Wikipedia's first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident--a wiki attached to an nascent online encyclopedia--has become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of "free access to the sum of all human knowledge" when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal.

When a public defender named Jim Sheehan received an unexpected inheritance, he decided to put his money to work for people and the planet. He purchased and renovated a cluster of six buildings in a dilapidated corner of downtown Spokane, Washington and repurposed them for the collective good. For more than twenty years these buildings, now known as the Community Building Campus, have served as an interdisciplinary hub where grassroots leaders run campaigns, build coalitions, host meetings, train activists, and transform their city. One-Block Revolution honors the chorus of diverse changemakers who show up every day to build their community. Part counterculture manifesto and framework for participatory placemaking, part handbook for nonprofits and social enterprises, this anthology tells one of Spokane's most essential stories, while providing inspiration and practical guidance for organizations across the world.

Beginning with a discussion of familiar images of the French Revolution, garnered from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and Tolstoy, as well as the legends of let them eat cake, and tricolours, Doyle leads the reader to the realization that we are still living with developments and consequences of the French Revolution such as decimalization, and the whole ideology of human rights. Continuing with a brief survey of the old regime and how it collapsed, Doyle continues to ellucidate how the revolution happened: why did the revolutionaries quarrel with the king, the church and the rest of Europe, why this produced Terror, and finally how it accomplished rule by a general. The revolution destroyed the age-old cultural, institutional and social structures in France and beyond. This book looks at how the ancien regime became ancien as well as examining cases in which achievement failed to match ambition. Doyle explores the legacy of the revolution in the form of rationality in public affairs and responsible government, and finishes his examination of the revolution with a discussion as to why it has been so controversial. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An account of the French Revolution.

At a time when China is once again facing a major turning point in its direction, I firmly believe that my academic dispute with Wang Hui is in no way a personal or left-right dispute. Wang Hui's grand narrative about the Chinese revolution and the Chinese century is meant to provide a new legitimate basis for one party to rule forever, to place world history in the value system of the Chinese revolution, and to shape the Chinese revolution and its regime into the ultimate source and ultimate judge of universal justice in the world. There is no doubt that Wang Hui's new theoretical proposition is not only far from the basic idea of liberalism, but also far from the political democratic position that the Western left-wing tradition has always insisted on. Since liberal scholars have automatically given up head-on confrontation with Wang Hui, it is time to end Wang Hui's theories, which have never been subjected to comprehensive and systematic academic criticism in China's intellectual and intellectual spheres for nearly thirty years. Therefore, at such a time, it would be an unforgivable dereliction of duty for liberals to fail to take the initiative, as Raymond Aron did, to undertake the historical mission of criticizing barbaric ideologies–totalitarianism and statism– and to hold fast to the basic virtues given to intellectuals by providence. As Arendt said, "the storm of ideas is not characterized by knowledge, but by the ability to distinguish good from evil, beauty from ugliness. And this may indeed prevent disaster in that rare moment of crisis."

Tells of the causes, the history, and the legacy of the French Revolution from a two-hundred year perspective.

This innovative history argues that we can understand important facets of the Mexican Revolution by analyzing the architecture designed and built in Mexico City during the formative years from 1920 to 1940. These artifacts allow us to trace and understand the path of the consolidation of the Mexican Revolution. Each individual building or development, by providing indelible evidence of the process by which the revolution evolved into a government, offers important insights into Mexican history. Seen in aggregate, they reveal an ongoing urban process at work; seen as a "composition," they reveal changes over time in societal values and aspirations and in the direction of the revolution. This book focuses on structure, change, and process for this remarkable city "in the true image of the gigantic heaven." The changes described in Fuentes' narrative are man-made, not wrought by impersonal or natural forces except on the rare occasions of earthquake and flood. Patrice Elizabeth Olsen views Mexico City as an artifact of those who created it—representing their ardor, humanity, and religion, as well as their politics. Individual chapters detail the expression of revolutionary values and aims in the physical form of Mexico City's built environment between 1920 and 1940, examining direction and meaning in terms of who is given license to design and build structures in the capital city, and equally important, who is excluded. Through the reshaping of the capital the revolution was extended and institutionalized; physical traces of the process of negotiation that enabled the revolution to be "fixed" in the Mexican polity appear in the city's skyline, parks, housing developments, and other new construction, as well as in modifications to existing colonial-era buildings. In this manner, the author argues, Mexico City's urban form crystallized as a product of the revolution as well as a part of the revolutionary process, as it has been of other conquests throughout its history.