The Happy Hero

The Happy Hero

Author: Solitaire Townsend

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1911586386

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What if saving the world was good for you? That’s my promise in The Happy Hero. That you can be happier and healthier simply by making a difference to the world around you. I call this formula ‘positive+action’, and after decades of researching, writing about and living positive+action I’ve become convinced this the answer to enjoying a better life. I want to tell you stories of the people who have already discovered this secret. And set out the principles for how to feel good by doing good. Which sounds simple. Except that there’s so much that needs to change, where do you even start? Everyday our media finds another international crisis or health scare, another predator or disaster. We are subject to an overwhelming barrage of fear and negativity each time we open our phones or switch on the TV. We have been trained out of happiness by these stories and turned into the victims of our own lives rather than the heroes. The Happy Hero will offer a simple solution: stop worrying about the world and start making it better. Because new research shows that trying to make a difference, even in the smallest ways, can extend your life, improve your relationships and even help you recover from a cold! And luckily, many of the changes we need to make to build a better world, we should want to do anyway. In The Happy Hero I’ll share the emerging evidence of how heroism can make you happy. I’ll also provide practical examples for getting started. This book will even take on the most intractable and complicated problem facing all of us: climate change. And we’ll discover how solving it will solve so much more. The UK’s top medical journal recently reported that the best way to protect your heart and slim your waistline is to count the carbon rather than calories in your food. The US Military insists that renewable energy will make our countries energy independent and help reduce conflict by providing cheaper sources of power to the poorest. In our own lives, we know that saving energy simply saves money. Together we can cut even huge challenges like climate change down to size. And every step and every action will come with their own reward.


Fragrant Palm Leaves

Fragrant Palm Leaves

Author: Thich Nhat Hanh

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1999-12-01

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1440619565

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Best known for his Buddhist teachings, Thich Nhat Hanh has lived in exile from his native Vietnam since 1966. These remarkable early journals reveal not only an exquisite portrait of the Zen master as a young man, but the emergence of a great poet and literary voice of Vietnam. From his years as a student and teaching assistant at Princeton and Columbia, to his efforts to negotiate peace and a better life for the Vietnamese, Fragrant Palm Leaves offers an elegant and profound glimpse into the heart and mind of one of the world's most beloved spiritual teachers.


Refiguring the Hero

Refiguring the Hero

Author: Dian Fox

Publisher: Penn State University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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Refiguring the Hero reassesses the social significance of several of the most widely read plays of Spain's Golden Age in light of then-contempory ideas about heroism. The Spanish dramatists Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca, near contemporaries of Shakespeare, are hailed by Hispanists as democrats at heart for making heroes, in both the literary and the positive moral sense, of peasants. Spanish drama is alleged to be the first literature in the Western world to find the common man worthy of heroic status. Refiguring the Hero reevaluates the place of the canon of Spanish Golden Age drama within its European context. The book discusses European literary heroism through the seventeenth century, with particular attention to the Spanish or moral enlightenment were essential characteristics of a hero. However, the protagonists of Spanish "peasant honor" plays do not fit into this heroic tradition. The peasant often murders a nobleman who has offended his honor, and is rewarded by the reigning monarch. The peasants gain official approval by misrepresenting the events leading up to the murders. The generous kings, in their turn, are historical figures known for their failures. While most scholars approaching Spanish Golden Age drama regard these plays a s socially subversive or revolutionary, Dian Fox contends that they are consistent with other contemporary European national dramas in reserving heroism in serious works for socially superior characters. She challenges the "democratic" view of the peasant triumphing over the nobleman as heroic and shows that political and social developments since the seventeenth century have enhanced the sympathy with which modern readers regard the violent acts of the peasants in these plays.


Heroes Return

Heroes Return

Author: Moira J. Moore

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2010-07-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0441019528

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View our feature on Moria Moore's Heroes Return Being a hero is a recession-proof job—from the author of Heroes at Risk. The Emperor has personally selected Shield Lee Mallorough and Source Shintaro Karish to protect the duchy of Westsea-Taro's ancestral lands. But Westsea is suffering from deadly earthquakes that resist Lee and Taro's magic and political unrest that is stoked by their arrival.


The False Hero, Volume 1

The False Hero, Volume 1

Author: James Plymel

Publisher:

Published: 2021-04-27

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13:

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Note: Inside illustrations are in black-and-white for this paperback version. For full color illustrations, check out the other edition of the paperback. Disillusioned businessman, John Lawrence Locke, finds himself summoned as a hero to another world, filled with monsters and magic! With his body reverted to the age of fifteen, the thirty-three-year-old's mind is filled with the possibility of battles and adventures, like the ones in his favorite video games. Unfortunately for him, life isn't also so convenient. Betrayed by the very people who summoned him, he's condemned as the False Hero and forced to flee for his life. Alone in an unfamiliar world and hunted by all of humanity, he takes on the alias of Lutz and uses his gaming knowledge to quickly adapt to the world's strangely game-like mechanics.


Homer's Hero

Homer's Hero

Author: Michelle M. Kundmueller

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 143847668X

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Offering a new, Plato-inspired reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey, this book traces the divergent consequences of love of honor and love of one's own private life for human excellence, justice, and politics. Analyzing Homer's intricate character portraits, Michelle M. Kundmueller concludes that the poet shows that the excellence or virtue to which humans incline depends on what they love most. Ajax's character demonstrates that human beings who seek honor strive, perhaps above all, to display their courage in battle, while Agamemnon's shows that the love of honor ultimately undermines the potential for moderation, destabilizing political order. In contrast to these portraits, the excellence that Homer links to the love of one's own, such as by Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, fosters moderation and employs speech to resolve conflict. It is Odysseus, rather than Achilles, who is the pinnacle of heroic excellence. Homer's portrait of humanity reveals the value of love of one's own as the better, albeit still incomplete, precursor to a just political order. Kundmueller brings her reading of Homer to bear on contemporary tensions between private life and the pursuit of public honor, arguing that individual desires continue to shape human excellence and our prospects for justice.


Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age

Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age

Author: Anthony J. Cascardi

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 1997-09-15

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780271025698

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Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in the throes of modernization arising from trade with the New World and the rise of an urban society. During this period, Spanish culture came to be dominated by the tension between an old regime of traditional values&—honor, lineage, purity of blood&—and these modernizing influences. Anthony J. Cascardi examines the literature of the Golden Age as the point at which tensions between the old and the new converged and proposes that this historical drama provided the context for subject-formation in early modern Spain. He examines how Spanish writers envisioned history and studies how these visions revealed or concealed contradictions between social values of their time, particularly between the value systems of caste and class. Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age draws on recent theoretical paradigms in contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, political and social theory, and literary history to place Spain's major literary figures in challenging new contexts. By accounting for both modernizing desires and resistances to modernization, Cascardi provides readers interested in theories of ideology and history with a new way of looking at the literature of the Spanish Golden Age.


On The Wings of Heroes

On The Wings of Heroes

Author: Richard Peck

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-10-16

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1440652570

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Davy Bowman’s dad looks forward to Halloween more than a kid, and Davy’s brother, Bill, flies B-17s. Davy adores these two heroes and tries his best to follow their lead, especially now. World War II has invaded Davy’s homefront boyhood. Bill has joined up, breaking their dad’s heart. It’s an intense, confusing time, and one that will spur Davy to grow up in a hurry. This is one of Richard Peck’s finest novels—a tender, unforgettable portrait of the World War II home front and a family’s enduring love.


Death of a Hero

Death of a Hero

Author: Richard Aldington

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-02-26

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1101602937

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One of the great World War I antiwar novels—honest, chilling, and brilliantly satirical Based on the author's experiences on the Western Front, Richard Aldington's first novel, Death of a Hero, finally joins the ranks of Penguin Classics. Our hero is George Winterbourne, who enlists in the British Expeditionary Army during the Great War and gets sent to France. After a rash of casualties leads to his promotion through the ranks, he grows increasingly cynical about the war and disillusioned by the hypocrisies of British society. Aldington's writing about Britain's ignorance of the tribulations of its soldiers is among the most biting ever published. Death of a Hero vividly evokes the morally degrading nature of combat as it rushes toward its astounding finish. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.