Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it. In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains. The results challenge the idea that storytelling is an obvious force for good in human life. Yes, storytelling can bind groups together, but it is also the main force dragging people apart. And it's the best method we've ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. Behind all civilization's greatest ills-environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare-you will always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story. Gottschall argues that societies succeed or fail depending on how they manage these tensions. And it has only become harder, as new technologies that amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and fake news make separating fact from fiction nearly impossible. With clarity and conviction, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, "How we can change the world through stories?" and start asking, "How can we save the world from stories?"

Through a series of critical essays this book concerns itself with the relationships and possibilities in and between "prose" and "disability". The critical and/or personal essays in this book all try to explore this potent inbetween space - a place full of possibilities. These prose pieces reflect on prose themselves as they stretch in an uneven yet interesting line from Hay's 'modern' essay on deformity through nineteenth century literary and cultural sensibilities about working bodies, wars and "normalcy" and also through contemporary considerations over the role of metaphor as it marks the disabled body in critical-creative "personal" essays that pose even as they prose the considerable possibilities for disability as represented in and through prose. This book was first published a special issue of Prose Studies.

* Author has track record of excellent scholarship * Accessible and engaging for a wide range of undergraduate and advanced students * Book addresses key themes of an important and widely studied period

Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture is a study of the great, and curiously underappreciated, engagement of a Medieval European Jewish community with the philosophic tradition. This lucid description of the Languedocian Jewish community's multigenerational cultivation of - and acculturation to - scientific and philosophic teachings into Judaism fulfils a major desideratum in Jewish cultural history.

In the first detailed account of this long-forgotten Jewish community and its cultural ideal, the author gives an expansive reappraisal of the role of the philosophic interpretation in rabbinic culture and medieval Judaism. Looking at how the cultural ideal of Languedocian Jewry continued to develop and flourish throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with particular reference to the literary style and religious teaching of the great Talmudist, Menahem ha-Meiri, Stern explores issues such as MeiriOCOs theory of civilized religions, including Christianity and Islam, controversy over philosophy and philosophic allegory in Languedoc and Catalonia, and the cultural significance of the medical use of astrological images.

This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Religion, of Judaism in particular, and of Philosophy, History and Medieval Europe, as well as those interested in Jewish-Christian relations."

These chapters deal with the life of London from the early 1830's to the mid-1860?s. The book mainly focuses on the social life of the day, but also deals with the blacker side of London and travel and country life.

A Who's Who of Western culture, from Woody Allen to Emile Zola...

Containing four hundred essay-style entries, and covering the period from 1850 to the present, The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture includes artists, writers, dramatists, architects, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, sociologists, major political figures, composers, film-makers and many other culturally significant individuals and is thoroughly international in its purview.

Next to Karl Marx is Bob Marley, with John Ruskin is Salman Rushdie, alongside Darwin is Luigi Dallapiccola, Deng Xiaoping rubs shoulders with Jacques Derrida as do Julia Kristeva and Kropotkin.

With its global reach, The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture provides a multi-voiced witness of the contemporary thinking world. The entries carry short bibliographies and there is thorough cross-referencing as well as an index of names and key terms.

'Amusements they must have, or life would hardly be worth living...' Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 1895 This text explores life in the mining villages of the north-east of England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - a time of massive social and industrial change. The sporting lives of these communities are often marginalized by historians, but this thoroughly researched account reveals how play as well as work were central to the lives of the working classes. Miners contributed significantly to the economic success of the north-east during this time, yet living conditions in the mining villages were 'horrendous'. Sport and recreation were essential to bring meaning and pleasure to mining families, and were fundamental to the complex social relationships within and between communities. Features of this extensive text include: * analysis of the physical, social and economic structures that determined the leisure lives of the mining villages * the role of 'traditional' and 'new' sports * comparisons with other British regions.

With chapters on theatre and opera, architecture and urban planning, the medieval revival and the rediscovery of the Etruscan and Roman past, The Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy analyzes Italians' changing relationship to their new nation state and the monarchy, the conflicts between the peninsula's ancient elites and the rising middle class, and the emergence of new belief systems and of scientific responses to the experience of modernity.

This second edition has been full updated to include the latest research, particularly on women's work, masculinity, sexual violence and global perspectives. Providing students with an up to date overview of gender relations in early modern England. In this new edition the shorter documents have been replaced with longer excepts including ones on black Londoners, Quaker women's travel, and on gendered cross-cultural encounters. Providing lecturers with meatier examples to discuss in class and students with a broader range of interesting topics to inform their seminars. Also including a chronology, who's who of key figures, guide to further reading and images it supports students in their studies at all levels of their undergraduate degree.

This major new reference book provides an authoritative and thorough analysis of the political changes which have occurred in Eastern Europe since the demise of communism. It offers an historical, comparative perspective of the region and focuses on the social consequences of the transition, historical legacies, and variations between countries in the sequences of the changes. This comprehensive handbook includes detailed examinations of elections, the formation of governments, electoral systems, and constitutional arrangements. It features country case studies on Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria. These are supplemented by several chapters drawing conclusions on the transition to democracy in the region as a whole, and the consolidation of democracy in a post-communist setting. The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe provides a state-of-the art companion which will be indispensable for students and scholars in the social sciences including transitional economics, comparative economic systems and political science, as well as for policymakers and practitioners.

In this innovative contribution to the field of environmental history, Stephen Mosley explores the devastating human and environmental costs of smoke pollution in the worlda (TM)s first industrial city.

In this comprehensive study, Elizabeth Crawford provides the first survey of women's suffrage campaigns across the British Isles and Ireland, focusing on local campaigns and activists. Divided into thirteen sections covering the regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, this book gives a unique geographical dimension to debates on the suffrage campaign of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Through a study of the grass-roots activists involved in the movement, Crawford provides a counter to studies that have focused on the politics and personalities that dominated at a national level, and reveals that, far from providing merely passive backing to the cause, women in the regions were engaged in the movement as active participants Including a thorough inventory of archival sources and extensive bibliographical and biographical references for each region, including the addresses of campaigners, this guide is essential for researchers, scholars, local historians and students alike.

Originally published in 1985, this book examines the extent of Scottish migration and Scottish involvement in the process of development. Although there are many books written on the Scots abroad, this volume is unique in that it has a unifying theme: each contributor has concentrated on the role played by the Scots in the economic development of their relevant country or area which include England, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, Latin America and Japan. This will be of interest to both social and economic historians.

"[An] unusual meditation on sex, death, art, and Jewishness. . . . Weber weaves in musings on his own sexual and religious experiences, creating a freewheeling psychoanalytic document whose approach would surely delight the doctor, even if its conclusions might surprise him." -New Yorker "Freud's Trip to Orvieto is at once profound and wonderfully diverse, and as gripping as any detective story. Nicholas Fox Weber mixes psychoanalysis, art history, and the personal with an intricacy and spiritedness that Freud himself would have admired." -John Banville, author of The Sea and The Blue Guitar "This is an ingenious and fascinating reading of Freud's response to Signorelli's frescoes at Orvieto. It is also a meditation on Jewish identity, and on masculinity, memory, and the power of the image. It is filled with intelligence, wit, and clear-eyed analysis not only of the paintings themselves, but how we respond to them in all their startling sexuality and invigorating beauty." -Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn and Nora Webster After a visit to the cathedral at Orvieto in Italy, Sigmund Freud deemed Luca Signorelli's frescoes the greatest artwork he'd ever encountered; yet, a year later, he couldn't recall the artist's name. When the name came back to him, the images he had so admired vanished from his mind's eye. This is known as the "Signorelli parapraxis" in the annals of Freudian psychoanalysis and is a famous example from Freud's own life of his principle of repressed memory. What was at the bottom of this? There have been many theories on the subject, but Nicholas Fox Weber is the first to study the actual Signorelli frescoes for clues. What Weber finds in these extraordinary Renaissance paintings provides unexpected insight into this famously confounding incident in Freud's biography. As he sounds the depths of Freud's feelings surrounding his masculinity and Jewish identity, Weber is drawn back into his own past, including his memories of an adolescent obsession with a much older woman. Freud's Trip to Orvieto is an intellectual mystery with a very personal, intimate dimension. Through rich illustrations, Weber evokes art's singular capacity to provoke, destabilize, and enchant us, as it did Freud, and awaken our deepest memories, fears, and desires. Nicholas Fox Weber is the director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and author of fourteen books, including biographies of Balthus and Le Corbusier. He has written for the New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, ARTnews, Town & Country, and Vogue, among other publications.

Harvey Mitchell's book argues that a reassessment of Voltaire's treatment of traditional Judaism will sharpen discussion of the origins of, and responses to, the Enlightenment. His study shows how Voltaire's nearly total antipathy to Judaism is best understood by stressing his self-regard as the author of an enlightened and rational universal history, which found Judaism's memory of its past incoherent, and, in addition, failed to meet the criteria of objective history-a project in which he failed.

Calling on an array of Jewish and non-Jewish figures to reveal how modern interpretations of Judaism may be traced to the core ideas of the Enlightenment, this book concludes that Voltaire paradoxically helped to foster the ambiguities and uncertainties of Judaism's future.

This collection illustrates the expansiveness of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of sport. While rooted in anthropology, these essays consider American sports in their social, economic, cultural and political aspects, charting their evolution. The book draws from history, sociology, and political science; as well as considering the relationship between the developed and developing world; and culture and masculinity. The first part of the book considers the local and global interplay of professional baseball, covering: Major League Baseball's impact on the Dominican Republic nationalism and baseball on the Mexican/US border the globalizing forces of baseball as an industry. The second part of the book is concerned with the cultural examination of the responsiveness of masculinity to social and cultural forces, examining: the exaggerated world of bodybuilders in Southern California the cross-cultural comparisons of male behaviour on a bi-national baseball team in Mexico the historical examination of Jews in American sport. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society

Making British Culture explores an under-appreciated factor in the emergence of a recognisably British culture. Specifically, it examines the experiences of English readers between around 1707 and 1830 as they grappled, in a variety of circumstances, with the great effusion of Scottish authorship--including the hard-edged intellectual achievements of David Hume, Adam Smith and William Robertson as well as the more accessible contributions of poets like Robert Burns and Walter Scott--that distinguished the age of the Enlightenment.

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Ancestry.com! Ancestry.com keeps growing, but how can you find your ancestors on the huge and ever-changing site? In this workbook, an essential companion to the Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com, you'll learn how to use Ancestry.com to its full advantage with detailed guides to searching Ancestry.com's digitized records. Each section briefly discusses how to search Ancestry.com for a particular type of record (including census records, vital records and historical publications), then shares detailed, illustrated tutorials that put those strategies into practice. And with the worksheets and genealogy forms in each section, you can easily plan your own Ancestry.com searches and apply what you've learned. The workbook features: Introductions to using the seven most important record groups on Ancestry.com, plus tips to navigate AncestryDNA and use DNA test results in your research Step-by-step case studies showing how to use Ancestry.com to find ancestors and solve research problems Fill-in worksheets and forms that let you apply the book's techniques to your own research Packed with expert advice, handy worksheets, and real-life search scenarios, this workbook will give you the hands-on knowledge you need to mine Ancestry.com for your family's records.

In mythology, art history and religious iconography, the apple has been imbued with every imaginable human desire. It has been a symbol of love and beauty, of temptation, of immortality, peace, death and poison, of sin and redemption. From Adam and Eve to the trials of Heracles, to the art of Cezanne and Magritte, to Newton's theory of gravity, the death of Alan Turing and the growth of Steve Jobs, the apple resonates throughout western culture. It is Snow White, William Tell, it is The Beatles and the Viking gods, it is even the American frontier. Now, Barnaby Barford offers a celebration of this fruit, exploring its impact on the history of humankind. Apples have become a recent feature of Barford's eye-catching installations, whether ripe and healthy or in a state of decay. The Apple is Everything guides the reader through Barford's work and ideology.

'Timely and important' THE TIMES 'Considered and nuanced ... A must-read' The Rt Hon. Sajid Javid MP 'Compelling and moving' Tom Holland, author of Dominion __________________ Islam is the fastest-growing faith community in Britain. Domes and minarets are redefining the skylines of towns and cities as mosques become an increasingly prominent feature. Yet while Britain has prided itself on being a global home of cosmopolitanism and modern civilisation, its deep-rooted relationship with Islam - unique in history - is complex, threatened by rising hostility and hatred, intolerance and ignorance. There is much media debate about embracing diversity in our communities, but what does integration look like on the ground, in places like Dewsbury, Glasgow, Belfast and London? How are Muslims, young and old, reconciling progressive values - of gender equality, individualism, the rule of law and free speech - with literalist interpretations of their faith? And how is this tension, away from the public gaze, unfolding inside mosques today? Ed Husain takes his search for answers into the heart of Britain's Muslim communities. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, Husain joins men and women in their prayers, conversations, meals, plans, pains, joys, triumphs and adversities. He tells their stories here in an open and honest account that brings the daily reality of British Muslim life sharply into focus - a struggle of identity and belonging, caught between tradition and modernity, East and West, revelation and reason.

Analysis of varied primary sources, such as as a letter from Anne to her half-brother and an apothecary bill that contains some fertility medicines, allows for a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of how Anne operated her life as well as the wider setting of the court. Much previous scholarship has focused on Anne's relatiosnhips with famous poets, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, but analysis of government documents reveals more about how Anne used her own wealth and status to enact power. This gives greater insight into the power of queenship and female autonomy. Rather than viewing Anne primarily as a wife of Richard II, this volume situates her within the context of medieval queenship which will be useful for all who seek a greater understanding of female power in medieval England.

At once disturbing and perversely comforting, the crime novel has historically been used to curtail social anxieties through the ‘open and shut case’ of its narrative form. But what happens to that form in a world where guilt and innocence cannot be so easily assigned?

Return to the Scene of the Crime takes on the trope of the investigator who returns to the postcolony on a quest for knowledge. In tandem with solving the case, they must also grapple with the complexities of their own origins. Kamil Naicker shows how five authors defy generic expectation in order to illustrate the complexity of personal identity, transitional justice and civil violence in the postcolonial world.

Bringing together novels set in South Africa, China, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Somalia, this book makes a marked intervention in the field of literary studies, by both bringing to light the trend of the returnee figure and exploring the possibilities of world-making through the explosion of a familiar form.

Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal offers a radical take on what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. Tracing the history of this thinking through to its far-reaching effects on our lives, and drawing on a range of disciplines, Challenger proposes that being an animal is a process, beautiful and unpredictable, and that we have a chance to tell ourselves a new story; to realise that if we matter, so does everything else.

This Volume explores the enormous impact the ethos of Muscular Christianity has had an on modern civil society in English-speaking nations and among the peoples they colonized. First codified by British Christian Socialists in the mid-nineteenth century, explicitly religious forms of the ideology have persistently re-emerged over ensuing decades: secularized, essentialized, and normalized versions of the ethos - the public school spirit, the games ethic, moral masculinity, the strenuous life - came to dominate and to spread rapidly across class, status, and gender lines. These developments have been appropriated by the state to support imperial military and colonial projects. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century apologists and critics alike widely understood Muscular Christianity to be a key engine of British colonialism. This text demonstrates the need to re-evaluate the entire history of Muscular Christianity comes chiefly from contemporary post-colonial studies. The papers explore fascinating case materials from Canada, the U.S., India, Japan, Papua, New Guinea, the Spanish Caribbean, and in Britain in a joint effort to outline a truly international, post-colonial sport history. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.