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The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale
by John A. ListA leading economist answers one of today&’s trickiest questions: Why do some great ideas make it big while others fail to take off? &“Brilliant, practical, and grounded in the very latest research, this is by far the best book I&’ve ever read on the how and why of scaling.&”—Angela Duckworth, CEO of Character Lab and New York Times bestselling author of GritONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Men&’s Journal&“Scale&” has become a favored buzzword in the startup world. But scale isn't just about accumulating more users or capturing more market share. It's about whether an idea that takes hold in a small group can do the same in a much larger one—whether you&’re growing a small business, rolling out a diversity and inclusion program, or delivering billions of doses of a vaccine. Translating an idea into widespread impact, says University of Chicago economist John A. List, depends on one thing only: whether it can achieve &“high voltage&”—the ability to be replicated at scale. In The Voltage Effect, List explains that scalable ideas share a common set of attributes, while any number of attributes can doom an unscalable idea. Drawing on his original research, as well as fascinating examples from the realms of business, policymaking, education, and public health, he identifies five measurable vital signs that a scalable idea must possess, and offers proven strategies for avoiding voltage drops and engineering voltage gains. You&’ll learn: • How celebrity chef Jamie Oliver expanded his restaurant empire by focusing on scalable &“ingredients&” (until it collapsed because talent doesn&’t scale) • Why the failure to detect false positives early on caused the Reagan-era drug-prevention program to backfire at scale • How governments could deliver more services to more citizens if they focused on the last dollar spent • How one education center leveraged positive spillovers to narrow the achievement gap across the entire community • Why the right set of incentives, applied at scale, can boost voter turnout, increase clean energy use, encourage patients to consistently take their prescribed medication, and more. By understanding the science of scaling, we can drive change in our schools, workplaces, communities, and society at large. Because a better world can only be built at scale.
The Voyeur's Motel (Books That Changed the World)
by Gay TaleseThe controversial chronicle of a motel owner who secretly studied the sex lives of his guests by the renowned journalist and author of Thy Neighbor’s Wife.On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark bestseller Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Gay Talese received an anonymous letter from a man in Colorado. “Since learning of your long-awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America,” the letter began, “I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book.” The man—Gerald Foos—hen divulged an astonishing secret: he had bought a motel outside Denver for the express purpose of satisfying his voyeuristic desires. Underneath its peaked roof, he had built an “observation platform” through which he could peer down on his unwitting guests.Over the years, Foos sent Talese hundreds of pages of notes on his guests, work that Foos believed made him a pioneering researcher into American society and sexuality. Through his Voyeur’s motel, he witnessed and recorded the harsh effects of the war in Vietnam, the upheaval in gender roles, the decline of segregation, and much more. In The Voyeur’s Motel. “the reader observes Talese observing Foos observing his guests.” An extraordinary work of narrative journalism, it is at once an examination of one unsettling man and a portrait of the secret life of the American heartland over the latter half of the twentieth century (Daily Mail, UK).“This is a weird book about weird people doing weird things, and I wouldn’t have put it down if the house were on fire.” —John Greenya, Washington Times
The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
by Ruth BeharEloquently interweaving ethnography and memoir, award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar offers a new theory and practice for humanistic anthropology. She proposes an anthropology that is lived and written in a personal voice. She does so in the hope that it will lead us toward greater depth of understanding and feeling, not only in contemporary anthropology, but in all acts of witnessing.
The Vulnerable Therapist: Practicing Psychotherapy in an Age of Anxiety
by Helen W. CoaleA passionate, proactive stance on the present state of psychotherapy, The Vulnerable Therapist: Practicing Psychotherapy in an Age of Anxiety picks the brains of contemporary mental health professionals and finds a common symptom--fear. You’ll see why litigation, market forces, and ethical confusion have raised a dark umbrella of angst over psychotherapy practices and discover what therapists can do to restore the profession to its former good self.The Vulnerable Therapist will capture your interest with its broad systemic approach, contextual analysis, fascinating case studies, and anecdotal material. You’ll see the need for improvement at the institutional and individual levels of the psychotherapy professions. Specifically, you’ll read about: social, cultural, and contextual aspects of the crisis of meaning in psychotherapy professional responses to the crisis of meaning which create ethical dilemmas for individual practitioners the power of language to construct and control mental health beliefs psychotherapy’s core constructs and ethical “buzzwords” psychological and legal risks in practicing psychotherapy today specific problems with licensing boards and other complaint channels problems with rule-based ethics alternative models for creating ethical therapist-client relationships Today, more and more, excessive litigation and market-driven forces are imposing standard ethics decisions on psychotherapists, forcing them to see their clients through the clouded lenses of risk management and liability instead of through the lens of therapeutic need. Much like the symptomatic children whose dysfunctional family stops blaming them and starts shouldering part of the “problem,” distraught therapists need the psychotherapy profession to address its own psychopathology at the institutional level. The Vulnerable Therapist shows how you can contribute to a total revamping of the mental health professions in a way that facilitates rather than impedes ethical functioning.
The Vygotsky Anthology: A Selection from His Key Writings
by Myra Barrs John RichmondThe Vygotsky Anthology brings together, for the first time, a selection of extracts from the best translations available of Vygotsky’s writings, spanning the entire arc of his career.Vygotsky was arguably one of the greatest educational psychologists of the 20th century. Grounded in his experience as a teacher, an expert in special education, a research psychologist and an outstanding theorist, the editors of this unique anthology chart his enormous influence on professionals working in education and child development around the world. The extracts are introduced by the editors’ commentaries, helpfully setting them in the context of Vygotsky’s life and work, providing a collection of work that adequately represents his writing, and conveying some of the great pleasures of reading him. In the passages selected here, his voice is clearly heard, the intellectual brilliance of his insights is reflected, his line of argument is clear, and his humour and humanity are evident.With its inclusion of recent translations of essential texts, this anthology will help students to understand the full diversity of Vygotsky’s influence on today’s classrooms. Seen as a companion volume to Myra Barrs’ previous work Vygotsky the Teacher (Routledge, 2022), the value of this text to teachers, educational psychologists, and other practitioners working in the field of education and child development will be significant and lasting. It is a key reference book for new generations of Vygotsky students.
The W.R. Bion Tradition (The\lines Of Development - Evolution And Theory And Practice Over The Decades Ser.)
by Giuseppe CivitareseThis book engages a truly international group of distinguished Bion scholars, offering a wide variety of contemporary clinical and theoretical explorations and extensions of the seminal work of Wilfred Bion. Readers will discover personal accounts of contacts with Bion and his ideas, including an extensive report of an analysis with Bion, as well as previously unpublished supervisions that Bion conducted in Brazil in the 1970s, with commentaries by contemporary analysts. The book also includes detailed case reports and theoretical discussions on a wide variety of topics including autism, psychosomatics, representation, field theory, psychosis and truth; and essays on Sense, Myth and Passion, the late papers, groups and aesthetics.For both experienced analysts and candidates, for those already familiar with Bion and for neophytes, The Bion Tradition should serve as an essential and up-to-date resource for study, thought and exploration.
The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change
by Michelle MiJung KimWaking Up to Our Capacity to Transform Ourselves and the World As we become more aware of various social injustices in the world, many of us want to be part of the movement toward positive change. But sometimes our best intentions cause unintended harm, and we fumble. We might feel afraid to say the wrong thing and feel guilt for not doing or knowing enough. Sometimes we might engage in performative allyship rather than thoughtful solidarity, leaving those already marginalized further burdened and exhausted. The feelings of fear, insecurity, inadequacy are all too common among a wide spectrum of changemakers, and they put many at a crossroads between feeling stuck and giving up, or staying grounded to keep going. So how can we go beyond performative allyship to creating real change in ourselves and in the world, together? In The Wake Up, Michelle MiJung Kim shares foundational principles often missing in today&’s mainstream conversations around &“diversity and inclusion,&” inviting readers to deep dive into the challenging and nuanced work of pursuing equity and justice, while exploring various complexities, contradictions, and conflicts inherent in our imperfect world. With a mix of in-the-trenches narrative and accessible unpacking of hot button issues—from inclusive language to representation to "cancel culture"—Michelle offers sustainable frameworks that guide us how to think, approach, and be in the journey as thoughtfully and powerfully as possible. The Wake Up is divided into four key parts: Grounding: begin by moving beyond good intentions to interrogating our deeper &“why&” for committing to social justice and uncovering our "hidden stories."Orienting: establish a shared understanding around our historical and current context and issues we are trying to solve, starting with dismantling white supremacy.Showing Up: learn critical principles to approach any situation with clarity and build our capacity to work through complexity, nuance, conflict, and imperfections.Moving Together: remember the core of this work is about human lives, and commit to prioritizing humanity, healing, and community. The Wake Up is an urgent call for us to move together while seeing each other&’s full and expansive humanity that is at the core of our movement toward justice, healing, and freedom.
The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction
by Jamie KreinerA revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge—and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later. The digital era is beset by distraction, and it feels like things are only getting worse. At times like these, the distant past beckons as a golden age of attention. We fantasize about escaping our screens. We dream of recapturing the quiet of a world with less noise. We imagine retreating into solitude and singlemindedness, almost like latter-day monks. But although we think of early monks as master concentrators, a life of mindfulness did not, in fact, come to them easily. As historian Jamie Kreiner demonstrates in The Wandering Mind, their attempts to stretch the mind out to God—to continuously contemplate the divine order and its ethical requirements—were all-consuming, and their battles against distraction were never-ending. Delving into the experiences of early Christian monks living in the Middle East, around the Mediterranean, and throughout Europe from 300 to 900 CE, Kreiner shows that these men and women were obsessed with distraction in ways that seem remarkably modern. At the same time, she suggests that our own obsession is remarkably medieval. Ancient Greek and Roman intellectuals had sometimes complained about distraction, but it was early Christian monks who waged an all-out war against it. The stakes could not have been higher: they saw distraction as a matter of life and death. Even though the world today is vastly different from the world of the early Middle Ages, we can still learn something about our own distractedness by looking closely at monks’ strenuous efforts to concentrate. Drawing on a trove of sources that the monks left behind, Kreiner reconstructs the techniques they devised in their lifelong quest to master their minds—from regimented work schedules and elaborative metacognitive exercises to physical regimens for hygiene, sleep, sex, and diet. She captures the fleeting moments of pure attentiveness that some monks managed to grasp, and the many times when monks struggled and failed and went back to the drawing board. Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty, illuminating account of human fallibility and ingenuity that bridges a distant era and our own.
The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You're Not Looking
by Michael CorballisRooted in neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology, this study explores what happens when we stop paying attention and the effect on our behavior.If we’ve done our job well—and, let’s be honest, if we’re lucky—you’ll read to the end of this description. Most likely, however, you won’t. Somewhere in the middle of the next paragraph, your mind will wander off. Minds wander. That’s just how it is.That may be bad news for me, but is it bad news for people in general? Does the fact that as much as fifty percent of our waking hours find us failing to focus on the task at hand represent a problem? Michael Corballis doesn’t think so. With The Wandering Mind, he shows us why, rehabilitating woolgathering and revealing its incredibly useful effects. Drawing on the latest research from cognitive science and evolutionary biology, Corballis shows us how mind-wandering not only frees us from moment-to-moment drudgery, but also from the limitations of our immediate selves. Mind-wandering strengthens our imagination, fueling the flights of invention, storytelling, and empathy that underlie our shared humanity; furthermore, he explains, our tendency to wander back and forth through the timeline of our lives is fundamental to our very sense of ourselves as coherent, continuing personalities.Full of unusual examples and surprising discoveries, The Wandering Mind mounts a vigorous defense of inattention—even as it never fails to hold the reader’s.Praise for The Wandering Mind“[A] conversational, sincere and amusing book about the tendency of our minds to stray from whatever it is we are actually supposed to be focusing on. . . . [An] engaging exploration of the subject.” —Times Higher Education, Book of the Week“Michael Corballis, the scientist, takes you by the hand and weaves through an avalanche of information from psychology, literature, history, and more to elucidate my favorite mental state—mind wandering. His high capacity for erudition, lucidity, and warmth have never shined more brightly.” —Michael S. Gazzaniga“The Wandering Mind is a pleasure to read—a lively book that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers.” —Thomas Suddendorf, author of The Gap
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men
by Christina Hoff SommersAn updated and revised edition of the controversial classic—now more relevant than ever—argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs.Girls and women were once second-class citizens in the nation&’s schools. Americans responded with concerted efforts to give girls and women the attention and assistance that was long overdue. Now, after two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, women have made massive strides in education. Today they outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic, and vocational well-being. Christina Hoff Sommers contends that it&’s time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help. Called &“provocative and controversial...impassioned and articulate&” (The Christian Science Monitor), this edition of The War Against Boys offers a new preface and six radically revised chapters, plus updates on the current status of boys throughout the book. Sommers argues that the problem of male underachievement is persistent and worsening. Among the new topics Sommers tackles: how the war against boys is harming our economic future, and how boy-averse trends such as the decline of recess and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies have turned our schools into hostile environments for boys. As our schools become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, competition-free, and sedentary, they move further and further from the characteristic needs of boys. She offers realistic, achievable solutions to these problems that include boy-friendly pedagogy, character and vocational education, and the choice of single-sex classrooms. The War Against Boys is an incisive, rigorous, and heartfelt argument in favor of recognizing and confronting a new reality: boys are languishing in education and the price of continued neglect is economically and socially prohibitive.
The War Between Mentalism and Behaviorism: On the Accessibility of Mental Processes (Scientific Psychology Series)
by William R. UttalThis book considers one of the most fundamental, but only infrequently considered, issues in psychology--Are mental processes accessible by means of verbal reports and/or experimental assays? It is argues that this is the main characteristic distinguishing between behaviorism and mentalistic cognitivism. The answer posed by the author is that, with few exceptions and for the most fundamental reasons, mental processes are not accessible and that any psychology, such as contemporary cognitivism, based on a putative analysis of mind into its mental components must be fallacious. Classic and modern arguments against both mentalism and behaviorism are reviewed. In general, it is concluded that most antibehaviorist arguments are based on second order humanistic considerations rather than those underlying the usual scientific standards. Behaviorism represents the best that can be done in a situation of fundamental immeasurability and uncertainty. A modern version is offered in the final chapter of this book.
The War Complex: World War II in Our Time
by Marianna TorgovnickThe recent dedication of the World War II memorial and the sixtieth anniversary commemoration of D-Day remind us of the hold that World War II still has over America's sense of itself. But the selective process of memory has radically shaped our picture of the conflict. Why else, for instance, was a 1995 Smithsonian exhibition on Hiroshima that was to include photographs of the first atomic bomb victims, along with their testimonials, considered so controversial? And why do we so readily remember the civilian bombings of Britain but not those of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo? Marianna Torgovnick argues that we have lived, since the end of World War II, under the power of a war complex--a set of repressed ideas and impulses that stems from our unresolved attitudes toward the technological acceleration of mass death. This complex has led to gaps and hesitations in public discourse about atrocities committed during the war itself. And it remains an enduring wartime consciousness, one most recently animated on September 11, 2001. Showing how different events from World War II became prominent in American cultural memory while others go forgotten or remain hidden in plain sight, "The War Complex" moves deftly from war films and historical works to television specials and popular magazines to define the image and influence of World War II in our time. Torgovnick also explores the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the emotional legacy of the Holocaust, and the treatment of World War II's missing history by writers such as W. G. Sebald to reveal the unease we feel at our dependence on those who hold the power of total war. Thinking anew, then, about how we account for war to each other andourselves, Torgovnick ultimately, and movingly, shows how these anxieties and fears have prepared us to think about 9/11 and our current war in Iraq.
The War Inside
by Michal ShapiraThe War Inside is a groundbreaking history of the contribution of British psychoanalysis to the making of social democracy, childhood, and the family during World War II and the postwar reconstruction. Psychoanalysts informed understandings not only of individuals, but also of broader political questions. By asserting a link between a real 'war outside' and an emotional 'war inside', psychoanalysts contributed to an increased state responsibility for citizens' mental health. They made understanding children and the mother-child relationship key to the successful creation of a democratic citizenry. Using rich archival sources, the book revises the common view of psychoanalysis as an elite discipline by taking it out of the clinic and into the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state welfare committee, and the children's hospital. It traces the work of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Freud in response to total war and explores its broad postwar effects on British society.
The War Within: Preventing Suicide in the U. S. Military
by Lisa H. Jaycox Rachel M. Burns Rajeev Ramchand Joie Acosta Christopher G. PerninThe increase in suicides among military personnel has raised concern. This book reviews the current evidence on suicide epidemiology in the military, identifies state-of-the-art suicide-prevention programs, describes and catalogs suicide-prevention activities in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and across each service, and recommends ways to ensure that the activities in DoD and across each service reflect state-of-the-art prevention science.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki'In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever' - Angela Duckworth, author of Grit 'Scientific, gripping, groundbreaking and hopeful. The War for Kindness is the message for our times' - Carol Dweck, author of Mindset Empathy has been on people's mind a lot lately. Philosophers, evolutionary scientists and indeed former President Obama agree that an increase in empathy could advance us beyond the hatred, violence and polarization in which the world seems caught. Others disagree, arguing it is easiest to empathize with people who look, talk or think like us. As a result, empathy can inspire nepotism, racism and worse. Having studied the neuroscience and psychology of empathy for over a decade, Jamil Zaki thinks both sides of this debate have a point. Empathy is sometimes an engine for moral progress, and other times for moral failure. But Zaki also thinks that both sides are wrong about how empathy works. Both scientists and non-scientists commonly argue that empathy is something that happens to you, sort of like an emotional knee-jerk reflex. Second, they believe it happens more to some people than others. This lines people up along a spectrum, with deep empaths on one end and psychopaths on the other. What's more, wherever we are on that spectrum, we're stuck there. In The War for Kindness, Zaki lays out a very different view of how empathy works, one that breaks these two assumptions. Empathy is not a reflex; it's a choice. We choose empathy (or apathy) constantly: when we read a tragic novel, or cross the street to avoid a homeless person, or ask a distraught friend what's the matter. This view has crucial consequences: if empathy is less a trait (like height), and more a skill (like being good at word games), then we can improve at it. By choosing it more often, we can flex our capabilities and grow more empathic over time. We can also "tune" empathy, ramping it up in situations where it will help and turning it down when it might backfire. Zaki takes us from the world of doctors who train medical students to empathise better to social workers who help each other survive empathising too much. From police trainers who help cadets avoid becoming violent cops to political advocates who ask white Americans to literally walk a (dusty) mile in Mexican immigrants' shoes. This book will give you a deepened understanding of how empathy works, how to control it and how to become the type of empathiser you want to be.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki'In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever' - Angela Duckworth, author of Grit'Scientific, gripping, groundbreaking and hopeful. The War for Kindness is the message for our times' - Carol Dweck, author of MindsetEmpathy has been on people's mind a lot lately. Philosophers, evolutionary scientists and indeed former President Obama agree that an increase in empathy could advance us beyond the hatred, violence and polarization in which the world seems caught. Others disagree, arguing it is easiest to empathize with people who look, talk or think like us. As a result, empathy can inspire nepotism, racism and worse. Having studied the neuroscience and psychology of empathy for over a decade, Jamil Zaki thinks both sides of this debate have a point. Empathy is sometimes an engine for moral progress, and other times for moral failure. But Zaki also thinks that both sides are wrong about how empathy works. Both scientists and non-scientists commonly argue that empathy is something that happens to you, sort of like an emotional knee-jerk reflex. Second, they believe it happens more to some people than others. This lines people up along a spectrum, with deep empaths on one end and psychopaths on the other. What's more, wherever we are on that spectrum, we're stuck there. In The War for Kindness, Zaki lays out a very different view of how empathy works, one that breaks these two assumptions. Empathy is not a reflex; it's a choice. We choose empathy (or apathy) constantly: when we read a tragic novel, or cross the street to avoid a homeless person, or ask a distraught friend what's the matter. This view has crucial consequences: if empathy is less a trait (like height), and more a skill (like being good at word games), then we can improve at it. By choosing it more often, we can flex our capabilities and grow more empathic over time. We can also "tune" empathy, ramping it up in situations where it will help and turning it down when it might backfire. Zaki takes us from the world of doctors who train medical students to empathise better to social workers who help each other survive empathising too much. From police trainers who help cadets avoid becoming violent cops to political advocates who ask white Americans to literally walk a (dusty) mile in Mexican immigrants' shoes. This book will give you a deepened understanding of how empathy works, how to control it and how to become the type of empathiser you want to be.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki&“In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever.&”—Angela Duckworth, author of GritDon&’t miss Jamil Zaki&’s TED Talk, &“We&’re experiencing an empathy shortage, but we can fix it together,&” online now. Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren&’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an &“empathy deficit.&” Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse. It doesn&’t have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we&’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping to extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don&’t succumb to burnout. Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.Praise for The War for Kindness&“A wide-ranging practical guide to making the world better.&”—NPR&“Relating anecdotes and test cases from his fellow researchers, news events and the imaginary world of literature and entertainment, Zaki makes a vital case for &‘fighting for kindness.&’ . . . If he&’s right—and after reading The War for Kindness, you&’ll probably think so—Zaki&’s work is right on time.&” —San Francisco Chronicle&“In this landmark book, Jamil Zaki gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed.&”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset
The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany
by Philip Schmitz Svenja GoltermannHistorians are increasingly looking at the sacrifices Germans had to make during World War II. In this context, Svenja Goltermann has taken up a particularly delicate topic, German soldiers' experience of violence during the war, and repercussions of this experience after their return home. Part I of her book explores the ways in which veterans' experiences of wartime violence reshaped everyday family life, involving family members in complex ways. Part II offers an extensive analysis of the psychiatric response to this new category of patient, and in particular the reluctance of psychiatrists to recognize the psychic afflictions of former POWs as constituting the grounds for long-term disability. Part III analyzes the cultural representations of veterans' psychic suffering, encompassing the daily press, popular films, novels, and theater. Originally published in German as Die Gesellschaft der Uberlebenden, The War in Their Minds examines hitherto unused source material--psychiatric medical files of soldiers--to make clear how difficult it was for the soldiers and their families to readjust to normal, everyday life. Goltermann allows these testimonies of violence, guilt, justification, and helplessness speak for themselves and sensitively explores how the pension claims of returning soldiers were to compete with the claims of the Holocaust victims to compensation.
The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present
by Paul SeabrightHow our stone-age brains made modern society, and why it matters for relationships between men and womenAs countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn't there a way we can use this capacity to achieve greater harmony and equality between the sexes? In The War of the Sexes, Paul Seabright argues that there is—but first we must understand how the tension between conflict and cooperation developed in our remote evolutionary past, how it shaped the modern world, and how it still holds us back, both at home and at work.Drawing on biology, sociology, anthropology, and economics, Seabright shows that conflict between the sexes is, paradoxically, the product of cooperation. The evolutionary niche—the long dependent childhood—carved out by our ancestors requires the highest level of cooperative talent. But it also gives couples more to fight about. Men and women became experts at influencing one another to achieve their cooperative ends, but also became trapped in strategies of manipulation and deception in pursuit of sex and partnership. In early societies, economic conditions moved the balance of power in favor of men, as they cornered scarce resources for use in the sexual bargain. Today, conditions have changed beyond recognition, yet inequalities between men and women persist, as the brains, talents, and preferences we inherited from our ancestors struggle to deal with the unpredictable forces unleashed by the modern information economy.Men and women today have an unprecedented opportunity to achieve equal power and respect. But we need to understand the mixed inheritance of conflict and cooperation left to us by our primate ancestors if we are finally to escape their legacy.
The Washington Post Pulitzers: Feature Writing, Gene Weingarten
by Gene WeingartenRecipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. What happens when one of the world&’s most renowned musicians appears incognito outside of a Washington, D.C. metro station to play some of the most beautiful music ever composed? In the audacious social experiment, &“Pearls Before Breakfast&”, Gene Weingarten seeks out the answer to this question as he chronicles how an audience of rush hour pedestrians pass indifferently by as international wunderkind Joshua Bell plays his Stradivarius. He also examines a horrifying phenomenon in the remarkable story "Fatal Distraction", in which he speaks to thirteen mothers and fathers whose children died as the result of being left in a sweltering car during the hot summer months. The result is an emotional revelation that inspires readers to take a closer look at the world around them.
The Watercooler Effect
by Nicholas Difonzo"A fresh look at informal communication, and how information spreads rapidly...An absorbing and compelling book." -Daniel J. Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs "Nicholas DiFonzo is one of the world's experts on why rumors spread. If you've ever wondered where rumors come from or whether some new rumor is true, this book will fascinate you." - Chip Heath, coauthor of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die During the 2008 presidential election, both campaigns sought to detect, decipher, and defuse a host of derogatory rumors. After Hurricane Katrina, rumors swirled about stranded residents shooting rescue workers. Tipping off the economic crisis, costly rumors crippled financial institutions as they flew through the stock market. Pyschologist Nicholas DiFonzo has studied hearsay for more than fifteen years, and in this book he shows how the process that gave rise to these troubling rumors is fundamentally the same as a tête-à-tête around the company watercooler. With The Watercooler Effect, you'll learn: * how businesses or campaigns can control destructive rumors * how to sort fact from fiction * why a "no comment" response can be more detrimental than helpful * how an organization can increase trust from within * why rumors can actually become more truthful the more they spread DiFonzo argues that rumors stem from our deeply rooted motivation to make sense of the world and are a window into both individual and group psychology. Using fascinating case studies and surprising research findings, The Watercooler Effect gives you the tools to find the truth behind the rumor.
The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols
by Jack TresidderTraditional symbols form a visual shorthand for ideas, yet their functions and meaning extend far beyond that--for thousands of years they have enabled artists and craftsmen to embody and reinforce beliefs about human life in immediate and powerful images. This accessible and comprehensive guide features more than 2,000 major themes from Absinthe to the Zodiac: figures and symbols found in myth, literature and art, as well as those that have entered into the mainstream of everyday life. Covering classical and other mythologies, Biblical themes and traditional symbols from cultures across the world, this wonderful dictionary has thorough yet concise entries on individual animals, plants, objects, supernatural creatures, mythical episodes, miracles, and many other topics.
The Wave
by Tyler CharltonWhen a boy is swept up in a wave of sadness, he finds himself tumbling. But when he remembers that this sadness won't last forever, and that the wave will eventually carry him back to shore, he discovers his friends and family waiting to gently pull him out of the water and back home. With hopeful text and gorgeous art, The Wave takes us on a journey through one child's experience with depression that fosters empathy for those on the outside, and solidarity for those still caught in the midst of their own wave. It is an honest look at depression which affects almost 2 million children in the United States. The Wave is a must-read for anyone who finds themselves tumbling, and a beautiful reminder that we can reach out to others to keep our heads - and hearts - above water.
The Wave Theory of Difference and Similarity (Psychology Revivals)
by Stephen W. LinkTwo experimental procedures prompted the empirical development of psychophysical models: those that measure response frequency, often referred to as response probability; and those that measure response time, sometimes referred to as reaction time. The history of psychophysics is filled with theories that predict one or the other of these two responses. Yet the persistent reappearance of empirical relationships between these two measures of performance makes clear the need for a theory that both predicts and relates these two measures. Most likely, both response measures are the result of a single process that generates empirical laws relating response time and response probability. It is this process — its theory, description, and application — that is the topic of The Wave Theory of Difference and Similarity. Originally published in 1992, the author of this book has set out to provide a theoretical foundation for formulating new theories that systematize earlier results and to stimulate new concepts and introduce new tools for exploring mental phenomena and improving mental measurement.
The Way Back (The O.C.)
by Cory MartinBased on the hit television series on Fox, this novelization takes readers inside "The O.C.", revealing the stories they have to know that they won't find anywhere else.