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      • Strange Days Books, Social Cooperative Enterprise

        Strange Days Books is a social cooperative publishing firm based in Crete, Greece. Since 2012 we have published almost 100 books. Every year we organize Sand Festival, an online Writers’ Workshop and - in cooperation with www.eyelands.gr literary magazine - the one and only international short story competition based in Greece, plus our International Book Awards. In 2019 SDB was the only publishing house in Greece to receive approval by the European Union’s Creative Europe translation funding program for its project "Strange Days in Europe”. Strange Days Books is an entirely independent publisher, primarily interested in showcasing the wealth of new writing voices in Greece. We work closely with our authors to create books that will appeal to booklovers, books about the present, books that strive to push the art of literature forward, books written with talent and passion, books that challenge the way we see the world, books bursting with new ideas and intriguing perspectives.

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2018

        Syria and the chemical weapons taboo

        Exploiting the forbidden

        by Michelle Bentley

        This book analyses the Syria crisis and the role of chemical weapons in relation to US foreign policy. The Syrian government's use of such weapons and their subsequent elimination has dominated the US response to the conflict, where these are viewed as particularly horrific arms - a repulsion known as the chemical taboo. On the surface, this would seem to be an appropriate reaction: these are nasty weapons and eradicating them would ostensibly comprise a 'good' move. But this book reveals two new aspects of the taboo that challenge this prevailing view. First, actors use the taboo strategically to advance their own self-interested policy objectives. Second, that applying the taboo to Syria has actually exacerbated the crisis. As such, this book not only provides a timely analysis of Syria, but also a major and original rethink of the chemical taboo, as well as international norms more widely.

      • Trusted Partner
        2024

        Reading Clinical Studies Critically

        Clinical trials, reviews, guidelines

        by Dr. Iris Hinneburg

        Make or break? Advertisements repeatedly praise „plant-based“ products or promise new mobility through ointments and dietary supplements. The tools of evidence-based pharmacy help to answer the question „Does this really help?“ This practical guide offers tips and explanations on how to be confident of finding the relevant scientific literature, critically evaluate clinical studies, and interpret therapeutic results. The book provides guidance on how to classify the quality of reviews and meta-analyses and assess the reliability of guidelines in everyday healthcare practice. Practical examples help to avoid pitfalls in evaluation and to understand the statistical details. An extensive appendix with technical terms, checklists, important institutions of evidence-based medicine and further sources completes the book.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2008

        National Missile Defence and the politics of US identity

        A poststructural critique

        by Natalie Bormann

        Why adopt a poststructural lens for the reading of the military strategy of national missile defence (NMD)? No doubt, when contemplating an attack on US territory by intercontinental ballistic missiles, consulting Michel Foucault and critical international relations theory scholars may not seem the obvious route to take. The answer to this lies in another question: why has there been so much interest and continuous investment in NMD deployment when there is such ambiguity surrounding the status of threat to which it responds, controversy over its technological feasibility and concern about its cost? Posed in this manner, the question cannot be answered on its own terms - the terms given in official accounts of NMD that justify the system's significance on the basis of strategic feasibility studies and conventional threat predictions guided by worst-case scenarios. Instead, this book argues that the preferences leading to NMD deployment must be understood as satisfying requirements beyond strategic approaches and issues. In turning towards the interpretative modes of inquiry provided by critical social theory and poststructuralism, this book contests the conventional wisdom about NMD and suggests reading the strategy in terms of US identity. Presented as an analysis of discourses on threats to national security, around which the need for NMD deployment is predominantly framed, this book is an effort to let the two fields of critical international relations theory and US foreign policy speak directly to each other. It seeks to do so by showing how the concept of identity can be harnessed to an analysis of a contemporary military-strategic practice. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        October 2025

        Legends of Askja 2. A Melody of Salt and Tears

        by Amy Erin Thyndal, Moon Notes

        Mit wunderschönem Farbschnitt in der Erstauflage – Lieferung nach Verfügbarkeit! Liebe ist die stärkste Waffe Das Inselkönigreich Askja ist nun durch eine magische Barriere geschützt, doch der Frieden hat einen hohen Preis. Nur die Sirenen können den Schutzzauber durchqueren, weshalb Adelaide es als ihre Aufgabe ansieht, das verfeindete Kaiserreich Myredal zu überwachen. Nach dem Tod ihrer Königin stehen nicht alle Sirenen hinter dem Bündnis mit den Askjern: Der Sirenenrat fordert blutige Rache. Im verzweifelten Versuch, den drohenden Krieg abzuwenden, nimmt Adelaide den Admiral Marcus gefangen, um mehr über die Pläne Myredals zu erfahren. Dabei erfährt sie nicht nur, dass diese einen Weg gefunden haben, die Barriere zu durchqueren, sondern auch, dass selbst ein magiehassender Seemann wie er dem Zauber einer Sirene erliegen kann - und umgekehrt… Legends of Askja 2. A Melody of Salt and Tears: Eine spicy Romantasy in einer faszinierenden Fantasywelt Magie, Intrigen und verbotene Gefühle: Packende New-Adult-Romance über eine verführerische Sirene im Kampf um ihr Inselkönigreich. Zwischen Loyalität und Liebe: Bei der Schlacht gegen das Kaiserreich Myredal nimmt die Sirene Adelaide den Admiral Marcus gefangen und verliebt sich in ihn. Fesselnd und romantisch: Eine mitreißende Fantasy Romance mit den beliebten Tropes „forbidden love" und „morally grey characters“. Toll ausgestattet: Softcover mit trendig gestalteten Klappen und einem zauberhaften Lesezeichen zum Abtrennen. Band 2 der Erfolgsreihe „Legends of Askja“: Der spicy Roman begeistert alle New-Adult-Leser*innen, die gerne ihr Herz an den Feind verlieren.

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2018

        Das kleine Sabotage-Handbuch von 1944

        Die besten Tricks des amerikanischen Geheimdienstes im Kampf gegen Hitler

        by US Office of Strategic Services

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        June 2024

        The labour movement in Lebanon

        Power on hold

        by Lea Bou Khater

        The labour movement in Lebanon: Power on hold narrates the history of the Lebanese labour movement from the early twentieth century to today. Bou Khater demonstrates that trade unionism in the country has largely been a failure, for reasons including state interference, tactical co-optation, and the strategic use of sectarianism by an oligarchic elite, together with the structural weakness of a service-based laissez-faire economy. Drawing on a vast body of Arabic-language primary sources and difficult-to-access archives, the book's conclusions are significant not only for trade unionism, but also for new forms of workers' organisations and social movements in Lebanon and beyond. The Lebanese case study presented here holds significant implications for the wider Arab world and for comparative studies of labour. This authoritative history of the labour movement in Lebanon is vital reading for scholars of trade unionism, Lebanese politics, and political economy.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2010

        Representing Africa

        Landscape, exploration and empire in Southern Africa, 1780–1870

        by John McAleer, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie

        Southern Africa played a varied but vital role in Britain's maritime and imperial stories: it was one of the most intricate pieces in the British imperial strategic jigsaw, and representations of southern African landscape and maritime spaces reflect its multifaceted position. Representing Africa examines the ways in which British travellers, explorers and artists viewed southern Africa in a period of evolving and expanding British interest in the region. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, contemporary travelogues and visual images, many of which have not previously been published in this context, this book posits landscape as a useful prism through which to view changing British attitudes towards Africa. Richly illustrated, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British, African, imperial and exploration history, art history, and landscape and environment studies. ;

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2022

        Class, work and whiteness

        Race and settler colonialism in Southern Rhodesia, 1919–79

        by Nicola Ginsburgh

        This book offers the first comprehensive history of white workers from the end of the First World War to Zimbabwean independence in 1980. It reveals how white worker identity was constituted, examines the white labouring class as an ethnically and nationally heterogeneous formation comprised of both men and women, and emphasises the active participation of white workers in the ongoing and contested production of race. White wage labourers' experiences, both as exploited workers and as part of the privileged white minority, offer insight into how race and class co-produced one another and how boundaries fundamental to settler colonialism were regulated and policed. Based on original research conducted in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK, this book offers a unique theoretical synthesis of work on gender, whiteness studies, labour histories, settler colonialism, Marxism, emotions and the New African Economic History.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2026

        United States and Chinese foreign assistance and diplomacy

        Aid for dominance

        by Salvador Santino Regilme, Obert Hodzi

        Aid for Dominance addresses the analytic weaknesses of mainstream analysis of foreign aid, which often focuses on its material dimensions. The book underscores the constitutive relationship between foreign aid as a material resource and the diplomatic discourses and practices that constitute complex bilateral relations between donor and recipient states. Written by two leading scholars of contemporary United States and Chinese foreign policies in the Global South, Aid for Dominance offers a pioneering, theoretically conscious, and empirically rich account of the two great powers' grand strategies in the global development sector. By deploying a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis, this book draws from a wide range of evidentiary materials from primary sources, including data from fieldwork interviews, government documents, local and international newspapers, speeches by high-ranking government officials and diplomats, and secondary data from scholarly publications and policy papers.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy

        by Nikki Ikani

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2013

        The Nine Years' War and the British army 1688–97

        The operations in the low countries

        by John Childs

        Between 1689 and 1697 the British army fought as a member of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV. Despite the military and political significance of the European conflict, this book is the first historical investigation for over a century dealing with the operations of the principal campaigns in the Low Countries. John Childs begins his comprehensive study by exploring the diplomatic origins of the Nine Years' War. Leading on from this political background, the author then focuses on the detailed organisation of the British, Dutch and other allied armies and the conduct of the operations. The specific campaigns are also examined and in particular the author looks at the strategic and tactical role played by the British. This campaign and operational study of the British army will be of interest to both specialist and general military historians, as well as to political historians. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2025

        Containing decolonisation

        British imperialism and the politics of race in late colonial Burma

        by Matthew Bowser

        This book examines British imperialism in late colonial Burma to study how imperialists attempted to protect their strategic and economic interests after decolonisation: they did so by supporting ethnonationalism. This process resembles the Cold War tactic of "containment," and the book makes a crucial contribution to the study of modern imperialism by demonstrating the continuity between "containment's" late- and "neo"-colonial manifestations. For Burma/Myanmar, it also explores the origin of the present-day military junta's racial regime: it emphasizes the protection of the ethnoreligious majority from ethnic minority insurgency. The Rohingya people are currently suffering a genocide because of this racial regime. As the country endures civil war against the junta, this book highlights how ethnonationalists in the late colonial period first promoted this racial regime to seize power and prevent revolution, a process supported by British imperialists for their own ends.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2024

        Murky waters

        British spas in eighteenth-century medicine and literature

        by Sophie Vasset

        Murky waters challenges the refined image of spa towns in eighteenth-century Britain by unveiling darker and more ambivalent contemporary representations. It reasserts the centrality of health in British spas by looking at disease, the representation of treatment and the social networks of care woven into spa towns. The book explores the great variety of medical and literary discourses on the numerous British spas in the long eighteenth century and offers a rare look at spas beyond Bath. Following the thread of 'murkiness', it explores the underwater culture of spas, from the gender fluidity of users to the local and national political dimensions, as well as the financial risks taken by gamblers and investors. It thus brings a fresh look at mineral waters and a pinch of salt to health-related discourses.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2010

        Transnational Advocacy on the Ground

        Against corruption in Russia?

        by Diana Schmidt-Pfister

        What can be done against corruption? If we trust most assessments, the global anti-corruption movement has so far not managed to markedly reduce the level of corruption, especially in the more problematic countries. This book examines the actual workings of transnational anti-corruption advocacy on the ground. In the 21st century, transnational advocacy has become ever more complex. Using the case study of contemporary Russia the book reassesses what this means for advocacy practices. It thoroughly maps the entanglement between international, national and local levels and reveals a range of obstacles posed to constructively involving civil society in practice, despite unanimous rhetorical commitment on the part of international actors and governments. The book further shows that the effectiveness of transnational advocacy is determined by both strategic action and situational contingencies. The book speaks to readers in, at least, three main fields of study: transnational advocacy, the anti-corruption movement, and Eastern Europe, particularly Russia. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2023

        Who governs Britain?

        Trade unions, the Conservative Party and the failure of the Industrial Relations Act 1971

        by Sam Warner

        Providing fresh insights from the archival record, Who governs Britain? revisits the 1970-74 Conservative government to explain why the Party tried - and failed - to reform the system of industrial relations. Designed to tackle Britain's strike problem and perceived disorder in collective bargaining, the Industrial Relations Act 1971 established a formal legal framework to counteract trade union power. As the state attempted to disengage from and 'depoliticise' collective bargaining practices, trade union leaders and employers were instructed to discipline industry. In just three-and-a-half years, the Act contributed to a crisis of the British state as industrial unrest engulfed industry and risked undermining the rule of law. Warner explores the power dynamics, strategic errors and industrial battles that destroyed this attempt to tame trade unions and ultimately brought down a government, and that shape Conservative attitudes towards trade unions to this day.

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