The Algiers Motel Incident


John Hersey - 1968
    By the time the interrogators left, three men had been shot to death and the others, including the women, beaten.

A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind


Roy Sorensen - 2003
     Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before He made the world, he wastold: Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that. A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at questions like that and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with suchthinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken towardthese puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor.

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.”

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq


Dunya Mikhail - 2018
    Mikhail extensively interviews these women—who’ve lost their families and loved ones, who’ve been sexually abused, psychologically tortured, and forced to manufacture chemical weapons—and as their tales unfold, an unlikely hero emerges: a beekeeper, who uses his knowledge of the local terrain, along with a wide network of transporters, helpers, and former cigarette smugglers, to bring these women, one by one, through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, back into safety.In the face of inhuman suffering, this powerful work of nonfiction offers a counterpoint to Daesh’s genocidal extremism: hope, as ordinary people risk their own lives to save those of others.

Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts


Bill Ashcroft - 1998
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders


Gary M. Lavergne - 1997
    He gunned down forty-five people inside and around the Tower before he was killed by two Austin police officers. In addition to promoting the rise of S.W.A.T. teams to respond to future crises, the murders spawned debates over issues which still plague America today: domestic violence, child abuse, drug abuse, military indoctrination, the insanity defense, and the delicate balance between civil liberties and public safety.

The Great War, 1914 1918


Marc Ferro - 1969
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Desert Heat (Victor Loshak #4)


L.T. Vargus - 2022
    A human body draped over the limbs of a cactus. Sand scouring the naked flesh every time the wind blows.A shocking death launches Special Agent Victor Loshak on a new investigation with an ominous message: They know everything. He heads to Tucson, Arizona, where a recent murder spree seems to be linked to the human trafficking conspiracy he's been working in secret for months.Loshak still has dreams about the Kansas City case. Nightmares about the team of techs peeling up the floorboards in a suburban home. Finding the rotting bodies face down in the muddy earth of the crawlspace. A grisly discovery that ultimately led to more questions than answers.Now he may be closer than ever to solving the puzzle.If you follow the conspiracy rabbit hole all the way down, you eventually reach the bottom.The task force working the desert murders seems oblivious to the conspiracy link, and Loshak must tread lightly. He doesn't know who to trust, what information to share.The tendrils of the human trafficking ring lead in all directions outward from that Kansas City crawlspace. Their influence reaches the highest levels of government and law enforcement. They have eyes and ears everywhere.Even with the complications, the Tucson case slowly unravels the web of connections behind the crimes, both the murders and the conspiracy.Questions get answered. Names and faces are laid bare. Puzzle pieces snapping into place at long last.But the revelations bring about the gravest danger yet.

I Wished


Dennis Cooper - 2021
    In his first novel in ten years, Dennis Cooper writes about George Miles, love, loss, addiction, suicide, and how fiction can capture these things, and how it fails to capture them. Candid and powerful, I Wished is a radical work of shifting forms. It includes appearances by Santa Claus, land artist James Turrell, sentient prairie dogs, John Wayne Gacy, Nick Drake, and George, the muse for Cooper’s acclaimed novels Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period, collectively known as “The George Miles Cycle.” In revisiting the inspiration for the Cycle, Dennis has written a masterwork: the most raw, personal, and haunted book of his career.

New Perspectives on Historical Writing


Peter Burke - 1991
    For this new edition, the book has been thoroughly revised and updated and includes an entirely new chapter on environmental history.Peter Burke is joined here by a distinguished group of internationally renowned historians, including Robert Darnton, Ivan Gaskell, Richard Grove, Giovanni Levi, Roy Porter, Gwyn Prins, Joan Scott, Jim Sharpe, Richard Tuck, and Henk Wesseling. The contributions examine a wide range of interdisciplinary areas of historical research, including women's history, history from below, the history of reading, oral history, the history of the body, microhistory, the history of events, the history of images, and political history.

Walking Miracle: How Faith, Positive Thinking, and Passion for Football Brought Me Back from Paralysis...and Helped Me Find Purpose


Ryan Shazier - 2021
    But then Ryan was forced to redefine success. Suddenly, it was no longer measured by tackles or sacks, but by purpose and faith.WALKING MIRACLE is the story of this new definition of success, following the arc from December 4, 2017, when Shazier was injured playing the Cincinnati Bengals, to his retirement. For three years, Shazier doggedly pursued a return to professional football. He took small wins as “first downs” on the drive to return to the field: moving his toes, walking, dancing at his wedding, and ultimately running and returning to the team. What Shazier didn’t realize is that along the way, he was preparing himself for another purpose—that of father and husband, philanthropist, and football analyst. The journey was preparing him not for a renewed life as a middle linebacker, but a renewed life after the game.Here we see Shazier overcome childhood alopecia, which caused a great deal of emotional pain, and scoliosis, which nearly robbed him of his dreams of playing college and professional football. We gain insights into legendary coaches Urban Meyer and Mike Tomlin. And we see him star on the field. Shazier was one of the best defensive players in Steeler history—a history full of great defensive stars.WALKING MIRACLE—the message on a bracelet given to him by his godmother—is the story of Ryan’s comeback, but it’s also a book of life’s lessons, challenges, and a love letter to the power of positive thinking.

The Tears of Eros


Georges Bataille - 1961
    Taking up such figures as Giles de Rais, Erzebet Bathory, the Marquis de Sade, El Greco, Gustave Moreau, Andre Breton, Voodoo practitioners, and Chinese torture victims, Bataille reveals their common obsession: death.This essay, illustrated with artwork from every era, was developed out of ideas explored in Erotism: Death and Sexuality and Prehistoric Painting: Lascaux or the Birth of Art. In it Bataille examines death—the "little death" that follows sexual climax, the proximate death in sadomasochistic practices, and death as part of religious ritual and sacrifice."Bataille is one of the most important writers of the century."— Michel FoucaultGeorges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic he was founder of the College of Sociology. In 1959, Bataille began Tears of Eros, and it was completed in 1961, his final work. City Lights published two of his other works: Story of the Eye and The Impossible. Bataille died in 1962.

The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology


Aldon D. Morris - 2015
    Morris’s ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline. Calling into question the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has traditionally given credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible. Morris uncovers the seminal theoretical work of Du Bois in developing a “scientific” sociology through a variety of methodologies and examines how the leading scholars of the day disparaged and ignored Du Bois’s work.The Scholar Denied is based on extensive, rigorous primary source research; the book is the result of a decade of research, writing, and revision. In exposing the economic and political factors that marginalized the contributions of Du Bois and enabled Park and his colleagues to be recognized as the “fathers” of the discipline, Morris delivers a wholly new narrative of American intellectual and social history that places one of America’s key intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois, at its center.The Scholar Denied is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, racial inequality, and the academy. In challenging our understanding of the past, the book promises to engender debate and discussion.

Every Last Tie: The Story of the Unabomber and His Family


David Kaczynski - 2016
    But as the couple pored over the Unabomber's seventy-eight page manifesto, David couldn't rule out the possibility. It slowly became clear to them that Ted was likely responsible for mailing the seventeen bombs that killed three people, and injured many more. Wanting to prevent further violence, David made the agonizing decision to turn his brother in to the FBI.Every Last Tie is David's highly personal, and powerful, memoir of his family, as well as a meditation on the possibilities for reconciliation and maintaining family bonds. Seen through David's eyes, Ted was a brilliant, yet troubled, young mathematician, and a loving older brother. Their parents were supportive, and emphasized to their sons the importance of education and empathy. But as Ted grew older he became more and more withdrawn, his behavior became increasingly erratic, and he often sent angry letters to his family from his isolated cabin in rural Montana.During Ted's trial David worked hard to save Ted from the death penalty, and since then he has been a leading activist in the anti–death penalty movement. The book concludes with an afterword by psychiatry professor, and forensic psychiatrist, James L. Knoll IV, who discusses the current challenges facing the mental health system in the United States, as well as the link between mental illness and violence.

The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung


C.G. Jung - 1991
    G. Jung laid the groundwork for a psychology of the spirit. The excerpts here illuminate the concept of the unconscious, the central pillar of his work, and display ample evidence of the spontaneous spiritual and religious activities of the human mind. This compact volume will serve as an ideal introduction to Jung's basic concepts.Part I of this book, "On the Nature and Functioning of the Psyche, " contains material from four works: "Symbols of Transformation, " "On the Nature of the Psyche, " "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, " and "Psychological Types." Also included in Part I are "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" and "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype." Part II, "On Pathology and Therapy, " includes "On the Nature of Dreams, " "On the Pathogenesis of Schizophrenia, " selections from "Psychology of the Transference." In Part III appear "Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy" and two sections of "Psychology and Religion." Part IV, called "On Human Development, " consists of the essay "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship."