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      • Trusted Partner
        2024

        The second half of your life - a manual

        Tips and strategies for successful ageing

        by Dr. Petra Kiedaisch

        In the middle of our lives, the cards are reshuffled: marriages are divorced, careers are questioned, friendships are ended, questions of meaning are asked, bodies change - and not just hormonally. At the same time, children leave home and parents become carers. From the age of 45, the majority of our population is at the centre of a second upheaval that affects all facets of our lives and leaves us at a loss in many ways. Not only in our daily lives, but also when it comes to planning for our own old age. This guide is designed to help us find our way. It presents the most important information from all areas relevant to a good life after 45. Leading experts from the fields of medicine, nutrition, philosophy, theology, psychology, care, law and finance give recommendations on what to look out for and what tools are needed to get through these challenging years unscathed. Useful checklists round off the articles. The book shows us the unique opportunity to see these challenges not as a crisis but as a source of strength. Not only can we come through this period of our lives healthy and happy, but we can also shape it so that the next age threshold is no longer frightening. During the second phase of adolescence, we lay the foundations for whether and how we will grow older. Be it in terms of health or living together with family and friends. With contributions from: Prof. Dr. Martin Gessmann (philosophy), Dipl. Psych. Claudia Kühner (psychology), Dr Suso Lederle (medicine), Dr Petra Forster (nutrition), Christian Hald, Anja Heine (law), Prof Dr Philipp Schreiber (finance), Prof Dr Thomas Klie (nursing care insurance), Georg Eberhardt (religion).

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2021

        Passing into the present

        Contemporary American fiction of racial and gender passing

        by Sinead Moynihan

        This book is the first full-length study of contemporary American fiction of passing. Its takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990s in order to make claims about wider trends in contemporary American fiction. The book accounts for the return of tropes of passing in fiction by Phillip Roth, Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich, Danzy Senna, Jeffrey Eugenides and Paul Beatty, by arguing meta-critical and meta-fictional tool. These writers are attracted to the trope of passing because passing narratives have always foregrounded the notion of textuality in relation to the (il)legibility of "black" subjects passing as white. The central argument of this book, then, is that contemporary narratives of passing are concerned with articulating and unpacking an analogy between passing and authorship. The title promises to inaugurate dialogue on the relationships between passing, postmodernism and authorship in contemporary American fiction.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2016

        The American bomb in Britain

        by Ken Young

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Ephemeral vistas

        by Paul Greenhalgh

        The international exhibitions held around the world between 1851 and 1939 were spectacular gestures, which briefly held the attention of the world before disappearing into an abrupt oblivion, of the victims of their planned temporality. Known in Britain as Great Exhibitions, in France as Expositions Universelles and in America as World's Fairs, the genre became a self-perpetuating phenomenon, the extraordinary cultural spawn of industry and empire. Thoroughly in the spirit of the first industrial age, the exhibitions illustrated the relation between money and power, and revelled in the belief that the uncontrolled expression of that power was the quintessence of freedom. Philanthropy found its place on exhibition sites functioning as a conscience to the age although even here morality was inextricably linked to economic efficiency and expansion. Imperial achievement was celebrated to the full at international exhibitions. Nevertheless, most World's Fairs maintained an imperial element and out of this blossomed a vibrant racism. Between 1889 and 1914, the exhibitions became a human showcase, when people from all over the world were brought to sites in order to be seen by others for their gratification and education. In essence, the English national profile fabricated in the closing decades of the nineteenth century was derived from the pre-industrial world. The Fine Arts were an important ingredient in any international exhibition of calibre. This book incorporates comparative work on European and American empire-building, with the chronological focus primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when these cultural exchanges were most powerfully at work.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2001

        Beginning ethnic American literatures

        by Helena Grice, Peter Barry, Candida Hepworth, John McLeod, Maria Lauret, Martin Padget, Annete Musker

        Since the late 1960s, American literature has been revitalised by the work of writers such as Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston. An introduction to the study of ethnic American fictions organised into four sections, each written by a specialist in the fields of African American, Asian American, Chicano/a and native American literature. Writers are discussed in their cultural/political contexts and literary traditions (rather than as exceptions or as individuals, or on a generic basis). The book highlights common themes in ethnic writing as well as specificities, and has extensive suggestions for further reading as well as a critical introduction regarding the concept of 'ethnic writing'. No competing titles - there are no textbooks, no beginners' books nor any systematised combination of ethnic fictions such as this - only edited collections on each area. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        September 2023

        Romantic women's life writing

        by Susan Civale

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2006

        The My Lai massacre in American history and memory

        by Kendrick Oliver

        On 16 March 1968, two US infantry companies entered a Vietnamese village and in the course of a single morning killed over 400 of its unarmed, unresisting inhabitants . . . This is the first book to examine the response of American society to the My Lai massacre and its ambiguous place in American national memory. Kendrick Oliver argues that the massacre revelations left many Americans untroubled. It was only when the soldiers most immediately responsible came to be tried that opposition to the conflict grew, for these prosecutions were regarded by supporters of the war as evidence that the national leaders no longer had the will to do what was necessary to win. Oliver goes on to show that, contrary to interpretations of the Vietnam conflict as an unhealed national trauma or wound, many Americans have assimilated the war and its violence rather too well, and they were able to do so even when that violence was most conspicuous and current. US soldiers have been presented as the conflict's principal victims, and this was true even in the case of My Lai. It was the American perpetrators of the massacre and not the Vietnamese they brutalized who became the central object of popular concern. Both the massacre and its reception reveal the problem of human empathy in conditions of a counter-revolutionary war - a war, moreover, that had always been fought for geopolitical credibility, not for the sake of the Vietnamese. This incisive enquiry into the moral history of the Vietnam war should be essential reading for all students of the conflict, as well as others interested in the war and its cultural legacies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2021

        On the Purposes of Life and Whether They Exist

        A philosophical fitting

        by Axel Braig

        The musician, doctor and philosopher Axel Braig considers philosophy a little like the weather: he looks for the right clothes for every situation. Braig is primarily concerned with practical, effective things from the two-and-a-half millennia fund of (Western) thinking, such as helpful approaches in existential crises. In this book, he introduces us to philosophical thinkers from Plato to Montaigne to Levinas and Feyerabend. Braig not only shares his own philosophical biography, but above all encourages us to philosophise ourselves.

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        Biography & True Stories
        June 2014

        A Biography of Paul Watzlawick

        The Discovery of the Present Moment

        by Andrea Köhler-Ludescher

        This book, the world's first biography of Paul Watzlawick, written by his great-niece, describes the life of this philosopher, therapist, and best-selling author. Paul Watzlawick had a talent for languages and he led an adventurous life, from his childhood in Villach to studying in Venice after the war, to analyst training under C. G. Jung in Zurich, an attempt at establishing himself in India and then in El Salvador as a therapist, and finally to the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in the United States, headed by Don D. Jackson, a venerable scientist. This marked the beginning of the second half of his life, his amazing career as a communication researcher, a pioneer of systemic therapy, a radical constructivist, and a great thinker regarding the divisions between East and West. With many letters, lectures, interviews, and statements from contemporary witnesses and family members, this book makes Paul Watzlawick accessible as a human being and as a spiritually inspired, leading 20th century thinker. It includes a variety of unpublished material from Watzlawick, and introduces a comprehensive and exciting picture of the scientist and cosmopolitan person, Paul Watzlawick.   Target Group: For people interest in Paul Watzlawick, communication sciences, systemic therapy, and constructivism.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2002

        American society today

        by Edward Ashbee, Bill Jones

        American society today provides a balanced introduction to the defining features of contemporary American society. Includes the ways in which the US can be considered 'exceptional' - the character of the 'American dream', the role of ethnicity and race, and the differences between the regions. Considers in depth a number of contemporary debates including the claim that the US economy has lost its capacity to generate wealth and stimulate mobility, that there has been a process of civic disengagement as voluntary organisations have lost members, and that the traditional family is in decline. Includes a thorough investigation of the effects of the terrorist attacks of September 11 and their aftermath. Looks at the arguments put forward by those who assert that a common American identity has given way to a multitude of conflicting identities structured around factors such as race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2021

        My Life with Viruses

        A researcher’s history of the fascinating world of pathogens

        by Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker in association with Jeanne Rubner

        In times of the coronavirus pandemic many people have certainly condemned them, but Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker has dedicated his life to researching them and is intrigued by viruses – even if sometimes he is keenly aware of their fatal effects. To mark his 80th birthday the biochemist describes the co-evolution and co-existence as well as the eternal ‘battle’ between humans and viruses. Winnacker takes up the cause of these ‘biological elements between animate and inanimate nature’ because they play an important role in fundamental research and genetic technology, and without them human beings would not be what they are.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Religion and life cycles in early modern England

        by Caroline Bowden, Emily Vine, Tessa Whitehouse

        Religion and life cycles in early modern England assembles scholars working in the fields of history, English literature and art history to further our understanding of the intersection between religion and the life course in the period c. 1550-1800. Featuring chapters on Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities, it encourages cross-confessional comparison between life stages and rites of passage that were of religious significance to all faiths in early modern England. The book considers biological processes such as birth and death, aspects of the social life cycle including schooling, coming of age and marriage and understandings of religious transition points such as spiritual awakenings and conversion. Through this inclusive and interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to show that the life cycle was not something fixed or predetermined and that early modern individuals experienced multiple, overlapping life cycles.

      • Trusted Partner
        November 2016

        Coming to Terms with Life

        by Matthias Wengenroth

        Do you struggle with thoughts and feelings that make life difficult? Have you tried all sorts of ways of dealing with this without getting anywhere? Do you feel that life is passing you by? Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which this book describes in a clear and entertaining way, provides new and very enlightening insights into the causes of human suffering. At the same time, ACT shows how we can improve the way we handle the difficult aspects of being human, while also developing our abilities and strengths. This title shows how using the described simple but effective methods can lead you to a happier, better life.   Target Group: people who want to utilize their potential more fully, people interested in acceptance and commitment therapy, people practicing or interested in psychotherapy (psychologists, doctors, coaches, social workers)

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2009

        John Ashbery and American Poetry

        by David Herd

        starting point. David Herd sets out to provide readers with a new critical language through which they can appreciate the beauty and complexity of Ashbery's writing. Presenting the poet in all his forms -avant-garde, nostalgic, sublime and camp - the book argues that the perpetual inventiveness of Ashbery's work has always been underpinned by the poets desire to write the poem fit to cope with its occasion. Tracing Ashbery's development in the light of this idea, and from its origins in the dazzling artistic environment of 1950's New York, the book evaluates his poetry against the aesthetic, literary and historical backgrounds that have informed it. The story of a brilliant career, and a history of the period in which that career has taken shape, John Ashbery and American Poetry provides a compelling account of Ashbery's importance to Twentieth Century Literature. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Walking in the dark

        James Baldwin, my father and I

        by Douglas Field

        A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.

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