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Suetonius, who is well informed about reports of warnings reaching Caesar before the conspiracy, wonders whether Caesar actually wanted to die, given that exhaustion had led to physical decline — a question which, he says, has already been explored by others. Suetonius also records the view that Caesar felt safer after the senators had sworn to protect him, and therefore made the mistake — which made possible his murder — of dismissing his bodyguard. A third opinion, which Suetonius duly records, is actually very close to the theory of those who said ‘he wanted to die’: this view held that he preferred to confront those perils, once and for all, rather than live constantly in fear of them. It is probable that each one of these suggestions captures part of the truth and helps to understand Caesar's baffling decision to dismiss his armed escort.

In Chapters 2–3 of the Introduction, the cultural‐theory framework is used to explore two central problems of public management—the analysis of the characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail (this chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation (in the broadest sense) available in public management (the next chapter); in both cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra dimension or an alternative perspective to the analysis. Aims to show how a cultural‐theory perspective can assist the analysis of public management failure and collapse in two ways. First, such a perspective can help bring out some of the varying and contradictory attitudes towards scandal or catastrophe in public management, in the sense of who to blame or how to put matters right. Second, the four basic organizational ways of life that cultural theory identifies (as introduced in the first chapter) can each be expected to have its own characteristic pattern of in‐built failure. The different sections are Responses to Public‐Management Disasters; Four Types of Failure and Collapse; Private Gain From Public Office; Fiascos Resulting from Excessive Trust in Authority and Expertise; Unresolved Conflict and Internecine Strife; Apathy and Inertia: Lack of Planning, Initiative, and Foresight; and Accounting for Failure in Public Management.

The Conclusion notes that Japanese political leaders are currently considering whether to amend their Constitution, particularly article 9, renouncing war and armed forces. In this light, it is important to recognize that the postwar Constitution emerged from a collaboration – one might almost say a conspiracy – between American and Japanese leaders, personified by General MacArthur and Prime Minister Yoshida.

This chapter describes the emergence of a conspiracy-thinking culture in the postwar British imperial state. As intelligence agents from the Middle East slipped into administrative roles in the postwar Middle Eastern empire, they applied their intuitive mode and conception of Middle Eastern space to the official task of understanding the postwar series of periods of anticolonial unrest. The theories were notable for their vagueness and ineffability. The conspiracy mode was intensified by the competing claims to expertise of the old guard of amateur agents and an emerging group of professionals. The British state became captive to a paranoid mode of understanding political events in the Middle East. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ramifications of this mode, namely the excuse it provided for continued British presence in the region.

This chapter closely examines the dramatic moments leading up to Jeremiah's trial, hanging, and public incineration by Charles Town patriots. The chapter argues that the pilot became embroiled in a power struggle between the last royal governor of South Carolina, Lord William Campbell, and the wealthy patriot planter Henry Laurens. Enmeshed in a three‐way tug of war, the boatman would eventually pay the ultimate price. On Friday, August 18, 1775, at noon, Jeremiah was brought before the gallows. Before the noose could be tightened around his neck, he boldly proclaimed his innocence, telling his accusers that one day, “God's judgment would … overtake them for shedding his innocent blood.” While the rest of spectacle is difficult to piece together, “Jerry” reportedly met death “like a man and a Christian.” After he was asphyxiated, his remains were set on fire—as both a reminder and a warning. “Surely,” one contemporary concluded, “there is no murder so cruel and dangerous as that committed under the appearance of law and justice.”

This chapter discusses the issue of order in American society. Topics covered include the foundations of order, government action into the private sphere of individual liberty on the grounds of preventing disorder, response to terrorism, order as a constitutional principle, social control and conspiracy, and criminal justice and private security.

This chapter considers the Law of the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism. It considers the question of why this law was needed at all, because the other repressions already facilitated the punishment of Freemasons and Communists. The answer lies in the regime's fear of the nebulous power of the ‘Judaeo–Masonic–Communist’ world conspiracy. The regime not only believed that this conspiracy had helped cause the ‘rebellion’ but that it continued to threaten Spain even after victory in 1939. However, the chapter reveals that the LRFC dealt almost exclusively with Freemasons; LRFC investigators paid considerable attention to Madrid as it was the home of the second largest Masonic community in Spain after Andalucia before the civil war.

This chapter explores the history and ingredients of the two types of conspiracy liability: lawful means conspiracy and unlawful means conspiracy. Throughout the 20th century, the relationship of the two types of conspiracy liability to the other economic torts and to each other was unclear. The decision in Total Network both rejects the limited view that unlawful means conspiracy is but a form of joint tortfeasance, and challenges the orthodox view that the conspiracy torts are largely peripheral to the main economic torts. Two questions are debated within the chapter: whether conspiracy liability is still contained in two separate torts or is part of a spectrum of liability for harmful combinations, and whether the overall discussion in Total Network reveals that conspiracy liability will help to shape the economic torts in the 21st century (in particular in relation to direct liability).

The first of the book's four case studies examines the long‐standing cartoon ministry of Californian Jack Chick. Situating Chick's work in the history of the comics genre and in the visual culture of American religions, this chapter explores the specific narrative structures of Chick's political vision alongside the particular demons he portrays in his graphic art. The chapter also includes a detailed biography of Chick, a history of American comics, and a close reading of the Chick canon. The chapter concludes by documenting Chick's sense of social decline and religious fear, themes that acquire power as the Religion of Fear develops over time.

This chapter discusses three major polemical works by Morison. It provides the first sustained discussion of the Comfortable Consolation, which was written to celebrate the birth of Prince Edward, and sheds new light on the Invective against treason (1539) and Exhortation (1539). All three tracts were suffused with evangelical sentiments and providentialist rhetoric that had important implications for contemporary views of Henry's kingship. Morison consistently advocated evangelical initiatives ahead of official policy, offering hope to other evangelicals. 1538–9 was a time of crisis for Henry VIII; this chapter situates the Invective and Exhortation against the internal and external threats to Henry's rule and examines the evidentiary basis of the Invective. Also discussed is the place of Morison's 1539 translation of Frontinus' Stratagems in the polemical campaign.

This chapter reveals that, by the 1740s, interracial socializing among colonial New York City's subaltern population of enslaved blacks, propertyless white servants, and transients troubled ruling elite and its binary racial division of society. It explains that with the additional threat of an impending Spanish invasion, the aggravation of an unsolved crime wave, and the outbreak of a mysterious rash of fire during the winter of 1741-42, fear of the city's dangerous classes crystallized in the discovery of the “plot of 1741-42,” an alleged conspiracy among enslaved blacks and several white outsiders accused of plotting together in secret to overthrow English rule, murder the city's white male settler population, enslave white females in harems, and establish a “Negro regime” under the protection of Catholic Spain.

In this introduction we provide an overview of some foundational questions in phonological theory and address how they can be answered by the informed study of phonological phenomena. The introduction outlines the relevance of rich data structures, serial vs parallel ordering, iterativity, teleology, and locally vs globally determined computation for cognitive science more generally, and situates the individual contributions of the volume within these contexts.

This introductory chapter discusses the ‘horrid Popish Plot’, which was an alleged Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II. This was done to effect an armed foreign invasion and a domestic uprising, as well as to reintroduce the Catholic faith into England. The chapter also includes a brief overview of the following chapters.

All cities change, and New York is no exception. While scholars continue to debate the impact of gentrification on places like Harlem, few are discussing its suburbanization or the process by which the city is losing its heterogeneity and becoming one big shopping mall. African Muslims and other community members appear to be under siege, as thousands of poor and working-class residents are forced to leave Harlem for more affordable neighborhoods. With the area’s increased commercialization, where sex sells the most mundane products, African Muslims are engaged in a jihad, or struggle, to maintain their Islamic values and ethics. This chapter explores how the average street merchant and his patrons, debating a series of conspiracy theories, struggle against professed racism and how African Muslims grapple with the meaning of freedom and democracy in America.

Many rumors concerning the September 11 terrorist attacks claimed that the event was in fact caused by a plot secretly planned by a secret group of evil elites. This chapter proposes a methodology of understanding conspiracy theories as an integrated body of beliefs that make sense of a confusing event by connecting it with deeply ingrained cultural values. Conspiracy has the benefit of seeing order in a disorderly event, and giving people a plausible villain to blame. Initially, many Americans assumed that Arab Americans or Muslims were generally aware of the plot and complicit in it; later, more hardy beliefs held that Israelis or Zionists were actually responsible, or that the Bush administration had cynically orchestrated the attacks to shore up its own credibility at home. Increasingly, these conspiracy beliefs express profound distrust of governments and elite groups of intellectuals.