Fragile Traditions


Book Description

Focuses on the complete effects of the primitive art market and various kinds of private & institutional collecting on the art traditions of Indonesia.




The Library


Book Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE HISTORICAL WRITERS' ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION CROWN A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A sweeping, absorbing history, deeply researched, of that extraordinary and enduring phenomenon: the library' Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes or filled with bean bags and children's drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied and stuffed full of incident. In this, the first major history of its kind, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the contested and dramatic history of the library, from the famous collections of the ancient world to the embattled public resources we cherish today. Along the way, they introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of fashions and tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanours committed in pursuit of rare and valuable manuscripts.




Fragile Grounds


Book Description

Recipient of a 2018 Preserve Louisiana Award and a 2018 Coastal Stewardship Award Fragile Grounds compiles stories and photographs of endangered cemeteries throughout Louisiana's coastal zone and beyond. These burial places link the fragile land to the frailty of the state's threatened community structures. The book highlights the state's vibrant diversity by showing its unique burial customs and traditions, while it also identifies the urgent need for ongoing documentation of cultural elements at risk. Cemeteries associated with the culturally rich communities of Louisiana reflect the history and global settlement patterns of the state. Yet many are endangered due to recurring natural and man-made events. Nearly 80 percent of the nation's coastal land loss occurs in Louisiana. Coastal erosion, sinking land, flooding, storm surge, and sea-level rise have led to an inland migration that threatens to unravel the fabric of Louisiana and, by association, hastens the demise of its burial places. As people are forced inland, migrants abandon, neglect, or often overlook cemeteries as part of the cultural landscape. In terms of erosion, when the land goes, the cemetery goes with it. Cemeteries fall prey to inland and coastal flooding. As cities grow outward, urban sprawl takes over the landscape. Cemeteries lose out to forces such as expansion, eminent domain, and urban neglect. Not only do cemeteries give comfort for the living, but they also serve as a vital link to the past. Once lost, that past cannot be recovered.




Stories for a Fragile Planet


Book Description

How the Seasons Came to Be The Hunter and the Swan The Saint and the Blackbird The Tale of the Lion Grey-eye and the Whale A Fishy Tale The Panda's Tale Maha and the Elephant The Shepherd and the Stone The Story of the Tower




A World of Fragile Things


Book Description

Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”




Antifragile


Book Description

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile “Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist “A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek




A Fragile Life


Book Description

It is perhaps our noblest cause, and certainly one of our oldest: to end suffering. Think of the Buddha, Chuang Tzu, or Marcus Aurelius: stoically composed figures impervious to the torments of the wider world, living their lives in complete serenity—and teaching us how to do the same. After all, isn’t a life free from suffering the ideal? Isn’t it what so many of us seek? Absolutely not, argues Todd May in this provocative but compassionate book. In a moving examination of life and the trials that beset it, he shows that our fragility, our ability to suffer, is actually one of the most important aspects of our humanity. May starts with a simple but hard truth: suffering is inevitable. At the most basic level, we suffer physically—a sprained ankle or a bad back. But we also suffer insults and indifference. We suffer from overburdened schedules and unforeseen circumstances, from moral dilemmas and emotional heartaches. Even just thinking about our own mortality—the fact that we only live one life—can lead us to tremendous suffering. No wonder philosophies such as Buddhism, Taosim, Stoicism, and even Epicureanism—all of which counsel us to rise above these plights—have had appeal over the centuries. May highlights the tremendous value of these philosophies and the ways they can guide us toward better lives, but he also exposes a major drawback to their tenets: such invulnerability is too emotionally disengaged from the world, leading us to place too great a distance between ourselves and our experience. Rather than seeking absolute immunity, he argues most of us just want to hurt less and learn how to embrace and accept what suffering we do endure in a meaningful way. Offering a guide on how to positively engage suffering, May ultimately lays out a new way of thinking about how we exist in the world, one that reassures us that our suffering, rather than a failure of physical or psychological resilience, is a powerful and essential part of life itself.







White Fragility


Book Description

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.




Fragile Resurrection


Book Description

How do we practice hope after trauma? What shape does hope take after abuse? In grappling with these questions, Ashley E. Theuring implicates the entire church and advocates changing our theologies of hope and our understanding of resurrection. Reimagining the Empty Tomb narrative from the Gospel of Mark in light of the experiences of domestic violence survivors, Fragile Resurrection reveals the possibility for everyday practices and relationships to mediate hope and resurrection. Theuring constructs an embodied imaginative hope found in the wake of trauma, which can speak to our current context of trauma and uncertainty.