The third Turnham Malpas novel from bestselling author Rebecca Shaw. Times are changing in Turnham Malpas... Brash Craddock Fitch up at the Big House seems determined to make his mark on the village - and the village is determined to put him in his place. Sir Ralph is having trouble adjusting to his more modest status, and timid Muriel to her exalted one, while a change of fortune surprises Jimmy Glover too. It's all Jimbo Charter-Plackett, fount of all gossip, can do to keep up. But these concerns are eclipsed by tragedy when Flick, Jimbo's daughter, is knocked down by the unpopular barman Alan. And before the shock of the accident has passed, a bitter dispute springs up that could affect the entire village...
In her surprising, entertaining, and persuasive new book, award-winning author and psychologist Susan Pinker shows how face-to-face contact is crucial for learning, happiness, resilience, and longevity. From birth to death, human beings are hardwired to connect to other human beings. Face-to-face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives, and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter, too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal “village” around us, one that exerts unique effects. Not just any social networks will do: we need the real, in-the-flesh encounters that tie human families, groups of friends, and communities together. Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience with gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the impact of face-to-face contact from cradle to grave, from city to Sardinian mountain village, from classroom to workplace, from love to marriage to divorce. Her results are enlightening and enlivening, and they challenge many of our assumptions. Most of us have left the literal village behind and don’t want to give up our new technologies to go back there. But, as Pinker writes so compellingly, we need close social bonds and uninterrupted face-time with our friends and families in order to thrive—even to survive. Creating our own “village effect” makes us happier. It can also save our lives. Praise for The Village Effect “The benefits of the digital age have been oversold. Or to put it another way: there is plenty of life left in face-to-face, human interaction. That is the message emerging from this entertaining book by Susan Pinker, a Canadian psychologist. Citing a wealth of research and reinforced with her own arguments, Pinker suggests we should make an effort—at work and in our private lives—to promote greater levels of personal intimacy.”—Financial Times “Drawing on scores of psychological and sociological studies, [Pinker] suggests that living as our ancestors did, steeped in face-to-face contact and physical proximity, is the key to health, while loneliness is ‘less an exalted existential state than a public health risk.’ That her point is fairly obvious doesn’t diminish its importance; smart readers will take the book out to a park to enjoy in the company of others.”—The Boston Globe “A hopeful, warm guide to living more intimately in an disconnected era.”—Publishers Weekly “A terrific book . . . Pinker makes a hardheaded case for a softhearted virtue. Read this book. Then talk about it—in person!—with a friend.”—Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human “What do Sardinian men, Trader Joe’s employees, and nuns have in common? Real social networks—though not the kind you’ll find on Facebook or Twitter. Susan Pinker’s delightful book shows why face-to-face interaction at home, school, and work makes us healthier, smarter, and more successful.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business “Provocative and engaging . . . Pinker is a great storyteller and a thoughtful scholar. This is an important book, one that will shape how we think about the increasingly virtual world we all live in.”—Paul Bloom, author of Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil From the Hardcover edition.
Explores the burgeoning menstrual advocacy movement and analyzes how law should evolve to take menstruation into account. Approximately half the population menstruates for a large portion of their lives, but the law is mostly silent about the topic. Until recently, most people would have said that periods are private matters not to be discussed in public. But the last few years have seen a new willingness among advocates and allies of all ages to speak openly about periods. Slowly around the globe, people are recognizing the basic fundamental human right to address menstruation in a safe and affordable way, free of stigma, shame, or barriers to access. Menstruation Matters explores the role of law in this movement. It asks what the law currently says about menstruation (spoiler alert: not much) and provides a roadmap for legal reform that can move society closer to a world where no one is held back or disadvantaged by menstruation. Bridget J. Crawford and Emily Gold Waldman examine these issues in a wide range of contexts, from schools to workplaces to prisons to tax policies and more. Ultimately, they seek to transform both law and society so that menstruation is no longer an obstacle to full participation in all aspects of public and private life.
One hundred kilometers from Seville, there is a small village, Marinaleda, that for the last thirty years has been at the center of a long struggle to create a communist utopia. In a story reminiscent of the Asterix books, Dan Hancox explores the reality behind the community where no one has a mortgage, sport is played in the Che Guevara stadium and there are monthly "Red Sundays" where everyone works together to clean up the neighbourhood. In particular he tells the story of the village mayor, Sanchez Gordillo, who in 2012 became a household name in Spain after leading raids on local supermarkets to feed the Andalucian unemployed.
The village of Middlewapping, a small and ancient rural backwater of southern England, forms a stage upon or within which the characters in this tale live out their various lives. Each has come to the village via a very different road; for some, such as Sally who works in a bank in the town, to own a house around the village Green has fulfilled a lifetimes' ambition, whilst others such as Rose, a prostitute from one of the less salubrious parts of London, arrive here quite by chance and not of their own volition. And each brings to the tale the manifestation their own experience, and how they now see the world. They are as disparate in age as they are in background; from Will and Emily who are on the cusp of adulthood, to Daphne, in the twilight years of her life. In their middle years are Percival, a former city banker and drug addict, who has come to seek refuge from his former life, and Keith, who with his lady, Meadow, lives on a bus on the outskirts of the village, and yet all are or become in their own way dependant upon one another to gain passage through the business of life, and alliances are formed which would seem unlikely, unless one knew the story. And so, from the very mundane to the very significant, 'Ordinary People' attempts to chart the progress of these people; their loves, their ambitions, and their own very individual ways of living out their lives. There may be irony in the book title, the reader will decide this for themselves, but however this may be perceived, the author has done his best to bring each character to life, and to present them in their stark manifestation, and in their collective manifestation of the human spirit.
