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Philosophy
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen
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From Publishers Weekly
Sociology professor Loewen lambastes history textbooks as both too inaccurate and too bland to engage students.
Copyright 1996 Reed business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When textbook gaffes make news, as with the tome that explained that the Korean War ended when Truman dropped the atom bomb, the expeditious remedy would be to fire the editor. Loewen would rather hire a new team of authors bent on the pursuit of context instead of factoids. In Loewen's ideal text, events and people illuminating the multicultural holy trinity of race, gender, and social class would predominate over the fixation on heroes and acts of government. Such is the mood adopted throughout this critique of 12 American history texts in current use. Vetting 10 topics they commonly address--from the Pilgrims to the Vietnam War--Loewen bewails a long train of alleged omissions and distortions. To account for the deplorable situation, he offers this quasi-Marxist explanation: "Perhaps we are all dupes, manipulated by elite white male capitalists who orchestrate how history is written as part of their scheme to perpetuate their own power and privilege at the expense of the rest of us." Certainly students' appalling ignorance of history is troublesome, and broken families and excessive TV viewing are at least the equals of white male conspirators as the cause. However, libraries located where dissatisfaction with textbooks exists should be interested in Loewen's critique. Gilbert Taylor
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh (Aladdin Fantasy)
by Robert C. O'Brien and Zena Bernstein
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Product Review
There's something very strange about the rats living under the rosebush at the Fitzgibbon farm. But Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with a sick child, is in dire straits and must turn to these exceptional creatures for assistance. Soon she finds herself flying on the back of a crow, slipping sleeping powder into a ferocious cat's dinner dish, and helping 108 brilliant, laboratory-enhanced rats escape to a utopian civilization of their own design, no longer to live "on the edge of somebody else's, like fleas on a dog's back." This unusual novel, winner of the Newbery Medal (among a host of other accolades) snags the reader on page one and reels in steadily all the way through to the exhilarating conclusion. Robert O'Brien has created a small but complete world in which a mother's concern for her son overpowers her fear of all her natural enemies and allows her to make some extraordinary discoveries along the way. O'Brien's incredible tale, along with Zena Bernstein's appealing ink drawings, ensures that readers will never again look at alley rats and field mice in the same way. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, is faced with a terrible problem. She must move her family to their summer quarters immediately, or face almost certain death. But her youngest son, Timothy, lies ill with pneumonia and must not be moved. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma. And Mrs. Frisby in turn renders them a great service.
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Philosophy for Dummies
by Tom Morris
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Book Description
Philosophy at its best is an activity more than a body of knowledge. In an ancient sense, done right, it is a healing art. It’s intellectual self-defense. It’s a form of therapy. But it’s also much more. philosophy is map-making for the soul, cartography for the human journey. It’s an important navigational tool for life that too many modern people try to do without. Philosophy For Dummies is for anyone who has ever entertained a question about life and this world. In a conversational tone, the book's author – a modern-day scholar and lecturer – brings the greatest wisdom of the past into the challenges that we face now. This refreshingly different guide explains philosophical fundamentals and explores some of the strangest and deepest questions ever posed to human beings, such as - How do we know anything?
- What does the word good mean?
- Are we ever really free?
- Do human beings have souls?
- Is there life after death?
- Is there a God?
- Is happiness really possible in our world?
This book is chock full of all those questions you may have long wanted to think about and talk with someone about, but have never had the time or opportunity to tackle head on. Philosophy For Dummies invites you to discuss the issues you find in the guide, share perspectives, and compare thoughts and feelings with someone you respect. You'll find lots of material to mull over with your friends or spouse, including thoughts on - When to doubt, and when to doubt our doubts
- The universal demand for evidence and proof
- The four dimensions of human experience
- Arguments for materialism
- Fear of the process of dying
- Prayers and small miracles
- Moral justification for allowing evil
The ancient philosopher Socrates (fifth century, B.C.) thought that, when it comes to the Ultimate Questions, we all start off as dummies. But if we are humbly aware of how little we actually know, then we can really begin to learn. Philosophy For Dummies will put you on the path to wising up as you steer through the experience called life.
Publisher Description
If you think philosophy is complicated or boring, think again! In this refreshingly different guide, author Tom Morris not only explains philosophical fundamentals, but shows you how philosophy can help you find more meaning in life, understand religious belief, and look at the world in a whole new light. Discover how to: *Think about lifes ultimate questions *Apply the insights of great philosophers *Develop your own personal philosophy *Expand your mind
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Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
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Product Review
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson take on the daunting task of rebuilding Western philosophy in alignment with three fundamental lessons from cognitive science: The mind is inherently embodied, thought is mostly unconscious, and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Why so daunting? "Cognitive science--the empirical study of the mind--calls upon us to create a new, empirically responsible philosophy, a philosophy consistent with empirical discoveries about the nature of mind," they write. "A serious appreciation of cognitive science requires us to rethink philosophy from the beginning, in a way that would put it more in touch with the reality of how we think." In other words, no Platonic forms, no Cartesian mind-body duality, no Kantian pure logic. Even Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics is revealed under scrutiny to have substantial problems. Parts of Philosophy in the Flesh retrace the ground covered in the authors' earlier Metaphors We Live By, which revealed how we deal with abstract concepts through metaphor. (The previous sentence, for example, relies on the metaphors "Knowledge is a place" and "Knowing is seeing" to make its point.) Here they reveal the metaphorical underpinnings of basic philosophical concepts like time, causality--even morality--demonstrating how these metaphors are rooted in our embodied experiences. They repropose philosophy as an attempt to perfect such conceptual metaphors so that we can understand how our thought processes shape our experience; they even make a tentative effort toward rescuing spirituality from the heavy blows dealt by the disproving of the disembodied mind or "soul" by reimagining "transcendence" as "imaginative empathetic projection." Their source list is helpfully arranged by subject matter, making it easier to follow up on their citations. If you enjoyed the mental workout from Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, Lakoff and Johnson will, to pursue the "Learning is exercise" metaphor, take you to the next level of training. --Ron Hogan
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Written by distinguished Berkeley linguist Lakoff and his coauthor on Metaphors We Live By (1983), this book explores three propositions claimed as "major findings" of cognitive science: "The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical." Cognitive science, with its basic materialist bent, applies computer-based concepts, a little neurophysiology, and linguistic theory to human mental life. It will, the authors say, drastically change philosophy. They seem to think that we are really run by our deep wiring and the cultural concepts that become embodied metaphors. While seeking clarity by drawing out the implications of their basic notions, they add new puzzles. What does it mean to say "reason is not disembodied"? Read this book to see how (some?) cognitive scientists think. But read it with Charles P. Siewert's recent The Significance of Consciousness (Princeton Univ., 1998) for the traditional notions of consciousness. Readers will find there's still room for their own judgments.?Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Canada
Copyright 1999 Reed business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Philosophy: Who Needs It
by Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff
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Best Sellers
"Her essays are lively, spirited, and challenging."
--This text refers to the
Audio Cassette
edition.
Book Description
Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand’s answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy but which one to have: rational, conscious, and therefore practical; or contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal. Written with all the clarity and eloquence that have placed Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy in the mainstream of American thought, these essays range over such basic issues as education, morality, censorship, and inflation to prove that philosophy is the fundamental force in all our lives.
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Since I am a fiction writer, let us start with a short short story. Read the first page
Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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tribal lone wolf, metaphysically given, altruist morality, conceptual faculty, conscious convictions, fairness doctrine, stock seed, autonomous man
Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
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Atlas Shrugged, Supreme Court, United States, First Amendment, Soviet Russia, Chief Justice Burger, Law of Identity, Helen Keller, Justice Douglas, Immanuel Kant, Nazi Germany, The New Republic, Annie Sullivan, The New York Times Book Review, West Point, Justice Brennan, Professor Paulsen, Science Without Experience, The Missing Link, Victor Hugo, Causality Versus Duty, John Rawls, Peregrine Worsthorne, The Ayn Rand Letter, Twin Oaks
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing
by William Irwin
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Entertainment Weekly
Wish we'd had this in college.
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh
Here is the answer to the prayers of Seinfeld aficionados who love philosophy and philosophy aficionados who love Seinfeld. And, thanks to reruns, the Owl of Minerva is not too late.
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Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy
by Jostein Gaarder
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Product Review
Wanting to understand the most fundamental questions of the universe isn't the province of ivory-tower intellectuals alone, as this book's enormous popularity has demonstrated. A young girl, Sophie, becomes embroiled in a discussion of philosophy with a faceless correspondent. At the same time, she must unravel a mystery involving another young girl, Hilde, by using everything she's learning. The truth is far more complicated than she could ever have imagined.
From Publishers Weekly
This long, dense novel, a bestseller in the author's native Norway, offers a summary history of philosophy embedded in a philosophical mystery disguised as a children's book-but only sophisticated young adults would be remotely interested. Sophie Amundsen is about to turn 15 when she receives a letter from one Alberto Knox, a philosopher who undertakes to educate her in his craft. Sections in which we read the text of Knox's lessons to Sophie about the pre-Socratics, Plato and St. Augustine alternate with those in which we find out about Sophie's life with her well-meaning mother. Soon, though, Sophie begins receiving other, stranger missives addressed to one Hilde Moller Knag from her absent father, Albert. As Alberto Knox's lessons approach this century, he and Sophie come to suspect that they are merely characters in a novel written by Albert for his daughter. Teacher and pupil hatch a plot to understand and possibly escape from their situation; and from there, matters get only weirder. Norwegian philosophy professor Gaarder's notion of making a history of philosophy accessible is a good one. Unfortunately, it's occasionally undermined by the dry language he uses to describe the works of various thinkers and by an idiosyncratic bias that gives one paragraph to Nietzsche but dozens to Sartre, breezing right by Wittgenstein and the most influential philosophy of this century, logical positivism. Many readers, regardless of their age, may be tempted to skip over the lessons, which aren't well integrated with the more interesting and unusual metafictional story line. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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The I Ching or Book of Changes
by C. G. Jung, Hellmut Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm, and Cary F. Baynes
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More than just a translation, Richard Wilhelm's I Ching is a profound introduction to the Chinese world-view. The I Ching (Yi Jing) is recognized by both Confucians and Taoists as a foundational work, and Wilhelm shows why. He separates his work into three books. The first book is about the hexagrams--the meanings of the lines and Wilhelm's extensive comments. The second presents two early commentaries that interpret the wisdom of the divinatory text, also with Wilhelm's helpful notes. And the third book takes us back to the hexagrams for more detailed commentary from both ancient Chinese thinkers and Wilhelm. Wilhelm is able to offer such enormous assistance because he spent the better part of a decade in china studying under classically trained scholars. His love for the work is thus as broad as his understanding. The I Ching was originally used for divination, kind of like palm reading or interpreting the stars. It differs from simple prognostication, however, in that it demands us, as diviners, to cultivate an understanding of the world and ourselves. Without this understanding, the text is useless, hence the value of the commentaries, particularly Wilhelm's. This version is not without its biases, of course--it is a European's understanding of the I Ching, through a late-Qing dynasty Confucian perspective, translated into English by a Jungian psychoanalyst. Nonetheless, it succeeds like no other. --Brian Bruya
Product Review
Princeton's Bollingen edition--still regarded as the best and most authentic by I Ching aficionados.
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Additional Pages: 1 2 3
© Adapt, Inc. 1998-2006
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