Popular science at its most exciting: the breaking new world of chronobiology - understanding the rhythm of life in humans and all plants and animals. The entire natural world is full of rhythms. The early bird catches the worm -and migrates to an internal calendar. Dormice hibernate away the winter. Plants open and close their flowers at the same hour each day. Bees search out nectar-rich flowers day after day. There are cicadas that can breed for only two weeks every 17 years. And in humans: why are people who work anti-social shifts more illness prone and die younger? What is jet-lag and can anything help? Why do teenagers refuse to get up in the morning, and are the rest of us really 'larks' or 'owls'? Why are most people born (and die) between 3am-5am? And should patients be given medicines (and operations) at set times of day, because the body reacts so differently in the morning, evening and at night? The answers lie in our biological clocks the mechanisms which give order to all living things. They impose a structure that enables us to change our behaviour in relation to the time of day, month or year. They are reset at sunrise and sunset each day to link astronomical time with an organism's internal time.

Drawing on thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva, Lefebvre, Meschonnic, and Virilio, this book explores the concept of rhythms in relation to questions of temporality and the everyday, technology and the city, poetry and autobiography, space and the body in performance.

The week has a remarkable rhythm that does not fit exactly with either the month or the year, yet most of humanity keeps faith with it. Why did the seven-day week triumph over other ways of subdividing the month in ancient times? The answer, as Wolfgang Held shows, is rooted in the human being. The human soul resonates from day to day in seven differing moods. Deepening our understanding of the characteristic weekly rhythm can give us strength and inspiration in the way we live our lives. Wolfgang Held goes on to discuss further rhythms at work in our lives — from the briefest moments to the seasons of the year — and explains ways in which our bodies influence our sense of time. This practical and inspirational book offers us fascinating insights into how we can develop our potential through a conscious relationship with time.

"The Life/Death Rhythms of Ancient Empires" outlines the flow of history from 3000BC to 1400AD to identify the factors that make up dominant, just, prosperous civilisations that can be described as golden cultures. These factors were found to have common features and the cultures themselves could be described in cyclical terms. This meant that the rise and fall of future dominant cultures could be roughly forecast to some degree in terms of hundreds of years. The evolution of capitalism was made possible, during and after actual warfare, by ancient priests and bankers, assisted by the invention of coinage. Capitalism was practised in the ancient world, supported at times by warfare and religion. It was vanquished for centuries by powerful weapons called irresponsible debt, and debasement of currency. The global capitalism of the twenty-first century is dependent on debt and a debased US dollar. A review of ancient history provides the basis for a glimpse into the future. This century's global temperature increase, which so excites environmentalists, can be shown to be part of a thousand year climate cycle. There well might be a human element to global warming but this just exacerbates the centuries' long cyclical pattern. Research has shown that periods of hot-dry and cold-dry climate have effects on human behaviour. Extrapolation of cycles enables forecasts of human behaviour to be made well into the new millennium. Dominant prosperous societies have occurred at roughly 200 year intervals which can suggest time-lines for societies in the present and the future A relatively irreverent history of ancient cultures, war, religion, money and debt produces cyclical analysis enabling a forecast that the USA might lose world dominance in 2040. The next volume "Life/Death Rhythms from the Capitalist Renaissance" will include economic data that will allow refined cyclical forecasts.

This book explores rhythmanalysis as a philosophy and as a research method for the study of cultural historical experiences. It formulates 'rhythm' as a critical concept which is defined in dialogic relationships to intellectual traditions, yet introducing unique philosophical positions that serve to re-think ways of conceiving and addressing cultural political issues. Engaging with the notion of 'conjunctural shift', which for Stuart Hall captures the ruptured social landscape of Britain in the 1970s, the book then puts the method of rhythmanalysis to work by testifying the changing cultural experiences in rhythmic terms. This particular rhythmanalytical project instantiates while opening up ways of using rhythmanalysis for exploring cultural historical experiences. .

We all shop. The essays in this wide-ranging anthology demonstrates how a material culture perspective—a focus on the mutual creation of people and their things—yields significant insights into multiple aspects of consumption in American culture.

Sacred Rhythms: The Monastic Way Every Day is a compilation of reflections originally published in our Notes from a Monastery series. Gathered here under the themes of prayer, work, faithfulness, and conversion, these meditations showcase the knowledge of religious and lay authors familiar with the Benedictine way of life.

Explores the 'still life spirit' in modern painting, prose, dance, sculpture and poetryChallenges the conventional positioning of still life a 'minor' genre in art historyProposes a radical alternative to narratives of modernism that privilege speed and motion by revealing forms of stillness and still life at the heart of modern literature and visual cultureProvides the first study of still life to consider the genre across modern literature, visual cultures and danceUncovers connections and cultural exchange between networks of European and American artists including the Bloomsbury Group and Wallace StevensThe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been characterised as the 'age of speed' but they also witnessed a reanimation of still life across different art forms. This book takes an original approach to still life in modern literature and the visual arts by examining the potential for movement and transformation in the idea of stillness and the ordinary. It ranges widely in its material, taking Czanne and literary responses to his still life painting as its point of departure. It investigates constellations of writers, visual artists and dancers including D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, David Jones, Winifred Nicholson, Wallace Stevens, and lesser-known figures including Charles Mauron and Margaret Morris. Claudia Tobin reveals that at the heart of modern art were forms of stillness that were intimately bound up with movement: the still life emerges charged with animation, vibration and rhythm; an unstable medium, unexpectedly vital and well suited to the expression of modern concerns.

"The primary task of a Waldorf teacher is to understand the human being in body, soul, and spirit. From this understanding will grow the approach, the curriculum, and the methods of an education capable of addressing the whole child." --Roberto Trostli Waldorf education, an established and growing independent school movement, continues to be shaped and inspired by Rudolf Steiner's numerous lectures on education. In Rhythms of Learning, key lectures on children and education have been thoughtfully chosen from the vast amount of material by Steiner and presented in a context that makes them approachable and accessible. In his many discussions and lectures, Steiner shared his vision of an education that considers the spirit, soul, and physiology in children as they grow. Roberto Trostli, an experienced Waldorf teacher, has selected the works that best illustrate the fundamentals of this unique approach. In each chapter, Trostli explains Steiner's concepts and describes how they work in the contemporary Waldorf classroom. We learn how the teacher-child relationship and the Waldorf school curriculum changes as the students progress from kindergarten through high-school. This book will serve as an excellent resource for parents who want to understand how their child is learning. Parents will be better prepared to discuss their child's education with teachers, and teachers will find it a valuable reference source and communication tool.