Download or read book The Ascent of Humanity written by Charles Eisenstein and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self Our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse. Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. Our journey of separation hasn't been a terrible mistake but an evolutionary process and an adventure in self-discovery. Even in our darkest hour, Eisenstein sees the possibility of a more beautiful world—not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. We must shift away from our Babelian efforts to build ever-higher towers to heaven and instead turn out attention to creating a new kind of civilization—one designed for beauty rather than height.

Download or read book The Journey of Humanity written by Oded Galor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress, from one of the world's preeminent thinkers. “Unparalleled in its scope and ambition…All readers will learn something, and many will find the book fascinating.’—The Washington Post “Breathtaking. A new Sapiens!” —L'Express “Completely brilliant and utterly original ... a book for our epoch.”—Jon Snow, former presenter, Channel 4 News (UK) “A wildly ambitious attempt to do for economics what Newton, Darwin or Einstein did for their fields: develop a theory that explains almost everything.” —The New Statesman “An inspiring, readable, jargon-free and almost impossibly erudite masterwork.” —The New Statesman “[A] sweeping overview of cultural, technological and educational forces... Its breadth and ambition are reminiscent of Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Harari’s Sapiens.”—Financial Times “Astounding in scope and insight...provides the keys to the betterment of our species.”—Nouriel Roubini, author of Crisis Economics “A masterful sweep through the human odyssey.... If you liked Sapiens, you'll love this.” —Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins “Oded Galor's attempt to unify economic theory is impressive and insightful.” —Will Hutton, The Guardian “A great historical fresco.” —Le Monde “It's a page-turner, a suspense-filled thriller full of surprises, mind-bending puzzles and profound insights!”—Glenn C. Loury, author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality “Brilliantly weaves the threads of global economic history. A tour de force!”—Dani Rodrik, author of Straight Talk on Trade In a captivating journey from the dawn of human existence to the present, world-renowned economist and thinker Oded Galor offers an intriguing solution to two of humanity’s great mysteries. Why are humans the only species to have escaped—only very recently—the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today? Galor’s gripping narrative explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning “phase change” in the human story a mere two hundred years ago. But by tracing that same journey back in time and peeling away the layers of influence—colonialism, political institutions, societal structure, culture—he arrives also at an explanation of inequality’s ultimate causes: those ancestral populations that enjoyed fruitful geographical characteristics and rich diversity were set on the path to prosperity, while those that lacked it were disadvantaged in ways still echo today. As we face ecological crisis across the globe, The Journey of Humanity is a book of urgent truths and enduring relevance, with lessons that are both hopeful and profound: gender equality, investment in education, and balancing diversity with social cohesion are the keys not only to our species’ thriving but to its survival.

Download or read book Dispatches from the Frontlines of Humanity written by Boštjan Videmšek and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an in-depth reportage on some of the most defining issues of our time, namely the global refugee crisis, the conflicts displacing these masses of humanity, and the causes behind them. It is also an ode to the vanishing art of the long-form feature or reportage, which is disappearing because many media organisations can no longer afford it, or are unwilling to pay for this kind of time-consuming, on-the-ground journalism. It is essential to keep alive old-school reportage from the field because it provides a human face to the issues challenging our world. It helps pierce the bubble of propaganda with a needle of truth and, beyond the political and human, it is a beautiful art form in its own right. This book showcases a keen eye for the human story and a profound commitment to the human family. By telling the stories detailed here, it helps put a human face on the suffering that is too often viewed statistically and quantitatively.

Download or read book The Dawn of Everything written by David Graeber and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations

Download or read book The Cradle of Humanity written by Mark Maslin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the fundamental questions of our existence is why we are so smart. There are lots of drawbacks to having a large brain, including the huge food intake needed to keep the organ running, the frequency with which it goes wrong, and our very high infant and mother mortality rates compared with other mammals, due to the difficulty of giving birth to offspring with very large heads. So why did evolution favour the brainy ape? This question has been widely debated among biological anthropologists, and in recent years, Maslin and his colleagues have pioneered a new theory that might just be the answer. Looking back to a crucial period some 1.9 million years ago, when brain capacity increased by as much as 80%, The Cradle of Humanity explores the implications of two adaptive responses by our hominin ancestors to rapid climatic changes - big jaws, and big brains. Maslin argues that the impact of changing landscapes and fluctuating climates that led to the appearance of intermittent freshwater lakes in East Africa may have played a key role in human evolution. Alongside the physical evidence of fossils and tools, he considers social theories of why a large, complex brain would have provided a major advantage when trying to survive in the constantly changing East African landscape.

Download or read book Big History and the Future of Humanity written by Fred Spier and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: big history and the future of humanity “This remains the best single attempt to theorize big history as a discipline that can link core concepts and paradigms across all historical disciplines, from cosmology to geology, from biology to human history. With additional and updated material, the Second Edition also offers a fine introduction to the history of big history and a superb introductory survey to the big history story. Essential reading for anyone interested in a rapidly evolving new field of scholarship that links the sciences and the humanities into a modern, science-based origin story.” David Christian, Macquarie University “Notable for its theoretic approach, this new Second Edition is both an indispensable contribution to the emerging big history narrative and a powerful university textbook. Spier defines words carefully and recognizes the limits of current knowledge, aspects of his own clear thinking.” Cynthia Brown, Emerita, Dominican University of California Reflecting the latest theories in the sciences and humanities, this new edition of Big History and the Future of Humanity presents an accessible and original overview of the entire sweep of history from the origins of the universe and life on Earth up to the present day. Placing the relatively brief period of human history within a much broader framework – one that considers everything from vast galaxy clusters to the tiniest sub-atomic particles – big history is an innovative theoretical approach that opens up entirely new multidisciplinary research agendas. Noted historian Fred Spier reveals how a thorough examination of patterns of complexity can offer richer insights into what the future may have in store for humanity. The second edition includes new learning features, such as highlighted scientific concepts, an illustrative timeline and comprehensive glossary. By exploring the cumulative history from the Big Bang to the modern day, Big History and the Future of Humanity, Second Edition, sheds important historical light on where we have been – and offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies ahead.

Download or read book The Orphaned Worlds written by Michael Cobley and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fight is on. So let the battle begin. Darien is no longer a lost outpost of humanity, but the prize in an intergalactic struggle. Hegemony forces control the planet, while Earth merely observes, rendered impotent by galactic politics. Yet Earth's ambassador to Darien will become a player in a greater conflict as there is more at stake than a turf war on a newly discovered world. An ancient temple hides access to a hyperspace prison, housing the greatest threat sentient life has never known. Millennia ago, malignant intelligences were caged there following an apocalyptic struggle, and their servants work on their release. Now a new war is coming.

Download or read book A History of Humanity written by Patrick Manning and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity today functions as a gigantic, world-encompassing system. Renowned world historian, Patrick Manning traces how this human system evolved from Homo Sapiens' beginnings over 200,000 years ago right up to the present day. He focuses on three great shifts in the scale of social organization - the rise of syntactical language, of agricultural society, and today's newly global social discourse - and links processes of social evolution to the dynamics of biological and cultural evolution. Throughout each of these shifts, migration and social diversity have been central, and social institutions have existed in a delicate balance, serving not just their own members but undergoing regulation from society. Integrating approaches from world history, environmental studies, biological and cultural evolution, social anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary linguistics, Patrick Manning offers an unprecedented account of the evolution of humans and our complex social system and explores the crises facing that human system today.

Download or read book Reenchanting Humanity written by OWEN. STRACHAN and published by . This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reenchanting Humanity is a work of systematic theology that focuses on the doctrine of humanity. Engaging the major anthropological questions of the age, like transgender, homosexuality, technology, and more, author Owen Strachan establishes a Christian anthropology rooted in Biblical truth, in stark contrast to the popular opinions of the modern age.

Download or read book An Edible History of Humanity written by Tom Standage and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-05-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lighthearted chronicle of how foods have transformed human culture throughout the ages traces the barley- and wheat-driven early civilizations of the near East through the corn and potato industries in America.

Download or read book What They Teach You at Harvard Business School written by Philip Delves Broughton and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'For anyone thinking of doing an MBA, or indeed anyone who wants to understand how the corporate elite are moulded, this is a must read' Luke Johnson, British entrepreneur The internationally best-selling business classic that reveals what it's really like to study an MBA at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. Philip Delves Broughton quit his position as New York correspondent for The Daily Telegraph to take his place on one of the most-coveted and exclusive courses in the world - an MBA at Harvard Business School - to acquire the wisdom reserved for the world's global elite. And what he learns is truly jaw-dropping. From his first class to graduation - encompassing the guest lectures, the Apprentice-style tasks, the booze-luge, the burnouts and the high flyers - Delves Broughton divulges the advice, wisdom and folly he found whilst studying at the most prestigious business school in the world. 'Anyone considering enrolling will find this an insightful portrait of Harvard Business School life' Economist 'Very funny. An excellent book' Wall Street Journal

Download or read book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-25 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.

Download or read book Humanity s Rise to Superdominance the Global Ecological Crisis and the Way Forward for Education written by Adam C. Scarfe and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book pinpoints the evolutionary connection between the global ecological crisis and transgenerational learning and education. As Julian Huxley (1887-1975) described, the cumulative passing down of knowledge, skills, and ideas by one generation to the next over eons of time, which has been afforded by the advent of complex languages in the evolutionary past, is chiefly responsible for humanity’s planetary superdominance. However, given that the drive of the human species to increase its control over the natural world has, today, run up against ecological limits, there is an evolutionary-existential choice to be made in relation to the ultimate purposes of formal education. Should humanity “double down” on the anthropocentric humanist project of superdominance, including the goals of unlimited economic growth, development, and scientific and technological progress? Alternatively, should a biocentric anti-humanist and/or postmodernist deconstruction of formal education take place? Or should a holistic organicist orientation, emphasizing biological wisdom, help to shape its future? As this book shows, the answers to these philosophical questions on the parts of educators, prospective teachers, and learners will, going forward, play a key role in deciding the evolutionary trajectories of all life-forms on the planet.

Download or read book The Plague Cycle written by Charles Kenny and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, sweeping, and “fact-filled” (Booklist, starred review) history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease that “contextualizes the COVID-19 pandemic” (Publishers Weekly)—for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza. For four thousand years, the size and vitality of cities, economies, and empires were heavily determined by infection. Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion—quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles—resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world. However, our development has lately become precarious. Climate and population fluctuations and factors such as global trade have left us more vulnerable than ever to newly emerging plagues. Greater global cooperation toward sustainable health is urgently required—such as the international efforts to manufacture and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine—with millions of lives and trillions of dollars at stake. “A timely, lucid look at the role of pandemics in history” (Kirkus Reviews), The Plague Cycle reveals the relationship between civilization, globalization, prosperity, and infectious disease over the past five millennia. It harnesses history, economics, and public health, and charts humanity’s remarkable progress, providing a fascinating and astute look at the cyclical nature of infectious disease.

Download or read book The State of Humanity written by Julian Simon and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1996-01-09 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and balanced assessment of the state of the Earth and its inhabitants at the close of the twentieth century. More than fifty scholars from all over the world present new, concise and accessible accounts of the present state of humanity and the prospects for its social and natural environment. The subjects range from deforestation, water pollution and ozone layer depletion to poverty, homelessness, mortality and murder. Each contributor considers the present situation, historical trends, likely future prospects, and the efficacy or otherwise of current activity and policy. The coverage is worldwide, with a particular emphasis on North America. The State of Humanity is a magnificent and eye-opening synthesis of cultural, social, economic and environmental perspectives. It will interest all those - including geographers, economists, sociologists and policy makers - concerned to understand some of the most pressing problems of our time.

Download or read book Diseased Cinema written by Robert Alpert and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses how the depiction of diseases in movies has changed over the last century and what these changes reveal about American culture Examines disease movies as a genre that has emerged over the last century and includes pandemic and zombie films Reveals the changes to the genre’s narratives over three broad time periods: the beginning of film through the 1980s, the 1990s through the mid-2000s, and the late 2000s and afterward Investigates the evolution of disease movies through three perspectives: historically notable films, remakes, and franchises Analyses disease movies in the context of the development of American, global capitalism and the fragmentation of the social contract Explains the role of disease movie narratives in the American experience of Covid American movies about infectious diseases have reflected and driven dominant cultural narratives during the past century. These movies – both real pandemics and imagined zombie outbreaks – have become wildly popular since the beginning of the 21st century. They have shifted from featuring a contained outbreak to an imagined containment of a known disease to a globalized, uncontainable pandemic of an unknown origin. Movie narratives have changed from identifying and solving social problems to a despair and acceptance of America’s failure to fulfil its historic social contract. Movies reflect and drive developments in American capitalism that increasingly advocates for individuals and their families, rather than communities and the public good. Disease movies today minimize human differences and envisage a utopian new world order to advance the needs of contemporary American capitalism. These movie narratives shaped reactions to the outbreak of Covid and reinforced individual responsibility as the solution to end the pandemic.

Download or read book The Beauty of Humanity Movement written by Camilla Gibb and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Vietnam lies in this bowl, for it is in Hanoi, the Vietnamese heart, that pho was born, a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French, who turned their cows away from ploughs and into bifteck and pot-au-feu. The name of their national soup is pronounced like this French word for fire, as Hung’s Uncle Chien explained to him long ago. “We’re clever people,” his uncle had said. “We took the best the occupiers had to offer and made it our own. Fish sauce is the key—in matters of soup and well beyond. Even romance, some people say.” —from The Beauty of Humanity Movement (p 5) by Camilla Gibb Old Man Hu’ng has been making and selling pho to hungry devotees for nearly 70 years, continually adapting his recipe and the location of his food cart to accommodate the terrible demands of poverty, war and oppression that have plagued Hanoi throughout his long life. Cherished least of all his mother’s ten children thanks to an inauspicious facial birthmark, Hu’ng was sent in 1933 to apprentice at his Uncle Chien’s restaurant where he achieved mastery over broth and noodles. Inheriting the business from his uncle, Hu’ng’s sublime cookery and willingness to barter made him a favourite in the 1950s with the Beauty of Humanity Movement, a group of artists and intellectuals who dared question Communist rule, at great peril. Heading the Movement was Dao, a poet whose young son Binh would shadow Hu’ng at the restaurant, hungry not for noodles but for the attention that his own revolutionary father was too distracted to provide. When Dao was inevitably arrested, Binh’s mother whisked the boy into hiding, blinding him in one eye to avoid conscription. Hu’ng was forced to close his restaurant, but not knowing any other life’s work, he persisted in making and selling pho by pushing a food cart through the city, even when forced to make his noodles with scavenged pond weeds. Fifty years later, Binh is a middle-class Hanoi carpenter who once again consumes daily bowls of Hu’ng’s pho, following the old man to whatever location he has moved to in order to evade police beatings. Binh tries valiantly to protect Hu’ng, the gentle old man who is as close to a father as he has ever known. By extension Hu’ng is also a grandfather to Binh’s son Tu’, a somewhat aimless Nike-shod tour guide who wears his clothes and hair in modern fashion, and yet whose spirited idealism reminds Hu’ng of his revolutionist grandfather. Then one day Hu’ng’s improvised pho stand is visited by a beautiful stranger, Maggie, a foreign-raised Vietnamese art curator who was spirited out of Hanoi as a child during the fall of Saigon. Her artist father disappeared in those tumultuous times, and Maggie has returned to the country of her birth to learn his fate. Hearing of Hu’ng’s reputation, she has come to plead for answers—did he know her father? Hu’ng’s memory is failing, but he dearly wants to help this young woman, whose beauty sends him back to a time long ago, when he loved a girl whose betrayal he has never forgiven. . . Steeped in rich and highly evocative language, Camilla Gibb’s The Beauty of Humanity Movement is a nuanced and gentle paean for Vietnam, a poignant testament to the strength and resiliency of love and art in overcoming terrible hardship.