Search results for ""Basic Books""

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Even the presence of sociable robots in our lives that pretend to demonstrate empathy makes us feel more isolated, as Turkle explains in a new introduction updating the book to the present day. Alone Together is the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on interviews with hundreds of children and adults, it describes new, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy and solitude.

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When EMDR was first published in 1997, it was hailed as the most important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades. In the twenty years since, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy has successfully treated psychological problems for millions of sufferers worldwide. In this updated edition, Francine Shapiro offers a new introduction that presents the latest applications of this remarkable therapy, as well as new scientific data demonstrating its efficacy. Drawing on the experiences of thousands of clinicians as well as a vast research literature on depression, addiction, PTSD, and other disorders, she explains how life experiences are physically stored in our brains, making us feel and act in harmful ways, and how EMDR therapy can bring relief, often in a remarkably short period of time. Applicable to survivors of trauma as well as people suffering from phobias and other experience-based disorders, EMDR is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand why we hurt, how we heal, and how we get better.

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A leading expert in childhood development makes the case for why self-directed learning -- "unschooling" -- is the best way to get kids to learn.In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that in order to foster children who will thrive in today's constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development. Drawing on evidence from anthropology, psychology, and history, he demonstrates that free play is the primary means by which children learn to control their lives, solve problems, get along with peers, and become emotionally resilient. A brave, counterintuitive proposal for freeing our children from the shackles of the curiosity-killing institution we call school, Free to Learn suggests that it's time to stop asking what's wrong with our children, and start asking what's wrong with the system. It shows how we can act-both as parents and as members of society-to improve children's lives and to promote their happiness and learning.

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On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail for government agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and journalist Christian Parenti points out, these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are part of a relentless (and clandestine) expansion of routine surveillance in American life over the last two centuries-from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice and tracking immigrants. Parenti explores the role computers are playing in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies-such as credit cards, website "cookies," and electronic toll collection-that have expanded this trend in the twenty-first century. The Soft Cage offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives.

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In the wrong hands, math can be deadly. Even the simplest numbers can become powerful forces when manipulated by politicians or the media, but in the case of the law, your liberty,and your life,can depend on the right calculation.In Math on Trial , mathematicians Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez describe ten trials spanning from the nineteenth century to today, in which mathematical arguments were used,and disastrously misused,as evidence. They tell the stories of Sally Clark, who was accused of murdering her children by a doctor with a faulty sense of calculation of nineteenth-century tycoon Hetty Green, whose dispute over her aunt's will became a signal case in the forensic use of mathematics and of the case of Amanda Knox, in which a judge's misunderstanding of probability led him to discount critical evidence,which might have kept her in jail. Offering a fresh angle on cases from the nineteenth-century Dreyfus affair to the murder trial of Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk, Schneps and Colmez show how the improper application of mathematical concepts can mean the difference between walking free and life in prison.A colourful narrative of mathematical abuse, Math on Trial blends courtroom drama, history, and math to show that legal expertise isn't always enough to prove a person innocent.

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Embodying the entire system of Robert Henri's teaching, The Art Spirit contains much valuable advice, critical comment, and inspiration to every student of the arts.

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The story of humanity is the story of textiles-as old as civilization itself. Textiles created empires and powered invention. They established trade routes and drew nations' borders. Since the first thread was spun, fabric has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel traces this surprising history, exposing the hidden ways textiles have made our world. The origins of chemistry lie in the coloring and finishing of cloth. The beginning of binary code-and perhaps all of mathematics-is found in weaving. Selective breeding to produce fibers heralded the birth of agriculture. The belt drive came from silk production. So did microbiology. The textile business funded the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; it left us double-entry bookkeeping and letters of credit, the David and the Taj Mahal. From the Minoans who exported woolen cloth colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to the Romans who wore wildly expensive Chinese silk, the trade and production of textiles paved the economic and cultural crossroads of the ancient world. As much as spices or gold, the quest for fabrics and dyes drew sailors across strange seas, creating an ever-more connected global economy. Synthesizing groundbreaking research from economics, archaeology, and anthropology, Postrel weaves a rich tapestry of human cultural development.

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In this classic work of developmental psychology, renowned psychiatrist and the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What Happened to You? reveals how trauma affects children-and outlines the path to recovery."Fascinating and upbeat.... Dr. Perry is both a world-class creative scientist and a compassionate therapist." -Mary Pipher, PhD, author of Reviving OpheliaHow does trauma affect a child's mind-and how can that mind recover?Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In the classic The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry tells their stories of trauma and transformation and shares their lessons of courage, humanity, and hope. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what happens to children's brain when they are exposed to extreme stress-and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease such pain and help them grow into healthy adults. Only when we understand the science of the mind and the power of love and nurturing can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.

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In The Interpretation of Cultures, the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.

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Encompassing more than a decade of research around the globe, this book shows that cultural capital has far more impact than politics, prejudice, or genetics on the social and economic fates of minorities, nations, and civilization.

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From the bestselling author of The Theoretical Minimum, a DIY introduction to the math and science of quantum mechanics. First he taught you classical mechanics. Now, physicist Leonard Susskind has teamed up with data engineer Art Friedman to present the theory and associated mathematics of the strange world of quantum mechanics. In this follow-up to the New York Times best-selling The Theoretical Minimum, Susskind and Friedman provide a lively introduction to this famously difficult field, which attempts to understand the behavior of sub-atomic objects through mathematical abstractions. Unlike other popularizations that shy away from quantum mechanics' weirdness, Quantum Mechanics embraces the utter strangeness of quantum logic. The authors offer crystal-clear explanations of the principles of quantum states, uncertainty and time dependence, entanglement, and particle and wave states, among other topics, and each chapter includes

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Oppose Any Foe is the epic story of America's most elite warriors: the Special Operations Forces. Born as small appendages to the conventional armies of World War II, the Special Operations Forces have grown into a behemoth of 70,000 troops, including Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, Air Force Night Stalkers, Special Operations Marines, Rangers, and Delta Force. Weaving together their triumphs and tribulations, acclaimed historian Mark Moyar introduces a colorful cast of military men, brimming with exceptional talent, courage and selflessness.In a nation where the military is the most popular institution, America's Special Operations Forces have become the most popular members of the military. Through nighttime raids on enemy compounds and combat advising of resistance movements, special operators have etched their names into the nation's registry of heroes. Yet the public knows little of the journey that they took to reach these heights, a journey that was neither easy nor glamorous.Fighting an uphill battle for most of their seventy-five year history, the Special Operations Forces slipped on many an occasion, and fell far on several. Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama have enthusiastically championed Special Operations Forces, but their enthusiasm has often surpassed their understanding, resulting in misuse or overuse of the troops. Lacking clearly defined missions, Special Operations Forces have had to reinvent themselves time and again to prove their value in the face of fierce critics-many of them from the conventional military, which from the start opposed the segregation of talent in special units.Highlighting both the heroism of America's most elite soldiers and the controversies surrounding their meteoric growth, Oppose Any Foe presents the first comprehensive history of these special warriors and their daring missions. It is essential reading for anyone interested in America's military history-and the future of warfare.

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The most complete account of the theory and application of Multiple Intelligences available anywhere.Howard Gardner's brilliant conception of individual competence, known as Multiple Intelligences theory, has changed the face of education. Tens of thousands of educators, parents, and researchers have explored the practical implications and applications of this powerful notion, that there is not one type of intelligence but several, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in self-understanding.Multiple Intelligences distills nearly three decades of research on Multiple Intelligences theory and practice, covering its central arguments and numerous developments since its introduction in 1983. Gardner includes discussions of global applications, Multiple Intelligences in the workplace, an assessment of Multiple Intelligences practice in the current conservative educational climate, new evidence about brain functioning, and much more.

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Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeA metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis CarrollDouglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

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One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks, where does the self come from -- and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop"-a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I." The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real-or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind.

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Learn how to think like a physicist from a Nobel laureate and "one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century" (New York Review of Books) with these six classic and beloved lessonsIt was Richard Feynman's outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that revolutionized the teaching of physics around the world. Six Easy Pieces, taken from these famous Lectures on Physics, represent the most accessible material from the series.In these classic lessons, Feynman introduces the general reader to the following topics: atoms, basic physics, energy, gravitation, quantum mechanics, and the relationship of physics to other topics. With his dazzling and inimitable wit, Feynman presents each discussion with a minimum of jargon. Filled with wonderful examples and clever illustrations, Six Easy Pieces is the ideal introduction to the fundamentals of physics by one of the most admired and accessible physicists of modern times."If one book was all that could be passed on to the next generation of scientists it would undoubtedly have to be Six Easy Pieces."- John Gribbin, New Scientist

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Despite your graduate education, brainpower, and technical prowess, your career in scientific research is far from assured. Permanent positions are scarce, science survival is rarely part of formal graduate training, and a good mentor is hard to find. In A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! , physicist Peter J. Feibelman lays out a rational path to a fulfilling long-term research career. He offers sound advice on selecting a thesis or postdoctoral adviser choosing among research jobs in academia, government labouratories, and industry preparing for an employment interview and defining a research program. The guidance offered in A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! will help you make your oral presentations more effective, your journal articles more compelling, and your grant proposals more successful. A classic guide for recent and soon-to-be graduates, A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! remains required reading for anyone on the threshold of a career in science. This new edition includes two new chapters and is revised and updated throughout to reflect how the revolution in electronic communication has transformed the field.

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These selections from the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of a half century cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational, and political issues. The sources range from Dr. Sowell's letters, books, newspaper columns, and articles in both scholarly journals and popular magazines. The topics range from late-talking children to "tax cuts for the rich," baseball, race, war, the role of judges, medical care, and the rhetoric of politicians. These topics are dealt with by sometimes drawing on history, sometimes drawing on economics, and sometimes drawing on a sense of humour.

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With a new preface by the author. Ten years after his murder, Tupac Shakur is even more loved, contested, and celebrated than he was in life. His posthumously released albums, poetry, and motion pictures have catapulted him into the upper echelon of American cultural icons. In Holler If You Hear Me , hip-hop intellectual" Michael Eric Dyson, acclaimed author of the bestselling Is Bill Cosby Right? , offers a wholly original way of looking at Tupac that will thrill those who already love the artist and enlighten those who want to understand him.

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Alan Bloom's new translation of Emile , Rousseau's masterpiece on the education and training of the young, is the first in more than seventy years. In it, Bloom, whose magnificent translation of Plato's Republic has been universally hailed as a virtual rediscovery of that timeless text, again brings together the translator's gift for journeying between two languages and cultures and the philosopher's perception of the true meaning and significance of the issues being examined in the work. The result is a clear, readable, and highly engrossing text that at the same time offers a wholly new sense of the importance and relevance of Rousseau's thought to us.In addition to his translation, Bloom provides a brilliant introduction that relates the structure and themes of the book to the vital preoccupation's of our own age, particularly in the field of education, but also more generally to the current concerns about the limits and possibilities of human nature. Thus in this translation Emile, long a classic in the history of Western thought and educational theory, becomes something more: a prescription, fresh and dazzling, for the bringing up of autonomous, responsible,that is, truly democratic,human beings.

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This classic work is a monumental, integrated view of man's search for an understanding of the inner reaches of the mind. In an account that is both exhaustive and exciting, the distinguished psychiatrist and author demonstrates the long chain of development,through the exorcists, magnetists, and hypnotists,that led to the fruition of dynamic psychiatry in the psychological systems of Janet, Freud, Adler, and Jung.

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This revised edition of Applied Economics is about fifty percent larger than the first edition. It now includes a chapter on the economics of immigration and new sections of other chapters on such topics as the"creative” financing of home-buying that led to the current"subprime” mortgage crisis, the economics of organ transplants, and the political and economic incentives that lead to money earmarked for highways being diverted to mass transit and to a general neglect of infrastructure. On these and other topics, its examples are drawn from around the world. Much material in the first edition has been updated and supplemented. The revised and enlarged edition of Applied Economics retains the easy readability of the first edition, even for people with no prior knowledge of economics.

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For eighteen centuries pious Jews had prayed for the return to Jerusalem, but only in the revolutionary atmosphere of nineteenth-century Europe was this yearning transformed into an active political philosophy: Zionism. In The Making of Modern Zionism, the distinguished political scientist Shlomo Avineri rejects the common view that Zionism was solely a reaction to anti-Semitism and persecution. Rather, he sees it as part of the universal quest for self-determination. In sharply-etched intellectual profiles of Zionism's major thinkers from Moses Hess to Theodore Herzl and from Vladimir Jabotinsky to David Ben Gurion, Avineri traces the evolution of this quest from its intellectual origins in the early nineteenth century to the establishment of the State of Israel. In an expansive new epilogue, he tracks the rise of religious Zionism since the 1970s, explaining its pernicious effect on the nation that secular Zionism created. The result is a book that enables us to understand, as perhaps never before, one of the truly revolutionary ideas of our time.

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The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years. We have seen a painting of a single black square on a white ground, Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915), and a hand-signed porcelain urinal, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917). Mid-century brought us the Abstract Expressionist "drip" paintings ofJackson Pollock. In Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit (1961), we got a series of 90 sealed tin cans purportedly containing Manzoni's own excrement. A decade later, with Chris Burden's Shoot (1971), we saw a performance in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle. More recently, Damien Hirst exhibited a shark floating in a glass tank of formaldehyde and fellow British artist Tracey Emin-in her autobiographical installation The History of Painting (1999)-displayed, among other items, her own used tampons.It is no wonder, then, that the art-viewing public is perplexed. What's going on here? Do today's renowned artists-like earlier masters such as Giotto, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Matisse-represent the highest achievements of civilization? Or something else entirely? Have viewers always felt this way; or is their confusion a sign of something new-something exclusive to the experience of today's contemporary art?In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund shows that works of Modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem to be. Nor do they represent a dramatic break from the past. He situates more recent movements in the tradition of art and examines the threads that tie the art of the past to that of the present. For instance, Esplund elucidates the similarities between Picasso and El Greco; between the ancient Egyptian Pyramids and sculptor Richard Serra's monumental Torqued Ellipses. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that contemporary art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who think that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.As our expert guide, Esplund has curated a personalized selection of moving and important works, using them as examples to walk the reader through the formal, emotional, and metaphoric experience of art, illuminating how an artist builds and explores a theme. Eager to democratize a genre that can feel inaccessible, Esplund empowers viewers to trust their own eyes, guts, and common sense. With The Art of Looking, readers will have the confidence to evaluate and appreciate galleries and museums for themselves, whether they are looking at a Greco-Roman statue, a Byzantine Madonna, a Rembrandt portrait, a Marina Abramovic performance, or one of Richard Serra's monumental sculptures.

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The provocative bestseller explaining the decline of power in the twenty-first century -- in government, business, and beyond.br> Power is shifting -- from large, stable armies to loose bands of insurgents, from corporate leviathans to nimble start-ups, and from presidential palaces to public squares. But power is also changing, becoming harder to use and easier to lose. In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor MoiséNaíilluminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, Naíexplains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world."The End of Power will . . . change the way you look at the world." -- Bill Clinton"Extraordinary." -- George Soros"Compelling and original." -- Arianna Huffington"A fascinating new perspective . . . Naímakes eye-opening connections." -- Francis Fukuyama

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Parenting is probably the biggest challenge any of us will face, and yet nobody has delivered the perfect formula to us help us out. Recognising this, clinical psychologist and parenting expert Linda Blair provides an easy to follow guide to parenting that is easily adaptable to individual circumstances. In THE HAPPY CHILD, Blair divides childhood into three stages of development: infancy, preschool and starting school. She concentrates on your child's psychological development and how to raise a happy, well adjusted child, as well as providing practical advice and addressing common problems which may arise. This is a book which both provides parenting guidelines as well as encouraging parents to trust their own instincts, and above all does not underestimate the challenges parents face. The foreword is by Ellen Winner, professor of child psychology at Boston College, specialising in gifted children and author of GIFTED CHILDREN (Basic Books).

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Fundamentals of Environmental Biology has been conceived to bring different aspects of environmental biology under one head. The purpose of this book is to fill the gap between basic books of ecology or environmental science and advanced environmental biotechnology in an appropriate manner. Divided in two parts, the book contains fourteen chapters. First part deals with the topics related with ecology and environmental sciences and second part deals with environmental biotechnology aspects.It will help the students of botany, zoology, biotechnology, and environmental sciences or engineering, as environmental biology is a multidisciplinary subject and involves various issues like ecological issues, global environmental problems, socio-economic scenario along with modern fields such as molecular ecology, etc. Although the book is primarily designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students, it also provides information in a precise way to the teachers, researchers and also to the people working in NGOs related to environmental aspects or problems. Salient Features: Multidisciplinary approach including case studies. Modern biotechnological and ecological approaches apart from traditional one Dedicated coverage of ';statistical ecology', ';green technology '; and ';molecular ecology'. Profusely illustrated with flowcharts and diagrams and has a lot of practice materials. PowerPoint slides are provided for teachers as well as students.

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