Best Selling Books by Pavel

How would you like to own a world class body-whatever your present condition- by doing only two exercises, for twenty minutes a day? A body so lean, ripped and powerful looking, you won''t believe your own reflection when you catch yourself in the mirror. And what if you could do it without a single supplement, without having to waste your time at a gym and with only a 150 bucks of simple equipment? And how about not only being stronger than you''ve ever been in your life, but having higher energy and better performance in whatever you do? How would you like to have an instant download of the world''s absolutely most effective strength secrets? To possess exactly the same knowledge that created world-champion athletes-and the strongest bodies of their generation? Pavel Tsatsouline''s Power to the People!-Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American delivers all of this and more.

Pavel Petrovich Svin''in (1787/88-1839) was a painter, diplomat, and journalist who spent two years as part of the first Russian diplomatic mission to the United States. Soon after returning to Russia, Svin''in published a travel narrative of his experiences.

Eight important early writings by twentieth-century Russian Orthodox theologian Pavel Florensky-Most of them presented in English translation for the first time. Splendidly interweaving religious, scientific, and literary themes, these essays showcase the diversity of Florensky''s broad learning and interests and include his reflections on the sacraments, Russian monastic culture, and other topics. The volume concludes with "The Salt of the Earth," arguably Florensky''s most spiritually moving work. Book jacket.

How much is a mother’s love worth? Clara, separated from her two children''s father, devotes herself daily to providing them with a home, food, and education. Despite her tireless efforts and unconditional devotion, her children blame her for their father’s abandonment and scorn the sacrifices she makes for them. The household she fights so hard to maintain is filled with reproach and disrespect, yet she clings to the one certainty that sustains her: a mother’s love is stronger than any ingratitude. From the window of a nearby orphanage, a boy named Miguel watches Clara with the admiration of someone who has lost everything. An orphan with no family beyond his dreams, he longs for a mother who can offer him the warmth he so desperately misses. As he sees her working day and night, enduring her children’s disregard, Miguel realizes that a mother’s love is worth more than any sum of money… and he would be willing to pay for it if he could. I Buy Mom: Coins of Hope is a moving story about the unbreakable bond between a mother and her children, even when all seems lost. A tale of sacrifice, hope, and redemption, it reminds us that true love is the most precious treasure—and that no matter how broken life leaves us, we can always piece ourselves back together through the inexhaustible power of a mother’s love.

Jan Hus was a late medieval Czech university master and popular preacher who was condemned at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Thanks to his contemporary influence and his posthumous fame in the Hussite movement and beyond, Hus has become one of the best known figures of the Czech past and one of the most prominent reformers of medieval Europe as a whole. This definitive biography now available in English opposes the view of Hus that saw his importance primarily as a martyr, subsequently invoked by a variety of religious, national, and political groups eager to appropriate his legacy. Looking for Hus’s significance in his own time, this treatment tells a story of a late medieval intellectual who—through his dedicated pursuit of what he understood as his mission—generated conflict and eventually brought execution upon himself. By investigating the life and death of Jan Hus, one learns not only about the man, but about the church, state, and society in late medieval Europe. The story told in this book is original in structure and purpose. Each chapter takes a major event in Hus’s life as a starting point for a broader discussion of crucial problems connected to his career and the controversies he generated. How did these specific events contribute to Hus’s own convictions? By suggesting parallels to and departures from other late medieval figures and events in Europe, the book liberates Hus from a narrow and nationalist Czech historiography and places him squarely in a broader European context, showing a significance that transcended Czech borders. From a number of different vantage points, it raises a central question critical to understanding the later Middle Ages: why was a sincere ecclesiastical reformer condemned by a church council committed to reform itself?

Over 100 years ago something outrageous happened in Yasnaya Polyana. Count Leo Tolstoy, a famous author 82 years of age at the time, took off, destination unknown. Since then, circumstances surrounding the writer''s whereabouts during his final days and his eventual death bred many myths and legends. Russian popular writer and reporter Pavel Basinsky picks into archives and presents his interpretation of facts prior to Leo Tolstoy''s mysterious disappearance.

Very roughly speaking, representation theory studies symmetry in linear spaces. It is a beautiful mathematical subject which has many applications, ranging from number theory and combinatorics to geometry, probability theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory. The goal of this book is to give a ``holistic'''' introduction to representation theory, presenting it as a unified subject which studies representations of associative algebras and treating the representation theories of groups, Lie algebras, and quivers as special cases. Using this approach, the book covers a number of standard topics in the representation theories of these structures. Theoretical material in the book is supplemented by many problems and exercises which touch upon a lot of additional topics; the more difficult exercises are provided with hints. The book is designed as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. It should be accessible to students with a strong background in linear algebra and a basic knowledge of abstract algebra.

In the downward spiral of the Third Reich''s final days, a sadistic serial killer is stalking the streets of Prague. The unlikely pair of Jan Morava, a rookie Czech police detective, and Erwin Buback, a Gestapo agent questioning his own loyalty to the Nazi''s, set out to stop the murderer. Weaving a delicate tale of human struggle underneath the surface of a thrilling murder story, Kohout has created a memorable work of fiction

The history of the early Slavs is a subject of renewed interest and one which is highly controversial both politically and historically. This pioneering text reviews the latest archaelogical (and other) evidence concerning the first settlers, their cultural identities and their relationship with their modern successors. Dr Dolukhanov explores the various historiographical debates before offering his own interpretations.

Towards the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prague still possessed its venerable majesty, but it was fast becoming a modern European metropolis. The old Jewish Quarter had been replaced with broad boulevards; modern bridges spanned the river; and the first steam trains from Vienna were arriving at the station. Though the Emperor and his guard had recently promenaded here, it wouldn''t be long before independence would be declared and a new country, Czechoslovakia, would be founded. The remarkable photographs in this book capture key moments and everyday life in Prague during this era. Pavel Scheufler has selected more than 140 photographs from his family''s archive and written a learned commentary on each one. This book is not only a valuable account of a city in transition, but a guide to reading photographs in a way that lets us hear fascinating stories they tell.

This textbook is an elementary introduction to the basic principles of partial differential equations. With many illustrations it introduces PDEs on an elementary level, enabling the reader to understand what partial differential equations are, where they come from and how they can be solved. The intention is that the reader understands the basic principles which are valid for particular types of PDEs, and to acquire some classical methods to solve them, thus the authors restrict their considerations to fundamental types of equations and basic methods. Only basic facts from calculus and linear ordinary differential equations of first and second order are needed as a prerequisite. The book is addressed to students who intend to specialize in mathematics as well as to students of physics, engineering, and economics.

Is there a vector space whose dimension is the golden ratio? Of course not--the golden ratio is not an integer! But this can happen for generalizations of vector spaces--objects of a tensor category. The theory of tensor categories is a relatively new field of mathematics that generalizes the theory of group representations. It has deep connections with many other fields, including representation theory, Hopf algebras, operator algebras, low-dimensional topology (in particular, knot theory), homotopy theory, quantum mechanics and field theory, quantum computation, theory of motives, etc. This book gives a systematic introduction to this theory and a review of its applications. While giving a detailed overview of general tensor categories, it focuses especially on the theory of finite tensor categories and fusion categories (in particular, braided and modular ones), and discusses the main results about them with proofs. In particular, it shows how the main properties of finite-dimensional Hopf algebras may be derived from the theory of tensor categories. Many important results are presented as a sequence of exercises, which makes the book valuable for students and suitable for graduate courses. Many applications, connections to other areas, additional results, and references are discussed at the end of each chapter.

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the curtain when you go on a cruise? Where all that food is coming from? What’s going on behind the doors of the main dining room? What ship life is really like? Where the crew sleeps and how they spend their time when the lights in the ship’s restaurants are finally turned off? Welcome to the dining room. My name is Pavel and I will be your waiter tonight. My recommendation for you is to read my menu featuring real stories from the cruise industry, garnished with accidents and stories of how the cruise staff spent their time during the more than fifteen years I was employed in the industry. For dessert, if you’re still up for it, we’ll have answers and more. The stories in Life as a Cruise Ship Waiter are all true.

By adopting the ecological process as their major theme, the contributors of this volume show how the process of human interaction with the natural environment unfolded in the past, and offer perspective on the ecological crises in our world at the beginning of the 21st century.

What is the relationship between phonetics and phonology? Are phonological features innate and universal, and do they have fixed phonetic correlates? These questions have received renewed prominence in theoretical debates, and this book explores them from a modular, substance-free perspective. This in-depth analysis of Breton serves not only to introduce important data from this endangered language into the theoretical landscape but also to demonstrate the viability of a modular phonological framework. The book introduces a minimalist system of phonological representations built up on a language-specific basis, and integrates it with a fully-fledged computational framework, showcasing the numerous empirical and conceptual advantages of a substance-free view of phonology. Presenting the first comprehensive analysis of the sound patterns of a Breton variety treated in a substance-free phonological framework, this book will enhance the understanding of Celtic phonology and offers a valuable reference for postgraduate students, academics and researchers working in phonological theory and Celtic studies.

This work is the first systematic study of how monumental buildings were constructed in medieval Russia. It deals specifically with ecclesiastical architecture, but also discusses such secular architecture, palaces or towers. In scope the book covers the territory of the Kievan state and the principalities that succeeded it, from the 10th century to the 13th century. Pavel Aleksandrovich Rappoport was the author of many of the standard works on the architectural history of Russia, whether monumental, military or domestic. He was also a leading archaeologist. In Building the Churches of Kievan Russia his aim is to investigate how people went about building them: from brickmaking and lime-firing to the roofing and decoration, from how the churches were laid out to how much brickwork was laid in a day. This book treats all these processes as one integrated and interconnected procedure. The detailed analysis enables Rappoport to identify the work of particular teams of builders, even individual masters, and to follow their progress from one site to another, and one town to a second. Similarly, he documents how the Byzantine styles and methods of church building, imported into Russia after its conversion in 989, were gradually adapted to meet the needs of local circumstances and climate. This study will be of direct relevance to those concerned with the architecture and the Church of pre-Mongol Russia, as well as its social history. The investigation of the earliest churches, furthermore, represents the sole extended discussion of Byzantine building practices. In terms of methodology, the book will be of interest to all architectural historians and archaeologists concerned with the Middle Ages, and makes accessible in English material that has hitherto only been available in Russian.

In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the tsar of Russia and established a new, communist government, one that viewed the Imperial Russia of old as a righteously vanquished enemy. And yet, as Pavel Khazanov shows, after the collapse of Stalinism, a reconfiguration of Imperial Russia slowly began to emerge, recalling the culture of tsarist Russia not as a disgrace but as a glory, a past to not only remember but to recover, and to deploy against what to many seemed like a discredited socialist project. Khazanov’s careful untangling of this discourse in the late Soviet period reveals a process that involved figures of all political stripes, from staunch conservatives to avowed intelligentsia liberals. Further, Khazanov shows that this process occurred not outside of or in opposition to Soviet guidance and censorship, but in mainstream Soviet culture that commanded wide audiences, especially among the Soviet middle class. Excavating the cultural logic of this newly foundational, mythic memory of a “lost Russia,” Khazanov reveals why, despite the apparently liberal achievement of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Boris Yeltsin (and later, Vladamir Putin) successfully steered Russia into oligarchy and increasing autocracy. The anti-Soviet memory of the pre-Soviet past, ironically constructed during the late socialist period, became and remains a politically salient narrative, a point of consensus that surprisingly attracts both contemporary regime loyalists and their would-be liberal opposition.

The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought about the collapse of the authoritarian communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia, marking the beginning of the country''s journey towards democracy. Though members of the elite have spoken about the transition to democracy, the experiences of ordinary people have largely gone untold. In Velvet Revolutions, Miroslav Vanek and Pavel Mücke examine the values of everyday citizens who lived under so-called real socialism, as well as how their values changed after the 1989 collapse. Based on 300 interviews, Vanek and Mücke give voice to everyone from farmers to managers, service workers to marketing personnel, manual laborers to members of the armed forces. Compelling and diverse, the oral histories touch upon the experience - and absence - of freedom, the value of family and friends, the experience of free time, and perceptions of foreign nations. Data from opinion polls conducted between 1970 and 2013 factor into the book''s analysis, creating a well-rounded view of the ways in which popular thoughts, trends, and attitudes changed as Czech society transitioned from communism to democracy. From this rich foundation, Velvet Revolutions builds a multi-layered view of Czech history before 1989 and during the subsequent period of democratic transformation.

Metalearning is the study of principled methods that exploit metaknowledge to obtain efficient models and solutions by adapting machine learning and data mining processes. While the variety of machine learning and data mining techniques now available can, in principle, provide good model solutions, a methodology is still needed to guide the search for the most appropriate model in an efficient way. Metalearning provides one such methodology that allows systems to become more effective through experience. This book discusses several approaches to obtaining knowledge concerning the performance of machine learning and data mining algorithms. It shows how this knowledge can be reused to select, combine, compose and adapt both algorithms and models to yield faster, more effective solutions to data mining problems. It can thus help developers improve their algorithms and also develop learning systems that can improve themselves. The book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the areas of machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence.

Ontologies are viewed as the silver bullet for many applications, but in open or evolving systems, different parties can adopt different ontologies. This increases heterogeneity problems rather than reducing heterogeneity. This book proposes ontology matching as a solution to the problem of semantic heterogeneity, offering researchers and practitioners a uniform framework of reference to currently available work. The techniques presented apply to database schema matching, catalog integration, XML schema matching and more.

A collection of Czech poetry by Pavel rut, and the English translations by Ema Katrovas.