Book picks similar to
Fifty Key Anthropologists by Robert J. Gordon
anthropology
anthro
history
re-f-anthropology-sociohistorical
Escaping Scientology: An Insider's True Story: My Journey With the Cult of Celebrity Spirituality, Greed and Power
Karen Schless Pressley - 2007
In leader David Miscavige's inner sanctum, they built their mental prison as they melded into its radicalized lifestyle where danger, captivity and abuse were normalized. After three escapes, Karen chose between two unbearable options. Escaping Scientology Part I sweeps you into the lives of two young adults filled with hope and love as designer Karen and her award-winning musician-composer husband Peter overcome obstacles to succeed in the music and fashion industries together. Scientology re-focuses their goals toward the importance of clearing the planet and recruiting celebrities to build Scientology's social capital. Karen portrays the basic beliefs of Scientology that led to her radicalization into the Sea Org at the Celebrity Centre, a fortress where artists aspire to achieve greatness while attaining spiritual freedom through L. Ron Hubbard’s teachings. Karen shows how celebrities are lured into Scientology and develop a co-dependent relationship from which few break out. Part II reveals Karen as a flawed and complex woman when she and Peter move to the secretive International Management headquarters, where they join 800 fanatical Sea Org members that made billion-year commitments to make this a Scientology world without war, criminality, or insanity. Karen finds the dystopian outpost and its global operations to be proof that Time magazine’s 1991 article, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power” captures the essence of Scientology’s mindset, that she describes as “war is everything and everything is war.” She is no passive victim as she attempts to stay in the driver’s seat and keep their marriage intact while fighting the pressures of the Int base culture that attempt to break them apart. Scientology goes under “Cruise Control” as Miscavige becomes obsessed with his biggest trophy, Tom Cruise, and stiffens his control and abusive punishment methods on the Int base staff. Karen rebels against regulations and spends time in Scientology’s prison camp. After two attempts to escape the Int base, she is trailed by security guards and coerced into returning. Failing to escape, she questions the evidence of her own senses, and makes a mind-twisting re-commitment to become the best version of a Sea Org member she can be. Karen carves out a world she can live within as she is promoted into the highest echelons of management, appointed by the Chairman of the Board RTC to Int Management Public Relations Officer and later to take charge of the image of Sea Org staff internationally from the Int Finance Office. While working on special projects under David and Shelley Miscavige, she travels to Scientology bases around the world where she sees human rights violations set in place by Hubbard’s policies that cause her to conclude Scientology is a for-profit business that builds billions of dollars of assets on the backs of Sea Org slave labor, while hiding behind the banner of the First Amendment, claiming benefits and protection as a non-profit religion. The epilogue of Part III portrays the mind-wrenching process of physical escape, and psychological anguish as Karen plies herself out of Scientology’s grip and endures its cruel disconnection policy. She re-acclimates herself to life on the outside while, brick by brick, she disassembles the walls of the mental prison she had built, and survives with the help of her accomplice and the love and support of her family. Karen's narrative memoir shows that Scientology's plan, authored by L.
Fire Me I Beg You: Quit Your Miserable Job (Without Risking it All)
Robbie Abed - 2018
Maybe you’re stuck in a boring industry. Maybe your boss likes to slam doors. The truth is that many smart, motivated people would quit in a heartbeat if they weren’t afraid of the financial risks…and, well, the unknown. Whether you want to upgrade your 9-5 or start your own company, Robbie Abed presents a foolproof strategy to find a better job—without stressing, worrying your family, or losing money. You’re talented. Talent is in high demand. You just have to know where to look. In this accessible handbook, full of anecdotes, stories, and tips, you’ll learn how to reconnect with your interests, sharpen your talents, build a network, experiment with ideas for next steps, elicit job offers, and negotiate for higher salaries than your last. Oh, and how to quit your job with aplomb (goodbye email template included). You’ve been miserable for long enough. Look at it this way: hating your job might be the best thing that could’ve happened to you. It’s a kick in the pants to learn survival skills for the coming jobpocalypse. As our machines get smarter, robots, cognitive machines, and the simple software on your computer will render old jobs obsolete. In other words, there is no such thing as job security. The goal of this book is twofold: to help you get out before the music stops, and to teach you skills to find a job you love. Not just once, but anytime, anywhere, in any economic climate, with almost any salary goal. You didn’t hear that wrong.
Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins
Donald C. Johanson - 2009
She is perhaps the best known and most studied fossil hominid of the twentieth century, the benchmark by which other discoveries of human ancestors are judged.”–From Lucy’s LegacyIn his New York Times bestseller, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, renowned paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson told the incredible story of his discovery of a partial female skeleton that revolutionized the study of human origins. Lucy literally changed our understanding of our world and who we come from. Since that dramatic find in 1974, there has been heated debate and–most important–more groundbreaking discoveries that have further transformed our understanding of when and how humans evolved. In Lucy’s Legacy, Johanson takes readers on a fascinating tour of the last three decades of study–the most exciting period of paleoanthropologic investigation thus far. In that time, Johanson and his colleagues have uncovered a total of 363 specimens of Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy’s species, a transitional creature between apes and humans), spanning 400,000 years. As a result, we now have a unique fossil record of one branch of our family tree–that family being humanity–a tree that is believed to date back a staggering 7 million years.Focusing on dramatic new fossil finds and breakthrough advances in DNA research, Johanson provides the latest answers that post-Lucy paleoanthropologists are finding to questions such as: How did Homo sapiens evolve? When and where did our species originate? What separates hominids from the apes? What was the nature of Neandertal and modern human encounters? What mysteries about human evolution remain to be solved?Donald Johanson is a passionate guide on an extraordinary journey from the ancient landscape of Hadar, Ethiopia–where Lucy was unearthed and where many other exciting fossil discoveries have since been made–to a seaside cave in South Africa that once sheltered early members of our own species, and many other significant sites. Thirty-five years after Lucy, Johanson continues to enthusiastically probe the origins of our species and what it means to be human.
BUNKER 1945 - The Last Ten Days of ADOLF HITLER
Christian Shakespeare - 2019
Twenty-two years later, he did. April 1945 – Berlin. The world had been at war for more than five-and-a-half years – approximately seventy million people were dead across the globe. The epicentre of the twelve-year-old Third Reich was now surrounded, enveloped by bitter Soviet forces hardened by Nazi barbarity in the east over the last four years. As the buildings were blasted into rubble, pounded by Russian guns and bombs, before their troops and tanks, Hitler was hunkered down in his last headquarters – the dark and damp bunker under the Reich Chancellery. As the Third Reich began to crumble as fast as the city’s buildings, what was the state of mind of the tyrant? Only his closest and fanatical allies saw the collapse, none more so than Hitler’s servants, Otto Gunsche and Heinz Linge – two individuals which witnessed the final act of their regime. An act tinged over the last ten days in late April with selfish betrayal, increasingly forlorn hope, pleas, desperation and eventually suicide. As the Soviets closed in with impending vigour, in the concrete tomb below ground and under the thunderous booms of the petrifying battle for Berlin, the mind of the dictator disintegrated into drugs, delusion and a determination to die. Not by the enemy bullet but one of his own. This is the story of the people who held a unique place in world history – the ones who were there when the nightmare of Nazism and the horrors which accompanied it was finally banished as a dark chapter in the story of the human race.
Noise: a Human History of Sound and Listening
David Hendy - 2013
In prehistoric caves, drummers used natural acoustics to recreate natural sound. In classical Europe, orators turned the human voice into a lyrical instrument. In Buddhist temples, the icons' ears were exaggerated to represent their spiritual power. And in modern metropolises we are battered by the roar of sound that surrounds us. In the first narrative history of the subject which puts humans at its centre, and coinciding with the author's major Radio 4 series on the same subject, acclaimed historian David Hendy describes the history of noise - which is also the history of listening. As he puts it himself: 'By thinking about sound and listening, I want to get closer to what it felt like to live in the past or be caught up in the major events of history. The book is a chance for readers to discover more of the personal and social background to those stories featured in the radio series.' This unusual book reveals fascinating changes in how we have understood our fellow human humans and the world around us. For although we might see ourselves inhabiting a visual world, our lives are shaped by our need to hear and be heard.
Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith
Richard C. Carrier - 2011
Richard Carrier, world renowned philosopher and historian, explains the four reasons he does not accept the Christian religion, describing four facts of the world that, had they been different, he would believe. He is brief, clear, and down to earth, covering the whole topic in under ninety pages of easy-to-read explanation. Those four reasons are God's silence, God's inaction, the lack of evidence, and the way the universe looks exactly like a godless universe would, and not at all like a Christian universe would, even down to its very structure. Dr. Carrier addresses all the usual replies to these claims, in ways you might not have heard before, relying on his wide experience in debating and studying these issues all over the world for more than fifteen years. A perfect book to introduce yourself, or your friends, to why fewer educated people are embracing Christianity than ever before. Ideal for handing out to door-to-door missionaries.
Life After Death, Powerful Evidence You Will Never Die
Stephen Hawley Martin - 2015
He spent two years gathering information that demonstrates this and along the way interviewed more than a hundred experts in a number of different fields. Among them were parapsychologists, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, quantum physicists, and researchers into the true nature of reality. Specific examples are presented that indicate what happens when we die, for example that memories can be formed and retained despite a subject’s brain having been shutdown and the blood drained from it. Questions such as whether or not you will be able to communicate with living loved ones after death are addressed, if it is possible to be reborn, and what might be missing from reproductive theory to explain the various phenomena indicated in the many case histories and scientific investigations presented. All of us will someday cross the border to what Shakespeare called "The undiscovered country." As long as we must make that trip, wouldn’t it be smart to find out where we are going and what to expect when we get there?
Prince Andrew: The End of the Monarchy and Epstein
Nigel Cawthorne - 2020
But few know the palace intrigue behind their long-standing triangular relationship. Going behind the headlines, documentaries and mini-series, PRINCE ANDREW exposes for the first time the unknown details of the Epstein scandal behind secretive palace gates and how it impacted on the power struggle between Andrew and his older brother Prince Charles.Rife with machinations and plots, it paints a rare and riveting, insider picture of vice and rarified daily life at the royal court. It is an unbelievable story how a boy from Coney Island befriended the world's foremost royal family. PRINCE ANDREW casts a truly eye-watering light on one of the dirtiest stories of our time, giving the reader much-needed forensic insight into all the facts, allegations and counter-allegations.
Looking in the Distance: The Human Search for Meaning
Richard Holloway - 2004
Fearlessly pondering life’s end, Holloway examines how doubts too often paralyze people. He explains, “A sentence is not finished till it has a full stop, and every life needs a dying to complete it … Our brief finitude is but a beautiful spark in the vast darkness of space. So we should live the fleeting day with passion and, when the night comes, depart from it with grace.” Written in the context of organized religion’s structural difficulties, Looking in the Distance is a highly personal and meditative work that helps us better understand the myriad ways in which the human search for wholeness and healing can be approached. Accessible, funny, inquisitive and ever hopeful, it will inspire all who read it.
Along the Path to Enlightenment: 365 Daily Reflections from David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.
David R. Hawkins - 2011
Hawkins M.D., Ph.D., on the nature of consciousness, spirit, and ego are known worldwide by students seeking to realize spiritual Truth. As a mystic, Dr. Hawkins has infused the truths found in the precepts of Western religion with the core of Eastern philosophy, bridging the familiar, physical world to the nonlinear, spiritual domain. This collection of passages, carefully selected from Dr. Hawkins’s extensive writings, offers readers a new contemplation for each day. Any one of these passages, fully understood, can elevate one’s level of consciousness.
The Five Great Philosophies of Life
William De Witt Hyde - 2012
This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Human Universals
Donald E. Brown - 1991
The text is divided into three parts: the problems posed for anthropology by universals; six important studies that have forced anthropologists to rethink; and the distinctions between linguistic, cultural and social universals.
Origins
Richard E. Leakey - 1977
Discusses the evolution of prehistoric ape-like creatures into human beings, theorizing that the key to this transformation was the ability to share & cooperate in a social context.
If you want to learn Early African History START HERE (Reklaw Education Lecture Series)
Robin Oliver Walker - 2011
Moreover, the achievements of the early people of Africa are as amazing and inspiring as the achievements of any other people.This history is much older than the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.The author introduces his readers to the early civilizations of Africa that existed long before the coming of the Europeans. Among these were the Songhai Empire, the Benin Empire, the Kanem-Borno Empire, the Monomotapa Empire, the Swahili Confederation, the Medieval Nubian kingdoms and the Axumite Empire.The author also introduces the ancient civilizations of Africa particularly those of the Nile Valley such as Nubia and Ancient Egypt.The book is illustrated with 18 images and maps. Finally, the book recommends other books for more in depth study.