The Caucasus region of Eurasia, wedged in between the Black and Caspian Seas, encompasses the modern territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the troubled republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. A site of invasion, conquest, and resistance since the onset of historical record, it has earned a reputation for fearsome violence and isolated mountain redoubts closed to outsiders. Over extended efforts to control the Caucasus area, Russians have long mythologized stories of their countrymen taken captive by bands of mountain brigands.In The Captive and the Gift, the anthropologist Bruce Grant explores the long relationship between Russia and the Caucasus and the means by which sovereignty has been exercised in this contested area. Taking his lead from Aleksandr Pushkin's 1822 poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus," Grant explores the extraordinary resonances of the themes of violence, captivity, and empire in the Caucasus through mythology, poetry, short stories, ballet, opera, and film. Grant argues that while the recurring Russian captivity narrative reflected a wide range of political positions, it most often and compellingly suggested a vision of Caucasus peoples as thankless, lawless subjects of empire who were unwilling to acknowledge and accept the gifts of civilization and protection extended by Russian leaders.Drawing on years of field and archival research, Grant moves beyond myth and mass culture to suggest how real-life Caucasus practices of exchange, by contrast, aimed to control and diminish rather than unleash and increase violence. The result is a historical anthropology of sovereign forms that underscores how enduring popular narratives and close readings of ritual practices can shed light on the management of pluralism in long-fraught world areas.

An authoritative new edition of Marcel Proust’s The Captive and The Fugitive, published together as the fifth volume of his epic masterwork, In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust’s monumental seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Captive and The Fugitive, the fifth and sixth volumes of Proust’s masterpiece, contain some of literature’s most beautiful meditations on art, music, desire, jealousy, love and loss, grieving and forgetting. In this work, Proust continues his vast satirical fresco of high society in France just prior to the outbreak of World War I. These volumes and the following volume were published posthumously, as Proust died when he was approximately one-third of the way through correcting the proofs for The Captive.The Fugitive was also the last volume translated by Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, who did not live to finish his enormous task. This edition of the two, published together as the fifth volume, is edited and annotated by noted Proust scholar William C. Carter, who endeavors to bring the classic C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation closer to the spirit and style of the original.

The Definitive Guide to Captive Insurance Companies: What Every Small Business Owner Needs To Know About Creating and Implementing a Captive Americas top corporate estate, tax and asset protection attorney provides readers with true insight on multiple key sophisticated planning techniques for small business owners implementing captive insurance companies. The Definitive Guide to Captive Insurance Companies will provide readers with the ability to: - Reduce income taxation, - Increase cashflow, - Self-insure, - Protect personal and business assets, and - Enhance estate planning.

A young English woman is kidnapped by pirates and sold to the Sultan’s harem in this historical romance. Sold to Suleiman Bakhar after being taken prisoner on the high seas, Eleanor Nash is fearful of what will become of her. The all-powerful Suleiman will not allow her to leave Constantinople, while Eleanor is adamant that she will not willingly become his concubine. Impressed by his spirited captive, Suleiman seeks her out at every opportunity. To Eleanor’s surprise, he’s open to Western ways. The glimpses of the sensitive man behind the awesome public image tease and tantalize her—and his seduction is hard to resist. But can Eleanor ever hope to become his one true love?

The first full-length biography of Sarah Winchester, the subject of the movie Winchester starring Helen Mirren. Since her death in 1922, Sarah Winchester has been perceived as a mysterious, haunted figure. After inheriting a vast fortune upon the death of her husband in 1881, Sarah purchased a simple farmhouse in San José, California. She began building additions to the house and continued construction on it for the next twenty years. A hostile press cast Sarah as the conscience of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company—a widow shouldering responsibility for the many deaths caused by the rifle that brought her riches. She was accused of being a ghost-obsessed spiritualist, and to this day it is largely believed that the extensive construction she executed on her San José house was done to appease the ghouls around her. But was she really as guilt-ridden and superstitious as history remembers her? When Winchester’s home was purchased after her death, it was transformed into a tourist attraction. The bizarre, sprawling mansion and the enigmatic nature of Winchester’s life were exaggerated by the new owners to generate publicity for their business. But as the mansion has become more widely known, the person of Winchester has receded from reality, and she is only remembered for squandering her riches to ward off disturbed spirits. Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune demystifies the life of this unique American. In the first full-length biography of Winchester, author and historian Mary Jo Ignoffo unearths the truth about this notorious eccentric, revealing that she was not a maddened spiritualist driven by remorse but an intelligent, articulate woman who sought to protect her private life amidst the chaos of her public existence. The author takes readers through Winchester’s several homes, explores her private life, and, by excerpting from personal correspondence, gives the heiress a voice for the first time since her death. Ignoffo’s research reveals that Winchester’s true financial priority was not dissipating her fortune on the mansion in San José but investing it for a philanthropic legacy. For too long Sarah Winchester has existed as a ghost herself—a woman whose existence lies somewhere between the facts of her life and a set of sensationalized recollections of who she may have been. Captive of the Labyrinth finally puts to rest the myths about this remarkable woman, and, in the process, uncovers the legacy she intended to leave behind.

Set the Captive Free is meant to help those who want to have a better relationship with our Heavenly Father, through Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, through and with You, Holy Spirit. It is meant to help readers have successful lives in whatever God has called them into, whether it is business, the arts, elected office, education, etc. It is meant to help them discover and come into their fullness in the spiritual realm and into the fullness of their spiritual calling. This book is about health, healing, and wholeness with spiritual and practical steps. As in the Lords Prayer, on earth as it is in heaven. Miracles still happen; just believe.

The Captive of the Castle of Sennaar is a utopian novel in two parts. In this scholarly edition, G.E. Bentley, Jr, places George Cumberland's late eighteenth-century work among the earliest historical novels in English and identifies it as a rare example of the "Romantic novel." He shows that while each part of the work adopts a very different form of utopia, the two utopias complement and modify one another. He also shows the work to be unusual for the sexual and political freedom encouraged and the Christian fundamentalism advocated, as well as for its setting, in lands never visited by Europeans at the time of writing.