This work looks at the topic of victimisation and blame as a pathology for our time, and its consequences for personal responsibility.

Whenever anything goes wrong our first instinct is often to find someone to blame. Blame infuses our society in myriad ways, seeding rancor and revenge, dividing lovers, coworkers, communities, and nations. Yet blame, appropriately placed and managed, safeguards moral order and legal culpability. In this book, Stephen Fineman explores this duality inherent in blame, taking us on a fascinating journey across blame’s sometimes bitter—sometimes just—landscape. Fineman focuses on blame’s roots and enduring manifestations, from the witch hunts of the past to today’s more buttoned-up scapegoating and stigmatization; from an individual’s righteous anger to entire cultures shaped by its power. Addressing our era of increasing unease about governance in public and private enterprises, he delves behind the scenes of organizations infected with blame, profiling the people who keep its plates spinning. With a critical eye, he examines the vexing issue of public accountability and the political circus that so often characterizes our politicians and corporations lost in their “blame games.” Ultimately, Fineman raises the challenging question of how we might mitigate blame’s corrosive effects, asking crucial and timely questions about the limits of remorse and forgiveness, the role of state apologies for historical wrongdoings, whether restorative justice can work, and many other topics. An absorbing look at something we all know intimately, this book deepens our understanding of blame and how it shapes our lives.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Blame Not The Child is the story and experience of a boy that grew up during the Nigeria/Biafra Civil War in Africa, and the effect of the war on the psyche of the post- war children. This book is a satire on the dangers of human error and judgment, and the ugly consequences on the social contract between people. It is a voice that calls the attention of leaders across the globe to consider the consequences of their collective actions on the future of their children.

John Mannering (aka ‘The Baron’) runs Quinns in London’s Mayfair. He is often called upon to solve difficult crimes, but this one is different. Quinns has suffered a night time burglary. A cold-blooded killing has taken place and now Mannering is the suspect. The chase is on in the face of both mystery and danger.

Epistemic Blame is the first book-length philosophical examination of our practice of criticizing one another for epistemic failings. People clearly evaluate and critique one another for forming unjustified beliefs, harbouring biases, and pursuing faulty methods of inquiry. But what is the nature of this criticism? Does it ever amount to a kind of blame? And should we blame one another for epistemic failings? Through careful analysis of the concept of blame, and the nature of epistemic normativity, this book argues that there are competing sources of pressure inherent in the increasingly prominent notion of "epistemic blame". The more genuinely blame-like a response is, the less fitting in the epistemic domain it seems; but the more fitting in the epistemic domain a response is, the less genuinely blame-like it seems. These competing sources of pressure comprise a puzzle about epistemic blame. The most promising resolution of this puzzle lies in the interpersonal side of epistemic normativity. Drawing on work by T. M. Scanlon, R. J. Wallace, and others, Cameron Boult argues that members of epistemic communities stand in "epistemic relationships", and epistemic blame just is a way of modifying these relationships. By thinking of epistemic blame as a distinctive kind of relationship modification, we locate a response that is both robustly blame-like, and distinctly epistemic. The result is a ground-breaking new theory of epistemic blame, the relationship-based account. With a solution to the puzzle of epistemic blame in hand, a new project for social epistemology comes into view: the ethics of epistemic blame. Boult demonstrates the power of the relationship-based account to contribute to this project, develops a systematic analysis of standing to epistemically blame, and defends the value of epistemic blame in our social and political lives. He shows that epistemic relationships can also be used to illuminate foundational questions about epistemic normativity, responsibility for our beliefs and assertions, and a wide range of epistemic harms, such as epistemic exploitation and gaslighting. Throughout the investigation, a more structured and precise understanding of the parallels and points of interaction between the epistemic and practical domains emerges.

Two star-crossed lovers try to make it home for Christmas in this fan-favorite novella from New York Times bestselling author Tawny Weber, originally published as A Babe in Toyland in 2010. Rita Mae Cole and Tyler Ramsey hail from feuding families. Can they ever be together? Impossible. But the incredible sex between them says otherwise…