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  • Book cover of What I Did Wrong
    John Weir

     · 2022

    Set in a rapidly gentrifying New York City determined to move beyond the decimation of a generation a decade earlier, What I Did Wrong is a day in the life of Tom, a forty-two-year-old English professor, haunted by the death of his best friend, Zack, who died theatrically and calamitously of AIDS. Tom himself slouches gingerly and precariously into middle age questioning every certainty he had about himself as a gay man while negotiating the field of his college classes, populated as they are with guys whose cocky bravado can’t quite compensate for their own confused masculinity. Tom tries to balance his awkwardly developing friendships with them. In the process, he begins to find common ground with these proud young men and, surprisingly, a way to claim his own place in the world, and in history. A powerfully moving—and often disarmingly funny—book about loss, character, and sexuality in the wake of AIDS, What I Did Wrong is a survivor’s tale in an age when all certainties have lost their logic and focus. It is a romance that embraces its objects from the traumas of toxic masculinity to the aftermath of catastrophic loss amidst the enduring allure of New York City in all its manic and heartbreaking grandeur.

  • Book cover of A Giant Cow-Tipping by Savages
    John Close

     · 2013

    Modern mergers and acquisitions, or M&A as it's more commonly known, is a new phenomenon. The buying and selling, the breaking up and combining of companies-the essence of M&A-has been a part of commerce throughout history, but only in our era has M&A itself become a business. In 2007, before the recession hit, it was a $4.4 trillion global enterprise. And yet, it remains largely unexplored. Discrete stories have been pulled from the annals of M&A, both true and fictionalized, that have become touchstones for wealth and excess. Who can forget Gordon Gekko and his "Greed is Good" speech? But while there have been a few iconic characters and tales to emerge, no one has told the rich history of M&A, until now. This is a look into that world and the people who created it. This reads like Dallas meets Wall Street, told through an intriguing narrative that not only brings to light in gritty detail all of the back room drama of such powerful players as Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman, Marty Lipton and Joe Flom, Jimmy Goldsmith and Sumner Redstone, but also reveals how the new generation, including activist whirlwind Bill Ackman and iconoclastic new Delaware judge Leo Strine, will dominate the next tsunamic, and imminent, M&A boom.

  • Book cover of The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket
    John Weir

     · 2022

    Before the onset of his irreversible decline, Eddie Socket always suspected he was on the verge of something. Now that “something” has arrived in the form of Merrit Mather, an attractive older gentleman of impeccable taste in everything from sweaters to his numerous sexual conquests. That Merrit happens to be the lover of Eddie’s agitated boss, Saul, hardly fazes the smitten Eddie; that the elusive Merrit loses interest in Eddie with dizzying speed hardly dims his ardor. While Eddie continues his futile chase, he finds solace in his roommate, Polly, involved in her own implausible affair with a self-involved banker. Both Eddie and Polly eventually conclude that solitude is their best option. But even that is not possible as Eddie finds his life taking an unexpected turn—a turn that that serves as the catalyst for Eddie, love-ravaged Polly, and the indomitable Saul to reclaim their lives. First published in 1989 and winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket is one of the first novels to respond to the global AIDS crisis. A comedy of absurdist horror, it weaponizes the comic as a way of intensifying the tragic aspects of AIDS, which were especially acute in the early 1980s, and the scars of which are still visible today.

  • Book cover of Apostolical Succession, as taught by Tractarians and Romanists, opposed to Holy Scripture ... A lecture delivered ... by the Rev. John Weir ... in reply to a widely circulated publication entitled Church Tracts, No. I., a reprint of which is prefixed. Second edition
  • Book cover of The Far Side of Madness

    John Weir Perry (1914-1998) first met C. G. Jung in Switzerland as a young medical student, where he was intrigued by Jung's assertion that schizophrenia is a natural healing process. During the 1970s, he founded an experimental residential facility called Diabasis in Berkeley, California, designed as a supportive home for young adults who were experiencing the initial days of their first "acute schizophrenic break." At Diabasis, these full-blown "schizophrenics" were able to emerge "on the far side of madness," as Perry put it, "weller than well," without any treatment by medication, electroshock, or locked doors. When "The Far Side of Madness" was first published in 1974, Perry's deep insight into the nature of so-called "schizophrenia" opened the way for a radically new, more compassionate approach to this condition. This pioneering work of Jungian psychiatry reframes acute psychotic episodes in the context of visionary experience of schizophrenic patients and describes innovative methods of handling them.

  • Book cover of The Far Side of Madness

    When The Far Side of Madness was first published in 1974, John Weir Perry's deep insight into the nature of so-called "schizophrenia" opened the way for a radically new, more compassionate approach to this condition. This pioneering work of Jungian psychiatry reframes acute psychotic episodes in the context of visionary experience of schizophrenic patients and describes innovative methods of handling them.

  • Book cover of Trials of the Visionary Mind

    Stress may cause highly activated mythic images to erupt from the psyche's deepest levels in the form of turbulent visionary experience. Depending on whether the interactions between the individual and the immediate surroundings lean toward affirmation or invalidation, comprehension of these visions can turn the visionary experience into a step in growth or into a disorder, as an acute psychosis. Based on his clinical and scholarly investigations, John Weir Perry has found and formulated a mental syndrome which, though customarily regarded as acute psychosis, is in actuality a more natural effort of the psyche to mend its imbalances. If the upset is received in the spirit of empathy and understanding, and allowed to run its course, an acute episode can be found to reveal a self-organizing process that has self-healing potential. This book examines what the acute "psychotic" experience stirs up in the psyche and how to empathetically respond. Understanding the function of mythic themes is reached through the author's investigation into myth and ritual of antiquity and also the visionary experience undergone by prophets and social reformers in various ages and parts of the world.

  • Book cover of Introduction to Engineering Design

    Introduction to Engineering Design is a completely novel text covering the basic elements of engineering design for structural integrity. Some of the most important concepts that students must grasp are those relating to 'design thinking' and reasoning, and not just those that relate to simple theoretical and analytical approaches. This is what will enable them to get to grips with *practical* design problems, and the starting point is thinking about problems in a 'deconstructionist' sense.By analysing design problems as sophisticated systems made up of simpler constituents, and evolving a solution from known experience of such building blocks, it is possible to develop an approach that will enable the student to tackle even completely alien design scenarios with confidence. The other essential aspect of the design process - the concept of failure, and its avoidance - is also examined in detail, and the importance not only of contemplating expected failure conditions at the design stage but also checking those conditions as they apply to the completed design is stressed.These facets in combination offer a systematic method of considering the design process and one that will undoubtedly find favour with many students, teaching staff and practising engineers alike.

  • Book cover of The Heart of History

    This book is about the psychology of acute culture change based on the historical antecedents of such events. It focuses on the spiritual process and the social circumstances of stressful turning points.

  • Book cover of The Self in Psychotic Process