How to Think About the Great Ideas

How to Think About the Great Ideas
Author: Mortimer Adler
Publisher: Open Court
Total Pages: 596
Release: 2000-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 081269693X

Time magazine called Mortimer J. Adler a "philosopher for everyman." In this guide to considering the big questions, Adler addresses the topics all men and women ponder in the course of life, such as "What is love?", "How do we decide the right thing to do?", and, "What does it mean to be good?" Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Western literature, history, and philosophy, the author considers what is meant by democracy, law, emotion, language, truth, and other abstract concepts in light of more than two millennia of Western civilization and discourse. Adler's essays offer a remarkable and contemplative distillation of the Great Ideas of Western Thought.

The LEGO Ideas Book

The LEGO Ideas Book
Author: Daniel Lipkowitz
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2011-09-19
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1465498575

Over 2 million copies sold worldwide! Be inspired to create and build amazing models with your LEGO® bricks! The LEGO Ideas Book is packed full of tips from expert LEGO builders on how to make jet planes reach new heights, create fantastic fortresses, swing through lush jungles, have fun on the farm and send space shuttles out of this world! This awesome ideas book is divided into six themed chapters - transport, buildings, space, kingdoms, adventure, and useful makes - to inspire every member of the family to get building. With over 500 models and ideas, this book is perfect for any LEGO fan - young or young at heart - who want to make their models cool, fun and imaginative. ©2020 The LEGO Group.

The First Ten Books

The First Ten Books
Author: Confucius
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2005-08-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0141967226

Perhaps the most widely read thinker of all time, Confucius transformed Chinese philosophy with his belief that the greatest goal in life was pursuit of 'The Way': a search for virtue not as a means to rewards in this world or the next, but as the pinnacle of human existence.

The Soda Bottle School

The Soda Bottle School
Author: Laura Kutner
Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-08-09
Genre: Recycling (Waste, etc.)
ISBN: 9780884483724

2016 EUREKA SILVER 2016 LIVING NOW AWARD, Books for Better LIving CBC Recommended Skipping Stones Honor Book In a Guatemalan village, students squished into their tiny schoolhouse, two grades to a classroom.

The Book of Bright Ideas

The Book of Bright Ideas
Author: Sandra Kring
Publisher: Delta
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2006-05-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0440336147

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Sandra Kring's A Life of Bright Ideas. Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn “Button” Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other. Much to her mother’s dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother’s ashes and a tome she calls “The Book of Bright Ideas.” It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. And when a devastating secret is suddenly revealed, dividing loyalties and uprooting lives, no one–from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family–will ever be the same.

The Value of Disorder

The Value of Disorder
Author: Julien Brachet
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2019-05-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108428339

Based on long-term research in northern Chad, this book provides a unique account of mobility, wealth, and aspirations to political autonomy at the heart of the contemporary Sahara.

Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities

Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities
Author: Amory Gethin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674248422

The empirical starting point for anyone who wants to understand political cleavages in the democratic world, based on a unique dataset covering fifty countries since WWII. Who votes for whom and why? Why has growing inequality in many parts of the world not led to renewed class-based conflicts, seeming instead to have come with the emergence of new divides over identity and integration? News analysts, scholars, and citizens interested in exploring those questions inevitably lack relevant data, in particular the kinds of data that establish historical and international context. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities provides the missing empirical background, collecting and examining a treasure trove of information on the dynamics of polarization in modern democracies. The chapters draw on a unique set of surveys conducted between 1948 and 2020 in fifty countries on five continents, analyzing the links between votersÕ political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics, such as income, education, wealth, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender. This analysis sheds new light on how political movements succeed in coalescing multiple interests and identities in contemporary democracies. It also helps us understand the conditions under which conflicts over inequality become politically salient, as well as the similarities and constraints of voters supporting ethnonationalist politicians like Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump. Bringing together cutting-edge data and historical analysis, editors Amory Gethin, Clara Mart’nez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty offer a vital resource for understanding the voting patterns of the present and the likely sources of future political conflict.

Ideas Are All Around

Ideas Are All Around
Author: Philip C. Stead
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2016-03
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1626721815

In search of writing ideas, an author takes a walk with his dog around the neighborhood.

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language
Author: David Shariatmadari
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1324004266

A linguist’s entertaining and highly informed guide to what languages are and how they function. Think you know language? Think again. There are languages that change when your mother-in-law is present. The language you speak could make you more prone to accidents. Swear words are produced in a special part of your brain. Over the past few decades, we have reached new frontiers of linguistic knowledge. Linguists can now explain how and why language changes, describe its structures, and map its activity in the brain. But despite these advances, much of what people believe about language is based on folklore, instinct, or hearsay. We imagine a word’s origin is it’s “true” meaning, that foreign languages are full of “untranslatable” words, or that grammatical mistakes undermine English. In Don’t Believe A Word, linguist David Shariatmadari takes us on a mind-boggling journey through the science of language, urging us to abandon our prejudices in a bid to uncover the (far more interesting) truth about what we do with words. Exploding nine widely held myths about language while introducing us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics, Shariatmadari is an energetic guide to the beauty and quirkiness of humanity’s greatest achievement.

Empires of Ideas

Empires of Ideas
Author: William C. Kirby
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2022-07-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674737717

The United States is the global leader in higher education, but this was not always the case and may not remain so. William Kirby examines sources of—and threats to—US higher education supremacy and charts the rise of Chinese competitors. Yet Chinese institutions also face problems, including a state that challenges the commitment to free inquiry.