Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

What do people believe about death and the afterlife? How do they negotiate the relationship between science and religion? How do they understand apparently paranormal events? What do they make of sensations of awe, wonder or exceptional moments of sudden enlightenment? The volunteer mass observers responded to such questions with a freshness, openness and honesty which compels attention. Using this rich material, Mass Observers Making Meaning captures the extraordinarily diverse landscape of belief and disbelief to be found in Britain in the late 20th-century, at a time when Christianity was in steep decline, alternative spiritualities were flourishing and atheism was growing. Divided as they were about the ultimate nature of reality, the mass observers were united in their readiness to puzzle about life’s larger questions. Listening empathetically to their accounts, James Hinton – himself a convinced atheist – seeks to bring divergent ways of finding meaning in human life into dialogue with one another, and argues that we can move beyond the cacophony of conflicting beliefs to an understanding of our common need and ability to seek meaning in our lives.

Provides motivation for developing mathematical models for telecommunications network power and energy efficiency modelling. Discusses factors impacting overall network power consumption. Includes types of network equipment and their power consumption profiles. Reviews basics of network power modelling including network segmentation, top-down and bottom-up models. Explores application of metrics for equipment, networks, and services.

Life in Nature, first published in 1862, is a series of papers by the nineteenth-century English surgeon and popular science writer James Hinton. About a third of the material, though revised and reworked for this book, had appeared previously under the title 'Physiological Riddles' in the Cornhill Magazine, in which Hinton explained biological phenomena for non-scientific readers. Hinton wrote this thirteen-chapter book to present a concise overview of the human body, informed by the latest scientific insights, that would be more easily intelligible for the general population than the scientific physiological data of his day. His intention was also to demonstrate the similarity between patterns occurring in the organic world and in the rest of nature. This book will be of value to historians of Victorian culture and science as an example of how authors and publishers responded to the growing middle-class interest in scientific discoveries.

History remembers James Hinton as a successful surgeon and author of books and articles on physiology and ethics. A gifted thinker and communicator, Hinton was well placed to address the relationship between science and religion in an age when the two were pitted against each other. First published in 1859, the same year as the Origin of Species, Man and His Dwelling Place takes an ambitiously broad view of the human condition, addressing difficult topics from science, religion, philosophy and ethics. Hinton's arguments against outdated ways of thinking and his approach to human nature were revolutionary, and he took pains to address readers' doubts in a series of question-and-answer dialogues at the end of the book. Hinton's impassioned plea for a bolder spirit of enquiry to better interpret human existence assures this book an important place in the history of science and the understanding of Darwin's intellectual context.

In Nine Wartime Lives, James Hinton uses diaries kept by nine 'ordinary' people in wartime Britain to re-evaluate the social history of the Second World War, and to reflect on the twentieth-century making of the modern self.
These diaries were written by some of the unusually self-reflective and public-spirited people who agreed to write intimate journals about their daily activity for the social research organization, Mass Observation. One of the nine diarists discussed is Nella Last, whose published diaries have been a source of delight and fascination for many thousands of readers. Alongside her there are chapters on eight other Mass Observers, each in their own way as vivid, interesting, and surprising as Nella herself.
A central insight underpins the book: in seeking to make the best of our own lives, each of us makes selective use of the resources of our shared culture in a unique way; and, in so doing, we contribute, however modestly, to molecular processes of historical change. Placing individuals at the center of his analysis, James Hinton probes the impact of war on attitudes to citizenship, the changing relationships between men and women, and the search for meanings in life that could transcend the wartime context of limitless violence.
Consistently sensitive, thoughtful and often moving, this beautifully written book resists nostalgic contrasts between the presumed dutiful citizenship of wartime Britain and contemporary anti-social individualism, pointing instead to longer run processes of change rooted as much in struggles for personal autonomy in the private sphere as in the politics of active citizenship in public life.

This is the first full-scale history of Mass-Observation, the independent social research organisation which, between 1937 and 1949, set out to document the attitudes, opinions, and every-day lives of the British people. Through a combination of anthropological fieldwork, opinion surveys, and written testimony solicited from hundreds of volunteers, Mass-Observation created a huge archive of popular life during a tumultuous decade which remains central to British national identity. The social history of these years has been immeasurably enriched by the archive, and extracts from the writings of M-O's volunteers have won a wide and admiring audience. Now James Hinton, whose acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives demonstrated how the intensely personal writing of some of M-O's volunteers could be used to shed light on broader historical issues, has written a wonderfully vivid and evocative account which does justice not only to the two founders whose tempestuous relationship dominated the early years of Mass-Observation, but also to the dozens of creative and imaginative, and until now largely unknown, young enthusiasts whose work helped to keep the show on the road. The history of the organisation itself - the staff, the research methods, the struggle for funding, M-O's characteristic 'voice', and its role in the cultural and political life of the period - are themselves as interesting as any of the themes that the founders set out to document. This long-awaited and deeply researched history corrects and revises much of our existing knowledge of Mass-Observation, opens up new and important perspectives on the organisation, and will be seen as the authoritative account for years to come.

What was it like to live in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century? In a successor to his acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives: Mass Observation and the Making of the Modern Self, James Hinton uses autobiographical writing contributed to Mass Observation since 1981 to explore the social and cultural history of late twentieth-century Britain. Prompted by thrice-yearly open-ended questionnaires, Mass Observation's volunteers wrote about their political attitudes, religious beliefs, work, childhoods, education, friendships, marriages, sex lives, mid-life crises, aging - the whole range of human emotion, feeling, attitudes, and experience. At the core of the book are seven 'biographical essays': intimate portraits of individual lives set in the context of the shift towards the more tolerant and permissive society of the 1960s and the rise of Thatcherite neo-liberalism as the structures of Britain's post-war settlement crumbled from the later 1970s. The mass observers featured in the book, four women and three men, are drawn from across the social spectrum - wife of a small businessman, teacher, social worker, RAF wife, mechanic, lorry driver, City banker: all active and forceful characters with strong opinions and lives crowded with struggle and drama. The honesty and frankness with which they wrote about themselves takes us below the surface of public life to the efforts of 'ordinary', but exceptionally articulate and self-reflective, people to make sense of their lives in rapidly changing times.