The Creation of the Modern World

The Creation of the Modern World
Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 772
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780393322682

This engagingly written new work highlights Britain's long-underestimated and pivotal role in disseminating the ideas and culture of the Enlightenment. Moving beyond the numerous histories centered on France and Germany, the acclaimed social historian Roy Porter explains how monumental changes in thinking in Britain influenced worldwide developments. Here is a "splendidly imaginative" work that "propels the debate forward ... and makes a valuable point" (New York Times Book Review).

The Nature of Tomorrow

The Nature of Tomorrow
Author: Michael Rawson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0300262779

An examination of how Western visions of endless future growth have contributed to the global environmental crisis For centuries, the West has produced stories about the future in which humans use advanced science and technology to transform the earth. Michael Rawson uses a wide range of works that include Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, the science fiction novels of Jules Verne, and even the speculations of think tanks like the RAND Corporation to reveal the environmental paradox at the heart of these narratives: the single-minded expectation of unlimited growth on a finite planet. Rawson shows how these stories, which have long pervaded Western dreams about the future, have helped to enable an unprecedentedly abundant and technology-driven lifestyle for some while bringing the threat of environmental disaster to all. Adapting to ecological realities, he argues, hinges on the ability to create new visions of tomorrow that decouple growth from the idea of progress.

A Companion to the Victorian Novel

A Companion to the Victorian Novel
Author: Patrick Brantlinger
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2005-03-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1405132914

The Companion to the Victorian Novel provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published between 1837 and 1901. Provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published during the Victorian period. Explains issues such as Victorian religions, class structure, and Darwinism to those who are unfamiliar with them. Comprises original, accessible chapters written by renowned and emerging scholars in the field of Victorian studies. Ideal for students and researchers seeking up-to-the-minute coverage of contexts and trends, or as a starting point for a survey course.

Approaching the Apocalypse

Approaching the Apocalypse
Author: John M. Court
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2008-08-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0857710451

Embracing two thousand years of intense and fiery admonition, "Approaching the Apocalypse" offers students of religion, history and politics the definitive handbook to Doomsday. Ideas about divinely-inspired disaster have an enduring place in the history of Christian thought. For centuries men and women have made preparations for the imminent end of the world, and for the thousand year reign of Christ and his saints. Inspired principally by the startling texts of the "Book of Revelation", Christianity has a rich and varied tradition of looking forward to the purifying fires of Armageddon. But what do recurring motifs like the Rapture, pestilence, biblical prophecy and the building of the New Jerusalem really add up to? And how have interpretations of these patterns differed from century to century?Charting a steady course between the feverish predictions of early Christian heretics like the Montanists, and the febrile outpourings of modern-day millennialists, such as the Branch Davidians and Christian Zionists in America, John M Court explores the continuities and differences between their violent visions of cataclysm. His history comprises an incisive analysis of such movements and figures as the Levellers and Diggers, James Jezreel and his Trumpeters, Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, cargo-cults and drug cultures. "Approaching the Apocalypse" shows why prophecies of plague, earthquake and flame continue to resonate so powerfully in the Christian imagination, and beyond.

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction
Author: Rob Latham
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2014
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 0199838844

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction attempts to descry the historical and cultural contours of SF in the wake of technoculture studies. Rather than treating the genre as an isolated aesthetic formation, it examines SF's many lines of cross-pollination with technocultural realities since itsinception in the nineteenth century, showing how SF's unique history and subcultural identity has been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology.The volume consists of four broadly themed sections, each divided into eleven chapters. Section I, "Science Fiction as Genre," considers the internal history of SF literature, examining its characteristic aesthetic and ideological modalities, its animating social and commercial institutions, and itsrelationship to other fantastic genres. Section II, "Science Fiction as Medium," presents a more diverse and ramified understanding of what constitutes the field as a mode of artistic and pop-cultural expression, canvassing extra-literary manifestations of SF ranging from film and television tovideogames and hypertext to music and theme parks. Section III, "Science Fiction as Culture," examines the genre in relation to cultural issues and contexts that have influenced it and been influenced by it in turn, the goal being to see how SF has helped to constitute and define important(sub)cultural groupings, social movements, and historical developments during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Finally, Section IV, "Science Fiction as Worldview," explores SF as a mode of thought and its intersection with other philosophies and large-scale perspectives on theworld, from the Enlightenment to the present day.

Meals to Come

Meals to Come
Author: Dr. Warren Belasco
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2006-10-18
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0520940466

In this provocative and lively addition to his acclaimed writings on food, Warren Belasco takes a sweeping look at a little-explored yet timely topic: humanity's deep-rooted anxiety about the future of food. People have expressed their worries about the future of the food supply in myriad ways, and here Belasco explores a fascinating array of material ranging over two hundred years—from futuristic novels and films to world's fairs, Disney amusement parks, supermarket and restaurant architecture, organic farmers' markets, debates over genetic engineering, and more. Placing food issues in this deep historical context, he provides an innovative framework for understanding the future of food today—when new prophets warn us against complacency at the same time that new technologies offer promising solutions. But will our grandchildren's grandchildren enjoy the cornucopian bounty most of us take for granted? This first history of the future to put food at the center of the story provides an intriguing perspective on this question for anyone—from general readers to policy analysts, historians, and students of the future—who has wondered about the future of life's most basic requirement.

Future: All That Matters

Future: All That Matters
Author: Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher: John Murray
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2013-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1444190067

In Future: All That Matters, Ziauddin Sardar shows that thinking and speculating about the future has always been a part of human history, but exploring the futures in a systematic and scientific way is a recent phenomenon. What is known variously as 'futures studies', 'futurology' or 'foresight' only emerged as a discipline during the last few decades. The study of the future, however, is not only about 'predicting' or 'forecasting' the future, which is always a perilous exercise. It is also about appreciating the potentials and possibilities, as well as risks and threats, lurking over the horizon. It can enable us both to avoid the dangers as well as shape a viable and desirable future. This book explores the exciting field of futures studies, and shows how knowledge of the future is acquired and put into practice. We examine various methods for studying the future, with the emphasis not so much on predicting specific events but on delineating alternative paths to the future. We look at some celebrated readings of the future as well as case studies where exploration of the future has been used to shape policy and planning in businesses and communities, international organisations and regional institutions, and interest and lobby groups. Finally, the book suggests why and how in an increasingly complex, uncertain and diverse world, the study of the future can help people recover their agency and help them to create the world in which they wish to live. This accessible and readable book will appeal both to students and general readers, giving a fascinating introduction to thinking about the future - and what matters most about it.

American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow

American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow
Author: Catherine R. Osborne
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022656116X

In the mid-twentieth century, American Catholic churches began to shed the ubiquitous spires, stained glass, and gargoyles of their European forebears, turning instead toward startling and more angular structures of steel, plate glass, and concrete. But how did an institution like the Catholic Church, so often seen as steeped in inflexible traditions, come to welcome this modernist trend? Catherine R. Osborne’s innovative new book finds the answer: the alignment between postwar advancements in technology and design and evolutionary thought within the burgeoning American Catholic community. A new, visibly contemporary approach to design, church leaders thought, could lead to the rebirth of the church community of the future. As Osborne explains, the engineering breakthroughs that made modernist churches feasible themselves raised questions that were, for many Catholics, fundamentally theological. Couldn’t technological improvements engender worship spaces that better reflected God's presence in the contemporary world? Detailing the social, architectural, and theological movements that made modern churches possible, American Catholics and the Churches of Tomorrow breaks important new ground in the history of American Catholicism, and also presents new lines of thought for scholars attracted to modern architectural and urban history.

Fin-de-Siècle Fictions, 1890s-1990s

Fin-de-Siècle Fictions, 1890s-1990s
Author: A. Mousoutzanis
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2014-05-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137430141

Fin-de-Siècle Fictions, 1890s- 1990s focuses on fin-de-siècle British and postmodern American fictions of apocalypse and investigates the ways in which these narratives demonstrate shifts in the relations among modern discourses of power and knowledge.