A pioneering analysis of radio as both a cultural and material production, Communities of the Air explores radio s powerful role in shaping Anglo-American culture and society since the early twentieth century. Scholars and radio writers, producers, and critics look at the many ways radio generates multiple communities over the air from elite to popular, dominant to resistant, canonical to transgressive. The contributors approach radio not only in its own right, but also as a set of practices both technological and social illuminating broader issues such as race relations, gender...

Blaise Pascal began as a mathematical prodigy, developed into a physicist and inventor, and had become by the end of his life in 1662 a profound religious thinker. As a philosopher, he was most convinced by the long tradition of scepticism, and so refused - like Kierkegaard - to build a philosophical or theological system. Instead, he argued that the human heart required other forms of discourse to come to terms with the basic existential questions - our nature, purpose and relationship with God.

This introduction to the life and philosophical thought of Pascal is intended for the...