Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Reader Over Your Shoulder -...

  Robert Graves, Alan Hodge

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  “The best book on writing ever published” (Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I).   When Robert Graves and Alan Hodge decided to collaborate on this manual for writers, the world was in total upheaval. Graves had fled Majorca three years earlier at the start of the Spanish Civil War, and as they labored over their new project, they witnessed the fall of France and the evacuation of Allied forces at Dunkirk. Soon the horror of World War II would reach British soil as well, as the Luftwaffe began bombing London in an effort to destroy the resolve of the English people.   Graves and Hodge believed that at a time when their whole world was falling apart, the survival of English prose sentences—of writing that was clear, concise, and intelligible—had become paramount if hope were going to outlive the onslaught. They came up with forty-one principles for writing, the majority devoted to clarity, the remainder to grace of expression. They studied the prose of a wide range of noted authors and leaders, finding much room for improvement. Successful communication could mean the difference between war and peace, life and death, and they were determined to contribute to its survival. The importance of good writing continues today, as obfuscation, propaganda, manipulative language, and sloppy standards are all too common—and this classic guide is just as useful and important as ever.  Note: This edition restores the full, original 1943 text.   “To see what really expert mavens can do in applying their rule-based expertise to clearing up bad prose, get hold of a copy of The Reader Over Your Shoulder.” —The Atlantic

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  From Brokenness to Atonement...

  Dr. Hani Khouzam

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  This is a story of Mr. L, an orphan who was raised and nurtured by a devoted Carmelite nun, then drafted to serve as a skilled sniper during the Vietnam War. A journey of learning and mastering of the French language, excelling in the Little League baseball, discovering the art of hunting, and of an uttermost devotion to assigned military missions. A tale of grief, depression, anxiety, intermixed with bitterness, rage, fear, and delayed onset posttraumatic stress disorder with its most devastating aftermath of survivor's guilt. 
  Witnessing the emergence of innate talents, the gifts of left-handedness, and astounding suddenness of action in each and every providential and self-inflicted circumstances. Travelling through life in orphanages with boyish freedom, self-consciousness, and then an adulthood of giving of oneself and sacrificing of own needs to fulfill a patriotic mission, an acceptance of a higher calling to serve the poor and the disfranchised. 
  Biographies are woven in the tapestry of the therapeutic alliance of a patient-and-physician relationship. 
  As a reader, you will be invited to introspect and reflect on the wonder of the human brain, the bubbling joy of loving, and the gift of living. 
  Will Mr. L descend into the abyss of ending his God-given gift of a well-deserved and joyful life or will he survive his heartbreaking sorrows and insurmountable guilt? Can brokenness be restored through faith, hope, love, and forgiveness? 
  The answers could be revealed by reading this personal journey--a portrait of faith, grace, and the joy that rises from giving and loving.

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  Tremendous Trifles - "Perhaps...

  G K Chesterton

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  A wonderful and whimsical collection of short essays on everything from sketching on brown paper and building toy theatres to the nature of Englishness and faith."Tremendous Trifles contains simply some of the best essays Chesterton ever wrote. They originally appeared in the Daily News, which Chesterton contributed to from 1901 to 1913, and which explains why people bought that paper. Which is an idea so large it spills over into another essay, “A Piece of Chalk.” Here Chesterton describes how he has set out to do some drawing with his chalks, but is distressed to find that he has forgotten his white chalk. White is essential. White is a color. It is not merely the absence of color. It is “a shining and affirmative thing…it draws stars.” As white is to art, so is virtue to religion. Virtue is a positive thing; not merely “the absence of dangers or the avoidance of moral dangers…Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.”In this book, Chesterton looks at the ordinary, common things and asks us to see how extraordinary and uncommon they are. The things in his pockets, the objects in a railway station, the people in the street. With these simple, random things he can defend Christianity, Western Civilization and Democracy. “Whatever is it that we are all looking for?” he asks at the beginning of an essay entitled “A Glimpse of My Country.” He suggests that what we are looking for lies very close; we just don’t manage to see it. It is a theme throughout the book, and throughout Chesterton’s writings that what appears to be a trifle is actually tremendous. In the title essay Chesterton crystallizes this truth in a perfect sentence that would go on to be inscribed on buildings and quoted by popes: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”-- Dale Ahlquist, lecture for Chesterton University

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  Spanish Empire in the Americas...

  Editors Charles River

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  By the time Christopher Columbus started setting east from the New World, he had explored San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he thought was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China), and Hispaniola, the source of gold. As the common story goes, Columbus, en route back to Spain from his first journey, called in at Lisbon as a courtesy to brief the Portuguese King John II of his discovery of the New World. King John subsequently protested that according to the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, which divided the Atlantic Ocean between Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence, the newly discovered lands rightly belonged to Portugal. To make clear the point, a Portuguese fleet was authorized and dispatched west from the Tagus to lay claim to the “Indies,” which prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. At the time, Spain lacked the naval power to prevent Portugal from acting on this threat, and the result was the hugely influential 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. 
  	The Treaty of Tordesillas was one of the most important documents of its kind of the age, for it established the essential parameters of the two competing empires, the first of the major European imperial entities. The Treaty of Tordesillas drew an imaginary line from pole to pole, running 100 leagues west of the westernmost islands of the Azores. According to the terms of a supporting papal bull, all the lands to the west of that belonged to Spain, and all of those to the east belonged to Portugal. What this meant in practical terms was that Portugal was given Africa and the Indian Ocean while Spain was granted all the lands to the west, including the Americas and the Caribbean, all collectively known as the “Indies,” or the New World. Perhaps inevitably, a regional rivalry had developed as the Portuguese began to establish a colony in Brazil and push its boundaries southwards. 

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  Unleash Your Primal Brain -...

  Tim Ash

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  Unleash Your Primal Brain illuminates the fundamental “why’s” behind our actions from an evolutionary perspective. From the rise of the earliest life on earth, to our uniquely human recent adaptations, you will come away with a deep understanding of our of how the brain evolved, and why we act the way that we do. 
  Understand what makes us human! 
  This book is about the commonalities all 8,000,000,000 people on earth share. 
  Our ancestors were molded by ruthless survival pressures from the earliest days of life on the planet. Adaptations which worked long ago are still inside of us – also shared with insects and reptiles. Later additions are common to all mammals from the tiniest shrews to the most massive whales. Some capabilities were bolted on relatively recently, and are only shared with our primate cousins. And the runaway explosion of humans on the planet can only be explained by our own bizarre species-level evolution. 
  The only way to understand how our brains work is to examine the complete evolutionary arc.Find out why your primal brain is in charge, and your logical mind is usually asleepLearn what makes people unique among all other animalsUnderstand the biased shortcuts your brain takes to make decisionsDiscover how culture has evolved us for learning and cooperationFind out how fairness and group conformity impact our behaviorUnderstand the real purpose of memory, sleep, and dreamingLearn how stories allow us to mind-meld with other people

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  The Shortest History of Eugenics...

  Erik L. Peterson

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  A harrowing history of a grim chapter in politics and science, in which groups of influential thinkers shaped global policy with the aim of determining who had the right to have children—and who was worthy of life. 
   
   
   
  For the last two centuries, groups of influential men have, in the professed interest of fiscal responsibility, crime reduction, and outright racism, attempted to control who was allowed to bear children. Their efforts, "eugenics," characterize a movement that over the last century swept across the world—from the US to Brazil, Japan, India, Australia, and beyond—in the form of marriage restrictions, asylum detention, and sterilization campaigns affected millions. German physicians and scientists adopted and then heightened these eugenics practices beginning in 1939, starving or executing those they deemed "life unworthy of life." 
   
   
   
  But well after the liberation of Nazi deathcamps, health care workers and even the US government pursued policies worldwide with the express purpose of limiting the reproduction of poor non-whites. The Shortest History of Eugenics takes us back to the founding principles of the movement, revealing how an idea that began in cattle breeding took such an insidious turn—and how it lingers in rhetoric and policy today.

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