Download or read book The Half Life of Facts written by Samuel Arbesman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insights from the science of science Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. Samuel Arbesman shows us how knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and how this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives. He takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries.

Download or read book Half Lives written by Lucy Jane Santos and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating, curious, and sometimes macabre history of radium as seen in its uses in everyday life. Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal. Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item – a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in- the-dark dance costume – to its role as a supposed cure-all in everyday twentieth-century life, when medical practitioners and business people (reputable and otherwise) devised ingenious ways of commodifying the new wonder element, and enthusiastic customers welcomed their radioactive wares into their homes. Lucy Jane Santos—herself the proud owner of a formidable collection of radium beauty treatments—delves into the stories of these products and details the gradual downfall and discredit of the radium industry through the eyes of the people who bought, sold and eventually came to fear the once-fetishized substance. Half Lives is a new history of radium as part of a unique examination of the interplay between science and popular culture.

Download or read book Half a Life written by Darin Strauss and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey—graduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father. Along the way, he takes a hard look at loss and guilt, maturity and accountability, hope and, at last, acceptance. The result is a staggering, uplifting tour de force. Look for special features inside, including an interview with Colum McCann.

Download or read book Herman Melville written by John Bryant and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 2599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive exploration of Melville's formative years, providing a new biographical foundation for today's generations of Melville readers Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, Volumes 1 and 2, follows Herman Melville's life from early childhood to his astonishing emergence as a bestselling novelist with the publication of Typee in 1846. These volumes comprise the first half of a comprehensive biography on Melville, grounded in archival research, new scholarship, and incisive critical readings. Author John Bryant, a distinguished Melville scholar, editor, critic, and educator, traces the events and experiences that shaped the many-stranded consciousness of one of literature’s greatest writers. This in-depth and innovative biography covers Melville's family history and literary friendships, his father-longing, god-hunger, and search for the hidden nature of Being, the genesis of his liberal politics, his empathy for African Americans, Native Americans, Polynesians, South Americans, and immigrants. Original perspectives on Melville’s earliest identities—orphaned son, sibling, farmer, teacher, debater, lover, actor, sailor—provide the context for Melville’s evolution as a writer. The biography presents new information regarding Melville's reading, his early orations and acting experience, his life at sea and on the road, and the unsettling death of his older, rival brother from mercury poisoning. It provides insights on experiences such as Melville's trauma at the loss of his father, his learning to write amidst a coterie siblings, his struggles to find work during economic depression, his journey West, his life in whaling and in the navy, and his vagabondage in the South Pacific during the moment of American and European imperial incursions. A significant addition to Melville scholarship, this important biographical work: Explores the nature and development of Melville's creative consciousness, through the lens of his revisions in manuscript and print Assesses Melville's sexual growth and exploration of the spectrum of his masculinities Highlights Melville's relevance in contemporary democratic society Discusses Melville's blending of dark humor and tragedy in his unique version of the picturesque Examines the 'replaying' of Melville's life traumas throughout his entire works, from Typee, Omoo, Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, Pierre, Israel Potter, and The Confidence-Man to his shorter works, including "Bartleby," his epic Clarel, his poetry, and his last novella Billy Budd Covers such cultural and historical events as the American revolution of his grandparents, the whaling industry, New York slavery, street life and theater in Manhattan, the transatlantic slave trade, the Jacksonian economy, Indian removal, Pacific colonialism, and westward expansion Written in an engaging style for scholars and general readers alike, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, Volumes 1 and 2 is an indispensable new source of information and insights for those interested in Melville, 19th-century and modern literature and culture, and readers of general American history and literary culture.

Download or read book The Half Known Life written by Pico Iyer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Masterful…A book of inner journeys told through extraordinary exteriors…One of his very best.” —Washington Post “Dazzling.” —Time Magazine, Best Books of 2023 From “one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time” (Brain Pickings): a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world. Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst—or just across the ocean—if only we can find eyes to see it. Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld – or can it be found in the here and now? For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul’s delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim’s readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.

Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Download or read book Half a Life written by V. S. Naipaul and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the finest living writers in the English language, V. S. Naipaul gives us a tale as wholly unexpected as it is affecting, his first novel since the exultantly acclaimed A Way in the World, published seven years ago. Half a Life is the story of Willie Chandran, whose father, heeding the call of Mahatma Gandhi, turned his back on his brahmin heritage and married a woman of low caste—a disastrous union he would live to regret, as he would the children that issued from it. When Willie reaches manhood, his flight from the travails of his mixed birth takes him from India to London, where, in the shabby haunts of immigrants and literary bohemians of the 1950s, he contrives a new identity. This is what happens as he tries to defeat self-doubt in sexual adventures and in the struggle to become a writer—strivings that bring him to the brink of exhaustion, from which he is rescued, to his amazement, only by the love of a good woman. And this is what happens when he returns with her—carried along, really—to her home in Africa, to live, until the last doomed days of colonialism, yet another life not his own. In a luminous narrative that takes us across three continents, Naipaul explores his great theme of inheritance with an intimacy and directness unsurpassed in his extraordinary body of work. And even as he lays bare the bitter comical ironies of assumed identities, he gives us a poignant spectacle of the enervation peculiar to a borrowed life. In one man’s determined refusal of what he has been given to be, Naipaul reveals the way of all our experience. As Willie comes to see, “Everything goes on a bias. The world should stop, but it goes on.” A masterpiece of economy and emotional nuance, Half a Life is an indelible feat of the imagination.

Download or read book How the Other Half Lives written by Jacob Riis and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Half a Life and Other Stories written by Kirill Bulychev and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Half Lives written by Sara Grant and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I've learned that surviving isn't all it's cracked up to be. NOW: Icie's parents gave her $10,000 in cash, a map of a top-secret bunker, and instructions to get there by any means necessary. They have news of an imminent viral attack and know that the bunker is Icie's only hope for survival. She and three other teens live locked away for months, not knowing what's happening in the outside world or who has survived. Then one day, Icie discovers a shocking secret deep in the bunker. Are they really safe there after all? THEN: Generations in the future, the world has changed, and a mysterious cult worships the very mountain where Icie's secret bunker was built. The people never leave the mountain, they're ruled by Beckett, a teenager...and they have surprising ties to Icie. Icie and Beckett must both fight to survive while protecting a secret that could destroy their civilizations. This high-stakes, original, and thought-provoking adventure follows two unlikely heroes, hundreds of years apart.

Download or read book Half in Shadow written by Shanna Greene Benjamin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nellie Y. McKay (1930–2006) was a pivotal figure in contemporary American letters. The author of several books, McKay is best known for coediting the canon-making with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which helped secure a place for the scholarly study of Black writing that had been ignored by white academia. However, there is more to McKay's life and legacy than her literary scholarship. After her passing, new details about McKay's life emerged, surprising everyone who knew her. Why did McKay choose to hide so many details of her past? Shanna Greene Benjamin examines McKay's path through the professoriate to learn about the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy. Benjamin shows that McKay's secrecy was a necessary tactic that a Black, working-class woman had to employ to succeed in the white-dominated space of the American English department. Using extensive archives and personal correspondence, Benjamin brings together McKay’s private life and public work to expand how we think about Black literary history and the place of Black women in American culture.

Download or read book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life written by James Hollis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-05-05 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it really mean to be a grown up in today’s world? We assume that once we “get it together” with the right job, marry the right person, have children, and buy a home, all is settled and well. But adulthood presents varying levels of growth, and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the age of thirty-five and seventy when we question the choices we’ve made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck—commonly known as the “midlife crisis.” Jungian psycho-analyst James Hollis believes it is only in the second half of life that we can truly come to know who we are and thus create a life that has meaning. In Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, Hollis explores the ways we can grow and evolve to fully become ourselves when the traditional roles of adulthood aren’t quite working for us, revealing a new way of uncovering and embracing our authentic selves. Offering wisdom to anyone facing a career that no longer seems fulfilling, a long-term relationship that has shifted, or family transitions that raise issues of aging and mortality, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life provides a reassuring message and a crucial bridge across this critical passage of adult development.

Download or read book The Horrors of the Half Known Life written by G.J. Barker-Benfield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a classic in the field, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life is an important foundational text in the construction of masculinity, female identity, and the history of midwivery.

Download or read book What You Really Need to Know for the Second Half of Life written by Julieanne E. Steinbacher and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I had the pleasure of coordinating the writing of this book and hand selecting this group of leading elder care attorneys from across the United States. It was an honor to work with these leading lawyers, and I want to thank each of them for sharing their knowledge and experience with the readers of this book. --Julieanne E. Steinbacher, Certified as an Elder Law Attorney by the National Elder Law Foundation

Download or read book 100 Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life written by David Niven, PhD and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical advice on how to thrive in the second half of your life, based on scientific studies. The sixth book in the bestselling 100 Simple Secrets series. What do people who relish the second half of their lives do differently than those who dread getting older? Sociologists, therapists and psychiatrists have spent entire careers investigating the ins and outs of successful aging, yet their findings are inaccessible to ordinary people, hidden in obscure journals to be shared with other experts. Now the international bestselling author of The 100 Simple Secrets series has collected the most current and significant data from more than a thousand of the best scientific studies on the second half of life. These findings have been boiled down to one hundred essential ways to find and maintain joy, health, and satisfaction every day of your life. Each one is accompanied by a true story showing the results in action. The Baby Boomers are hitting retirement age. This upbeat, light approach will appeal to the enormous market of citizens grappling with the effects of becoming 'senior', looking to discover the positive benefits of aging beyond discount tickets at the movie theatre. Books about aging well continue to sell year in and year out. The Simple Secrets approach will stand out among the heavier self-help/psychology titles and will without a doubt become an affordable impulse and gifty mainstay in this category. A good inexpensive gift for parents and grandparents.

Download or read book Half a Life written by Jill Ciment and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jill Ciment weaves an unforgettable tale of survival, compassion, and courage, in this haunting recollection of a child surrounded by confusion and madness, and her struggle to find an identity. Half a Life traces Jill Ciment's family from Toronto to the California desert—a landscape and culture so alien to her father that the last vestiges of sanity leave him. As madness engulfs him he becomes increasingly brutal and the family, grasping at survival, throws him out the door. Having no understanding that he has done anything wrong, he first lives in his car at the end of the driveway, waiting to be invited back in, before exiting completely from their lives. Poor and fatherless, Ciment spends the years from age fourteen to seventeen, as a gang girl, a professional forger, a stripper, a corporate spy, and finally, a high school dropout who by age eighteen has seduced her art teacher, a man nearly three decades her senior and bluffed her way into college in an effort to shape a future. Ciment is cutting, insightful and clearly unapologetic as she details the confusion and bravado of a child heroine whose dreams and tenacity allow her finally, to create the life she has been so desperately seeking.

Download or read book Hagitude written by Sharon Blackie and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: RADICALLY REIMAGINE THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE “There can be a certain perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish.” — from the book For any woman over fifty who has ever asked “What now? Who do I want to be?” comes a life-changing book showing how your next phase of life may be your most dynamic yet. As mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie describes it, midlife is the threshold to decades of opportunity and profound transformation, a time to learn, flourish, and claim the desires and identities that are often limited during earlier life stages. This is a time for gaining new perspectives, challenging and evolving belief systems, exploring callings, uncovering meaning, and ultimately finding healing for accumulated wounds. Western folklore and mythology are rife with brilliantly creative, fulfilled, feisty, and furious role models for aging women, despite our culture’s focus on youthfulness. Blackie explores these archetypes in Hagitude, presenting them in a way sure to appeal to contemporary women. Drawing inspiration from these examples as well as modern mentors, you can reclaim midlife as a liberating, alchemical moment rich with possibility and your elder years as a path to feminine power.