Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have grappled with for millennia. But the last decades have seen a drastic change in the way we approach it. In the past, a person going through a time of difficulty might keep a journal or see a therapist, but now the psychological has been replaced by the biological: instead of treating the heart, soul, and mind, we take a pill to treat the brain....

Identity and Social Change examines the thorny problem of modern identity. Trenchant critiques have come from identity politics, focusing on the construction of difference and the solidarity of minorities, and from academic deconstructions of modern subjectivity. This volume places identity in a broader sociological context of destabilizing and reintegrating forces.The contributors first explore identity in light of economic changes, consumerism, and globalization, then fo...

Although philosophy, religion, and civic cultures used to help people prepare for aging and dying well, this is no longer the case. Today, aging is frequently seen as a problem to be solved and death as a harsh reality to be masked. In part, our cultural confusion is rooted in an inadequate conception of the human person, which is based on a notion of absolute individual autonomy that cannot but fail in the face of the dependency that comes with aging and decline at the end of life. To hel...

A fascinating look at the Russian war effort during World War Two by and American war correspondent on the spot in Moscow."It has been said that World War II will be the most completely recorded conflict in history. Hundreds of newspapermen are now with the armed forces on every front. Through the medium of press, radio, and newsreel, they are giving a full picture of what is happening on the battlefields. (Many war correspondents have given their lives in that service.) But, more t...

Do doctors fix patients? Or do they heal them? For all of modern medicine’s many successes, discontent with the quality of patient care has combined with a host of new developments, from aging populations to the resurgence of infectious diseases, which challenge medicine’s overreliance on narrowly mechanistic and technical methods of explanation and intervention, or “fixing’ patients. The need for a better balance, for more humane “healing” rationales and practices that attend to the socia...

50 Vintage Sci-Fi Short Stories: More Than 27 Hours of Classic Science Fiction is an extraordinary collection of timeless adventures from the Golden Age of science fiction. Featuring fifty unforgettable stories by many of the genre’s greatest authors, this epic audiobook delivers more than 27 hours of imagination, exploration, mystery, and wonder.Inside you’ll discover classic tales by Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Damon Knight, Winston Marks, Mack Reynolds...

Join creators, writers, and comics legends as they discuss the impact of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther in this gorgeously illustrated collection of essaysMarvel Studios’ Black Panther has become more than just a movie—it has shaped conversations about art, culture, science fiction, representation, justice, fashion, comics, creativity, and so much more. Celebrate the legacy of the film with this collection of all-new personal essays and reflections...

by Joseph Davis, with Magdalena Janosikova

Finally—an intuitive, single-source standardization for naming guitar chords in the 21st century!A honing of guitar theory as a subcategory of music theory.Commonsense approach to all things guitar chord, including how to label alternate chord voicings.New concepts, including natural harmonics chords, unison chords, and octaval chords.A massive Instructional Glossary with clear and precise definitions, benefiting both guitarists andmusic theorists alike.

Short stories from an author with "a roomy imagination, big appetite for the absurd, healthy sense of humor, [and] heightened sense for the telling detail" ( Telegraph-Journal).The elderly take to the streets at night for illegal and cathartic electric scooter racing. A copy editor suffers brain damage from West Nile virus and is suddenly filled with cannibalistic violence and award-winning minimalist poetry. Mayor McCheese visits a sexually repressed Brit...

When We Arrested James SpaderIt was the saddest thing I’d seen. How he kept thinking he was a cat and he wouldn’t get out of that filthy litter box.And then, in the back of the cruiser, meowing for his cat brothers to save him.Deliciously wicked satires about local and international celebrities, the poems in Portable Altamont evince an irrepressible grasp of the zeitgeist, its machinations and manipulations, its possibilities and puerility. Who other than artist and...

America lies in ruins during an age of decline despair and death. The year is 1975 and a radical far–left group has kidnapped a young woman from one of America’s richest families. She will later join their cause and will eventually be arrested and convicted of armed robbery. She will claim it was a “different personality” that robbed the bank. The jury didn’t buy it but author Brian Joseph Davis did. The important difference is: Davis thought her “different personality” was more interestin...