Work Without Wages: Russia's Non-Payment Crisis

Book Description

The seventy-year-old Soviet tradition of "wages without work" soon turned into "work without wages" when the planned economy began switching to a market system in 1992. Lack of budget discipline, the breakdown of contractual obligations at all levels, and the failure of state agencies to enforce laws among businesses led to pervasive wage nonpayment to workers in both the public and private sectors. In this book Padma Desai and Todd Idson combine econometric rigor, policy analysis, and empirical evidence to analyze wage nonpayment patterns across demographic groups defined by gender, age, and education, and in various occupations, industries, and regions of Russia. They also examine wage nonpayment to Russia's military personnel, in the wider context of a disintegrating military. Focusing on the roots and scale of wage nonpayment, the book is an indispensable guide to understanding Russia's economic restructuring and of the social costs of the transition born by the general population.

Among the questions addressed are: How did Russia's factory managers decide who, among various categories of workers, would not get paid? Did wage denial push people below the poverty line? How did families survive when denied wages? Did strikes lead to reduced wage arrears? The authors describe a variety of survival strategies on the part of Russian families, including informal paid activity, the selling of family assets, home production for consumption and sale, and the receiving of cash from relatives.

Work Without Wages: Russia's Non-Payment Crisis

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Work Without Wages: Russia's Non-Payment Crisis
Padma Desai
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OQA686

Book Description

The process of regulation in the field of international environmental law belies the complexity of environmental issues that need to be addressed in managing global environmental resources. Although the regulatory process has succeeded in elevating the acknowledgement of a new set of ideas and concepts toward sustainable development, it has not had success in elevating those concepts into a set of determinative norms or rules. "Cosmopolitan Orientation of the Process of International Environmental Lawmaking" stresses the futility of a state-centric approach to a planet-wide phenomenon that the environmental issue presents.

Book Description

An outstanding group of leading contributors in the food industry and agriculture discuss such issues as international regulation of food, biotechnical applications and acceptance of bioengineered food products, global trade and tariffs connected with nourishment.

Book Description

In this unique volume, key researchers present newly emerging approaches to computer simulation models of large, forest landscapes. Over the past decade the field of landscape ecology has developed rapidly, focusing on the need to address ecological research and management at large spatial scales, and longer temporal domains. There is also great attention being focused on the use and management of forests throughout the world, particularly on issues such as long-term sustainability, ecosystem management, and biodiversity protection. These models have the potential to help answer research and management questions through simulation experiments that have not, in the past, considered spatial interactions among ecological processes and human activities at broad scales. Representing a rapidly emerging area in the field of landscape ecology, this volume will be of value to ecologists, forest and natural resource managers, as well as wildlife biologists and conservationists.

Book Description

John Bunyan's amazing Pilgrim's Progress is well into its fourth century of unparalleled popularity as the world's best-selling non-Biblical book in all history. Now in modern English comes The New Amplified Pilgrim's Progress. All of the age-old spiritual treasures that have made John Bunyan's original the world's best selling non-Biblical masterpiece in all of history are now carried to new heights of power and clarity in this new enhanced version. While this is perhaps the most adventure-filled and user-friendly adaptation ever penned, yet it is totally unabridged and, excepting certain amplified scenes, remains strictly faithful to Bunyan's original storyline.

Exciting new levels of love and joy, hope and humor are skillfully woven by master storyteller Jim Pappas, into this enchanting retelling of John Bunyan's immortal classic! Designed to return this spellbinding masterpiece of angels and giants, castles and dragon, to the fireside of the everyday reader.

Customer Reviews:

Easy read...Just like the amplified Bible.........2003-03-02

If you have no desire to tackle the "old English" then this is the Pilgrim's Progress for you. Everyone should read The Pilgrims Progress as well as Hinds Feet For High Places. We need to read the classics and this one is an easy read.

In Praise of the Original version by John Bunyan.......2003-01-26

In the beginning we were very excited because we felt like Mr. Pappas clarified some of the messages of Christians experiences. However, when we read comparatively with John Bunyans original we found several glaring exclusions, changes, and introductions of different theological ideas. John Bunyan was Reformed in his theology. This book takes a definite dispensational turn (a doctrine introduced only in the last 150 years and not scriptural). There is terminology inserted in this "amplified" version that makes the story even harder to understand, (i.e. The two witnesses; latter rain). The meaning of these two terms is debatable depending on denominational differences. Mr. Pappas also completely reversed the words in some instances, saying the exact opposite of what Bunyan said. (e.g. In the Second Stage, Bunyan says that God put the man in the cage-Pappas says that the man put himself in the cage.)

Part of the reason that Pilgrims Progress has faded out of favor is it's reformed context, and most denominations have fallen into dispensationalism. If you aren't familiar with what I am referring to then it is imperative that you seek out my meaning. Then, if you choose to remain of a dispensational mind this book is fine. But if you choose to keep to the reformed path, this version must be rejected.

I am very sorry to have to give this negative review, I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by a new easier to understand version for my grandchildren.

Incredibly well-adapted to "our times-" Great Family Reading.......1999-09-05

We began the "Aloud" reading of this wonderful book in our home as daily family time, and our four children, ages 5-14, have been energetic in their enthusiasm over it. We splurged and purchased each of them their own copy since we take turns reading, and they guard their books well. Using modern-day terminology, Pappas' Pilgrim's Progress weaves an understandable, incredible journey. Even our five year old is entranced, and all are enriched as we discover and discuss the meanings of the players' and places' names. We keep the original version of Pilgrim's Progress nearby and compare passages at times. Mr. Pappas' rendition of this classic is superb. His amplifications really do enhance the journey of Christian, are not distracting, nor (important to me) do they take away from the original text. This is an heirloom edition, to be sure. We have also very, very much enjoyed the old-world graphics throughout the book as it lends to take us back to the era in which it was staged.

". . . most adventure-filled. . . version published today.......1999-08-18

Jim Pappas' adaption of Bunyan's timeless classic is the most adventure-filled and reader-friendly modern version published today. The work is totally unabridged and (excepting certain amplified scenes) remains strictly adherent to Bunyan's original storyline. In it we are treated to exciting new levels of love and joy, hope and humor, all skillfully woven and designed to accurately present Bunyan's spellbinding, inspirational masterpiece of angels and giants, castles and dragons to the modern reader.

Book Description

Covering ten centuries, this fascinating introduction to the key Greek and Roman authors begins with writers like Homer and Sappho and concludes at the onset of the Late Antique period with the likes of Lucian and Cassius Dio.

Set in within a chronological framework, this brilliant collection aims to tell the story of classical literature: how it developed, flourished, and changed throughout the ages. The individual essays, which constitute the main body of the book, give for each of the fifty authors a substantial introduction to the author's life, works, and cultural and social positions. The essays collectively create an overall sense of the main periods of the flowering classical culture, and of the significance of historical events which affected it. The reader sees firsthand how ancient literature was bound up in its historical, political, and social context.

Genre tables, timelines, and useful appendices makes this book an ideal resource for the both the undergraduate student and thegeneral reader of the classics.

Customer Reviews:

A very literary history.......2003-09-16

The classical world of Greece and Rome furnished early written works in poetry, philosophy, mathematics, history, plays, and the natural sciences. By explaining the lives of FIFTY KEY CLASSICAL AUTHORS, this book gives the historical setting in which intertextuality had 1,000 years of allusion and the dynamics of appropriation to produce meanings which were not isolated but interactive. I would consider the authors of this book young, as the Notes at the end of the Introduction reveal that a book on Virgil by Otis which was published in 1964 was written "before either of the authors of this book were born." (p. xxi).

Back in 1964, I was taking Latin in high school, but my high school only offered two years of Latin, so after tenth and eleventh grades, I gave it up. I avoided reading the great Greek plays studied by the honors students at the University of Michigan in 1965-66 by enrolling in the College of Engineering, which had its own English courses, in which ancient civilizations were not the key to what we were supposed to learn, though writing one paper about something that was supposed to be funny was as challenging as sticking to the factual approach for which technocrats would become famous, in the event they ever escaped being anonymous.

Philosophy is much more aware of its origin in the Greek world, and Plato and Aristotle show up in this book, after the early poets, writers of the great tragedies, a historian, the comic Aristophanes, "the best of the writers of Old Comedy," (p. 84), a speechwriter who is called a logographer, and the versatile Xenophon, who even gets credit for writing "Socratic texts." (p. 103). Socrates was not a writer, so he is not discussed as a main character in FIFTY KEY CLASSICAL AUTHORS, but the index reveals that he was mentioned on 16 pages, similar to Suetonius, who is mentioned on 15 pages before having his own section on pages 365-70.

The index is mainly names, with more people than places. Many names which appear in the text are not to be found in the index, especially names of two words. Though "the epic poet Silius Italicus" (p. 274) can be found in the index between Sicily and similes on page 420, modern names are listed under the last name, as in Shakespeare, William; Shelley, Mary; and Shelley, Percy. There is an Alphabetical List of Contents on pages viii-ix in which Julius Caesar appears between Aristotle and Callimachus, then Cassius Dio before Catullus. In the index, the first entry starting with a C is Calabria, and Julius Caesar shows up between Julia (daughter of Augustus) and Juno on page 417.

There is no listing in the index for mathematics, but plenty for madness, manuscripts, marriage, Megalopolis, metaphor, metre, misogyny, mothers, Muses, and mutiny. Following a single entry for Rabelais, there are multiple pages for readers, reading, realism, reception, recognition, a single entry for recusatio, many for repetition, revenge and reversal of fortune/peripeteia, but only a few for Rhodes and ring composition.

Occasionally the point of view in FIFTY KEY CLASSICAL AUTHORS is very British. In discussing Seneca the Younger, "whose work dominated the Roman literary scene of the first century AD," (p. 301), the book introduces him by saying, "However, it was during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras that Seneca really came into his own. Seneca's tragedies superseded their Greek models, which were less accessible to a community who knew Latin much better than Greek." (p. 300). For those who missed seeing a recent performance, take comfort in knowing that the 1968 adaptation of Seneca's OEDIPUS by Ted Hughes "was revived in April 1998 at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter." (p. 301). My interest in Seneca might be like Ezra Pound's, who wrote about him in his ABC OF READING in 1934, in which Pound "saw Seneca's writings as symptomatic of a nation `losing a grip of its empire and of itself.' Yet Pound's condemnation of Seneca didn't prevail." (p. 301). Could it be that the authors of this book stopped their timeline with the "Death of Cassius Dio" in post-AD 229 (p. 411) because they are not fond of those who blame the Roman Empire for falling apart? Perhaps they want us to think that they do not approve or are not familiar with a history of Rome called HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, by someone named Edward Gibbon, who does not appear in the index of this book. This book might be better than that one for people who are looking for useful information, but decline can also be found in the index of this book. Even the works of Homer are not unaware of the fall of Troy, and the fall of Carthage gets a few sympathic words from the writers in this book who thought that Rome might well be damned by the rest of the world for doing something like that, so arrogant.

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immensely helpful

Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides)
G.R. Evans
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
General | England | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Ancient | England | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Medieval | England | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
General | Ireland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books
General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Medieval Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

A History of the Church in the Middle Ages

Fifty Key Thinkers on History (Fifty Key Thinkers)

The Early Church (Hist of the Church)

ASIN: 0415236630

Book Description

Focusing on individuals whose ideas shaped intellectual life between 400 and 1500, Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers is an accessible introduction to those religious, philosophical and political concepts central to the medieval worldview. Including such diverse figures as Bede and Wyclif, each entry presents a biographical outline, a list of works and a summary of their main theories, alongside suggestions for further reading. Chronologically arranged, and with an introductory essay which presents important themes in context, this volume is an invaluable reference tool for all students of Medieval Europe.

Download Description

Focusing on individuals whose ideas shaped intellectual life between 400 and 1500, Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers is an accessible guide to those religious, philosophical and political concepts central to the medieval worldview.

Customer Reviews:

immensely helpful.......2007-01-07

It can be very difficult to get a grasp on the roughly 1,000 years that make up the Medieval period, but this book is a great peek at some of the period's most influential thinkers. These 50 people have all in some way laid the intellectual foundation for the rest of Western Civilization and Evans gives a great primer into their world, their lives, and their minds.

This book should is a reference book and should be read in conjunction with a solid history of the Middle Ages, especially those focusing on the intellectual history of the era.

Book Description

KEY BENEFIT: This book explains why western civilization is worth knowing about. Taking a topical approach and stressing social and cultural themes, it asks, “What is the West?” and incorporates significant discussions of peoples and civilizations outside the boundaries of the West. KEY TOPICS: Provides coverage of Western civilization from the first civilizations of Prehistory through the origins of the West to its development and expansion into what is currently considered the Western world. MARKET: For social studies enthusiasts, historians and cultural development professionals.

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Another fine work by Preston.

Inspiring

A book worth owning. . .

Somebody find this guy an editor!

A good read for those interested in astronomy

First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe
Richard Preston
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Cosmology | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books
Universe | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Science | Subjects | Books
Cosmology | Astronomy | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

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The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

ASIN: 0812991850
Release Date: 1996-10-29

Amazon.com

"There is a saying among astronomers that five billion people concern themselves with the surface of the Earth, and ten thousand with everything else," writes Richard Preston, best-selling author of The Hot Zone. And if you think these professional stargazers spend most of their time serenely peering into the night sky, guess again. Today's astronomers are world-class gadgeteers who scurry about giant (and often frigid) observatories tinkering with the mechanical and electronic tools of their trade. In First Light, they tangle with the Hale Telescope, one of the world's oldest and largest. This beautifully written book is highly recommended for anybody interested in astronomy.

Book Description

Seven years before Richard Preston wrote about horrifying viruses in The Hot Zone, he turned his attention to the cosmos. In First Light, he demonstrates his gift for creating an exciting and absorbing narrative around a complex scientific subject--in this case the efforts by astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains of California to peer to the farthest edges of space through the Hale Telescope, attempting to solve the riddle of the creation of the universe.

Richard Preston's name became a household word with The Hot Zone, which sold nearly 800,000 copies in hardcover, was on The New York Times's bestseller list for 42 weeks, and was the subject of countless magazine and newspaper articles. Preston has become a sought-after commentator on popular science subjects.

For this hardcover reprint of what has been called "the best popular account of astronomy in action," ( Kirkus Reviews) he has revised the text and written a new introduction.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Another fine work by Preston........2007-02-17

Reading a work by Richard Preston has become such an intellectual treat that I have decided that these books are worth locating in "First Edition," which I was able to find and add to my collection.

Inspiring.......2005-01-14

I found "First Light" to be a deeply inspiring book. For me, as an amateur astronomer, Mt. Palomar is almost a sacred place. I think "First Light" must be mandatory reading for everyone who is visiting the Mt. Palomar observatory - read the book before your visit and the place will really spring to life when you get there.

A book worth owning. . ........2003-07-18

I adore this book. Of course, I must give a disclaimer, I've always loved the subject of astronomy ever since I was very small. Unfortunately for me, I lacked the patience and the math skills to really delve into it, but books like Preston's, which are written for the layman but dare to delve a little, are a great read.

'First Light' follows two different groups of people: one working at the famed Palomar Telescope in Pasadena; the other, Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker of the Shoemaker Comets fame. The book is rich with detail and lovingly paints a picture of the kindly, eccentric and brilliant people who inhabit that world. Especially wonderful are the analogies that help you understand how large the universe is when compared to objects around us (i.e., "Imagine the sun the size of the dot on this i. . .").

No, the writing isn't flawless, but the depth of detail and the easy flow of the narrative will keep you reading. . .

Highly recommended for all ages.

Somebody find this guy an editor!.......2002-01-08

Great topic. Intiguing charcters. Lots of fun to read. Unfortunately this book reads like a first draft instead of a final copy. Richard Preston's sentence structure is terrible. He tends to repeat himself...alot!! Like his other books, the topics and information are wonderful; he needs somebody to keep him organized.

A good read for those interested in astronomy.......2001-12-22

If you are somebody who loves astronomy, then look no further. While this isn't "the best book about astronomy ever written", it is a great book. I got this book when I was thirteen and have loved it ever since. The author tends to jump around a lot, which can be a little annoying and why I only gave it four stars instead of five. Although I liked the part about the Shoemakers, I don't see how that fits in with the purpose of the book. But aside from that, the section about the Shoemakers is really interesting and sometimes funny, like when Carolyn Shoemaker was teaching the author how to change film. The other astronomers are also very interesting, and the book helps debunk some of the myths about astronomers, such as they are all boring nerds, which some people still actually think. While I don't believe it's the "perfect" astronomy book, it makes astronomy seem much more human and relevant than you might think. The author keeps the book moving (although again, he skips around a lot), and it should be enjoyable for anybody looking for a great read.

First Light the search for the Edge of the Universe

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First Light the search for the Edge of the Universe
Richard Preston
Manufacturer: Scribners
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000QYGUIQ

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First Light - The Search for the Edge of the Universe

Manufacturer: Scribners
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H7N2DS

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First Light: the Search for the Edge of the Universe
Richard Preston
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N75CA8

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