How cognitive psychology explains human creativityConventional wisdom holds that creativity is a mysterious quality present in a select few individuals.... The rest of us, the common view goes, can only stand in awe of great creative achievements: we could never paint Guernica or devise the structure of the DNA molecule because we lack access to the rarified thoughts and inspirations that bless geniuses like Picasso or Watson and Crick. Presented with this view, today's cognitive psychologists largely differ finding instead that "ordinary" people employ the same creative thought processes as the greats. Though used and developed differently by different people, creativity can and should be studied as a positive psychological feature shared by all humans.Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts presents the major psychological theories of creativity and illustrates important concepts with vibrant and detailed case studies that exemplify how to study creative acts with scientific rigor.Creativity includes:* Two in-depth case studies--Watson and Crick's modeling of the DNA structure and Picasso's painting of Guernica-- serve as examples throughout the text* Methods used by psychologists to study the multiple facets of creativity* The "ordinary thinking" or cognitive view of creativity and its challengers* How problem-solving and experience relate to creative thinking* Genius and madness and the relationship between creativity and psychopathology* The possible role of the unconscious in creativity* Psychometrics--testing for creativity and how personality factors affect creativity* Confluence theories that use cognitive, personality, environmental, and other components to describe creativityClearly and engagingly written by noted creativity expert Robert Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts takes both students and lay readers on an in-depth journey through contemporary cognitive psychology, showing how the discipline understands one of the most fundamental and fascinating human abilities."This book will be a hit. It fills a large gap in the literature. It is a well-written, scholarly, balanced, and engaging book that will be enjoyed by students and faculty alike."--David Goldstein, University of Toronto

The third volume in the CREATORS OF THE AMERICAN MIND series, this text offers an approach to Lincoln and his place in American history that is as... accurate as it is novel. Unlike texts that only serve to reinforce the mythology that has been built around this powerful individual, Baker's text presents him as a flesh-and-blood human being by providing primary documents authored by Lincoln himself. Complemented by works presented by Lincoln scholars who have studied him from a variety of historical perspectives, the book places Lincoln in historical context. From his rise through the ranks of nineteenth-century politicians to his posthumous elevation to a central place in American political mythology, this book explores the complete picture of Lincoln.

This collection of over three dozen essays ponders the essence of creativity. Includes selections from Henry Miller, Federico Fellini, Rainer Maria... Rilke, Isadora Duncan, Frank Zappa, and Mary Shelley. A New Consciousness Reader.

Art is often viewed as being inherently spiritual. But what does it mean to describe an experience of art or beauty as "spiritual"? Is there a... relationship between the spiritual experience a person has in the presence of a work of art and the Holy Spirit of Christian faith? Skilled theologian, musician, and educator Steven Guthrie examines areas of overlap between spirituality, human creativity, and the arts with the goal of sharpening and refining how we speak and think about the Holy Spirit. By exploring various connections between art and spirituality, he helps Christians better understand the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and offers a clear, engaging theology of the arts. The book includes a foreword by renowned theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie.

"The author puts forward a bracing theory of partial empathy....Johnston's searching book of thought-probes goes a long way toward allowing the reader... the grounding that would allow him to make empathic contacts with the animals over which he ponders....Each time another animal becomes extinct a special and irretrievable way of looking at the world is gone....Perhaps the more people that read this book, the more this absence would be poignantly felt."—The Brooklyn Rail"Creaturely, like its subjects, eludes definition. It's a book of exquisite essays—or are they prose poems—that tessellate into something larger: a meditation, perhaps, or a vision. Johnston's subject is at once the absolute otherness of the creatures with whom we share the world's everyday spaces—dogs, owls, mice, squirrels, crows—and the worth of our attempts to get to know them. Modest, calm, and beautiful, this is an exceptional book."—Robert MacfarlaneDevin Johnston teaches at St. Louis University. He was named a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Sources, published by Turtle Point Press.

In Creatures of a Day, Reginald Gibbons presents intense encounters with everyday people amidst the historical and social contexts of everyday life. ... His poems are meditations on memory, obligation, love, death, celebration, and sorrow. Some of them show how the making of poetry itself seems inextricably enmeshed with personal encounter and with history. This new collection includes five odes woven from interactions with others, thirteen shorter poems, and "Fern-Texts," a kind of biographical and autobiographical essay in syllabic verse on the parallel decades of the English 1790s and the American 1960s. Using quotations from the notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Fern-Texts" interweaves the dilemmas of love, ethics, and political engagement in Coleridge's life when he was in his twenties and in the poet's own life when, at the same age, he lived in California. Ranging from poems of witness to paradoxical speculations, from the personal intimacy of love and death to the broad scope of historical turmoil, Creatures of a Day is an unusual, powerful collection.

More than any other writer, Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) is responsible for raising detective stories from the level of pulp fiction to literature.... Chandler's hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe set the standard for rough, brooding heroes who managed to maintain a strong sense of moral conviction despite a cruel and indifferent world. Chandler's seven novels, including The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1953), with their pessimism and grim realism, had a direct influence on the emergence of film noir. Chandler worked to give his crime novels the flavor of his adopted city, Los Angeles, which was still something of a frontier town, rife with corruption and lawlessness. In addition to novels, Chandler wrote short stories and penned the screenplays for several films, including Double Indemnity (1944) and Strangers on a Train (1951). His work with Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock on these projects was fraught with the difficulties of collaboration between established directors and an author who disliked having to edit his writing on demand. Creatures of Darkness is the first major biocritical study of Chandler in twenty years. Gene Phillips explores Chandler's unpublished script for Lady in the Lake, examines the process of adaptation of the novel Strangers on a Train, discusses the merits of the unproduced screenplay for Playback, and compares Howard Hawks's director's cut of The Big Sleep with the version shown in theaters. Through interviews he conducted with Wilder, Hitchcock, Hawks, and Edward Dmytryk over the past several decades, Phillips provides deeper insight into Chandler's sometimes difficult personality. Chandler's wisecracking Marlowe has spawned a thousand imitations. Creatures of Darkness lucidly explains the author's dramatic impact on both the literary and cinematic worlds, demonstrating the immeasurable debt that both detective fiction and the neo-noir films of today owe to Chandler's stark vision.

When we think of the key figures of early American history, we think of explorers, or pilgrims, or Native Americans--not cattle, or goats, or swine. But... as Virginia DeJohn Anderson reveals in this brilliantly original account of colonists in New England and the Chesapeake region, livestock played a vitally important role in the settling of the New World. Livestock, Anderson writes, were a central factor in the cultural clash between colonists and Indians as well as a driving force in the expansion west. By bringing livestock across the Atlantic, colonists believed that they provided the means to realize America's potential. It was thought that if the Native Americans learned to keep livestock as well, they would be that much closer to assimilating the colonists' culture, especially their Christian faith. But colonists failed to anticipate the problems that would arise as Indians began encountering free-ranging livestock at almost every turn, often trespassing in their cornfields. Moreover, when growing populations and an expansive style of husbandry required far more space than they had expected, colonists could see no alternative but to appropriate Indian land. This created tensions that reached the boiling point with King Philip's War and Bacon's Rebellion. And it established a pattern that would repeat time and again over the next two centuries. A stunning account that presents our history in a truly new light, Creatures of Empire restores a vital element of our past, illuminating one of the great forces of colonization and the expansion westward.

McCorkle takes us back to her longtime fictional home town, Fulton, North Carolina, to meet a broad range of characters that have much in common with... the so-called lesser species. The voices with which McCorkle tells their stories crackle with wit, but also with a deeper-and more forgiving-wisdom than ever before.

Jossey-Bass Trade Paperback 1st Printing with 332 pages - Credibility is a personal, inspiring and genuine guide to helping the fundamental importance... of credibility for building personal and organizational success and for fostering trust within out work, family, and community.

The first true revision of the classic book from the bestselling author of The Leadership ChallengeAs the world falls deeper into economic downturns and... warfare, the question of credibility (how leaders gain and lose it) is more important than ever. Building on their research from The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner explore in Credibility why leadership is above all a relationship, with credibility as the cornerstone, and why leaders must "Say what you mean and mean what you say." This first full revision of the book since its initial publication in 1993 features new case studies from around the world, fully updated data and research, and a streamlined format. Written by the premier leadership experts working today, Credibility: Reveals the six key disciplines that strengthen a leader's capacity for developing and sustaining credibility. Provides rich examples of real managers in actionIncludes updates to?the applications?and researchThis personal, inspiring, and genuine guide helps you understand the fundamental importance of credibility for building personal and organizational success.

This accessible and stirring book not only introduces readers to the work of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the domestic... antipoverty and social justice program sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but also inspires us to service. With John P. Hogan as our guide, we are invited to walk with those who serve and those who are served in confronting the daily reality of poverty as well as the root causes and structures that cause it. Written with the skill of a journalist and the passion of a social justice reformer, Credible Signs of Christ Alive highlights six exemplary CCHD-funded projects that represent successful joint efforts between the working poor--including whites, African-Americans, Latin Americans, and a variety of immigrant groups including, Africans, Asians, Hispanics, and Russians--and the non-poor. Complete with case studies, reflection questions, suggested actions, contacts, and optional further reading, this book tells the story behind the poverty statistics, mines the hope behind the headlines, and makes real the power of faith to transform the world.

Credit-card debt is choking American prosperity off at the neck. In Credit Card Nation, Robert D. Manning tells a fascinating story about the present... and future consequences of credit dependence across all strata of U.S. society. Through extensive interviews with consumers, Manning talks to debtors, and to average Americans, affected by what Manning describes as our "credit card nation": an American juggernaut of indebtedness that spans personal, corporate, and governmental debt.

The credit derivatives market is booming and, for the first time, expanding into the banking sector which previously has had very little exposure to... quantitative modeling. This phenomenon has forced a large number of professionals to confront this issue for the first time. Credit Derivatives Pricing Models provides an extremely comprehensive overview of the most current areas in credit risk modeling as applied to the pricing of credit derivatives. As one of the first books to uniquely focus on pricing, this title is also an excellent complement to other books on the application of credit derivatives. Based on proven techniques that have been tested time and again, this comprehensive resource provides readers with the knowledge and guidance to effectively use credit derivatives pricing models. Filled with relevant examples that are applied to real-world pricing problems, Credit Derivatives Pricing Models paves a clear path for a better understanding of this complex issue.Dr. Philipp J. Schönbucher is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, and has degrees in mathematics from Oxford University and a PhD in economics from Bonn University. He has taught various training courses organized by ICM and CIFT, and lectured at risk conferences for practitioners on credit derivatives pricing, credit risk modeling, and implementation.

More efficient credit portfolio engineering can increase the decision-making power of bankers and boost the market value of their banks. By implementing... robust risk management procedures, bankers can develop comprehensive views of obligors by integrating fundamental and market data into a portfolio framework that treats all instruments similarly. Banks that can implement strategies for uncovering credit risk investments with the highest return per unit of risk can confidently build their businesses. Through chapters on fundamental analysis and credit administration, authors Morton Glantz and Johnathan Mun teach readers how to improve their credit skills and develop logical decision-making processes. As readers acquire new abilities to calculate risks and evaluate portfolios, they learn how credit risk strategies and policies can affect and be affected by credit ratings and global exposure tracking systems. The result is a book that facilitates the discipline of market-oriented portfolio management in the face of unending changes in the financial industry. Concentrates on the practical implementation of credit engineering strategies and tools Demonstrates how bankers can use portfolio analytics to increase their insights about different groups of obligorsInvestigates ways to improve a portfolio's return on risk while minimizing probability of insolvency