Bonfire of the Verities

Bonfire of the Verities PDF Author: Michael Lieberman
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1937875318
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
Res ipsa loquitor—the thing speaks for itself—as the lawyers say. But does it? Not in Michael Lieberman’s new book of poems, Bonfire of the Verities. What speaks here is doubt and the commitment to cast aside the apparent truths we all accumulate. Those verities are what are tossed onto Lieberman's bonfire: It is here I heap the platitudes I cannot keep. He grounds his struggle precisely: The coordinates of the country of doubt are 29º, 45’ N / 95º, 21’ W, which are those of Houston, his adopted city. It is an unusual poet who is willing to pare away belief and accept that truths—received or earned—must be discarded as we face the unknowable mystery. In the end what Lieberman wrests from the void is the recognition that there is no ultimate choice but dissolution: This fire burns in me— it cannot set me free it leaves me ash, not tree. And yet ash is both residue and tree, offering the possibility that dissolution is a kind of redemption.

Bonfire of the Verities

Bonfire of the Verities PDF Author: Michael Lieberman
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1937875318
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Get Book Here

Book Description
Res ipsa loquitor—the thing speaks for itself—as the lawyers say. But does it? Not in Michael Lieberman’s new book of poems, Bonfire of the Verities. What speaks here is doubt and the commitment to cast aside the apparent truths we all accumulate. Those verities are what are tossed onto Lieberman's bonfire: It is here I heap the platitudes I cannot keep. He grounds his struggle precisely: The coordinates of the country of doubt are 29º, 45’ N / 95º, 21’ W, which are those of Houston, his adopted city. It is an unusual poet who is willing to pare away belief and accept that truths—received or earned—must be discarded as we face the unknowable mystery. In the end what Lieberman wrests from the void is the recognition that there is no ultimate choice but dissolution: This fire burns in me— it cannot set me free it leaves me ash, not tree. And yet ash is both residue and tree, offering the possibility that dissolution is a kind of redemption.

Some Dark Fire

Some Dark Fire PDF Author: Michael Lieberman
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1680031082
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Michael Lieberman’s Some Dark Fire, New and Selected Poems is a generous sampling of an exceptional poet’s mature work, written over almost thirty years—since Lieberman moved to Houston in 1988. His poems offer a perspective on our world that is in turn celebratory, somber, joyous, dark, tender, and, most of all, doubt-plagued. He offers no easy answers, but his questions will enrich and reward the reader. This deeply felt book is the work of a gifted poet and research physician at the height of his powers. Lucky Every heart conceals a few small secrets or, if full of amplitude and plenty, large ones. I begin with a green bough, forsythia— supple and yellow with flower. I end there—not because I am impoverished, but because I have it all.

The Houstiliad

The Houstiliad PDF Author: Michael Lieberman
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1680030566
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In this savage yet beautiful book length poem Michael Lieberman captures the rage of men in modern society. He reimagines the characters of Homer's Iliad, recasts them, and sets them in conflict in today's Houston. Unflinching is its descriptions of violence, The Houstiliad implicitly contrasts the rage of Homer's Achilles which was specific and focused with the free-floating rage of contemporary men. Though unsparing in its descriptions, Lieberman's portrait is leavened by lovely lyric passages, reflection, and humor. For those who care about the complicated role of men in modern society this book is revelatory without promising an easy path to redemption or honor. Achilles' wrath is where our tale begins then spools out venom and men's mortal sins. It's tempered true yet riffs on Homer's style, suffused with guile, grit, and mordant wile. * * * Men savage men in violent travails though in the end it's humor that prevails.

Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy

Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy PDF Author: David Chandler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134147104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This new volume moves beyond the limits of current debate to show how today’s foreign policy is increasingly about values rather than interests and why ethics are now playing a central role. Rather than counterposing interests and ethics, trying to find ‘hidden agendas’ or emphasizing the double-standards at play in ethical foreign policy, this book brings together leading international theorists, and a variety of stimulating approaches, to develop a critical understanding of the rise of ethical foreign policy, and to analyze the limits of ethical policy-making on its own terms. They deal with the limits of ‘ethical foreign policy’ both in the light of the internal dynamic of these policies themselves, and with regard to the often unintended consequences of policies designed to better the world. This book also shows how the transformation of both the domestic and the international spheres of politics means that ethics has become a rallying point for non-state actors and experts who gather around values and norms in order to force institutions to justify their behavior. This process results from different structural changes and the transformation of the international system, the individualization of Western societies and the growing importance of expertise in the justification of decisions in risk adverse societies. It leads to a transformation of norms and to a redefinition of a global ethical framework that needs to be clarified. This book will be of great interest to all students and researchers of foreign policy formation, politics and international relations.

Night Sweats: How Moral Philosophy Failed

Night Sweats: How Moral Philosophy Failed PDF Author: Michael Bernhart
Publisher: Hough Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this, the final volume in the Max Brown Tetralogy (+1), Sally and Max Brown encounter the inconveniences that accompany advancing age: declining health, concern over diminished appeal, a loss of optimism – and sometimes hope. These challenges pale, however, when they go in pursuit of the most ruthless and unprincipled criminals on earth: recruiters and surgeons who harvest and sell human organs. Set against the backdrop of honor crimes against women, Sally and Max fight to stay alive and protect the victims of honor crimes from further attack. The action takes place in Switzerland and Jordan. Sally, for the first time in the series, is a co-narrator.

The Lobsterman's Daughter

The Lobsterman's Daughter PDF Author: Michael Lieberman
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1937875598
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
The Lobsterman's Daughter is a tale of murder and deceit in five generations of a Maine family, the Markhams. The story's narrator, Henrietta Markham, is a recent Harvard graduate, who submits an early version as her honors thesis and claims her work is an actual history of her family. She tells the story in her own voice and the conjured voices of her relatives, both living and dead. After graduation, in Barcelona she faces her own deceit in omitting her sins from the chronicle and adds a journal that documents her bizarre attempts at expiation and atonement. Markham sends the new version back to her advisor and asks that it be published as her final word on her family's history. In an epilogue Lieberman's author struggles unsuccessfully to regain control of a narrator who is at once incorrigible and essential. Ultimately the novel asks us to consider our capacity for evil, what it means to atone, and where forgiveness and grace reside.

Standards

Standards PDF Author: Lawrence Busch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525054
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
An investigation into standards, the invisible infrastructures of our technical, moral, social, and physical worlds. Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education—for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as “recipes for reality.” Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves. Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power—that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.

Systemic Risk

Systemic Risk PDF Author: Prasanna Gai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199544492
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
This book applies some of the lessons from network disciplines - such as ecology, epidemiology, and engineering - to study and measure how small probability events can lead to contagion and banking crises on a global scale.

Surpassing Wonder

Surpassing Wonder PDF Author: Donald H. Akenson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226010731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 678

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Book Description
Elegant and inventive, Surpassing Wonder uncovers how the ancient Hebrew scriptures, the Christian New Testament, and the Talmuds of the Rabbis are related and how, collectively, they make up the core of Western consciousness. Donald Harman Akenson provides an incisive critique of how religious scholars have distorted the holy books and argues that it was actually the inventor of the Hebrew scriptures who shaped our concept of narrative history—thereby founding Western culture.

Don DeLillo after the Millennium

Don DeLillo after the Millennium PDF Author: Jacqueline A. Zubeck
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498548679
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Don DeLillo after the Millennium: Currents and Currencies examines all the author’s work published in the 21st century: The Body Artist, Cosmopolis, Falling Man, Point Omega, and Zero K, the plays Love-Lies-Bleeding and The Word for Snow, and the short stories in The Angel Esmeralda. What topic doesn’t DeLillo tackle? Cyber-capital and currency markets, ontology and intelligence, global warming and cryogenics, Don DeLillo continues to ponder the significance of present cultural currents and to anticipate the waves of the future. Performance art and ethics, drama and euthanasia, space studies and the constrictions of time, DeLillo perspicaciously reads our culture, giving voice to the rhythms of our vernacular and diction. Rich and resonant, his work is so multifaceted in its attention that it accommodates a wide variety of critical approaches while its fine and filigreed prose commends him to a poetic appreciation as well. Don DeLillo after the Millennium brings together an international cast of scholars who examine DeLillo’s work from many critical perspectives, exploring the astonishing output of an author who continues to tell our stories and show us ourselves.