Book picks similar to
History: Why It Matters by Lynn Hunt


history
non-fiction
historiography
nonfiction

Social Research Methods


Alan Bryman - 2001
    Fully updated and now in two colour, the text is accessible and well structured with numerous real life examples and student learning aids. The text is also accompanied by a fully comprehensive companion web site.

The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600


Alfred W. Crosby - 1988
    More people in Western Europe thought quantitatively in the sixteenth century than in any other part of the world, enabling them to become the world's leaders. With amusing detail and historical anecdote, Alfred Crosby discusses the shift from qualitative to quantitative perception that occurred during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Alfred W. Crosby is the author of five books, including the award-winning Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge, 1986)

After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation


George Steiner - 1975
    In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenologyand processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the Babel problem in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. Withthis provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions. For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantiallyupdated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in theacademy today.

Images of Organization


Gareth Morgan - 1986
    Morgan shows managers how to break free of management fads by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of management metaphors and applying them to organizational life.

The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography


Martin W. Lewis - 1997
    Lewis and historian Kären Wigen reexamine the basic geographical divisions we take for granted, and challenge the unconscious spatial frameworks that govern the way we perceive the world. Arguing that notions of East vs. West, First World vs. Third World, and even the sevenfold continental system are simplistic and misconceived, the authors trace the history of such misconceptions. Their up-to-the-minute study reflects both on the global scale and its relation to the specific continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa—actually part of one contiguous landmass.The Myth of Continents sheds new light on how our metageographical assumptions grew out of cultural concepts: how the first continental divisions developed from classical times; how the Urals became the division between the so-called continents of Europe and Asia; how countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan recently shifted macroregions in the general consciousness.This extremely readable and thought-provoking analysis also explores the ways that new economic regions, the end of the cold war, and the proliferation of communication technologies change our understanding of the world. It stimulates thinking about the role of large-scale spatial constructs as driving forces behind particular worldviews and encourages everyone to take a more thoughtful, geographically informed approach to the task of describing and interpreting the human diversity of the planet.

Passwords


Jean Baudrillard - 2000
    With the ever-greater mediatization of society, Baudrillard argues that we are witnessing the virtualization of our world, a disappearance of reality itself, and perhaps the impossibility of any exchange at all. This disenchanted perspective has become the rallying point for all those who reject the traditional sociological and philosophical paradigms of our age.Passwords, in the spirit of Gilles Deleuze’s Abecedaire, offers us twelve accessible and enjoyable entry points into Baudrillard’s thought by way of the concepts he uses throughout his work: the object, seduction, value, impossible exchange, the obscene, the virtual, symbolic exchange, the transparency of evil, the perfect crime, destiny, duality, and thought.

Roman Civilization: Selected Readings: The Republic & the Augustan Age, Vol 1


Naphtali Lewis - 1989
    Originally published by Columbia University Press in 1955, the authors have undertaken another revision which takes into account recent work in the field. These volumes consist of selected primary documents from ancient Rome, covering a range of over 1,000 years of Roman culture, from the foundation of the city to its sacking by the Goths.The selections cover a broad spectrum of Roman civilization, including literature, philosophy, religion, education, politics, military affairs, and economics. These English translations of literary, inscriptional, and papyrological sources, many of which are available nowhere else, create a mosaic of the brilliance, the beauty, and the power of Rome.

The Essential Guide to Rhetoric


William M. Keith - 2008
    The Essential Guide to Rhetoric provides an accessible and balanced overview of the core historical and contemporary theories. It uses concrete, relevant examples and jargon-free language to bring these concepts to life. The guide helps students move from concept to action with discussions of invention, the traditions of trope, argument and speech, among others. This handy guide is an excellent addition to the public speaking class, extending and deepening crucial concepts, and an indispensable supplement to the rhetorical theory class.

The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew


Alan Lightman - 2013
    He looks at the difficult dialogue between science and religion; the conflict between our human desire for permanence and the impermanence of nature; the possibility that our universe is simply an accident; the manner in which modern technology has separated us from direct experience of the world; and our resistance to the view that our bodies and minds can be explained by scientific logic and laws. And behind all of these considerations is the suggestion—at once haunting and exhilarating—that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the extraordinary, perhaps unfathomable whole.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me


Zora Neale Hurston - 1928
    In this autobiographical piece about her own color, Hurston reflects on her early childhood in an all-black Florida town and her first experiences in life feeling different. In this beautiful piece, Hurston largely focuses on the similarities we all share and on her own self-identity in the face of difference. Through it all, I remain myself.This short work is part of Applewood's American Roots series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America's most famous writers and thinkers.

Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-Of-Fame Career in Advertising


Phil Dusenberry - 2005
    A good idea can inspire one commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. An insight gives you an entirely new way of thinking about your business. Consider just a few of the breakthrough insights that Dusenberry's agency, BBDO, has offered their clients over the years: That General Electric's unifying tagline should be ?We bring good things to life.? That Pepsi should be targeting the ?Pepsi Generation.? That Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection theme should be ?Morning in America.? That Visa should compare itself with American Express, not MasterCard. Talk about moving the needle!Dusenberry argues that these brainstorms don?t come out of thin air, even at a world class organization like BBDO. They are actually the result of a rigorous and disciplined process of insight generation, one that any manager in any type of business can adopt. Dusenberry explains this process?Research, Analysis, Insight, Strategy, and Execution (RAISE)?in plain English. And he offers examples of some of the greatest business insights of our time, from the birth of Federal Express to the positioning of HBO."Moving the Needle" will help businesspeople get to the heart of their toughest problems.

Redrum The Innocent: From Wrongful Conviction to Stunning Exoneration


Kirk Makin - 1992
    

The Globalization Reader


Frank J. Lechner - 1999
    This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with thirty new essays and a new section on anti-globalization movements. The editors have replaced several abstract articles from the first edition with livelier, more accessible essays that reflect the current scholarship. With new case studies, and a more international focus, this second edition is an even better introduction to globalization studies.Fully revised and updated - includes 30 new essays and a new section on anti-globalization movements.Wide-ranging - across economic, political, cultural, and experiential dimensions of social change.Inclusive - covering a wide variety of perspectives on globalization and capturing some of the fault lines in current debates.Stimulating - not only by including well-written, provocative, and contemporary works but also by structuring sections around arguments that serve as connecting themes.

Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned its Mission


Harry Specht - 1993
    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.

Decreation


Anne Carson - 2005
    In her first collection in five years, Anne Carson explores this idea with characteristic brilliance and a tantalizing range of reference, moving from Aphrodite to Antonioni, Demosthenes to Annie Dillard, Telemachos to Trotsky, and writing in forms as varied as opera libretto, screenplay, poem, oratorio, essay, shot list, and rapture. As she makes her way through these forms she slowly dismantles them, and in doing so seeks to move through the self, to its undoing.