The Unpredictable Past PDF Download

Author: Lawrence W. Levine
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780195082975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This collection of fourteen stimulating, insightful essays by Lawrence Levine, one of our most original American historians, covers American history, historiography, aspects of black culture, and American popular culture during the Great Depression.

Author: F. N Peters
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
ISBN: 1035809974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
Visiting the past would be akin to visiting a foreign country; the people speak in different tongues, dress in unfamiliar garbs, and behave in an alien manner. Just like visiting a foreign country, seemingly universal truths would get shattered upon impact. Our imaginations often prove incapable of fully grasping the all-encompassing cultural aspects that are present in a foreign country. Throughout this book, you will be guided through a foreign past to see how our modern world has been shaped by the often-unpredictable whims of fate, chance occurrences and downright luck. In each chapter, you will travel to a new region and time period, being globally guided through eras ranging from European antiquity to twentieth-century Japan. It is often said that one only appreciates home after having been abroad. By the same token, you will increase your understanding and appreciation for the present after having delved into The Unpredictable Past.

Author: James Owen Weatherall
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547317271
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
A young scholar tells the story of the physicists and mathematicians who created the models that have become the basis of modern finance and argues that these models are the "solution" to--not the source of--our current economic woes.

Author: Susan Elizabeth Hough
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173303
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
An earthquake can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death, whether it's the catastrophic 2010 quake that took a devastating toll on the island nation of Haiti or a future great earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in California, which scientists know is inevitable. Yet despite rapid advances in earthquake science, seismologists still can’t predict when the Big One will hit. Predicting the Unpredictable explains why, exploring the fact and fiction behind the science—and pseudoscience—of earthquake prediction. Susan Hough traces the continuing quest by seismologists to forecast the time, location, and magnitude of future quakes. She brings readers into the laboratory and out into the field—describing attempts that have raised hopes only to collapse under scrutiny, as well as approaches that seem to hold future promise. She also ventures to the fringes of pseudoscience to consider ideas outside the scientific mainstream. An entertaining and accessible foray into the world of earthquake prediction, Predicting the Unpredictable illuminates the unique challenges of predicting earthquakes.

Author: Daniel Robert McClure
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Neoliberalism took shape in the 1930s and 1940s as a transnational political philosophy and system of economic, political, and cultural relations. Resting on the fundamental premise that the free market should be unfettered by government intrusion, neoliberal policies have primarily redirected the state's prerogatives away from the postwar Keynesian welfare system and toward the insulation of finance and corporate America from democratic pressure. As neoliberal ideas gained political currency in the 1960s and 1970s, a&8239;reactionary cultural turn&8239;catalyzed their ascension. The cinema, music, magazine culture, and current events discourse of the 1970s provided the space of negotiation permitting these ideas to take hold and be challenged. Daniel Robert McClure's book follows the interaction between culture and economics during the transition from Keynesianism in the mid-1960s to&8239;the&8239;triumph of&8239;neoliberalism at the dawn of the 1980s. From the 1965 debate between William F. Buckley and James Baldwin, through the pages&8239;of BusinessWeek and Playboy, to the rise of exploitation cinema in the 1970s, McClure tracks the increasingly shared perception by white males that they had "lost" their long-standing rights and that a great neoliberal reckoning might restore America's repressive racial, sexual, gendered, and classed foundations in the wake of&8239;the 1960s.

Author: William Poundstone
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
ISBN: 0316228087
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
A practical guide to outguessing everything, from multiple-choice tests to the office football pool to the stock market. People are predictable even when they try not to be. William Poundstone demonstrates how to turn this fact to personal advantage in scores of everyday situations, from playing the lottery to buying a home. Rock Breaks Scissors is mind-reading for real life. Will the next tennis serve go right or left? Will the market go up or down? Most people are poor at that kind of predicting. We are hard-wired to make bum bets on "trends" and "winning streaks" that are illusions. Yet ultimately we're all in the business of anticipating the actions of others. Poundstone reveals how to overcome the errors and improve the accuracy of your own outguessing. Rock Breaks Scissors is a hands-on guide to turning life's odds in your favor.

Author: Alex Rosenberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026234842X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Why we learn the wrong things from narrative history, and how our love for stories is hard-wired. To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature. Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading—the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators—to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history—what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States—by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story.

Author: Reinhold Niebuhr
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226583996
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction

Author: Ernie Jr. Johnson
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 149340699X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Ernie Johnson Jr. has been in the game a long time. With one of the most recognized voices in sports broadcasting, he is a tireless perfectionist when it comes to preparing and delivering his commentary. Yet he knows that some of sports' greatest triumphs--and life's greatest rewards--come from those unscripted moments you never anticipated. In this heartfelt, gripping autobiography, the three-time Sports Emmy Award-winner and popular host of TNT's Inside the NBA provides a remarkably candid look at his life both on and off the screen. From his relationship with his sportscaster father to his own rise to the top of sports broadcasting, from battling cancer to raising six children with his wife, Cheryl, including a special needs child adopted from Romania, Ernie has taken the important lessons he learned from his father and passed them on to his own children. This is the untold story, the one Ernie has lived after the lights are turned off and the cameras stop rolling. Sports fans, cancer survivors, fathers and sons, adoptive parents, those whose lives have been touched by a person with special needs, anyone who loves stories about handling life's surprises with grace--Unscripted is for all of these.

Author: John Ortberg
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310413443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The day after Jesus' death, whatever small mark he made on the world seemed destined to disappear. Instead, his impact on human history has been unparalleled, leading believers and nonbelievers alike to ask, Who Is This Man? In Who Is This Man, bestselling author John Ortberg explores the paradox of Jesus, history's most familiar figure while simultaneously the man no one knows. Who Is This Man traces Jesus' incredible life and legacy from his days on Earth to the present moment, showing us: How his vision of life continues to haunt and challenge humanity The ways his influence has inspired movements in art, science, government, medicine, and education How his lessons about dignity, compassion, forgiveness, and hope continue to influence humanity Join John Ortberg as he shares how Jesus' influence has swept over history and how his vision of life continues to impact us today. Praise for Who Is This Man?: "Sometimes in the clutter and noise of 'religion,' we lose sight of who Jesus is. Once again, John Ortberg helps us do what he does best: he helps us see God as he really is and connect with him amid all the noise. This book is a gift." --Dr. Henry Cloud, psychologist, coauthor of the bestselling Boundaries books "We live in a period where the divide between the secular and the sacred has never been greater. Who Is This Man? bridges this gap by sharing in his inimitable and entertaining style the undeniable and profound impact of Jesus Christ on our world. His impact, over two thousand years later, is more profound on the day-to-day lives of people--believers or not--than the impact of any other person at any point in history. John shows how Christ came to teach us how to live and in the process changed the world forever and for good." --Ron Johnson, CEO, J. C. Penney