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 144 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 The Age of Illusion written by Dr Ronald Blythe and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brilliant reconstruction of life in England between the two world wars, Ronald Blythe highlights a number of key episodes and personalities which typify the flavour of those two extraordinary decades. He begins with the burial in Westminster Abbey of the Unknown Soldier. This was nearly two years after the last shot had been fired in battle and the near-delirium of 1919 - a boom year though few families were out of mourning - was giving way to the uneasy realization that the world was still far from being a place fit for heroes to live in. The period abounded with colourful figures whose idiosyncrasies Ronald Blythe relishes. The absurd Joynson-Hicks cleaning up London's morals while defending General Dyer shooting down nearly 400 Indians at Amritsar; Mrs Meyrick, the night-club queen of London, being regularly raided at the famous '43'; John Reith putting the B. B.C. on its feet and the public in its place; and headline stealers such as Amy Johnson and T. E. Lawrence. Behind this garish facade, the author shows the new writers emerging at the turn of the decade from their embarrassingly middle-class backgrounds and traces the birth of Britain's first radical intelligentsia. The popular front, the cartoonist David Low's Colonel Blimp and the Left Book Club characterise the much-changed political climate of the 1930s. There, dealing with Jarrow, the Spanish Civil War and Munich, Ronald Blythe show his capacity for writing with an urgency no less effective for its restraint. Coupled with the delightful astringency he brings to such rather less weighty matters as the Brighton trunk murders and the Rector of Stiffkey's remarkable capers, Ronald Blythe demonstrated in this early book his impressive gifts as a social historian.

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 The age of illusion written by James Laver and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

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 The Age of Illusion written by Ronald Blythe and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book THE SHAPE OF ILLUSION written by William E. Barrett and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book City of Illusion written by Victoria Ying and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read the follow-up to the action-packed adventure that Dan Santat called "An-edge-of-your-seat thriller!" It's been a peaceful three months since Hannah Morgan and Ever Barnes saved their beloved Oskars, and activated the powers of their city's Megantic. Ever now lives with the Morgan family and the two children watch over and learn more about Oskar (the Megantic) every day. But their conflict-free days come to an abrupt end when Mr. Morgan is captured while on a family trip to nearby Alexios, and the kids get into a spat with a group of street magicians who con Hannah out of her pocket money. Chifa and Tanan were never planning to make friends while performing their tricks, but when Hannah and Ever learn of their connection to Vash, they realize there's much more at stake than a few coins. If Hannah and Ever want to find out what Vash is hiding and save both Oskars and Alexios before time runs out, they'll have to learn to trust Chifa and Tanan, and most importantly, find a way to work together.

Download or read book The Great Fox Illusion written by Justyn Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2022-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secrets and illusions abound as a group of young magicians competes for the prize of a lifetime in this gripping adventure, the first in an enthralling new series from debut author Justyn Edwards. Magic is about dreaming what is impossible and making it possible. It's the innocent young mind in all of us that loves it. We want to be filled with wonder. We want to believe. I want the winner of this competition and the recipient of my legacy to dare to dream big. So, let the Great Fox Hunt begin. Thirteen-year-old Flick Lions has won a place on a new television show, in which young people compete to win the legacy of The Great Fox, one of the world's most famous magicians. But Flick isn't interested in uncovering the Great Fox's tired old magic tricks - she's after something much more important. The magician destroyed her family, and this is Flick's only chance to put things right. Inside the Fox's house is a secret that will change the world of magic for ever, and Flick will go to any lengths to find it.

Download or read book Illusion and Disillusionment written by Roberta Micallef and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through engaging characters--China-bound missionaries, an Indo-Persian diplomat, a Turkish exile in India, a French teacher in America, Arab students in Moscow, a Japanese woman writer in Europe--Illusion and Disillusionment examines travel writing beyond colonialism, imperialism, and Orientalism, focusing on the experience of travel itself.

Download or read book The Knowledge Illusion written by Steven Sloman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker We all think we know more than we actually do. Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it. The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.

Download or read book The Price of Illusion written by Joan Juliet Buck and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Joan Juliet Buck, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris and “one of the most compelling personalities in the world of style” (New York Times) comes her dazzling, compulsively readable memoir: a fabulous account of four decades spent in the creative heart of London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris—“If you loved The Devil Wears Prada, you’ll adore The Price of Illusion” (Elle). In a book as rich and dramatic as the life she’s led, Joan Juliet Buck takes us into the splendid illusions of film, fashion, and fame to reveal, in stunning, sensual prose, the truth behind the artifice. The only child of a volatile movie producer betrayed by his dreams, she became a magazine journalist at nineteen to reflect and record the high life she’d been brought up in, a choice that led her into a hall of mirrors where she was both magician and dupe. After a career writing for Vogue and Vanity Fair, she was named the first American woman to edit VogueParis. The vivid adventures of this thoughtful, incisive writer at the hub of dreams across two continents over fifty years are hilarious and heartbreaking. Including a spectacular cast of carefully observed legends, monsters, and stars (just look at the index!), this is the moving account of a remarkable woman’s rocky passage through glamour and passion, filial duty and family madness, in search of her true self.

Download or read book Crime and Illusion written by Felipe Pereda and published by Harvey Miller. This book was released on 2019-01-09 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to an old historiographic tradition, the Spanish Golden Age placed the imitation of nature at the service of religion: its radical naturalism responded to the deep faith of that culture and moment. Crime & Illusion argues the opposite. It defends the thesis that the fundamental problem artists of the Golden Age confronted was not imitation but Truth. Moreover a large part, maybe the best part, of Spanish Baroque religious imagery is better understood as a complex exercise in addressing the spectators' doubts. Hovering on the horizon of an emerging empiricism, artists created their images as pieces of evidence, arguments for belief. Crime & Illusion reconstructs and interprets this judicial or forensic aspect of early modern visual culture at the center of a political, religious, and scientific triangle. Finally, the book explores the artists' skeptical reflection on the problematic relationship of painting and sculpture to the art of truth.

Download or read book The Grand Illusion written by Brendan D Murphy and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grand Illusion synthesizes the best consciousness research with decades of cutting-edge discovery and hard science, empowering you with an intelligent new paradigm and new direction for humanity. This acclaimed book destroys the materialist notion of humans as "meat computers" and lays the foundation for a scientifically-based metaphysics.

Download or read book News written by W. Lance Bennett and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1995 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Deadly Illusion written by Kathy Lockheart and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-10 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairytales aren't supposed to end in murder She's hiding a dangerous secret. He'll stop at nothing to keep her safe...but can he stop himself from killing her? An emotional, tension-filled forbidden romance that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page... Jenna wasn't going to let the darkness of her past prevent her from building the life she's always wanted, so she put herself through college and moved to the magnificent city of Chicago. But just when she thought all her dreams were coming true, a shocking incident shattered her fairy-tale life and now, she's hiding a terrible secret-a secret that could cost her everything. Damian is as gorgeous as he is mysterious, keeping his own dark secrets from everyone he meets. He never thought he'd care about anything again...until he meets Jenna. He knows letting her get close to him will put her in danger, but when he suspects Jenna's in trouble, there's only one thing that matters: protecting her at all costs. Thrust into a terrifying nightmare where a threat looms in every shadow, Jenna and Damian find themselves in a race for survival. Soon, everyone Jenna loves is in peril, and only the ultimate sacrifice can save them... This book contains sensitive subject matter.