A Remarkable Curiosity
A Remarkable Curiosity

Author: Amos Jay Cummings

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2011-05-18

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1457109379

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In 1873, Amos Jay Cummings, a decorated Civil War veteran and journalist for the New York Sun newspaper, set out on a westward journey aboard the newly completed transcontinental railroad. For some time, miners, settlers, and entrepreneurs had already been heading west to make their fortunes, and Cummings made the trip in part to see what all the fuss was about. During his six-month expedition from Kansas to California, Cummings sent extraordinary and engaging accounts of the American West back to his readers in New York. Collected in this volume for the first time are Cummings's portraits of a land and its assortment of characters unlike anything back East. Characters like Pedro Armijo, the New Mexican sheep tycoon who took Denver by storm, and more prominently the Mormon prophet Brigham Young and one of his wives, Ann Eliza Young, who was filing for divorce at the time of Cummings's arrival. Although today he is virtually unknown, during his lifetime Cummings was one of the most famous newspapermen in the United States, in part because of stories like these. Complete with a biographical sketch and historical introduction, A Remarkable Curiosity is an enjoyable read for anybody interested in the American West in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Living Curiously
Living Curiously

Author: Becki Saltzman

Publisher:

Published: 2016-05-20

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 9780989093569

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Living Curiously reveals the 5-step, science-based framework for using curiosity strategically to generate new ideas, bust assumptions, cure stagnation, and design and create a remarkable life. Living curiously is not about endless inquiry; it's about discovering blind spots, hidden connections, and opportunities in order to make better decisions, and ultimately live a more fulfilling and adventurous life. *** Becki Saltzman is a curiosity seeker, assumption buster, and idea generator. She holds a master's degree in behavioral science from Washington University in Saint Louis and has spent the last two decades studying curiosity and the role it plays in adventure and insights, problem solving, sales, and ideal lifestyle design. She loves great travel adventures, crowded dance floors, and brown drinks.

Curiosity Studies
Curiosity Studies

Author: Perry Zurn

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1452963622

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The first English-language collection to establish curiosity studies as a unique field From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross-disciplinary study has existed—until now. Curiosity Studies stages an interdisciplinary conversation about what curiosity is and what resources it holds for human and ecological flourishing. These engaging essays are integrated into four clusters: scientific inquiry, educational practice, social relations, and transformative power. By exploring curiosity through the practice of scientific inquiry, the contours of human learning, the stakes of social difference, and the potential of radical imagination, these clusters focus and reinvigorate the study of this universal but slippery phenomenon: the desire to know. Against the assumption that curiosity is neutral, this volume insists that curiosity has a history and a political import and requires precision to define and operationalize. As various fields deepen its analysis, a new ecosystem for knowledge production can flourish, driven by real-world problems and a commitment to solve them in collaboration. By paying particular attention to pedagogy throughout, Curiosity Studies equips us to live critically and creatively in what might be called our new Age of Curiosity. Contributors: Danielle S. Bassett, U of Pennsylvania; Barbara M. Benedict, Trinity College; Susan Engel, Williams College; Ellen K. Feder, American U; Kristina T. Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Narendra Keval; Christina León, Princeton U; Tyson Lewis, U of North Texas; Amy Marvin, U of Oregon; Hilary M. Schor, U of Southern California; Seeta Sistla, Hampshire College; Heather Anne Swanson, Aarhus U.

A Curious Mind
A Curious Mind

Author: Brian Grazer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-04-07

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 147673075X

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Brian Grazer knows the one thing that can instantly connect you with anyone: Curiosity. A Curious mind offers a brilliantly entertaining and inspiring account of how his courage and enthusiasm for talking with complete strangers have been the secret of his success as a leading Hollywood producer.

The Art of Noticing
The Art of Noticing

Author: Rob Walker

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0525521259

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A thought-provoking, gorgeously illustrated gift book that will spark your creativity and help you rediscover your passion with “simple, low-stakes activities [that] can open up the world.”—The New York Times Welcome to the era of white noise. Our lives are in constant tether to phones, to email, and to social media. In this age of distraction, the ability to experience and be present is often lost: to think and to see and to listen. Enter Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing—an inspiring volume that will help you see the world anew. Through a series of simple and playful exercises—131 of them—Walker maps ways for you to become a clearer thinker, a better listener, a more creative workplace colleague, and finally, to rediscover what really matters to you.

American Curiosity
American Curiosity

Author: Susan Scott Parrish

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2012-12-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0807838896

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Colonial America presented a new world of natural curiosities for settlers as well as the London-based scientific community. In American Curiosity, Susan Scott Parrish examines how various peoples in the British colonies understood and represented the natural world around them from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth. Parrish shows how scientific knowledge about America, rather than flowing strictly from metropole to colony, emerged from a horizontal exchange of information across the Atlantic. Delving into an understudied archive of letters, Parrish uncovers early descriptions of American natural phenomena as well as clues to how people in the colonies construed their own identities through the natural world. Although hierarchies of gender, class, institutional learning, place of birth or residence, and race persisted within the natural history community, the contributions of any participant were considered valuable as long as they supplied novel data or specimens from the American side of the Atlantic. Thus Anglo-American nonelites, women, Indians, and enslaved Africans all played crucial roles in gathering and relaying new information to Europe. Recognizing a significant tradition of nature writing and representation in North America well before the Transcendentalists, American Curiosity also enlarges our notions of the scientific Enlightenment by looking beyond European centers to find a socially inclusive American base to a true transatlantic expansion of knowledge.

Why?
Why?

Author: Mario Livio

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1476792127

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Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio investigates perhaps the most human of all our characteristics—curiosity—in this “lively, expert, and definitely not dumbed-down account” (Kirkus Reviews) as he explores our innate desire to know why. Experiments demonstrate that people are more distracted when they overhear a phone conversation—where they can know only one side of the dialogue—than when they overhear two people talking and know both sides. Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation? “Have you ever wondered why we wonder why? Mario Livio has, and he takes you on a fascinating quest to understand the origin and mechanisms of our curiosity. I thoroughly recommend it.” (Adam Riess, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, 2011). Curiosity is not only at the heart of mystery and suspense novels, it is also essential to other creative endeavors, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity. In the ever-fascinating Why? Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects? An astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience, Livio has firsthand knowledge of his subject which he explores in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.