In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "the River," the community of like-minded people whose mastery of risk allows them to shape-and dominate-so much of modern life.[Bokinfo]

Collection of the journalist's articles previously published in varous periodicals in slightly different form.

On July 1, 1959, at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics: Clyde Benson, an elderly farmer and alcoholic; Joseph Cassel, a failed writer who was institutionalized after increasingly violent behavior toward his family; and Leon Gabor, a college dropout and veteran of World War II. The men had one thing in common: each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. Their extraordinary meeting and the two years they spent in one another’s company serves as the basis for an investigation into the nature of human identity, belief, and delusion that is poignant, amusing, and at times disturbing. Displaying the sympathy and subtlety of a gifted novelist, Rokeach draws us into the lives of three troubled and profoundly different men who find themselves “confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity.”

Ceremonial Violence analyzes the Columbine high school shooting and four other cases and explains for the first time why teenagers commit school rampage shootings. With his grasp of the elements of abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, sociology, and neurology that contribute to the homicidal mindset, Fast offers us a means of understanding and coming to terms with these tragedies.--From publisher description.

Making Connections maps new territory in the field of psychology. The essays in this volume are "a series of exercises en route to a new psychology of adolescence and women...[and] part of a process that they also describe: of changing a tradition by including girls' voices, of listening to girls and asking again about the meaning of self, relationship, and morality--concepts central to any psychology of human development... Each essay originated with a question that arose or became clarified in the experience of the research. No attempt has been made to unify these essays or to arrive at a central thesis, beyond the common intention to listen for the ways in which girls orchestrate themes of connection and separation and concerns about care and justice in speaking about themselves, about their relationships, and about experiences of conflict... "When Women's Studies is joined with the study of girls development it becomes clearer why adolescence is a critical time in girls' lives--a time when girls are in danger of losing their voices and thus losing connection with others, and also a time when girls, gaining voice and knowledge, are in danger of knowing the unseen and speaking the unspoken and thus losing connection with what is commonly taken to be 'reality.' This crisis of connection in girls' lives at adolescence links the psychology of women with the most basic questions about the nature of relationships and the definition of reality. Girls questions about relationships and about reality, however, also tug at women's silences."

These essays are "a series of exercises en route to a new psychology of adolescence and of women...[and] part of a process that they also describe: of changing a tradition by including girls' voices, of listening to girls and asking again about the meaning of self, relationship, and morality-concepts central to any psychology of human development."

Dr. Stern’s The Flight from Woman is a study of the polarity of the sexes as reflected in the conflict between two modes of knowledge–scientific or rational, as contrasted with intuitive or poetic. In exploring this rich theme, he undertakes the psychological portraits of six representative figures whose thought and work have influenced modern man: Descartes, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and Sartre. The scientific revolution of the last 300 years has yielded, in Dr. Stern’s view, a de-ferninization and de-humanization of society, in the sense that it is a rejection of the kind of wisdom, called sophia, that is comprehended intuitively. “If we equate the one-sidedly rational and technical with the masculine,” he states, “there arises the ghastly specter of a world impoverished of womanly values.” A deeply original work, The Flight from Woman goes far beyond psychology in its analysis of the malaise of our time.

This ground-breaking work by a Harvard-trained psychiatrist shows women how to achieve happiness by finding out what really matters to them.

Introduces you to people who have dreamed big dreams and overcome daunting obstacles to achieve their goals, confronted challenges, and found new meaning and purpose in life as a result.

In 1955 a New York City court sentenced Puerto Rican immigrant and teenage gang member Frank Santana to twenty-five years to life for second-degree murder. Fredric Wertham (1895-1981), one of the most influential authorities on child psychology in the twentieth century, was outraged and felt compelled to write The Circle of Guilt . He had conducted multiple interviews with Santana and created an extensive psychological profile on him. Wertham saw unsettling patterns in the ways in which the case was reported, investigated, and deliberated. Media portrayed the victim, a white teenager named Bill Blankenship, as a "model boy" and reported the killing as "unprovoked." In the furor surrounding the case, Santana was often called a "hoodlum." Wertham suspected otherwise. In The Circle of Guilt , the psychiatrist uncovers a paradigm of fear, racism, distrust, and prejudice. He argues that the press's presentation of the case reflected extreme cultural bigotry. Wertham also reveals Blankenship's activity within teen gangs and asserts that Santana's actions were shaped in part by his unmediated exposure to mass media. This reprinted edition includes a new introduction by history professor William Bush that places both the crime and Wertham's work into cultural and historical context. Bush argues that much of what Wertham decries in mass media and its impact on justice and race applies equally today. Longtime chief of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital, Fredric Wertham authored Seduction of the Innocent . William Bush is visiting assistant professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"For The Real World of College, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and others, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less-selective state schools. What they found challenged characterizations in the media: students are not preoccupied by political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They are most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. Many say they face mental health challenges, fear that they don't belong, and feel a deep sense of alienation. Given this daily reality for students, has higher education lost its way? Fischman and Gardner contend that US universities and colleges must focus sharply on their core educational mission. Fischman and Gardner, both recognized authorities on education and learning, argue that higher education in the United States has lost sight of its principal reason for existing: not vocational training, not the provision of campus amenities, but to increase what Fischman and Gardner call "higher education capital"--to help students think well and broadly, express themselves clearly, explore new areas, and be open to possible transformations. Fischman and Gardner offer cogent recommendations for how every college can become a community of learners who are open to change as thinkers, citizens, and human beings."--

In his new book, Michael Billig uses psychology's past to argue that nowadays, when we write about the mind, we should use more examples and less theory. He provides a series of historical studies, analysing how key psychological writers used examples. Billig offers new insights about famous analysts of the mind, such as Locke, James, Freud, Tajfel and Lewin. He also champions unfairly forgotten figures, like the Earl of Shaftesbury and the eccentric Abraham Tucker. There is a cautionary chapter on Lacan, warning what can happen when examples are ignored. Marie Jahoda is praised as the ultimate example: a psychologist from the twentieth century with a social and rhetorical imagination fit for the twenty-first. More Examples, Less Theory is an easy-to-read book that will inform and entertain academics and their students. It will particularly appeal to those who enjoy the details of examples rather than the simplifications of big theory

This interpretation of the way female sexuality was viewed by the nineteenth-century European medical profession characterizes an attitude based on massive ignorance and prejudice

Two of the most destructive moments of state violence in the twentieth century occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and in China between 1959 and 1961 (the Great Leap famine). This is the first book to bring the two histories together in order to examine their differences and to understand if there are any similar processes of transmission at work. The author expertly ties in the Taiwanese civil war between Nationalists and Communists, which included the White Terror from 1947 to 1987, a less well-known but equally revealing part of twentieth-century history. Personal and family stories are told, often in the individual's own words, and then compared with the public accounts of the same events as found in official histories, commemorations, school textbooks and other forms of public memory. The author presents innovative and constructive criticisms of social memory theories in order to make sense both of what happened and how what happened is transmitted.--From publisher description

Provides a complex account of a human emotion. Rage permeates every aspect of our lives. In this thoughtful series of case studies, Michael Eigen shows the ways in which rage is integral to human existence. Along the way, he explores the role of rage in art, religion and contemporary culture; his far-reaching examples range from "the murderous art" of Shakespeare to road rage to the wrath of God in the Old Testament to a consideration of the events of September 11, 2001. Eigen writes that "rage more than most states affords a sense of totality, experiencing one's being with all one's might." Eigen's breadth of cultural knowledge, combined with his respect for and attention to the individuality of a person, come together in providing the reader with a complex account of rage — what it is, where it comes from and what we should do with it. This is a useful book for therapists and laypeople alike.

In her new book, Kim Chernin, author of The Obsession and The Hungry Self, takes us inside the mind of the psychoanalytic listener and her clients as few other writers have done. In an almost novelistic fasion she recalls her analysis with three very different analysts and how they shaped her analytic work with their distinctive personalities. She decides to go back to graduate school for a degree in clinical psychology and works with a major figure in the field, discussing with him the life stories of her own clients.