This Ugly Civilization
This Ugly Civilization

Author: Harry Elmer Barnes

Publisher:

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 9781943687220

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There are three basic themes in Ralph Borsodi's This Ugly Civilization a critique of modern industrial civilization, achieving personal economic independence, and maximizing individual potential. Borsodi advocates a lifestyle of self-reliance and decentralized power, and outlines how it can be realized either by one man or by all. The logical steps are given for moving beyond a "victory garden" so that each of us may cultivate a human-scale existence compatible with nature and the pursuit of the good life.Received with great interest upon release in 1929, This Ugly Civilization offered a course of action for those who were soon facing the Great Depression. The book again found an audience during the rationing and instability of World War II. This Ugly Civilization and Borsodi's subsequent Flight from the City (1933) became "bibles" to many in the successive "back-to-the-land" movements that occur every generation. His ideas gained further momentum among young people looking for answers in the 1960s and 70s. The indefatigable Mildred Loomis, the greatest advocate of Borsodi's work, even garnered the nickname "grandmother of the counterculture." Within another decade, the punk-inspired DIY movement would rail against centralizing authority and encourage the creation of a new culture of self-determination-although such radical ideas were hardly new, as Borsodi's book shows.This Ugly Civilization rejects the reign of quantity over quality in both man and machine, along with the concomitant rise of consumerism and groupthink. Above and beyond mere self-sufficiency, Barsodi champions an appreciation of beauty, uniqueness and craftsmanship over the factory conformity being imposed in every sector of life. He has written a pragmatic, poetic and philosophical work that will speak to every thoughtful nonconformist. It represents an early seed of the Green Revolution that continues to promote health, comfort and independence. It is about living a whole, organic life and developing the potential of the individual, the family and the surrounding community.

This Is Not Civilization
This Is Not Civilization

Author: Robert Rosenberg

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2004-06-16

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0547561660

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Hopscotching from Arizona to Central Asia to Istanbul, this inspired debut novel is “a vibrant mix of the serious and the absurd” (Publishers Weekly). In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Anarbek Tashtanaliev singlehandedly supports his small village in Kyrgyzstan, despite struggles at his cheese factory and a ruthless blackmailer. In the canyons of Arizona, Adam Dale’s basketball prowess represents the hope of his entire Apache tribe, but his personal life is filled with poverty and the struggle to break free from his tyrannical tribal councilman father. In Turkey, American Jeff Hartig works as a refugee resettlement officer—until Anarbek and Adam, men he knew during his stint as an aid worker, suddenly reappear in his life. Sharing a small apartment in the magical, sprawling city of Istanbul, the three men form an unlikely bond, filled with confusion, compassion, hope, and friendship. But when tragedy strikes the city, each will have to examine his own journey and his capacity to endure. Hailed as “journalistic, humane, and heart-wrenching” by the New York Times Book Review, This Is Not Civilization is “an ambitious, bighearted debut . . . intelligent, earnest, and highly readable” (Kirkus Reviews).

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

Author: Samuel Gregg

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1621579069

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"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high. The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason. But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.

The Ugly One
The Ugly One

Author: Leanne Statland Ellis

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0547640234

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At the height of the Incan empire, a girl called the Ugly One because of a disfiguring scar on her face, seeks to have the scar removed and instead finds a life path as a shaman.

Ugly as Sin
Ugly as Sin

Author: M. Rose

Publisher: Sophia Institute Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1933184442

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How Catholic churches are being sapped of their spiritual vitality and what you can do about it The problem with new-style churches isn't just that they're ugly they actually distort the Faith and lead Catholics away from Catholicism. So argues Michel S. Rose in these eye-opening pages, which banish forever the notion that lovers of traditional-style churches are motivated simply by taste or nostalgia. In terms that non-architects can understand (and modern architects can't dismiss!), Rose shows that far more is at stake: modern churches actually violate the three natural laws of church architecture and lead Catholics to worship, quite simply, a false god.

Temperament
Temperament

Author: Stuart Isacoff

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2003-02-04

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0375703306

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Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes on today’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature, or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role in the controversy. Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeks through the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenment philosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musical scale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe. In this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isacoff leads us through the battles over that scale, placing them in the context of quarrels in the worlds of art, philosophy, religion, politics and science. The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system known as equal temperament called into question beliefs that had lasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed. Filled with original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits of some of the greatest geniuses of all time, Temperament is that rare book that will delight the novice and expert alike.

Civilization and Monsters
Civilization and Monsters

Author: Gerald A. Figal

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9780822324188

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Discusses the representation/role of the supernatural or the "fantastic" in the construction of Japanese modernism in late 19th and early 20th century Japan.

Civilization
Civilization

Author: Niall Ferguson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1101548029

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From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Ugliness
Ugliness

Author: Gretchen E. Henderson

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2015-12-15

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1780235240

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"'Ugly as sin', 'ugly duckling', 'rear its ugly head'. The word 'ugly' is used freely, yet it is a loaded term: from the simply plain and unsightly to the repulsive and even offensive, definitions slide all over the place. Hovering around 'feared and dreaded', ugliness both repels and fascinates. But the concept of ugliness has a lineage that has long haunted our cultural imagination. Gretchen E. Henderson explores perceptions of ugliness through history, from ancient Roman feasts to medieval grotesque gargoyles, from Mary Shelley's monster cobbled from corpses to the Nazi Exhibition of Degenerate Art. Covering literature, art, music and even Ugly dolls, Henderson reveals how ugliness has long posed a challenge to aesthetics and taste. Henderson digs into the muck of ugliness, moving beyond the traditional philosophic argument or mere opposition to beauty, and emerges with more than a selection of fascinating tidbits. Following ugly bodies and dismantling ugly senses across periods and continents, [this book] draws on a wealth of fields to cross cultures and times, delineating the changing map of ugliness as it charges the public imagination. Illustrated with a range of artefacts, this book offers a refreshing perspective that moves beyond the surface to ask what 'ugly' truly is, even as its meaning continues to shift"--