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Viktor Frankl's search for meaning
?\"[T]his is a scholarly, commendable biography and intellectual history. Lay readers will be challenged; psychologists and historians will be grateful.\"—Library Journal, starred review
First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl's memoir Man's Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author's philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust.
This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl's life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the \"third Viennese school\" amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed.
Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life.
From the introduction:
At the same time, Frankl's testimony, second only to the Diary of Anne Frankin popularity, has raised the ire of experts on the Holocaust. For example, in the 1990s the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington purportedly refused to sell Man's Search for Meaningin the gift shop…. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Frankl became very popular in America. Frankl's survival of the Holocaust, his reassurance that life is meaningful, and his personal conviction that God exists served to make him a forerunner of the self-help genre.
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Rose Henderson : a woman for the people
\"\"This is a much needed biography! Peter Campbell creatively guides us through the life of a woman who left behind no personal papers, diaries or letters. It is a wonderful feat, and makes significant contributions to the history of Canada, women's studies, and Left history\".\" \"Andree Levesque, Department of History, McGill University\"--Jacket.
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Righteous dopefiend
This powerful work of gonzo journalism, predating the widespread acknowledgement of the opioid epidemic as such, immerses the reader in the world of homelessness and drug and alcohol abuse in the contemporary United States. For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers in the San Francisco drug scene, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary, larceny, panhandling, recycling, and day labor. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photography with vivid dialogue, oral biography, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis to viscerally illustrate the life of a drug addict. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, racism and race relations, sexuality, trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of fixes and overdoses; of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the drug abusers' determination to hang on for one more day, through a \"moral economy of sharing\" that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal.
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You are a star, Malala Yousafzai
\" Make way for Malala Yousafzai! It's Malala like you've never seen her before!Using a unique mix of first-person narrative, hilarious comic panels, and essential facts, Dean Robbins introduces young readers to an activist and trailblazer. The third book in the exciting You Are a Star nonfiction series, You Are a Star, Malala Yousafzai focuses on Malala's lifelong mission to bring educational equality and justice to all - especially young girls.Maithili Joshi's spot-on comic illustrations bring this icon to life, and backmatter instructs readers on how to be more like Malala!\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Size of Others' Burdens
Americans have a fierce spirit of individualism. We pride ourselves on self-reliance, on bootstrapping our way to success. Yet, we also believe in helping those in need, and we turn to our neighbors in times of crisis. The tension between these competing values is evident, and how we balance between these competing values holds real consequences for community health and well-being. In his new book, The Size of Others' Burdens, Erik Schneiderhan asks how people can act in the face of competing pressures, and explores the stories of two famous Americans to develop present-day lessons for improving our communities.
Although Jane Addams and Barack Obama are separated by roughly one hundred years, the parallels between their lives are remarkable: Chicago activists-turned-politicians, University of Chicago lecturers, gifted orators, crusaders against discrimination, winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Addams was the founder of Hull-House, the celebrated American \"settlement house\" that became the foundation of modern social work. Obama's remarkable rise to the presidency is well known.
Through the stories of Addams's and Obama's early community work, Erik Schneiderhan challenges readers to think about how many of our own struggles are not simply personal challenges, but also social challenges. How do we help others when so much of our day-to-day life is geared toward looking out for ourselves, whether at work or at home? Not everyone can run for president or win a Nobel Prize, but we can help others without sacrificing their dignity or our principles. Great thinkers of the past and present can give us the motivation; Addams and Obama show us how. Schneiderhan highlights the value of combining today's state resources with the innovation and flexibility of Addams's time to encourage community building. Offering a call to action, this book inspires readers to address their own American dilemma and connect to community, starting within our own neighborhoods.
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Amanda Gorman
\"From an early age, Little Amanda read everything she could get her hands on, from books to cereal boxes. Growing up with an auditory processing disorder and a speech impediment, Amanda had to work hard, but ultimately she took great strength from her experiences. After hearing her teacher read aloud to the class, she knew that she wanted to become a poet, and nothing would stand in her way. At the age of 19, she became America's first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. And, after performing her inspiring poem 'The Hill We Climb' at the Presidential Inauguration in January 2021, she became an icon across the world. This inspiring book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the incredible young poet and activist's life so far\"-- Provided by publisher.
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A Matter of Simple Justice
In August 1972, Newsweek proclaimed that \"the person in Washington who has done the most for the women's movement may be Richard Nixon.\" Today, opinions of the Nixon administration are strongly colored by foreign policy successes and the Watergate debacle. Its accomplishments in advancing the role of women in government have been largely forgotten. Based on the \"A Few Good Women\" oral history project at the Penn State University Libraries, A Matter of Simple Justice illuminates the administration's groundbreaking efforts to expand the role of women—and the long-term consequences for women in the American workplace.
At the forefront of these efforts was Barbara Hackman Franklin, a staff assistant to the president who was hired to recruit more women into the upper levels of the federal government. Franklin, at the direction of President Nixon, White House counselor Robert Finch, and personnel director Fred Malek, became the administration's de facto spokesperson on women's issues. She helped bring more than one hundred women into executive positions in the government and created a talent bank of more than a thousand names of qualified women. The Nixon administration expanded the numbers of women on presidential commissions and boards, changed civil service rules to open thousands more federal jobs to women, and expanded enforcement of antidiscrimination laws to include gender discrimination. Also during this time, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment and Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments into law. The story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and those \"few good women\" shows how the advances that were made in this time by a Republican presidency both reflected the national debate over the role of women in society and took major steps toward equality in the workplace for women.
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Where rivers part : a story of my mother's life
\"In the 1960s when Kalia's mother, Chue, was born, the US was actively recruiting Hmong Laotians to assist with CIA efforts in Laos's Secret War. By the time Chue was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were perceived as traitorous for their involvement. Notably, from 1964-1973, Laos became victim to the heaviest bombardment by the United States against communist Pathet Lao, becoming the most heavily bombed country in history. Fearing vengeful soldiers looking to take their lives, Chue and her family quickly fled their village for the jungle, leaving all that they knew behind. Perpetually on the run, the family was often on the brink of starvation, and death loomed. During this tumultuous period, Chue met her husband, Bee, and unwittingly left her mother behind forever when she escaped to a refugee camp with his family, a mistake she would regret for the rest of her life. There, Chue, Bee, and their daughters lived in a state of constant fear and hunger until they finally made it to America. The determined couple enrolled in high school classes despite being in their late twenties and worked grueling factory jobs to provide for their family, yet most who meet Chue know nothing of her extraordinary resilience and traumatic past. In Where Rivers Part, told from her mother's point of view, Kao Kalia Yang unveils her mother's epic struggle towards safety and the important undocumented history of a time and place most US readers know nothing about, offering insight into America's Secret War in Laos with tenderness and unvarnished clarity. In doing so, she excavates the plight of many refugees, who suffer silently and are often overlooked as one of the essential foundations of this country. For readers of The Wild Swans by Jung Chang, The Spirit Catches You When You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, and those who flock to stories about survival during wartime, Where Rivers Part is not only a personal account of resilience and survival but also a powerful and transporting look into Laos's Secret War and the lived experiences of the Hmong people\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture
Too often remembered solely as the psychiatrist and cultural critic whose testimony in Senate subcommittees sparked the creation of the Comics Code, Fredric Wertham was a far more complex man. Author Bart Beaty traces the evolution of Wertham's attitudes toward popular culture and reassesses his place in the debate about pop culture's effects on youth and society.
WhenThe Seduction of the Innocentwas published in 1954, Wertham (1895-1981) became instantly known as an authority on child psychology. Although he had published several books beforeSeduction, its sharp criticism of popular culture in general--and comic books in particular--made it a touchstone for debate about issues of censorship, child protection, and freedom of speech.
Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture, a fresh perspective on Wertham's career, reinterprets his intellectual legacy and challenges notions about his alleged cultural conservatism. Drawing upon Wertham's published works as well as his unpublished private papers, correspondence, and notes, Beaty reveals a man whose opinions, life, and career offer more subtlety of thought than previously assumed. In particular, the book examines Wertham's change of heart in the 1970s, when he began to claim that comics could be a positive influence in American society.
The Wertham that emerges is a critic who was significantly more progressive and multifaceted than his reputation would suggest.
Bart Beaty is associate professor of communication and culture at the University of Calgary. His work has been published in theComics Journal,International Journal of Comic Art,Canadian Journal of Communication,Essays in Canadian Writing, andCanadian Review of American Studies.
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