Download or read book The World of Extreme Happiness written by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unwanted from the moment she’s born, Sunny is determined to escape her life in rural China and forge a new identity in the city. As naïve as she is ambitious, Sunny views her new job in a grueling factory as a stepping stone to untold opportunities. When fate casts her as a company spokeswoman at a sham PR event, Sunny’s bright outlook starts to unravel in a series of harrowing and darkly comic events, as she begins to question a system enriching itself by destroying its own people.
Download or read book Happiness Around the World written by Carol Graham and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-12-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries the pursuit of happiness was the preserve of either the philosopher or the voluptuary and took second place to the basic need to survive on the one hand, and the pressure to conform to social conventions and morality on the other. More recently there is a burgeoning interest in the study of happiness, in the social sciences and in the media. Can we really answer the question what makes people happy? Is it really grounded in credible methods and data? Is there consistency in the determinants of happiness across countries and cultures? Are happiness levels innate to individuals or can policy and the environment make a difference? How is happiness affected by poverty? By economic progress? Is happiness a viable objective for policy? This book is an attempt to answer these questions, based on research on the determinants of happiness in countries around the world, ranging from Peru and Russia to the U.S. and Afghanistan. The book reviews the theory and concepts of happiness, explaining how these concepts underpin a line of research which is both an attempt to understand the determinants of happiness and a tool for understanding the effects of a host of phenomena on human well being. The research finds surprising consistency in the determinants of happiness across levels of development. Yet there is still much debate over the relationship between happiness and income. The book explores the effects of many mediating factors in that relationship, ranging from macroeconomic trends and democracy to inequality and crime. It also reviews what we know about happiness and health and how that relationship varies according to income levels and health status. It concludes by discussing the potential - and the potential pitfalls - of using happiness surveys to contribute to better public policy.
Download or read book Factfulness written by Hans Rosling and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Download or read book The World of Extreme Happiness written by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-22 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. When Sunny's attempts to pull herself out of poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is forced to question the system she's spent her life trying to master – and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and individuals struggling to shape their own destinies. This new edition is published to coincide with the US premiere of the play at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, which then transfers to the Manhattan Theater Club, NYC.
Download or read book Twenty First Century American Playwrights written by Christopher Bigsby and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces nine exciting and talented playwrights who have emerged in twenty-first century America, exploring issues of race, gender and society.
Download or read book Billionaires written by Darrell M. West and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the Billionaires: the 1,645 men and women who control a massive share of global assets worth $6.5 trillion. Darrell West reveals what the other 99.99998% of us need to know. With rich anecdotes and personal narratives, West goes inside the world of the ultra wealthy. Meet U.S. billionaires such as Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg, David and Charles Koch, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Donald Trump—as well as international billionaires from around the globe. The growing political engagement of this small supra-wealthy group raises important questions about influence, transparency, and government performance, and West lays bare the wealthification of politics, including: • How billionaires can block appointments and legislation they don't like • Why the supra-wealthy moved into policy advocacy and referenda at the state level • Why billionaires run for office in more than a dozen countries around the world
Download or read book New and Selected Poems 1974 1994 written by Stephen Dunn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1995-05-17 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Justly celebrated as one of our strongest poets, Stephen Dunn selects from his eight collections and presents sixteen new poems marked by the haunting "Snowmass Cycle."
Download or read book Frances Ya Chu Cowhig s China Trilogy Three Parables of Global Capital written by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Some playwrights have a gift to amuse; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig has a darker gift. Anyone with romantic notions of Chinese culture will be unsettled by the jagged, unsentimental portrait of modern urban China."(Chicago Reader) Poetic and devastating, sensuous and politically acute, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's China Plays explore the forces of global capital as they explode within the lives of everyday people in contemporary China. This volume collects together the three plays in the series, including Cowhig's exploration of the human cost of development in China's socialist market economy (The World of Extreme Happiness), of justice and revenge amidst ecological and economic catastrophe (Snow in Midsummer), and the tale of the trade in blood that brought the AIDS crisis to rural China (The King of Hell's Palace). In addition to Cowhig's plays, the volume includes a host of supplemental materials including an editorial preface and three (previously published) brief essays responding to each play by the editor, Joshua Chambers-Letson; a new introduction by theatre/performance scholar and dramaturg Christine Mok that explores the key themes in Cowhig's body of work; a summary discussion between Cowhig, Chambers-Letson, and Mok, on Cowhig's process and the political and aesthetic currents animating her work. The World of Extreme Happiness: "Fearless, zippily-paced, and satirical . . . Cowhig forces us down the long hard look path" (Independent) Snow in Midsummer: “Gripping and affecting... graceful and impassioned” (Times) The King of Hell's Palace: "A medical-scandal drama that we can't afford to ignore" (Telegraph)
Download or read book Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women written by Penny Farfan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-07-22 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book foregrounds some of the ways in which women playwrights from across a range of contexts and working in a variety of forms and styles are illuminating the contemporary world while also contributing to its reshaping as they reflect, rethink, and reimagine it through their work for the stage. The book is framed by a substantial introduction that sets forth the critical vision and structure of the book as a whole, and an afterword that points toward emerging currents in and expansions of the contemporary field of playwriting by women on the cusp of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Within this frame, the twenty-eight chapters that form the main body of the book, each focusing on a single play of critical significance, together constitute a multi-faceted, inevitably partial, yet nonetheless integral picture of the work of women playwrights since 2000 as they engage with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Some of these issues include the continuing oppression of and violence against women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic minorities; the ongoing processes of decolonization; the consequences of neoliberal capitalism; the devastation and enduring trauma of war; global migration and the refugee crisis; the turn to right-wing populism; and the impact of climate change, including environmental disaster and species extinction. The book is structured into seven sections: Replaying the Canon; Representing Histories; Staging Lives; Re-imagining Family; Navigating Communities; Articulating Intersections; and New World Order(s). These sections group clusters of plays according to the broad critical actions they perform or, in the case of the final section, the new world orders that they capture through their stagings of the seeming impasse of the politically and environmentally catastrophic global present moment. There are many other points of resonance among and across the plays, but this seven-part structure foregrounds the broader actions that drive the plays, both in the Aristotelian dramaturgical sense and in the larger sense of the critical interventions that the plays creatively enact. In this way, the seven-part structure establishes correspondences across the great diversity of dramatic material represented in the book while at the same time identifying key methods of critical approach and areas of focus that align the book’s contributors across this diversity. The structure of the book thus parallels what the playwrights themselves are doing, but also how the contributors are approaching their work. Plays featured in the book are from Canada, Australia, South Africa, the US, the UK, France, Argentina, New Zealand, Syria, Brazil, Italy, and Austria; the playwrights include Margaret Atwood, Leah Purcell, Yaël Farber, Paula Vogel, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, debbie tucker green, Lisa Loomer, Hélène Cixous, Anna Deavere Smith, Lola Arias, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, Marie Clements, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Alia Bano, Holly Hughes, Whiti Hereaka, Julia Cho, Liwaa Yazji, Grace Passô, Dominique Morisseau, Emma Dante, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Lynn Nottage, Elfriede Jelinek, Caryl Churchill, Colleen Murphy, and Lucy Kirkwood. Encompassing several generations of playwrights and scholars, ranging from the most senior to mid-career to emerging voices, the book will be essential reading for established researchers, a valuable learning resource for students at all levels, and a useful and accessible guide for theatre practitioners and interested theatre-goers.
Download or read book Gross National Happiness written by Arthur C. Brooks and published by . This book was released on 2008-04-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author analyzes evidence and empirical research to determine which groups are the happiest in America; and offers suggestions on how the government can help individuals maximize their happiness.
Download or read book The H Spot written by Jill Filipovic and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do women want? The same thing men were promised in the Declaration of Independence: happiness, or at least the freedom to pursue it. For women, though, pursuing happiness is a complicated endeavor, and if you head out into America and talk to women one-on-one, as Jill Filipovic has done, you'll see that happiness is indelibly shaped by the constraints of gender, the expectations of feminine sacrifice, and the myriad ways that womanhood itself differs along lines of race, class, location, and identity. In The H-Spot, Filipovic argues that the main obstacle standing in-between women and happiness is a rigged system. In this world of unfinished feminism, men have long been able to "have it all" because of free female labor, while the bar of achievement for women has only gotten higher. Never before have women at every economic level had to work so much (whether it's to be an accomplished white-collar employee or just make ends meet). Never before have the standards of feminine perfection been so high. And never before have the requirements for being a "good mother" been so extreme. If our laws and policies made women's happiness and fulfillment a goal in and of itself, Filipovic contends, many of our country's most contentious political issues -- from reproductive rights to equal pay to welfare spending -- would swiftly be resolved. Filipovic argues that it is more important than ever to prioritize women's happiness-and that doing so will make men's lives better, too. Here, she provides an outline for a feminist movement we all need and a blueprint for how policy, laws, and society can deliver on the promise of the pursuit of happiness for all.
Download or read book Monologues for Actors of Color written by Roberta Uno and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actors of colour need the best speeches to demonstrate their skills and hone their craft. Roberta Uno has carefully selected monologues that represent African-American, Native American, Latino, and Asian-American identities. Each monologue comes with an introduction and notes on the characters and stage directions to set the scene for the actor. This new edition now includes more of the most exciting and accomplished playwrights to have emerged over the 15 years since the Monologues for Actors of Color books were first published, from new, cutting edge talent to Pulitzer winners.
Download or read book Going to Extremes written by Cass R. Sunstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Going to Extremes, renowned legal scholar and best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein offers startling insights into why and when people gravitate toward extremism."--Inside jacket.
Download or read book Snow In Midsummer written by Guan Hanquing and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men in this town were born with mouths that can right wrongs with a few words. Why are you too timid to speak? As she is about to be executed for a murder she didn't commit, young widow Dou Yi vows that, if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry ghost, the new factory owner must expose the injustices Dou Yi suffered before the curse destroys every living thing. A contemporary re-imagining by acclaimed playwright Frances-Ya Chu Cowhig of one of the most famous classical Chinese dramas, which breathes new life into this ancient story, haunted by centuries of retelling. The world premiere of Snow in Midsummer on 23 February 2017 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, launched the RSC's Chinese Translations Project, a cultural exchange bringing Chinese classics to a contemporary Western audience.
Download or read book Stumbling on Happiness written by Daniel Gilbert and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.
Download or read book 9 Common Lies Christians Believe written by Shane Pruitt and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maybe God isn't who you think He is. Maybe He's much better. Pastor and speaker Shane Pruitt guides readers in identifying the Christian cliches we've all heard that are actually unbiblical lies. He then counters with the truths about God as presented in the Bible, truths that bring encouragement and freedom for our lives. God won't give you more than you can handle. Really? Pastor and speaker Shane Pruitt shines a light on this and other Christian cliches that upon further inspection are actually unbiblical lies that keep far too many believers stuck in spiritual immaturity.
Download or read book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness written by Arundhati Roy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post * The Boston Globe * Minneapolis Star Tribune * NPR * Newsday * The Guardian * Financial Times * The Christian Science Monitor The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on an intimate journey across the Indian subcontinent—from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. Braiding together the lives of a diverse cast of characters who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, patched together by acts of love—and by hope, here Arundhati Roy reinvents what a novel can do and can be.
