Book picks similar to
Consequences of Oppression: Hell on Earth by Pen Black


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Science(ish): The Peculiar Science Behind the Movies


Rick Edwards - 2017
    Inspired by their award-winning podcast, this popular (hopefully) science (definitely) book dedicates each chapter to a different sci-fi classic, and wittily explores the fascinating issues that arise. Covering movies from 28 Days Later to Ex Machina, this is a joyous ride through astrophysics, neuroscience, psychology, botany, artificial intelligence, evolution, and plenty more subjects you've always wanted to grasp. Now's your chance: stylishly designed and illustrated throughout, Science(ish) is the perfect gift for every curious mind.

I Know You Really Love Me: A Psychiatrist's Account of Stalking and Obsessive Love


Doreen R. Orion - 1997
    This demanding, calculating woman doggedly follows Orion state-to-state, and continues to stalk her to this day - eight years and counting. In this painfully honest account you will follow the victim step-by-step, as she finds herself engulfed in Fran's erotomanic fantasy and then struggles to regain control over both her personal and professional lives. In the process, she educates herself about the history of this little-understood mental disorder, meets other victims, and eventually finds the courage to tell her story to others here in these pages. Orion's engrossing personal drama also provides the first overview of erotomania, including case histories of stalking victims, from David Letterman and Madonna to a woman rabbi, an Olympic athlete, and scores of others; unbelievable true stories of the depths to which the wily stalker will go - such as "The Tunneler, " who dug his way beneath an apartment building to get at his victim; and cases that led to murder, of either the victim or the stalker. In a final section the author discusses the need for adequate treatment and punishment of erotomanics, and points out problems in existing anti-stalking laws and ways to strengthen them. A guide to organizations that assist victims, plus protective measures to deter a potential stalker or erotomanic, are provided as well.

Whole Child, Whole Parent


Polly Berrien Berends - 1975
    This fourth edition includes new material for contemporary parents on anger, children's dreams, maintaining individual and family life, marital as well as parental life, and many new personal anecdotes. It is the perfect guide "not merely for parents who want to raise their children in the best manner possible, it is for all people, including adults who want to raise themselves." (M. Scott Peck, from the foreword).Whether exploring love and discipline or bedtime and storybook reading, Berends shows the practical relevance of spiritual insights to the most ordinary parental tasks.

The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day


David J. Hand - 2014
    Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.     But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of “miracle” is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough.     Together, these constitute Hand’s groundbreaking Improbability Principle. And together, they explain why we should not be so surprised to bump into a friend in a foreign country, or to come across the same unfamiliar word four times in one day. Hand wrestles with seemingly less explicable questions as well: what the Bible and Shakespeare have in common, why financial crashes are par for the course, and why lightning does strike the same place (and the same person) twice. Along the way, he teaches us how to use the Improbability Principle in our own lives—including how to cash in at a casino and how to recognize when a medicine is truly effective.     An irresistible adventure into the laws behind “chance” moments and a trusty guide for understanding the world and universe we live in, The Improbability Principle will transform how you think about serendipity and luck, whether it’s in the world of business and finance or you’re merely sitting in your backyard, tossing a ball into the air and wondering where it will land.

Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior


Dennis Coon - 2000
    The Twelfth Edition's hallmark continues to be its pioneering integration of the proven-effective SQ4R learning system (Survey, Question, Read, Reflect, Review, Recite), which promotes critical thinking as it guides students step-by-step to an understanding of psychology's broad concepts and diversity of topics. Throughout every chapter, these active learning tools—together with the book's example-laced writing style, discussions of positive psychology, cutting-edge coverage of the field's new research findings, and excellent media resources—ensure that students find the study of psychology fascinating, relevant, and above all, accessible.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life


Erving Goffman - 1959
    This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives


Michael Specter - 2009
    In Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter reveals that Americans have come to mistrust institutions and especially the institution of science more today than ever before. For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad—that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial. Now, science is viewed as a political constituency that isn’t always in our best interest. We live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically modified grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. In the United States a growing series of studies show that dietary supplements and “natural” cures have almost no value, and often cause harm. We still spend billions of dollars on them. In hundreds of the best universities in the world, laboratories are anonymous, unmarked, and surrounded by platoons of security guards—such is the opposition to any research that includes experiments with animals. And pharmaceutical companies that just forty years ago were perhaps the most visible symbol of our remarkable advance against disease have increasingly been seen as callous corporations propelled solely by avarice and greed. As Michael Specter sees it, this amounts to a war against progress. The issues may be complex but the choices are not: Are we going to continue to embrace new technologies, along with acknowledging their limitations and threats, or are we ready to slink back into an era of magical thinking? In Denialism, Specter makes an argument for a new Enlightenment, the revival of an approach to the physical world that was stunningly effective for hundreds of years: What can be understood and reliably repeated by experiment is what nature regarded as true. Now, at the time of mankind’s greatest scientific advances—and our greatest need for them—that deal must be renewed.

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business


Erin Meyer - 2014
    Renowned expert Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain where people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together.When you have Americans who precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans who get straight to the point (“your presentation was simply awful”); Latin Americans and Asians who are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians who think the best boss is just one of the crowd—the result can be, well, sometimes interesting, even funny, but often disastrous.Even with English as a global language, it’s easy to fall into cultural traps that endanger careers and sink deals when, say, a Brazilian manager tries to fathom how his Chinese suppliers really get things done, or an American team leader tries to get a handle on the intra-team dynamics between his Russian and Indian team members.In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business. She combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice for succeeding in a global world.

The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do


Judith Rich Harris - 1998
    This electrifying book explodes some of our unquestioned beliefs about children and parents and gives us a radically new view of childhood.Harris examines with a fresh eye the lives of real children to show that it is what they experience outside the home, in the company of their peers, that matters most. Parents don't socialize children; children socialize children. With eloquence and humor, Judith Harris explains why parents have little power to determine the sort of people their children will become. The Nurture Assumption brings together insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, primatology, and evolutionary biology to offer a startling new view of who we are and how we got that way.

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.

The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough


Alex Evans - 2017
    They told a story voters longed to hear. And in the absence of greater, more unifying narratives, then true or not, voters plumped for the best story available.Once upon a time our society was rich in stories. They brought us together and helped us to understand the world and ourselves. We called them myths. Today, we have a myth gap – a vacuum that Alex Evans argues powerfully and persuasively is both dangerous and an opportunity. In this time of global crisis and transition– mass migration, inequality, resource scarcity, and climate change - It is stories, rather than facts and pie-charts,that will animate us and bring us together. It is by finding new myths, those that speak to us of renewal and restoration, that we will navigate our way to a better future. Drawing on his first-hand experience as a political adviser within British government and at the United Nations, and examining the history of climate change campaigning and recent contests such as Brexit and the US presidential election, Alex Evans explores: *how tomorrow’s activists are using narratives for change, * how modern stories have been used and abused, * where we might find the right myths that will take us forward

Hmm...I Did Not Know That, 1,000 random & interesting facts on a variety of subjects


A.P. Holiday - 2011
    Did you know that there are one million earthworms in an acre of soil, or that an average American eats 10 pounds of marshmallows in a year? Did you know that the act of yawning and stretching at the same time is known as pandiculation?These facts, and hundreds more in a wide variety of subjects including history, science, sports, music and more, make Hmm...I Did Not Know That a must read for trivia buffs and fact fanatics.

Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language


Desmond Morris - 1977
    Desmond Morris shows us how people, consciously and unconsciously, signal their attitudes, desires and innermost feelings with their bodies and actions, often more powerfully than with their words.

The Porn Pandemic: A Simple Guide To Ending Pornography And Masturbation Addiction And Getting Back Into The Real World


Andrew Ferebee - 2016
    Slam The Door On Your Addiction And Take Back Your Life With best selling author and men's coach Andrew Ferebee. Congratulations! I mean it. If you’re sitting here right now, you’ve taken an important step toward acknowledging that porn has become a problem for you, and that’s huge. Now, it’s time to actually do something about it. That’s where it falls apart for most people, but not you, because you’re gonna add this to your cart and actually read it … then read it again… Cuz breaking cycles ain’t easy, whether it’s booze, drugs or porn, but I’m here to guide you toward success. Why am I the right guide? Cuz I’ve been there and done that. When I was in high school and college, I wasted thousands of hours watching porn when I could have been out there in the real world finding true happiness. I even managed to ruin a solid, loving relationship because watching so much porn had really done a number on me when it came to sex and emotional attachment. With this book, I’m trying to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes. But you can only break porn’s hold on you if you’re well and truly ready to change. Are you: - Tired of porn butting into your daily life to the point you find yourself looking forward to getting home and getting off even when you’re out having a good time with friends, doing something you used to love, or even hanging out with your girlfriend? - Sick of the fact that you now watch porn that’s way more graphic and intense than anything you thought you’d ever watch a year or two ago? - Horrified that you’re getting more out of the pornstars on the screen than you’re getting out of your girlfriend? - Disgusted to find yourself having to think of different pornstars to get off – even during what should be intimate, mind-blowing sex? Well, you’re far from alone. In fact, you’ve got more company than you probably realize. We’re the first generation to grow up with nearly limitless, free porn at our fingertips, and it’s messing with us for sure. Your brain is barraged by so many gorgeous girls and so much point-of-view sex that it doesn’t know what to do. It can’t differentiate between the sex you’re watching onscreen and actual sex. No wonder it’s so easy to make a habit of it. The problems come when this half-an-hour-a-week habit turns into an hour a week, then two, then five, then an hour a day… You get the idea. All the while, you have free access to just about any sordid sex situation your brain can conjure up – and quite a few you never would have imagined. Before you know it, you start picturing women in your life doing these things – from the random girl who drops her books and bends over to pick them up to girls you’ve known for years. And the things you’re thinking are not things that most real women actually do. You may think it’s a private fantasy, but trust me, it can ruin your interaction with ladies and make it much tougher for you to find or keep a girlfriend. They may not know exactly what’s going on in your head, but they know something’s up, and it makes them uncomfortable. And every time that happens, it’s costing you a shot at real-world fulfillment and happiness.

The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome


Harriet B. Braiker - 2000
    Those who suffer from the Disease to Please are people who say "Yes" when they really want to say "No." For them, the uncontrollable need for the elusive approval of others is an addiction. Their debilitating fears of anger and confrontation force them to use "niceness" and "people-pleasing" as self-defense camouflage.Featured on NBC's "Today," The Disease to Please explodes the dangerous myth that "people pleasing" is a benign problem. Best-selling author and frequent Oprah guest Dr. Harriet Braiker offers clear, positive, practical, and easily do-able steps toward recovery.Begin with a simple but revealing quiz to discover what type of people-pleaser you are. Then learn how making even small changes to any single portion of the Disease to Please Triangle - involving your thoughts, feelings, and behavior - will cause a dramatic, positive and long-lasting change to the overall syndrome.As a recovered peoplepleaser, you will finally see that a balanced way of living that takes others into consideration but puts the emphasis first on pleasing yourself and gaining your own approval is the clearest path to health and happiness.