ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award Finalist!What Would Your Life Be Like If You Simply Let Go of Control?At work, they oversee every detail of every project and expect nothing less than perfection from their coworkers.At home, they obsess over finding the "right" person. Then, they criticize their lover or spouse for doing everything wrong.As parents, they practice zero tolerance for their children's preferred study practices, choice of friends, dress cho...

This book is a highly original exploration of what life could and should be. It juxtaposes a philosophical enquiry into the nature of the good life with an ethnography of people living in a small Irish town.Attending carefully to the everyday lives of these people, the ethnographic chapters examine topics ranging from freedom and inequality to the creation of community and the purpose of life. These chapters alternate with discussions of similar topics by a wide range of philosophe...

"Transform any type of entrepreneurial activity, new idea, or . . . a business you already own into a much more profitable company" with this book's strategy. (from the foreword by Kevin Harrington, an original "shark" on Shark Tank and serial entrepreneur)In Click and Grow Rich, readers discover the nine-step proven formula for creating a wildly successful online business.The unsettling truth is that ninety-five percent of all businesses ...

In "Texit: Why and How Texas Will Leave The Union," Texas Nationalist Movement president Daniel Miller delivers a provocative yet methodical case for Texas independence. Far from fringe political theory, Miller reveals how Texas independence has deep historical roots and growing mainstream appeal, with polling data showing surprising levels of support across political affiliations.Miller methodically dismantles common arguments against Texit while building a compelling case that Te...

Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff.The book opens with a critique of the concept of superficiality as applied to clothing. It presents the theories that are required to understand the way we are created by material as well as...

A Theory of Shopping offers a highly original perspective on one of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonly assume that shopping is primarily concerned with individuals and materialism. But Miller rejects this assumption and follows the surprising route of analysing shopping by means of an analogy with anthropological studies of sacrificial ritual. He argues that the act of purchasing goods is almost always linked to other social relations, and most especially t...

What do we know about ordinary people in our towns and cities, about what really matters to them and how they organize their lives today? This book visits an ordinary street and looks into thirty households. It reveals the aspirations and frustrations, the tragedies and accomplishments that are played out behind the doors. It focuses on the things that matter to these people, which quite often turn out to be material things – their house, the dog, their music, the Christmas decorations. Th...

Throughout history and across social and cultural contexts, most systems of belief—whether religious or secular—have ascribed wisdom to those who see reality as that which transcends the merely material. Yet, as the studies collected here show, the immaterial is not easily separated from the material. Humans are defined, to an extraordinary degree, by their expressions of immaterial ideals through material forms. The essays in Materiality explore varied manifestations of materiali...

This is a book for those looking for different answers to some of today's most fundamental questions. What is a consumer society? Does being a consumer make us less authentic or more materialistic? How and why do we shop? How should we understand the economy? Is our seemingly insatiable desire for goods destroying the planet? Can we reconcile curbs on consumption with goals such as reducing poverty and social inequality?Miller responds to these questions by proposing feasible and, ...

Overwhelmed by life's challenges, unpredictability, and uncertainty? Imagine waking up each day with less stress and more ease, confident that whatever challenges arise, you have the practical tools to transform obstacles into opportunities for growth.In The Way of the Wave: Nature's Model for Navigating Life's Currents, best-selling author Daniel A. Miller (renowned for Losing Control, Finding Serenity and The Gifts of Acceptance) shows ...

On any given day nearly half the world's population is wearing blue jeans. This is entirely extraordinary. Yet there has never been a serious attempt to understand the causes, nature and consequences of denim as 'the' global garment of our world. This book takes up that challenge with gusto. It gives clear, if surprising, explanations for why this is the case, challenging the accepted history of jeans and showing why the reasons cannot be commercial.While discussing the consequence...

Anthropology has two main tasks: to understand what it is to be human and to examine how humanity is manifested differently in the diversity of culture. These tasks have gained new impetus from the extraordinary rise of the digital. This book brings together several key anthropologists working with digital culture to demonstrate just how productive an anthropological approach to the digital has already become.Through a range of case studies from Facebook to Second Life to Google Ea...