The Why of Things
The Why of Things

Author: Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-06-11

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1451695845

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“A fast-paced, entertaining summer read” (People), The Why of Things is a “keenly observed” and “richly drawn” (The New York Times) novel about a family fighting towards hope in the wake of a terrible tragedy. Since the loss of her seventeen-year-old daughter less than a year ago, Joan Jacobs has struggled to keep her tight-knit family from coming apart. But Joan and Anders, her husband, are unable to snap back into the familiarity and warmth they so desperately need, both for themselves and for their surviving daughters, Eve and Eloise. The family flees to their summer home in search of peace and renewal, only to encounter an eerily similar tragedy when a pickup truck drives into the quarry in their backyard killing a young local named James Favazza. As the Jacobs family learns more about the inexplicable events that preceded that fateful evening, each of them becomes increasingly tangled in the emotional threads of James’s story: fifteen-year-old Eve is determined to solve, on her own, the mystery of his death; Anders finds himself facing his own deepest fears; and seven-year-old Eloise unwittingly adopts James’s orphaned dog. For her part, Joan becomes increasingly fixated on James’s mother, a stranger whose sudden loss so closely mirrors her own. With an urgent, beautiful intimacy that her fans have come to expect from this “bitingly intelligent writer” (The New York Times), Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop delivers here a powerful, buoyant novel that explores the complexities of family relationships and the small triumphs that can bring unexpected healing. The Why of Things is a wise, empathetic, and exquisitely heartfelt story about the strength of family bonds. It is an unforgettable and searing tour de force.

The Why of Things
The Why of Things

Author: Peter V. Rabins

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-08-20

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0231535457

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Why was there a meltdown at the Fukushima power plant? Why do some people get cancer and not others? Why is global warming happening? Why does one person get depressed in the face of life's vicissitudes while another finds resilience? Questions like these—questions of causality—form the basis of modern scientific inquiry, posing profound intellectual and methodological challenges for researchers in the physical, natural, biomedical, and social sciences. In this groundbreaking book, noted psychiatrist and author Peter Rabins offers a conceptual framework for analyzing daunting questions of causality. Navigating a lively intellectual voyage between the shoals of strict reductionism and relativism, Rabins maps a three-facet model of causality and applies it to a variety of questions in science, medicine, economics, and more. Throughout this book, Rabins situates his argument within relevant scientific contexts, such as quantum mechanics, cybernetics, chaos theory, and epigenetics. A renowned communicator of complex concepts and scientific ideas, Rabins helps readers stretch their minds beyond the realm of popular literary tipping points, blinks, and freakonomic explanations of the world.

Making Peace with the Things in Your Life
Making Peace with the Things in Your Life

Author: Cindy Glovinsky

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2002-05-03

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780312284886

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Do you spend much of your time struggling against the growing ranks of papers, books, clothes, housewares, mementos, and other possessions that seem to multiply when you're not looking? Do these inanimate objects, the hallmarks of busy modern life, conspire to fill up every inch of your space, no matter how hard you try to get rid of some of them and organize the rest? Do you feel frustrated, thwarted, and powerless in the face of this ever-renewing mountain of stuff? Help is on the way. Cindy Glovinsky, practicing psychotherapist and personal organizer, is uniquely qualified to explain this nagging, even debilitating problem -- and to provide solutions that really work. Writing in a supportive, nonjudmental tone, Glovinsky uses humorous examples, questionnaires, and exercises to shed light on the real reasons why we feel so overwhelmed by papers and possessions and offers individualized suggestions tailored to specific organizing problems. Whether you're drowning in clutter or just looking for a new way to deal with the perennial challenge of organizing and managing material things, this fresh and reassuring approach is sure to help. Making Peace with the Things in Your Life will help you cut down on your clutter and cut down on your stress!

Why Things are
Why Things are

Author: Joel Achenbach

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13:

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"Not only does Joel Achenbach ask some great questions, but he actually answers them--and with a rigor that puts him somewhere between Socrates and Miss Manners. Plus he's funnier than either of them.: Judy Jones and William Wilson Authors of AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION From the dawn of time to yesterday's headlines, from baseball to the atom bomb, fromant farms to Peperidge Farm, syndicated columnist Joel Achenbach answers the perennial question, WHY? Why do foreign languages sound so fast? Wh do fools fall in love? Why don't people talk in elevators? And much more.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Author: Whitney Phillips

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-02-27

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0262028948

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Internet trolls live to upset as many people as possible, using all the technical and psychological tools at their disposal. They gleefully whip the media into a frenzy over a fake teen drug crisis; they post offensive messages on Facebook memorial pages, traumatizing grief-stricken friends and family; they use unabashedly racist language and images. They take pleasure in ruining a complete stranger's day and find amusement in their victim's anguish. In short, trolling is the obstacle to a kinder, gentler Internet. To quote a famous Internet meme, trolling is why we can't have nice things online. Or at least that's what we have been led to believe. In this provocative book, Whitney Phillips argues that trolling, widely condemned as obscene and deviant, actually fits comfortably within the contemporary media landscape. Trolling may be obscene, but, Phillips argues, it isn't all that deviant. Trolls' actions are born of and fueled by culturally sanctioned impulses -- which are just as damaging as the trolls' most disruptive behaviors. Phillips describes, for example, the relationship between trolling and sensationalist corporate media -- pointing out that for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity; for media, it's a business strategy. She shows how trolls, "the grimacing poster children for a socially networked world," align with social media. And she documents how trolls, in addition to parroting media tropes, also offer a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes, including gendered notions of dominance and success and an ideology of entitlement. We don't just have a trolling problem, Phillips argues; we have a culture problem. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things isn't only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive.

Why We Make Things and Why it Matters
Why We Make Things and Why it Matters

Author: Peter Korn

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2015-02-05

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1473520681

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Why do we make things? Why do we choose the emotionally and physically demanding work of bringing new objects into the world with creativity and skill? Why does it matter that we make things well? What is the nature of work? And what is the nature of a good life? This January, whether you're honing your craft or turning your hand to a new skill, discover the true value in what it means to be a craftsman in a mass-produced world. Part memoir, part polemic, part philosophical reflection, this is a book about the process of creation. For woodworker Peter Korn, the challenging work of bringing something new and meaningful into the world through one's own efforts is exactly what generates authenticity, meaning, and fulfilment, for which many of us yearn. This is not a 'how-to' book in any sense, Korn wants to get at the 'why' of craft in particular, and the satisfaction of creative work in general, to understand its essential nature. How does the making of objects shape our identities? How do the products of creative work inform society? In short, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves? Korn draws on four decades of hands-on experience to answer these questions eloquently in this heartfelt, personal and revealing book. 'If you are in the building trade or just love creating things as a hobby, you will find this book fascinating' The Sun

Why Things Break
Why Things Break

Author: Mark Eberhart

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307422690

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Did you know— • It took more than an iceberg to sink the Titanic. • The Challenger disaster was predicted. • Unbreakable glass dinnerware had its origin in railroad lanterns. • A football team cannot lose momentum. • Mercury thermometers are prohibited on airplanes for a crucial reason. • Kryptonite bicycle locks are easily broken. “Things fall apart” is more than a poetic insight—it is a fundamental property of the physical world. Why Things Break explores the fascinating question of what holds things together (for a while), what breaks them apart, and why the answers have a direct bearing on our everyday lives. When Mark Eberhart was growing up in the 1960s, he learned that splitting an atom leads to a terrible explosion—which prompted him to worry that when he cut into a stick of butter, he would inadvertently unleash a nuclear cataclysm. Years later, as a chemistry professor, he remembered this childhood fear when he began to ponder the fact that we know more about how to split an atom than we do about how a pane of glass breaks. In Why Things Break, Eberhart leads us on a remarkable and entertaining exploration of all the cracks, clefts, fissures, and faults examined in the field of materials science and the many astonishing discoveries that have been made about everything from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger to the crashing of your hard drive. Understanding why things break is crucial to modern life on every level, from personal safety to macroeconomics, but as Eberhart reveals here, it is also an area of cutting-edge science that is as provocative as it is illuminating.

Why People Do the Things They Do
Why People Do the Things They Do

Author: Nicola Baumann

Publisher: Hogrefe Publishing GmbH

Published: 2018-05-07

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1616765402

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A unique and comprehensive book by leading researchers looking at motivation and volition. How can we motivate students, patients, employees, and athletes? What helps us achieve our goals, improve our well-being, and grow as human beings? These issues, which relate to motivation and volition, are familiar to everyone who faces the challenges of everyday life. This comprehensive book by leading international scholars provides integrative perspectives on motivation and volition that build on the work of German psychologist Julius Kuhl. The first part of the book examines the historical trail of the European and American research traditions of motivation and volition and their integration in Kuhl's theory of personality systems interactions (PSI). The second part of the book considers what moves people to action – how needs, goals, and motives lead people to choose a course of action (motivation). The third part of the book explores how people, once they have committed themselves to a course of action, convert their goals and intentions into action (volition). The fourth part shows what an important role personality plays in our motivation and actions. Finally, the fifth part of the book discusses how integrative theories of motivation and volition may be applied in coaching, training, psychotherapy, and education. This book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the science of motivating people.

Why Things Are the Way They Are
Why Things Are the Way They Are

Author: B. S. Chandrasekhar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780521456609

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Popular physics book on why materials behave the way they do.

The Why of Things
The Why of Things

Author: Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-06-24

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1451695837

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Arriving in their summer home less than a year after the suicide of a teenage daughter, Joan and her family stumble on the death of a local young man and bond with his grieving mother before learning that the victim's death was not accidental.