Abstract This paper examines trends in the publishing industry caused by the effect of such factors as the birth of the PC and the globalization of the internet as well as economic factors. It looks at how small presses are being bought out by larger chains which can negotiate volume deals with publishers, while also offering customers discount on propriety books published under their own labels. It shows how internet booksellers, most notably the avaricious Amazon.com have made it so that book customers can find just about any title at below suggested retail. It also discusses how the advancement of technologies such as dvds, ebooks and online libraries are also cutting into the market affecting the need for printed material.
From the Paper "The independent bookstores (known in the industry as "indies') are in trouble, if not on the edge of extinction, being replaced in part by larger chain stores such as Barnes and Noble, and Borders who pull in customers with coffee shop atmospheres and non-book products. The chains can negotiate volume deals with publishers, while also offering customers discount on propriety books -- titles that are published under their own labels. Internet booksellers, most notably the avaricious Amazon.com have made it so that book customers can find just about any title at below suggested retail."
Abstract This paper examines how, in the fourth book of Swift's "Gulliver's Travel"s, the narrator of the fictional travelogue finds himself again shipwrecked and stranded, this time on the island of the Houyhnhnms, which are horses who have all the trappings of a reasonable and enlightened society. In particular, it looks at how the tables are turned in an interesting way, as the Houyhnhnms are the masters of logic, reason, dignity, and the Yahoos, who are humans, are portrayed as being avaricious and savage. It looks at how the narrator takes his place in the society of the horses and finds that he is much more comfortable among them; he reviles the conduct of the Yahoos he observes and distances himself from them as much as is possible.
From the Paper "Other sources have seen more of a duality in Swift's condemnation of humanity, stressing the difference between human beings and Yahoos rather than the similarities. These scholars have made differentiations between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms in terms of both humans and horses being lacking in essential tenets of societal success, as observed by the narrator. After all, the horses cannot build boats, and are served to have no written language. This leads some scholars to comment that human beings are neither Yahoos nor Houyhnhnms, but are somewhere in between: the Yahoos are too universally wretched and savage, and the horses are too change-averse and stultified in their own stable society."
Abstract This paper explains that Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" is a brilliant historical account of how Leopold II, King of the Belgian, carved a personal empire and fortune from the Congo and how Edmund Morel, a clerk for the Elder Dempster shipping company, led an international campaign to expose the monarch's criminal enterprise. The author points out that Leopold's single-minded ambition, adroit diplomacy, skillful corruption and ruthless brutality brought him, already one of Europe's wealthiest men, untold riches, while for the Congolese people it brought only unbelievable suffering. The paper states that the "ghost" in the book's title relates to (1) after Leopold's death, rumors abounded that he had not really died but instead had gone to live in the Congo or (2) a more plausible claim emerged that Leopold's ghost would return to haunt the Congo for more than three decades after independence in the form of Mobutu Sese Seku, also a master criminal driven by vampire avarice.
From the Paper "From the start, Leopold's Congo administration required Congolese labor, at first as portage to carry ivory, then to construct the railway. With the commercial emphasis switching to rubber, the Congo Free State was faced with a problem. Obviously, the state could purchase ivory, or seize it at the point of a gun, but it was impossible to oversee the harvesting of rubber latex, Its collection required going deep into the rain forests to find the rubber vines. So the Congo Free State's militias, the Force Publique, developed a brutal system which involved raiding villages and seizing women and children as hostages, only releasing them when the men brought in quotas of rubber."
Abstract This paper argues that George Bernard Shaw presents his belief that religious organizations for the most part are a sham because their minions will gladly embrace the money of the most wretched people if it will help them to pay their own bills. The paper then suggests that, at the same time, the character of Major Barbara in Shaw's play of the same name, while dismayed by the seeming hypocrisy of the Salvation Army, does not so much recoil from her holy mission as she returns to it with a more realistic understanding of how the world really works - and that doing good may, in the final analysis, involve making certain accommodations that the idealistic and naive might find appalling.
From the Paper "In the end, Barbara dejectedly walks away from the Salvation Army (Shaw, 113-114; for a good description of how the experience seared Barbara to the quick, please see page 145 of the text) and assumes - it is her father's idea - control of the munitions factory (Shaw, 123-124). From her experiences she has learned a few things that are of the greatest importance: money really is power; Christian organizations can surely be bought for the right price; all men, like her father, who deign to be good men only have the luxury of being so when they are wealthy (for her father's treatise on why he finds poverty so abominable, please see pages 147-148); and evil in life (and those with blasted principles) cannot be avoided."
