The World Beyond Your Head

Author: Matthew B. Crawford
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708444
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
In his bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self. Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology, and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the coming to fruition of certain assumptions at the root of Western culture that are profoundly at odds with human nature. The World Beyond Your Head makes sense of an astonishing array of common experience, from the frustrations of airport security to the rise of the hipster. With implications for the way we raise our children, the design of public spaces, and democracy itself, this is a book of urgent relevance to contemporary life.

The World Beyond Your Head

Author: Matthew Crawford
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241959454
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
From Matthew Crawford, 'one of the most influential thinkers of our time' (Sunday Times), comes The World Beyond Your Head - a hugely ambitious manifesto on flourishing in the modern world. In this brilliant follow-up to The Case for Working with Your Hands, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. With ever-increasing demands on our attention, how do we focus on what's really important in our lives? Exploring the intense focus of ice-hockey players, the zoned-out behaviour of gambling addicts, and the inherited craft of building pipe organs, Crawford argues that our current crisis of attention is the result of long-held assumptions in Western culture and that in order to flourish, we need to establish meaningful connections with the world, the people around us and the historical moment we live in. Praise for The Case for Working With Your Hands: 'The best book I have read for ages . . . a profound exploration of modern education, work and capitalism' Telegraph 'Full of interesting stories and thought-provoking aperçus enlivened with humour . . . Important, memorable and enjoyable' The Times 'Masterly' Economist Matthew Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and served as a postdoctoral fellow on its Committee on Social Thought. Currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, he also runs Shockoe Moto, a motorcycle repair shop.

Why We Drive

Author: Matthew B. Crawford
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062741985
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
A brilliant and defiant celebration of driving as a unique pathway of human freedom, by "one of the most influential thinkers of our time" (Sunday Times) "Why We Drive weaves philosophers, thinkers, and scientific research with shade-tree mechanics and racers to defend our right to independence, making the case that freedom of motion is essential to who we are as a species. ... We hope you'll read it." —Road & Track Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy “self-driving” future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? Why We Drive reveals that much more may be at stake than we might think. Ten years ago, in the New York Times-bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, philosopher-mechanic Matthew B. Crawford—a University of Chicago PhD who owned his own motorcycle shop—made a revolutionary case for manual labor, one that ran headlong against the pretentions of white-collar office work. Now, using driving as a window through which to view the broader changes wrought by technology on all aspects of contemporary life, Crawford investigates the driver’s seat as one of the few remaining domains of skill, exploration, play—and freedom. Blending philosophy and hands-on storytelling, Crawford grounds the narrative in his own experience in the garage and behind the wheel, recounting his decade-long restoration of a vintage Volkswagen as well as his journeys to thriving automotive subcultures across the country. Crawford leads us on an irreverent but deeply considered inquiry into the power of faceless bureaucracies, the importance of questioning mindless rules, and the battle for democratic self-determination against the surveillance capitalists. A meditation on the competence of ordinary people, Why We Drive explores the genius of our everyday practices on the road, the rewards of “folk engineering,” and the existential value of occasionally being scared shitless. Witty and ingenious throughout, Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the irrepressible human spirit.

Wild Spectacle

Author: Janisse Ray
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595349588
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
Looking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray’s worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness. Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change. In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change. Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.

Shop Class as Soulcraft

Author: Matthew B. Crawford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594202230
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands “This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving.” —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman Called “the sleeper hit of the publishing season” by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a “knowledge worker,” based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.

Torkel's Chosen

Author: Michelle Howard
Publisher: Michelle Howard
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
What would you do if Earth didn’t have enough men? Would you take a chance and leave the only world you knew behind? This is the decision Faith Reid faces. Placing all her hope in a new government program, she seizes the opportunity that offers a chance for the women of Earth to find love among the stars, on a world beyond the one they know. How many times can one man risk rejection? Would you give up on your dreams? Torkel Alonson has had enough of being ignored and looked over by females on his adopted home world of Enotia. His pride has suffered and he must accept the painful truth. Females will never choose a male with his evil lineage despite his honorable service to his government’s military. Can two people looking for the same thing find not just what they want but what they need in one another?

The Case for Working with Your Hands

Author: Matthew Crawford
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141954884
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Why do some jobs offer fulfilment while others leave us frustrated? Why do we so often think of our working selves as separate from our 'true' selves? Over the course of the twentieth century, we have separated mental work from manual labour, replacing the workshop with either the office cubicle or the factory line. In this inspiring and persuasive book, Matthew Crawford explores the dangers of this false distinction and presents instead the case for working with your hands. He brings to life the immense psychological and intellectual satisfactions of making and fixing things, explores the moral benefits of a technical education and, at a time when jobs are increasingly being outsourced over the internet, argues that the skilled manual trades may be one of the few sure paths to a good living. Drawing on the work of our greatest thinkers, from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Karl Marx to Iris Murdoch, as well as on his own experiences as an electrician and motorcycle mechanic, Crawford delivers a radical, timely and extremely enjoyable re-evaluation of our attitudes to work.

Get Out of Your Head Bible Study Leader's Guide

Author: Jennie Allen
Publisher: HarperChristian Resources
ISBN: 0310122430
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 57

Book Description
Stopping the spiral of toxic thoughts. In Get Out of Your Head, a six-session video-based Bible study, Jennie inspires and equips us to transform our emotions, our outlook, and even our circumstances by taking control of our thoughts. Our enemy is determined to get in our heads to make us feel helpless, overwhelmed, and incapable of making a difference for the kingdom of God. But when we submit our minds to Christ, the promises of goodness of God flood our lives in remarkable ways. It starts in your head. And from there, the possibilities are endless. This guide serves as a tool to prepare you in leading this Get Out of Your Head study and to encourage you along the way. It helps you as the leader to effectively point your group to the overarching theme of each lesson and point them to the themes of each study. This Get Out of Your Head Leader’s Guide includes: Session-by-session helps to guide your group through the study. Walk-through for using each piece of the study: Videos, Study Guide, and Conversation Card Deck. The vision for Get Out of Your Head. Tips for leading your group, and much more. This guide is designed for use with the Get Out of Your Head Video Study (9780310116394), sold separately. Streaming video, study guide, and conversation cards also available.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Author: Nicholas Carr
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079368
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

The Extended Mind

Author: Richard Menary
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262014033
Category : Cognition
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Book Description
Leading scholars respond to the famous proposition by Andy Clark and David Chalmers that cognition and mind are not located exclusively in the head.