Argues that schadenfreude is a normal human emotion, looking at its roots in feelings of justice, positive sense of self, and concern with inferiority.
Only six escapees survived the Sandakan death marches of 1945 in North Borneo, the worst atrocity ever inflicted on Australian soldiers. 1787 Australian and 641 British POWs perished. Previous descriptions of the numerous violent acts have yielded little understanding of a situation where the real struggle was to keep one’s humanity when so many were losing theirs, whether Allied POWs, local residents of Borneo, Javanese slave labourers, or Japanese soldiers. Understanding this extraordinary story is aided by reference to a wide range of sources in different countries and disciplines, and by examining the perspectives of all players in this terrible game of survival. An unusual and extreme POW story, the Sandakan tragedy had four stages: active resistance in 1942–3, stubborn endurance in 1943–4, the collapse of civilized existence in 1945 and, finally, the postwar decades of torment for the six damaged survivors, the gradual assimilation of the story, the healing of the damage and the commemoration of the tragedy by the families and communities involved. Richard Wallace Braithwaite’s father was one of the six survivors of the Sandakan death marches of 1945. He died in 1986, still wanting the story to be properly told. This led to a project that has lasted for much of the last forty years of the author’s life, culminating in this book. With a scientific background, Richard worked for many years with CSIRO and universities in the biological and social sciences and in historical research. His extensive and diverse research history and lifelong personal immersion in the story has given him a unique perspective in exploring the complexities of the Sandakan tragedy.
A family history, tracing the varied fortunes of the Smiths of West Yorkshire and their relationship to other families, i.e. The Absaloms of Hampshire and London ; The Cardens of Brighton ; The Cloughs of Sutton and Crosshills ; The Fareys of Skipton ; The Fosters of Birmingham and Waterford in Ireland ; The Gillinsons of Leeeds ; The Hastings of Holderness ; The Myersons of London and Europe ; The Stamfords of East Yorkshire and The Wilsons of Colne, Sutton and Crosshills.
America’s emerging “fat war” threatens to pit a shrinking population of trim Americans against an expanding population of heavy Americans in raging policy debates over “fat taxes” and “fat bans.” These “fat policies” would be designed to constrain what people eat and drink – and theoretically crimp the growth in Americans’ waistlines and in the country’s healthcare costs. Richard McKenzie’s HEAVY! The Surprising Reasons America Is the Land of the Free—And the Home of the Fat offers new insight into the economic causes and consequences of America's dramatic weight gain over the past half century. It also uncovers the follies of seeking to remedy the country’s weight problems with government intrusions into people’s excess eating, arguing that controlling people’s eating habits is fundamentally different from controlling people’s smoking habits. McKenzie controversially links America’s weight gain to a variety of causes: the growth in world trade freedom, the downfall of communism, the spread of free-market economics, the rise of women's liberation, the long-term fall in real minimum wage, and the rise of competitive markets on a global scale. In no small way – no, in a very BIG way – America is the “home of the fat” because it has been for so long the “land of the free.” Americans’ economic, if not political, freedoms, however, will come under siege as well-meaning groups of “anti-fat warriors” seek to impose their dietary, health, and healthcare values on everyone else. HEAVY! details the unheralded consequences of the country's weight gain, which include greater fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases, reduced fuel efficiency of cars and planes, growth in health insurance costs and fewer insured Americans, reductions in the wages of heavy people, and required reinforcement of rescue equipment and hospital operating tables. McKenzie advocates a strong free-market solution to how America's weight problems should and should not be solved. For Americans to retain their cherished economic freedoms of choice, heavy people must be held fully responsible for their weight-related costs and not be allowed to shift blame for their weight to their genes or environment. Allowing heavy Americans to shift responsibility for their weight gain can only exacerbate the country’s weight problems.
Considering the range of stars that have claimed Bill Monroe as an influence—Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Jerry Garcia are just a few—it can be said that no single artist has had as broad an impact on American popular music as he did. For sixty years, Monroe was a star at the Grand Ole Opry, and when he died in 1996, he was universally hailed as "the Father of Bluegrass." But the personal life of this taciturn figure remained largely unknown. Delving into everything from Monroe's professional successes to his bitter rivalries, from his isolated childhood to his reckless womanizing, veteran bluegrass journalist Richard D. Smith has created a three-dimensional portrait of this brilliant, complex, and contradictory man. Featuring over 120 interviews, this scrupulously researched work—a Chicago Tribune Choice Selection, New York Times Notable Book, and Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2000—stands as the authoritative biography of a true giant of American music.
Manalapan Township and Englishtown Borough-- originally a part of the township--share a long and rich history dating to the Revolutionary War. From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, the township was composed of several small villages that sustained themselves through farming. In creating this book, author Richard J. Dalik seeks to preserve the significance of this thriving stage of the communities' heritage. Manalapan and Englishtown includes fascinating photographs, engravings, and postcards illustrating the early rural way of life in these areas. Vintage images of farms, mills, houses, schools, churches, streets, and families are presented together with informative captions to transport the reader to an earlier time and another Manalapan. In addition, some early views highlight the Battle of Monmouth--fought mostly on the farmlands of Manalapan Township--and other historical landmarks of that period.
This fascinating portrait of an amateur astronomy movement tells the story of how Charles Olivier recruited a hard-working cadre of citizen scientists to rehabilitate the study of meteors. By 1936, Olivier and members of his American Meteor Society had succeeded in disproving an erroneous idea about meteor showers. Using careful observations, they restored the public’s trust in predictions about periodic showers and renewed respect for meteor astronomy among professional astronomers in the United States. Charles Olivier and his society of observers who were passionate about watching for meteors in the night sky left a major impact on the field. In addition to describing Olivier’s career and describing his struggles with competitive colleagues in a hostile scientific climate, the author provides biographies of some of the scores of women and men of all ages who aided Olivier in making shower observations, from the Leonids and Perseids and others. Half of these amateur volunteers were from 13 to 25 years of age. Their work allowed Olivier and the AMS to contradict the fallacious belief in stationary and long-enduring meteor showers, bringing the theory of their origin into alignment with celestial mechanics. Thanks to Olivier and his collaborators, the study of meteors took a great leap forward in the twentieth century to earn a place as a worthy topic of study among professional astronomers.
Numerous scholarly articles and books have been written about biologic and social evolution, compassion, life’s meaning, violence and predictions of future outcomes. However, what is not often addressed, but is increasingly desperately needed, is the realization of the evolutionary survival value of caring for others. This book strives to link our humanities and religious philosophies to a scientific understanding of human destiny, and provide a key to meaning in our lives. Though this idea has incubated for over two decades, recent extremism in Charlottesville and global threats of inhumanity and violence make this more timely than ever for all who care about who we are and our children’s future. Furthermore, our capacity for benefit or destruction of Homo sapiens or civilization as we know it sets a ticking timer on the urgency of this realization and focused action; we don’t have ‘forever’ to ‘get it!’
Chronicles the life and career of the creator of the unique sound of American bluegrass music and documents his influence on American popular music in the twentieth century.
This book assesses European Union policies aimed at encouraging democratization in East Asia and the North African and Middle Eastern States within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership - these two regions being the source of some of the strongest conceptual challenges to 'Western' liberaldemocracy since the end of the cold war. The book addresses theoretical debates over the international dimensions of political change and the EU's characteristics as an international actor. The factors both driving and inhibiting European democracy promotion policies are explored. The book outlinesthe EU's distinctive bottom-up philosophy, aimed at constructing the socio-economic and ideational foundations for political liberalization, but argues that the EU has in practice failed to develop a fully comprehensive and coherent democracy promotion strategy.
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