The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation
Author: Ny Jim Cullen Ethical Culture Fieldston School File Type: pdf The American Dream is one of the most familiar and resonant phrases in our national lexicon, so familiar that we seldom pause to ask its origin, its history, or what it actually means.In this fascinating short history, Jim Cullen explores the meaning of the American Dream, or rather the several American Dreams that have both reflected and shaped American identity from the Pilgrims to the present. Cullen begins by noting that the United States, unlike most other nations, defines itself not on the facts of blood, religion, language, geography, or shared history, but on a set of ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and consolidated in the Constitution. At the core of these ideals lies the ambiguous but galvanizing concept of the American Dream, a concept that for better and worse has proven to be amazingly elastic and durable for hundreds of years and across racial, class, and other demographic lines. Cullen then traces a series of overlapping American dreams the quest for of religious freedom that brought the Pilgrims to the New World the political freedom promised in the Declaration the dream of upward mobility, embodied most fully in the figure of Abraham Lincoln the dream of home ownership, from homestead to suburb the intensely idealistic--and largely unrealized--dream of equality articulated most vividly by Martin Luther King, Jr. The version of the American Dream that dominates our own time--what Cullen calls the Dream of the Coast--is one of personal fulfillment, of fame and fortune all the more alluring if achieved without obvious effort, which finds its most insidious expression in the culture of Hollywood.For anyone seeking to understand a shifting but central idea in American history, The American Dream is an interpretive tour de force.**
Author: Pamela Alexander
File Type: pdf
Combining the best of poetry, nature writing, a biography, Pamela Alexander in her book-length persona poem brings to life John James Audubon and a world not yet aware of natures limits. She distills the essence of this remarkable naturalistic-artist and gives him voice to tell his life story in fragments and letters, journal entries, actual vignettes, and lyrical passages. Captivating, and accessible, her poem reads with the authority of autobiography, the dramatic coherence of a novel, and the evocative clarity of an Audubon print. The reader, briefly transported to the natural world of America a century and a half ago, cannot help but contrast its condition today and feel a poignant sense of loss.
Author: Paul Farmer
File Type: pdf
Bringing together the experience, perspective and expertise of Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Arthur Kleinman, Reimagining Global Health provides an original, compelling introduction to the field of global health. Drawn from a Harvard course developed by their student Matthew Basilico, this work provides an accessible and engaging framework for the study of global health. Insisting on an approach that is historically deep and geographically broad, the authors underline the importance of a transdisciplinary approach, and offer a highly readable distillation of several historical and ethnographic perspectives of contemporary global health problems. The case studies presented throughout Reimagining Global Health bring together ethnographic, theoretical, and historical perspectives into a wholly new and exciting investigation of global health. The interdisciplinary approach outlined in this text should prove useful not only in schools of public health, nursing, and medicine, but also in undergraduate and graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, political economy, and history, among others.**
Author: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
File Type: pdf
Cross-cultural encounters in Europe and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought the potential for bafflement, hostility, and admiration. The court was the crucial site where expanding Eurasian states and empires met and were forced to make sense of one another. By looking at these interactions, Courtly Encounters provides a fresh cross-cultural perspective on the worlds of early modern Islam, Counter-Reformation Catholicism, Protestantism, and a newly emergent Hindu sphere. Both individual agents and objects such as texts and paintings helped mediate encounters between courts, which possessed rules and conventions that required decipherment and translation, whether in words or in pictures. Sanjay Subrahmanyam gives special attention to the depiction of South Asian empires in European visual representations, finding a complex history of cultural exchange the Mughal paintings that influenced Rembrandt and other seventeenth-century Dutch painters had themselves been earlier influenced by Dutch naturalism. Courtly Encounters provides a rich array of images from Europe, the Islamic world, India, and Southeast Asia as aids for understanding the reciprocal nature of cross-cultural exchanges. It also looks closely at how insults and strategic use of martyrdom figured in courtly encounters. As he sifts through the historical record, Subrahmanyam finds little evidence for the cultural incommensurability many ethnohistorians have insisted on. Most often, he discovers negotiated ways of understanding one another that led to mutual improvisation, borrowing, and eventually change. **
Author: Thomas Weber
File Type: pdf
In Becoming Hitler, Thomas Weber continues from where he left off in his previous book, Hitlers First War, stripping away the layers of myth and fabrication in Hitlers own tale to tell the real story of Hitlers politicisation and radicalisation in post-First World War Munich. It is the gripping account of how an awkward and unemployed loner with virtually no recognisable leadership qualities and fluctuating political ideas turned into the charismatic, self-assured, virulently anti-Semitic leader with an all-or-nothing approach to politics with whom the world was soon to become tragically familiar. As Weber clearly shows, far from the picture of a fully-formed political leader which Hitler wanted to portray in Mein Kampf, his ideas and priorities were still very uncertain and largely undefined in early 1919 - and they continued to shift until 1923.
Author: George Saunders
File Type: epub
One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.In the taut opener, Victory Lap, a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In Home, a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store two mothers struggling to do the right thing a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to killthe unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunderss signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of Decemberthrough their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spiritnot only entertain and delight they fulfill Chekhovs dictum that art should prepare us for tenderness
Author: Ian M. Church
File Type: pdf
Why care about intellectual humility? What is an intellectual virtue? How do we know who is intellectually humble? The nature of intellectual virtues is a topic of ancient interest. But contemporary philosophy has experienced unparalleled energy and concern for one particular virtue over the past 30 years intellectual humility. Intellectual Humility An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science draws on leading research to provide an engaging and up-to-date guide to understanding what it is and why its important. By using ten big questions to introduce the concept, this introduction presents a vibrant account of the ideas behind intellectual humility. Covering themes from philosophy, psychology, education, social science, and divinity, it addresses issues such as What human cognition tells us about intellectual virtues The extent to which traits and dispositions are stable from birth or learned habits How emotions affect our ability to be intellectually humble The best way to handle disagreement The impact intellectual humility has on religion or theological commitmentsWritten for students taking the University of Edinburghs online course, this textbook is for anyone interested in finding out more about intellectual humility, how it can be developed and where it can be applied.
Author: James Reay Williams
File Type: pdf
This book argues that the Anglophone novel in the twentieth century is, in fact, always multilingual. Rooting its analysis in modern Europe and the Caribbean, it recognises that monolingualism, not multilingualism, is a historical and global rarity, and argues that this fact must inform our study of the novel, even when it remains notionally Anglophone. Drawing principally upon four authors Joseph Conrad, Jean Rhys, Wilson Harris and Junot Diaz this study argues that a close engagement with the novel reveals a series of ways to apprehend, depict and theorise various kinds of language diversity. In so doing, it reveals the presence of the multilingual as a powerful shaping force for the direction of the novel from 1900 to the present day which cuts across and complicates current understandings of modernist, postcolonial and global literatures. About the Author James Reay Williams holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London, UK, and has lectured at Queen Mary and the University of Exeter.
Author: Jesper Juul
File Type: pdf
We used to think that video games were mostly for young men, but with the success of the Nintendo Wii, and the proliferation of games in browsers, cell phone games, and social games video games changed changed fundamentally in the years from 2000 to 2010. These new casual games are now played by men and women, young and old. Players need not possess an intimate knowledge of video game history or devote weeks or months to play. At the same time, many players of casual games show a dedication and skill that is anything but casual. In A Casual Revolution, Jesper Juul describes this as a reinvention of video games, and of our image of video game players, and explores what this tells us about the players, the games, and their interaction. With this reinvention of video games, the game industry reconnects with a general audience. Many of todays casual game players once enjoyed * Pac-Man, Tetris*, and other early games, only to drop out when video games became more time-consuming and complex. Juul shows that it is only by understanding what a game requires of players, what players bring to a game, how the game industry works, and how video games have developed historically that we can understand what makes video games fun and why we choose to play (or not to play) them. Important Notice The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition. **Review A Casual Revolution is a hard look at the unique characteristics of games outside of the hardcore. Juul pushes past the prejudice that casual games are somehow lesser experiences and presents a multifaceted view of casualness, casual players and the non-trivial role of these deeply engaging games in our social and cultural lives. (Tracy Fullerton, Director, USC Game Innovation Lab, USC School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media Division) [F]or anyone working in the games industry or studying games and their role in popular culture, A Casual Revolution is a succinct and indispensable summary of the current state of video games. (Stewart Woods Game Studies) Lets start with the hype. A Casual Revolution is terrific. A succinct, informative, thoughtful examination of the forces that have been, as its subtitle says, reinventing video games and their players. Oh, and on top of all that, its just plain fun to read. (Tap-Repeatedly (55 stars)) About the Author Jesper Juul is a researcher at the Danish Design School and an affiliate of the New York University Game Center. He is the author of Half-Real Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (2005), published by the MIT Press.