Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Death Rays And Delusions
Download Death Rays And Delusions full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Death Rays And Delusions ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis Death Rays and Delusions by : Gerold Yonas
Download or read book Death Rays and Delusions written by Gerold Yonas and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-06 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Death Rays and Delusions," Dr. Gerold Yonas explains how he found himself thrust into a high stakes world of generals and politicians, international intrigue, multi-billion dollar budgets, laser beams and nuclear annihilation as he faced a mind-boggling assignment-creating a high-tech shield in space to defend America from attack. In this autobiographical narrative about the end of the Cold War, Yonas gives a firsthand account of the creation and evolution of the Star Wars beam weapon program. Having served as the first chief scientist and acting deputy director for Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as the "Star Wars" program, Yonas traces the strange, ironic and humorous events of his career as "Reagan's Ray Gun." He offers insight into the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the political, military and scientific machinations taking place in the background. Exploring a time characterized by chaos and confusion, politics and public relations, delusions and deceptions, Yonas reflects on the modern lessons from this era and shares his unique perspective on what happens when science and politics collide.
Download or read book Delusion in Death written by J. D. Robb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant Eve Dallas must foil a terrorist plot in this explosive thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. It was just another after-work happy hour at a bar downtown—until the madness descended. And after twelve minutes of chaos and violence, more than eighty people lay dead. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is trying to sort out the inexplicable events. Surviving witnesses talk about seeing things—monsters and swarms of bees. They describe sudden, overwhelming feelings of fear and rage and paranoia. When forensics makes its report, the mass delusions make more sense: it appears the bar patrons were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that could drive anyone into temporary insanity—if not kill them outright. But that doesn’t explain who would unleash such horror—or why. Eve’s husband, Roarke, happens to own the bar, but he’s convinced the attack wasn’t directed at him. It’s bigger than that. And if Eve can’t figure it out fast, it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. Because it’s airborne…
Download or read book The Delusion written by Laura Gallier and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 Christy Award winner! By March of Owen Edmonds’s senior year, eleven students at Masonville High School have committed suicide. Amid the media frenzy and chaos, Owen tries to remain levelheaded—until he endures his own near-death experience and wakes to a distressing new reality. The people around him suddenly appear to be shackled and enslaved. Owen frantically seeks a cure for what he thinks are crazed hallucinations, but his delusions become even more sinister. An army of hideous, towering beings, unseen by anyone but Owen, are preying on his girlfriend and classmates, provoking them to self-destruction. Owen eventually arrives at a mind-bending conclusion: he’s not imagining the evil—everyone else is blind to its reality. He must warn and rescue those he loves . . . but this proves to be no simple mission. Will he be able to convince anyone to believe him before it’s too late? Owen’s heart-pounding journey through truth and delusion will force him to reconsider everything he believes. He both longs for and fears the answers to questions that are quickly becoming too dangerous to ignore.
Download or read book Delusion's Master written by Tanith Lee and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A recognized master fantasist, Tanith Lee has won numerous awards for her craft, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. Delusion’s Master is the third book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales. A long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle. Chuz, Prince of Madness, third of the Lords of Darkness—beauty on one side, foul corruption on the other—“takes pity” on the world. In his gentle, soft embrace, mortal minds repose in a tide of illusion and twisted desire. Yet no one is immune from the sweetest madness of all, and even immortals fall at the cast of the bone dice…. Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love. Discover the wonder that is the Flat Earth.
Book Synopsis Delusions of Grandma by : Carrie Fisher
Download or read book Delusions of Grandma written by Carrie Fisher and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Optical Delusions in Deadwood by : Ann Charles
Download or read book Optical Delusions in Deadwood written by Ann Charles and published by Ann Charles. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Someone is spreading rumors around Deadwood that Violet Parker likes to chat with dead folks. With her reputation endangered, her bank account on the verge of extinction, and her career at risk of going up in flames, Violet is desperate. When the opportunity to sell another vintage home materializes, she grabs it, even though this “haunted” house was recently the stage for a two-act, murder-suicide tragedy. Ghost or no ghost, Violet knows this can’t be as bad as the last house of horrors she tried to sell, but sexy Doc Nyce has serious doubts. Her only hope of hanging on to her job is to prove that the so-called, ghostly sightings are merely the eccentric owner’s optical delusions. But someone—or something—in the house wants Violet stopped...dead.
Book Synopsis Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon by : Jeff Hecht
Download or read book Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon written by Jeff Hecht and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The whole story of laser weapons with a focus on its many interesting characters and sometimes bizarre schemes The laser--a milestone invention of the mid-twentieth century--quickly captured the imagination of the Pentagon as the key to the ultimate weapon. Veteran science writer Jeff Hecht tells the inside story of the adventures and misadventures of scientists and military strategists as they exerted Herculean though often futile efforts to adapt the laser for military uses. From the 1950s' sci-fi vision of the death ray, through the Reagan administration's Star Wars missile defense system, to more promising developments today, Hecht provides an entertaining history. As the author illustrates, there has always been a great deal of enthusiasm and false starts surrounding lasers. He describes a giant laser that filled a Boeing 747, lasers powered like rocket engines, plans for an orbiting fleet of robotic laser battle stations to destroy nuclear missiles, claims that nuclear bombs could produce intense X-ray laser beams, and a scheme to bounce laser beams off giant orbiting relay mirrors. Those far-out ideas remain science fiction. Meanwhile, in civilian sectors, the laser is already being successfully used in fiber optic cables, scanners, medical devices, and industrial cutting tools. Now those laser cutting tools are leading to a new generation of laser weapons that just might stop insurgent rockets. Replete with interesting characters, bizarre schemes, and wonderful inventions, this is a well-told tale about the evolution of technology and the reaches of human ambition.
Book Synopsis A Bright Ray of Darkness by : Ethan Hawke
Download or read book A Bright Ray of Darkness written by Ethan Hawke and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The blistering story of a young man making his Broadway debut in Henry IV just as his marriage implodes—a "witty, wise, and heartfelt novel" (Washington Post) about art and love, fame and heartbreak from the acclaimed actor/writer/director. A bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theater, A Bright Ray of Darkness showcases Ethan Hawke's gifts as a novelist as never before. Hawke's narrator is a young man in torment, disgusted with himself after the collapse of his marriage, still half hoping for a reconciliation that would allow him to forgive himself and move on as he clumsily, and sometimes hilariously, tries to manage the wreckage of his personal life with whiskey and sex. What saves him is theater: in particular, the challenge of performing the role of Hotspur in a production of Henry IV under the leadership of a brilliant director, helmed by one of the most electrifying—and narcissistic—Falstaff's of all time. Searing, raw, and utterly transfixing, A Bright Ray of Darkness is a novel about shame and beauty and faith, and the moral power of art.
Book Synopsis The Technical Delusion by : Jeffrey Sconce
Download or read book The Technical Delusion written by Jeffrey Sconce and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delusions of electronic persecution have been a preeminent symptom of psychosis for over two hundred years. In The Technical Delusion Jeffrey Sconce traces the history and continuing proliferation of this phenomenon from its origins in Enlightenment anatomy to our era of global interconnectivity. While psychiatrists have typically dismissed such delusions of electronic control as arbitrary or as mere reflections of modern life, Sconce demonstrates a more complex and interdependent history of electronics, power, and insanity. Drawing on a wide array of psychological case studies, literature, court cases, and popular media, Sconce analyzes the material and social processes that have shaped historical delusions of electronic contamination, implantation, telepathy, surveillance, and immersion. From the age of telegraphy to contemporary digitality, the media emerged within such delusions to become the privileged site for imagining the merger of electronic and political power, serving as a paranoid conduit between the body and the body politic. Looking to the future, Sconce argues that this symptom will become increasingly difficult to isolate, especially as remote and often secretive powers work to further integrate bodies, electronics, and information.
Book Synopsis Reflections on Groups and Organizations by : Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries
Download or read book Reflections on Groups and Organizations written by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on Groups and Organizations is the third and final book in the On the Couch with Manfred Kets de Vries series. Broadening the Kets De Vries canvas, this book examines concepts of organizational health, performance, and change. Material ranges from studies of high performance teams – based on time the author spent with the pygmies of central Africa – to the study of organizational stars, to the use of coaching interventions to improve personal and organizational functioning. Kets de Vries looks at the interpersonal and group processes that determine how organizations work within specific contexts, including family firms. He studies dysfunctional leader-follower relationships, downsizing, and organizational transformation. Kets de Vries also introduces his concept of the "authentizotic" organization – a pleasant, healthy, well-functioning workplace.
Download or read book The Divided Self written by R. D. Laing and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Divided Self, R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience. First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world. Laing's radical approach to insanity offered a rich existential analysis of personal alienation and made him a cult figure in the 1960s, yet his work was most significant for its humane attitude, which put the patient back at the centre of treatment. Includes an introduction by Professor Anthony S. David. 'One of the twentieth century's most influential psychotherapists' Guardian 'Laing challenged the psychiatric orthodoxy of his time ... an icon of the 1960s counter-culture' The Times
Download or read book To Be a Machine written by Mark O'Connell and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies—our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans—in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.
Download or read book The Book of Woe written by Gary Greenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his Inferno.” —Errol Morris Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the “official” view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to diagnose more illnesses—and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or harmful medications. Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the DSM-5’s compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns suffering into a commodity—and made the APA its own biggest beneficiary.
Book Synopsis Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People by : Paul Sann
Download or read book Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People written by Paul Sann and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Calculated in Death written by J. D. Robb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant Eve Dallas must immerse herself in her billionaire husband Roarke’s world of big business to uncover the identity of a hit man in this thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. On Manhattan’s East Side a woman lies dead at the bottom of the stairs, stripped of all her valuables. Most cops might call it a mugging gone wrong, but Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows better. A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn’t seem the type to be on anyone’s hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the building, the lieutenant knows Marta’s murder was the work of a killer who’s trained, but not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence. But when someone steals the files out of Marta’s office and the killer’s violent streak begins to escalate, Eve knows she has to draw him out, even if it means using herself as bait…
Download or read book Techno-Fixers written by Sean F. Johnston and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a seductive idea. Over the past century, the potential of new technology to solve social dilemmas has captivated modern culture. From apps that encourage physical activity to airport scanners meant to prevent terrorism, the concept that clever innovation can improve society is irresistible, but faith in such technological fixes is seldom questioned. Where did this idea come from, what makes it so appealing, and how does it endanger our future? Techno-Fixers traces the source of modern confidence in technology to engineering hubris, radical utopian movements, science fiction fanzines, policy-makers' soundbites, corporate marketing, and optimistic consumer culture from the turn of the twentieth century until today. Sean Johnston demonstrates that, through the promotion of prominent government scientists, technocrats, entrepreneurs, and popular media, modern invention became the favourite tool for addressing human problems and society's ills. Nonetheless, when it comes to assessing the success of cigarette filters as the solution to safe smoking, or DDT as the answer for agricultural productivity, the evidence is sobering. Cautioning that the rhetoric of technological fixes seldom matches reality, Johnston examines how employing innovation to bypass traditional methods can foster as many problems as it solves. A critical examination of modern faith in technology, Techno-Fixers evaluates past mistakes, present implications, and future opportunities for innovating societies.
Book Synopsis I Know This Much Is True by : Wally Lamb
Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
