Book picks similar to
The Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand by Scott Stonington
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Theory of Bastards
Audrey Schulman - 2018
This near-future world is utterly dependent on these little understood mechanisms and implants.And so when the terrible, dry winds sweep out of the abandoned places in America, silencing all devices, Francine and the man she has grown to love make a decision that will determine if they’ll face a premature ending or, maybe, find a chance to start life over.This superb literary novel can’t be characterized as dystopian or science fiction. Audrey Schulman has written an absorbing, recognizable story, a book that is humane, generous and surprising. Readers will shiver as they keep turning the pages.
The Road to Winter
Mark Smith - 2016
Rose is a Siley—an asylum seeker—and she has escaped from Ramage, who had enslaved her and her younger sister, Kas. Rose is desperate, sick, and needs Finn’s help. Kas is still missing somewhere out in the bush.And Ramage wants the girls back—at any cost.
Reading National Geographic
Catherine A. Lutz - 1993
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.
Poker's 1%: The One Big Secret That Keeps Elite Players On Top
Ed Miller - 2014
Sure, they play in huge games where tens of thousands of dollars can move in the blink of an eye. But that's not the only difference. Elite players play and think about the game in a completely different way from everyone else. If you want to raise your game to their level, it's not just a matter of getting a little better at what you already do. The honest truth is that the way 99% of poker players approach the game is fundamentally flawed. You will never be able to crack the top 1% until you know what they know. There's one big secret to the game that nearly every elite player knows, yet almost no one else understands. It's an open secret-no one is hiding it. Elite players talk about it sometimes in videos and articles. Nevertheless, top players have known this secret for years, yet still almost no one else does. Poker's 1% seeks to change that. It bridges that gap between the elite players and everyone else. It promises that as long as you are willing to put in the work, you too have a shot to reach the top. Poker's 1% teaches a way of thinking about how you play, a way to unify every hand you've ever played and ever will play into one single, overarching strategy. The goal is that you will have one big "aha" moment, the moment where you finally "get" this game. After that, it's just fine tuning. The more you fine tune your strategy, the more you win, and the higher you can go. Poker's 1% gives you a unique window into the secrets of the world's best players. It shows you what you've been doing wrong and how to fix it. And, most importantly, it guides you in a straightforward way along the path from average player to elite.
The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—And Us
Richard O. Prum - 2017
In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum--reviving Darwin's own views--thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons--for the mere pleasure of it--is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.
The Children of Sisyphus
Orlando Patterson - 1964
By interweaving the stories of Dinah, a prostitute who can never quite escape the circumstances of her life, and Brother Solomon, a respected Rastafarian leader who allows his followers to think that a ship is on its way to take them home to Ethiopia, this brutally poetic story creates intense and tragic characters who struggle to come to grips with the absurdity of life. As these downtrodden protagonists shed their illusions and expectations, they realize that there is no escape from meaninglessness, and eventually gain a special kind of dignity and stoic awareness about life and the universe.
American Cinema/American Culture
John Belton - 1993
Ideal for Introduction to American Cinema courses, American Film History courses, and Introductory Film Appreciation courses focused on American Film, this text offers a cultural examination of the American movie-making industry, with particular attention paid to the economic and aesthetic institution of Hollywood.
Beneath the Sands of Egypt: Adventures of an Unconventional Archaeologist
Donald P. Ryan - 2010
I heartily recommend his book to all Egyptology buffs.”—Barbara Mertz ( a.k.a. Elizabeth Peters), author of Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs A real-life “Indiana Jones,” Donald P. Ryan, Ph.D., offers a breathtaking personal account of his adventures in archaeology in Beneath the Sands of Egypt. Fans of The Lost City of Z will thrill to the exploits of this “unconventional archaeologist” as he retrieves the remains of Egypt’s past—including his breakthrough discovery in the Valley of the Kings of Egypt’s famous female pharaoh, Hatshepsut.
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.
Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World
Billy Bragg - 2017
These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year, and - as with the punk rock that would flourish two decades later - all you needed to know were three chords to form your own group, with your mates accompanying on tea-chest bass and washboard.Against a backdrop of Cold War politics, rock and roll riots and a newly assertive working-class youth, Billy Bragg charts - for the first time in depth - the history, impact and legacy of Britain's original pop movement. It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts, who between them sparked a revolution that shaped pop culture as we have come to know it.
Shifters of Bear's Den Complete Series
Cecilia Lane - 2019
A secretive town. Six growly bears claim their fated mates.Forbidden MateLeah lives a life haunted by secrets. She can't stay in one place for long, even if bear shifter Callum’s slow, sexy smile and quiet strength make her yearn for more. As Leah’s secrets unravel, danger looms over her and all of Bearden. Can the alpha bear keep his people safe, especially the woman who is fated to be his?Dangerous MateRylee doesn’t have time for distractions or bossy bodyguards, even if they’re tall, dark and gorgeous. She’s determined to ignore the tension sizzling between her and gruff bear shifter Cole, but it grows harder to resist his charm as one wicked-hot kiss leads to another. While Rylee and Cole fight their attraction, sinister forces gather in the town of Bearden.Hunted MateNo one could call fox shifter Becca fragile. She's been to hell and back and got the t-shirt, thank you very much. After experiencing a tragic loss and the abandonment of her mate, she left Bearden and vowed never to return. Only, fate had a different plan in mind and Nolan’s bear will no longer be denied.Runaway MateMeghan's on the run, hiding from a vengeful ex-fiance after she dumped him at the altar. Just when her heart is on the edge of loving an untamed shifter, danger looms, threatening all she holds dear. The only one who can save her is a wild and feral bear.Stolen MateEverly’s terrible, no-good day starts with defying her alpha’s plans to mate her to make little black panther heirs. Everyone thinks Sawyer is steady and gentlemanly, but that ends when he hauls the curvy blonde to his cabin for some neighborly protective custody. To keep from returning to her alpha, Everly claims she’s already married. To Sawyer.Untamed MateMara flirted with darkness to save her family. Now, locked in a cell, she struggles to atone for her crimes. Will a hulking bear shifter and a mission to save missing children be her chance for redemption?The Shifters of Bear's Den Complete Series collection is for readers who enjoy steamy paranormal romance novels filled with intense action, sassy heroines, and broody bear shifters hot enough to melt your heart. Download now because you love forbidden romances, second chances, and happily-ever-afters.
Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life
James Daschuk - 2013
Macdonald’s “National Dream.”It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.
What We Owe to Each Other (Revised)
T.M. Scanlon - 1999
M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism.Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.
Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (Reprint Series in Social Sciences)
Horace Miner - 1975
The Dobe Ju/'hoansi
Richard B. Lee - 1993
It documents their determination to take hold of their own destiny-despite exploitation of their habitat and relentless development-to assert their political rights and revitalize their communities. Use of the name Ju/'hoansi (meaning "real people") acknowledges their new sense of empowerment.