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There are few innovations that have the potential to revolutionize commerce and have evolved so quickly that there remain significant misunderstandings about their operation, opportunity, and challenges as has Bitcoin in the dozen years since its invention. The potential for banking, transacting, and public recording of important records is profound, but can be displacing if not done with appropriate care, and is downright dangerous if certain pitfalls are not noted and avoided. Among other things, this book proves the existence of a Bitcoin dilemma that challenges the conventional wisdom which mistakenly asserts the incredibly intensive energy consumption in Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining will be remedied by more efficient mining machines or sustainable power sources. It shows for the first time within a well-specified economic model of Bitcoin mining that the recent runup in electricity consumption has a simple and inevitable explanation. For a coin with almost completely inelastic supply and steadily increasing demand, the conditions for accelerating electricity demand is consistent with economic theory and may well characterize the future of Bitcoin. The book also demonstrates the counterintuitive result that improvements in mining efficiency, in terms of electricity consumption per terahash of processing power, or decreases in electricity costs as cheaper sustainable energy is diverted to this industry, merely exacerbates the acceleration of energy consumption because of a prisoner¿s dilemma arms-race-to-the-bottom. The book proposes policy solutions to mitigate this Bitcoin dilemma but note that the mobility of industry capacity which needs but a ready supply of electricity and an Internet connection frustrates local regulation and warrants global solutions. The incredible opportunities of this industry will only be realized if our regulators, legislators, entrepreneurs, and general public garner a more complete and objective understandingof this and other Proof-of-Work mining techniques. The book provides this broader perspective based on the author¿s research as an economist, his position as a director of a large regional bank, his understanding as a technologist and as an environmental and sustainability researcher, and his public policy experience as a mayor who has also written books and articles about public policy and public finance.

Object Studies: Introductions to Material Culture is a textbook that introduces students to an interdisciplinary approach to material cultural study. This text helps reveal how everyday objects from pens and coffee cups to our most cherished keepsakes help define our collective histories and personal narratives. Object Studies is organized around accessible and engaging chapters on objects with ¿model essays¿ that present original projects designed to engage students with a series of concepts and research activities. Each will demonstrate a key methodology tied to specific learning outcomes, but all chapters will be intertwined in their attention to the project of developing the core skills of ¿object studies¿: careful viewing, writing detailed descriptions, setting out and testing research hypotheses, and telling stories through material artifacts. Aimed towards undergraduate students taking courses in material culture as well as postgraduate students embarking on independent research projects these chapter ¿studies¿ are practically oriented and demonstrate research projects that can be undertaken either in a course or even through personal study. Chapters in Object Studies conclude with research questions, suggestions on methodology, and a discursive bibliography designed to help students pursue their own projects based on these examples.

This volume addresses the current boom in biographical fictions across the globe, examining the ways in which gendered lives of the past become re-imagined as gendered narratives in fiction. Building on this research, this book is the first to address questions of gender in a sustained and systematic manner that is also sensitive to cultural and historical differences in both raw material and fictional reworking. It develops a critical lens through which to approach biofictions as ¿fictions of gender¿, drawing on theories of biofiction and historical fiction, life-writing studies, feminist criticism, queer feminist readings, postcolonial studies, feminist art history, and trans studies. Attentive to various approaches to fictionalisation that reclaim, appropriate or re-invent their ¿raw material¿, the volume assesses the critical, revisionist and deconstructive potential of biographical fictions while acknowledging the effects of cliché, gender norms and established narratives in many of the texts under investigation. The introduction of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.comChapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Providing a Nordic historical perspective, this collection aims to further our understanding of trade union activism and its role in modern society. Contributions from a range of leading scholars analyse the organisational conditions of mobilisation that were deployed by Nordic unionists, and explore the way that they interacted with other forms of social and political protest during the twentieth century. Covering illegal or so-called wildcat strikes, blockades, demonstrations and other activist measures, the authors examine the way that trade union activism in the Nordic countries aimed to move the political combat zone from the meeting rooms of the respective confederations into the streets and the public domain. The collection focuses on cases from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, but comparisons are also made with countries such as Iceland, Germany, and the USA. Exploring the ways in which political parties have intervened in Nordic trade union activism since the early twentieth century, this unique collection offers new insights for those interested in labour market dynamics and the complex process behind the formation of salary and employment conditions.

Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America is organized around the critical and theoretical ¿turn¿ known as hydro-criticism, an innovative approach to the study of the ways in which bodies of water (oceans, seas, rivers, archipelagos, lakes, etc.) impact the study of history, culture, and society. This volume proposes a hydro-critical approach to issues related to the colonial period. The analysed texts demonstrate not only the presence of water and oceanic trajectories as metaphorical devices, but the inherent implication of navigation, ports, islandic territories, drainage systems, floodings and the like in configuration of collective imaginaries, from colonial times to the present. This book encompasses studies of the decisive role water played in the world view from/about the ¿New World¿ since the discovery, both for the monarchy and the church, and the impact of oceanic journeys for the advancement of colonization and slavery. In chapters that combine historical,linguistic, literary and ethnographic approaches, this volume constitutes an attempt to expand the scope and methodology of colonial studies. At the same time, the continuity of maritime perspectives reaches the analysis of contemporary literature, thus demonstrating the importance of this critical paradigm for the study of Caribbean cultures. In this respect, studies particularly illuminate the connection between popular beliefs and oceanic dimensions, as well as on issues of gender and ethnicity.

This is a book about European integration and mainstream parties of the left, the main underlying question driving it being: Given that the communist left was fatally wounded by the collapse of the Berlin Wall; given that, since then, the terms ¿left¿ and ¿right¿ have not infrequently been attacked (especially by populists) as being no longer useful for making sense of politics; given that social democracy, understood as ¿national Keynesianism¿ no longer appears to be viable (as reflected in its long-term electoral decline), what does it mean to be on the left in the early 21st century and what can be done to revive its fortunes? Its answer is that being on the left means embracing principles of equality and international solidarity, and that since the nation state is too small to respond effectively to climate change and the other most pressing issues of the present, no viable strategy for left-wing revival in Europe can dispense with European integration as a centralelement, of which European democratisation is a core component.