Download or read book Every Cradle Is a Grave written by Sarah Perry and published by . This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of years ago, humans just happened. Accidents of environment and genetics contributed to the emergence of sentient beings like us. Today, however, people no longer "just happen"; they are created by the voluntary acts of other people. This book examines several questions about the ethics of human existence. Is it a good thing, for humans, that humans "happened"? Is it ethical to keep making new humans, now that reproduction is under our control? And given that a person exists (through no fault or choice of his own), is it immoral or irrational for him to refuse to live out his natural lifespan? Sarah Perry answers these questions in the negative--not out of misanthropy, but out of empathy for human suffering and respect for human autonomy. "Every Cradle Is a Grave undertakes a difficult task-to write on discomforting matters from a perspective that is socially unsanctioned. Strange as it may seem to some of us, there are scads of volumes that praise the abuses we endure in our lives. Such works have always been well thumbed, though they are only prayer-books for the purpose of worshiping misery. Sarah Perry is more honest and less perverse on the subject of suffering, treating pain as both a philosophical and a practical problem to which, it is admitted, there is no ultimate solution. Nonetheless, in her view there still remains intelligence and compassion as a means for confronting the insoluble. That is what makes this book as much a necessity as it is a rarity." --Thomas Ligotti, author of The Conspiracy against the Human Race Meaning. Value. Birth. Death. Sanctity. These subjects and others are reexamined through the lens of suicide rights and procreation ethics in Sarah Perry's Every Cradle Is a Grave. If you're at all fond of asking the truly Big Questions, this is the read you've been waiting for. Why are we here, and why do we stay? Prepare to have your assumptions dissected and turned on their heads. It's a bumpy ride, but then, so is this little journey we're on as we spin aimlessly around a sun that's destined to burn out, just as surely as each individual life will one day fall back down into the mud from which all life arises. Asking the hard questions is one thing, but hearing answers that might shake us to the core can be something else again. --Jim Crawford, author of Confessions of an Antinatalist "In this eminently rational, clear and serious book, Sarah Perry is courageous and strong enough to confront the forbidden truths of human life. Every Cradle Is a Grave should be mandatory reading for anyone who plans to have children." -Mikita Brottman, author of Thirteen Girls
Download or read book Cradle to Grave written by Larry Lankton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-02-25 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concentrating on technology, economics, labor, and social history, Cradle to Grave documents the full life cycle of one of America's great mineral ranges from the 1840s to the 1960s. Lankton examines the workers' world underground, but is equally concerned with the mining communities on the surface. For the first fifty years of development, these mining communities remained remarkably harmonious, even while new, large companies obliterated traditional forms of organization and work within the industry. By 1890, however, the Lake Superior copper industry of upper Michigan started facing many challenges, including strong economic competition and a declining profit margin; growing worker dissatisfaction with both living and working conditions; and erosion of the companies' hegemony in a district they once controlled. Lankton traces technological changes within the mines and provides a thorough investigation of mine accidents and safety. He then focuses on social and labor history, dealing especially with the issue of how company paternalism exerted social control over the work force. A social history of technology, Cradle to Grave will appeal to labor, social and business historians.
Download or read book Cradle to Cradle written by William McDonough and published by North Point Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism "Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we do not consider its abundance wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective; hence, "waste equals food" is the first principle the book sets forth. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new-either as "biological nutrients" that safely re-enter the environment or as "technical nutrients" that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles, without being "downcycled" into low-grade uses (as most "recyclables" now are). Elaborating their principles from experience (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, William McDonough and Michael Braungart make an exciting and viable case for change.
Download or read book Nodding Off written by Alice Gregory and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sleep plays a crucial role in our waking lives, and we need to start paying it more attention. The latest research tells us that it's essential for learning and memory, for mental health and physical well-being, and yet we tend to only think about it when it's proving a struggle. Nodding Off leads you on a fascinating journey through the science of sleep as it evolves throughout our lives; from babies to teenagers, from middle age to the later years of our life, there are constantly new challenges to our sleep. Based on knowledge accumulated over almost two decades as a sleep researcher, Professor Alice Gregory shares real-life stories and interviews with other sleep experts to find the answers to questions, such as: - Why do so many adolescents enjoy lying in at the weekends? - Why do children experiencing anxiety, behavioural problems or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder so often have co-occurring sleep problems? - Why are scientists turning to sleep disorders such as sleep paralysis to try to understand paranormal experiences? With important tips on improving your sleep, Nodding Off is an essential read for anyone who sleeps, and more important still for those who don't get enough. Fans of Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep will love this book!
Download or read book Alcohol written by Eric Newhouse and published by Issues Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, Alcohol: Cradle to Grave, offers a compelling, day-in-the-life look at how the disease of alcoholism affects Great Falls, Montana in particular and the state of Montana in general. It's also what he terms "A microcosm of a national problem." Here, Newhouse offers us a compelling and comprehensive understanding of the complexity, magnitude and cost of alcohol abuse. It's an unflinching look at the largely unnoticed river of booze that flows through our towns, our communities and our daily lives. Book jacket.
Download or read book Grave Peril written by Jim Butcher and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Chicago's ghost population starts going seriously postal, resident wizard Harry Dresden much figure out who is stirring them up and why they all seem to be somehow connected to him.
Download or read book Scottish Customs written by Margaret Bennett and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2012-12-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly readable and absorbing anthology of traditional Scottish customs and rites of passage, Scottish Customs from the Cradle to the Grave draws upon a broad range of literary and oral sources. Scotland has been fortunate to have written accounts of intrepid early travellers such as Martin Martin, Edward Burt and John Lane Buchanan, and extracts from their writing are found alongside modern interviews made by Margaret Bennett and researchers from the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University. This expanded edition includes a large amount of new material. The result is a detailed and comprehensive picture of social behaviour in Scotland over the last 400 years. The book is divided into three sections, each covering a stage in the cycle of life: Childbirth and infancy; Love, courtship and marriage; Death The first edition was originally published by Polygon and was joint runner-up of the 1993 Katharine Briggs Folklore Award.
Download or read book The Price for Their Pound of Flesh written by Daina Ramey Berry and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade. Covering the full “life cycle,” historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Illuminating “ghost values” or the prices placed on dead enslaved people, Berry explores the little-known domestic cadaver trade and traces the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools. This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. Reaching out from these pages, they compel the reader to bear witness to their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely commodities. A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, nineteenth-century medical education, and the value of life and death. Winner of the 2018 Hamilton Book Award – from the University Coop (Austin, TX) Winner of the 2018 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Book Prize (SHEAR) Winner of the 2018 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage Finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize from Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Download or read book Outwalkers written by Fiona Shaw and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this tense, page-turning story of survival in near-future England, Jacob must go to all lengths to find his dog and escape to freedom with a gang of rebel children. In a frighteningly real near future England, Jacob escapes from the Academy orphanage to reenter a world that is grimly recognizable. The Coalition can track anyone, anywhere, from a chip implanted at birth. Now Jacob must fulfill his promise to his parents, find his dog, Jet, and navigate his way out of England. Their only hope is a band of children who have found a way to survive off the grid: The Outwalkers. Their rules are strict, but necessary if they're going to get out alive...
Download or read book From Cradle to Grave written by Patricia MacDonald and published by Severn House Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A nail-biting novel of domestic suspense from a best-selling author - When Morgan Adair arrives at the small seaside town of West Briar on the Long Island shore, she is looking forward to attending the baptism of her new godson, Drew. Morgan and Drew's mother, Claire, have been friends since childhood, and Morgan was delighted when Claire married the handsome Guy Bolton. But a few days after the christening, Morgan receives a devastating phone call from her friend . . .
Download or read book From Cradle to Grave written by Joyce Egginton and published by Virgin Books Limited. This book was released on 1989 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Year after year, one after another, the babies of Marybeth Tinning died - nine children in 14 years. Incredibly, neither police nor coroners, doctors, social workers or neighbours suspected anything. The vague verdicts of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome fooled even Marybeth's husband. On 4th February 1986, however, six weeks after the last baby's death, even he had to face the unthinkable - as his wife was charged with their murder. This book tells the story of Marybeth Tinning's children, her arrest and subsequent trial.
Download or read book From Cradle to Stage written by Virginia Hanlon Grohl and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by Virginia Grohl, the mother of Dave Grohl—former Nirvana drummer and current frontman for the Foo Fighters—From Cradle to Stage shares stories and exclusive photos featuring mothers of rock icons, the icons themselves, and their Behind the Music-style relationships While the Grohl family had always been musical-the family sang together on long car trips, harmonizing to Motown and David Bowie-Virginia never expected her son to become a musician, let alone a rock star. But when she saw him perform in front of thousands of screaming fans for the first time, she knew that rock stardom was meant to be for her son. And as Virginia watched her son's star rise, she often wondered about the other mothers who raised sons and daughters who became rock stars. Were they as surprised as she was about their children's fame? Did they worry about their children's livelihood and wellbeing in an industry fraught with drugs and other dangers? Did they encourage their children's passions despite the odds against success, or attempt to dissuade them from their grandiose dreams? Do they remind their kids to pack a warm coat when they go on tour? Virginia decided to seek out other rock star mothers to ask these questions, and so began a two-year odyssey in which she interviewed such women as Verna Griffin, Dr. Dre's mother; Marianne Stipe, Michael Stipe of REM's mother; Janis Winehouse, Amy Winehouse's mother; Patsy Noah, Adam Levine's mother; Donna Haim, mother of the Haim sisters; Hester Diamond, Mike D of The Beastie Boys' mother. With exclusive family photographs and a foreword by Dave Grohl, From Cradle to Stage will appeal to mothers and rock fans everywhere.
Download or read book Stranger Faces written by Namwali Serpell and published by Undelivered Lectures. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculative essays that probe the mythology of the face by the author of The Old Drift
Download or read book Cat s Cradle written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2009-11-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly
Download or read book The Invisible Majority written by C.K. Meena and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-12-03 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen fractures and eight surgeries caused by brittle bone disease could not stop Ummul Kher from cracking the prestigious IAS exam and joining the civil services. The determination of homemaker Smrithy Rajesh to educate her child affected by autism and ADHD empowered her to forge a career path for herself. Inspired by a blind friend, Pancham Cajla successfully transformed several railway stations, making them accessible to the visually impaired. These are only a few of the umpteen stories of resilience, courage and remarkable determination that offer a sensitive, holistic view of the lives of persons with disabilities in this much-needed book for today's India. Navigating a range of topics with lucid ease - from history and laws to widespread social attitudes - it meticulously records and amplifies the diverse, vibrant voices of persons with disabilities. Equally, it turns its gaze on those inextricably linked to their lives - health professionals, educators, trainers, employers, caregivers and activists - highlighting the key roles they play. Insightful, informative and moving, The Invisible Majority: India's Abled Disabled is a timely and invaluable book that inspires societal transformation while addressing the crucial question: how do we make India a more inclusive nation?
Download or read book Government Nannies written by Cathy Duffy and published by Noble Pub Assoc/Noble Books. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confusing stories about Goals 2000 and outcome-based education have made the front page of every newspaper in the country. It is a tangled web of "government-nanny" programs that invade the privacy of families and destroys the principle of individual responsibility. This book describes where we are heading under Goals 2000.
