The Book of Mr. Natural


Robert Crumb - 1995
    Natural is probably the most famous underground comix character of all time, recognizable even to "civilians." Don't miss this opportunity to snatch up this jam-packed collection of comics from one of the all-time masters!

Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments


Gina Perry - 2012
    In the summer of 1961, a group of men and women volunteered for a memory experiment to be conducted by young, dynamic psychologist Stanley Milgram. None could have imagined that, once seated in the lab, they would be placed in front of a box known as a shock machine and asked to administer a series of electric shocks to a man they'd just met. And no one could have foreseen how the repercussions of their actions, made under pressure and duress, would reverberate throughout their lives. For what the volunteers did not know was that the man was an actor, the shocks were fake, and what was really being tested was just how far they would go. When Milgram's results were released, they created a worldwide sensation. He reported that people had repeatedly shocked a man they believed to be in pain, even dying, because they had been told to -- he linked the finding to Nazi behaviour during the Holocaust. But some questioned Milgram's unethical methods in fooling people. Milgram became both hero and villain, and his work seized the public imagination for more than half a century, inspiring books, plays, films, and art. For Gina Perry, the story of the experiments never felt finished. Listening to participants' accounts and reading Milgram's unpublished files and notebooks, she pieced together an intriguing, sensational story: Milgram's plans went further than anyone had imagined. This is the compelling tale of one man's ambition and of the experiment that defined a generation.

Caste as Social Capital


R. Vaidyanathan - 2019
    The establishment and running of businesses tap into caste networks, both in terms of arranging finance and providing access to a ready workforce.By and large, caste has only been studied from a religious, social and political angle. Though it is widely accepted that caste has economic ramifications, any study of this aspect has been limited to looking at caste groups in terms of their per capita income, their representation in various professions, and other statistical details.Caste as Social Capital examines the workings of caste through the lens of business, economics and entrepreneurship. It interrogates the role caste plays in the economic sphere in terms of facilitating the nuts and bolts of business and entrepreneurship: finance, markets and workforce. Through this qualitative view of caste, an entirely new picture emerges of caste which forces one to view this age-old institution in new light.

The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior


Sarah Kendzior - 2015
    Louis journalist Sarah Kendzior tackles issues including labor exploitation, racism, gentrification, media bias and other aspects of the post-employment economy. Sample titles: "The Peril of Hipster Economics", "The Wrong Kind of Caucasian", "Survival is Not an Aspiration". "Mothers Are Not 'Opting Out' -- They Are Out of Options", "Academia's Indentured Servants", "Meritocracy for Sale", "The Immorality of College Admissions", "Expensive Cities Are Killing Creativity". A former columnist for Al Jazeera English, Kendzior has spent years chronicling an America of diminishing opportunities. This collection contains the best of her work.

Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals


Christine M. Korsgaard - 2018
    Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of humans' moral relationships to the other animals. She defends the claim that we are obligated to treat all sentient beings as what Kant called ends-in-themselves. Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, she offers anexplanation of why animals are the sorts of beings for whom things can be good or bad. She then turns to Kant's argument for the value of humanity to show that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends-in-ourselves, in two senses. Kant argued that as autonomous beings, we claim to beends-in-ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. Korsgaard argues that as beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us tojoining with other autonomous beings in relations of moral reciprocity. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient creature as something of absolute importance.Korsgaard argues that human beings are not more important than the other animals, that our moral nature does not make us superior to the other animals, and that our unique capacities do not make us better off than the other animals. She criticizes the marginal cases argument and advances a newview of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. She criticizes Kant's own view that our duties to animals are indirect, and offers a non-utilitarian account of the relation between pleasure and the good. She also addresses a number of directly practical questions: whether wehave the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us and fight in our wars, and keep them as pets; and how to understand the wrong that we do when we cause a species to go extinct.

American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism


Matthew Avery Sutton - 2014
    Perceiving the United States as besieged by Satanic forces--communism and secularism, family breakdown and government encroachment--Billy Sunday, Charles Fuller, Billy Graham, and others took to the pulpit and airwaves to explain how Biblical end-times prophecy made sense of a world ravaged by global wars, genocide, and the threat of nuclear extinction. Believing Armageddon was nigh, these preachers used what little time was left to warn of the coming Antichrist, save souls, and prepare the nation for God's final judgment.By the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and conservative Republicans appropriated evangelical ideas to create a morally infused political agenda that challenged the pragmatic tradition of governance through compromise and consensus. Following 9/11, the politics of apocalypse continued to resonate with an anxious populace seeking a roadmap through a world spinning out of control. Premillennialist evangelicals have erected mega-churches, shaped the culture wars, made and destroyed presidential hopefuls, and brought meaning to millions of believers. Narrating the story of modern evangelicalism from the perspective of the faithful, Sutton demonstrates how apocalyptic thinking continues to exert enormous influence over the American mainstream today.

Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World


Michele Gelfand - 2018
    With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference—how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms. Just as DNA affects everything from eye color to height, our tight-loose social coding influences much of what we do. Why are clocks in Germany so accurate while those in Brazil are frequently wrong? Why do New Zealand’s women have the highest number of sexual partners? Why are red and blue states really so divided? Why was the Daimler-Chrysler merger ill-fated from the start? Why is the driver of a Jaguar more likely to run a red light than the driver of a plumber’s van? Why does one spouse prize running a tight ship while the other refuses to sweat the small stuff? In search of a common answer, Gelfand spent two decades conducting research in more than fifty countries. Across all age groups, family variations, social classes, businesses, states, and nationalities, she has identified a primal pattern that can trigger cooperation or conflict. Her fascinating conclusion: behavior is highly influenced by the perception of threat. “A useful and engaging take on human behavior” (Kirkus Reviews) with an approach that is consistently riveting, Rule Makers, Ruler Breakers thrusts many of the puzzling attitudes and actions we observe into sudden and surprising clarity.

The Bias of Communication


Harold A. Innis - 1964
    It is a collection of essays by one of Canada's greatest historians, on a subject that opened broad new avenues of thought on the role of media in the creation of history. Marshall McLuhan, deeply influenced by these essays, led North America to a new awareness of the role of media in contemporary culture. The works of Harold Innis are seminal in the study of Canadian history; the essays in this volume continue to generate intense dabate among historians, communications scholars, and media theorists.

Made in Britain


Evan Davis - 2011
    Like Andrew Marr's HISTORY OF MODERN BRITAIN or Michael Palin's HIMALAYA, the book will have a coherence and life beyond the television series, mirroring its basic structure, but looking at some issues in greater depth, and telling additional stories to illustrate some of the ideas.This book is about the things that Britain produces in order to pay its way in the world, from physical goods that we can see and feel, to intangible services that are much harder to quantify. We don't have to be prejudiced in favour of certain types of value: we shouldn't assume finance is modern, and manufacturing out of date for example. What matters is what sells and for how much. From manufacturing to technology, design and the services industries, this book will provide a cutting edge analysis - via entertaining stories - about what we make and why it matters.

From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor


Steven M. Cahn - 2008
    Cahn's advice on the professorial life covers an extensive range of critical issues: how to plan, complete, and defend a dissertation; how to navigate a job interview; how to improve teaching performance; how to prepare and publish research; how to develop a professional network; and how to garner support for tenure. He deals with such hurdles as a difficult dissertation advisor, problematic colleagues, and the pressures of the tenure clock. Whether you are beginning graduate study, hoping to secure an academic position, or striving to build a professorial career, Cahn's insights are invaluable to traversing the thickets of academia.

When Memory Comes


Saul Friedländer - 1978
    In 1939, seven-year-old Saul and his family were forced to flee to France, where they lived through the German Occupation, until his parents' ill-fated attempt to flee to Switzerland. They were able to hide their son in a Roman Catholic seminary before being sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. After an imposed religious conversion, young Saul began training for priesthood. The birth of Israel prompted his discovery of his Jewish past and his true identity.   Friedländer brings his story movingly to life, shifting between his Israeli present and his European past with grace and restraint. His keen eye spares nothing, not even himself, as he explores the ways in which the loss of his parents, his conversion to Catholicism, and his deep-seated Jewish roots combined to shape him into the man he is today. Friedländer's retrospective view of his journey of grief and self-discovery provides readers with a rare experience: a memoir of feeling with intellectual backbone, in equal measure tender and insightful.

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design


Charles Montgomery - 2012
    Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and condo towers an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world’s most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience and Montgomery’s own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how our cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the world--and all of us can help build it.

Speeches and Writings 1859–1865


Abraham Lincoln - 1989
    His addresses at Gettysburg and at his inaugurals, his presidential messages and public lectures, are an essential record of the war and have forever shaped the nation’s memories of it. This Library of America volume collects writings from 1859 to 1865 and contains 555 speeches, messages, proclamations, letters, memoranda, and fragments. They record the words and deeds—the order to resupply Fort Sumter, the emancipation of the slaves held in the Confederacy, and proposals to offer the South generous terms of reconstruction—by which he hoped to defend and preserve the Union.The speeches and letters Lincoln wrote in 1859 and 1860 show his unyielding opposition to the spread of slavery and his canny appraisals of the upcoming election in which he was to win the presidency. His victory triggered the secession that he would oppose in his First Inaugural, with its appeal to logic, history, and “the better angels of our nature.”Lincoln’s wartime writings record the nearly overwhelming burdens of office during a fratricidal war, and the added burden of self-seeking Cabinet members, military cliques, and a bitter political opposition. He was savagely criticized both for being too harsh and for being too mild. He ordered the blockade of ports, suspended habeas corpus, jailed dissenters, and applauded Sherman’s devastating march to the sea; at the same time he granted clemency to individual Union deserters and releases to Confederate prisoners. “I expect to maintain this contest until successful,” he declared, and toward that end he was prepared, not without his characteristic drolleries, to suffer the paradoxes of leadership in a nation at war with itself. His writings here include pleas to his own party to spare him their patronage feuds and to generals that they act more resolutely in the field. The struggles that taxed his physical endurance also tempered his prose style, as evidenced in the nobility of his state papers, his sparse words at Gettysburg, and his poignant letter to Mrs. Bixby, consoling her for the deaths of her sons in battle.In a message to Congress in December 1862, Lincoln wrote of the fiery trial through which the nation was passing: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.” By 1865, he was ready to offer the nation his view of the Almighty’s purposes and did so in his Second Inaugural Address with a beauty, clarity, and severity unsurpassed in American letters. Soon after, he fell to an assassin’s bullet, joining six hundred thousand of his countrymen killed in the war. He became part of what he called “the cherished memory of the loved and lost,” all those who had died that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

Philosophical Hermeneutics


Hans-Georg Gadamer - 1976
    Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes


Jacques Ellul - 1962
    With the logic which is the great instrument of French thought, [Ellul] explores and attempts to prove the thesis that propaganda, whether its ends are demonstrably good or bad, is not only destructive to democracy, it is perhaps the most serious threat to humanity operating in the modern world."--Los Angeles Times"The theme of Propaganda is quite simply...that when our new technology encompasses any culture or society, the result is propaganda... Ellul has made many splendid contributions in this book."--Book Week"An exhaustive catalog of horrors. It shows how modern, committed man, surrounded and seized by propaganda, more often than not surrenders himself to it only too willingly, especially in democracies--because he is educated for his rule as dupe. 'The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him,' Ellul writes, 'is when he is alone in the mass; it is at this point that propaganda can be most effective. This is the situation of the 'lonely crowd,' or of isolation in the mass, which is a natural product of modern-day society, which is both used and deepened by the mass media.' "--Los Angeles Free Press