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Following her bestselling <I>Life Along the Silk Road</I>, Susan Whitfield widens her exploration of the great cultural highway with a new captivating portrait focusing on material things. <I>Silk, Slaves, and Stupas</I> tells the stories of ten very different objects, considering their interaction with the peoples and cultures of the Silk Road&mdash;those who made them, carried them, received them, used them, sold them, worshipped them, and, in more recent times, bought them, conserved them, and curated them. From a delicate pair of earrings from a steppe tomb to a massive stupa deep in Central Asia, a hoard of Kushan coins stored in an Ethiopian monastery to a Hellenistic glass bowl from a southern Chinese tomb, and a fragment of Byzantine silk wrapping the bones of a French saint to a Bactrian ewer depicting episodes from the Trojan War, these objects show us something of the cultural diversity and interaction along these trading routes of Afro-Eurasia.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> Exploring the labor, tools, materials, and rituals behind these various objects, Whitfield infuses her narrative with delightful details as the objects journey through time, space, and meaning.&#160;<I>Silk, Slaves, and Stupas</I>&#160;is a lively, visual, and tangible way to understand the Silk Road and the cultural, economic, and technical changes of the late antique and medieval worlds.&#160; &#160;<BR /> &#160;

A hard-hitting expose of the overwork culture and modern management techniques that seduce millions of people to hand over the best part of their lives to their employer.Work has come to increasingly dominate British national life. ‘Job intensification’ affects every shopfloor, office, classroom and hospital, as a cult of efficiency has driven a missionary magnetism of tighter deadlines and more exacting targets in the most exploitative and manipulative work culture developed since the Industrial Revolution.What do we get in return for this hard work? Stagnant wages, job insecurity, stress, exhaustion; the British workforce has not been so powerless for over a century. ‘Willing Slaves’ exposes the paradox that, though we’re all being exploited, it’s work that has come to give our lives meaning: religion, political causes, family life have become secondary. This book reveals how this astonishing fraud has been perpetrated, how millions of workers know they face burnout but believe ‘there is no alternative’.Bunting tells us how to take our lives back – and what will happen if we don’t.

When archaeologist Annja Creed is hired to find the lost city of Promise in Brazil, she is more than intrigued. Legends abound of a magical place where slaves were rumored to have discovered the secret to eternal youth and life.But strangers are not welcome in Promise.Annja soon learns that the residents have gone to extreme lengths to guard their precious secret. Making her way from the steamy port of Belem to the brutal slums of Northeast Brazil, Annja faces unexpected peril, from poisoned arrows to Amazonian anacondas. As she navigates through a land where spirituality collides with the material world, Annja must distinguish between what is real and what is imagined for fear of making a wrong move. Because anyone or anything could be her enemy.And she's getting too close…