The Banshee and the Wraith. They have the power to save the world—or destroy it. In a place unlike any other, two brothers set off an ancient, epic, and never-ending battle. This world is controlled by the Necromancers and Reapers—one side pulls people back up through the earth, and the other cuts them down again. One ancient family, the Laheys, have been tasked again and again with keeping the balance between the worlds. And Nyx Lahey, born a Necromancer, but raised a Reaper, is on the front lines. Lately, though, Nyx is wrestling with her identity as she’s thrown into an adventure filled with prophecies and the kind of danger you can cut down with a giant scythe. While chasing a creature that’s killing young girls, Nyx runs headlong—and gun drawn—into Erebus Salem. A hunter who has the ability to turn into a raven to escape danger, Erebus also harbors a secret: he’s not alive. He lives in Dewmort, a world in-between, where the souls of the dead reside, and where memory is all but erased. With no memory of who he is, his only connection to the past is a locket which ends up in Nyx’s hands. Determined to get it back, Erebus and his friends set watch on the Laheys, but they aren’t the only ones. Other beings are lurking in the shadows. They know the truth about Erebus and Nyx. They know that the pair are the Relics, the only two powerful beings in the world capable of taking down the greatest evils known to any kind. Soon, Nyx and Erebus become the hunted, and must try and escape the evil plans of the war lord, Bellum. Bellum wants the Relics for his own purposes. He needs them to raise his father, the original Necromancer, Neco. With his father by his side, Bellum believes he can rule the world—all of them—and destroy the Reapers once and for all. Can Nyx and Erebus master their new found powers, and even if they do, can they survive?

At face value, the concept of modernity seems to reference a stream of social and historical traffic headed down a utopian one-way street named "progress." Mexico's Ruins examines modernity in twentieth-century Mexican culture as a much more ambiguous concept, arguing that such a single-minded notion is inadequate to comprehend the complexity of modern Mexico's national projects and their reception by the nation's citizenry. Instead, through the trope of modernity as ruin, author Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández explores the dilemma presented by the etymology of "ruins": a simultaneous falling down and rising up, a confluence of opposing forces at work on the skyline of the metropolis since 1968. He focuses on artists and writers of the generación de medio siglo, like Juan García Ponce, and envisions both the tales of modernity and their storytellers in a new light. The arts, literature, and architecture of twentieth-century Mexico are all examined in this cross-cultural and interdisciplinary book.

The claim that heritage practice in Asia is Eurocentric may be well-founded, but the view that local people in Asia need to be educated by heritage practitioners and governments to properly conserve their heritage distracts from the responsibility of educating oneself about the local-popular beliefs and practices which constitute the bedrock of most people’s engagement with the material past. Written by an archaeologist who has long had one foot in the field of heritage practice and another in the academic camp of archaeology and heritage studies, Counterheritage is at once a forthright critique of current heritage practice in the Asian arena and a contribution to this project of self-education. Popular religion in Asia – including popular Buddhism and Islam, folk Catholicism, and Chinese deity cults – has a constituency that accounts for a majority of Asia’s population, making its exclusion from heritage processes an issue of social justice, but more pragmatically it explains why many heritage conservation programs fail to gain local traction. This book describes how the tenets of popular religion affect building and renovation practices and describes how modernist attempts to suppress popular religion in Asia in the early and mid-twentieth century impacted religious ‘heritage.’ Author Denis Byrne argues that the campaign by archaeologists and heritage professionals against the private collecting and ‘looting’ of antiquities in Asia largely ignores the regimes of value which heritage discourse has helped erect and into which collectors and local diggers play. Focussing on the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan but also referencing China and other parts of Southeast Asia, richly detailed portraits are provided of the way people live with ‘old things’ and are affected by them. Narratives of the author’s fieldwork are woven into arguments built upon an extensive and penetrating reading of the historical and anthropological literature. The critical stance embodied in the title ‘counterheritage’ is balanced by the optimism of the book’s vision of a different practice of heritage, advocating a view of heritage objects as vibrant, agentic things enfolded in social practice rather than as inert and passive surfaces subject to conservation.

RES 63/64 includes "Source and trace" by Christopher S. Wood; "Timelessness, fluidity, and Apollo's libation" by Milette Gaifman; "A liquid history: Blood and animation in late medieval art" by Beate Fricke; "Guercino's 'wet' drawing" by Nicola Suthor; "The readymade metabolized: Fluxus in life" by David Joselit; and other papers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Virtual Reality, ICVR 2007, held in Beijing, China. It covers 3D rendering and visualization, interacting and navigating in virtual and augmented environments, industrial applications of virtual reality, as well as health, cultural, educational and entertainment applications.

Focusing on the non-Western context and case studies, this book explores theories of interdisciplinary architectural thinking and the construction of urban memory in Chinese cities, with an emphasis on contemporary architecture and the diversity of agencies. China has undergone one of the fastest urbanisation and urban renewal processes in human history, but discussions of urban memory in China have tended to be practice-oriented and lack theoretical reflection. This book brings together interdisciplinary architectural scholarship to interrogate the production of urban memory and examine experiences in China. The 14 chapters explore different processes, projects, materials, architecture and urban spaces in different Chinese cities by analysing cityscapes such as temples, bridges, conservation projects, architectural design, historical architecture, memorial hall, market street, city images, custom bike, food market and so on. The book deals with different agencies and methods, tangible and intangible, in the construction of memories aimed at promoting hybridised multiple identities, and explores the interplay of different versions of memory, i.e. state, public, regional, local, individual and collective memory. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of architecture and urbanism, cultural studies and China studies, as well as architects, urban planners and historians interested in these fields.

With the gang war behind him and touting a brand-new set of gear (again), Akira is ready to dive back into the ruins for relics once more! In the depths of Kuzusuhara, the enigmatic Alpha guides him to an Old World city. There he encounters Tsubaki—the AI managing the area—who seems to hold a grudge against Alpha! Meanwhile, Sheryl’s relic shop finally opens for business. All is going well for Akira, but the city seems to have other plans for him. Many lives hang in the balance as conspiracies unfold and the Old and New Worlds clash!