Britain and Ireland are nations of beer drinkers. Beer has been part of their national identity despite it being regarded both positively as a dietary staple or necessity and negatively as the root cause of drunkenness and debauchery. There are many cultural traditions associated with beer drinking in Britain and Ireland. Contrary to popular belief, British ales are not served warm. Another tradition is ‘buying a round’. Since British pubs are traditionally small and crowded, getting to the bar was difficult, so one group member would ‘buy a round’. The famous Guinness story has kept Ireland on the beer map of the world. The Irish government even had to change its harp symbol to face in the other direction because Sir Arthur Guinness had trademarked the Irish harp for the Guinness Brewery. Finally, the traditional pub provides a community hub where locals and visitors alike can catch up, debate the issues of the day, and enjoy the regular Sunday roast. Long may these traditions continue.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most environmentally explicit dramas. Exploring how the play stages the relationship between humans and the natural environment, this article argues that its comedically flawed attempts to represent nature unsettle any sense of human dominion over the wild, offering a new environmental epistemology.

The anglophone slang lexis has been recorded for 500 years and probably been used for much longer. Initially seen as a purely crime-based vocabulary, and despised as such, it has gradually moved into ‘civilian’ use: still outlawed, still looked down upon by many, but an essential part of the greater English language. The story is geographical as well as social: if slang was a British creation until the nineteenth century, the former colonies of the US and Australia have generated their own slangs. It is they, especially African Americans, who dominate the lexis now.

This chapter covers the economic theory and evidence about the impact of provider consolidations (mergers and acquisitions) in healthcare services. As expected, hospital combinations within local markets (horizontal) are associated with higher unit prices but no measurable improvement in metrics of quality or outcomes. Prices increase by about 15%. Currently 30%–40% of the US population lives in big cities with competitive hospital markets. However, an equal fraction lives in smaller cities that could support more competitive hospitals; public policy to encourage competition there would be appropriate. The chapter investigates economic theories of vertical integration across markets; results here are less robust. An example of enhanced market power through bundling is provided, but a health system’s ability to do so is limited by lower administrative cost to employers of dealing with a single insurer that covers sellers in such markets.

This chapter explores how five medieval religious songs with Czech texts transformed into musical signifiers of national identity in the nineteenth century. The songs under consideration are: Hospodine, pomiluj ny (“Lord, Have Mercy upon Us”), Buoh všemohúcí (“God Almighty”), Svatý Václave (“Saint Wenceslas”), Jezu Kriste, ščedrý kněže (“Jesus Christ, O Bounteous Prince”), and Ktož jsú boží bojovníci (“You Who Are the Warriors of God”). These samples of medieval sacred music gradually shed their predominantly religious functions to become prominent symbols of Czechness in music. As such, they have been discussed by generations of Czech musicologists and critics. These songs reflect both medieval and modern Czech cultural history. In the nineteenth century, incorporating these songs into new works was associated with the rise of Czech nationalism, illustrating how modern ethnocentric Czech identity is rooted in ancient traditions dating back to the Middle Ages.

Chapter 3 explores the relationship between increased social tension and the emergence of nascent conflict and finds traces of this stage in the Damascus Document. This chapter continues to examine how the emergence of violence in New Religious Movements such as the People’s Temple or the Branch Davidians can serve as an analytical lens for understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This chapter deals with the economics of prescription drugs and of insurance coverage for them. Sellers of drugs have temporary market power because of patents. Drugs are supplied under a cost structure with high fixed costs of research, discovery, and approval followed by low marginal cost of producing additional units; this structure does not permit competitive markets to exist during the period of patient protection. Health systems buy drugs for inpatients in the usual way, but outpatient and pharmacy sold drugs are priced above marginal cost with prices often distorted by insurance coverage. The result can be high prices (though not necessarily increasing ones). A potential solution to the inefficiencies in this market is an agreement between insurers and drug sellers to buy a predetermined volume with the marginal price of additional units low or zero – the so called “Netflix” model. The intent of above-cost pricing for drugs is to encourage the supply of innovative products, but evidence on whether the current patient system in the US achieves an ideal outcome is lacking.