Book picks similar to
Monturiol's Dream: The Extraordinary Story of the Submarine Inventor Who Wanted to Save the World by Matthew Stewart
biography
history
biographies-diaries-and-memoirs
bought
Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains
William F. Drannan - 1903
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
History of the Moors of Spain
M. Florian - 2007
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
We have now begun our descent: How to Stop South Africa losing its way
Justice Malala - 2015
I am furious. Because I never thought it would happen to us. Not us, the rainbow nation that defied doomsayers and suckled and nurtured a fragile democracy into life for its children. I never thought it would happen to us, this relentless decline, the flirtation with a leap over the cliff.” In a searing, honest paean to his country, renowned political journalist and commentator Justice Malala forces South Africa to come face to face with the country it has become: corrupt, crime-ridden, compromised, its institutions captured by a selfish political elite bent on enriching itself at the expense of everyone else. In this deeply personal reflection, Malala’s diagnosis is devastating: South Africa is on the brink of ruin. He does not stop there. Malala believes that we have the wherewithal to turn things around: our lauded Constitution, the wealth of talent that exists, our history of activism and a democratic trajectory can all be used to stop the rot. But he has a warning: South Africans of all walks of life need to wake up and act, or else they will soon find their country has been stolen.
Heidegger: An Essential Guide For Complete Beginners
Michael Watts - 2014
He is a master at this!” (Roy Martinez, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Spelman College, Atlanta, USA).“To write clearly and accessibly, and yet present a philosopher’s ideas without trivialising or distorting them requires considerable intellectual discipline. This challenge is, arguably, all the more severe in the case of philosophers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein…Michael Watts has understood his responsibilities to the ‘newcomer’ very well.” (Extract from The Philosophers’ Magazine [Summer 2002] review by Jonathan Derbyshire, Culture Editor of New Statesman and Managing Editor of Prospect).“Michael Watts gives an exceptionally clear and readable account of Being and Time, while also performing the difficult feat of weaving this into an account of Heidegger’s later writings. He provides valuable guidance for the beginner through the complexities of Heidegger’s thought and much of interest for those who are already ‘on the way’.” (Michael Inwood, Trinity College, Oxford).Ideal for complete beginners, this is an exceptionally readable and reliable overview of Heidegger's thought, refreshingly free from the complex jargon typical of most academic philosophy. Full of concrete examples, Watts provides easy access to key Heideggerian notions of authenticity, falling, throwness, angst, guilt, conscience, technology and death, while also navigating the difficult relationship between earlier and later texts, to provide readers with a strong sense of the overall continuity of the Heidegger's thought. About the Author Philosophy Publications:1.The Philosophy of Heidegger, Acumen Publishing, Durham (2011)2.Kierkegaard, Oneworld Publications, Oxford (2003) E book version: Kierkegaard: An Essential Introduction3.Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London, (2001) 4.Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, Spanish Language Edition: Heidegger Guia para Jovenes, Logues Ediciones, Madrid (2003)5.Heidegger: A Beginner’s Guide, Korean Language Edition: Korean Translation Joong-Ang Inc. Seoul, (2006)Psychology Publications:6.Doodle Interpretation: A Beginner's Guide, Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London (2000)7.Lovescript: What Handwriting Reveals About Love & Romance, St Martins Griffin, New York, (1996)8.The Naked Hand: Sexuality Revealed Through Handwriting, Headline Book Publishing, London (1995)9.Graphology: What Your Handwriting Reveals About You, Your Friends and Your Enemies, Simon & Schuster, New York (1991)Michael Watts graduated with honors in 1980 in Experimental Psychology, (Sussex University, UK). Continuing with post-graduate research in Graphology, he became a personnel consultant for companies worldwide, and in 1983 assisted the Security Commission in Whitehall.Writing for numerous magazines and national newspapers in the UK and USA, he has also been a frequent guest on radio and television (ITV, BBC and Sky News channels).An independent scholar and writer, his specialist interests are in philosophy, in particular in the practical application of East Asian thinking and Western Existentialism.
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
Alan Jacobs - 2011
Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way. In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices. Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.
The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed
Amir D. Aczel - 2006
Pure mathematics, the area of Bourbaki's work, seems on the surface to be an abstract field of human study with no direct connection with the real world. In reality, however, it is closely intertwined with the general culture that surrounds it. Major developments in mathematics have often followed important trends in popular culture; developments in mathematics have acted as harbingers of change in the surrounding human culture. The seeds of change, the beginnings of the revolution that swept the Western world in the early decades of the twentieth century — both in mathematics and in other areas — were sown late in the previous century. This is the story both of Bourbaki and the world that created him in that time. It is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke — because Bourbaki, one of the foremost mathematicians of his day — never existed.
Life in the French Foreign Legion: How to Join and What to Expect When You Get There
Evan McGorman - 2000
Many of the legends you grew up with no longer apply, so whatever you've heard probably does not reflect the reality of service today. Evan McGorman explains in detail how to apply to get into this elite corps, what to expect if accepted, and how to make the most of the experience.
Jean-Paul Sartre:
John Compton - 1990
In this view, no external authority gives life meaning: mankind is radically free and responsible. In every moment we choose ourselves, with no assurance that we have a continuing identity or power. We set up determinisms to ease our minds, but in the face of the finality of death, only through our present consciousness do we establish our own authentic existence. Sartre's existentialism faces the evil in human existence and sees that humans are responsible for it.The Giants of Philosophy is a series of dramatic presentations, in understandable language, of the concerns, questions, interests, and overall world view of history's greatest philosophers. Special emphasis on clear and relevant explanations gives you a new arsenal of insights toward living a better life.
The Convict Lover
Merilyn Simonds - 1996
In 1987, writer Merilyn Simonds found a cache of letters, albums, clippings and other memorabilia in the attic of her Kingston, Ontario, home, the bits and pieces of an unknown woman's life. Among the overflowing boxes and stuffed sugar sacks was a tin box that held one complete, brief collection of letters from the months immediately after the First World War in 1919, a one-way correspondence written in pencil on flimsy paper, undated and without postmarks. From this careless jumble of pages, remarkable individuals and events emerged: a convict, a penitentiary, a village girl, a life in small town Canada at the end of the Great War. Merilyn Simonds was drawn irresistibly to the lives of Joe "Daddy Long Legs," a thief and con artist incarcerated inside the stone fortress that was the country's most notorious prison, and of Phyllis Halliday, a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl whose family home bordered the prison quarry and who fell under the spell of a man she could never meet or touch, except through their clandestine correspondence. Around them swirled a cast of equally compelling characters, chief among them William St. Pierre Hughes, superintendent of the nations' prisons, whose fate, like those of Joe and Phyllis, was bound to the conspiracies and intrigues inside Kingston Penitentiary. All three are caught in prisons of their own devising; only one truly escapes. In the year after its publication, families of all the major characters in the book contacted author Merilyn Sinonds to share their stories and find out more about these little known relations. As a result, she learned that Joseph Cleroux had been part of the Cleroux gang that burgled Ottawa Valley businesses in the first decades of the 1900s. The story of Josie Cleroux's early years and what is now known about where he ended up is told in the epilogue of the paperback edition of "The Convict Lover" "From the Hardcover edition."
Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Ryan Holiday - 2018
Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental--it had been masterminded by Thiel.For years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem." When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of pageviews and to say the things that others were afraid to say. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit--until it was too late. The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean--for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture?In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious--and successful--secret plots in recent memory.Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after reading these pages--and seeing the access the author was given--no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world.