Thinking America

Thinking America PDF Author: Andrew Taylor
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1584658630
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A penetrating literary and philosophical examination of major figures in the development of American intellectual culture, from Emerson to Santayana

America's Critical Thinking Crisis

America's Critical Thinking Crisis PDF Author: Steven Pearlman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735942209
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Even though 95% of Americans consider critical thinking an essential skill that schools should teach, our students' problem-solving skills rank among the lowest in the world. Students actually show lower brain activity in class than while watching TV or sleeping, and most college students, as well as half of American adults, fail critical thinking tests. But why? Written by an expert who trains educators and executives, America's Critical Thinking Crisis shows that the problem doesn't fall on educators or Gen Z, but on a fundamentally flawed conception of what education means. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and educational research, it demonstrates how we can create legions of divergent thinkers and problem solvers by tapping the hardwiring that innately makes children think all the time, in all areas of life - just not so much in school.

Time To Start Thinking

Time To Start Thinking PDF Author: Edward Luce
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0748118616
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
On its present course, the US faces a world of rising new countries that will compete with it ever more fiecely as its own power is declining. In order to slow and improve this steady leakage of power, the US must change course internationally, economically and domestically. It must also restructure to remain the world's most competitive economy. And it must address quality of life issues and fairness at home. But American politics is broken -- competing forces and interests have led to stasis. With change so tough, where now for a country where the middle classes are suffering as they have never suffered before, the pensions crisis is growing, the deficit out of sight, and radicalism waiting in the wings?

Rereading America

Rereading America PDF Author: Gary Colombo
Publisher: Bedford Books
ISBN: 9780312447052
Category : College readers
Languages : en
Pages : 861

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Book Description
Intended as a reader for writing and critical thinking courses, this volume presents a collection of writings promoting cultural diversity, encouraging readers to grapple with the real differences in perspectives that arise in our complex society.

Thinking About America's Defense

Thinking About America's Defense PDF Author: Glenn A. Kent
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833048627
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Lieutenant General Glenn A. Kent was a uniquely acute analyst and developer of American defense policy in the second half of the twentieth century. His 33-year career in the Air Force was followed by more than 20 years as one of the leading analysts at RAND. This volume is not a memoir in the normal sense but rather a summary of the dozens of national security issues in which Glenn was personally engaged over the course of his career. These issues included creating the single integrated operational plan (SIOP), leading DoD's official assessment of strategic defenses in the 1960s, developing and analyzing strategic nuclear arms control agreements, helping to bring new weapon systems to life, and many others. Each vignette describes the analytical frameworks and, where appropriate, the mathematical formulas and charts that Glenn developed and applied to gain insights into the issue at hand. The author also relates his roles in much of the bureaucratic pulling and hauling that occurred as issues were addressed within the government.

The Last Myth

The Last Myth PDF Author: Matthew Barrett Gross
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616145749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
During the first dozen years of the twenty-first century, apocalyptic anticipation in America has leapt from the cultish to the mainstream. Today, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe that the events foretold in the book of Revelation will come true. But many secular readers also seem hungry for catastrophe and have propelled books about peak oil, global warming, and the end of civilization into bestsellers. How did we come to live in a culture obsessed by the belief that the end is near? The Last Myth explains why apocalyptic beliefs are surging within the American mainstream today. Demonstrating that our expectation of the end of the world is a surprisingly recent development in human thought, the book reveals the profound influence of apocalyptic thinking on America’s past, present, and future.

Enchanted America

Enchanted America PDF Author: J. Eric Oliver
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022657864X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
America is in civic chaos, its politics rife with conspiracy theories and false information. Nationalism and authoritarianism are on the rise, while scientists, universities, and news organizations are viewed with increasing mistrust. Its citizens reject scientific evidence on climate change and vaccinations while embracing myths of impending apocalypse. And then there is Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who won the support of millions of conservative Christians despite having no moral or political convictions. What is going on? The answer, according to J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, can be found in the most important force shaping American politics today: human intuition. Much of what seems to be irrational in American politics arises from the growing divide in how its citizens make sense of the world. On one side are rationalists. They use science and reason to understand reality. On the other side are intuitionists. They rely on gut feelings and instincts as their guide to the world. Intuitionists believe in ghosts and End Times prophecies. They embrace conspiracy theories, disbelieve experts, and distrust the media. They are stridently nationalistic and deeply authoritarian in their outlook. And they are the most enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump. The primary reason why Trump captured the presidency was that he spoke about politics in a way that resonated with how Intuitionists perceive the world. The Intuitionist divide has also become a threat to the American way of life. A generation ago, intuitionists were dispersed across the political spectrum, when most Americans believed in both God and science. Today, intuitionism is ideologically tilted toward the political right. Modern conservatism has become an Intuitionist movement, defined by conspiracy theories, strident nationalism, and hostility to basic civic norms. Enchanted America is a clarion call to rationalists of all political persuasions to reach beyond the minority and speak to intuitionists in a way they understand. The values and principles that define American democracy are at stake.

Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América

Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América PDF Author: Rodolfo Kusch
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392518
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Originally published in Mexico in 1970, Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América is the first book by the Argentine philosopher Rodolfo Kusch (1922–79) to be translated into English. At its core is a binary created by colonization and the devaluation of indigenous practices and cosmologies: an opposition between the technologies and rationalities of European modernity and the popular mode of thinking, which is deeply tied to Indian ways of knowing and being. Arguing that this binary cuts through América, Kusch seeks to identify and recover the indigenous and popular way of thinking, which he contends is dismissed or misunderstood by many urban Argentines, including leftist intellectuals. Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América is a record of Kusch's attempt to immerse himself in the indigenous ways of knowing and being. At first glance, his methodology resembles ethnography. He speaks with and observes indigenous people and mestizos in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. He questions them about their agricultural practices and economic decisions; he observes rituals; he asks women in the market the meaning of indigenous talismans; he interviews shamans; he describes the spatial arrangement and the contents of shrines, altars, and temples; and he reproduces diagrams of archaeological sites, which he then interprets at length. Yet he does not present a "them" to a putative "us." Instead, he offers an inroad to a way of thinking and being that does not follow the logic or fit into the categories of Western social science and philosophy. In his introduction, Walter D. Mignolo discusses Kusch's work and its relation to that of other twentieth-century intellectuals, Argentine history, and contemporary scholarship on the subaltern and decoloniality.

What Were We Thinking

What Were We Thinking PDF Author: Carlos Lozada
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1982145625
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic uses the books of the Trump era to argue that our response to this presidency reflects the same failures of imagination that made it possible. As a book critic for The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada has read some 150 volumes claiming to diagnose why Trump was elected and what his presidency reveals about our nation. Many of these, he’s found, are more defensive than incisive, more righteous than right. In What Were We Thinking, Lozada uses these books to tell the story of how we understand ourselves in the Trump era, using as his main characters the political ideas and debates at play in America today. He dissects works on the white working class like Hillbilly Elegy; manifestos from the anti-Trump resistance like On Tyranny and No Is Not Enough; books on race, gender, and identity like How to Be an Antiracist and Good and Mad; polemics on the future of the conservative movement like The Corrosion of Conservatism; and of course plenty of books about Trump himself. Lozada’s argument is provocative: that many of these books—whether written by liberals or conservatives, activists or academics, Trump’s true believers or his harshest critics—are vulnerable to the same blind spots, resentments, and failures that gave us his presidency. But Lozada also highlights the books that succeed in illuminating how America is changing in the 21st century. What Were We Thinking is an intellectual history of the Trump era in real time, helping us transcend the battles of the moment and see ourselves for who we really are.

Quicklet on Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Quicklet on Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich PDF Author: Coralie McCormick
Publisher: Hyperink Inc
ISBN: 161464117X
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
ABOUT THE BOOK "The law of attraction is that our thinking creates and brings to us whatever we think about, it's as though every time we think a thought, every time we speak a word, the universe is listening and responding to us." Louise Hay With the rise of the positive thinking and positive psychology movement, many supposed “gurus” have emerged.Napoleon Hill wrote his classic book, Think and Grow Rich, in one of the most difficult times of America’s history (the Depression), and the book is still in circulation today. Other promoters of positive thought run the gamut from Norman Vincent Peale to modern day pastors such as Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston, who preaches the new ‘Prosperity Gospel.’ We might ask ourselves, how can optimism hurt? Many of the people who follow these positive thought ideologies find themselves subjected to a regimen of self-hypnosis-like visualizations and verbalizations. MEET THE AUTHOR Coralie McCormick would really like to travel constantly. When she's not travelling, she's planning new trips, taking photographs, playing with my nephews, or writing. She have a day job that helps her pay the bills and a degree in Economics. She is also obsessed with Haruki Murakami novels and his 'words as pictures' style where sheep can talk, and you can always check yourself into the Dolphin Hotel when you need a break. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Going back to Ehrenreich’s ideal, breast cancer sufferers face an onerous battle for their very survival, full of trials and very real ordeals, and pain. The pressure is to assume a sunny demeanour, partly out of the concern of sparing their family and friends the real role they should be hoping to fulfill: that of supporting the person who is ill, rather than the other way around. The pressure is on the person with cancer to radiate positivity because without this positivity, they believe they lower their chances of survival.. Imagine the pressure! Should their health take a turn for the worse, their burden trebles, as they only have themselves to blame, their attitude was not positive enough. There are similarities in the job market, or in those facing mortgage foreclosures. According to the Law of Attraction, summed up in the quote at the beginning of this section, it is your thoughts which determine your future. No matter what circumstances dictate, a mortgage payment that is 133% of your actual income, or downsizing at your corporation, your fate is in your hands. Fate is never capricious... Buy a copy to keep reading!