How do we model abundance and generosity – in teaching, in learning, in leading organizations, particularly non-profits – when dealing with fiscal austerity and other forms of scarcity thinking? Hope Circuits explores this question, presenting sophisticated ideas that support democratizing higher education for everybody. Written in a conversational style that draws upon Jessica Riddell’s experience in governance, senior administration, and scholarship, the book is a how-to guide and thought leadership manifesto for developing the conceptual tools to seek solutions to higher education’s most pressing issues. Hope Circuits aims to rewire mindsets, perspectives, and behaviours to in turn rewire and renew the systems within which university stakeholders learn, live, and work. It tackles this challenging feat by suggesting ten tools to build hope circuits, a concept borrowed from neuroscience. Riddell acknowledges that changing systems and deep cultures is not for the faint of heart; indeed, the more than 250 interviews conducted with thought partners for Hope Circuits expose how individuals who navigate complex systems regularly experience discomfort and even despair. In response, she shows us how to anchor a practice of hope in higher education with focus and intention, inviting others to adopt and adapt her approach.

One of the most influential living psychologists looks at the history of his life and discipline, and paints a much brighter future for everyone. When Martin E. P. Seligman first encountered psychology in the 1960s, the field was devoted to eliminating misery: it was the science of how past trauma creates present symptoms. Today, thanks in large part to Seligman's Positive Psychology movement, it is ever more focused not on what cripples life, but on what makes life worth living -- with profound consequences for our mental health. In this wise and eloquent memoir, spanning the most transformative years in the history of modern psychology, Seligman recounts how he learned to study optimism -- including a life-changing conversation with his five-year-old daughter. He tells the human stories behind some of his major findings, like CAVE, an analytical tool that predicts election outcomes (with shocking accuracy) based on the language used in campaign speeches, the international spread of Positive Education, the launch of the US Army's huge resilience program, and the canonical studies that birthed the theory of learned helplessness -- which he now reveals was incorrect. And he writes at length for the first time about his own battles with depression at a young age. In The Hope Circuit, Seligman makes a compelling and deeply personal case for the importance of virtues like hope, gratitude, and wisdom for our mental health. You will walk away from this book not just educated but deeply enriched.

The then-controversial message of Jerome D. Frank's Persuasion and Healing (1991) was that "the shared features of the various methods of psychological therapy are more important than those by which they differ." Alarcon (emeritus, psychiatry, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine), a former student of Frank's, and Julia Frank (psychiatry and behavioral sciences, George Washington U. School of Medicine), his daughter/coauthor, introduce essays treating his book's themes (e.g., the importance of life history, meaning, cultural concepts, demoralization, the mind-body interface); its impact on current practices; relevance to neuroscience; and applications to special populations. Frank's contributions are situated in the history of American psychiatry. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The U.S. Supreme Court increasingly matters in American political life when those across the political spectrum look at the Court for relief from policies they oppose and as another venue for advancing their own policy agendas. However, the evidence is mounting, to include this book in a big way, that courts are more of a sideshow to the culture war. While court decisions, especially Supreme Court decisions, do have importance, the decisions emanating from the Court reflect social, cultural, and political change that occurred long prior to their decision ever being made. This book tests how much political and social change has been made primarily through Gerald Rosenberg’s framework from his seminal work, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change, but it also utilizes Daniel Elazar’s Political Culture Theory to explain state level variations in political and social change. The findings indicate that while courts are not powerless institutions, reformers will not have success unless supported by the public and the elected branches, and most specifically, that preexisting state culture is a determining factor in the amount of change courts make. In short, federalism still matters.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

An inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of one doctor’s discovery of how hope can change the course of illness Since the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman shows us why. The search for hope is most urgent at the patient’s bedside. The Anatomy of Hope takes us there, bringing us into the lives of people at pivotal moments when they reach for and find hope--or when it eludes their grasp. Through these intimate portraits, we learn how to distinguish true hope from false, why some people feel they are undeserving of it, and whether we should ever abandon our search. Can hope contribute to recovery by changing physical well-being? To answer this hotly debated question, Groopman embarked on an investigative journey to cutting-edge laboratories where researchers are unraveling an authentic biology of hope. There he finds a scientific basis for understanding the role of this vital emotion in the outcome of illness. Here is a book that offers a new way of thinking about hope, with a message for all readers, not only patients and their families. "We are just beginning to appreciate hope’s reach," Groopman writes, "and have not defined its limits. I see hope as the very heart of healing."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-258)

Devoted to the preparation, characterization and evaluation of HTS electronic devices, this reference provides information on using high-Tc thin films and junctions to increase speed, lessen noise, lower power consumption and enhance upper frequency limits in superconductor electronics.

Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque and strange. This introduction to the problems posed by consciousness discusses the most important work of cognitive science, neurophysiology and philosophy of mind of the past thirty years and presents an up to date assessment of the issues and debates. The reader is first introduced to the way that consciousness has been thought about in the history of philosophy and psychology. The author then presents an informal and largely non-technical account of the properties of consciousness that are thought to be the most paradigmatic and problematic. Recent scientific work on consciousness, from neurophysiological studies of the brain and evolutionary studies of the development of consciousness to computational theories of the mind are then examined and the philosophical problems that these accounts raise are systematically introduced. The final chapters of the book consider more practical matters by addressing self-deception, neuroses, the unconscious and notions of the self, before concluding with an assessment of the future for psychology and the philosophy of mind.