The Mirror Test PDF Download

Author: J. Kael Weston
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0345806948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice A Military Times Best Book of the Year J. Kael Weston spent seven years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan working for the U.S. State Department. Upon returning home, traveling throughout the United States to pay his respects to the dead and wounded, he wondered what lessons, if any, could be learned from these wars. In this essential book, Weston questions, interprets, and explains our wars in the Middle East through a tapestry of voices—Iraqi, Afghan, and American—taking readers across California and Fallujah, Khost and Colorado. Along the way we meet generals, corporals, and captains, former Taliban fighters, Afghan schoolteachers, SEAL teams, imams, and many Marines. When will these wars end? How will they be remembered? Perhaps no one is better suited to tackle these important questions than Weston. The Mirror Test is an unflinching look at warfare and diplomacy, and a necessary reckoning with America’s actions abroad.

Author: J. Kael Weston
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385351135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice A Military Times Best Book of the Year A powerfully written firsthand account of the human costs of conflict. J. Kael Weston spent seven years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan working for the U.S. State Department in some of the most dangerous frontline locations. Upon his return home, while traveling the country to pay respect to the dead and wounded, he asked himself: When will these wars end? How will they be remembered and memorialized? What lessons can we learn from them? These are questions with no quick answers, but perhaps ones that might lead to a shared reckoning worthy of the sacrifices of those—troops and civilians alike—whose lives have been changed by more than a decade and a half of war. Weston takes us from Twentynine Palms in California to Fallujah in Iraq, Khost and Helmand in Afghanistan, Maryland, Colorado, Wyoming, and New York City, as well as to out-of-the-way places in Iowa and Texas. We meet generals, corporals and captains, senators and ambassadors, NATO allies, Iraqi truck drivers, city councils, imams and mullahs, Afghan schoolteachers, madrassa and college students, former Taliban fighters and ex-Guantánamo prison detainees, a torture victim, SEAL and Delta Force teams, and many Marines. The overall frame for the book, from which the title is taken, centers on soldiers who have received a grievous wound to the face. There is a moment during their recovery when they must look upon their reconstructed appearance for the first time. This is known as “the mirror test.” From an intricate tapestry of voices and stories—Iraqi, Afghan, and American—Weston delivers a larger mirror test for our nation in its global role. An unflinching and deep examination of the interplay between warfare and diplomacy, this is an essential book—a crucial look at America now, how it is viewed in the world and how the nation views itself.

Author: Jeffrey W. Hayzlett
Publisher: Business Plus
ISBN: 0446569135
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Hayzlett's big booming approach is direct and to the point, but done so with a smile on his face as The Mirror Test is chock full of inspirational business stories and insights from his own career. Jeff Hayzlett is a big, boisterous guy who has the guts to get in your face and tell you exactly why your business isn't doing well. In short, he asks the questions that most business managers are afraid to ask. And as Jeff points out, if you aren't willing to look at what's working and what isn't - and then take the necessary steps to fix them -- well, you and your colleagues and employees are in for a tough ride. Known for his outspoken appearances on numerous TV reality shows, Hayzlett has built his career on having the ability to get his people to look up and pay attention to the problems at hand. The Mirror Test will teach readers -- through entertaining and timely anecdotes -- how to thoughtfully yet aggressively evaluate, deconstruct, and then reconstruct one's business.. In his unique, confrontational manner, Hayzlett will coach small business owners and managers on topics such as: Give your business the mirror test - is your company really breathing? Here's how you and your company must adapt...or die. The bottom line of your business really is... your bottom line. You have to focus on it.

Author: Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385352077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
With the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. Here, in ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker, he recalls the path that terror in the Middle East has taken, from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS. The Terror Years draws on several articles he wrote while researching The Looming Tower, as well as many that he’s written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread. They include a portrait of the “man behind bin Laden,” Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the tumultuous Egypt he helped spawn; an indelible impression of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of silence under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, at the time compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; the 2006–11 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, a study in the disparate value of human lives. Other chapters examine al-Qaeda as it forms a master plan for its future, experiences a rebellion from within the organization, and spins off a growing web of worldwide terror. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and the head of the intelligence community. The book ends with a devastating piece about the capture and slaying by ISIS of four American journalists and aid workers, and our government’s failed response. On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, The Terror Years is at once a unifying recollection of the roots of contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, a study of how it has grown and metastasized, and, in the scary and moving epilogue, a cautionary tale of where terrorism might take us yet.

Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523226
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

Author: Thalia Field
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811229742
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
A remarkable and moving cross-genre work about animal rights by one of America’s foremost experimental writers Whether investigating refugee parrots, indentured elephants, the pathetic fallacy, or the revolving absurdity of the human role in the "invasive species crisis," Personhood reveals how the unmistakable problem between humans and our nonhuman relatives is too often the derangement of our narratives and the resulting lack of situational awareness. Building on her previous collection, Bird Lovers, Backyard, Thalia Field's essayistic investigations invite us on a humorous, heartbroken journey into how people attempt to control the fragile complexities of a shared planet. The lived experiences of animals, and other historical actors, provide unique literary-ecological responses to the exigencies of injustice and to our delusions of special status.

Author: Diana Reiss
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547445725
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
A leading authority on dolphin intelligence shares scientific information about dolphin creativity, emotions, and communication abilities while advocating for stronger dolphin protection laws.

Author: Robert S. Kaplan
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1422170012
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Harvard Business School professor and business leader Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necessary, and advance your career.

Author: Tara Well
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 168403969X
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Discover the power of mirror meditation to help you awaken self-compassion, increase self-awareness, and gain the confidence needed to thrive. Seeing ourselves clearly isn’t always easy—especially in the age of social media. Technology has eroded our capacity for authentic self-reflection. As a result, we feel more anxious and depressed, have shorter attention spans, and have become more estranged from ourselves and each other. We’ve also become more critical of our physical appearance, and this self-criticism can damage our confidence and stand in the way of our happiness. In order to heal, we must come face to face with our true selves—not the images of ourselves that we alter and post online. If you're ready for self-reflection that has nothing to do with selfies, this book will reveal the way. Based in cutting-edge neuroscience, Mirror Meditation offers mindful practices for increasing your self-awareness, managing stress and emotions, developing self-compassion, and increasing your confidence and personal presence. Using the three principles of mindfulness meditation—attention to the present moment, open awareness, and kind intention toward oneself—you’ll realize just how much your self-criticisms are affecting you. Then you’ll have a choice—and a practice—to treat yourself with more self-acceptance. Self-awareness can help you break free from both your inner critic and the external world that stokes the fears and anxieties that we are never good enough, never have enough, and are never safe enough. The simple self-mirroring technique in this unique guide isn’t grounded in technology—just a commitment to be present with yourself.

Author: Noah Warren
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1619322412
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
The Complete Stories announces its desire and its lie in the title; this is a book of shatter and loss. In his second collection, Noah Warren—previously selected by Carl Phillips for the Yale Series of Younger Poets—unravels histories both personal and public, picking apart their ugliness, beauty, and irreducible singularity. Clothed in broken forms, these poems of grieving and tentative joy ask finally how we can go forward with our own mottled pasts, into the futures we can’t predict but for which we must bear responsibility.