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This chapter examines how the Middle West recovered from the ill effects of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was something Americans hoped they would never experience again. In the rural Midwest, foreclosures and sheriff's auctions were common. The worst drought years devastated the land. Dust storms blew with such intensity that crops failed and machinery broke down. World War II sparked the economy, revived agriculture, and coincided with better weather. However, the war took millions of men and women away from their families, necessitated mandatory rationing, and drove up prices. When it was over, rural communities faced continuing challenges. The chapter considers the case of Smith Center, Kansas, to illustrate the challenges rural communities faced as they overcame the setbacks of the Great Depression and prepared for the era ahead. Recovery from the Great Depression varied across middle America, but many of the dynamics evident in Smith County occurred elsewhere.

Chopin's Second Ballade, Op. 38, appeared in a culture in which operatic styles and strategies were well understood, and at a time when Poland's desperate political situation was on minds of many and Chopin was considered the artistic hope of the entire Polish nation. Operatic and musical antecedents from French opera enable this ballade to be read as a narrative of Poland's recent struggle and martyrdom, with the tragically unresolved national trauma being mirrored in the unique form and off‐tonic close. Such a reading is consistent not only with what contemporary accounts of the piece survive, but also with the way narrative and referential music of the time was conceived and heard. It is in the anachronistic hearings we insist upon today that the piece becomes most mysterious and opaque; when we approach it using the vocabulary of its own time, the narrative is much easier to comprehend.

This chapter examines condensation and evaporation on Mars, with particular emphasis on how exchanges of water vapor and carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and polar ice influence the planet's climate. Both Earth and Mars have seasonal cycles. At the poles of each planet, frost accumulates during the fall and winter and evaporates during the spring and summer; and right at the poles, the frost lasts throughout the year. In these respects the seasons on Mars are like the seasons on Earth, but there are differences. For example, on Mars, there are two kinds of frost—water and carbon dioxide, the latter of which is also the major constituent of the atmosphere. The chapter first provides an overview of seasonal cycles of water and carbon dioxide on Mars before discussing the effect of winds on weather. It also considers dust storms and weather fluctuations on Mars.

This chapter compares the climate of Saturn with that of Jupiter. Both Jupiter and Saturn have no oceans and no solid surfaces, but they have lightning storms and rain clouds that dwarf the largest thunderstorms on Earth. Saturn's weather is normally very calm, but every 20–30 years a giant storm erupts. These storms last for a few months and then disappear. In contrast, Jupiter's giant storms endure without change for decades or centuries. Saturn's winds are stronger than Jupiter's. The chapter first reviews the variables that might control the planets' climates before discussing how the climates actually differ. It examines Saturn's rotation, giant storms, effective radiating temperature, electrostatic discharges and lightning, enrichment relative to solar composition, helium raindrops, moist convection and conditional instability, and ortho-para instability.

The deployment of large numbers of British troops to both Korea in 1950 and to Kuwait in 1990 followed similar domestic and international legal paths, though the political contexts were quite different, one occurring at the outset of the Cold War and the other at its end. Britain was instrumental in shaping the idea of coalitions acting under the authority of the UN as an alternative to the more centralized application of military force envisaged under the UN Charter. This chapter traces the Parliamentary and international political debates that led to the development of this as a form of lawful military action. In particular, it concentrates on why it was necessary to obtain UN authority for these actions when they could readily be justified as exercise of the right of collective defence.

Thoreau loved trees in all seasons but had a special fondness for trees transformed by snow. Winter made the familiar trees he saw all year look new. After a winter storm, Thoreau went to see them as excited as a child on Christmas morning. He saw surreal and poetic forms in trees covered in snow. They were statues draped in white in a gigantic sculptor’s studio. Trees glistening with ice or clad in a coat of white quickened his pulse and stirred his pen. They stirred some of his best writing about trees.

The fingernail sign may need description and further explanation. This is the case in Storm's story, which presents the visual recognition taking place before Alfred had read anything about the sign, and in Boucicault's dialogue, where Zoe's long explanation stops dramatic action. Atherton lets the narrator mediate with an explanatory description, even though the argument is made in the text that the sign is instinctually visible. The description of the sign varies from dark shade to a bluish tinge and from an opal-tinted onyx to a half-moon. Upon other instances, the reader's familiarity with the motif seems to be taken for granted, hence requiring no description beyond the quickest reference to “telltale nails.” In some borderline cases, the mark may be assumed to be familiar to readers even when it is not explicitly written in the text.

This chapter analyzes the sea storm caused by the storm winds Boreas and Aeolus. The storm, which threatens to sink Argo, is read as an act of political revolution aimed at thwarting Jupiter's imperial agenda. It is thus an episode charged with allegorical significance for the Vespasianic context in which Valerius composed his poem. It is shown that Valerius employs gigantomachic motifs in order simultaneously to vilify the enemies of the Jovian regime and to absolve the Argonauts of any potentially Giant-like associations, a strategy Valerius carries out by distancing his Argonauts from the image of Lucan's gigantomachic Caesar. Boreas and Aeolus emerge as anti-Jovian dissidents who must be quelled so that order can be maintained, while the Argonauts emerge as pious agents of Jupiter's reunification program. The myth of Gigantomachy distinguishes between those who desire to establish a new order and those who oppose such progress.

On February 19, 1704, Daniel Defoe brought out his first issue of a newspaper entitled A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France: Purg’d from the Errors and Partiality of News-Writers, and Petty Statesmen of All Sides. Though most of Defoe’s productions had been very serious indeed, his contemporaries appreciated the wit of his lampoons, and he thought he would attract readers by creating a mythical society to deal with errors of other newspapers and with various subjects, some light and some fairly serious. By getting his readers to understand the reasons for the greatness of France, Defoe would enable them to make the kinds of distinction about foreign policy that, in turn, would enable the government to conduct the war in a proper fashion. In November 1703, the month Defoe was released from prison, he apparently made plans for writing an account of a week-long storm that struck England on November 24. While Defoe was writing on such subjects, he did not abandon his attacks against the enemies of the Dissenters.

This chapter identifies three distinct moral “storms” that provide converge in the phenomenon of global climate change. These three “storms” arise in the global, intergenerational, and theoretical dimensions. A global storm is characterized by the dispersion of causes and effects, the spatial fragmentation of agency, and institutional inadequacy. The intergenerational storm is characterized by delayed effects and a temporally fragmented agency, and creates an intergenerational collective-action problem. The theoretical storm constitutes theoretical ineptitude in addressing issues of climate change. The chapter also argues that interaction and convergence of these three storms encourage a new and distinct problem for ethical action on climate change: the problem of moral corruption.

This chapter documents the spectacular increase of beer consumption in Russia. Over the course of only a few years, beer has become the dominant drink in Russia, with consumption levels now close to European averages. This major shift is explained as the result of improvements in quality (due to FDI), advertising regulations and price changes, all of which combined into a ‘perfect storm’ that made beer a more attractive drink to Russian consumers. It is argued that consumers' choice of beverage is heavily influenced by their peers' behaviour. Once a critical mass of consumers adopted beer, these network effects led to more and more people drinking beer in subsequent years.

This chapter examines how a Passion narrative underlies the temptation narrative of Milton's Paradise Regain'd. The main purpose of the intricate dialectical debates conducted across the brief epic between Satan and the Son is to interrogate the nature of divine kingship and Messianic heroism and to confirm that the qualities of altruistic endurance and patience communicate the substance of kingly values. Learned prolepses of the atonement irradiate the poetic narrative and Miltonic irony continues to be very much in play. Even before the temptations have properly begun, Milton's Jesus is fully aware of his redeeming office and, in myriad ways, the narrative delineates the disparity between Satan's limited, worldly idea of kingship and the Messianic reality of Jesus as the suffering servant-king.

Gabriela Saavedra was working in a sweatshop. The dangers of her job increased with the sleep deprivation. There was no leave time at the factory, and there were barely breaks for lunch. She couldn't afford to lose any of the limited wages she earned, so she worked when she was sick. She also worked when Ana Daniel, her 19-month-old toddler, was sick. Despite her mother's adoration, Ana Daniel didn't have a chance at a healthy childhood if her mother remained in the sweatshop where she worked. The anti-sweatshop movement has brought much-needed attention to the draconian conditions under which many adults must labor around the world. During the past 50 years, three striking forces have led to major transformations of family life that offer the potential to either lift families out of poverty or place children at heightened risk. When the three major historical shifts of labor, urbanization, and economic globalization occurred simultaneously, they dropped working families into the vortex of what is in many ways a perfect storm.

In 2009 Tropical Storm Ida caused major damage in El Salvador, killing hundreds, and wreaking havoc in many communities. Based upon personal experience in the community, Kirk analyses the evolution of the Cuban role in El Salvador. The Henry Reeve Brigade arrived within days to help, but afterwards its role increased and diversified. In addition to providing immediate emergency relief, Cuban physicians became involved in health promotion campaigns (mainly against dengue and malaria) and also helped in strengthening the new national health system, and in particular the national system of rural clinics.

This chapter examines the history of the proposal for the construction of an observatory in Hong Kong. The recognition of the need for an observatory for use in professional storm warning came around 1874 when a major typhoon struck the territory resulting in the loss of at least 2,500 lives. However, it was only in 1877 that the first steps were taken towards the building of an observatory and it took another five years before a decision in favor of the project was made. Surveyor general J. M. Price played an important role in lobbying for the construction of the observatory.