The Lifespan of a Fact

Author: John D'Agata
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1529404630
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
NOW A BROADWAY PLAY STARRING DANIEL RADCLIFFE 'Provocative, maddening and compulsively readable' Maggie Nelson In 2003, American essayist John D'Agata wrote a piece for Harper's about Las Vegas's alarmingly high suicide rate, after a sixteen-year-old boy had thrown himself from the top of the Stratosphere Tower. The article he delivered, 'What Happens There', was rejected by the magazine for inaccuracies. But it was soon picked up by another, who assigned it a fact checker: their fresh-faced intern, and recent Harvard graduate, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment, and beyond the essay's eventual publication in the magazine, was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions as D'Agata and Fingal struggled to navigate the boundaries of literary nonfiction. This book includes an early draft of D'Agata's essay, along with D'Agata and Fingal's extensive discussion around the text. The Lifespan of a Fact is a brilliant and eye-opening meditation on the relationship between 'truth' and 'accuracy', and a penetrating conversation about whether it is appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other. 'A fascinating and dramatic power struggle over the intriguing question of what nonfiction should, or can, be' Lydia Davis

The Lifespan of a Fact

Author: Jeremy Kareken
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 0822240114
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 66

Book Description
Based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. Jim Fingal is a fresh-out-of-Harvard fact checker for a prominent but sinking New York magazine. John D’Agata is a talented writer with a transcendent essay about the suicide of a teenage boy—an essay that could save the magazine from collapse. When Jim is assigned to fact check D’Agata’s essay, the two come head to head in a comedic yet gripping battle over facts versus truth.

The Half-Life of Facts

Author: Samuel Arbesman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159184651X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
New insights from the science of science Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. Samuel Arbesman shows us how knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and how this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives. He takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries.

About a Mountain

Author: John D'Agata
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393076695
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
Named One of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books Written by the New York Times Magazine, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editors' Choice. When John D'Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain; the result is a startling portrait that compels a reexamination of the future of human life.

Four Thousand Weeks

Author: Oliver Burkeman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374715246
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

Grief Doodling

Author: Harriet Hodgson
Publisher: BQB Publishing
ISBN: 1608082539
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 89

Book Description
Grief Doodling is a different approach to coping with loss. It gets tweens and teens to participate, think, set goals, and start walking a healing path. From the very first page, Grief Doodling invites action. Topics range from the benefits of doodling, to why doodling is fun, to doodling tips, and responding to doodling prompts. The prompts, based on grief research, promote self-worth and healing. This is a hopeful book---something all grieving kids need. Grief Doodling will take the reader's hand and lead them down an inspiring and whimsical path toward healing. Hodgson has created a magnificent tool that every person experiencing loss should have at their fingertips. I love this book!" - Sandy Goodman, grief speaker and author of Love Never Dies Grief Doodling is an insightful, creative way for tweens and teens to express and process grief. Hodgson aptly reminds readers that there is no right or wrong way to doodle---or to grieve. Hodgson's illustrations are poignant in how they illustrate and bio-psycho-social impact of grief. Grief Doodling will help children and bereaved people of all ages." - Heidi Smith, Fellow in Thantology, Certified Grief Therapist

Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Author: Robert L. Glass
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780321117427
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
Regarding the controversial and thought-provoking assessments in this handbook, many software professionals might disagree with the authors, but all will embrace the debate. Glass identifies many of the key problems hampering success in this field. Each fact is supported by insightful discussion and detailed references.

Health Promotion Throughout the Lifespan

Author: Carole Edelman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 834

Book Description
This comprehensive textbook covers all the major concepts of health promotion and disease prevention for all population groups including individuals, families, and communities. Its lifespan approach focuses on health promotion for all age groups. An assessment franework based on Gordon's Functional Health Patterns provides consistent presentation and an approach that promotes health. Current, timely, and readable, the 5th edition includes numerous special features that highlight critical information and help students apply concepts to practice.

Reality Hunger

Author: David Shields
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307593231
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
A landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” (The Atlantic) and “raw and gorgeous” (LA Times), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead. Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, Shields orchestrates a chorus of voices, past and present, to reframe debates about the veracity of memoir and the relevance of the novel. He argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality,” precisely because we experience hardly any, and urgently calls for new forms that embody and convey the fractured nature of contemporary experience.

Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309217105
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages-cancer and cardiovascular disease-available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which-unlike randomized controlled trials-are subject to many biases.