Author: John Elder Robison
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812996909
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
An extraordinary memoir about the cutting-edge brain therapy that dramatically changed the life and mind of John Elder Robison, the New York Times bestselling author of Look Me in the Eye NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST Imagine spending the first forty years of your life in darkness, blind to the emotions and social signals of other people. Then imagine that someone suddenly switches the lights on. It has long been assumed that people living with autism are born with the diminished ability to read the emotions of others, even as they feel emotion deeply. But what if we’ve been wrong all this time? What if that “missing” emotional insight was there all along, locked away and inaccessible in the mind? In 2007 John Elder Robison wrote the international bestseller Look Me in the Eye, a memoir about growing up with Asperger’s syndrome. Amid the blaze of publicity that followed, he received a unique invitation: Would John like to take part in a study led by one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, who would use an experimental new brain therapy known as TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation, in an effort to understand and then address the issues at the heart of autism? Switched On is the extraordinary story of what happened next. Having spent forty years as a social outcast, misreading others’ emotions or missing them completely, John is suddenly able to sense a powerful range of feelings in other people. However, this newfound insight brings unforeseen problems and serious questions. As the emotional ground shifts beneath his feet, John struggles with the very real possibility that choosing to diminish his disability might also mean sacrificing his unique gifts and even some of his closest relationships. Switched On is a real-life Flowers for Algernon, a fascinating and intimate window into what it means to be neurologically different, and what happens when the world as you know it is upended overnight. Praise for Switched On “An eye-opening book with a radical message . . . The transformations [Robison] undergoes throughout the book are astonishing—as foreign and overwhelming as if he woke up one morning with the visual range of a bee or the auditory prowess of a bat.”—The New York Times “Astonishing, brave . . . reads like a medical thriller and keeps you wondering what will happen next . . . [Robison] takes readers for a ride through the thorny thickets of neuroscience and leaves us wanting more.”—The Washington Post “Fascinating for its insights into Asperger’s and research, this engrossing record will make readers reexamine their preconceptions about this syndrome and the future of brain manipulation.”—Booklist “Like books by Andrew Solomon and Oliver Sacks, Switched On offers an opportunity to consider mental processes through a combination of powerful narrative and informative medical context.”—BookPage “A mind-blowing book that will force you to ask deep questions about what is important in life. Would normalizing the brains of those who think differently reduce their motivation for great achievement?”—Temple Grandin, author of The Autistic Brain “At the heart of Switched On are fundamental questions of who we are, of where our identity resides, of difference and disability and free will, which are brought into sharp focus by Robison’s lived experience.”—Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Effect
Author: Nate Sloan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190056657
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Pop music surrounds us - in our cars, over supermarket speakers, even when we are laid out at the dentist - but how often do we really hear what's playing? Switched on Pop is the book based on the eponymous podcast that has been hailed by NPR, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Entertainment Weekly for its witty and accessible analysis of Top 40 hits. Through close studies of sixteen modern classics, musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding shift pop from the background to the foreground, illuminating the essential musical concepts behind two decades of chart-topping songs. In 1939, Aaron Copland published What to Listen for in Music, the bestseller that made classical music approachable for generations of listeners. Eighty years later, Nate and Charlie update Copland's idea for a new audience and repertoire: 21st century pop, from Britney to Beyoncé, Outkast to Kendrick Lamar. Despite the importance of pop music in contemporary culture, most discourse only revolves around lyrics and celebrity. Switched on Pop gives readers the tools they need to interpret our modern soundtrack. Each chapter investigates a different song and artist, revealing musical insights such as how a single melodic motif follows Taylor Swift through every genre that she samples, André 3000 uses metric manipulation to get listeners to "shake it like a Polaroid picture," or Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee create harmonic ambiguity in "Despacito" that mirrors the patterns of global migration. Replete with engaging discussions and eye-catching illustrations, Switched on Pop brings to life the musical qualities that catapult songs into the pop pantheon. Readers will find themselves listening to familiar tracks in new waysand not just those from the Top 40. The timeless concepts that Nate and Charlie define can be applied to any musical style. From fanatics to skeptics, teenagers to octogenarians, non-musicians to professional composers, every music lover will discover something ear-opening in Switched on Pop.
Author: David Wills
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681882612
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
An overview of the era and showcases the It girls and designers who defined the decade, with lavishly illustrated profiles of Jane Birkin, Jean Shrimpton, Catherine Deneuve, Mary Quant, Sharon Tate, and many more.Sixties counter-culture led to a revolution in fashion so profound that its contemporary influence remains unparalleled. For the first time in history women dominated the zeitgeist; never before has this monumental time in fashion been so richly documented. Switched On provides an overview of the era and showcases the 'It girls' and designers who defined the decade.250 iconic photos are accompanied by lavishly illustrated profiles of Jane Birkin, Jean Shrimpton, Catherine Deneuve, Mary Quant, Sharon Tate, Twiggy, and many more.Contributing photographers include Bert Stern, Milton Greene, Horst P. Horst, Terry O'Neill, Franco Rubartelli, David Hurn, Pierluigi Praturlon, Gianni Penati, Bud Fraker, David Montgomery, Patrick Lichfield, Henry Clarke, Arnaud de Rosnay, Slim Aarons, Arthur Evans, Jean-Marie Perier, Mark Shaw.
Author: Franklin Horton
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781721780808
Category : End of the world
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"It's been around nine long months since the United States spiraled into chaos due to a cascading systems failure. The die-off everyone predicted has begun and after a hard winter nearly every other house sits empty with the owners dead or unaccounted for. Lately the power has flickered on and off a few times, raising hopes that power restoration is coming soon. But how do you put the genie back in the bottle? Violence is everywhere. Disease is rampant. Hundreds of thousands are dead. Insurance can never pay for the damage and loss that has occurred. The economy will take years to restore, if it can be restored at all. From the recesses of a fractured government comes a plan to restore order and rescue what remains of the population. The first step comes with restoring power. But what if having access to electricity came at such a price that many -- like Jim Powell, his friends, and his neighbors -- would rather face a future in the dark."--Back cover.
Author: David Bodanis
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307335984
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
The bestselling author of E=mc2 weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through an account of the invisible force that permeates our universe—electricity—and introduces us to the virtuoso scientists who plumbed its secrets. For centuries, electricity was seen as little more than a curious property of certain substances that sparked when rubbed. Then, in the 1790s, Alessandro Volta began the scientific investigation that ignited an explosion of knowledge and invention. The force that once seemed inconsequential was revealed to be responsible for everything from the structure of the atom to the functioning of our brains. In harnessing its power, we have created a world of wonders—complete with roller coasters and radar, computer networks and psychopharmaceuticals. In Electric Universe, the great discoverers come to life in all their brilliance and idiosyncrasy, including the visionary Michael Faraday, who struggled against the prejudices of the British class system, and Samuel Morse, a painter who, before inventing the telegraph, ran for mayor of New York City on a platform of persecuting Catholics. Here too is Alan Turing, whose dream of a marvelous thinking machine—what we know as the computer—was met with indifference, and who ended his life in despair after British authorities forced him to undergo experimental treatments to “cure” his homosexuality. From the frigid waters of the Atlantic to the streets of Hamburg during a World War II firestorm to the interior of the human body, Electric Universe is a mesmerizing journey of discovery.
Author: Roshanak Kheshti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501320300
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 119
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Book Description
So much, popular and scholarly, has been written about the synthesizer, Bob Moog and his brand-name instrument, and even Wendy Carlos, the musician who made this instrument famous. No one, however, has examined the importance of spy technology, the Cold War and Carlos's gender to this critically important innovation. Through a postcolonial lens of feminist science and technology studies, Roshanak Kheshti engages in a reading of Carlos's music within this gendered context. By focusing on Switched-On Bach (the highest selling classical music recording of all time), this book explores the significance of gender to the album's--and, as a result, the Moog synthesizer's--phenomenal success.
Author: Jan Beatty
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822978709
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
In Jan Beatty’s fourth collection, The Switching/Yard, she takes us through the ravaged landscape of the American West. In unflinching lines of burning lyric and relentless narrative, she forges the constructed body into movement. What is still stereotyped as the romantic journey—now becomes as scarred as the Rust Belt. What lives in our collective unconscious as the Golden West becomes almost surreal, as these poems snap that vision in half with extended description of ghost explorers. We see the open truck cab, the farm workers on the corner waiting for pick-up; we see the speaker returning west to find the long-abandoned story of the birthfather. There is no stable landscape here except the horizontal action of moving through. Landscape becomes story. In this extended tale of the idea of family, we find stand-ins for the father in the form of a hit man, Jim Morrison, and ultimately the unyielding road takes the place of the body. The Switching/Yard is at once the horizontal world of the birth table where babies are switched, the complex yard of the body where gender routinely shifts and switches, and the actual switching yard of the trains that run the inevitable tracks of this book.
Author: Eric J. Caron
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781457562433
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
"A very compelling and personal glimpse into the mind and spirit of our nation's unseen guardians." Rear Admiral Francis McDonald, President, Mass. Maritime Academy As a twin in a large Massachusetts family with a heart of gold, Eric wanted to emulate his hero when he grew up--his Police Officer father, Sgt. Edmond Caron, a former Marine. Eric's dad taught him valuable life lessons that formed his foundation and defined his path, and experience taught him the rest. With his family's courage, love and guidance inspiring his journey, the author became renowned as an expert in the field of terrorism, money laundering and transnational crime. His investigations ranged from U.S. defense contractors and CIA going rogue, to WMD programs of Iran, China and Russia, to fi re and intrigue in Dubai and Afghanistan. His most challenging case would be a mere mile from his family home, and grip the nation. Throughout his twenty-five-year decorated career as a Special Agent and Diplomat for the U.S. Government, Caron discovered the powerful, life-saving effects of listening to one's heart, mind and God-given instincts. The author came to think of this principle as being Switched On. Join this Special Agent as he takes you on a ride-along filled with twists and turns and reveals the key to becoming Switched On for life. U.S. Government Special Agent and Diplomat Eric Caron (Ret.) enjoyed a decorated twenty-five-year career investigating terrorism, money laundering and transnational crime. He currently holds positions as an adjunct professor with the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on Cape Cod, and a terrorism expert for WHDH News 7/Boston.
Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1429956526
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Amanda Hocking is an indie publishing sensation whose self-published novels have sold millions of copies all over the world, and Switched is the book that started the phenomenon. Prepare to be enchanted... When Wendy Everly was six years old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. Eleven years later, Wendy discovers her mother might have been right. She's not the person she's always believed herself to be, and her whole life begins to unravel—all because of Finn Holmes. Finn is a mysterious guy who always seems to be watching her. Every encounter leaves her deeply shaken...though it has more to do with her fierce attraction to him than she'd ever admit. But it isn't long before he reveals the truth: Wendy is a changeling who was switched at birth—and he's come to take her home. Now Wendy's about to journey to a magical world she never knew existed, one that's both beautiful and frightening. And where she must leave her old life behind to discover who she's meant to become... As a special gift to readers, this book contains a new, never-before-published bonus story, "The Vittra Attacks," set in the magical world of the Trylle.
Author:
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763642495
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
A collection of bedtime poems.
