In the Midst of Things

In the Midst of Things
Author: Mike Owen Benediktsson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2022-09-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691174334

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How ordinary urban objects influence our behavior, exacerbate inequality, and encourage social change Assumptions about human behavior lie hidden in plain sight all around us, programmed into the design and regulation of the material objects we encounter on a daily basis. In the Midst of Things takes an in-depth look at the social lives of five objects commonly found in the public spaces of New York City and its suburbs, revealing how our interactions with such material things are our primary point of contact with the social, political, and economic forces that shape city life. Drawing on groundbreaking fieldwork and a wealth of original interviews, Mike Owen Benediktsson shows how we are in the midst of things whose profound social role often goes overlooked. A newly built lawn on the Brooklyn waterfront reflects an increasingly common trade-off between the marketplace and the public good. A cement wall on a New Jersey highway speaks to the demise of the postwar American dream. A metal folding chair on a patch of asphalt in Queens exposes the political obstacles to making the city livable. A subway door expresses the simmering conflict between the city and the desires of riders, while a newsstand bears witness to our increasingly impoverished streetscapes. In the Midst of Things demonstrates how the material realm is one of immediacy, control, inequality, and unpredictability, and how these factors frustrate the ability of designers, planners, and regulators to shape human behavior.

In the Midst of Winter

In the Midst of Winter
Author: Isabel Allende
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501183265

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New York Times and worldwide bestselling author Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil that offers “a timely message about immigration and the meaning of home” (People). During the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his sixties, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and what at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice. As these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love. Allende returns here to themes that have propelled some of her finest work: political injustice, the art of survival, and the essential nature of—and our need for—love.

In the Midst of Plenty

In the Midst of Plenty
Author: Marybeth Shinn
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1119104750

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Foreword by Nan Roman, President and CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness This book explains how to end the U.S. homelessness crisis by bringing together the best scholarship on the subject and sharing solutions that both local communities and national policy-makers can apply now. In the Midst of Plenty shifts understanding of homelessness away from individual disability to larger contexts of poverty, income inequality, housing affordability, and social exclusion. Homelessness experts Shinn and Khadduri provide guidance on how to end homelessness for people who experience it and how to prevent so many people from reaching the point where they have no alternative to sleeping on the street or in emergency shelters. The authors show that we know how to end homelessness—if we devote the necessary resources to doing so. In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What to Do About It is an excellent resource for policy-makers, professionals in the homeless services system, and anyone else who wants to end homelessness. It also can serve as a text in undergraduate or masters courses in public policy, sociology, psychology, social work, urban studies, or housing policy. "The knowledgeable and thoughtful authors of this book—two brilliant women who know as much as anyone in the country about the nature of homelessness and its solutions—have done a great service by taking us on a journey through the history of homelessness, how our responses have changed, and how we can end it." —Nan Roman, President and CEO National Alliance to End Homelessness. "Shinn and Khadduri's new book is a thorough yet concise examination of what we know about the nature and causes of homelessness, and the crucial lessons learned. This critically important work provides a roadmap to restoring basic housing and income security as viable policy options, in the face of our daunting inequality divide that otherwise threatens millions with destitution and homelessness." —Dennis Culhane, Dana and Andrew Stone Professor of Social Policy, University of Pennsylvania "Marybeth Shinn and Jill Khadduri have combined their significant expertise to create an essential guide about the history of modern homelessness and to offer a clear path forward to end this American tragedy. Their policy recommendations on ending homelessness are culled from the best about what we know works." —Barbara Poppe, Executive Director US Interagency Council on Homeless, 2009-2014

In the Midst of Life

In the Midst of Life
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2022-10-14T01:00:11Z
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

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The first major collection of Ambrose Bierce’s short stories, In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians went through multiple editions and titles, with Bierce adding, removing, and revising the stories each time. The version of the stories as collected here follows the final selection and revisions made by Bierce for his Collected Works, Volume 2, published in 1909, and is broken up into two sections, “Soldiers” and “Civilians.” Bierce fought for the Union in the American Civil War from the very first organized action at Philippi. He went on to fight in some of the deadliest battles of the war, at Shiloh and Chickamauga. He joined Sherman’s army on its march to Atlanta, and was grievously wounded in the head at Kennesaw Mountain. These locations serve as backdrops in his gritty and realist short stories in the “Soldiers” collection, most especially in the surreal story “Chickamauga.” While these stories are set in the war, Bierce covers a wide range of themes, from the fear of death in “Parker Adderson, Philosopher,” the requirements of duty for a soldier in “A Horseman in the Sky,” and what one might do for love in “Killed at Resaca.” Perhaps the most well-known story in “Soldiers” is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Kurt Vonnegut called it “the greatest American short story,” saying “It is a flawless example of American genius, like ‘Sophisticated Lady’ by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.” Bierce, much like Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, was an American pioneer in what he called his “tall tales”—psychological, supernatural, grotesque, and horror fiction. Many stories in “Civilians,” such as “The Man and the Snake,” “A Holy Terror,” and “The Suitable Surroundings,” foreshadow his later and darker works as studies in psychological horror. “The Eyes of the Panther” is a tragic, near-supernatural (though the reader is left guessing) tale of a woman of “feline beauty” and the man seeking her hand. Other stories found in the collection are satirical and ironic, like “The Famous Gilson Bequest” and “The Applicant.” Bierce’s writing earned him the title “Bitter Bierce” from his contemporaries, as one finds precious little hope and compassion in his stories, with death—often cruel—a recurring theme. A very rare exception can be found in “A Lady from Redhorse,” an epistolary romance. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

In the Midst of Loving

In the Midst of Loving
Author: Cheeraz Gormon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2015-03-14
Genre: African American women
ISBN: 9780692401279

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"In The Midst of Loving," is the first collection of poetry and writing by Cheeraz Gormon. The work spans over 14-years of living and loving.

In the Midst of Chaos

In the Midst of Chaos
Author: Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506454607

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How the daily practices of life with children can shape our faith In the Midst of Chaos explores parenting as spiritual practice, building on Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore's fresh conceptions of children from her book Let the Children Come. She questions conventional perceptions that spiritual practices require silence, solitude, and uninterrupted prayer and that assume a life unburdened by care of others. She is both honest about the difficulties and attentive to the blessings present in everyday life and demonstrates that the life of faith encompasses children and the adults who care for them. Miller-McLemore explores how parents might use seven daily practices, such as play, reading, chores, and saying goodbye or goodnight as rich opportunities to shape both parent and child morally and spiritually. Through these experiences, she shows how the very care of children forms and reforms the faith of adults themselves, contrary to the belief that adults must form children. In the Midst of Chaos also goes beyond the typical focus on individual self-fulfillment by tackling difficult questions of social justice and mutuality in the ways families live together. Readers will find in this book an invitation to love those around them in the midst of life's craziness and to live more deeply in grace.

In the Midst of Civilized Europe

In the Midst of Civilized Europe
Author: Jeffrey Veidlinger
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250116260

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FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD * SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE “The mass killings of Jews from 1918 to 1921 are a bridge between local pogroms and the extermination of the Holocaust. No history of that Jewish catastrophe comes close to the virtuosity of research, clarity of prose, and power of analysis of this extraordinary book. As the horror of events yields to empathetic understanding, the reader is grateful to Veidlinger for reminding us what history can do.” —Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers, and governmental officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems. In riveting prose, In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century.

In the Midst of Wolves

In the Midst of Wolves
Author: Kurt Ellis
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1485904277

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Nick Creed, expert criminal profiler, hunts down human monsters for a living. Back in South Africa after working with the fbi, he is haunted by his past mistakes, including the death of his fiancée. When a young woman is murdered and dismembered in her Johannesburg apartment, Creed’s long-time friend and head of the saps’ Investigative Psychological Unit, Major Eli Grey, enlists his help in investigating the murder – an attempt to save the self-destructing Creed from himself. But not all the Unit’s members welcome his involvement, and there are those intent on exposing his secrets while the murder is being solved. The young woman’s community are convinced she was the victim of a witch called Nomtakhati, but Creed’s hunch points to an angry ex-boyfriend. Who, or what, is really behind the murder? Could it be Nomtakhati, who believes Nick Creed is uSatane? In the Midst of Wolves is a dark psychological thriller about metaphorical demons from the past and the living monsters who target the innocent. Bonus content: Star Crossed: A Nick Creed Short Story

And I Will Dwell in Their Midst

And I Will Dwell in Their Midst
Author: Etan Diamond
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2014-03-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0807868159

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Suburbia may not seem like much of a place to pioneer, but for young, religiously committed Jewish families, it's open territory." This sentiment--expressed in the early 1970s by an Orthodox Jew in suburban Toronto--captures the essence of the suburban Orthodox Jewish experience of the late twentieth century. Although rarely associated with postwar suburbia, Orthodox Jews in metropolitan areas across the United States and Canada have successfully combined suburban lifestyles and the culture of consumerism with a strong sense of religious traditionalism and community cohesion. By their very existence in suburbia, argues Etan Diamond, Orthodox Jewish communities challenge dominant assumptions about society and religious culture in the twentieth century. Using the history of Orthodox Jewish suburbanization in Toronto, Diamond explores the different components of the North American suburban Orthodox Jewish community: sacred spaces, synagogues, schools, kosher homes, and social networks. In a larger sense, though, his book tells a story of how traditionalist religious communities have thrived in the most secular of environments. In so doing, it pushes our current understanding of cities and suburbs and their religious communities in new directions.

Angels in Our Midst

Angels in Our Midst
Author: Anne H. Neilson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2012
Genre: Angels in art
ISBN: 9780985336219

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