A transformative, fascinating theory—based on robust and groundbreaking experimental research—reveals how our unconscious fear of death powers almost everything we do, shining a light on the hidden motives that drive human behaviorMore than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James dubbed the knowledge that we must die “the worm at the core” of the human condition. In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his boo...

More than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James wrote that the knowledge that we must die is "the worm at the core" of the human condition—a universally shared fear that informs all our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage.Using data collected from human subjects, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski show conclusively that the fear of death and the desire to transcend it inspire us to buy expensiv...

Patients who have both a psychiatric disorder and a substance abuse problem cause most clinicians to throw up their hands in despair. The clinical problems that these "dual diagnosis" patients present are enor mously complex. Diagnostically, how is one to tell if disorders of mood and thinking, for instance, are signs of a mental illness or consequences of substance abuse? How is one to obtain important historic information when the patient may be unable or unwilling to provide it and ther...

Exploring a new approach to interfaith/interreligious communication, the contributors to this collection seek to interact from the perspective of their own tradition or academic discipline with Ernest Becker's theory on the relationship between religion, culture, and the human awareness of death and mortality. While much interfaith/interreligious dialogue focuses on beliefs and practices, thus delineating areas of disagreement as a starting point, these chapters foster interactive communic...

In Facing Cancer and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Treatment, Dr. Norman Straker proposes that “death anxiety” is responsible for the American society’s failure to address costly futile care at the end of life; more specifically, doctors default on the appropriate prescription of palliative care because of this anxiety. This leads to unnecessary suffering for terminally-ill patients and their families and significant distress for physicians. To address these challenges...

Concerns with how students are taught, and whether and how they learn, has become particularly salient in higher education. This is evident in growing awareness of increases in time-to-degree and declines in attainment rates for many students, including those who are underrepresented, in our nation’s community and public and private colleges and universities. It is also demonstrated vis-à-vis recent findings that more than a third of college students evinced no noticeable improvement in cr...

"A great story--how modernism brought down the regime of censorship--told as a great story. Kevin Birmingham's imaginative scholarship brings Joyce and his world to life. There is a fresh detail on nearly every page."--Louis Menand, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Metaphysical ClubFor more than a decade, the book that literary critics now consider the most important novel in the English language was illegal to own, sell, advertise or purchase in most ...

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICEBestselling author Richard Reeves provides an authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II“Highly readable … [A] vivid and instructive reminder of what war and fear can do to civilized people.”—Evan...

A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America’s “separate but equal” doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never toldOn September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites....

The long-hidden truth about America’s black pioneers, the frontier they settled, and their fight for a better nationThe American frontier is one of our most cherished and enduring national images. We think of the early pioneers who settled the wilderness as courageous, independent—and white.This version of history is simply wrong. Starting in our nation’s earliest years, thousands of free African Americans were building hundreds of settlements in the Northwest Territory, a ...

“The Ostrich Paradox boldly addresses a key question of our time: Why are we humans so poor at dealing with disastrous risks, and what can we humans do about it? It is a must-hear for everyone who cares about risk.”—Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of Thinking, Fast and SlowWe fail to evacuate when advised. We rebuild in flood zones. We don’t wear helmets. We fail to purchase insurance. We would rather avoid the risk of “crying wolf” than so...

Respected conservative journalist and commentator Timothy P. Carney continues the conversation begun with Hillbilly Elegy and the classic Bowling Alone in this hard-hitting analysis that identifies the true factor behind the decline of the American dream: it is not purely the result of economics as the left claims, but the collapse of the institutions that made us successful, including marriage, church, and civic life.During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald ...