitional economies. Stiglitz sees the critical failing in the standard neoclassical model underlying market socialism to be its assumptions concerning information, particularly its failure to consider the problems that arise from lack of perfect information and from the costs of acquiring information.

There's a chapter in Networking: A Beginner's Guide called "Network Servers: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask." The chapter title encapsulates this book's raison d'être. It's a compendium of network engineers' essential knowledge, the stuff you really need to have a handle on to build, operate, and grow local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs). Author Bruce Hallberg lays down a lot of conceptual material and then takes a three-pronged approach to implementation specifics. For Novell NetWare 5, Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, and Linux 2.2.x (particularly in its Red Hat Linux 6.1 form), the reader will find specific directions for setting up and running a particular kind of network infrastructure. One might wish for more information on setting up services (such as Samba under Linux, which isn't covered), but you'll likely want to buy at least one other book dedicated to the operating system you choose, and that book should cover services in detail.

A great storyteller, Professor Gurock masterfully weaves together personal narrative, sermons, and social observations to create gripping narratives of Orthodox Jewry in America.... [Orthodox Jews in America] brings together several decades of Gurock's incisive research and thinking on American Orthodoxy while offering a still deeper and more nuanced analysis of its overall development.

In this major new work, Matthew Kramer seeks to establish two main conclusions. On the one hand, moral requirements are strongly objective. On the other hand, the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. Moral realism - the doctrine that morality is indeed objective - is a moral doctrine.