Search results for ""Author Douglas""

To Light the Flame of Reason is all about the art of clear thinking, an art that is needed now more than ever in the world we now live in. Written for anyone who wants to navigate better in this world filled with populist dogmas, anti-science attitudes, and pseudo-philosophy, authors Christer Sturmark and Douglas Hofstadter provide a set of simple tools for clear thinking, as well as a deeper understanding of science, truth, naturalism, and morality. It also offers insights into the rampant problems of extremism and fundamentalism – and suggestions for how the world can move towards a new enlightenment. The book argues that we need to reawaken the basic values and ideals that defined the original age of enlightenment. We need to accept the idea that the world we inhabit is part of nature, and that it has no trace of supernatural or magical forces. Ethical questions should be detached from religion. This doesn’t mean that the questions become any easier— just that ideas are tested and judged without being profoundly tainted and constrained by religious dogmas.Such a form of secular humanism builds on the power of free thought — the power to investigate and understand the natural world. Although not everything can be investigated or understood, the sincere quest for knowledge and understanding establishes a flexible, nondogmatic attitude toward the world. Curiosity and openness lie at the core of such an attitude. The scientific method of careful and open- minded testing, as well as science’s creative and reflective ways of thinking, provides key tools. What clear, science-inspired thinking helps us to understand, among many other things, is that a person can be good and can be motivated to carry out morally good actions without ever bowing to, or being limited by, supposedly divine forces.To Light the Flame of Reason will appeal to adults who are trying to figure out how to deal with the ever-increasing daily bombardment of conflicting messages about what is right, true, sensible, or good, and it should appeal even more to teenagers and university students who are struggling to find a believable and reliable philosophy of life that can help guide them in their choices of what and whom to trust, and how to act, both on the personal and the social level.Today, more people have greater access to information and knowledge than ever was dreamt of before, and more people are concerned about the world situation. More people have the chance, through their own actions, to make a difference.Each one of us, as an individual, matters. It is thus vitally important that each of us should choose, in a conscious and reflective manner, our own views of reality, of the world, and of humanity. And this means that it is crucial for us all to train ourselves in the art of thinking clearly.Christer Sturmark along with Pulizer Prize winning author Douglas Hofstdter argue that we must refocus our efforts on cultivting a secular society, and in doing so, we will rediscover the values and ethics that are so foreign in today’s society.

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This book is a compilation of seminal articles on poverty and welfare in the United States that would work well as reading for graduate level courses in welfare, poverty, and evaluation. Articles from the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management - considered to be one of the leading forums for the exploration of poverty and welfare - presented in a single volume Presents high-quality research, performed over many years by a wide range of individuals and organizations Includes articles on poverty measurement, concentrated poverty, the relative merits of voluntary versus mandatory welfare-to-work policies, welfare dependency, and the impact of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program

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How do we explain the breakthrough market success of businesses like Nike, Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, and Jack Daniel's? Conventional models of strategy and innovation simply don't work. The most influential ideas on innovation are shaped by the worldview of engineers and economists - build a better mousetrap and the world will take notice. Holt and Cameron challenge this conventional wisdom and take an entirely different approach: champion a better ideology and the world will take notice as well. Holt and Cameron build a powerful new theory of cultural innovation. Brands in mature categories get locked into a form of cultural mimicry, what the authors call a cultural orthodoxy. Historical changes in society create demand for new culture - ideological opportunities that upend this orthodoxy. Cultural innovations repurpose cultural content lurking in subcultures to respond to this emerging demand, leapfrogging entrenched incumbents. Cultural Strategy guides managers and entrepreneurs on how to leverage ideological opportunities: - How managers can use culture to out-innovate their competitors - How entrepreneurs can identify new market opportunities that big companies miss - How underfunded challengers can win against category Goliaths - How technology businesses can avoid commoditization - How social entrepreneurs can develop businesses that appeal to more than just fellow activists - How subcultural brands can break out of the 'cultural chasm' to mass market success - How global brands can pursue cross-cultural strategies to succeed in local markets - How organizations can maximize their innovation capabilities by avoiding the brand bureaucracy trap Written by leading authorities on branding in the world today, along with one of the advertising industry's leading visionaries, Cultural Strategy transforms what has always been treated as the "intuitive" side of market innovation into a systematic strategic discipline.

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Stop apathy in its tracks with the 5 C’s of engagement Disengagement, disenchantment, distress—the three "D’s" of many post-pandemic schools. If we are to find our way back from this brink, every student, teacher, and leader must relearn how to lean in. It’s time to focus, know one another, and stop chasing so many initiatives. It’s time to shake things up so learners want to participate. From faculty meetings to student conferences, casual greetings to grading, you can learn to use practices that most powerfully reflect the Five C’s of Engagement: Connections — feeling known, valued, and tethered to others Conditions — being able to learn in a stable environment in which expectations are high Challenge — engaging in an endeavor knowing your "high jumps" in terms of intellectual and creative risks will be supported Control — the privilege of learning with a balance between ownership and support Collaboration — deepening one’s knowledge and identity as a learner by being skillful at relationship-building Our students are looking to us as the grownups in the room to model what it looks like to belong, believe, and balance high expectations with compassionate support. With Confronting the Crisis of Engagement in hand, you have the guide to make that happen.

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These commentaries are designed to help the reader of the Bible understand what the text says and what it means. The Introduction to each book gives a concise but thorough treatment of its authorship, date, original setting and purpose. Following a structural Analysis, the Commentary takes the book section by section, drawing out its main themes, and also comments on individual verses and problems of interpretation. Additional Notes provide fuller discussion of particular difficulties. In the new New Testament volumes, the commentary on each section of the text is structured under three headings: Context, Comment and Theology. The goal is to explain the true meaning of the Bible and make its message plain.JAMESThe letter of James has often been defined in terms of moral earnestness, repentance and consistent social action, leading many to argue that it is not theological. This separation between theology and practice, Douglas J. Moo observes, can all too easily lead people to read Scripture as a book to be analysed rather than a message to be obeyed - the very mindset against which James inveighs. Moo's exposition of these themes illuminates James's rich letter and its message for us today.

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Population growth and food supply have long been of central concern to economists. The World Food Economy examines the lessons of the past while assessing 21st century and future challenges, including food shortages, global hunger, and economic inequality. With the demand for food and the population growing at an unprecedented rate, this text provides students with a timely, relevant, and unique overview of the world of agricultural production. New coverage in the Second Edition explains how productivity has risen around the globe throughout the last century through technological advances and how consumers and producers in every part of the world—rich and poor alike—feel the effects of expanded global commodity trade, food aid, and national legislation in response to globalization.

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Medieval writers frequently refer to the composition of their own verse and prose works. These authorial interventions are often cryptic and partial, bringing them together, like pieces in a puzzle, reveals a coherent picture of their art of poetry and prose. However, beyond the interest of this knowledge in its own right, it is also necessary to find out how it can be used to interpret, evaluate, and appreciate the works that exemplify it. As the French art of invention emerged from the medieval Latin tradition in rhetoric and poetics, vernacular authors, from Chretien de Troyes to Christine de Pizan, adapted it to the composition of their own narratives, lyric poems, and treatises. This book brings together a number of essays that show how medieval writers in the translatio studii invented, with subtlety and imagination, diverse, original, and even compelling works that conform to their literary art. Focusing on both well known and less well known authors and works, the essays are grouped under the following topics: the art of invention, the Roman de Troie, Arthurian verse romances and the matiere de Bretagne, prose romance on the knights of the Round Table and on the Seven Sages of Rome, Occitan and Old French lyric, and late medieval allegory and the Dit.

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In a world where the built environment seems ever more shaped by invisible market forces, where modern architecture can seem to dissolve into a generic void, sometimes it takes a very special person to make a difference. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was Mayor of London from 2008 until 2016, during which time he took a remarkably keen interest in the built environment, commissioning, guiding, and shaping all manner of different projects. With his achievements he showed us all that massive privilege, leaping ambition, no concern for detail and a wasp's attention span needn't hold you back when it comes to creating terrible architecture. Nincompoopolis examines the built legacy of Johnson's tenure, from his embarrassing follies to the folly of his policies, and wonders if there's anything that can be learned from letting someone like him have a go at one the world's great cities.

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In this tale of Las Vegas during the two delirious boom decades before the bust of the Great Recession, a failed actor is slowly losing his moral and existential compass. Douglas Unger pits the ideologies of marketing and consumerism in the casino economy against the erosion of individual and humane values that success in that world demands.

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Among the American avant-garde of the early twentieth century, Floyd Dell played a distinctive role. A boy from the Midwest who rose to influence in the Chicago Literary Renaissance and in the heyday of Greenwich Village radicalism, he became a celebrated novelist, critic, editor (of The Masses), poet, and playwright. Dell was also a notorious bohemian, proponent of free love, and champion of feminism, progressive education, socialism, and Freudianism. His love affairs earned him almost as much notoriety as his writings. His friends and colleagues included many of the great figures of the era: radical journalists John Reed and Max Eastman; the Christian Socialist Dorothy Day; novelists Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and Sherwood Anderson; and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Yet no figure was more colorful and brilliant than Dell himself. Better than anyone, he epitomized the high spirits and towering ambitions of American culture in the early decades of the century. Douglas Clayton's biography of Dell, the first full-length life, captures the remarkable accomplishments and contradictions of a man who was both central to radical culture and profoundly skeptical of it. An early escapee from Marxism, his career never followed the familiar left-to-right course. But Dell struggled all his life with the relationship between politics and art, which makes his life so arresting and relevant today. With 8 pages of photographs.

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Now in paperback, Douglas Galbraith's The Rising Sun is an extraordinary tour de force of historical fiction in the tradition of Caleb Carr's The Alienist and David Liss's A Conspiracy of Paper. A widespread critical favorite in hardcover, it was hailed by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best novels of the past decade, and established its author as a major new talent. In 1698, five vessels led by the flagship Rising Sun embarked on a perilous voyage for the northern coast of what is now Panama, where passengers intended to found a colony at Darien. With them went the hopes and fortunes of the nation of Scotland, which sought to build an overseas empire so that it could at last compete on the world stage with its rival, England. The Rising Sun is the story of this mission and its tragic outcome, as recorded by the ship's superintendent of cargoes, Roderick Mackenzie. A young man of promise and ambition, Mackenzie is quickly caught up in the intrigues of his fellow colonists -- rivalries that will prove overwhelming as nationalist optimism gives way to the brutal realities of their hardscrabble life and rain, mud slides, and disease assault the Scottish encampment. A dramatic, pitch-perfect story of the adventures and betrayals of men under duress in a strange, exotic land, The Rising Sun establishes Douglas Galbraith as a writer of uncommon resonance and skill. "Galbraith's powers of description are immense ... it succeeds absolutely." -- Geoff Nicholson, The New York Times Book Review "The writing throughout is beautifully wrought.... ...the tale unfolds like a vast exotic panorama demanding further examination ... fascinating." -- Bernadette Murphy, Los Angeles Times "[A] remarkable novelistic debut." -- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

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