A Brain Wider Than the Sky

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416588108
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis A Brain Wider Than the Sky by : Andrew Levy

Download or read book A Brain Wider Than the Sky written by Andrew Levy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than one in ten Americans -- and more than one in five families -- affected, the phenomenon of migraine is widely prevalent and often ignored or misdiagnosed. By his mid-forties, Andrew Levy's migraines were occasional reminders of a persistent illness that he'd wrestled with half his life, though he had not fully contemplated their physical and psychological influence on the individual, family, and society at large. Then in 2006 Levy was struck almost daily by a series of debilitating migraines that kept him essentially bedridden for months, imprisoned by pain and nausea that retreated only briefly in gentler afternoon light. When possible, Levy kept careful track of what triggered an onset -- the "thin, taut" pain from drinking a bourbon, the stabbing pulse brought on by a few too many M&M's -- and in luminous prose recounts his struggle to live with migraines, his meticulous attempts at calibrating his lifestyle to combat and avoid them, and most tellingly, the personal relationship a migraineur develops -- an almost Stockholm syndrome-like attachment -- with the indescribable pain, delirium, and hallucinations. Levy read about personalities and artists throughout history with migraine -- Alexander Pope, Nietzsche, Freud, Virginia Woolf, even Elvis -- and researched the treatments and medical advice available for migraine sufferers. He candidly describes his rehabilitation with the aid of prescription drugs and his eventual reemergence into the world, back to work and writing. An enthralling blend of memoir and provocative analysis, A Brain Wider Than the Sky offers rich insights into an illness whose effects are too often discounted and whose sufferers are too often overlooked.

The Brain is Wider Than the Sky

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781780220154
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (21 download)

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Book Synopsis The Brain is Wider Than the Sky by : Bryan Appleyard

Download or read book The Brain is Wider Than the Sky written by Bryan Appleyard and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simplicity has become a brand and a cult. People want simple lives and simple solutions. And now our technology wants us to be simpler, to be 'machine readable'. It is time, says Bryan Appleyard, to resist, and to reclaim the full depth of human experience. We are, he argues, naturally complex creatures, we are only ever at home in complexity. Through art and literature we see ourselves in ways that machines never can. He makes an impassioned plea for the voices of art to be heard before those of the technocrats.

Wider Than the Sky

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300102291
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Wider Than the Sky by : Gerald M. Edelman

Download or read book Wider Than the Sky written by Gerald M. Edelman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wider Than the Sky presents an analysis of the brain activities underlying consciousness that is based on remarkable recent advances in biochemistry, immunology, medical imaging, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. But the implications of this rewarding book extend farther, well beyond the worlds of science and medicine into virtually every area of human inquiry."--BOOK JACKET.

Spencer Finch

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Publisher : Prestel
ISBN 13 : 9783791355160
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (551 download)

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Book Synopsis Spencer Finch by : Susan Cross

Download or read book Spencer Finch written by Susan Cross and published by Prestel. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artist Spencer Finch is internationally celebrated for his transportive studies of light and color. This books looks at over two decades of work that investigates the nature of perception and its mysteries.

Wider than the Sky

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Author :
Publisher : Diode Editions
ISBN 13 : 1939728363
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (397 download)

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Book Synopsis Wider than the Sky by : Nancy Chen Long

Download or read book Wider than the Sky written by Nancy Chen Long and published by Diode Editions. This book was released on 2020-03-04 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her second book Wider Than the Sky, Nancy Chen Long grapples with the porous and slippery nature of memory and mind. Through form and content, the poems in the book mimic memory, its recursive and sometimes surreal qualities—how recalling one memory resurrects a different memory, which then jumps to another memory, and then another, each memory connected by the thinnest of wisps—as well as memory’s mutability—conflicting memories among family members, changes in the collective memory of a society, a buried memory that is resurrected when one catches the scent of a forgotten perfume. Wider Than the Sky explores the role of memory in identity, how the physical aspects of the brain impact who we are, and how who we are—both individually and as a society—is, in one sense, a narrative. These poems delve into the mind’s need for narrative in order to make sense of the world and how a society uses stories and myth to help its members remember a lesson, a preferred behavior, or their position in the social scale.

The Spider's Thread

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262551470
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spider's Thread by : Keith J. Holyoak

Download or read book The Spider's Thread written by Keith J. Holyoak and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of metaphor in poetry as a microcosm of the human imagination—a way to understand the mechanisms of creativity. In The Spider's Thread, Keith Holyoak looks at metaphor as a microcosm of the creative imagination. Holyoak, a psychologist and poet, draws on the perspectives of thinkers from the humanities—poets, philosophers, and critics—and from the sciences—psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, and computer scientists. He begins each chapter with a poem—by poets including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, Du Fu, William Butler Yeats, and Pablo Neruda—and then widens the discussion to broader notions of metaphor and mind. Holyoak uses Whitman's poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to illustrate the process of interpreting a poem, and explains the relevance of two psychological mechanisms, analogy and conceptual combination, to metaphor. He outlines ideas first sketched by Coleridge—who called poetry “the best words in their best order”—and links them to modern research on the interplay between cognition and emotion, controlled and associative thinking, memory and creativity. Building on Emily Dickinson's declaration “the brain is wider than the sky,” Holyoak suggests that the control and default networks in the brain may combine to support creativity. He also considers, among other things, the interplay of sound and meaning in poetry; symbolism in the work of Yeats, Jung, and others; indirect communication in poems; the mixture of active and passive processes in creativity; and whether artificial intelligence could ever achieve poetic authenticity. Guided by Holyoak, we can begin to trace the outlines of creativity through the mechanisms of metaphor.

Waking, Dreaming, Being

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231538316
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Waking, Dreaming, Being by : Evan Thompson

Download or read book Waking, Dreaming, Being written by Evan Thompson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.

Beyond the Brain

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691165564
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond the Brain by : Louise Barrett

Download or read book Beyond the Brain written by Louise Barrett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-22 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations--that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment--not just their brains--to behave intelligently. Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain--or indeed having a brain at all--she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain's evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments. Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world.

All in My Head

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Publisher : Da Capo Lifelong Books
ISBN 13 : 0786736755
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis All in My Head by : Paula Kamen

Download or read book All in My Head written by Paula Kamen and published by Da Capo Lifelong Books. This book was released on 2009-04-24 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the age of twenty-four, Paula Kamen's life changed in an instant. While she was putting in her contacts, the left lens disturbed a constellation of nerves behind her eye. The pain was more piercing than that of any other headache she had ever experienced. More than a decade later, she still has a headache-the exact same headache. From surgery to a battery of Botox injections to a dousing of Lithuanian holy water, from a mountain of pharmaceutical products to aromatherapy and even a vibrating hat, All in My Head chronicles the sometimes frightening, usually absurd, and always ineffective remedies Kamen-like so many others-tried in order to relieve the pain. Beleaguered and frustrated by doctors who, frustrated themselves, periodically declared her pain psychosomatic, she came to understand the plight of the millions who suffer chronic pain in its many forms. Full of self-deprecating humor and razorsharp reporting, All in My Head is the remarkable story of patience, acceptance, and perseverance in the face of terrifying pain.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547527543
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (475 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by : Julian Jaynes

Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

On Wings of Words

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Publisher : Chronicle Books
ISBN 13 : 1452172072
Total Pages : 54 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (521 download)

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Book Synopsis On Wings of Words by : Jennifer Berne

Download or read book On Wings of Words written by Jennifer Berne and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring and kid-accessible biography of one of the world's most famous poets. Emily Dickinson, who famously wrote "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul," is brought to life in this moving story. In a small New England town lives Emily Dickinson, a girl in love with small things—a flower petal, a bird, a ray of light, a word. In those small things, her brilliant imagination can see the wide world—and in her words, she takes wing. From celebrated children's author Jennifer Berne comes a lyrical and lovely account of the life of Emily Dickinson: her courage, her faith, and her gift to the world. With Dickinson's own inimitable poetry woven throughout, this lyrical biography is not just a tale of prodigious talent, but also of the power we have to transform ourselves and to reach one another when we speak from the soul. • Fantastic educational opportunity to share Emily Dickinson's story and poetry with young readers • An inspirational real-life story that will appeal to children and adults alike. • Jennifer Berne is the author of critically acclaimed children's biographies of Albert Einstein and Jacques Cousteau. Fans who enjoyed Emily Writes: Emily Dickinson and her Poetic Beginnings, Emily and Carlo, and Uncle Emily will love On Wings of Words. • Books for kids ages 5–8 • Poetry for children • Biographies for children Jennifer Berne is the award-winning author of the biographies Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau and On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein. She lives in Copake, New York. Becca Stadtlander is the illustrator of many children's and young adult publications, including Sleep Tight Farm. She was born and raised in Covington, Kentucky.

Consciousness

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262301032
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness by : Christof Koch

Download or read book Consciousness written by Christof Koch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the human brain that combines “the leading edge of consciousness science with surprisingly personal and philosophical reflection . . . shedding light on how scientists really think”—this is “science writing at its best” (Times Higher Education). In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book—part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation—describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest—his instinctual (if “romantic”) belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a “fringy” subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work—to uncover the roots of consciousness.

Brainwalker

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Publisher : Dualmind Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780997652529
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (525 download)

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Book Synopsis Brainwalker by : Robyn Mundell

Download or read book Brainwalker written by Robyn Mundell and published by Dualmind Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique blend of science and fantasy, fourteen-year old Bernard journeys inside his father's brain. There he discovers a galaxy, infinite and alive, and is soon caught up in an epic war between the two sides of his dad's brain over their most precious resource: mental energy.

Brain Storm

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674058798
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Brain Storm by : Rebecca M. Jordan-Young

Download or read book Brain Storm written by Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Female and male brains are different, thanks to hormones coursing through the brain before birth. That’s taught as fact in psychology textbooks, academic journals, and bestselling books. And these hardwired differences explain everything from sexual orientation to gender identity, to why there aren’t more women physicists or more stay-at-home dads. In this compelling book, Rebecca Jordan-Young takes on the evidence that sex differences are hardwired into the brain. Analyzing virtually all published research that supports the claims of “human brain organization theory,” Jordan-Young reveals how often these studies fail the standards of science. Even if careful researchers point out the limits of their own studies, other researchers and journalists can easily ignore them because brain organization theory just sounds so right. But if a series of methodological weaknesses, questionable assumptions, inconsistent definitions, and enormous gaps between ambiguous findings and grand conclusions have accumulated through the years, then science isn’t scientific at all. Elegantly written, this book argues passionately that the analysis of gender differences deserves far more rigorous, biologically sophisticated science. “The evidence for hormonal sex differentiation of the human brain better resembles a hodge-podge pile than a solid structure...Once we have cleared the rubble, we can begin to build newer, more scientific stories about human development.”

Chocolate & Vicodin

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439182094
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Chocolate & Vicodin by : Jennette Fulda

Download or read book Chocolate & Vicodin written by Jennette Fulda and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The humorous and touching memoir of a woman who’s been seeking relief from a headache for more than two years. Jennette Fulda was riding high on the success of her first book, Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, until one fateful day in February 2008, when she developed a headache—and it never went away. So she dealt with it the best way she knows how: by writing about it. And eating lots of chocolate. In Chocolate and Vicodin, Jennette explores her change of identity from “the girl who lost hundreds of pounds” to “the girl who lives with constant pain,” and all she’s had to endure to try and make the pain stop—from a bevy of expensive, time-consuming tests, which have taught her interesting facts (for example, that an MRI does indeed cost more than a European vacation—and doesn’t last nearly as long), to tons of medications prescribed by her doctors to hilarious, sometimes insane advice she’s received from her blog readers. While nothing’s been able to grant her relief, she has gained a new perspective. Instead of dwelling on the “invisible tiara of nails” she may very well wear for the rest of her life, she’s instead learned how to live with the pain, sharing with readers not only how she’s managed to get by, but to laugh—and thrive—in spite of it.

Bright Air, Brilliant Fire

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780140172447
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (724 download)

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Book Synopsis Bright Air, Brilliant Fire by : Gerald M. Edelman

Download or read book Bright Air, Brilliant Fire written by Gerald M. Edelman and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author takes the reader on a tour that covers such topics as computers, evolution, Descartes, Schrodinger, and the nature of perception, language, and invididuality. He argues that biology provides the key to understanding the brain. Underlying his argument is the evolutionary view that the mind arose at a definite time in history. This book ponders connections between psychology and physics, medicine, philosophy, and more. Frequently contentious, Edelman attacks cognitive and behavioral approaches, which leave biology out of the picture, as well as the currently fashionable view of the brain as a computer.

What Are We Doing Here?

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Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374717788
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis What Are We Doing Here? by : Marilynne Robinson

Download or read book What Are We Doing Here? written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”