Robert Smith

This volume is based on the research of DR W. Gareth Evans into state secondary schools in Wales from 1896-2000. At the time of his death in 2000, he had covered the period of 1896 to 1970. This is an original, comprehensive study of the history of external examinations in the schools of Wales during the twentieth century, based on documents that have never previously been analysed. The aim of the book is to demonstrate how the present system of external examinations has developed in Wales over the last century and illustrates the inherent difficulty of making judgments about standards in schools, past and present.

Drawing on more than fifteen years of research, "Mexican New York" offers an intimate view of globalization as it is lived by Mexican immigrants and their children in New York and in Mexico. Robert Courtney Smith's groundbreaking study sheds new light on transnationalism, vividly illustrating how immigrants move back and forth between New York and their home village in Puebla with considerable ease, borrowing from and contributing to both communities as they forge new gender roles; new strategies of social mobility, race, and even adolescence; and new brands of politics and egalitarianism. Smith's deeply informed narrative describes how first-generation men who have lived in New York for decades become important political leaders in their home villages in Mexico. Smith explains how relations between immigrant men and women and their U. S.-born children are renegotiated in the context of migration to New York and temporary return visits to Mexico. He illustrates how U. S.-born youth keep their attachments to Mexico, and how changes in migration and assimilation have combined to transnationalize both U. S.-born adolescents and Mexican gangs between New York and Puebla. "Mexican New York" profoundly deepens our knowledge of immigration as a social process, convincingly showing how some immigrants live and function in two worlds at the same time and how transnationalization and assimilation are not opposing, but related, phenomena.

The Stroke of Midnight chronicles moments of my experience suffering a stroke, paying particular attention to the physical, emotional, and financial considerations typically associated with a medical emergency. Primarily using anecdotal approach, I recount the night when the stroke hit, and the subsequent events that followed. Throughout the text, I emphasize the likely importance of belief, using generally straightforward language in an effort to create a thorough yet accessible resource. Part memoir, part guide, the volume incorporates an understanding of diverse scientific principles, furnishing data from various sources. Overall, my contribution is designed to commemorate phases of my journey as well as to enlighten, inspire, and provoke thought for the reader who may confront similar circumstances.

This modernized guide to electrical wiring for commercial buildings features new, up-to-date information. Written to the 2005 National Electrical Code®, Electrical Wiring Commercial, 12E enables readers to gain expertise in the identification, interpretation, and application of NEC® standards for the actual wiring of commercial buildings. A complete set of full-size, ready-to-use plans provides readers with all the information and practical hands-on experience needed to 'meet Code' when wiring a light commercial building.

The 1870 Education Act provided that every child in England and Wales was to be provided with an opportunity to receive elementary education. This book considers the way in which Welsh society viewed the 1870 Education Act and how local political and religious leaders oversaw its implementation.

This standard lexicon of Syriac has long been the choice of students of Syriac, both for its comprehensiveness and also because of its handy size. It originated as an abridgement of Payne Smith’s Thesaurus Syriacus, a substantically larger work that also tends to be less accessible for the student. Here the meanings of the Syriac words are given in English, and the order of the Syriac is alphabetical, to avoid requiring the student to know the root of the word being looked up. An essential tool for anyone studying or researching Syriac texts or literature and for students of the Semitic languages. The Compendious Syriac Dictionary was first published by Oxford University Press in 1903 and has been out of print for a number of years. A quality Eisenbrauns reprint based on the 1976 printing.

The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories. In this book Robert Smith offers both a reading of the philosophy of Derrida and an investigation of current theories of autobiography. Smith argues that for Derrida autobiography is not so much subjective self-revelation as relation to the other, not so much a general condition of thought as a general condition of writing - what Derrida calls the ‘autobiography of the writing’ - which mocks any self-centred finitude of living and dying. In this context, and using literary-critical, philosophical, and psychoanalytical sources, Smith thinks through Derrida’s texts in a new, but distinctly Derridean, way, and finds new perspectives to analyse the work of classical writers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, and de Man.