Résultats lu par "Liam Gerrard" dans Toutes les catégories

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma.

An immediate sensation when it was first published in two volumes in 1945, Popper's monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right and is credited with inspiring anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Arguing that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics, Popper traces the roots of an opposite, authoritarian tendency to a tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel.

A century before Britain became involved in this terrible business, whole villages and towns in European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women, and children to Africa, where they were sold. This is the forgotten slave trade, one which saw over a million Christians forced into captivity in the Muslim world. Starting in the ancient world, Simon Webb traces the history of slavery in Europe, showing that the numbers involved were vast and that the victims were often treated far more cruelly than black slaves in America and the Caribbean.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas in Five Staves when he was 31. Now with numerous adaptations for film, television, radio, stage - and indeed in audio - it has become an essential part of Christmas for many. Raconteurs Audio has created this collection to include Dickens’ two Christmas novellas, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, as well as some of his lesser known short stories with a Christmas theme.

In The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution, Dan Robinson presents a new history of politics in colonial America and the imperial crisis, tracing how ideas of Europe and Europeanness shaped British-American political culture. Reconstructing colonial debates about the European states system, European civilization, and Britain's position within both, Robinson shows how these concerns informed colonial attitudes towards American identity and America's place inside - and, ultimately, outside - the emerging British Empire.

One Presentation Away: Become an Irresistible Speaker and Convert More Clients provides crystal-clear direction on how to become confident when speaking and selling from any stage and how to start getting clients, not just claps. Uniquely, this book reveals how to sell from a virtual or live stage without feeling like you're selling. Written by renowned professional speaker and presentation builder Colin Boyd, this book's core premise is that you are just one irresistible presentation away from the breakthrough you desire.

Tom Standage's fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted fans and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology - personal transportation - and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel - a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention - Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in.

Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption, and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy.

This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of "basic stories" in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it reveals that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling.

In this companion volume to Merlin’s Tour of the Universe, we visit again with Merlin, a timeless traveler from Planet Omniscia, who answers a collection of imaginative questions about the cosmos from curious stargazers. Whether waxing poetic about Earth and its environs, the Sun and its stellar siblings, physical laws, or galaxies near and far, Merlin’s remarks are witty, humorous, and clear as a starry night sky.

Savage and bloodthirsty, or civilized and peaceable? The Celts have long been a subject of enormous fascination, speculation, and misunderstanding. From the ancient Romans to the present day, their real nature has been obscured by a tangled web of preconceived ideas and stereotypes.

How did "the West" come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. "The West" was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders.

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy - but rather superior control of subordinate labor.

When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein treated as an equal. Had he lived he might have been recognized as the most brilliant thinker of the century. This amiable shambling bear of a man was an ardent socialist, a believer in free love, and an intimate of the Bloomsbury set. For the first time Cheryl Misak tells the full story of his extraordinary life.

In the newly updated third edition of The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide to Successful Negotiating, distinguished commercial negotiator Steve Gates delivers a singular and practical guide to the art and science of negotiation. The book lays out the behaviors and traits associated with successful negotiation and offers a comprehensive model for how power, process, and behavior can have substantial impacts on your next negotiation. You'll also learn how you can shape these factors to optimize value for yourself, your client, or your organization.

With incomparable wisdom, skill, and wit, world-renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith traces the history of the major speculative episodes in our economy over the last three centuries. Exposing the ways in which normally sane people display reckless behavior in pursuit of profit, Galbraith asserts that our "notoriously short" financial memory is what creates the conditions for market collapse. By recognizing these signs and understanding what causes them we can guard against future recessions and have a better hold on our country's (and our own) financial destiny.

An unparalleled practical training tool for investment analysis, On the Hunt for Great Companies helps listeners move beyond using rules of thumb for companies or investment hypotheses based on broad-level pattern recognition. Listeners will learn how to assess all the essential traits of a good business, including passionate management, staying power, abnormal reinvestment options, low dependency risk, and to identify emerging quality. This book is supported by a wealth of real-world examples, both contemporary and historical, and true business stories and anecdotes.

Gathering ten modern masters of the strange and unsettling, Unquiet Guests sets fire to the blueprints and reimagines the haunted house from the foundations up. From dreamlike visions of an abandoned future mansion to a sentient building grown tired of its owners, these rooms echo with whispers of the disenfranchised and the lost.

This Very Short Introduction presents the field of fluid mechanics by focusing on the underlying physical ideas and using everyday phenomena to demonstrate them, from dripping taps to swimming ducks. Eric Lauga shows how this set of fundamental physical concepts can be applied to a wide range of flow behaviors and highlights the role of fluid motion in both the natural and industrial worlds. This book also considers future applications of fluid mechanics in science.

Just when DI Tom Mariner seems to be settling down with his new girlfriend...everything kicks off. First, a badly decomposed body of a young woman is found in a Birmingham sewer. The police can't identify her and dub her "Madeleine". Then, an important politician and his wife are shot on an isolated road. "Vengeance is mine" is scrawled in blood at the scene. Finally, a bomb explosion in the busy city kills five people, causing chaos and panic. Can Detective Mariner and his team get to the bottom of crimes that will come very close to home for him and his team?