Book picks similar to
In a Dark Time by Robert J. Lifton


poetry
philosophy
fr-c-2
fiction-general

Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times


Nancy F. Koehn - 2013
     Featuring “five stand-alone case studies that are well-written and interesting” (The New York Times), Koehn begins each section by showing her protagonist on the precipice of a great crisis: Shackleton marooned on an Antarctic ice floe; Lincoln on the verge of seeing the Union collapse; escaped slave Douglass facing possible capture; Bonhoeffer agonizing over how to counter absolute evil with faith; Carson racing against the cancer ravaging her in a bid to save the planet. Readers then learn about each person’s childhood and see the individual growing—step by step—into the person he or she will ultimately become. Significantly, as we follow each leader’s against-all-odds journey, we begin to glean an essential truth: leaders are not born but made. In a book dense with epiphanies, the most galvanizing one may be that the power and courage to lead resides in each of us. Providing both great insight and exceptionally rendered human drama, Forged in Crisis is “a highly engaging (and well documented)…book that quietly surpasses many so-called leadership tomes” (Booklist, starred review).

A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love


Richard Dawkins - 2003
    He revisits the meme, the unit of cultural information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work The Selfish Gene. He makes moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams; he shares correspondence with the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; and he visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife preserve. He concludes the essays with a vivid note to his ten-year-old daughter, reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the examined life.

Rules for Retrogrades: Forty Tactics to Defeat the Radical Left


Timothy J. Gordon - 2020
     In the words of Shakespeare, a retrograde is one of God’s spies. The retrograde has the unique capacity for understanding the stark chasm between the degenerate, socialist-infiltrated world of decay on one side and the well-meaning, good-hearted, but clueless Christian world on the other. In a time of such profound decay, being one of God’s spies is a last resort and a pure necessity: it involves not “deep cover,”—i.e., acting like the enemy—but rather “half cover”: acting as a “contra” in the secular arena, a crypto-Christian counterinsurgent willing to fight like a Navy Seal and to think like a counterintel officer. Retrogrades . . . to the streets: our aim is to reverse the deliberate, deuced machinations of “radicals” like Saul Alinsky who, by penning the rulebook of radicalism, threw down a challenge that has, until now, gone unanswered. Rules for Retrogrades is the handbook men of good will need to win the culture war! Here is a sampling from the call to action found within these pages: No truth is “off-limits”; we must never be ashamed to be candid. It is a damnable lie that humility disallows Christians from standing up (for what they believe) in the cultural and political forum! Control of language is control of thought; don’t let radicals control the language. Never trust a man who is unwilling to have enemies. Radicals form coalitions but retrogrades form fellowships. The root of cultural decay is feminism: end feminism to end radicalism.

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure


Daniel Quinn - 1999
    We all know there's no one right way to build a bicycle, no one right way to design an automobile, no one right way to make a pair of shoes, but we're convinced that there must be only one right way to live -- and the one we have is it, no matter what. Beyond Civilization makes practical sense of the vision of Daniel Quinn's best-selling novel Ishmael. Examining ancient civilizations such as the Maya and the Olmec, as well as modern-day microcosms of alternative living like circus societies, Quinn guides us on a quest for a new model for society, one that is forward-thinking and encourages diversity instead of suppressing it. Beyond Civilization is not about a "New World Order" but a "New Personal World Order" that would allow people to assert control over their own destiny and grant them the freedom to create their own way of life right now -- not in some distant utopian future.

How to Bomb the U.S. Gov't


Sam Hyde
    This is our protestation against Toxic Hellworld Culture™, including but not limited to: nihilism, people who don't know what to do with debt/money, BPA incl. touching receipts and plastic water bottles, new music genres, cybernetic private-part-augmentation, women who *actually* deserve ~it~ (you know what I mean), and Bad Sex Play™.It's everything you know and love about MDE, and more, in traditional 2D format, so you can print it out and have something to look @ after the inevitable "Russian" EMP attack. Cheers gents.744 Extremely Funny Pages. You will laugh out loud more than once--we guarantee it. This is the product of four years hard labor: raw primo content that is too unchained and unshackled for sketches or video format. It's our magnum opus and best work and we are damn proud. Fourteen dollars is a high price especially since you have less than a thousand dollars in your checking account and you eat noodles and McDonald's every night, but you will be provided with HOURS of CLEAN laughs and smiles. Not to mention you will be really and truly supporting the hell out of independent comedy.I think that's enough text but this thing is so fowcking good I just have to write another paragraph. Every time I touch it is like my first kiss. Charls had tears in his eyes flipping through it last night. We hope you like it man--we hope you find something in here to believe in, to bite into, to use against your enemies, to uplift all Mankind (the wrestler).

ABC of Reading


Ezra Pound - 1934
    With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulously chosen from the classics, and the concluding “Treatise on Meter” provides an illuminating essay for anyone aspiring to read and write poetry. The ABC of Reading emphasizes Pound's ability to discover neglected and unknown genius, distinguish originals from imitations, and open new avenues in literature for our time.

The Vanishing of Flight MH370: The True Story of the Hunt for the Missing Malaysian Plane


Richard Quest - 2016
    The airplane’s whereabouts and fate would quickly become one of the biggest aviation mysteries of our time...   Richard Quest, CNN’s Aviation Correspondent, was one of the leading journalists covering the story. In a coincidence, Quest had interviewed one of the two pilots a few weeks before the disappearance. It is here that he begins his gripping account of those tense weeks in March, presenting a fascinating chronicle of an international search effort, which despite years of searching and tens of millions of dollars spent has failed to find the plane.   Quest dissects what happened in the hours following the plane’s disappearance and chronicles the days and weeks of searching, which led to nothing but increasing despair. He takes apart the varying responses from authorities and the discrepancies in reports, the wide range of theories, the startling fact that the plane actually turned around and flew in the opposite direction, and what solutions the aviation industry must now implement to ensure it never happens again.   What emerges is a riveting chronicle of a tragedy that continues to baffle everyone from aviation experts to satellite engineers to politicians—and which to this day worries the traveling public that it could happen again. INCLUDES PHOTOS

The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense


Gad Saad - 2020
    Dr. Gad Saad, the host of the YouTube show THE SAAD TRUTH, exposes the bad ideas—what he calls “idea pathogens”—that are killing common sense and rational debate. Incubated in our universities and spread through the tyranny of political correctness, these ideas are endangering our most basic freedoms—including freedom of thought and speech. The danger is grave, but as Dr. Saad shows, politically correct dogma is riddled with logical fallacies. We have powerful weapons to fight back with—if we have the courage to use them. A provocative guide to defending reason and intellectual freedom and a battle cry for the preservation of our fundamental rights.

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth


Margaret Atwood - 2007
    She doesn’t talk about high finance or managing money; instead, she goes far deeper to explore debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By looking at how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day, from the stories we tell of revenge and sin to the way we order social relationships, Atwood argues that the idea of what we owe may well be built into the human imagination as one of its most dynamic metaphors. Her final lecture addresses the notion of a debt to nature and the need to find new ways of interacting with the natural world before it is too late.

गंधाली


Ranjit Desai
    The name indicates that this is a set of stories having it's own fragrance.

Under Our Skin: A White Family's Journey through South Africa's Darkest Years


Donald McRae - 2012
    The McRaes, like so many white people, seemed oblivious to the violent injustices of apartheid. As the author grew up, the political differences between father and son widened and when Don refused to join up for National Service, risking imprisonment or exile overseas, the two were torn apart. It wasn't until years later that the author discovered that the father with whom he had fought so bitterly had later in his life transformed himself into a political hero. Risking everything one dark and rainy night Ian McRae travelled secretly into the black township of Soweto to meet members of Nelson Mandela's then banned African National Congress to discuss ways to bring power to black South Africa. He had no political ambitions; he was just a man trying to replace the worst in himself with something better.Under Our Skin is a memoir of these tumultuous years in South Africa's history, as told through the author's family story. It offers an intimate and penetrating perspective on life under apartheid, and tells a story of courage and fear, hope and desolation and love and pain, especially between a father and his son.

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few


Robert B. Reich - 2004
    Reich, and now he reveals the cycles of power and influence that have perpetuated a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years. He makes clear how centrally problematic our veneration of the "free market" is, and how it has masked the power of the moneyed interests to tilt the market to their benefit. He exposes the falsehoods that have been bolstered by the corruption of our democracy by big corporations and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street-- that all workers are paid what they're "worth," a higher minimum wage equals fewer jobs, corporations must serve shareholders before employees. Ever the pragmatist, Reich sees hope for reversing our slide toward inequality and diminished opportunity by shoring up the countervailing power of everyone else. Here is a revelatory indictment of our economic status quo and an empowering call to civic action.

A Pen Warmed-Up in Hell: Mark Twain in Protest.


Mark Twain - 1889
    Historian Norman Cantor explains how and why common law developed out of Roman law, in response to the needs and assumptions of English society and culture from 1000 to 1780, and how it became the basis of the American legal system. Professor Cantor shows that many of the current debates about the jury trial, the adversarial model and other parts of our legal system stem from this history. He highlights the minds and personalities of prominent judicial leaders, from Cicero and Justinian in the ancient world, through Glanville and Bracton in the Middle Ages, to Coke, Blackstone and Bentham in later centuries. A concluding chapter relates the social and cultural history of common law to the American system of Supreme Court Justices John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes and to the legal profession in the United States today."Imagining the Law" is authoritatively based on the extensive amount of recent research and writing in the field of legal history, and on Professor Cantor's reading of thousands of court cases. It is the first book to examine legal history in a cultural and sociological context and thus illuminates one of our most important institutions in a whole new way.

लक्ष्यवेध


रणजित देसाई
    Apart from this, many a times each state of each nation has role models from the past but not forgotten history. Maharashtra has its own idols. The greatest and most loved of them all is shivaji maharaj.

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity


Douglas Rushkoff - 2016
    Social networks surrender their original missions to more immediately profitable data mining, while brokerage houses abandon value investing for algorithms that drain markets and our 401ks alike--all tactics driven by the need to stoke growth by any means necessary. Instead of taking this opportunity to reprogram our economy for sustainability, we have doubled down on growth as its core command. We have reached the limits of this approach. We must escape the growth trap, once and for all. Media scholar and technology author Douglas Rushkoff--one of today's most original and influential thinkers--argues for a new economic program that utilizes the unique distributive power of the internet while breaking free of the winner-take-all system the growth trap leaves in its wake. Drawing on sources both contemporary and historical, Rushkoff pioneers a new understanding of the old economic paradigm, from central currency to debt to corporations and labor.Most importantly, he offers a series of practical steps for businesses, consumers, investors, and policymakers to remake the economic operating system from the inside out--and prosper along the way. Instead of boycotting Wal-Mart or overtaxing the wealthy, we simply implement strategies that foster the creation of value by stakeholders other than just ourselves. From our currency to our labor to the corporation, every aspect of the economy can be reprogrammed with minimal disruption to create a more equitably distributed prosperity for all.Inspiring and challenging, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus provides a pragmatic, optimistic, and human-centered model for economic progress in the digital age.