Strange Talk

Strange Talk
Author: Gavin Jones
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 1999-10-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780520921191

Late-nineteenth-century America was crazy about dialect: vernacular varieties of American English entertained mass audiences in "local color" stories, in realist novels, and in poems and plays. But dialect was also at the heart of anxious debates about the moral degeneration of urban life, the ethnic impact of foreign immigration, the black presence in white society, and the female influence on masculine authority. Celebrations of the rustic raciness in American vernacular were undercut by fears that dialect was a force of cultural dissolution with the power to contaminate the dominant language. In this volume, Gavin Jones explores the aesthetic politics of this neglected "cult of the vernacular" in little-known regionalists such as George Washington Cable, in the canonical work of Mark Twain, Henry James, Herman Melville, and Stephen Crane, and in the ethnic writing of Abraham Cahan and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He reveals the origins of a trend that deepened in subsequent literature: the use of minority dialect to formulate a political response to racial oppression, and to enrich diverse depictions of a multicultural nation.

I Am a Strange Loop

I Am a Strange Loop
Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2007-03-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0465030785

Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.

Strange Bird

Strange Bird
Author: Michele K. Troy
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300228074

The first book about the Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism The Albatross Press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a “strange bird”: a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. A precursor to Penguin, it distributed both middlebrow fiction and works by edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks in English from the heart of Hitler’s Reich. In her original and skillfully researched history, Michele K. Troy reveals how the Nazi regime tolerated Albatross—for both economic and propaganda gains—and how Albatross exploited its insider position to keep Anglo-American books alive under fascism. In so doing, Troy exposes the contradictions in Nazi censorship while offering an engaging detective story, a history, a nuanced analysis of men and motives, and a cautionary tale.

Strange Tools

Strange Tools
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2015-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1429945257

A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.

Gef!

Gef!
Author: Christopher Josiffe
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2021-02-24
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 191368914X

An exhaustive investigation of the case of Gef, a “talking mongoose” or “man-weasel,” who appeared to a family living on the Isle of Man. “I am the fifth dimension! I am the eighth wonder of the world!” During the mid-1930s, British and overseas newspapers were full of incredible stories about Gef, a “talking mongoose” or “man-weasel” who had allegedly appeared in the home of the Irvings, a farming family in a remote district of the Isle of Man. The creature was said to speak in several languages, to sing, to steal objects from nearby farms, and to eavesdrop on local people. Despite written reports, magazine articles and books, several photographs, fur samples and paw prints, voluminous correspondence, and signed eyewitness statements, there is still no consensus as to what was really happening to the Irving family. Was it a hoax? An extreme case of folie à plusieurs? A poltergeist? The possession of an animal by an evil spirit? Now you can read all the evidence and decide for yourself. Seven years' research and interviews, photographs (many previously unseen), interviews with surviving witnesses, visits to the site—all are presented in this book, the first examination of the case for seventy years. In the words of its mischievous, enigmatic subject, “If you knew what I know, you'd know a hell of a lot!"

Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0316535621

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

The Psychopath Test

The Psychopath Test
Author: Jon Ronson
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2011-06-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1447202503

What if society wasn't fundamentally rational, but was motivated by insanity? This thought sets Jon Ronson on an utterly compelling adventure into the world of madness. Along the way, Jon meets psychopaths, those whose lives have been touched by madness and those whose job it is to diagnose it, including the influential psychologist who developed the Psychopath Test, from whom Jon learns the art of psychopath-spotting. A skill which seemingly reveals that madness could indeed be at the heart of everything . . . Combining Jon Ronson's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is both entertaining and honest, unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges. 'The belly laughs come thick and fast – my God, he is funny . . . provocative and interesting' – Observer

Why People Believe Weird Things

Why People Believe Weird Things
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2002-09-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1429996765

"This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.

Strange Hate

Strange Hate
Author: Keith Kahn-harris
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1912248441

Keith Kahn-Harris argues that the controversy over antisemitism today is a symptom of a growing "selectivity" in anti-racism caused by a failure to engage with the challenges that diverse societies pose. How did antisemitism get so strange? How did hate become so clouded in controversy? And what does the strange hate of antisemitism tell us about racism and the politics of diversity today? Life-long anti-racists accused of antisemitism, life-long Jew haters declaring their love of Israel... Today, antisemitism has become selective. Non-Jews celebrate the "good Jews" and reject the "bad Jews". And its not just antisemitism that's becoming selective, racists and anti-racists alike are starting to choose the minorities they love and hate. In this passionate yet closely-argued polemic from a writer with an intimate knowledge of the antisemitism controversy, Keith Kahn-Harris argues that the emergence of strange hatreds shows how far we are from understanding what living in diverse societies really means. Strange Hate calls for us to abandon selective anti-racism and rethink how we view not just Jews and antisemitism, but the challenge of living with diversity.

The Strange Order of Things

The Strange Order of Things
Author: Antonio Damasio
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0307908763

From one of our preeminent neuroscientists: a landmark reflection that spans the biological and social sciences, offering a new way of understanding the origins of life, feeling, and culture. The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition of that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms; and that inherent in our very chemistry is a powerful force, a striving toward life maintenance that governs life in all its guises, including the development of genes that help regulate and transmit life. In The Strange Order of Things, Damasio gives us a new way of comprehending the world and our place in it.