Best Selling Books by Elena

''Which test should I apply?'' During the many years of working with ecologists, biologists and other environmental scientists, this is probably the question that the authors of this book hear the most often. The answer is always the same and along the lines of ''What are your underlying questions?'', ''What do you want to show?''. The answers to these questions provide the starting point for a detailed discussion on the ecological background and purpose of the study. This then gives the basis for deciding on the most appropriate analytical approach. Therefore, a better start ing point for an ecologist is to avoid the phrase ''test'' and think in terms of ''analy sis''. A test refers to something simple and unified that gives a clear answer in the form of a p-value: something rarely appropriate for ecological data. In practice, one has to apply a data exploration, check assumptions, validate the models, per haps apply a series of methods, and most importantly, interpret the results in terms of the underlying ecology and the ecological questions being investigated. Ecology is a quantitative science trying to answer difficult questions about the complex world we live in. Most ecologists are aware of these complexities, but few are fully equipped with the statistical sophistication and understanding to deal with them.

Though often seen as scientific or objective, medicine has a fundamentally narrative aspect. Much like how an author constructs meaning around fictional events, a doctor or patient narrates the course of an illness and treatment. In what ways have literary and medical storytelling intersected with and shaped each other? In Medical Storyworlds, Elena Fratto examines the relationship between literature and medicine at the turn of the twentieth century—a period when novelists were experimenting with narrative form and the modern medical establishment was taking shape. She traces how Russian writers such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov responded to contemporary medical and public health prescriptions, placing them in dialogue with French and Italian authors including Romains and Svevo and such texts as treatises by Paul Broca and Cesare Lombroso. In nuanced readings of these works, Fratto reveals how authors and characters question the rhetoric and authority of medicine and public health in telling stories of mortality, illness, and well-being. In so doing, she argues, they provide alternative ways of thinking about the limits and possibilities of human agency and free will. Bridging the medical humanities, European literary studies, and Slavic studies, Medical Storyworlds shows how narrative theory and canonical literary texts offer a new lens on today’s debates in medical ethics and bioethics.

Quand Gabriel reçoit un coup de fil de son meilleur ami, en panique au beau milieu de la nuit, le suppliant de venir en aide à sa petite sœur, il ne peut pas refuser. Parce que la jolie garce qui a brisé son cœur d’adolescent est dans la merde et qu’il est tout bonnement incapable de lui tourner le dos. Peu importe qu’ils ne se soient pas revus depuis des années et même s’il se serait bien passé de ces retrouvailles, lui qui a mis tant de temps à essayer de l’oublier. Face à la jeune femme, toujours aussi fière, excentrique, totalement irréfléchie, et scandaleusement belle, il s’était préparé à ce que ça ne soit pas simple. Après tout, ça ne l’est jamais avec Andrea Cardinale. Mais après toutes ces années, acceptera-t-elle son aide ? Car si des yeux pouvaient tuer, ceux de la petite brune le crucifieraient sur place... Sans aucun état d’âme.

Siena never imagined her pact with Rowan Thorne, the future Alpha of Carrowmoor, would spiral into a labyrinth of secrets, betrayal, and forbidden longing. Bound by strict terms, Siena agrees to the contract to save her family—meeting him only on his terms, never reaching for more. But as each hidden encounter fans the flames of desire, Siena soon realizes that she’s at risk of breaking the most sacred rule of all: never fall in love. Rowan’s life as the next Alpha demands loyalty, yet Siena’s presence stirs something deeper than duty. As his heart wars with his role, he becomes entangled in a dangerous game that could shatter his legacy and expose their hidden connection. But when a rival discovers their secret, Siena’s safety and Rowan’s honor are thrown into jeopardy, threatening to destroy not only their pact but the lives of those they hold dear. Now, Siena must make a choice—stay and risk everything for the Alpha who can’t openly claim her, or walk away from the only man who has ever seen her true strength. In a world of ancient traditions and deadly rivalries, love may be the ultimate sacrifice. The Alpha’s Broken Contract is a story of passion, deception, and courage where nothing is what it seems, and the heart’s deepest desires may be the most dangerous secrets of all.

The goal of this book is to present and evaluate the concept of dynamic testing. Unlike ''static'' tests such as the SAT or IQ tests, dynamic testing emphasizes learning potential rather than past learning accomplishments. The book opens with a theoretical framework of abilities as forms of developing expertise. It then continues with an introduction to dynamic testing and then a capsule history of dynamic testing. The book also reviews the approaches of Feuerstein and Budoff and other diverse approaches to dynamic testing. The Drs Sternberg and Grigorenko present their own three-prong approach to dynamic testing along with two case studies using dynamic testing in their own research. The authors conclude that dynamic testing has enormous potential which has not yet been tapped.

Styles of Enlightenment argues that alongside its democratic ideals and its efforts to create a unified public sphere, the Enlightenment also displayed a tendency to erect rigid barriers when it came to matters of style and artistic expression. The French philosophes tackled the issue of the hierarchy of genres with surprising inflexibility, and they looked down on those forms of art that they saw as commercial, popular, and merely entertaining. They were convinced that the standard of taste was too important a matter to be left to the whims of the public and the vagaries of the marketplace: aesthetic judgment ought to belong to a few, enlightened minds who would then pass it on to the masses. Through readings of fictions, essays, memoirs, eulogies, and theatrical works by Fénelon, Bouhours, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Mercier, Thomas, and others, Styles of Enlightenment traces the stages of a confrontation between the virile philosophe and the effeminate worldly writer, "good" and "bad" taste, high art and frivolous entertainment, state patronage and the privately sponsored marketplace, the academic eulogy and worldly conversation. It teases out the finer points of division on the public battlefields of literature and politics and the new world of contesting sexual economies.

In her explorative study that is based on data from 62 qualitative interviews, Elena Sommer examines the use of social capital for entrepreneurial activities of self-employed migrants from the former Soviet Union in Germany. She analyses what type of social capital is used by migrants as a resource for the formation and development of small businesses and how entrepreneurial social networks of migrants change over time. The study illustrates that the use of business-related social relationships of the interviewed self-employed depends on the company''s market strategy as well as on access to relevant social networks.

Four "pitch-perfect" (Oprah Daily) essays by the author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. In these four crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look into the origins of her literary prowess. She describes her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she warns against the perils of "bad language" and the ways in which it has long excluded women''s truth; she proposes a choral fusion of feminine talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, and many others. An "incandescent...philosophical monograph on the nature of writing," (Molly Young, New York Times) this candid collection by one of the great novelists of our time is destined to delight general readers, writers, and Ferrante fans in equal measure. "Everyone should read everything with Elena Ferrante''s name on it."--The Boston Globe

Enchanted Tales is a heartwarming collection of modern fairy tales by Elena Raileanu, inviting young readers into a world of adventure, courage, and magical discoveries. Each story gently weaves a beautiful lesson about friendship, kindness, bravery, and self-acceptance, told in a way children will understand and cherish. Along the way, little ones will meet a cast of delightful characters: dreamy snails, curious bunnies, penguins who long to fly, crocodiles learning to laugh, clever foxes, wise owls, and many other charming creatures with stories of their own. Perfect for bedtime reading or quiet afternoons, these enchanted tales will spark imaginations and warm hearts.

The Story of a New Name is an extraordinary novel about two young women, Lila and Elena, growing up in Naples in the early 1960s. At sixteen Lila marries the shopkeeper Stefano. She is filled with pleasure at her new wealth, and horror at the life she has chosen. Elena''s own attempts at romance seem to be sabotaged by Lila''s turbulent affairs. As she tries to plot her way out of poverty via academic and literary success, her constant anxiety is that she is just a shadow of the brilliant Lila. The sequel to My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name continues the enthralling chronicle of a friendship that is obsessive, loving, complicated, hurtful, enduring and constantly startling. It is an exhilarating reading experience. Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the author of seven novels: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost Daughter, and the quartet of Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. Fragments, a selection of interviews, letters and occasional writings by Ferrante, will be published in early 2016. She is one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors. Ann Goldstein is an editor at the New Yorker and a recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. ''Ferrante transforms the love, separation and reunion of two poor urban girls into the general tragedy of their city, a place so beautiful and heartbreaking that it inspired the expression "Vedi Napoli e poi muori" - "See Naples and then die".'' New York Times Book Review ''Elena Ferrante may be the best contemporary novelist you have never heard of...Ferrante''s voice is startlingly honest...her storytelling both visceral and compelling.'' Economist ''The writing and translation from Italian are first-class.'' Otago Daily Times ''The first two Neapolitan novels [My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name]...move far from contrivance, logic or respectability to ask uncomfortable questions about how we live, how we love, how we singe an existence in a deeply flawed world that expects pretty acquiescence from its women. In all their beauty, their ugliness, their devotion and deceit, these girls enchant and repulse, like life, like our very selves.'' Sydney Morning Herald ''Ferrante writes so beautifully that you can''t help but become engrossed with the lives, loves and loss of Lila and Elena...will leave readers salivating for the third instalment.'' Courier Mail ''[Elena Ferrante''s] brilliance isn’t limited to her mechanics, her finesse or her creativity as a writer, but it’s her willingness to continually address the psychological machinations of women who have very unfeminine feelings.'' Three Percent ''The Neapolitan novels are smart, thoughtful, serious literature. At the same time, they are violent, suspenseful soap operas populated with a vivid cast of scheming characters...Ferrante’s novels are deeply personal and intimate, getting to the very heart of what it means to be a woman, a friend, a daughter, a mother.’ Debrief Daily

The Symposium is one of Plato’s most accessible dialogues, an engrossing historical document as well as an entertaining literary masterpiece. By uncovering the structural design of the dialogue, Plato’s Dialectic at Play aims at revealing a Plato for whom the dialogical form was not merely ornamentation or philosophical methodology but the essence of philosophical exploration. His dialectic is not only argument; it is also play. Careful analysis of each layer of the text leads cumulatively to a picture of the dialogue’s underlying structure, related to both argument and myth, and shows that a dynamic link exists between Diotima’s higher mysteries and the organization of the dialogue as a whole. On this basis the authors argue that the Symposium, with its positive theory of art contained in the ascent to the Beautiful, may be viewed as a companion piece to the Republic, with its negative critique of the role of art in the context of the Good. Following Nietzsche’s suggestion and applying criteria developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, they further argue for seeing the Symposium as the first novel. The book concludes with a comprehensive reevaluation of the significance of the Symposium and its place in Plato’s thought generally, touching on major issues in Platonic scholarship: the nature of art, the body-soul connection, the problem of identity, the relationship between mythos and logos, Platonic love, and the question of authorial writing and the vanishing signature of the absent Plato himself.

María Elena Martínez''s Genealogical Fictions is the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) and colonial Mexico''s sistema de castas, a hierarchical system of social classification based primarily on ancestry. Specifically, it explains how this notion surfaced amid socio-religious tensions in early modern Spain, and was initially used against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. It was then transplanted to the Americas, adapted to colonial conditions, and employed to create and reproduce identity categories according to descent. Martínez also examines how the state, church, Inquisition, and other institutions in colonial Mexico used the notion of purity of blood over time, arguing that the concept''s enduring religious, genealogical, and gendered meanings and the archival practices it promoted came to shape the region''s patriotic and racial ideologies.