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“An impassioned indictment, one that glows with the heat of a prosecution motivated by an ethical imperative.” —Lisa Appignanesi, New York Review of Books In the first comprehensive history of the links between autism and Nazism, prize-winning historian Edith Sheffer uncovers how a diagnosis common today emerged from the atrocities of the Third Reich. As the Nazi regime slaughtered millions across Europe during World War Two, it sorted people according to race, religion, behavior, and physical condition. Nazi psychiatrists targeted children with different kinds of minds—especially those thought to lack social skills—claiming the Reich had no place for them. Hans Asperger and his colleagues endeavored to mold certain “autistic” children into productive citizens, while transferring others to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich’s deadliest child killing centers. In this unflinching history, Sheffer exposes Asperger’s complicity in the murderous policies of the Third Reich.
The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 shocked the world. Ever since, the image of this impenetrable barrier between East and West, imposed by communism, has been a central symbol of the Cold War. Based on vast research in untapped archival, oral, and private sources, Burned Bridge reveals the hidden origins of the Iron Curtain, presenting it in a startling new light. Historian Edith Sheffer's unprecedented, in-depth account focuses on Burned Bridge-the intersection between two sister cities, Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg, Germany's largest divided population outside Berlin. Sheffer demonstrates that as Soviet and American forces occupied each city after the Second World War, townspeopl...
The first history of postwar fears of a Nazi return to power in Western political, intellectual, and cultural life.
400 years after The Anatomy of Melancholy, this book guides readers through Renaissance medicine's disease of the mind.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inh...
'Magisterial ... Immensely readable' Douglas Alexander, Financial Times 'Insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant' New York Times A compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from 'the most brilliant British historian of his generation' (The Times) Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, N...
How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and consideri...
Hitler's Germany provides a comprehensive narrative history of Nazi Germany and sets it in the wider context of nineteenth and twentieth century German history. Roderick Stackelberg analyzes how it was possible that a national culture of such creativity and achievement could generate such barbarism and destructiveness. This second edition has been updated throughout to incorporate recent historical research and engage with current debates in the field. It includes: an expanded introduction focusing on the hazards of writing about Nazi Germany an extended analysis of fascism, totalitarianism, imperialism and ideology a broadened contextualisation of antisemitism discussion of the Holocaust in...
Pharmacologically enhanced militaries -- Alcohol -- From pre-modern times to the end of the Second World War -- Pre-modern times: opium, hashish, mushrooms and coca -- Napoleon in Egypt and the adventures of Europeans with hashish -- The Opium Wars -- The American Civil War, opium, morphine and the "soldiers' disease"--The colonial wars and the terrifying "barbarians"--coca to cocaine: the First World War -- The Second World War -- The Cold War -- From the Korean War to the war over mind control -- In search of wonderful new techniques and weapons -- Vietnam: the first true pharmacological war -- The Red Army in Afghanistan and the problem of drug addiction -- Towards the present -- Contemporary irregular armies empowered by drugs -- Intoxicated child soldiers -- Drugs in the contemporary American Armed Forces -- Conclusion -- Epilogue: war as a drug
Confessional and often hilarious, in Normal Sucks a neuro-diverse writer, advocate, and father meditates on his life, offering the radical message that we should stop trying to fix people and start empowering them to succeed Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote, expertise, and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learn—individually, uniquely, and with advantages and upshots to every type of brain and body. As a neuro-diverse kid diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD who didn't learn to read until he was twelve, the realization that that he wasn’t the problem—the system and the concept of normal were—saved Mooney’s life and fundamentally changed his outlook. Here he ...