Download or read book Awakening of a Foot Soldier written by John M. Healey and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I was in the recognition that I was here for many more reasons than I could possibly comprehend; the superficial, the psychological, the emotional, spiritual and the anything else ending with an "al" that could be squeezed into this being. I was here to seek, to sit, to eat, to make money, to live, and to die. In 1992, author John M. Healey enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Somalia. Upon his return three years later, he was declared mentally unfit for service and was discharged. In 1998, Healey found a backdoor entrance into the Army and reenlisted for a second term. He was then sent to Bosnia, and upon his return he disappeared, never to return to that life-in uniform-again. Awakening of a Foot Soldier: A Journal of Liberation from the Suffering of War is a collection of journal entries that take place between August 2004 and February 2006. At the time of his first account, Healey is in Kuwait awaiting his entry into Iraq where he will work as a civilian contractor. Living in the darkness of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, he goes to Iraq in search of death and ultimately finds inner peace. Awakening of a Foot Soldier is an enlightening story that shares the vulnerability of a young man and his quest for peace and liberation from the darkness of war.
Download or read book The Good Road written by Louis F. Kavar and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the maze of information available today on personal and spiritual development, one book provides a clear map for this vital aspect of life’s journey: The Good Road. Author, lecturer and therapist Dr. Louis F. Kavar provides clear explanations, practical exercises, and time-honored wisdom for those seeking to develop the spiritual dimension of their lives. Spiritual practices are considered for simple integration in the busiest 21st century life. Stories of those whose lives have been transformed by traveling the good road illustrate the value of making this journey. While including insights from Buddhist, Christian, and Native American traditions, The Good Road provides the tools to make the journey of the spiritual life from one’s own experience. The Good Road is a solid foundation for those who want to make the spiritual life their own.
Download or read book Creating Peace by Being Peace written by Gabriel Cousens, M.D. and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2010-05-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing a synthesis of the author’s decades of multidisciplinary work in meditation, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and spirituality, Creating Peace by Being Peace guides readers in creating peace on seven levels of engagement, from the body to the ecology to God. Author Gabriel Cousens addresses the increasingly urgent need to transform humankind with the ancient peace wisdom of the Essenes, a Judaic mystical group that flourished two millennia ago. He begins by explaining the Essenes and the lessons they can teach us as creators of peace. Individual chapters cover a wide range of possibility, from the personal (“Peace with the Mind”) to the political (“Peace with the Community”). The final chapter, "Integrating Peace on Every Level," presents a comprehensive plan for peace with the body, mind, family, community, culture, ecology, and God as a pervasive experience in life—moment to moment, day by day. Cousens blends documentary evidence with original interpretation to show that the Essenes actually did live this experience of peace. Most importantly, he transfers their gift to modern seekers as a breathing blueprint for realizing this reality as we walk in our lives; work according to our gifts, joys, and sacred design; and live the path of spiritual awakening—the sevenfold peace.
Download or read book Essential Spirituality written by Roger Walsh and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Essential Spirituality beautifully articulates the benefits of spiritual living in the material world."-Dan Millman, author, Everyday Enlightenment and The Way of the Peaceful Warrior "Deceptively simple. Its power is rooted not only in Dr. Walsh's formidable intellectual capacity to deal effectively with a vast body of religious literature but in his own deep spiritual practices in a multitude of disciplines over many years. An important contribution."-Ram Dass, author, Be Here Now "An absolute masterpiece . . . Essential Spirituality is helpful to both the unseasoned and seasoned seeker. The writing is deep, simple, and clear yet at the same time poetic and musical. A must read."-GERALD G. JAMPOLSKY, M.D. author, Love Is Letting Go of Fear "Energetic, engaged, and occasionally electrifying. . . . The field of spiritual books has been looking for its own Lewis Thomas or Carl Sagan, and I believe Roger Walsh may be that one."-KEN WILBER, author, One Taste and A Brief History of Everything Based on over twenty years of research and spiritual practice, this is a groundbreaking and life-changing book. In his decades of study, Dr. Roger Walsh has discovered that each of the great spiritual traditions has both a common goal and seven common practices to reach that goal: recognizing the sacred and divine that exist both within and around us. Filled with stories, exercises, meditations, myths, prayers, and practical advice, Essential Spirituality shows how you can integrate these seven principles into one truly rewarding way of life in which kindness, love, joy, peace, vision, wisdom, and generosity become an ever-growing part of everything you do.
Download or read book Inventing Intelligence written by Elaine E. Castles and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-06-06 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use and misuse of IQ tests has long been a subject of contention in the scientific and social communities, particularly because these evaluations favor intelligence at the expense of other valuable human qualities. This is the first book of its kind to examine the historical development of our modern concept of intelligence and to explore America's fascination with the controversial exams that purport to measure it. Most of us assume that people in every period and in every region of the world have understood and valued intelligence in the same way we do today. Our modern concept of intelligence, however, is actually quite recent, emerging from the dramatic social and scientific changes that rocked the United States during the 19th century. Inventing Intelligence: How America Came to Worship IQ discusses the historical context for understanding the development of the concept of intelligence and the tests used to measure it. The author delves into the intertwined issues of IQ, heredity, and merit to offer a provocative look at how Americans came to overvalue IQ and the personal and social problems that have resulted.
Download or read book Under the Black Flag written by Sami Moubayed and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Islamic State movement (ISIS/ISIL/IS) burst onto the world stage in 2014. From its heartland in Syria, where it arose from the chaos of the Syrian Revolt, the organisation has expanded in ideology and membership and now poses a significant threat to the region, if not to the wider world. Moubayed, a Beirut-based journalist who has been analysing Syria and the region for 20 years, has unrivalled access to the movement and its participants. His book is the first inside account of an organisation which has dominated the headlines with a dangerous mix of barbarity and military prowess. In looking at the historical background of ISIS: where it came from, how it evolved, where it stands today and what its aims are for the future to reveal, it will provide, for the first time, a fully-fledged picture of what lies at the heart of the Islamic State.
Download or read book The Caliphate at War written by Ahmed Hashim and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is key to military success, as Ahmed S. Hashim explains in his study of how Islamic State functions as a fighting, social media, and administrative entity.
Download or read book Small Wars Big Data written by Eli Berman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a new understanding of warfare can help the military fight today's conflicts more effectively. The way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns used to play out between large armies at central fronts. Today's conflicts find major powers facing rebel insurgencies that deploy elusive methods, from improvised explosives to terrorist attacks. Small Wars, Big Data presents a transformative understanding of these contemporary confrontations and how they should be fought. The authors show that a revolution in the study of conflict--enabled by vast data, rich qualitative evidence, and modern methods--yields new insights into terrorism, civil wars, and foreign interventions. Modern warfare is not about struggles over territory but over people; civilians--and the information they might choose to provide--can turn the tide at critical junctures. The authors draw practical lessons from the past two decades of conflict in locations ranging from Latin America and the Middle East to Central and Southeast Asia. Building an information-centric understanding of insurgencies, the authors examine the relationships between rebels, the government, and civilians. This approach serves as a springboard for exploring other aspects of modern conflict, including the suppression of rebel activity, the role of mobile communications networks, the links between aid and violence, and why conventional military methods might provide short-term success but undermine lasting peace. Ultimately the authors show how the stronger side can almost always win the villages, but why that does not guarantee winning the war. Small Wars, Big Data provides groundbreaking perspectives for how small wars can be better strategized and favorably won to the benefit of the local population.
Download or read book Military Review written by and published by . This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Professional Journal of the United States Army written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Teacher Preacher Soldier Spy written by Christopher Grasso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-04 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic life story of a schoolteacher and preacher in Missouri, guerrilla fighter in the Civil War, Congressman, freethinking lecturer and author, and anarchist. A former Methodist preacher and Missouri schoolteacher, John R. Kelso served as a Union Army foot soldier, cavalry officer, guerrilla fighter, and spy. Kelso became driven by revenge after pro-Southern neighbors stole his property, burned down his house, and drove his family and friends from their homes. He vowed to kill twenty-five Confederates with his own hands and, often disguised as a rebel, proceeded to track and kill unsuspecting victims with "wild delight." The newspapers of the day reported on his feats of derring-do, as the Union hailed him as a hero and Confederate sympathizers called him a monster. Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso is an account of an extraordinary nineteenth-century American life. During Reconstruction, Kelso served in the House of Representatives and was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Personal tragedy then drove him west, where he became a freethinking lecturer and author, an atheist, a spiritualist, and, before his death in 1891, an anarchist. Kelso was also a strong-willed son, a passionate husband, and a loving and grieving father. The Civil War remained central to his life, challenging his notions of manhood and honor, his ideals of liberty and equality, and his beliefs about politics, religion, morality, and human nature. Throughout his life, too, he fought private wars--not only against former friends and alienated family members, rebellious students and disaffected church congregations, political opponents and religious critics, but also against the warring impulses in his own character. In Christopher Grasso's hands, Kelso's life story offers a unique vantage on dimensions of nineteenth-century American culture that are usually treated separately: religious revivalism and political anarchism; sex, divorce, and Civil War battles; freethinking and the Wild West. A complex figure and passionate, contradictory, and prolific writer, John R. Kelso here receives a full telling of his life for the first time.
Download or read book The Failure of Counterinsurgency written by Ivan Eland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the implications of counterinsurgency warfare for U.S. defense policy and makes the compelling argument that the United States' default position on counterinsurgency wars should be to avoid them. Given the unsatisfactory outcomes of the counterinsurgency (COIN) wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military is now in a heated debate over whether wars involving COIN operations are worth fighting. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of COIN through key historic episodes and concludes that the answer is an emphatic "no," based on a dominant record of U.S. military or political failure, and inconsistency in the reasons for the rare cases of success. The author also examines the implications of his findings for U.S. foreign policy, defense policy, and future weapons procurement.
Download or read book Not A Nation of Immigrants written by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants—was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good—but inaccurate—story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception. While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.
Download or read book Doomsayers written by Susan Juster and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The age of revolution, in which kings were dethroned, radical ideals of human equality embraced, and new constitutions written, was also the age of prophecy. Neither an archaic remnant nor a novel practice, prophecy in the eighteenth century was rooted both in the primitive worldview of the Old Testament and in the vibrant intellectual environment of the philosophers and their political allies, the republicans. In Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution, Susan Juster examines the culture of prophecy in Great Britain and the United States from 1765 to 1815 side by side with the intellectual and political transformations that gave the period its historical distinction as the era of enlightened rationalism and democratic revolution. Although sometimes viewed as madmen or fools, prophets of the 1790s and early 1800s were very much products of a liberal commercial society, even while they registered their disapproval of the values and practices of that society and fought a determined campaign to return Protestant Anglo-America to its biblical moorings. They enjoyed greater visibility than their counterparts of earlier eras, thanks to the creation of a vigorous new public sphere of coffeehouses, newspapers, corresponding societies, voluntary associations, and penny pamphlets. Prophecy was no longer just the art of applying biblical passages to contemporary events; it was now the business of selling both terror and reassurance to eager buyers. Tracking the careers of several hundred men and women in Britain and North America, most of ordinary background, who preached a message of primitive justice that jarred against the cosmopolitan sensibilities of their audiences, Doomsayers explores how prophetic claims were formulated, challenged, tested, advanced, and abandoned. The stories of these doomsayers, whose colorful careers entertained and annoyed readers across the political spectrum, challenge the notion that religious faith and the Enlightenment represented fundamentally alien ways of living in and with the world. From the debates over religious enthusiasm staged by churchmen and the literati to the earnest offerings of ordinary men and women to speak to and for God, Doomsayers shows that the contest between prophets and their critics for the allegiance of the Anglo-American reading public was part of a broader recalibration of the norms and values of civic discourse in the age of revolution.
Download or read book Investing in Life written by Sharon Ann Murphy and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the early years of the life insurance industry in 19th century America. Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its early origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class. Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy also analyzes changing roles for women; the attempts to adapt slavery to an urban, industrialized setting; the rise of statistical thinking; and efforts to regulate the business environment. Her research directly challenges the conclusions of previous scholars who have dismissed the importance of the earliest industry innovators while exaggerating clerical opposition to life insurance. Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumers?their reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product. Winner, Hagley Prize in Business History, Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference Praise for Investing in Life “A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America.” —Sean H. Vanatta, Common Place “An intriguing, instructive history of the establishment and development of the life insurance industry that reveals a good deal about changing social and commercial conditions in antebellum America . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
Download or read book Gandhi written by Kathryn Tidrick and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his long and turbulent career as a political leader, first in South Africa and then in India, Gandhi sought to fulfil his religious aspirations through politics and to reconcile politics with personal religious conviction. But Gandhi’s religion was wildly divergent from anything to have taken root in his native India. Foremost among his private tenets was the belief that he was a world saviour, long prophesied and potentially divine. Penetrating and provocative, Kathryn Tidrick’s book draws on neglected material to explore the paradoxes within Gandhi’s life and personality. She reveals a man whose spiritual ideas originated not in India, but in the drawing rooms of late-Victorian England, and which included some very eccentric and damaging notions about sex. The resulting portrait is complex, convincing and, to anyone interested in the legacy of colonialism, more enlightening than any previously published. The Gandhi revealed here is not the secular saint of popular renown, but a difficult and self-obsessed man driven by a messianic sense of personal destiny.
Download or read book Abandoned Warriors Riding High written by Richard Moorman and published by Old Fella Writes. This book was released on 2024-05-03 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fictional historical adventure story based on the recollections of Australia's own 'Forrest Gump' who returns from the Vietnam War disillusioned and abandoned in his post-war life. He decides on an 'Easy Rider' style Run like the movie of the same name, riding a chopped Harley-Davidson Motorcycle alongside his War Veteran Mate. "Abandoned Warriors Riding High" is a poignant tale of friendship, resilience, and the search for redemption set against the backdrop of Australia's stunning yet unforgiving landscapes. It explores what it means to be a warrior in peace, struggling with the ghosts of a turbulent past and the hope for a reconciled future.
