Life Myth And The American Family Unreeling

This book is about what movies do for us. It is about how movies exhibit the contradictions, truths, and fantasies surrounding our bedrock American beliefs in things held sacred, including, in this case, our creed of family. It is about why we again and again attend the dark universal tabernacles in which these sermons are offered. The depth of analysis offered here will also bring new insights to those concerned with parenting issues, self understanding, and media consciousness - all increasingly relevant areas of concern in contemporary life. And, for those interested in telling stories that will truly "move" the rest of us, this book will serve as a secret doorway to the inner sanctum of human characters responding to the places and times of their lives. Finally, this book will bring revelation and liberation to reader's lives by showing them how to look through movies into themselves as they have never done before. In the specific examples of archetypal life journeys illuminated through these films, they will experience empathy with the ineffability of their existence. And, in transubstantiating with these movie characters amidst history, culture, and family, they will journey through their own conundrums in arcs that bring them moments of at-one-ment.

This book is about what movies do for us. It is about how movies exhibit the contradictions, truths, and fantasies surrounding our bedrock American beliefs in things held sacred, including, in this case, our creed of family. It is about why we again and again attend the dark universal tabernacles in which these sermons are offered. The depth of analysis offered here will also bring new insights to those concerned with parenting issues, self understanding, and media consciousness - all increasingly relevant areas of concern in contemporary life. And, for those interested in telling stories that will truly "move" the rest of us, this book will serve as a secret doorway to the inner sanctum of human characters responding to the places and times of their lives. Finally, this book will bring revelation and liberation to reader's lives by showing them how to look through movies into themselves as they have never done before. In the specific examples of archetypal life journeys illuminated through these films, they will experience empathy with the ineffability of their existence. And, in transubstantiating with these movie characters amidst history, culture, and family, they will journey through their own conundrums in arcs that bring them moments of at-one-ment.

The definitive edition of the classic, myth-shattering history of the American family Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the "male breadwinner marriage" is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz examines two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues, and neither does any other era from our cultural past. This revised edition includes a new introduction and epilogue, exploring how the clash between growing gender equality and rising economic inequality is reshaping family life, marriage, and male-female relationships in our modern era. More relevant than ever, The Way We Never Were is a potent corrective to dangerous nostalgia for an American tradition that never really existed.

Discusses ritual events we regard as family traditions and how they must be open to perpetual revision so we can satisfy our human needs and changing circumstances.

This dystopian tale from Robert Hugh Benson offers a unique spiritual twist on typical end-of-the-world narratives: in Benson's imagined future, it's the Catholic Church that offers the only respite from encroaching doom. Whatever your religious beliefs may be, Lord of the World is a gripping must-read for fans of novels like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984.

In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients. From the Hardcover edition.

“This country's leading hell-raiser" (The Nation) shares his impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.” First published in 1971 and written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.

An anthropologist is called to journey down rivers of legend in Amazonia to discover the source of the most enigmatic object on Earth, only to realize he has been drawn inescapably into league with an assortment of deadly characters because of his own need to find a cosmic purpose. Keeper of the Planet combines action-adventure with magical realism as it divergently impels human hubris to come face to face with Nature's creative judgment.