A geologist takes readers inside contemporary earthquake research to offer a new account of the Midwest’s legendary New Madrid fault—“an exceptional read” (Choice). In the winter of 1811-12, a series of large earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone shook the Midwest. These historic geological events are often incorrectly described as the biggest ever to hit the United States. Today the federal government ranks the earthquake hazard in the Midwest as high as California's and is pressuring communities to undertake expensive preparations for disaster. In Disaster Deferred, geologist Seth Stein revisits these earthquakes, the legends that have grown around them, and the predictions of doom that have followed in their wake. He details how limited scientific knowledge, bureaucratic instincts, and the media's love of a good story have exaggerated these hazards. Debunking the hype, Stein explains how contemporary seismological techniques—including the use of GPS—painting a very different-and much less frightening-picture of the future. Using new geological ideas and data, he calls for a more sensible, less costly policy. “An essential book for policy makers, economists, and notably educators.”—Choice
Defending society against natural hazards is a high-stakes game of chance against nature, involving tough decisions. How should a developing nation allocate its budget between building schools for towns without ones or making existing schools earthquake-resistant? Does it make more sense to build levees to protect against floods, or to prevent development in the areas at risk? Would more lives be saved by making hospitals earthquake-resistant, or using the funds for patient care? What should scientists tell the public when – as occurred in L’Aquila, Italy and Mammoth Lakes, California – there is a real but small risk of an upcoming earthquake or volcanic eruption? Recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis show that society often handles such choices poorly. Sometimes nature surprises us, when an earthquake, hurricane, or flood is bigger or has greater effects than expected from detailed hazard assessments. In other cases, nature outsmarts us, doing great damage despite expensive mitigation measures or causing us to divert limited resources to mitigate hazards that are overestimated. Much of the problem comes from the fact that formulating effective natural hazard policy involves combining science, economics, and risk analysis to analyze a problem and explore the costs and benefits of different options, in situations where the future is very uncertain. Because mitigation policies are typically chosen without such analysis, the results are often disappointing. This book uses general principles and case studies to explore how we can do better by taking an integrated view of natural hazards issues, rather than treating the relevant geoscience, engineering, economics, and policy formulation separately. Thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter invite readers to confront the complex issues involved. Readership: Instructors, researchers, practitioners, and students interested in geoscience, engineering, economics, or policy issues relevant to natural hazards. Suitable for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses. Additional resources can be found at: http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature
An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes and Earth Structures is an introduction to seismology and its role in the earth sciences, and is written for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. The fundamentals of seismic wave propagation are developed using a physical approach and then applied to show how refraction, reflection, and teleseismic techniques are used to study the structure and thus the composition and evolution of the earth. The book shows how seismic waves are used to study earthquakes and are integrated with other data to investigate the plate tectonic processes that cause earthquakes. Figures, examples, problems, and computer exercises teach students about seismology in a creative and intuitive manner. Necessary mathematical tools including vector and tensor analysis, matrix algebra, Fourier analysis, statistics of errors, signal processing, and data inversion are introduced with many relevant examples. The text also addresses the fundamentals of seismometry and applications of seismology to societal issues. Special attention is paid to help students visualize connections between different topics and view seismology as an integrated science. An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes, and Earth Structure gives an excellent overview for students of geophysics and tectonics, and provides a strong foundation for further studies in seismology. Multidisciplinary examples throughout the text - catering to students in varied disciplines (geology, mineralogy, petrology, physics, etc.). Most up to date book on the market - includes recent seismic events such as the 1999 Earthquakes in Turkey, Greece, and Taiwan). Chapter outlines - each chapter begins with an outline and a list of learning objectives to help students focus and study. Essential math review - an entire section reviews the essential math needed to understand seismology. This can be covered in class or left to students to review as needed. End of chapter problem sets - homework problems that cover the material presented in the chapter. Solutions to all odd numbered problem sets are listed in the back so that students can track their progress. Extensive References - classic references and more current references are listed at the end of each chapter. A set of instructor's resources containing downloadable versions of all the figures in the book, errata and answers to homework problems is available at: http://levee.wustl.edu/seismology/book/. Also available on this website are PowerPoint lecture slides corresponding to the first 5 chapters of the book.
This fascinating interdisciplinary work explores U.S. politics since 2015 and offers psychodynamic insights into the unconscious undercurrents of contemporary culture and politics in the United States. Allcorn and Stein expertly lead readers up the steep learning curve of understanding the Trump era by exploring seven key elements of recent political dynamics. Using the complementary psychodynamic models of object relations, Group Relations and Karen Horney’s tripartite theory, this book makes sense of the Age of Trump and its chaotic world of alternate facts, conspiracy theories, reality TV politics, hoax pandemics, and the sweeping chaos of life in the United States. This sense-making relies on two triangulations. The first represents the complex systemic political scene. The second uses three psychoanalytic theories to understand social, political, and organizational dynamics. This book is a key resource for helping readers know and understand ourselves, our fellow citizens, colleagues, family, friends and what Trump and his followers call "them" such as liberals and foreign immigrants, as well as both the larger polarized social and political context in the United States today. The book also provides concrete examples of how these discoveries can be operationalized both in organizations and at the level of national government and leadership. This book is an essential reading for students in organizational behavior including leadership and how governments operate, as well as behavioral health professionals consulting or offering therapy to organizations.
Understanding experience at work, especially in toxic organizations, is a multidimensional undertaking that must include all senses. The use of applied poetry has its primary value as an evocative approach to sensing, knowing, and understanding workplace experience. Poetry at its best condenses into relatively few words, metaphors, and images what conventional social science narratives would take much longer to articulate. Where poetry often hints and alludes, narrative seeks to spell out, expound, and complete. Where poetry leaves much mental space for the listener or reader to fill in with one’s imagination, narrative fills in the spaces with rich detail. Applied poetry and its contextual stories offer a way of accessing workplace experience that is unique and valuable in terms of understanding lives at work. The use of complementary psychodynamic theories, like all theories, is a way of trying to account for what we have found and experienced and in particular why it happened. "Why," the authors suggest, is critical in terms of understanding the sensing, images, and metaphors evoked by the poetry and stories that may resonate with hearers and readers for reasons that are unconscious and are rooted in the past. These transferences that come forward from life experience into the present are the critical data we work with. These are the data of psychoanalysis. This book both widens and deepens the scope of organizational research offered by other researchers, theorists, and approaches to understanding, interpreting, explaining, leading, and consulting with workplace organizations. Its triangulating integration of applied poetry, experience and stories behind the poetry, and the three psychoanalytic models of explaining life in workplaces, is a new and distinct contribution to organizational research, leadership, and consulting efforts to help organization members solve real, underlying problems and not offer simplistic, formulaic solutions based solely on a study of the organization’s surface. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational studies, leadership, and management.
This book explores the dark, dysfunctional nature of organizations and the experience of working in them. The authors offer dozens of stories of workplace dysfunction and use a psychoanalytically informed perspective to help readers understand why a leader, colleague, or friend behaves in ways that are destructive to others and to the organization. The work is divided into three parts: theory, stories, and practice. Topics covered in the first section include the value of storytelling, an overview of competing paradigms in analysis, and the value of psychoanalysis and its explanatory power. This is followed by chapters on case stories organized by theme and a conclusion that explores the implications of the research and analytic practice. The engaging stories are drawn from events the authors have experienced or observed, and from their roles as professional consultants. Subjects range from the consequences egotistical and shortsighted leaders can have on organizations, to details such as the effect a suddenly empty desk has on staff in the office. This fresh scholarship provides the basis for studying the workplace, organizational dynamics, and management. By posing questions and providing analysis, the authors seek to make the reader a "virtual consultant" participating in answering the questions the stories inevitably raise. This is followed by the authors' own analysis of the case studies, addressing those same questions and offering reflections on how organizations might be managed so as to minimize dysfuction.
An enlightening examination of the relationship between poetry and the information technologies increasingly used to read and write it Many poets and their readers believe poetry helps us escape straightforward, logical ways of thinking. But what happens when poems confront the extraordinarily rational information technologies that are everywhere in the academy, not to mention everyday life? Examining a broad array of electronics—including the radio, telephone, tape recorder, Cold War–era computers, and modern-day web browsers—Seth Perlow considers how these technologies transform poems that we don’t normally consider “digital.” From fetishistic attachments to digital images of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts to Jackson Mac Low’s appropriation of a huge book of random numbers originally used to design thermonuclear weapons, these investigations take Perlow through a revealingly eclectic array of work, offering both exciting new voices and reevaluations of poets we thought we knew. With close readings of Gertrude Stein, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, and many others, The Poem Electric constructs a distinctive lineage of experimental writers, from the 1860s to today. Ultimately, Perlow mounts an important investigation into how electronic media allows us to distinguish poetic thought from rationalism. Posing a necessary challenge to the privilege of information in the digital humanities, The Poem Electric develops new ways of reading poetry, alongside and against the electronic equipment that is now ubiquitous in our world.
An enlightening examination of the relationship between poetry and the information technologies increasingly used to read and write it Many poets and their readers believe poetry helps us escape straightforward, logical ways of thinking. But what happens when poems confront the extraordinarily rational information technologies that are everywhere in the academy, not to mention everyday life? Examining a broad array of electronics—including the radio, telephone, tape recorder, Cold War–era computers, and modern-day web browsers—Seth Perlow considers how these technologies transform poems that we don’t normally consider “digital.” From fetishistic attachments to digital images of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts to Jackson Mac Low’s appropriation of a huge book of random numbers originally used to design thermonuclear weapons, these investigations take Perlow through a revealingly eclectic array of work, offering both exciting new voices and reevaluations of poets we thought we knew. With close readings of Gertrude Stein, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, and many others, The Poem Electric constructs a distinctive lineage of experimental writers, from the 1860s to today. Ultimately, Perlow mounts an important investigation into how electronic media allows us to distinguish poetic thought from rationalism. Posing a necessary challenge to the privilege of information in the digital humanities, The Poem Electric develops new ways of reading poetry, alongside and against the electronic equipment that is now ubiquitous in our world.
Allcorn (Assistant Dean and Chief Financial Officer, Texas Tech U. Health Sciences Center School of Medicine) examines aspects of the literature on organizational dynamics, leadership, groups at work, organizational structure, and related topics from a psychoanalytic perspective with the goal of suggesting a way of understanding organizational life and work experience that will allow for a more informed and proactive approach to management. Individual chapters examine organizational resistance to change, organizational fragmentation, the role of goals in the workplace, the nature of incentives, "leadership pathology," forms of violence in the workplace, the role of the human psyche in the workplace, organizational membership selection, psychological experience of glass ceilings and other organizational surface phenomenon, the presence and nature of mysticism in the workplace, and the narrative of workplace histories." -- Publisher.
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