Human Accomplishment
Human Accomplishment

Author: Charles Murray

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 790

ISBN-13: 0061745677

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A sweeping cultural survey reminiscent of Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. "At irregular times and in scattered settings, human beings have achieved great things. Human Accomplishment is about those great things, falling in the domains known as the arts and sciences, and the people who did them.' So begins Charles Murray's unique account of human excellence, from the age of Homer to our own time. Employing techniques that historians have developed over the last century but that have rarely been applied to books written for the general public, Murray compiles inventories of the people who have been essential to the stories of literature, music, art, philosophy, and the sciences—a total of 4,002 men and women from around the world, ranked according to their eminence. The heart of Human Accomplishment is a series of enthralling descriptive chapters: on the giants in the arts and what sets them apart from the merely great; on the differences between great achievement in the arts and in the sciences; on the meta-inventions, 14 crucial leaps in human capacity to create great art and science; and on the patterns and trajectories of accomplishment across time and geography. Straightforwardly and undogmatically, Charles Murray takes on some controversial questions. Why has accomplishment been so concentrated in Europe? Among men? Since 1400? He presents evidence that the rate of great accomplishment has been declining in the last century, asks what it means, and offers a rich framework for thinking about the conditions under which the human spirit has expressed itself most gloriously. Eye-opening and humbling, Human Accomplishment is a fascinating work that describes what humans at their best can achieve, provides tools for exploring its wellsprings, and celebrates the continuing common quest of humans everywhere to discover truths, create beauty, and apprehend the good.

Accomplishment
Accomplishment

Author: Michael Barber

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2021-04-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0141991283

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'Excellent . . . reveals that high accomplishment has a signature pattern that reoccurs from sport to politics to business to government' Matthew Syed There is no secret formula for success, especially when tackling a new challenge. But what if there were a pattern you could follow? A way of mapping the route and navigating the obstacles that arise? Michael Barber has spent many years advising governments, businesses and major sporting teams around the world on how to achieve ambitious goals on time. Drawing on stories of historic visionaries and modern heroes - from Mary Fischer and Rosa Parks to Paula Radcliffe and Gareth Southgate - Barber presents a unique combination of personal anecdote, historical evidence and interviews from inspirational figures to unpack the route to success.

Achievement
Achievement

Author: Gwen Bradford

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0198714025

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From the magisterial to the mundane, achievements play a role in the best kind of human life, and many people think that they are of such importance that they are worth pursuing at the expense of serious sacrifices. Yet for all that, no philosophers have devoted more than a few short passages to discerning what makes achievements valuable, or even what makes something an achievement to begin with. Gwen Bradford presents the first systematic account of what achievements are, and what it is about them that makes them worth doing. It turns out that more things count as achievements than we might have thought, and that what makes them valuable isn't something we usually think of as good. It turns out that difficulty, perhaps surprisingly, plays a central part in characterizing achievements and their value: achievements are worth the effort. But just what does it mean for something to be difficult, and why is it valuable? A thorough analysis of the nature of difficulty is given, and ultimately, the best account of the value of achievements taps into perfectionist axiology. But not just any perfectionist theory of value will do, and in this book we see a new perfectionist theory developed that succeeds in capturing the value of achievement better than its predecessors.

Animals and Society
Animals and Society

Author: Margo DeMello

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 0231152957

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This textbook provides a full overview of human-animal studies. It focuses on the conceptual construction of animals in American culture and the way in which it reinforces and perpetuates hierarchical human relationships rooted in racism, sexism, and class privilege.

Enlightenment Now
Enlightenment Now

Author: Steven Pinker

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-02-13

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0698177886

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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

The Human Element
The Human Element

Author: James Balog

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 084787088X

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A magnum opus on the human impact on our planet—from the threat of animal extinction to catastrophic wildfires, global warming as visualized through glacier melt, and increased ferocity of historic floods and storms—James Balog presents four decades of his research and photography in this environmental call to arms. For four decades, world-renowned environmental photographer James Balog has traveled well over a million miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic and the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas. With his images heightening awareness of climate change and endangered species, he is one of the most relevant photographers in the world today. Balog’s photography of and essays on “human tectonics”—humanity’s reshaping of the natural environment—reveal the intersection of people and nature, and that when we sustain nature, we sustain ourselves. This monumental book is an unprecedented combination of art informed by scientific knowledge. Featuring Balog’s 350 most iconic photographs, The Human Element offers a truly unmatched view of the world—and a world we may never see again.

Does Skill Make Us Human?
Does Skill Make Us Human?

Author: Natasha Iskander

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691217572

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Regulation : how the politics of skill become law -- Production : how skill makes cities -- Skill : how skill is embodied and what it means for the control of bodies -- Protest : how skillful practice becomes resistance -- Body : how definitions of skill cause injury -- Earth : how the politics of skill shape responses to climate change.

Mastery Through Accomplishment
Mastery Through Accomplishment

Author: Hazrat Inayat Khan

Publisher: Suluk Press

Published: 1985-09

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780930872403

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Accomplishment in worldly affairs is seen as the means of developing the ability to achieve what one wishes, and ultimately to achieve the purpose of life.

Homicide
Homicide

Author: Martin Daly

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 676

ISBN-13: 135151525X

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The human race spends a disproportionate amount of attention, money, and expertise in solving, trying, and reporting homicides, as compared to other social problems. The public avidly consumes accounts of real-life homicide cases, and murder fiction is more popular still. Nevertheless, we have only the most rudimentary scientific understanding of who is likely to kill whom and why. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson apply contemporary evolutionary theory to analysis of human motives and perceptions of self-interest, considering where and why individual interests conflict, using well-documented murder cases. This book attempts to understand normal social motives in murder as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. They note that the implications for psychology are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparison and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and the phenomenology of the self. This is the first volume of its kind to analyze homicides in the light of a theory of interpersonal conflict. Before this study, no one had compared an observed distribution of victim-killer relationships to "expected" distribution, nor asked about the patterns of killer-victim age disparities in familial killings. This evolutionary psychological approach affords a deeper view and understanding of homicidal violence.