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Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historical approaches to the study of the central idea of utilitarianism, the chapters provide a rich set of insights into a founding component of ethics and modern political and economic thought, as well as political and economic practice. In doing so, the chapters examine the multiple dimensions of utilitarianism and the contested interpretations of this standard for judgement in morality and public policy.
The inside story of an upstate New York serial killer who abducted, raped, and murdered women and hid their bodies in his home. In the late 1990s in Poughkeepsie, New York, prostitutes began to go missing off the streets of the old Hudson River town. Due to the women’s nomadic lifestyles, which many people condemned, few in the town noticed they were gone besides their families and Lieutenant Bill Siegrist, who suspected that a serial killer was behind the disappearances. Local prostitutes described a strange man lurking around, leading Siegrist to Kendall Francois, an overweight, slovenly middle school hall monitor nicknamed Stinky. Police brought in Francois for a lie detector test, whic...
Frederick Rosen presents an original study of John Stuart Mill's moral and political philosophy. He explores a range of key themes across the breadth of Mill's works, and considers Mill's complex relationships with his contemporary thinkers; the traditional sources on which he drew; and his influence on major thinkers of recent centuries.
This book presents a new interpretation of the principle of utility in moral and political theory based on the writings of the classical utilitarians from Hume to J.S. Mill. Discussion of utility in writers such as Adam Smith, William Paley and Jeremy Bentham is included.
The shocking exposé of a carny’s murder arranged by his wife—and the daughter who threatened the author to keep the truth from getting out. In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival “freak” Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles’s death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband’s murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. The narrative is full of appearances from the couple’s colorful acquaintances, including the World’s Only Living Half Girl, Midget Man, and the Human Blockhead. During Mary Teresa’s dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book. When both he and the prosecution are threatened by Mary Teresa’s daughter, who Rosen believes was a co-conspirator although she was never indicted, the writer risks his life in pursuit of the truth and the evidence that leads to Mary Teresa’s conviction.
Exploring the connection between Bentham and Byron forged by the Greek struggle for independence, this book focuses on the activities of the London Greek Committee, supposedly founded by disciples of Jeremy Bentham, which mounted the expedition on which Lord Byron ultimately met his death in Greece. Rosen's penetrating study provides a new assessment of British philhellenism and examines for the first time the relationship between Bentham's theory of constitutional government and the emerging liberalism of the 1820s. Breaking new ground in the history of political ideas and culture in the early nineteenth century, Rosen advances striking new interpretations based on recently published texts and manuscript sources of the development of constitutional theory from Locke and Montesquieu, the conflicting strands of liberalism in the 1820s, and the response in Britain to strong claims for national self-determination in the Mediterranean basin. He sets out to distinguish between Bentham's theory and the ideological context against which it is usually interpreted.
A Michigan couple’s affair leads to two grisly murders by heroin injection in this true crime account from the acclaimed author of Lobster Boy. When Carol Giles’s friend Nancy Billiter was found dead—she had been bound, sexually violated, and injected with a lethal dose of battery acid and heroin—detectives in Michigan traced Billiter’s death back to Giles and her boyfriend, Tim Collier. Police also learned that the diabolical duo shared another secret: They had murdered Giles’s husband, Jessie. Jessie, who had died months before Billiter, was disinterred, and an autopsy proved he’d been given a lethal shot of heroin instead of his prescribed insulin. Homebound and diabetic, Jessie was a heroin dealer. Police determined that Giles—who was fed up with taking care of her husband and children—along with her lover, Collier, had stolen the fatal dose from Jessie’s own drug supply. The cops surmised that Billiter’s death might have been due to her knowledge of the couple’s plot. In their dramatic trial, Giles and Collier turned against each other, but both were eventually convicted of murder.
Since the early nineteenth century, the United States has repeatedly intervened in the affairs of Latin American nations to pursue its own interests and to “protect” those countries from other imperial powers or from internal “threats.” The resentment and opposition generated by the encroachment of U.S. power has been evident in the recurrent attempts of Latin American nations to pull away from U.S. dominance and in the frequent appearance of popular discontent and unrest directed against imperialist U.S. policies. In Empire and Dissent, senior Latin Americanists explore the interplay between various dimensions of imperial power and the resulting dissent and resistance. Several essay...
Two brothers turn from Jehovah’s Witnesses in Allentown, PA, to neo-Nazi murderers in this true crime investigation from the author of Lobster Boy. Raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses and frustrated with their parents’ repressive rules, Bryan and David Freeman rebelled as teenagers. Encouraged by an acquaintance he met while institutionalized at a reform school, Bryan became a neo-Nazi. Bryan then indoctrinated David, and their flare for defiance took a dark turn. After callously murdering their father, mother, and younger brother, the skinhead brothers took flight across America, with police from three states in hot pursuit. They were eventually captured in Michigan and returned to Pennsylvania for trial. During the trial, author Fred Rosen uncovered evidence that one of the brothers might not have been as culpable as authorities claimed, and divulged the history of a family torn apart by stringent religious beliefs.