Joe Moran

Advanced maths has no practical use, and is understood by few. A symphony can be widely appreciated, but created only by a genius. Good writing, however, can be written (and read) by anyone if we give it the gift of our time. And a sentence might be as near as many of us will get to orchestrating beauty. Enter universally praised historian Professor Joe Moran. Using minimal technical terms, First You Write a Sentence. is his unpedantic explanation of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace. With examples from the Bible and Shakespeare to Orwell and Diana Athill, and with support from scientific studies of what most fires people's minds, he shows how we can all write in a way that is vivid, clear and engaging. With chapters from tools of the trade (from typewriters to texting and the impact this has on the craft); and writing and the senses (how to make the world visible and touchable); to how to find the ideal word, build a sentence, and construct a paragraph, First You Write a Sentence. informsby light example. It's an elegant gem in praise of the English sentence.

First You Write a Sentence

Our success as a species is built on sociability, so shyness in humans should be an anomaly. But it's actually remarkably common - we all know what it's like to cringe in embarrassment, stand tongue-tied at the fringe of an unfamiliar group, or flush with humiliation if we suddenly become the unwelcome centre of attention. In Shrinking Violets, Joe Moran explores the hidden world of shyness, providing insights on everything from timidity in lemon sharks to the role of texting in Finnish love affairs. As he seeks answers to the questions that shyness poses - Why are we shy? Can we overcome it? Does it define us? - he uncovers the fascinating stories of the men and women who were 'of the violet persuasion', from Charles Darwin to Agatha Christie, and from Tove Jansson to Nick Drake. In their stories - often both heart-breaking and inspiring - and through the myriad ways scientists and thinkers have tried to explain and cure shyness, Moran finds a hopeful conclusion. To be shy, he decides, is not simply a burden - it is also a gift, a different way of seeing the world that can be both enriching and inspiring.

The Secrret Life of Shyness

Shrinking Violets

Do you ever feel like a failure? Enter widely acclaimed observer of daily life Professor Joe Moran, not to tell you that everything will be OK in the end, but to reassure you that failure is an occupational hazard of being human. It is the small print in life's terms and conditions. If You Should Fail is about how modern life makes us feel like failures, frauds and imposters; how in a world of broadcasting success we need more narratives of failures; and how not every failure can be made into a success, but that's OK. It is encouraging to read that Leonardo da Vinci and Virginia Woolf, for example, felt like failures. Woolf wrote that she wanted to look life in the face and to see it for what it was. The truth is cruel, but it can be loved. Combining philosophy, psychology, history and literature, Moran's ultimately upbeat reflections on being human and his critique of how we live now offers comfort and hope. As Samuel Beckett advised, despair young and never look back . . .

If You Should Fail

But what does your furniture point at?' asks the character Joey in the sitcom Friends on hearing an acquaintance has no TV. It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features of urban skylines. Television (or 'the idiot's lantern', depending on your feelings about it) has created controversy, brought coronations and World Cups into living rooms, allowed us access to 24hr news and media and provided a thousand conversation starters. As shows come and go in popularity, the history of television shows us how our society has changed. Armchair Nation reveals the fascinating, lyrical and sometimes surprising history of telly, from the first demonstration of television by John Logie Baird (in Selfridges) to the fear and excitement that greeted its arrival in households (some viewers worried it might control their thoughts), the controversies of Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV' campaign and what JG Ballard thought about Big Brother. Via trips down memory lane with Morecambe and Wise, Richard Dimbleby, David Frost, Blue Peter and Coronation Street, you can flick between fascinating nuggets from the strange side of TV: what happened after a chimpanzee called 'Fred J. Muggs' interrupted American footage of the Queen's wedding, and why aliens might be tuning in to The Benny Hill Show.

An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV

Armchair Nation

We spend our days emailing, shopping, queuing, lying on sofas - but we know almost nothing about these everyday activities. Exploring these subjects as they occur in a typical day, Joe Moran shows that they have all kinds of hidden histories and meanings.

The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime

Queuing for Beginners

The author of Armchair Nation and On Roads examines shyness in a“sparkling cultural history rang[ing]from Jane Austen to Silicon Valley” (The Guardian). Shyness is a pervasive human trait: even most extroverts know what it is like to stand tongue-tied at the fringe of an unfamiliar group or flush with embarrassment at being the unwelcome center of attention. And yet the cultural history of shyness has remained largely unwritten—until now. With incisiveness, passion, and humor, Joe Moran offers an eclectic and original exploration of what it means to be a “shrinking violet.” Along the way, he provides a collective biography of shyness through portraits of such shy individuals as Charles Darwin, Charles Schulz, Garrison Keillor, and Agatha Christie, among many others. In their stories often both heartbreaking and inspiring and through the myriad ways scientists and thinkers have tried to explain and “cure” shyness, Moran finds hope. To be shy, he decides, is not simply a burden; it is also a gift, a different way of seeing the world that can be both enriching and inspiring. “Fantastic and involving . . . [A] feat of empathy. Every page radiates understanding; every paragraph, its (shy) author’s gentle wit.”—The Observer “Whether you’re boldly outgoing or reticent and self-effacing, you’ll find something to inspire, inform, or surprise in this thoughtful, beautifully written, and vividly detailed cultural history.”—Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet

The Secret Life of Shyness

With social and community services coming under increasing pressure as austerity continues, Unfinished Business examines how social policy has operated in Ireland and how it has been affected by consistent government cutbacks. It examines a wide range of issues important to social care students, such as poverty, homelessness, disability, immigrants, mental health and many other issues pertinent to Irish society today. This book: Is the first Irish social policy textbook written for social care studentsPoses important questions about not only social policy approaches but also policy failings, and makes the case for a move towards social policy regulationIs useful to students from other disciplines, such as community work, early childhood studies, nursing, addiction studies and child protection studiesIs written in a clear and accessible style and laid out in a user-friendly manner The book is aimed at undergraduate students in social studies, social science and public administration, and will also prove useful to practitioners who seek to broaden their understanding of social care.

Social Policy for Social Care Students in Ireland

Unfinished Business

Interdisciplinarity covers one of the most important changes in attitude and methodology in the history of the university. Taking the study of English as its main example, this fully updated second edition examines the ways in which we have organized knowledge into disciplines, and are now reorganizing it into new configurations as existing structures come to seem restrictive. Joe Moran traces the history and use of the term ‘interdisciplinarity’, tackling such vital topics as: the rise of the disciplines interdisciplinary English Literary and Cultural Studies 'theory' and the disciplines texts and histories literature and science, space and nature. Including an updated further reading section and new concluding chapter, Interdisciplinarity is the ideal entry point into one of today's most heated critical debates.

Interdisciplinarity

In this history of roads and what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain's favourite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, and spaghetti junctions. Using a unique blend of travel writing, anthropology, history and social observation, he explores how Britain's roads have their roots in unexpected places, from Napoleon's role in the numbering system to the surprising origin of sat-nav. Full of quirky nuggets of history, such as the day trips organised to see the construction of the M1 and the 2.5m Mills and Boons used to build the M6 Toll Road, On Roads also celebrates innovators whose work we take for granted, such as the designers of the road sign system. On subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, and the 'non-places where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams, these hidden stories have never been told together, until now.

A Hidden History

On Roads

Why do so many people go on about queuing? Have we always been obsessed with traffic? And why do so many of us now eat lunch at our computers - al desko? We spend our days catching buses and trains, writing emails, shopping, queuing...But we know almost nothing about these activities. Exploring the history of these subjects as they come up during a typical day, starting with eating breakfast and ending with sleeping, Joe Moran tells a story about hidden social and cultural changes in Britain since the Second World War. Drawing on his academic research on everyday life, but writing with wit and lucidity for a popular audience, he shows that we know less about ourselves than we think...

The Story of Daily Life From Breakfast to Bedtime

In America, authors are as likely to be seen on television talk shows or magazine covers as in the more traditional settings of literary festivals or book signings. Is this literary celebrity just another result of ‘dumbing down’? Yet another example of the mass media turning everything into entertainment? Or is it a much more unstable, complex phenomenon? And what does the American experience tell us about the future of British literary celebrity?In Star Authors, Joe Moran shows how publishers, the media and authors themselves create and disseminate literary celebrity. He looks at such famous contemporary authors as Toni Morrison, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, John Updike, Philip Roth, Kathy Acker, Nicholson Baker, Paul Auster and Jay McInerney. Through an examination of their own work, biographical information, media representations and promotional material, Moran illustrates the nature of modern literary celebrity. He argues that authors actively negotiate their own celebrity rather than simply having it imposed upon them – from reclusive authors such as Salinger and Pynchon, famed for their very lack of public engagement, to media-friendly authors such as Updike and McInerney. Star Authors analyses literary celebrity in the context of the historical links between literature, advertising and publicity in America; the economics of literary production; and the cultural capital involved in the marketing and consumption of books and authors.

Literary Celebrity in America

Star Authors

This volume examines the way in which we organize knowledge into disciplines, then reorganize it into new configurations when the existing disciplines have come to seem irrelevant or exclusory. Joe Moran traces the history and use of the term interdisciplinarity and tackles such vital topics as: the rise of the disciplines interdisciplinary English Literary and Cultural Studies 'theory' and the disciplines texts and histories literature, science, space and nature. Interdisciplinarity is the ideal entry point into one of today's most heated critical debates.

Studying the work of important continental theorists, Joe Moran explores the concrete sites and routines of everyday life and how they are represented through political discourse, news media, material culture, photography, reality TV and more.

Joe Moran

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