"Wednesday, November 01, 2006."

One of the most important developments of the last fifty years has been the explosive increase in our knowledge about human language. Speech acquisition, reception, and production are arguably the most complex and distinctive operations of the human mind. This is a comprehensive and up-to-date reference resource for this knowledge.

More than 100 contributors â from the fields of art, science, mathematics, performance, music, architecture, design, literature and sociology â have devised or chosen their own personal formula to express their understanding of contemporary life. At times quirky and idiosyncratic, witty and playful, some of the formulas register an indisputable fact or propose a speculative idea; others provide a method of bringing order to a complex universe â or point to the impossibility of doing so; still others suggest propositions or solutions for a better future. Whether taking the form of a scribbled equation or typeset text, or a drawing, diagram, photograph or painting, each contribution is treated imaginatively in a fun and colourful design in keeping with the spirit of the project.

From the Publisher: Making Waves unearths the successive, worldwide waves of revolts, rebellions, and revolutions that have shaken and remade the world from the eighteenth century to the present. It challenges us to rethink not only our limited conceptions of social movements but the very character and possibilities of social movements. The authors show how successive outbursts of global social protest have undermined world capitalist orders and, through both their successes and their failures, provided the basis for long periods of stable capitalist rule across all the zones of the world-economy. The surprises start in the Age of Revolution, when the antisystemic wave of slave revolts that led to the Haitian Revolution is related to the systemic effects of their combination with the U.S. and French Revolutions. The analysis comes up to the present, when a wave of post-1989 movements points to quite divergent futures based, as in the past, on the search for alternatives to communities

V.1. Methodology and African prehistory -- v.2. Ancient civilizations of Africa -- v.3. Africa from the seventh to the eleventh century -- v.4. Africa from the twelfth to the sixteenth century -- v.5. Africa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century -- v.6. The nineteenth century until the 1880s -- v.7. Africa under foreign domination 1880-1935 -- v.8. Africa since 1935.