The fabulous collections housed in the worlds most famous museums are trophies from an imperial age. Yet the huge crowds that each year visit the British Museum in London; the Louvre in Paris; or the Metropolitan in New York have little idea that many of the objects on display were acquired by coercion or theft.Now the countries from which these treasures came would like them back. The Greek demand for the return of the Elgin Marbles is the tip of an iceberg that includes claims for the Benin Bronzes from Nigeria; sculpture from Turkey; scrolls and porcelain taken from the Chinese Summer Palace; textiles from Peru; the bust of Nefertiti; Native American sacred objects and Aboriginal human remains.In Keeping Their Marbles; Tiffany Jenkins tells the bloody story of how western museums came to acquire these objects. She investigates why repatriation claims have soared in recent decades and demonstrates how it is the guilt and insecurity of the museums themselves that have stoked the demands for return. Contrary to the arguments of campaigners; she shows that sending artefacts back will not achieve the desired social change nor repair the wounds of history.Instead; this ground-breaking book makes the case for museums as centres of knowledge; demonstrating that no object has a single home and no one culture owns culture.
#3206541 in eBooks 2016-02-25 2016-02-25File Name: B01B28OLK8
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A really great bookBy Dr. Boris VolfsonThis is a really great book that considers the collaboration effort of fire protection specialists and structural engineers in building design. Some of the most important recommendations provided by NIST (NIST; Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers; 2009) after the tragic 9/11/2001 events are as follows:1. "Increased structural integrity; including methods for preventing conditions that could result in progressive collapse (when a building or a significant portion of a building collapses due to disproportionate spread of an initial local failure); standardizing the estimation of wind loads that frequently govern the design of tall buildings; and enhancing the stability of tall buildings.2. Enhanced fire resistance of structures; including the technical basis for determining construction classification and fire resistance ratings; improvements to the technical basis for standard fire resistance testing methods; adoption of the "structural frame" approach to fire resistance ratings; and in-service performance requirements and conformance assessment criteria for spray-applied fire resistive materials.3. New methods for designing structures to resist fires; including the objective of burnout without collapse; the development of performance-based methods as an alternative to current prescriptive design methods; the development and evaluation of new fire resistive coating materials and technologies; evaluation of the fire performance of conventional and high-performance structural materials; and elimination of technical and standards barriers to the introduction of new materials and technologies.4. Education and training programs for fire protection engineers; structural engineers; and architects".The required above information is covered in depth in this book. The content is presented in an easy to read format with great examples! Many examples include detailed computations that demonstrate a STEP-BY-STEP process!!!!This is a must for any fire protection and structural engineer.It is important that the textbook is published by the McGraw-Hill and International Code Council (ICC) publishing companies; so it is supported by a reputable source.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Very usefull bookBy Dr. V.RaizerThis book bridges the gap between prescriptive and performance-based methods and simplifies very complex and comprehensive computer analyses to the point that structural fire loads have a simple approximate analytical expression that can be used in structural analysis on a day-to-day basis.This book covers a lot; and is more comprehensive than other books of its type. It has very good material on `traditional way of structural fire design using standard temperature-time curve and parametric fire curves (that are incorporated into Eurocode 1-1-2; annex A); as well as the new (authors) approach to the performance-based method.The computational procedures that are developed in this book were then applied to create the functional relationships between structural fire load (SFL) and opening factor; fuel load; fire duration; decay period; geometry of the fire compartment; etc. The comparison of Eurocode parametric curves and SFL curves is also presented in this book. Finally; the computational procedure for passive fire protection design is also established in this book. The output of such computations is the temperature-time function that is used for structural analyses and design. Traditional (standard) structural systems (such as beams; simple frames; trusses; and arches) subjected to the SFL are analyzed and designed.The book provides an excellent and detailed guide to critical issues that are connected with the structural fire load; including making transparent practices for undertaking the building design process to evaluate the structures behavior subjected to such loading condition. Filled with well-researched data about fire protection material types; it also contains excellent reference sections at the end of each chapter. It is well organized and presented; the examples easy to follow and the problems flow from the material.The main audience is practicing structural and fire prevention engineers. The scope of the work is broad enough to be useful to practicing and research engineers and to serve as a teaching tool in colleges and universities.
