Michael Harris

Citing the current generation's unique experience of life on and without the Internet, a chronicle of the modern world's massive shift to an information-driven, online existence evaluates the connected world's potentially costly absence of silence, contemplation and solitude.

Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

The End of Absence

Solitude

Our lives are defined by a story of endless growth and consumption. Now a climate crisis demands that we change. Can we write new stories? In All We Want, award-winning author Michael Harris dismantles our untenable consumer culture and delivers surprising, heartwarming alternatives. Drawing on the wisdom of philosophers, scientists, and artists, Harris uncovers three realms where humans have always found deeper meaning: the worlds of Craft, the Sublime, and Care. Past attempts to blunt our impact on the environment have simply redirected our consumption--we bought fuel-efficient cars and canvas tote bags. We cannot, however, buy our way out of this crisis. We need, instead, compelling new stories about life's purpose. Part meditation and part manifesto, All We Want is a blazing inquest into the destructive and unfulfilling promise of our consumer society, and a roadmap toward a more humane future.

Building the Life We Cannot Buy

All We Want

'An elegant, thoughtful book . . . beautifully expresses the importance and experience of liberation from the battery-hen life of constant connection and crowds.' Daily Mail 'A compelling study of the subtle ways in which modern life and technologies have transformed our behaviour and sense of self.' Times Literary Supplement In a world of social media and smartphones, true solitude has become increasingly hard to find. In this timely and important book, award-winning writer Michael Harris reveals why our hyper-connected society makes time alone more crucial than ever. He delves into the latest neuroscience to examine the way innovations like Google Maps and Facebook are eroding our ability to be by ourselves. He tells the stories of the remarkable people - from pioneering computer scientists to great nineteenth-century novelists - who managed to find solitude in the most unexpected of places. And he explores how solitude can bring clarity and creativity to each of our inner lives. Urgent, eloquent and beautifully argued, Solitude might just change the way you think about being alone. 'Speaks to a long-overdue conversation we still haven't properly had in our society.' Vice 'A timely, elegant provocation to daydream and wander.' Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall 'A poetic, contemplative journey into the benefits of solo sojourning.' Elle

In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World

A Love Story

Farley and Claire

It often happens in the middle of an otherwise pleasant day -- you're shopping, or walking across a college campus, and you encounter them. They're holding signs that claim Israel is an "apartheid state" and charge Israel with committing "genocide" against Palestinians. They're calling for boycotts against Israeli products, and divestment from companies that do business with Israel. You know supporting Israel is the right thing to do. And you're not alone. For decades, polls have shown a large plurality, usually a majority, of Americans back Israel. But here's the problem: you don't know how to respond - or if you even should - to these Israel haters. That's where this book comes in. Imagine some of the key points from Alan Dershowitz's authoritative volume, The Case For Israel-- as it might be delivered by Bill Maher. All the information you need in this street fight of words, but delivered in a light and accessible way, with satirical humor. So the next time you encounter a group of Israel-hating extremists, you'll be armed with the facts - and the techniques to apply them with skill and confidence. This is the second edition of this book with updated information.

How to Effectively Challenge Anti-Israel Extremists in Your Neighborhood

Winning a Debate with an Israel-Hater

Linda Sickler

Georgia’s oldest city plays hostess to a bevy of ghostly guests whose stories are wrapped up in its rich southern history. As one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, has a long list of stories of the supernatural, such as the story of the first two people hanged in colonial Savannah for the murder of their abusive master. Or James Stark, a tempestuous planter, and Dr. Philip Minis, who settled their dispute with a duel and still hang around the old building at Moon River Brewing Co. Or the terrifying “boy-giant,” Rene Rhondolia, who preys on young girls and animals. Join authors Michael Harris and Linda Sickler as they navigate the chilling world of those who refuse to leave their Savannah homes. Includes photos! “Story-loving Sickler and research-savvy Harris dug behind the ghost stories of what’s called one of America’s most haunted cities.” —Savannah Now

Historic Haunts of Savannah

"Brandywine Creek calmly meanders through the Pennsylvania countryside today, but on September 11, 1777, it served as the scenic backdrop for the largest battle of the American Revolution, one that encompassed more troops over more land than any combat fought on American soil until the Civil War. Long overshadowed by the stunning American victory at Saratoga, the complex British campaign that defeated George WashingtonÕs colonial army and led to the capture of the capital city of Philadelphia was one of the most important military events of the war. Michael C. HarrisÕs impressive Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777, is the first full-length study of this pivotal engagement in many years. General Sir William Howe launched his campaign in late July 1777, when he loaded his army of 16,500 British and Hessian soldiers aboard a 265-ship armada in New York and set sail. Six difficult weeks later HoweÕs expedition landed near Elkton, Maryland, and moved north into Pennsylvania. WashingtonÕs rebel army harassed HoweÕs men at several locations including a minor but violent skirmish at CoochÕs Bridge in Delaware on September 3. Another week of hit-and-run tactics followed until Howe was within three miles of ChadsÕs Ford on Brandywine Creek, behind which Washington had posted his army in strategic blocking positions along a six-mile front. The young colonial capital of Philadelphia was just 25 miles farther east. Obscured by darkness and a heavy morning fog, General Howe initiated his plan of attack at 5:00 a.m. on September 11, pushing against the American center at ChadsÕs Ford with part of his army while the bulk of his command swung around WashingtonÕs exposed right flank to deliver his coup de main, destroy the colonials, and march on Philadelphia. Warned of HoweÕs flanking attack just in time, American generals turned their divisions to face the threat. The bitter fighting on Birmingham Hill drove the Americans from the field, but their heroic defensive stand saved WashingtonÕs army from destruction and proved that the nascent Continental foot soldiers could stand toe-to-toe with their foe. Although fighting would follow, Philadelphia fell to HoweÕs legions on September 26. HarrisÕs Brandywine is the first complete study to merge the strategic, political, and tactical history of this complex operation and important set-piece battle into a single compelling account. More than a decade in the making, his sweeping prose relies almost exclusively upon original archival research and his personal knowledge of the terrain. Enhanced with original maps, illustrations, and modern photos, and told largely through the words of those who fought there, Brandywine will take its place as one of the most important military studies of the American Revolution ever written."

A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777

Brandywine

What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers—for the sake of truth, beauty, and practical applications—this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources. Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, Michael Harris reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, he touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party? Disarmingly candid, relentlessly intelligent, and richly entertaining, Mathematics without Apologies takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.

Portrait of a Problematic Vocation

Mathematics without Apologies

David Mower

* Discovery approach to grammar and an up-front focus on vocabulary gives students maximum opportunity to learn* Educational and cultural input encourages students to learn more than just English and make lessons more memorable* Learner strategies help students become better language learners* Quick Tests make assessment easier* The Video Workbook allows students to see and feel the culture that goes with the English language, through six documentary-type episodes on different elements of life in Britain

Opportunities

Gideon Doron

The emergence and impact of the modern term limits movement is a unique story of political development and transformation. Despite its significant impact on politics and policy making, the 1990s implementation of term limits at the state level has received limited scholarly attention. This book, divided in two parts, presents an overview and detailed analysis of the origins and effects of the movement. The first part analyzes the political concept of term limits and its theoretical foundations. The second part focuses on the modern process of implementation at the state level. Term Limits will be of significant interest to leglislators, government officials, lobbyists, members of the judicial branch of state government and anyone who seeks an explication of this movement within its full political, economic, judicial, and historical context.

Term Limits

Korey Hood

Jill Weissberg-Benchell

Written by three psychologists with more than 50 years of collective experience in the field of diabetes and youth, Teens with Diabetes provides evidence-based techniques for clinicians to treat the psychological needs of children with diabetes and help them transition into their teenage years. The authors have provided care to thousands of diabetic teens and their families from initial diagnosis to leaving home for college. Any professional working with diabetic teens, including psychologists, physicians, social workers, dietitians, and nurse educators, needs this how-to handbook for working with what is arguably one of the most difficult populations in diabetes. Topics covered include handling the initial diagnosis of diabetes in teens, talking with young people about diabetes in a manner that is effective and reduces reactivity, improving diabetes self-care, helping families negotiate the challenges of adolescent diabetes, dealing with peer relations, dealing with high-risk issues related to diabetes, and handling with mood problems.

A Clinician's Guide

Teens with Diabetes

Sedona is well-known as a very spiritual place. It is also known as a congregation ground for crystal crunchers, self-proclaimed visionaries and mystics. There are a few true healers here, but they shun the media and the publicity that others come here to seek. Two of them feel a shift in balance one evening, and know something bad has come to this healing spot. A father and son serial killer team has stopped by in Sedona on the way north to Canada. With them, they bring all the hate that drives them to keep killing. They have a well-refined method of finding, keeping and finally killing their subjects, and are experts at leaving no trace. They have remained at large as they perform these acts while travelling through seven states. This story is about the healers, and how they, with the help of a USFS volunteer and his search/rescue dog, Sam find out what has happened and how to make it go away before more killings occur. Mike and Linda Harris are residents of Sedona, Arizona. They relocated to Sedona in 2003, leaving California for a less-structured and more healthful lifestyle in a peaceful, beautiful place. Both are graduates of SDSU, and Mike has authored several books under his name on technical subjects, including some which remain in the classified domain. He is from a Business Development background with emphasis on contract electronics for Defense Electronics companies. Linda has a Business degree, and was most recently a Director of Resident Programs at one of the largest multi-level senior care facilities in Southern California. She has been on television, and is credited for assisting in the establishment of the ethics committee under which many of the senior care facilities operate today. Both, with the assistance of Sam, co-wrote this book. Both Mike and Linda are active in the Sedona area, volunteering under USFS programs which are dedicated to preservation of the Sedona wildlife preserves and trail systems. These include the Adopt-a-Trail program, Mountain Bike Patrol and Friends of the Forest programs. Sam is included in these efforts, and routinely can be seen walking in the forest with patrollers, trail management personnel and volunteer search and rescue groups.

The Shift

An insightful reflection on the mathematical soul What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers—for the sake of truth, beauty, and practical applications—this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources. Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, Michael Harris reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, he touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party? Disarmingly candid, relentlessly intelligent, and richly entertaining, Mathematics without Apologies takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.

Olivia Johnston

Anna Sikorzyńska

Christina Ruse

Education for Life. Elementary

New Opportunities

The ever-popular blue jean originated in the Old West frontier of San Francisco in the late 1800s, and here is an extensive look at the entire era of Old West denim. Gathered from collections around the world, it presents never-before-seen pictures of antique "miner's denim" worn in the frontier communities of Nevada and California, including Levi denim that is over 120 years old. More than a dozen other brands that helped make blue jeans what they are today include Greenebaum Brothers, Neustadter Brothers, S. R. Krouse, A. B. Elfelt & Co., Heynemann & Co., Harman Adams, W. & I. Steinhart & Co., Toklas, Brown, and others. Many of these innovative blue-jean designs have been lost in the dust of history and were inaccessible to the public until now. Over 300 color photos and illustrations chronicle examples, patent drawings, and the histories of the manufacturers. This is invaluable information for fashion historians and collectors alike.

Jeans of the Old West, 2nd Edition

Richard Taylor

Richard Lawrence Taylor

This book aims first to prove the local Langlands conjecture for GLn over a p-adic field and, second, to identify the action of the decomposition group at a prime of bad reduction on the l-adic cohomology of the "simple" Shimura varieties. These two problems go hand in hand. The results represent a major advance in algebraic number theory, finally proving the conjecture first proposed in Langlands's 1969 Washington lecture as a non-abelian generalization of local class field theory. The local Langlands conjecture for GLn(K), where K is a p-adic field, asserts the existence of a correspondence, with certain formal properties, relating n-dimensional representations of the Galois group of K with the representation theory of the locally compact group GLn(K). This book constructs a candidate for such a local Langlands correspondence on the vanishing cycles attached to the bad reduction over the integer ring of K of a certain family of Shimura varieties. And it proves that this is roughly compatible with the global Galois correspondence realized on the cohomology of the same Shimura varieties. The local Langlands conjecture is obtained as a corollary. Certain techniques developed in this book should extend to more general Shimura varieties, providing new instances of the local Langlands conjecture. Moreover, the geometry of the special fibers is strictly analogous to that of Shimura curves and can be expected to have applications to a variety of questions in number theory.

The Geometry and Cohomology of Some Simple Shimura Varieties. (AM-151)

Robin Myers

Presents nine essays on the history of the book trade, focusing on booksellers in various eras in Britain and Italy. Looks at booksellers' place at the center of the manufacture and distribution of books, and their role in shaping readers' tastes and laying the foundation of commercial publishing.

Booksellers and Bookselling from the 16th to the 20th Century

A Genius for Letters

The northern cod have been almost wiped out. Once the most plentiful fish on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, the cod is now on the brink of extinction, and tens of thousands of people in Atlantic Canada have been left without work by a 1992 moratorium on fishing the stock. Today, the Pacific salmon stocks are in similar trouble – victims of the same blind, stupid greed. Angry, accusatory fingers have been pointed at various possible culprits for the collapse of the cod – at the Spanish and Portuguese, who for hundreds of years sent ever-bigger fleets to the Grand Banks; at the factory-freezer trawlers, which “vacuumed” the ocean floor for the prized fish; at those inshore fishermen who circumvented the rules governing the fishery; at the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is responsible for managing the fishery; at the harp seal, the cod’s competitor for food, whose numbers have exploded in recent years; even at Nature, for lowering the temperature of the ocean. In Lament for an Ocean, the award-winning true-crime writer Michael Harris investigates the real causes of the most wanton destruction of a natural resource in North American history since the buffalo were wiped off the face of the prairies. The story he carefully unfolds is the sorry tale of how, despite the repeated and urgent warnings of ocean scientists, the northern cod was ruthlessly exploited.

The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery

Lament for an Ocean

When Will's best friend outs him on Facebook and his small-town life starts to spin out of control, Will starts to question his identity and his friendship with Daniel, who is openly gay and bullied for it at high school.

Michael Harris

About

Books

Join the club