Chapter 1 introduces the main arguments, findings, and contributions of the book. Counterrevolution is a subject that has often been overlooked by scholars, even as counterrevolutions have been responsible for establishing some of history’s most brutal regimes, for cutting short experiments in democracy and radical change, and for perpetuating vicious cycles of conflict and instability. The chapter reveals some of the most important statistics from the book’s original dataset of counterrevolution worldwide. These statistics raise a number of puzzling questions, which motivate the theoretical argument about counterrevolutionary emergence and success. After previewing this argument, the chapter discusses the main contributions of the book, including to theories of revolution, democratization, and nonviolence; to ongoing debates about Egypt’s revolution and the failures of the 2011 Arab Spring; and to our understanding of the present-day resurgence of authoritarianism worldwide. It finishes by laying out the multi-method research strategy and providing an overview of the chapters to come.

Chapter 4 pivots to Umbria, where Fra Filippo Lippi painted the apse decoration in the cathedral of Spoleto between 1466 and 1469. Here again, primary and secondary sources reveal the ceremonies that took place in the cathedral and highlight the relationship of the apse paintings and the venerated Madonna icon of the cathedral. The bishop of Spoleto, Berardo Eroli, played a leading role in the commission, which is set in the context of his art patronage in Umbria and Rome. From the copious documentation for the Spoleto project – here published in full for the first time – emerges evidence that Eroli conceived the Coronation murals as a magnificent setting for the Madonna icon of the cathedral and its display on holy days, especially the feast of the Virgin’s Assumption, August 15. In his vision and his active involvement in the project during its execution, Eroli sought to link the Spoleto Duomo visually and liturgically with the venerable basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

This chapter is an extended argument for the existence of value (including moral) properties in the natural world, refusing thereby the equation of nature with what the natural sciences study. The argument turns on considerations of agency, seeking to establish that we could not be said to have the agency we manifestly possess, if value properties were not in the world we inhabit. Appealing to considerations found in Gareth Evans about the nature of belief, the chapter extends those considerations to take in our notion of desires as well, and draws from that extension the chapter’s grounds for saying that only if there are value properties without can our states of mind within possess the motivational power that makes possible our agency.

In setting up your model, include those variables, in addition to the risk factor or group assignment, that have been theorized or shown in prior research to be confounders or those that empirically are associated with the risk factor and the outcome in bivariate analysis.

Exclude variables that are on the intervening pathway between the risk factor and outcome, those that are extraneous because they are not on the causal pathway, redundant variables, and variables with a lot of missing data.

Sample size calculation for multivariable analysis is complicated but statistical programs exist to help you to calculate it. Missing data on independent variables can compromise your multivariable analysis. Several methods exist to compensate for missing independent data including deleting cases, using indicator variables to represent missing data and estimating the value of missing cases. Methods also exist for estimating missing outcome data using other data you have about the subject and multiple imputation.

Why does sovereignty need narrative? In modern political thought, sovereignty typically appears as an abstract concept unrelated to storytelling. It usually is defined as a state’s supreme authority over internal affairs and borders, the noninterference of other states in its domestic matters, and the mutual recognition of states as sovereign entities. This model of state sovereignty is used to explain our current world order, which itself is a product of European empire building and colonization, even though it does not accurately describe today’s international situation or political practices. Indeed, it may never have done so.

Explores a variety of mental models that depict conversational remembering.

How old is the Grand Canyon? When did the glaciers last retreat from this area? How long does it take to form an inch of topsoil? When did the earthquake occur that formed these rock scarps? These are the questions that geomorphologists ponder. This chapter will outline the tools and approaches we use to answer such questions.

Establishing how old a landform might be, that is, when it formed, has always occupied the mindset of geomorphologists. If we know how OLD a landform is, then we can begin to understand how it is evolving, how fast it might be changing, and how it formed in the first place. Fortunately, various dating principles and techniques now exist to address these issues. These techniques require the ability to measure change in a system or a landform over time, with the (usual) goal of establishing the age of a sediment package or a landform.

Chapter 5 discusses how intensifying transpacific traffic along the Kuroshio affected Japan’s geopolitical situation in the mid nineteenth century. It argues that the so-called “opening” of Japan was a process that began at sea and crept ashore in peripheral locations such as the Yaeyama Islands of Ryukyu, where a mutiny on a “coolie” ship involved local authorities in a violent, international conflict. For decades, Japanese governments had been coping with naval incursions and weighed different strategies for defense reforms, though domestic controversies delayed these efforts. By 1853, the American quest for steam-powered access attracted new interest to land-borne coaling infrastructure across the Japanese archipelago, a pursuit that materialized with Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, Ryukyu, and the Bonin Islands. The chapter shows how the shogunate and Japanese domains competed to reverse engineer steam engines and sailing technologies, and eventually to deploy their own steam-powered facilities to reclaim the strategically located Bonin Islands.

Chapter 4 explores how the literary collection adapted to audio recording to form a species of sonic cartography. I argue that Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti presented US borders in stereo, both offset from Caribbean islands and overlapping with them. Hurston’s notion of a sonic boundary is distinct from that heard by Jean Toomer, for whom folksong is a spiritual rejoinder to the violence of agricultural labor. Toomer’s swansong to Georgia’s small-town sugarcane harvest is echoed and distorted by Cuban soundscapes. Poems about cane harvest by Agustin Acosta and Nicolás Guillén document of Cuba’s rather different agricultural identity and pose toward US imperium. In these cartographies, I argue, the line demarcating continental nation from island colony is not just aquatic, but also sonic: heard in stereo, and often out of phase.

Chapter 7 discusses the emergence of new actors in the Kuroshio frontier over the decades after the shogunate’s retreat from the Bonin Islands. It observes that pirates, state officials, and scientists formed a triangle of frontier actors. The pirate Benjamin Pease vied for state approval of his local rule in the Bonins, but eventually it was individuals like the official-botanist Tanaka Yoshio or the Bonin settler Thomas Webb who helped showcase the colonial flagship project of the young Meiji empire. The relationship of state and commercial agents, as much as the swift reconfiguration of settler identities on the ground, reflected the physical fluidity and political instability of the contested ocean frontier. Taming this frontier was a project of ideological significance for Japan. Clarifying the state’s relationship with its new subjects by testing new forms of subjecthood was central to this process. The flagship colony in the Bonin Islands became the site of state-funded agrarian experiments centered on exotic fruits and medical plants. Showcased at agricultural exhibitions, these experiments underpinned the “enlightened” character of Japanese colonialism.