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A Grief Observed
C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings. --Michael Joseph Gross.
Price: $4.98
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C. S. Lewis Signature Classics: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, A Grief Observed, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and The Great Divorce (Boxed Set)
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Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Phoenix Books)
"In four brief chapters," writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, "I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan." Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Mr. Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion. .
Price: $11.99
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Observed Brain Dynamics
The biomedical sciences have been recently undergone revolutionary change, due to the ability to digitize and store large data sets. In neuroscience, the data sources include measurements of neural activity measured using electrode arrays, EEG and MEG, brain imaging data from PET, fMRI and optical imaging methods. Analysis, visualization and management of these time series data sets is a growing field of research that has become increasingly important both for experimentalists and theorists interested in brain function. Written by investigators who have played an important role in developing the subject and in its pedagogical exposition, the current volume addresses the need for a textbook in this interdisciplinary area. The book is written for a broad spectrum of readers ranging from physical scientists, mathematicians and statisticians wishing to educate themselves about neuroscience, as well as biologists who would like to learn time series analysis methods in particular, and refresh their mathematical and statistical knowledge in general, through self-pedagogy. It could also be used as a supplement for a quantitative course in neurobiology or as a textbook for instruction on neural signal processing. The first part of the book contains a set of essays meant to provide conceptual background which are not technical and should be generally accessible. Salient features include the adoption of an active perspective of the nervous system, an emphasis on function, and a brief survey of different theoretical accounts in neuroscience. The second part is the longest in the book, and contains a refresher course in mathematics and statistics leading up to time series analysis techniques. The third part contains applications of data analysis techniques to the range of data sources indicated above (also available as part of the Chronux data analysis platform from http://chronux.org), and the fourth part contains special topics..
Price: $51.90
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City Observed: Los Angeles
Charles Moore's classic is in turn knowledgeable, warm, witty, and slightly irreverent. Moore's genius was his ability to tie the disparate built environments of Los Angeles into a coherent whole. We read with pleasure the miniature essays that comprise his entries on subjects as varied as Disneyland, Riverside's Mission Inn, the Gamble House, and downtown Los Angeles. While still a practical guide, Moore's work approaches literature..
Price: $15.72
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Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork (History of Anthropology)
History of Anthropology is a new series of annual volumes, each of which will treat an important theme in the history of anthropological inquiry. For this initial volume, the editors have chosen to focus on the modern cultural anthropology: intensive fieldwork by "participant observation." Observers Observed includes essays by a distinguished group of historians and anthropologists covering major episodes in the history of ethnographic fieldwork in the American, British, and French traditions since 1880. As the first work to investigate the development of modern fieldwork in a serious historical way, this collection will be of great interest and value to anthropologist, historians of science and the social sciences, and the general readers interested in the way in which modern anthropologists have perceived and described the cultures of "others." Included in this volume are the contributions of Homer G. Barnett, University of Oregon; James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz; Douglas Cole, Simon Frazer University; Richard Handler, Lake Forest College; Curtis Hinsley, Colgate University; Joan Larcom, Mount Holyoke College; Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley; and the editor. .
Price: $24.92
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Venice Observed (Art and Places)
A penetrating work of reportage on Venice. “Searching observations and astonishing comprehension of the Venetian taste and character” (New York Herald Tribune).
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Price: $2.99
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