Download or read book Useful Delusions The Power and Paradox of the Self Deceiving Brain written by Shankar Vedantam and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2021 A Next Big Idea Club Best Nonfiction of 2021 From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.

Download or read book Suspicious Minds written by Joel Gold and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Truman Show delusion and other strange beliefs"--Cover.

Download or read book The Palestinian Delusion written by Robert Spencer and published by Bombardier Books. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every new American President has a plan to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and every one fails. Every “peace process” has failed in its primary objective: to establish a stable and lasting accord between the two parties, such that they can live together side-by-side in friendship rather than enmity. But why? And what can be done instead? While this failure is a consistent pattern stretching back decades, there is virtually no public discussion or even basic understanding of the primary reason for this failure. The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the “peace process,” Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict. The Palestinian Delusion offers a general overview of the Zionist settlement of Palestine, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the Arab Muslim reaction to these events. It explores the dramatic and little-known history of the various peace efforts—showing how and why they invariably broke down or failed to be implemented fully. The Palestinian Delusion also provides shocking evidence from the Palestinian media, as well as statements from the Palestinian leadership, showing that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will never work. But there is still cause for hope. Spencer delineates a realistic, viable alternative to the endless and futile “peace process,” that shows how the Jewish State and the Palestinian Arabs can truly coexist in peace—without illusions or unrealistic expectations.

Download or read book Delusions of Grandeur written by Chris Andoe and published by Cahokia Press. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Not since Charles Bukowski have I found myself so submerged into the life and times of so many colorful characters. Acclaimed writer Chris Andoe brings a modern flair to such a missing style of literature today. I felt intrigued, enlightened, dirty, amused, outraged, betrayed and in awe of all that is Delusions Of Grandeur." - Karla Templeton, Vital Voice Oklahoma native Chris Andoe has lived from San Francisco to New York, but for nearly twenty years has remained captivated by the drama, culture, and tragedy of the haunted old river city of St. Louis, a place he's likened to Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond, simultaneously celebrating yet mourning a glorious past. Delusions of Grandeur is a compilation of tales and snippets of many lives and characters whose stories entertain standing alone and enrapture woven together. From a deranged conman penetrating the highest reaches of state politics to shocking headlines of a 'human slaughter chamber' on the East St. Louis riverfront, Andoe has collected and craftily chronicled the whole spectrum of the St. Louis LGBT community and beyond, and the outcome is nothing short of page turning. Often mired in controversy for his unflinching style, "Emperor of St. Louis" Chris Andoe is a columnist for Vital Voice.

Download or read book How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs. Subcommittee on the City and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A History of Delusions written by Victoria Shepherd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Fascinating and compassionate’ Horatio Clare The King of France – thinking he was made of glass – was terrified he might shatter…and he wasn’t alone. After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France’s asylums. Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead. For centuries we’ve dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks – they hold the key to collective anxieties and traumas. In this groundbreaking history, Victoria Shepherd uncovers stories of delusions from medieval times to the present day and implores us to identify reason in apparent madness.

Download or read book The Hidden Brain written by Shankar Vedantam and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist or a group of bystanders into a mob. In a series of compulsively readable narratives, Shankar Vedantam journeys through the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science to uncover the darkest corner of our minds and its decisive impact on the choices we make as individuals and as a society. Filled with fascinating characters, dramatic storytelling, and cutting-edge science, this is an engrossing exploration of the secrets our brains keep from us—and how they are revealed.

Download or read book Auden s Apologies for Poetry written by Lucy McDiarmid and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common wisdom has it that when Auden left England for New York in January 1939, he had already written his best poems. He left behind (most critics believe) all the idealisms of the 1930s and all serious concerns to become an unserious poet, a writer of ingenious, agreeable, minor lyrics. Lucy McDiarmid argues that such readers, spoiled by the simple intensities of apocalypse, distort and misjudge Auden's greatest work. She shows that once Auden was freed from the obligation to criticize and reform the society of his native country, he devoted his imaginative energies to commentary on art. And about art he was never complaisant: with greater passion than he had ever used to undermine "bourgeois" society, Auden undermined literature. Every major poem and every essay became a retractio, a statement of art's frivolity, vanity, and guilt. Auden's Apologies for Poetry, then, sets forth the unorthodox notion that the chief subject of later, "New Yorker" Auden is the insignificance of poetry. Commenting on all the major poems and essays from the 1930s through the 1960s, and analyzing manuscript revisions and unpublished works, it charts the changes in Auden's poetics in the light of his shift from an oral to a written model of poetry. In his earliest work Auden voices the tentative hope that poems can be like loving spoken words, transforming and redeeming, themselves carriers of value. After 1939 he takes for granted a written model. His later essays and poems deny art spiritual value, claiming that "love, or truth in any serious sense" is a "reticence," the unarticulated worth that exists--if at all--outside the words on the page. Later Auden creates a poetics of apology and self-deprecation, a radical undermining of poetry itself. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs written by Lisa Bortolotti and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions. It brings together recent work in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology and psychiatry, offering a comprehensive review of the philosophical issues raised by the psychology of normal and abnormal cognition.

Download or read book The Mormon Delusion written by Jim Whitefield and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-07-17 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the third in a series of books exposing the truth behind Mormonism. In this volume, we review doctrines that have been discarded. To early Mormons, Adam was God and blood atonement was a stark reality. These were accepted doctrines which survived for several decades throughout the leadership of several successive prophets. Today, the Church denies they even existed. The origin of the Mormon temple ceremony is established and explained. An analysis of changes over the years shows that the rites now enacted bear no resemblance to the original ceremonies Joseph Smith lifted from late eighteenth century Masonic ritual, claiming they were restored from the time of Solomon. The psychology of a Mormon testimony is explored and explained. Sections of the Doctrine and Covenants are exposed as completely unfulfilled nonsense that Mormons simply cannot see through as long as blind faith precludes rational thinking. Visit www.themormondelusion.com for further information on this and other volumes.

Download or read book The Delusions of Crowds written by William J. Bernstein and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “disturbing yet fascinating” exploration of mass mania through the ages explains the biological and psychological roots of irrationality (Kirkus Reviews). From time immemorial, contagious narratives have spread through susceptible groups—with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay’s nineteenth-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, neurologist and author William Bernstein examines mass delusion through the lens of current scientific research in The Delusions of Crowds. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last five hundred years—from the Anabaptist Madness of the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that pervade today’s polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles. Through Bernstein’s supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their “desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next.” Bernstein’s chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania. He observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of this all-too-human phenomenon, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

Download or read book Merger Delusion written by Peter F. Trent and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2012 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the fight against the forced merger of Montreal municipalities and the world's first metropolitan de-merger.

Download or read book New Outlook written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Outlook written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Technical Delusion written by Jeffrey Sconce and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delusions of electronic persecution have been a preeminent symptom of psychosis for over two hundred years. In The Technical Delusion Jeffrey Sconce traces the history and continuing proliferation of this phenomenon from its origins in Enlightenment anatomy to our era of global interconnectivity. While psychiatrists have typically dismissed such delusions of electronic control as arbitrary or as mere reflections of modern life, Sconce demonstrates a more complex and interdependent history of electronics, power, and insanity. Drawing on a wide array of psychological case studies, literature, court cases, and popular media, Sconce analyzes the material and social processes that have shaped historical delusions of electronic contamination, implantation, telepathy, surveillance, and immersion. From the age of telegraphy to contemporary digitality, the media emerged within such delusions to become the privileged site for imagining the merger of electronic and political power, serving as a paranoid conduit between the body and the body politic. Looking to the future, Sconce argues that this symptom will become increasingly difficult to isolate, especially as remote and often secretive powers work to further integrate bodies, electronics, and information.

Download or read book The Outlook written by Lyman Abbott and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Imperial Delusions written by Carl Boggs and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hard-hitting critique, Carl Boggs argues that the United States is dominated by a new militarism, one that has become more potent and menacing since 9/11. He skillfully explores the origins and development of this new militarism and show its devastating effects on American society.