Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prescient book that forecast the culture that gave rise to Trump -- a society beholden to empty spectacle and obsession with image at the expense of reality, reason, and truth. An instant bestseller, Empire of Illusion is a striking and unsettling exploration of illusion and fantasy in contemporary American culture. Traveling to the ringside of professional wrestling bouts at Madison Square Garden, to Las Vegas to write about the pornographic film industry, and to academic conferences held by positive psychologists who claim to be able to engineer happiness, Hedges chronicles our flight from an ever-worsening reality. The cultural embrace of illusion and celebrity culture have accompanied a growing system of casino capitalism, which creates vast wealth for elites. Corporations have ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our working class. Hedges exposes the mechanisms that undermine our democracy and divert us from the economic, environmental, political, and moral collapse around us. A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies, Hedges argues, and we are dying now.
Download or read book Imperial Illusions written by Kristina Kleutghen and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Forbidden City and other palaces around Beijing, Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) surrounded himself with monumental paintings of architecture, gardens, people, and faraway places. The best artists of the imperial painting academy, including a number of European missionary painters, used Western perspectival illusionism to transform walls and ceilings with visually striking images that were also deeply meaningful to Qianlong. These unprecedented works not only offer new insights into late imperial China�s most influential emperor, but also reflect one way in which Chinese art integrated and domesticated foreign ideas. In Imperial Illusions, Kristina Kleutghen examines all known surviving examples of the Qing court phenomenon of �scenic illusion paintings� (tongjinghua), which today remain inaccessible inside the Forbidden City. Produced at the height of early modern cultural exchange between China and Europe, these works have received little scholarly attention. Richly illustrated, Imperial Illusions offers the first comprehensive investigation of the aesthetic, cultural, perceptual, and political importance of these illusionistic paintings essential to Qianlong�s world. For more information: http://arthistorypi.org/books/imperial-illusions
Download or read book The Power of Illusion written by Christopher Anvil and published by Baen Publishing Enterprises. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection of stories by the master of humorous science fiction adventure, including: The full-length novel, The Day the Machines Stopped¾and what happens, not just to civilization, but to humanity and its chances of survival when all the machines stop working at once? A man is captured by aliens who are investigating the Earth as a possible target for colonization. The aliens have science and technology far in advance of humans¾but, unfortunately for them, they have never developed the human art of bluffing. For the first time in book form, Anvil's stories of Richard Verner, who is called in to solve apparently insoluble problems, such as explaining why experimental missiles keep failing for no apparent reason, or locating a kidnapped judge, or even solving an inexplicable murder that's interrupting his vacation. And much more, in a generous volume of sardonically humorous science fiction. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
Download or read book Death of the Liberal Class written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The liberal class plays a vital role in a democracy. It gives moral legitimacy to the state. It makes limited forms of dissent and incremental change possible. The liberal class posits itself as the conscience of the nation. It permits us, through its appeal to public virtues and the public good, to define ourselves as a good and noble people. Most importantly, on behalf of the power elite the liberal class serves as bulwarks against radical movements by offering a safety valve for popular frustrations and discontentment by discrediting those who talk of profound structural change. Once this class loses its social and political role then the delicate fabric of a democracy breaks down and the liberal class, along with the values it espouses, becomes an object of ridicule and hatred. The door that has been opened to proto-fascists has been opened by a bankrupt liberalism The Death of the Liberal Class examines the failure of the liberal class to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues there are five pillars of the liberal establishment — the press, liberal religious institutions, labor unions, universities and the Democratic Party — and that each of these institutions, more concerned with status and privilege than justice and progress, sold out the constituents they represented. In doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large and ultimately the corporate power elite they once served.
Download or read book American Fascists written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the celebrated author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" comes a startling expos of the political ambitions of the Christian Right--a clarion call for everyone who cares about freedom.
Download or read book The Europe Illusion written by Stuart Sweeney and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was one of the pre-eminent figures of the Italian Renaissance – he was also one of the most paradoxical. He spent an incredible amount of time writing notebooks, perhaps even more time than he ever held a brush, yet at the same time Leonardo was Renaissance culture’s most fanatical critic of the word. When Leonardo criticized writing he criticized it as an expert on words; when he was painting, writing remained in the back of his mind. In this book, Joost Keizer argues that the comparison between word and image fuelled Leonardo’s thought. The paradoxes at the heart of Leonardo’s ideas and practice also defined some of Renaissance culture’s central assumptions about culture and nature: that there is a look to script, that painting offered a path out of culture and back to nature, that the meaning of images emerged in comparison with words, and that the difference between image-making and writing also amounted to a difference in the experience of time.
Download or read book The Age of Illusions written by Andrew Bacevich and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable. In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom. In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.
Download or read book America The Farewell Tour written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Hedges’s profound and unsettling examination of America in crisis is “an exceedingly…provocative book, certain to arouse controversy, but offering a point of view that needs to be heard” (Booklist), about how bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in a culture of sadism and hate. America, says Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As our society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change. All these ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of the nation and the planet. Donald Trump rode this disenchantment to power. In his “forceful and direct” (Publishers Weekly) America: The Farewell Tour, Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic problem. Until our corporate coup d’état is reversed these diseases will grow and ravage the country. “With sharply observed detail, Hedges writes a requiem for the American dream” (Kirkus Reviews) and seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while there is still time.
Download or read book The Peace of Illusions written by Christopher Layne and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a provocative book about American hegemony, Christopher Layne outlines his belief that U.S. foreign policy has been consistent in its aims for more than sixty years and that the current Bush administration clings to mid-twentieth-century tactics--to no good effect. What should the nation's grand strategy look like for the next several decades? The end of the cold war profoundly and permanently altered the international landscape, yet we have seen no parallel change in the aims and shape of U.S. foreign policy. The Peace of Illusions intervenes in the ongoing debate about American grand strategy and the costs and benefits of "American empire." Layne urges the desirability of a strategy he calls "offshore balancing": rather than wield power to dominate other states, the U.S. government should engage in diplomacy to balance large states against one another. The United States should intervene, Layne asserts, only when another state threatens, regionally or locally, to destroy the established balance. Drawing on extensive archival research, Layne traces the form and aims of U.S. foreign policy since 1940, examining alternatives foregone and identifying the strategic aims of different administrations. His offshore-balancing notion, if put into practice with the goal of extending the "American Century," would be a sea change in current strategy. Layne has much to say about present-day governmental decision making, which he examines from the perspectives of both international relations theory and American diplomatic history.
Download or read book Empire of Enchantment written by John Zubrzycki and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-10 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India's association with magicians goes back thousands of years. Conjurors and illusionists dazzled the courts of Hindu maharajas and Mughal emperors. As British dominion spread over the subcontinent, such wonder-workers became synonymous with India. Western magicians appropriated Indian attire, tricks and stage names; switching their turbans for top hats, Indian jugglers fought back and earned their grudging respect. This book tells the extraordinary story of how Indian magic descended from the realm of the gods to become part of daily ritual and popular entertainment across the globe. Recounting tales of levitating Brahmins, resurrections, prophesying monkeys and "the most famous trick never performed," Empire of Enchantment vividly charts Indian magic's epic journey from street to the stage. This heavily illustrated book tells the extraordinary, untold story of how Indian magic descended from the realm of the gods to become part of daily ritual and popular entertainment across the globe. Drawing on ancient religious texts, early travelers' accounts, colonial records, modern visual sources, and magicians' own testimony, Empire of Enchantment is a vibrant narrative of India's magical traditions, from Vedic times to the present day.
Download or read book Ideal Illusions written by James Peck and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a noted historian and foreign-policy analyst, a groundbreaking critique of the troubling symbiosis between Washington and the human rights movement The United States has long been hailed as a powerful force for global human rights. Now, drawing on thousands of documents from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and development agencies, James Peck shows in blunt detail how Washington has shaped human rights into a potent ideological weapon for purposes having little to do with rights—and everything to do with furthering America's global reach. Using the words of Washington's leaders when they are speaking among themselves, Peck tracks the rise of human rights from its dismissal in the cold war years as "fuzzy minded" to its calculated adoption, after the Vietnam War, as a rationale for American foreign engagement. He considers such milestones as the fight for Soviet dissidents, Tiananmen Square, and today's war on terror, exposing in the process how the human rights movement has too often failed to challenge Washington's strategies. A gripping and elegant work of analysis, Ideal Illusions argues that the movement must break free from Washington if it is to develop a truly uncompromising critique of power in all its forms.
Download or read book The Last Illusion written by Porochista Khakpour and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A kaleidoscopic tale inspired by a legend from the medieval Persian epic "Book of Kings" follows the coming-of-age of a feral Middle Eastern youth in New York City on the eve of the September 11 attacks. By the award-winning author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects. 25,000 first printing.
Download or read book Identity and Violence written by Amartya Sen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The violence of illusion -- Making sense of identity -- Civilizational confinement -- Religious affiliations and Muslim history -- West and anti-west -- Culture and captivity -- Globalization and voice -- Multiculturalism and freedom -- Freedom to think.
Download or read book Privacy written by Martin Dowding and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matters of privacy have profoundly changed since electronic storage of information has become the norm. Consequently, policy-makers and legislators are trying to keep up with privacy challenges in the workplace, in healthcare, in surveillance, and on social networking sites. With Privacy: Defending an Illusion, Martin Dowding fills a very important gap in policy analysis and the teaching of privacy issues at the senior undergraduate and early graduate student level. In the first section of this book, Dowding recounts historical interpretations of privacy in a wide variety of socio-cultural circumstances. In the second section, the author addresses how information and communication technologies have changed our conceptions about privacy and redirected our focus from keeping information private to sharing it with many more people than we would have even a few years ago. Dowding also examines a variety of possible options for the future of privacy. The appendixes include seminal readings on relevant topics that should encourage debates about the nature of privacy and its problems. Overall, this book provides a solid background for defining and understanding privacy in a wide variety of contexts.
Download or read book Wages of Rebellion written by Chris Hedges and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges -- who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class -- investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges' message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization. Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as "sublime madness" -- the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this "sublime madness." From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable guide to rebellion.
Download or read book Habits of Empire written by Walter Nugent and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its founding, the United States' declared principles of liberty and democracy have often clashed with aggressive policies of imperial expansion. In this sweeping narrative history, acclaimed scholar Walter Nugent explores this fundamental American contradiction by recounting the story of American land acquisition since 1782 and shows how this steady addition of territory instilled in the American people a habit of empire-building. From America's early expansions into Transappalachia and the Louisiana Purchase through later additions of Alaska and island protectorates in the Caribbean and Pacific, Nugent demonstrates that the history of American empire is a tale of shifting motives, as the early desire to annex land for a growing population gave way to securing strategic outposts for America's global economic and military interests. Thorough, enlightening, and well-sourced, this book explains the deep roots of American imperialism as no other has done.
