Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore—yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humor, capacity for suffering, and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has traveled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railway man, and—after a quest lasting decades—an individual pot of strawberry jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

    He argues that the only feasible explanations of scientific successes are historical explanations, and that anarchism must now replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge.

    This account of an American institution explores the possibility that the magazine, in purporting to teach about distant cultures, actually tells us much more about our own. Lutz & Collins go inside the Nat'l Geographic Society to investigate how its photographers, editors & designers select images & text to produce representations of 3rd World cultures. Thru interviews with editors, they describe the process as one of negotiating standards of balance, objectivity, informational content & visual beauty. Then, in a close reading of some 600 photos, they examine issues of race, gender, privilege, progress & modernity thru an analysis of the way such things as color, pose, framing & vantage point are used in representations of non-Western peoples. Finally, interviewing readers, they assess how the magazine's cultural narratives are received & interpreted, & identify a tension between the desire to know about other peoples' ways & the wish to validate middle-class American values. The result is a complex portrait of an institution & its role in promoting a kind of conservative humanism that acknowledges universal values & celebrates diversity while allowing readers to relegate non-Western peoples to earlier stages of progress. We see the magazine & the Society as a middlebrow arbiter of taste, wealth & power. We get a telling glimpse into middle-class culture & all the wishes, assumptions & fears it brings to bear on armchair explorations of the world.

    For many they’re as close as children; for some they may be our only children. And while most of us can expect that our children will outlive us, sadly, our pets almost never do.Losing a pet can be as difficult as losing any other family member; we grieve, we miss them, and, mostly, we want closure, to know that our furry, feathered, or scaled friends are okay, wherever they are.For years, animal communicator Sonya Fitzpatrick has helped pet owners cope with the loss of their beloved companions. Many of them ask the same questions: Is my pet happy? Why did this happen? Is it okay to get another pet? Using her personal experiences as well as the stories of the families she’s worked with, Sonya sheds some light on the questions that every grieving pet owner has, and assures the reader that there are, in fact, no sad dogs (or cats or birds or turtles or horses or cows) in heaven.

    He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our anxieties: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV news-magazines that monger a new scare every week to garner ratings.

    The average young person in the UK will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. What's causing this mass exodus? According to world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal the answer is simple: videogames are fulfilling genuine human needs. Drawing on positive psychology, cognitive science and sociology, Reality is Broken shows how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy, and utilized these discoveries to astonishing effect in virtual environments. But why, McGonigal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking exploration of the power and future of gaming, she reveals how gamers have become expert problem solvers and collaborators, and shows how we can use the lessons of game design to socially positive ends, be it in our own lives, our communities or our businesses. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality is Broken sends a clear and provocative message: the future will belong to those who can understand, design and play games.

    As Specht and Courtney persuasively demonstrate, if social work continues to drift in this direction there is good reason to expect that the profession will be entirely engulfed by psychotherapy within the next twenty years, leaving a huge gap in the provision of social services traditionally filled by social workers. The authors examine the waste of public funds this trend occasions, as social workers educated with public money abandon community service in increasing numbers.

    This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

    The authors include such best sellers as Malcolm Gladwell, Seymour Hersh, and Jonathan Franzen - and the subjects range from the lives of short-order cooks to the secrets of college admissions.In all, there are nine stories:ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY"The Bakeoff" by Malcolm Gladwell: Project Delta aims to create the perfect cookie. (Originally published Sept. 5, 2005)COMMENT"Mired" by Hendrik Hertzberg: Evolution vs. creationism vs. intelligent design. (Originally published Aug. 22, 2005)ANNALS OF MEDICINE"Bloodsuckers" by John Colapinto: Leeches are good for you after all. (Originally published July 25, 2005)BOOKS"A Cloud of Dust" by John Updike: A review of E. L. Doctorow's new novel, The March. (Originally published Sept. 12, 2005)THE TALK OF THE TOWN:"Watergate Days" by Seymour Hersh: The veteran investigative reporter writes about the revelation of the identity of "Deep Throat" and his own reporting experiences. (Originally published June 13 & 20, 2005)IN THE KITCHEN"The Egg Men" by Burkhard Bilger: What it takes to be a short-order cook in Las Vegas. (Originally published Sept. 5, 2005)A CRITIC AT LARGE"Getting In" by Malcolm Gladwell: The social logic of Ivy League admissions. (Originally published Oct. 10, 2005)ANNALS OF ADOLESCENCE"The Retreat" by Jonathan Franzen: Memories of a church youth group. (Originally published June 6, 2005)POP MUSIC"The Gift and the Curse" by Sasha Frere-Jones: The "vexing brilliance" of Jack White and the latest release by The White Stripes. (Originally published June 13 & 20, 2005)The articles in this collection were selected by Audible in cooperation with the editorial staff of The New Yorker. Narration by William Dufris, Todd Mundt, and Christine Marshall.(P) and ©2005 The New YorkerListening Length: 4 hours and 32 minutes

    For introductory courses in public administration, public affairs, and public policy.Public Administration and Public Affairs examines the realities underlying the stereotypes that are brought out by both phrases.  Public Administration and Public Affairs is about both the means used to fulfill the public interest, and the human panoply that is the public interest. It keeps up with the tumultuous world of public administration and public affairs and it reports that tumult in an engaging manner.

    It brings texts together in unexpected and exciting ways: those of Parsons and Dorothy Smith, Merton and Lacan, Wallerstein and Frantz Fanon, James Coleman and Molefi Asante. Extensive introductory essays by the editor situate the writings in their times, identifying the currents of social change that shaped fundamental questions of modern and postmodern life. The second edition includes new readings, a new section covering the postmodern controversies of recent years, and a postscript that addresses the changes and directions in social theory.

    Contemporaries of the Astors and Vanderbilts, they grew up together along the shores of bucolic Staten Island, linked by privilege—her grandparents built the world’s fastest clipper ship, his family owned most of Murray Hill. Theirs was a world filled with mansions, balls, summer homes, and extended European vacations.Newton became a passionate preserver of New York history and published the finest collection of Manhattan maps and views in a six-volume series. Edith became the face of the age when Daniel Chester French sculpted her for Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, a colossus intended to match the Statue of Liberty’s grandeur. Together Edith and Newton battled on behalf of New York’s poor and powerless as reformers who never themselves wanted for anything. Through it all, they sustained a strong-rooted marriage.From the splendid cottages of the Berkshires to the salons of 1890s Paris, Love, Fiercely is the real story of a world long relegated to fiction.

    But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all of our inventions -- our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations -- we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society.In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide.With many vivid examples -- including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own -- Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness.In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past. But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilization, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies are still shaping our genes today.

    Wilde argues that under capitalism the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-are forced, indeed, so to spoil them: instead of realizing their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away. Thus, caring people seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty, but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it because, the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

    This new edition, prepared by an acclaimed translator and scholar of Kant's practical philosophy, presents the first new translation of the work to appear for many years, together with a substantial and lucid introduction.