From the Irish Cailleach and other shape-shifters of folk legends to modern movie “transformers”; from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the moment when Gregor Samsa woke up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect in Kafka’s novella; from conversion narratives to slave narratives, turning points and transformations have always been central to literary works and to cultural developments. In fact, with Freytag’s pyramid in mind, one could claim that all literary works focus on the trope of a transformation born of a turning point, because such moments comprise the very essence and vitality of human life and culture. But why are turning points necessarily transformational and in what way? And what brings about those turning points in language, literature, culture and human lives? These are essentially the questions the essays in this volume seek to answer. The contributors examine turning points and transformations – personal, literary and cultural – brought about through the randomness of the universe as well as through human interference, and discuss ways in which humans in general and writers in particular, through their art, experience and cope with the ineluctable results.

This book explores the transformation of the political organization of the world as manifest in different spheres of world politics, in particular, in world politics, regional studies, interaction of MNCs and government agencies, and state responses to biogenic challenges. To achieve this goal, M. Lebedeva proposes the concept of a political organization of the world, which in modern conditions is in the process of transformation. The transformation of the political organization of the world is accompanied by megatrends (globalization, integration, democratization) and the opposite trends (de-globalization disintegration, dedemocratization). Interdisciplinary in nature, this book brings together scholars from Russia, the United States, and Canada, and provides a compelling perspective on the geopolitics of our time.

The New York Times–bestselling author of The Wisdom Codes bridges science with wisdom traditions around the globe to reveal how we can thrive in our rapidly changing world. We solve our problems based upon the way we think of ourselves and the world. From peak energy and peak debt to failing economies and the realities of climate change, everyday life is showing us where we’ve outgrown the thinking of the past. It’s also showing us where big changes in the world mean big changes in our lives. Through dramatic shifts in our jobs, our relationship to money, our health, and even our homes, it’s clear that our lives are changing in ways we’ve never seen, to a degree that we’re not prepared for, and at speeds that we’ve never experienced. It’s also clear that the thinking of the past is no longer enough to meet our needs today. A new, healthy, and sustainable world is emerging, and our ability to accept what it offers begins with our willingness to: • Honestly acknowledge the facts of what we’re up against. • Embrace the new discoveries that reveal the role of cooperation in nature and human communities. • Create resilience in our lives, families, and communities based upon five proven and sustainable principles. Through easy-to-understand science and the wisdom traditions of the past, The Turning Point identifies the extremes in the world that are reshaping our lives, the keys to thrive in the midst of the transformation, and the strategies to get us there.

Turning Points: Challenges for Western Democracies in the 21st Century centers around the strikingly under-researched concept of turning points and its application in political science, including various theories, fields, and sub-disciplines. The chapters provide theoretical discussion and conceptual clarity by distinguishing a set of turning points at different analytical levels. Based on a wide range of case studies, the authors illustrate where, when and how different types of turning points occur (or not) against the backdrop of current challenges in and for Western democracies. The conceptual and empirical variety of the volume allows scholars and practitioners in policymaking to develop and apply their own frameworks when dealing with turning point dynamics.

Confused about the various concepts on Transformation and Graphs taught in school? This book on Transformation and Graphs seeks to offer a condensed version of what you need to know for your journey in IB Mathematics (HL), alongside with detailed worked examples and extra practice questions. Tips on certain question types are provided to aid in smoothing the working process when dealing with them.

My book "Asymptotic Expansions for Ordinary Differential Equations" published in 1965 is out of print. In the almost 20 years since then, the subject has grown so much in breadth and in depth that an account of the present state of knowledge of all the topics discussed there could not be fitted into one volume without resorting to an excessively terse style of writing. Instead of undertaking such a task, I have concentrated, in this exposi tion, on the aspects of the asymptotic theory with which I have been particularly concerned during those 20 years, which is the nature and structure of turning points. As in Chapter VIII of my previous book, only linear analytic differential equations are considered, but the inclusion of important new ideas and results, as well as the development of the neces sary background material have made this an exposition of book length. The formal theory of linear analytic differential equations without a parameter near singularities with respect to the independent variable has, in recent years, been greatly deepened by bringing to it methods of modern algebra and topology. It is very probable that many of these ideas could also be applied to the problems concerning singularities with respect to a parameter, and I hope that this will be done in the near future. It is less likely, however, that the analytic, as opposed to the formal, aspects of turning point theory will greatly benefit from such an algebraization.

Managing Indonesia''s Transformation: An Oral History is an account of Ginandjar Kartasasmita''s career in the Indonesian government, both under President Suharto and in the post-Suharto era. Based on all the ministerial positions in which Kartasasmita has served the government, the book provides readers candid insights into the domestic and international political and economic contexts in which decisions were made, and how policies were formulated and implemented in Indonesia.The book contains many hours of interviews in which the author responds OCo as frankly as he can OCo to all sorts of questions from a group of scholars and specialists working on Indonesian politics and political economy, with the understanding that the book is for those who want to understand Indonesian politics, both past and present.

How do people narrate events in their life story and in the history of their family or families when making a self-presentation? How are narratives and experiences in the present related to experiences and narratives in the past? This book answers these questions with a theoretical and empirical study of the interconnections between remembering, experiencing, and presenting what was experienced, at different points of the life course and of the associated collective histories. It also discusses rules for conducting interviews that support processes of remembering, and for carrying out an analysis that does justice to this dialectic. The author exploits ideas from phenomenology and Gestalt theory in this book, which has become a classic. Since its first publication in 1995, she has increasingly taken inspiration from the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias. Accordingly, this English edition contains a new introduction and a new chapter on this later expansion of her approach to sociological biographical research.

The approach of layer-damping coordinate transformations to treat singularly perturbed equations is a relatively new, and fast growing area in the field of applied mathematics. This monograph aims to present a clear, concise, and easily understandable description of the qualitative properties of solutions to singularly perturbed problems as well as of the essential elements, methods and codes of the technology adjusted to numerical solutions of equations with singularities by applying layer-damping coordinate transformations and corresponding layer-resolving grids. The first part of the book deals with an analytical study of estimates of the solutions and their derivatives in layers of singularities as well as suitable techniques for obtaining results. In the second part, a technique for building the coordinate transformations eliminating boundary and interior layers, is presented. Numerical algorithms based on the technique which is developed for generating layer-damping coordinate transformations and their corresponding layer-resolving meshes are presented in the final part of this volume. This book will be of value and interest to researchers in computational and applied mathematics.

Autobiographies of Transformation is a completely unique history of sociology in Central and Eastern Europe in the post-Communist era. Through the autobiographies of ten key sociological witnesses from the region, the sociological imagination is turned upon itself, resulting in a compelling and revealing account of the struggles, triumphs, and continuing challenges faced. The sociologists examined fall into three cohorts: early, mid and late career. As participants, each of the sociologists included has witnessed the intersection of history and biography in Central and Eastern Europe. As sociologists, they have tried, and continue to try, to connect the two so that they and their fellow citizens may better understand their circumstances and the futures that may follow. This revealing book, ideal for students and researchers of sociology, and Central and Eastern Europe studies, provides powerful and compelling autobiographical accounts, relating them to the current interest in this area's transformation.