The End of Meaning
The End of Meaning

Author: William A. Sikes

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2024-04-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1666783366

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Towards the end of the twentieth century books proclaiming the “closing” of America’s mind, the “collapse” of her communities, and the “end” of her art, literature, education and more, began appearing with regularity. The underlying theme in all such works is the loss of those experiences that give our lives meaning. In The End of Meaning: Cultural Change in America Since 1945, readers learn to recognize these experiences, realize how prominent they were in the postwar period (c. 1945–65), understand the forces that have brought about their extraordinary decline (in our families and communities, universities and religious institutions, films and popular music, fine arts, labor and more) and realize the implications of this loss for our society and our humanity. In doing so the book provides a way of thinking about a vital subject—one which, despite its enormous importance, has never been examined in a broad and systematic way capable of generating real understanding, discussion and debate.

The End of Meaning
The End of Meaning

Author: Matthew Gumpert

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2012-04-25

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 1443839434

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The specter of the apocalypse has always been a semiotic fantasy: only at the end of all things will their true meaning be revealed. Our long romance with catastrophe is inseparable from the Western hermeneutical tradition: our search for an elusive truth, one that can only be uncovered through the interminable work of interpretation. Catastrophe terrifies and tantalizes to the extent it promises an end to this task. 9/11 is this book’s beginning, but not its end. Here, it seemed, was the apocalypse America had long been waiting for; until it became just another event. And, indeed, the real lesson of 9/11 may be that catastrophe is the purest form of the event. From the poetry of classical Greece to the popular culture of contemporary America, The End of Meaning seeks to demonstrate that catastrophe, precisely as the notion of the sui generis, has always been generic. This is not a book on the great catastrophes of the West; it offers no canon of catastrophe, no history of the catastrophic. The End of Meaning asks, instead, what if meaning itself is a catastrophe?

The End of Meaning
The End of Meaning

Author: Matthew Gumpert

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781443839150

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From the poetry of classical Greece to the popular culture of contemporary America, this book seeks to show that catastrophe, precisely as the notion of the sui generis, has always been generic. To single out catastrophe as the exceptional, or the monstrous, or the modern, runs contrary to the proposition underlying the essays here.

Until the End of Time
Until the End of Time

Author: Brian Greene

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1524731684

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose, from the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe. "Few humans share Greene’s mastery of both the latest cosmological science and English prose." —The New York Times Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal. From particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, matter to meaning—Brian Greene allows us all to grasp and appreciate our fleeting but utterly exquisite moment in the cosmos.

Education's End
Education's End

Author: Anthony T. Kronman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0300138164

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This book describes the ever-escalating dangers to which Jewish refugees and recent immigrants were subjected in France and Italy as the Holocaust marched forward. Susan Zuccotti uncovers a gruelling yet complex history of suffering and resilience through historical documents and personal testimonies from members of nine central and eastern European Jewish families, displaced to France in the opening years of the Second World War. The chronicle of their lives reveals clearly that these Jewish families experienced persecution of far greater intensity than citizen Jews or longtime resident immigrants. The odyssey of the nine families took them from hostile Vichy France to the Alpine village of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and on to Italy, where German soldiers rather than hoped-for Allied troops awaited. Those who crossed over to Italy were either deported to Auschwitz or forced to scatter in desperate flight. Zuccotti brings to light the agonies of the refugees' unstable lives, the evolution of French policies toward Jews, the reasons behind the flight from the relative idyll of Saint-Martin-Vesubie, and the choices that confronted those who arrived in Italy. Powerful archival evidence frames this history, while firsthand reports underscore the human cost of the nightmarish years of persecution.

The Beginning and the End
The Beginning and the End

Author: Clément Vidal

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-05-16

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 3319050621

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In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe's deepest mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come.

The Meaning and End of Religion
The Meaning and End of Religion

Author: Wilfred Cantwell Smith

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9781451420142

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Wilfred Cantwell Smith, maintained in this vastly important work that Westerners have misperceived religious life by making "religion" into one thing. He shows the inadequacy of "religion" to capture the living, endlessly variable ways and traditions in which religious faith presents itself in the world.

The End of Ice
The End of Ice

Author: Dahr Jamail

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1620976056

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Finalist for the 2020 PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Acclaimed on its hardcover publication, a global journey that reminds us "of how magical the planet we're about to lose really is" (Bill McKibben) With a new epilogue by the author After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice. In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet's wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before. Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle—including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world—of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.

Frindle
Frindle

Author: Andrew Clements

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9780689837036

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Nicholas Allen has plenty of ideas. Who can forget the time he turned the classroom into a tropical island, or the times he has fooled the teacher by chirping like a blackbird? But now it looks like his days as a troublemaker are over. Now Nick is in Mrs Granger's class - she who has X-ray vision - and everyone knows that nobody gets away with anything in her classroom. To make matters worse, Mrs Granger is also fanatical about the dictionary - which Nick thinks is so boring. But then inspiration strikes and Nicholas invents his greatest plan yet: to create a new word. From now on, a pen is no longer a pen - it's a frindle. It doesn't take long to catch on and soon the excitement has spread well beyond the school and town . . . but frindle doesn't belong to Nick anymore, it has a life of it's own, and all Nick can do now, is sit back and watch what happens.

Death Is But a Dream
Death Is But a Dream

Author: Christopher Kerr

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0525542841

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The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears. Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients' stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity's transcendence. Kerr's book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure. Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine's and humanity's greatest mystery.