Psychology History

Why do military commanders fail at crucial moments of their careers? Robert Pois and Philip Langer, one a historian, the other an educational psychologist, study seven cases of military command failures, from Frederick the Great at Kunersdorf to Hitler’s invasion of Russia. While the authors recognize the value of psychological theorizing, they do not believe that one method can cover all the individuals, battles, or campaigns under examination. Instead, they judiciously take a number of psycho-historical approaches in hope of shedding light on the behaviors of commanders during war.

American politics today can be defined by the intense and increasingly toxic divide between Democrats and Republicans. Matthew D. Luttig explores why so many Americans have endorsed this level of political conflict.

First he considers moments in history - Periclean Athens, the English Civil War, the American and French Revolutions, among them - in which the challenges we face today were first encountered and what solutions, however imperfect, were found. Then he lays bare the specific problems of democracy in the 21st century and maps out a set of urgently needed reforms. With the advent of authoritarian leaders and the simultaneous rise of populism, representative democracy appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place, yet it is this space that it must occupy, says Grayling, if a civilised society that looks after all its people is to flourish.

Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It's an inquiry into why we swim - the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It's a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It's about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You'll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.

The brilliant, amoral, and spectacularly bold Bessie Tyler and Edward Young Clarke - together, the Southern Publicity Association - met the fervent William Joseph Simmons (founder of the second KKK), saw an opportunity, and played on his many weaknesses. Tyler and Clarke took Simmons' dying and broken KKK, with its 2,000-3,000 associates in Georgia and Alabama, and in a few short years swelled its membership to nearly five million.

On April 14, 1865 John Wilkes Booth changed the world with a single bullet. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln had many repercussions and for Henry Rathbone they were profound. Henry was the only man to confront Booth and attempt to apprehend the assassin. Henry was also the man that let Booth escape. While Henry wasn't officially blamed for allowing John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln, he blamed himself.

As a student named Rick Starr experiences elementary school, middle school, and high school, he learns more about gender roles, psychological isolation, bullying, and apathy than about reading, writing, and arithmetic. After suffering through bad teachers, navigating the social ladder, confronting bullies, and completing countless standardized tests, he has a revelation about public school in America: It's comprised of sex, lies, and scantrons.

Fear is ubiquitous but slippery. It has been defined as a purely biological reality, derided as an excuse for cowardice, attacked as a force for social control, and even denigrated as an unnatural condition that has no place in the disenchanted world of enlightened modernity. In these times of institutionalized insecurity and global terror, Facing Fear sheds light on the meaning, diversity, and dynamism of fear in multiple world-historical contexts, and demonstrates how fear universally binds us to particular presents.

John Homans adopted his dog, Stella, from a shelter for all the usual reasons: fond memories of dogs from his past, a companion for his son, an excuse for long walks around the neighborhood. Soon enough, she is happily ensconced in the daily workings of his family. And not only that: Stella is treated like a family member - in ways that dogs of his youth were not. Spending humanlike sums on vet bills, questioning her diet and exercise regimens, contemplating her happiness - how had this all come to pass, when the dogs from Homans's childhood seemed quite content living mostly out in the yard?

In Beastly Brains, Nancy Castaldo delves into the minds of animals and explores animal empathy, communication, tool use, and social societies through interviews and historical anecdotes. Researchers from Charles Darwin to Jane Goodall have spent years analyzing the minds of animals, and today's science is revolutionizing old theories and uncovering surprising similarities to our own minds. Humans are not alone in our ability to think.

Post-traumatic stress disorder was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the latter part of the 19th century. In PTSD, Allan V. Horwitz traces the fluctuations in definitions of and responses to traumatic psychic conditions. Arguing that PTSD, perhaps more than any other diagnostic category, is a lens for showing major historical changes in conceptions of mental illness, he surveys the conditions most likely to produce traumas, the results of those traumas, and how to evaluate the claims of trauma victims.

Abhinav Bindra once shot 100 out of 100 in practice six times in a row and walked out of the range unhappy. He is a perfectionist who once soled his shoes with rubber from Ferrari tyres because he thought it would help. He would wake up at 3:00 a.m. to practise at his range at home if an idea suddenly struck him. It is from such obsession that greatness arrives.

Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.

When Paul Collins’s son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head … but not answer to his own name. A casual conversation—or any social interaction that the rest of us take for granted—will, for Morgan, always be a cryptogram that must be painstakingly decoded. He lives in a world of his own: an autistic world. In Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins melds a memoir of his son’s autism with a journey into this realm of permanent outsiders.

Chakras, the seven energy points of the body, are a fundamental part of ancient Eastern teachings. But so many people have their chakras blocked and unbalanced in the modern world, and are unable to benefit from their spiritual and physical healing powers. Now, this book uncovers the secrets of the seven chakras, and how we can unlock them.

Today, millions of Americans are struggling with alcoholism, but millions are also in long-term recovery. Alcoholics Anonymous and a growing number of recovery organizations are providing support for alcoholics who will face the danger of relapse for the rest of their lives. We have finally come to understand alcoholism as a treatable illness rather than a moral failure. Today's advocates can draw inspiration from the victories of sober drunks throughout American history.

En este libro se aborda la nueva rama denominada la CiberPisoclogía, que estudia cómo se ha producido un cambio en la relación persona-tecnología, analizando cómo afectan los nuevos desarrollos al día a día de la persona, así como a la salud mental de sus usuarios. Todo ello avalado por una extensa bibliografía sobre las últimas investigaciones realizadas en este ámbito.

PTSD, as the name suggests, is a stress disorder that follows a traumatic event or period of time where an individual is gripped by such terror and feelings of helplessness that it actually changes how their nervous system operates moving forward. This insidious, and far too often life-threatening disorder can arise from the aforementioned cases of war or sexual abuse, but it also can be set in motion by any and all other forms of psychological trauma.

The Book of Phobias and Manias is a thrilling compendium of 99 obsessions that have shaped us all, the rare and the familiar, from ablutophobia (a horror of washing) to syllogomania (a compulsion to hoard) to zoophobia (a fear of animals).

On August 22, 1485, at Bosworth Field, Richard III fell, the Wars of the Roses ended, and the Tudor dynasty began. The clash is so significant because it marks the break between medieval and modern; yet how much do we really know about this historical landmark? Michael K. Jones uses archival discoveries to show Richard III's defeat was by no means inevitable and was achieved only through extraordinary chance. He relocates the battle away from the site recognized for more than 500 years.