When their adopted eight-year-old son Max suddenly turns feral, Maya Shulman convinces her husband, Alex, to embark on a cross-country trip to Montana to track down Max's birth parents, which results in unexpected consequences and life-altering changes.

Includes chapters on the therapeutic use of psychedelics and megavitamins.

Ziff: A Life? is the latest tour de force by an extraordinary novelist with explosive verbal energy and intelligence, sexual sensibility, and drive, who has been acclaimed by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Wallace Stegner. Who is Arthur Ziff? One of our greatest living writers or an impertinent provocateur? A true literary master or a clever tactician who seduces the reading public? It is narrator Danny Levitan’s job to find out who Ziff really is, in a compelling novel about the writing life that is at once comic and provocative, producing a memorable reading experience. Sensational publishing and serious literature collide when Levitan, a has-been writer, is offered a hefty advance to write a biography of Ziff, the scourge of myriad Jewish-American readers and a titan among the world’s literary giants. For years, Ziff has been sharing secrets, manuscripts, and sexual escapades with his longtime and less successful friend Danny. But, old friendships aside, Ziff hardly welcomes an incendiary study of his life, and is determined to thwart Danny, with legal roadblocks and personal humiliation. Danny must decide whether to accept the advance and risk the rollercoaster of recriminations that will surely follow. He recounts with humor and often wrenching anguish his journey of discovery into the land of Ziff, and the hard-won truths he finds there—original insights into a man who has crafted his novels, often savagely, from the lives of his friends, including Danny’s life. An unabashed look at the ruthless forging of literary careers and a heady brew of books within a book, Ziff: A Life? will enthrall readers of great fiction everywhere and anyone eager for a peek through the keyhole of contemporary literary celebrity.

The topic of perceptual experience lies at the center of a number of important debates in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the psychology of perception. In recent years, it has become one of the most vibrant areas of philosophy, provoking an enormous amount of high-level debate and discussion. The essays in this volume provide novel perspectives on a wide range of questions about the nature and content of perceptual experience. They address topics like representationalism, disjunctivism, and non-conceptual content, as well as others like perceptual illusion and the phenomenology of perceptual experience. Some of the essays employ traditional philosophical methods of conceptual analysis; others bring recent empirical research to bear on traditional philosophical questions. Among the issues the essays address are the following: What reasons do we have for thinking that perceptual experience represents the world as being a certain way, and (assuming that it does) what sorts of features do we have reason to think that it represents? Assuming that it has representational content, what is that content like? What is the relation between the representational content of perceptual experience, and its phenomenal character? What is the relation between perceptual experience and perceptual success, and can the one be analyzed in terms of the other? What does the structure of perceptual experience tell us about our own physical and cognitive make-up?

Anshen's book displays an extensive phenomenology of evil with dispassion, insight & irony. The Devil is seen as no mere medieval curiosity. He's equal to God in power, but not in substance, & a compulsive force in humans & the universe. Dr Ansen reviews the fall of Lucifer & of humanity with an analytical ingenuity that casts Satan, Eve & Cain in roles formidable & provocative for the history & psychology of humankind. Lucifer, before his fall, the author contends, was not evil. Nor was his act of rebellion against God an act of satanic hatred. It was the act of an individualist who rebelled against the fact of being created by one beyond & above himself.

What if Americans were the terrorists, and a more civilized superpower found it necessary to put us down? What if contemporary Christian ministers preached salvation through murder of non-believing foreigners, and the US government recruited child suicide-assassins for this purpose? If you were an American living in such a crazed society, what would you do? If you were a civilized outsider, how would you deal with these insane savages? The Holy Land poses such predicaments, and more. In an attempt to save the Minervans from oppression in the central galaxy, the liberal Western Galactic Empire has relocated the sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington. The fundamentalist fanatics ruling the USA find the presence of pagans in the holy city intolerable, however, and they launch an interstellar campaign of mass destruction in protest. Now, cast in a universe gone mad, the primitive Earthling POW Sergeant Hamilton and his case officer, the sophisticated Minervan priestess (3rd class) Aurora, must find the way out, or neither side will survive. In this madcap role-reversed science-fiction satire on the Mideast crisis and the War on Terrorism, the gloves come off. Written with wit and verve by Heinlein Award winner Robert Zubrin, the author of The Case for Mars, Entering Space, and First Landing, The Holy Land takes science fiction back to its Swiftian roots. Rarely since Czech humanist Karel Capek aimed his 1936 War with the Newts at fascism and appeasement has the medium been mobilized to such pointed effect. "A satiric tour de force" - School Library Journal "The duplicity, mendacity, and hypocrisy that characterize the present predicament in the Middle East are laid bare in Zubrin's engaing romp, with verve and biting wit." - National Review Online "Nothing is spared from Zubrin's satiric pen: religion, politics, economics, sex, war, psychology, philosophy - all are the objects of his barbs....The Holy Land is a surprisingly fine follow-up to Zubrin's other fictional and non-fiction works." - The Rocky Mountain News "It's a hoot." - The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Once a woman brought her son to the thirteenth-century Turkish Sufi master Nasruddin complaining that the boy had an uncontrollable sweet tooth. She asked Nasruddin to tell the boy to stop eating sweets. He said to bring him back in four weeks. When they returned he said, “Boy, I order you to stop eating sweets!” The mother asked, “Couldn’t you have said that at the beginning? Why make us wait four weeks?” “No, I couldn’t have said that even two weeks ago,” Nasruddin replied. “Why not?” asked the mother. “Because I love sweets myself. First I had to control my own love for them. Only then could I tell your son to stop eating them.” That is, words are empty unless backed by experience, says Robert Frager. People will not change until they hear from those who have lived what they teach. Frager has indeed lived his teaching. Founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in 1975, in 1976 he became a student of the Sufi master Muzaffer Efendi. Since becoming a sheikh in 1985, he has given many sohbets-a Turkish word for the spiritual conversations Sufi teachers hold to inspire their students. The sohbets he presents here are compiled from his talks over the past decade and represent Sufism as it is now practiced in the United States. Frager believes that the wisdom in such talks flows through the sheikh from his teacher and his teacher’s teacher all the way back to the Prophet Mohammad and God; the sheikh is merely a channel for something greater than any individual. Moreover, these talks are not lectures but rather living connections going both ways between heart and heart. Indeed, the warm, personal immediacy to Frager’s voice is rarely found. Like the tales of Nasruddin, he teaches through colorful anecdote and metaphors. Sufi practice has two sides, he says: one is to develop our love of God; the other is to become less self-centered. We need both, just as a bird needs both wings to fly. “How can I put my knowledge into practice?” is the question we must ask. As the Qur’an states, those who fail to live by their understanding are like donkeys carrying a load of books. The books won’t change them. They can carry the holiest books but will still be donkeys. Among the practices Frager teaches are zikr, or remembrance of God through chanting; halvet, or spiritual retreat; and adab, or “right action.” Thus do we develop character-or, rather, restore the character we had at birth. “I’ve never seen a baby with a bad character,” he says. “We are all born in a pure state. With hard work and God’s blessings we can return to it.” Other topics include Obstacles on the Path, Reducing Narcissism, Inner Work, Prayer, Marriage, Generosity, Taking Responsibility, and Waking before We Die. No matter what one’s religion, the reader will find such universal wisdom in this book that he will agree with Frager’s teacher Muzaffer Efendi who once advised, “You can tell these stories ten thousand times and people will still benefit from them"

How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind. According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways. This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.

Few luminaries in Jewish history, particularly in modern times, have made such a lasting and profound contribution to our spiritual heritage as Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812). His works embrace the entire spectrum of Jewish thought - mysticism, philosophy, psychology, ethics and law - and represent an expression of unparalled creative genius.This richly detailed biography traces Rabbi Schneur Zalman's life from his childhood and formative years to his trials and triumph as a leader who revolutionized Jewish life. It reveals many hitherto unknown facts, and offers the reader considerable insight into his extraordinary strength of character. Vilified by many of his contemporaries and arrested by the Czar, Rabbi Schneur Zalman emerged victorious; today his teachings continue to inspire and vitalize Jewish life all over the world.

The study of emotions and their effects in the workplace has become one of the 21st century's most exciting and burgeoning fields of organizational research. This unique work confirms that it has become increasingly clear that emotions are an essential element of our understanding of organizational life.This Companion brings together many leading scholars to address a wide range of topics in 38 chapters, across five levels of organizational analysis - including within-person, between-person (individual differences), relationships, groups, and the organization as a whole. Chapters tackle structure and measurement of emotion, antecedents and consequences of positive and negative emotions, including effects on work satisfaction and performance. The expression, recognition, and regulation of emotion and the propagation of mood and emotion in groups are also dealt with. The Companion explores contemporary issues including leadership, organizational climate and culture, as well as organizational change.With cutting edge research and comprehensive coverage of emotion in organizations this Companion will be of invaluable interest to postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of organizational behavior, organizational science, and industrial and organizational psychology.

"New religions emerge as distinct entities in the religious landscape when innovations are introduced by a charismatic leader or a schismatic group leaves its parent organization. New religious movements (NRMs) often present novel doctrines and advocate unfamiliar modes of behavior, and have therefore often been perceived as controversial. NRMs have, however, in recent years come to be treated in the same way as established religions, that is, as complex cultural phenomena involving myths, rituals and canonical texts. This Companion discusses key features of NRMs from a systematic, comparative perspective, summarizing results of forty years of research. The volume addresses NRMs that have caught media attention, including movements such as Scientology, New Age, the Neopagans, the Sai Baba movement and Jihadist movements active in a post-9/11 context. An essential resource for students of religious studies, the history of religion, sociology, anthropology and the psychology of religion"--

The specific focus of Martin Buber and the Human Sciences is “dialogue” as the foundation of and integrating factor in the human sciences, using dialogue in the special sense which Buber has made famous: mutuality, presentness, openness, meeting the other in his or her uniqueness and not just as a content for one’s own thought categories, and knowing as deriving in the first instance from mutual contact rather than knowledge of a subject about an object. By the “human sciences” the authors/editors mean material that can be meaningfully approached in a dialogic way, hence, the humanities, education, psychology, speech communication, anthropology, history, sociology, and economics. The essays in Martin Buber and the Human Sciences demonstrate that thirty years after Buber’s death his influence is still resonating in many countries and in many fields.

"In this provocative new study one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes that an understanding of cognitive science enriches, rather than threatens, the work of social scientists. Maurice Bloch argues for a naturalist approach to social and cultural anthropology, introducing developments in cognitive sciences such as psychology and neurology and exploring the relevance of these developments for central anthropological concerns: the person or the self, cosmology, kinship, memory and globalisation. Opening with an exploration of the history of anthropology, Bloch shows why and how naturalist approaches were abandoned and argues that these once valid reasons are no longer relevant. Bloch then shows how such subjects as the self, memory and the conceptualisation of time benefit from being simultaneously approached with the tools of social and cognitive science. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge will stimulate fresh debate among scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines"--

About the Author Larry T. Reynolds is Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan University and Adjunct Professor at the University of West Florida. He is former Chair of the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association, recipient of the first annual Charles Horton Cooley Award, and past president of the North Central Sociological Association. A Fellow of the Rockport Institute, he has published in such journals as Sociometry, Sociological Quarterly, Phylon, and Current Anthropology. Among his recent books are Interactionism: Exposition and Critique (1993); A Critique of Contemporary American Sociology (1993); and Symbolic Interactionism (1994). Leonard Liberman is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Central Michigan University. His areas of interest are physical anthropology, social psychology, and the sociology of science. He has published in Phylon, Human Organization, Current Anthropology, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, and the American Anthropologist, and he is the author of the forthcoming volume, Outrageous Concepts: Race, Genes, and Sociobiology.

1928. A guide to everyday psychology. This book is based on the belief that there are many ways of meeting the demand for knowledge of the mind's behavior and one of them is to follow the popular habit of the mind. This browses more readily than it studies, wants to be stimulated as well as informed, absorbs willingly what ties up with established interests, and that means practical ones. There are all sorts and conditions of readers; and the psychology of the average reader is considered in this work.

This book traces the psychology, history and theory of the compulsion to collect, focusing not just on the normative collections of the Western canon, but also on collections that reflect a fascination with the "Other" and the marginal – the ephemeral, exotic, or just plain curious. There are essays on the Neoclassical architect Sir John Soane, Sigmund Freud and Kurt Schwitters, one of the masters of collage. Others examine imperialist encounters with remote cultures – the consquitadors in America in the sixteenth century, and the British in the Pacific in the eighteenth – and the more recent collectors of popular culture, be they of Swatch watches, Elvis Presley memorabilia or of packaging and advertising. With essays by Jean Baudrillard, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Nicholas Thomas, Mieke Bal, John Forrester, John Windsor, Naomi Schor, Susan Stewart, Anthony Alan Shelton, John Elsner, Roger Cardinal and an interview with Robert Opie.

"With this one compact statement, Jacob Needleman has forced the discussion of both science and religion in our time into a new, more mature and discriminating phase. . . . It is a way station where those who are seriously exploring the transformation of consciousness will have to stop, take thought, and perhaps re-plot their course."--Theodore Roszak "I want to strongly recommend it to every reader seriously interested in our present cultural situation."--Fritjof Capra "Needleman is unique; he is really on to something. . . . A fine book"--Harvey Cox Western science has operated for centuries on the assumption that we can understand the universe without understanding ourselves. We are just now seeking to make the necessary connection between the general laws of nature to those of our own (inner) nature. But the job won't be done with "massive injections of the new consciousness"; we cannot democratize the sacred by cheapening its demands. "My aim in this book therefore" says Needleman, "has not been to speak of the convergence of science and spirituality, but of their separation. As in nature itself, organic unity is a reciprocal relationship between separate but interdependent entities. In human life as well, there can be no real unity except through the awareness of real divisions. One may then hope to experience the magic power of sustained awareness by itself to bring the harmony that we have until now fruitlessly attempted to impose on ourselves and on our endangered civilization." Jacob Needleman is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and the author of many books, including Money and the Meaning of Life , and The American Soul . In addition to his teaching and writing, he serves as a consultant in the fields of psychology, education, medical ethics, philanthropy, and business, and has been featured on Bill Moyers's acclaimed PBS series A World of Ideas .