At the Human Limit


Book Description




At the Limit of the Obscene


Book Description

As German-language literature turned in the mid-nineteenth century to the depiction of the profane, sensual world, a corresponding anxiety emerged about the terms of that depiction—with consequences not only for realist poetics but also for the conception of the material world itself. At the Limit of the Obscene examines the roots and repercussions of this anxiety in German realist and postrealist literature. Through analyses of works by Adalbert Stifter, Gustav Freytag, Theodor Fontane, Arno Holz, Gottfried Benn, and Franz Kafka, Erica Weitzman shows how German realism’s conflicted representations of the material world lead to an idea of the obscene as an excess of sensual appearance beyond human meaning: the obverse of the anthropocentric worldview that German realism both propagates and pushes to its crisis. At the Limit of the Obscene thus brings to light the troubled and troubling ontology underlying German realism, at the same time demonstrating how its works continue to shape our ideas about representability, alterity, and the relationship of human beings to the non-human well into the present day.




The Limits to Growth


Book Description

Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs




The Genesis of Animal Play


Book Description

A scientist examines the origins and evolutionary significance of play in humans and animals.




History at the Limit of World-History


Book Description

The past is not just, as has been famously said, another country with foreign customs: it is a contested and colonized terrain. Indigenous histories have been expropriated, eclipsed, sometimes even wholly eradicated, in the service of imperialist aims buttressed by a distinctly Western philosophy of history. Ranajit Guha, perhaps the most influential figure in postcolonial and subaltern studies at work today, offers a critique of such historiography by taking issue with the Hegelian concept of World-history. That concept, he contends, reduces the course of human history to the amoral record of states and empires, great men and clashing civilizations. It renders invisible the quotidian experience of ordinary people and casts off all that came before it into the nether-existence known as "Prehistory." On the Indian subcontinent, Guha believes, this Western way of looking at the past was so successfully insinuated by British colonization that few today can see clearly its ongoing and pernicious influence. He argues that to break out of this habit of mind and go beyond the Eurocentric and statist limit of World-history historians should learn from literature to make their narratives doubly inclusive: to extend them in scope not only to make room for the pasts of the so-called peoples without history but to address the historicality of everyday life as well. Only then, as Guha demonstrates through an examination of Rabindranath Tagore's critique of historiography, can we recapture a more fully human past of "experience and wonder."




At the Mind's Limits


Book Description

Jean Amery (1921-1978) was born in Vienna and in 1938 emigrated to Belgium, where he joined the Resistance. He was caught by the Germans in 1943, tortured by the SS, and survived the next two years in the concentration camps. In five autobiographical essays, Amery describes his survival--mental, moral, and physical--through the enormity and horror of the Holocaust.




Limits of Human Endurance


Book Description

How to improve exercise performance capacity through adequate nutrition Nutrition is one of the key factors that modulate exercise performance. In this book, a group of expert scientists discuss the ergogenic properties of various nutritional interventions and present research to show that dietary strategies can be applied to extend the limits of human endurance, lower the risk of illness or injury, and speed recovery rates. More specifically, they discuss recent findings on topics such as caffeine and its effect on the brain, carnitine and fat oxidation, ergogenic properties of beta- alanine, dietary protein and muscle reconditioning, nutrition and immune status, and the importance of proper hydration. This publication will provide the reader with many novel insights into the complex interaction between nutrition and exercise, allowing them to define more effective dietary strategies to improve health and performance. Moreover, while focusing on elite athletes, it is interesting to note that some of the discoveries can be applied beyond this niche, for example to improve performance outcomes in the elderly.










Leading Transformation


Book Description

New Tools to Overcome the Human Barriers to Change Leaders know that their job is to transform their organizations to keep pace with technology and an ever-changing business environment. They also know that they are bound to fail in doing so. But this discouraging prospect is not because they won't be able to solve a technological or strategic problem. Leaders will fail because of intractable human responses associated with change--responses such as fear, ingrained habits, politics, incrementalism, and lack of imagination. These stumbling blocks always arise when we humans are faced with change, but what if we had a way to transcend them? This book reveals a radical new method for doing just that. Written by the executive who designed and implemented it, the neuroscientist who helped make it work, and the academic who explains why it works and how to do it, Leading Transformation introduces an innovative yet proven process for creating breakthrough change. Divided into three steps--envisioning the possible, breaking down resistance, and prototyping the future--this process uses cutting-edge tools such as science fiction, cartoons, rap music, artifact trails, and neuroprototypes to overcome people's inability to imagine or react to what doesn't yet exist, override powerful habits and routines that prevent them from changing, and create compelling narratives about the organization's future and how to get there. Showing how these tools have been used successfully by companies such as Lowe's, Walmart, Pepsi, IKEA, Google, Microsoft, and others, the process revealed in this book gives leaders the means to transcend the human barriers that block change and lead their organizations confidently into the future.