Disillusioned

We expect our leaders to be superhuman, to provide all the answers and never fail. Amanda Sinclair offers an alternative and more realistic approach to leadership based on personal growth, drawing on Eastern philosophies.

How do photographs compel belief and endow knowledge? To understand the impact of photography in a given era, we must study the adjacent forms of visual persuasion with which photographs compete and collaborate. In photography’s early days, magic shows, scientific demonstrations, and philosophical games repeatedly put the visual credulity of the modern public to the test in ways that shaped, and were shaped by, the reality claims of photography. These venues invited viewers to judge the reliability of their own visual experiences. Photography resided at the center of a constellation of places and practices in which the task of visual discernment—of telling the real from the constructed—became an increasingly crucial element of one’s location in cultural, political, and social relations. In Disillusioned: Victorian Photography and the Discerning Subject, Jordan Bear tells the story of how photographic trickery in the 1850s and 1860s participated in the fashioning of the modern subject. By locating specific mechanisms of photographic deception employed by the leading mid-century photographers within this capacious culture of discernment, Disillusioned integrates some of the most striking—and puzzling—images of the Victorian period into a new and expansive interpretive framework.

"Astonishingly important.” —Alex Kotlowitz, The Atlantic Through the stories of five American families, a masterful and timely exploration of how hope, history, and racial denial collide in the suburbs and their schools Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school. And outside Pittsburgh, a Black mother moves to the same street where author Benjamin Herold grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his. Disillusioned braids these human stories together with penetrating local and national history to reveal a vicious cycle undermining the dreams upon which American suburbia was built. For generations, upwardly mobile white families have extracted opportunity from the nation’s heavily subsidized suburbs, then moved on before the bills for maintenance and repair came due, leaving the mostly Black and Brown families who followed to clean up the ensuing mess. But now, sweeping demographic shifts and the dawning realization that endless expansion is no longer feasible are disrupting this pattern, forcing everyday families to confront a truth their communities were designed to avoid: The suburban lifestyle dream is a Ponzi scheme whose unraveling threatens us all. How do we come to terms with this troubled history? How do we build a future in which all children can thrive? Drawing upon his decorated career as an education journalist, Herold explores these pressing debates with expertise and perspective. Then, alongside Bethany Smith—the mother from his old neighborhood, who contributes a powerful epilogue to the book—he offers a hopeful path toward renewal. The result is nothing short of a journalistic masterpiece.

THE DISILLUSIONED is a ruthlessly honest memoir of a young man who writes both searingly and disarmingly about the highs and lows, the perils and promise of our times. THE DISILLUSIONED documents the struggle all too common for recent generations: yearning to find a sense of worth and a purpose to their lives against the backdrop of abuses rife in modern society and the duplicity of political systems which favour the rich and powerful despite the hollow rhetoric that promises something else. THE DISILLUSIONED encompasses three decades, beginning with the impressionable child indoctrinated with the propaganda of Thatcher's Britain and suffering sexual abuse, a lack of role models and any sense of belonging. It is a gripping story of obsessive ambition, discrimination, sex, scams, suicidal impulses, alcoholism, the search for love, loss and the quest for redemption in New Zealand. It is the author's story, but also the story of a disillusioned silent majority; the story of young people bogged down with debt and disillusionment; the story, too, of the increasing dangers facing our children in a materialistic world where family bonds and values are sacrificed for high incomes and status. "THE DISILLUSIONED is a surprisingly compulsive read about what I call the Misfit Generation - the one beguiled at first by the challenge of rational economics and then bewildered by its effects. David Scott's odyssey is to find self-worth, to discover basic human values among the detritus of modern life. At the end you can't be sure he's made it. But his story matters and he tells it with the pace and directness of a pro." - Gordon McLauchlan, writer and book critic.

A mother's suicide threatens to destroy a family legacy. Her sons, Sam and Daniel, are forced to leave their comfortable worlds behind and search for a woman they believe can unlock the secrets that have remained hidden. They are propelled into separate journeys from Los Angeles to the heart of the Zambezi, where they are forced to confront a man known as Die Duiwel, the Devil. On their adventures they will find themselves in a place where death is one breath away, where thousands of children are disappearing into the darkness, and where the woman they are searching for is on the hunt for revenge. When they stand face-to-face with the forgotten slaves of Africa, they will fight to redeem what has been lost. "A fast-paced mystery ... you won't put it down until you've unlocked the secrets and lies to find the truth." -Judith McCreary, co-executive producer, Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, and CSI "Riveting ... an indelible picture painted with suspense." -Mitch Kruse, author of Restoration Road "An engrossing tale ... makes you think about the world we live in and your place in it." -Tony Guerrero, founder of F.A.C.T. Alliance: Fight Against Child Trafficking

Moving from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the present day, this book traces the trajectory of the six East Central European former satellites of the Soviet Union (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria) that have joined the European Union. It seeks in particular to explain these countries’ disenchantment with the “return to Europe” in spite of their significant advances. The book proceeds country by country and then devotes chapters to some contemporary issues, such as minorities, migration, and the relations of these “new” members with the European Union as a whole. The book eschews theory and is intended for a general audience, including students at all levels in political science and history classes devoted to the EU and to contemporary Europe, and to an academic and practitioner audience interested in world affairs and the evolution of the European Union. The book strives to fill a persistent knowledge gap in the English-speaking world concerning East Central Europe, and to offer fresh insights about the region in the context of contemporary geopolitics.

"The present volume contains thirty-five fairy tales by nineteen writers, presented chronologically by author"--Introduction.

Prescription for the Disillusioned is an invitation to enter into a world of the magical mundane. The poet observes the curious and unique life given to each of us, cherishing the quotidian and commonplace experience as the precious gift it is. These poems are a personal response to the human condition, a conversation with life and loss, as well as an attempt to uncover the mystical in the day-to-day walk that we call our lives. At times political, at times personal, the poet always attempts to reach through the pain or struggle to find the treasures that are hidden in plain sight.