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Oxford University Press
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Biography is one of the most popular, best-selling, and widely-read of literary genres. But why do certain people and historical events arouse so much interest? How can biographies be compared with history and works of fiction? Does a biography need to be true? Is it acceptable to omit or conceal things? Does the biographer need to personally know the subject? Must a biographer be subjective? In this Very Short Introduction Hermione Lee considers the cultural and historical background of different types of biographies, looking at the factors that affect biographers and whether there are different strategies, ethics, and principles required for writing about one person compared to another. She also considers contemporary biographical publications and considers what kind of 'lives' are the most popular and in demand. |
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Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individual agents that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should go about explaining the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable in the manner of individuals. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, in a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. Christian List and Philip Pettit take the line that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper social science and a proper approach to law, morality, and politics have to take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy. |
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Ethical and legal issues concerning physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are very much on the public agenda in many jurisdictions. In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process. His ethical conclusion is that a bright line between assisted death and other widely accepted end-of-life practices, including the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, pain control through high-dose opioids, and terminal sedation, cannot be justified. In the course of the ethical argument many familiar themes are given careful and thorough treatment: conceptions of death, the badness of death, the wrongness of killing, informed consent and refusal, the ethics of suicide, cause of death, the double effect, the sanctity of life, the 'active/passive' distinction, advance directives, and nonvoluntary euthanasia. The legal discussion opens with a survey of some prominent prohibitionist and regulatory regimes and then outlines a model regulatory policy for assisted death. Sumner concludes by defending this policy against a wide range of common objections, including those which appeal to slippery slopes or the possibility of abuse, and by asking how the transition to a regulatory regime might be managed in three common law prohibitionist jurisdictions. |
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Why are there so few Muslim terrorists? With more than a billion Muslims in the world — many of whom supposedly hate the West and ardently desire martyrdom — why don't we see terrorist attacks every day? Where are the missing martyrs? In this startlingly counterintuitive book, a leading authority on Islamic movements demonstrates that terrorist groups are thoroughly marginal in the Muslim world. Charles Kurzman draws on government sources, public opinion surveys, election results, and in-depth interviews with Muslims in the Middle East and around the world. He finds that young Muslims are indeed angry with what they see as imperialism — and especially at Western support for local dictatorships. But revolutionary Islamists have failed to reach them, as can be seen from the terrorists' own websites and publications, which constantly bemoan the dearth of willing recruits. Kurzman notes that it takes only a small cadre of committed killers to wreak unspeakable havoc. But that very fact underscores his point. As easy as terrorism is to commit, few Muslims turn to violence. Out of 140,000 murders in the United States since 9/11, Islamist terrorists have killed at most three dozen people. Of the 150,000 people who die each day, worldwide, Islamist militants account for fewer than fifty fatalities — and only ten per day outside of the hotspots of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The real bulwark against Islamist violence, Kurzman finds, is Muslims themselves, who reject both the goals of the terrorists and their bloody means. With each bombing, the terrorists lose support among Muslims. Incisive and authoritative, The Missing Martyrs provides much-needed corrective to deep-seated and destructive misconceptions about Muslims and the Islamic world. The threat of Islamist terrorism is real, Kurzman shows, but its dimensions are, so far, tightly confined. |
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This new translation has an Introduction which sets the novel in its social, historical, and literary context. |
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Schizophrenia is the archetypal form of madness. Schizophrenia is a common disorder and has a devastating effect on sufferers and their families-patients typically hear voices in their heads and hold bizarre beliefs. The schizophrenic patient presented to the public in sensational press reports and lurid films bears little resemblance to reality of the illness. This book describes what schizophrenia is really like, how the illness progresses, and the treatments that have been applied. It also summarizes the most up-to-date knowledge available about the biological bases of this disorder. Finally it attempts to give some idea of what it is like to have schizophrenia and what this disorder tells us about the relationship between mind and brain. |
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This Very Short Introduction deals with the social life of language: language in its sociocultural context. The field ranges from micro-analyses to broadly-based policy and planning undertakings. As such, this book draws from sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, and psycholinguistics. The relationship between language and identity — whether of an individual or a group — is a strong thread linking all the topics covered in the book. The ordinary, instrumental, communicative aspects of language cannot be adequately understood without paying attention to the symbolic features that powerfully underpin feelings and attributions of groupness and belonging. The book therefore focuses more on macro sociological areas than to fine-grained analyses of variation in linguistic features (though the latter are not ignored). Edwards explains the differential social evaluations of languages and dialects, how names (and naming) are much more than simple designations, why some languages come to dominate others, as well as questions about the relationship between language and gender, sexist language, the language of poverty, the intertwining of language and religion, and politically driven language planning and policy. These matters have always been timely and of great social interest. The book demonstrates the connections and continuities that exist within the language arena in which we all participate, and about which all of us have opinions, preferences and prejudices. This is the first short treatment that acquaints the educated non-specialist with the social life of language. |
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With startling speed, Spanish conquistadors invaded hundreds of Native American kingdoms, took over the mighty empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and initiated an unprecedented redistribution of the world's resources and balance of power. They changed the course of history, but the myth they established was even stranger than their real achievements. This Very Short Introduction deploys the latest scholarship to shatter and replace the traditional narrative. Chapters explore New World civilizations prior to the invasions, the genesis of conquistador culture on both sides of the Atlantic, the roles black Africans and Native Americans played and the consequences of the invasions. The book reveals who the conquistadors were and what made their adventures possible. |
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In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Beat Generation writers revolutionized American literature with their iconoclastic approach to language and their angry assault on the conformity and conservatism of postwar society. They and their followers took aim at the hypocrisy and taboos of their time — particularly those involving sex, race, and class — in such provocative works as Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959). This volume offers a concise overview of the social, cultural, and aesthetic sensibilities of the Beats, bringing out the similarities that connected them and also the many differences that made them a loosely knit collective rather than an organized movement. Principal figures in the saga include Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Clellon Holmes, Carolyn Cassady, and Gary Snyder; locations range from Greenwich Village and San Francisco to Mexico, western Europe, and North Africa; topics include Beat approaches to literature, drugs, sexuality, art, music, and religion. Members of the Beat Generation hoped that their radical rejection of materialism, consumerism, and regimentation would inspire others to purify their lives and souls as well; yet they urged the remaking of consciousness on a profoundly inward-looking basis, cultivating the unspeakable visions of the individual, in Kerouac's phrase. The idea was to revolutionize society by revolutionizing thought, not the other way around. This book explains how the Beats used their drastic visions and radical styles to challenge dominant values, fending off absorption into mainstream culture while preparing ground for the larger, more explosive social upheavals of the 1960s. More than half a century later, the Beats' impact can still be felt in literature, cinema, music, theater, and the visual arts. |
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This brand new edition celebrating 20 years of R. W. Holder's popular and successful dictionary of euphemisms is packed full of traditional favourites, such as 'Dutch uncle' or 'push up the daisies', as well as euphemisms from the contemporary world such as 'restructuring', 'coffee-housing', 'extrajudicial killing'. Definitions include examples from real authors, along with entertaining explanations of their origins. To prove that the use of euphemisms is not just a British speciality, there is widespread coverage of American euphemisms, too: for example, 'English' (pertaining to sexual deviance) and 'watermelon' (an indication of pregnancy). The A-Z organization of the text is complemented by a thematic index with short introductory articles on fruitful areas of euphemistic language such as business, sex, death, and the human body. This book remains the most lively and authoritative guide to the language of evasion, hypocrisy, prudery, and deceit. |
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With over 11,000 authoritative and up-to-date entries, this best-selling dictionary covers all branches of psychology, including psychoanalysis, psychiatry, criminology, neuroscience, and statistics. It features comprehensive coverage of key areas, for example, cognition, sensation and perception, emotion and motivation, learning and skills, language, mental disorder, and research methods. Entries provide clear and concise definitions, word origins and derivations, and they are extensively cross-referenced for ease of use. In addition, over 80 illustrations complement the text. Detailed appendices follow the A-Z dictionary and include a list of 800 commonly used abbreviations and symbols, and a list of phobias and phobic stimuli with full definitions. Now containing an appendix of recommended web links, which are accessed and kept up to date via the Dictionary of Psychology website, this edition is loaded with more information than any other dictionary of its kind. A Dictionary of Psychology is an invaluable work of reference for students and teachers of psychology and related disciplines, professionals, and is ideally suited to anyone with an interest in the workings of the mind. |
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This is an authoritative and hugely browsable treasury of over 15,000 sayings, adages, and maxims commonly used in the United States and Canada, including thousands that have never previously been recorded. Based on oral and written sources, it is the culmination of over 40 years' research, and covers thousands of uniquely American proverbs as well as those hailing from classical, biblical, European, and English literature. |
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Dissonant Lives is not a standard 'history of Germany' in the twentieth century, or even of the German dictatorships. It is concerned with the ways in which Germans of different ages and life stages lived through the violent eruptions of the two world wars, and through the dictatorships of Nazism and then Communism that succeeded them. Mary Fulbrook explores the experiences and perceptions of selected individuals, analysing the ways in which major historical events, and changing structures of constraint and opportunity, affected the course of their lives and their outlooks. How did those who lived through this terrible period in German history interpret, confront, and respond to the multiple challenges of their times? How were they affected by the major economic, social, and political crises they lived through? How did living through Germany's second dictatorship, the German Democratic Republic, dominated by the communist power against whom the Germans had fought, affect behaviour patterns and social identities? And what implications did these experiences have for interpretations of the Nazi past? Dissonant Lives explores these important questions, seeking to view the dictatorial regimes of twentieth-century Germany from within. Taking a deeper look at the life stories of individual Germans from a range of periods and backgrounds, it provides a new understanding of the ways in which not only the character of the German state, economy, and social structure changed over the century, but also the very character of people themselves. |
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«Trials of the Diaspora presents the long and troubling history of anti-Semitism in England, from the middle ages to the twenty-first century. Anthony Julius identifies four distinct versions of English anti-Semitism, which he then investigates in detail. The first is the anti-Semitism of medieval England, a radical prejudice of defamation, expropriation, and murder, which culminated in 1290, the year of Edward I's expulsion of the Jews from England, after which there were no Jews left to torment. The second major strand is literary anti-Semitism: an anti-Semitic account of Jews continuously reappearing in English literature, from the anonymous medieval ballad «Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter» through Shakespeare to Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, and beyond. Thirdly, Julius addresses modern anti-Semitism, a quotidian anti-Semitism of insult and partial exclusion, pervasive but contained, experienced by Jews from their 'readmission' to England in the mid-17th century through to the late 20th century. The final chapters then deal with contemporary anti-Semitism, a new configuration of anti-Zionisms, emerging in the late 1960s and the 1970s, which treats Zionism and the State of Israel as illegitimate Jewish enterprises. It is this final perspective which, in Julius's opinion, now constitutes the greatest threat to Anglo-Jewish security and morale. This book, the first history of its kind, has already provoked much comment and debate in its hardback edition, coming as a timely reminder that English culture has been in no way immune to anti-Semitism — and in certain ways is still not to this day. The paperback edition now includes a new preface by the author and a conclusion delineating the main categories of anti-Semitic prejudice.» |
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Talking Proper is a history of the rise and fall of the English accent as a badge of cultural, social, and class identity. Lynda Mugglestone traces the origins of the phenomenon in late eighteenth-century London, follows its history through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and charts its downfall during the era of New Labour. This is a witty, readable account of a fascinating subject, liberally spiced with quotations from English speech and writing over the past 250 years. |
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Jim Miller and Regina Weinert investigate syntactic structure and the organization of discourse in spontaneous spoken language. Using data from English, German, and Russian, they develop a systematic analysis of spoken English and highlight properties that hold across languages. The authors argue that the differences in syntax and the construction of discourse between spontaneous speech and written language bear on various areas of linguistic theory, apart from having obvious implications for syntactic analysis. In particular, they bear on typology, Chomskyan theories of first language acquisition, and the perennial problem of language in education. In current typological practice written and spontaneous spoken texts are often compared; the authors show convincingly that typological research should compare like with like. The consequences for Chomskyan, and indeed all, theories of first language acquisition flow from the central fact that children first learn spoken language before they are taught written language. |
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From a young age Albie Sachs played a prominent part in the struggle for justice in South Africa. As a result he was detained in solitary confinement, tortured by sleep deprivation and eventually blown up by a car bomb which cost him his right arm and the sight of an eye. His experiences provoked an outpouring of creative thought on the role of law as a protector of human dignity in the modern world, and a lifelong commitment to seeing a new era of justice established in South Africa. After playing an important role in drafting South Africa's post-apartheid Constitution, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to be a member of the country's first Constitutional Court. Over the course of his fifteen year term on the Court he has grappled with the major issues confronting modern South Africa, and the challenges posed to the fledgling democracy as it sought to overcome the injustices of the apartheid regime. As his term on the Court approaches its end, Sachs here conveys in intimate fashion what it has been like to be a judge in these unique circumstances, how his extraordinary life has influenced his approach to the cases before him, and his views on the nature of justice and its achievement through law. The book provides unique access to an insider's perspective on modern South Africa, and a rare glimpse into the working of a judicial mind. By juxtaposing life experiences and extracts from judgments, Sachs enables the reader to see the complex and surprising ways in which legal culture transforms subjective experience into objectively reasoned decisions. With rare candour he tells of the difficulties he has when preparing a judgment, of how every judgment is a lie. Rejecting purely formal notions of the judicial role he shows how both reason and passion (concern for protecting human dignity) are required for law to work in the service of justice. |
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This book provides guidelines on making homework relevant to the students and the curriculum, and integrates homework into classroom activities. |
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