New Releases by David Brooks

Hay una capacidad que yace en el corazón de cualquier persona o comunidad: la de ver a los demás —en su sentido más profundo— y hacerlos sentir valorados, respetados y comprendidos. Sin embargo, a nuestro alrededor hay personas que se sienten invisibles en una sociedad fragmentada, hostil e insensible al sufrimiento. David Brooks se nutre de la psicología y la neurociencia, así como del teatro, la filosofía y la historia para ofrecer un enfoque esperanzador sobre la conexión humana que nos enseña a realizar acciones concretas, pequeñas pero significativas: ser un buen oyente, pedir y ofrecer perdón, sentarse con quien sufre, mirar las cosas desde la perspectiva del otro... En pocas palabras: ser más comprensivos —y compasivos— con nuestros semejantes. Cómo conocer a una persona es para aquellos que anhelan conectar verdaderamente con los demás. "Este libro ya es mi favorito de todos los que David ha escrito. [...] Más que una guía para tener mejores conversaciones, se trata de un proyecto para vivir de manera más conectada y humana. Es una lectura imprescindible para cualquiera que busque profundizar sus relaciones y ampliar sus perspectivas." —Bill Gates, GatesNotes (lecturas recomendadas)

Você já se perguntou como realmente conhecer alguém além das aparências superficiais? Em um mundo onde as conexões verdadeiras são cada vez mais raras, David Brooks nos oferece uma obra indispensável para entender a essência das pessoas ao nosso redor. Como conhecer bem uma pessoa é mais do que um livro; é um guia prático e profundo que revela os segredos para construir relações significativas e autênticas. Brooks, renomado colunista do The New York Times e autor de best-sellers, combina sua habilidade narrativa com pesquisas sólidas em psicologia e sociologia para mostrar ao leitor como: · Desenvolver empatia genuína. · Praticar a escuta ativa e melhorar a comunicação. · Elaborar perguntas que revelam a verdadeira essência de uma pessoa. · Superar preconceitos e enxergar além das aparências. Este livro é leitura obrigatória para qualquer pessoa que valorize relações pessoais e profissionais mais profundas e satisfatórias. Com sua escrita envolvente, Brooks transforma conceitos complexos em insights práticos e acessíveis que podem ser aplicados no dia a dia.

Korean edition of [How to Know a Person] by David Brooks. New York Times bestseller. A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives--from the author of [The Road to Character] and [The Second Mountain]. Korean edition translated by Gyeong Shik Lee.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

Mensen écht kennen en diepe verbindingen aangaan is een kunst – die je kunt leren Er is volgens The New York Times-bestsellerauteur David Brooks één basisvaardigheid essentieel voor het geluk van ieder mens. En dat is het vermogen om anderen goed te kennen en hun het gevoel te geven dat ze worden gezien, gehoord, begrepen en op waarde worden geschat. Toch voelen veel mensen in onze samenleving zich onzichtbaar en onbelangrijk. In De kunst van mensen kennen vertelt Brooks hoe we het vermogen om anderen echt te zien kunnen verbeteren. Hoe communiceer je met de mensen om je heen? Welke vragen stel je en hoe luister je? Hoe voorkom je dat je iemand meteen in een hokje plaatst en hoe leer je door andermans ogen te kijken? Voor de antwoorden op deze vragen put Brooks uit de psychologie en de neurowetenschap, maar ook uit cultuur, geschiedenis en onderwijs. Hij stelt dat er niet alleen kennis en aandacht, maar vooral ook creativiteit nodig is om in iedereen iets bijzonders te zien. De kunst van mensen kennen is voor de lezer die anderen beter wil begrijpen én zelf beter begrepen wil worden. ‘Zijn columns staan steevast dagenlang op nummer een van bestgelezen stukken van de website van The New York Times. Hij is te horen en te zien in vele populaire podcasts, radio- en tv-programma’s. Als de VS een ‘Denker des Vaderlands’ had, zou Brooks goede kans maken.’ NRC Handelsblad Over De tweede berg: ‘Een overtuigend pleidooi’ **** NRC Handelsblad ‘Een krachtig, indringend boek dat je niet meer loslaat.’ The Guardian ‘Zeer ontroerend en buitengewoon scherp. En hoopvol in de beste zin van het woord.’ The Washington Post ‘Een must-read in tijden van sociale distantie en nieuwe gemeenschapszin.’ Trouw David Brooks (1961) is auteur en al jaren een van de bestgelezen columnisten van The New York Times. Hij heeft meerdere bestsellers geschreven, waaronder De tweede berg. Hij geeft les aan de Yale University en is lid van de American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain “More than a guide to better conversations, it’s a blueprint for a more connected and humane way of living. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to deepen their relationships and broaden their perspectives.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes (Summer Reading Pick) As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to? Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception. The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.

This is a biography of Dan Levenson, an old-time banjo and fiddle player from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1987 and 1991, Dan worked for Goose Acres Folk Music Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he dove deeply into old-time music. In the late 1980s, he formed the Boiled Buzzards; they recorded four albums between 1989 and 1994 and were a consistently active presence at old-time music festivals. He also played with Bob Frank during that time as one-half of the Hotfoot Duo. In 1995, he teamed up with Kim Murley and recorded New Frontier: Instrumentals from China and America. Levenson undertook his first cross-country trip as a solo performer in 1996. His traveling workshop "Meet the Banjo" ran with the sponsorship of Deering Banjos from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Dan recorded three projects in the first five years of the 2000s and began editing the quarterly "Old Time Way" section for Banjo Newsletter in 2005. He continues performing old-time music, teaching fiddle and banjo, writing instructional and repertoire books featuring banjo and fiddle tunes for Mel Bay, and making plans for more old-time music projects.

Suitable for all voices, this song cycle (\"Three Poems of David Brooks\") was inspired by the poetry of Australian writer David Brooks. The three poems used in this song cycle came from David''s anthology \"The Cold Front\". In this instance, David''s poems are written in the manner of the \"deep image\" poets of America. \"The Cold Front\" represents a journey by the poet through the darker side of his nature; however, within the poetry we see tremendous beauty and hope. The three poems selected for the song cycle, \"Here\

''Our lives with non-human animals are characterised by a kind of unremitting contempt. Habits of life, traditions of thought, and failures of imagination have rendered us blind to their invitations to companionship within a shared world. And philosophy, alas, has offered little to assuage our moral incomprehension, our soul blindness, preferring to make what appeal it can through the languid language of ‘rights’ or the calculus of sentient suffering. Over the last few decades, it has fallen increasingly to novelists, like J.M. Coetzee, and poets, like David Brooks – artists whose language has slipped the leash, if you will, of ‘pure reason’ – to awaken us to the possibility of moral encounter with non-human animals. Brooks’s essay Turin is truly a startling achievement. It startles us from an impoverished slumber, leaving us wondering how we could have been so blind to the gentle presence, the insistent voices, the sly wisdom, the subtle reproach, the offers of friendship held out by our non-human companions. The world cannot help but look different once Brooks rips way the veil of our all-too-human conceit.'' — Scott Stephens Scott Stephens is the religion and ethics editor of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and the co-host (with Waleed Aly) of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. He is the author of On Contempt (forthcoming from Melbourne University Press).

Lorsque son mariage s’écroule après vingt-sept années de vie commune et deux enfants, David Brooks remet brutalement en question son mode de vie hyper-individualiste où le temps compte plus que les gens, la productivité plus que les relations. L’expérience de cet échec lui permet de développer la théorie de l’existence des « deux montagnes ». La réalisation de soi est la « première montagne », mais elle cache une « deuxième montagne » vers laquelle nous devons tous tendre pour remettre au centre de nos vies individuelles et collectives la question du lien. David Brooks est un célèbre éditorialiste du New York Times. Fin observateur du monde contemporain, il a inventé le concept du « bobo » (pour bourgeois-bohème). Il est l’auteur de nombreux ouvrages best-sellers et il intervient régulièrement à la radio et à la télévision.

The Necessity of Atheism is an essay on atheism Dr. D.M. Brooks. Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox...

''We need to organise politically to defend the weak, empower the many and prepare the ground for reversing the absurdities of capitalism.'' - Yanis Varoufakis ''Capitalism over the past twenty-five years has been an incredible moral good.'' - David Brooks The Munk debate on capitalism There is a growing belief that the capitalist system no longer works. Inequality is rampant. The environment is being destroyed for profits. In some western nations, life expectancy is even falling. Political power is wielded by wealthy elites and big business, not the people. But for proponents of capitalism, it is the engine of progress, not just making all of us materially better off, but helping to address everything from women''s rights to political freedoms. We seem to stand at a crossroads: do we need to fix the system as a matter of urgency, or would it be better to hold our nerve?

This book has been published to accompany the Mark Dion and David Brooks exhibition of the same title.

''Een must-read in tijden van sociale distantie en nieuwe gemeenschapszin.'' - Trouw ''Een overtuigend pleidooi.'' **** NRC Handelsblad Sta jij op je eerste of tweede berg? Draait het leven om jou – of om anderen? Gaat het om succes – of om betekenis? We leven in een wereld die ons vertelt dat we vooral persoonlijk geluk moeten nastreven: carrière maken, succes hebben en mooie spullen verzamelen. Dit is wat David Brooks de zogenaamde ‘eerste berg’ noemt die we vaak allemaal bewandelen. Maar als we op die top zijn aangekomen, of eraf zijn gevallen door bijvoorbeeld een ontslag of een verlies, kunnen we tot de ontdekking komen dat dát ons niet daadwerkelijk gelukkig maakt. We gaan verlangen naar dingen die er echt toe doen. Dat is het moment waarop je de tweede berg beklimt. Op de tweede berg draait het niet meer om jezelf, maar om jouw relatie met anderen. Het gaat om een betekenisvol leven. David Brooks onderzoekt hoe je een waardevol leven kunt leiden in een egocentrische maatschappij. Wat betekent het om verder te kijken dan jezelf en je op een groter doel te richten? Om onafhankelijkheid los te laten en afhankelijkheid te omarmen? Hij richt zich hierbij op vier belangrijke pijlers die je helpen met het beklimmen van die tweede berg: een verbintenis aangaan met familie, met een roeping, met een gemeenschap of met een filosofie of geloof. De tweede berg is een inspirerend en persoonlijk boek dat je helpt te ontdekken hoe jij ook een rijk en voldaan leven kunt leiden. ''Een krachtig, indringend boek dat je niet meer loslaat.'' The Guardian David Brooks (1961) is auteur en al jaren een van de best gelezen columnisten van The New York Times. Hij heeft meerdere bestsellers geschreven, waaronder The Road to Character. Hij geeft les aan Yale University en is lid van de American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ‘Zijn columns staan steevast dagenlang op nummer een van bestgelezen stukken van de website van The New York Times. Hij is te horen en zien in vele populaire podcasts, radio- en tv-programma’s. Als de VS een ‘Denker des Vaderlands’ had, zou Brooks goede kans maken.’ NRC Handelsblad ''Zeer ontroerend en buitengewoon scherp. En hoopvol in de beste zin van het woord.'' The Washington Post ''Lessen die mogelijk je leven veranderen zijn te vinden in dit relevante boek dat je aanzet tot nadenken.'' Booklist ''Het beste boek van Brooks ooit. Krachtig. Zijn inspirerende boek is een zelfhulpgids om de gevangenis van jezelf te ontvluchten.'' The Observer ''Het is de gave van David Brooks om taai maar overtuigend sociaal onderzoek toegankelijk en zelfs verrassend te maken.'' The New York Times Book Review ''Brooks haalt een breed scala aan wetenschappers en denkers aan om een idee te weven dat groter is dan de som der delen.'' USA Today ''Brooks grootse prestatie zit in zijn vermogen om de ongeziene aspecten van privé-ervaringen te verheffen tot een krachtig en uitdagend gesprek over wat we allemaal met elkaar delen.'' San Francisco Chronicle ''Het hogere doel is volgens Brooks de “tweede berg”. De eerste berg draait om jezelf, de tweede om anderen. Het goede leven is niet gericht op pleziertjes, maar op diepe relaties met de mensen om je heen.'' **** NRC Handelsblad

（原書名 品格：履歷表與追悼文的抉擇） 你的一生是為了履歷表的成就， 還是為了追悼文中的讚美而活？ 追求成功之際，你要如何回應內心抉擇，無愧人生？ 終其一生，我們都被要求同時具備兩種自我， 學會在這兩種對抗中自處、修練高尚品格，是每個人的生命必修課題。 ★比爾．蓋茲推薦人生必讀之書 ★《紐約時報》暢銷書排行榜第一名 ★《經濟學人》首選好書 ★Amazon年度百大暢銷書 ★TED演講超過2,686,000次點擊 ★《紐約時報》《今日美國報》《華盛頓郵報》《出版者週刊》 《英國時代雜誌》《衛報》《英國觀點雜誌》等主流媒體一致盛讚 成為更好的你，就從展開自我對抗的那一刻起。 我們多半都知道如何追求職場成就，卻不十分明瞭如何健全自己的人格。 而這個世界也多半鼓勵人發展較有企圖心、外顯在履歷表的那一面， 忽略了內心深處追求平靜、貢獻世界的渴望。 而人的一生，就在這兩種矛盾中互相拉扯； 如何在兩種相互對抗的張力中雍容自處，成為人生的必修課題。 《紐約時報》專欄作家大衛．布魯克斯以犀利新穎的論述和TED高人氣演講撼動全世界。 他在TED著名演說「你應該為哪個奮鬥——履歷表與追悼文？」 讓我們重新思索，那個渴望成功、亟欲征服世界的自我， 以及另一個以愛為先、以包容和寬恕為主軸的自我，該如何達到平衡？ 傾盡全力想征服世界的同時，如何回應內心深處良善的召喚？ 馬歇爾將軍戰功彪炳、舉世聞名，仍能保持虛懷若谷； 戰勝自我弱點的艾森豪總統、服膺召喚的作家喬治．艾略特， 以及走過蔭谷找回救贖、將生命全然投入服務眾人的社會運動家， 他們都以謙卑的內在力量找回更好的自己，並逐步影響了世界。 在這個以我為先、注重個人利益的時代，我們不該只為了享樂而活。 每個人都要努力戰勝自我，找到人生的真義，成為更好的人。 專文推薦 u200b人不只是追求享樂，還要追求使命。 人生有二本帳：私人小帳與社會大帳。 人不能只有私人帳上財富累積，社會帳上卻出現赤字。 這就是小我與大我的平衡。 ——高希均，遠見．天下文化事業群創辦人 沒有人是完美的，當面對自己時，我們無所遁形； 一旦面對社會責任時，我們也要時時提醒自己必須要「自視甚渺」。 ——嚴長壽，公益平台文化基金會董事長

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world. “Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive.”—The Washington Post Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment. In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose. In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

David Brooks ha construido una brillante carrera como articulista en The New York Times, allí, con su implacable ingenio, ha enriquecido nuestras mañanas con sorprendentes historias narradas con humor y sabiduría. Ahora, en su más reciente éxito, Brooks se opone a la cultura de la presunción, que centra los esfuerzos de las personas en demostrar un éxito y calidad de vida superficial, y llama a cultivar aquellos valores que dotarán a nuestra existencia de un destello único. Sólo necesitamos buscar en nuestro interior la bondad, la valentía y la honestidad necesarias para forjar en nuestras vidas la estela única del éxito verdadero: el amor, la compasión, la felicidad. Best seller #1 de The New York Times. Cargado de política, psicología y espiritualidad, El camino del carácter es la oportunidad perfecta para repensar nuestras prioridades y luchar por construir vidas más enriquecedoras apoyadas en profundos valores morales.

The Necessity of Atheism presents an overview of religious scepticism in the 1930s, and a look at on-going debate and like scepticism even today. Despite obvious conflict of its central topic coupled with the thorough deconstruction of all major religious figures and practices through time, I see this work as mainly offering a range of viewpoints on religious beliefs, systems and practices and not necessarily seeking to dissuade the reader from religious thought in anyway...I think this work is only for the open-minded or the free-thinker and even an opportunity for thought by those only previously exposed to religion, but it should not be employed as a tool for conflict.Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are "crutches" hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances.

This volume charts a new course in animal studies that re-examines Jacques Derrida''s enduring thought on the visualization of the animal in his seminal Cerisy Conference from 1997, The Animal That Therefore I Am. Building new proximities with the animal in and through - and at times in spite of - the visual apparatus, Seeing Animals after Derrida investigates how the recent turn in animal studies toward new materialism, speculative realism, and object-oriented ontology prompts a renewed engagement with Derrida''s animal philosophy. In taking up the matter of Derrida''s treatment of animality for the current epoch, the contributors to this book each present a case for new philosophical approaches and aesthetic paradigms that challenge the ocularcentrism of Western culture.

Milky and vine, a parody of milk and honey comprises of a collection of best vine quotes ever created and shared in the form of poetry. Its truly a delight for the sensation of true comedy at home and thought provoking ideas for happy leaving. Get a copy and be glad you did.

This is a primer written for computer architects in the new and rapidly evolving field of deep learning. It reviews how machine learning has evolved since its inception in the 1960s and tracks the key developments leading up to the emergence of the powerful deep learning techniques that emerged in the last decade. Machine learning, and specifically deep learning, has been hugely disruptive in many fields of computer science. The success of deep learning techniques in solving notoriously difficult classification and regression problems has resulted in their rapid adoption in solving real-world problems. The emergence of deep learning is widely attributed to a virtuous cycle whereby fundamental advancements in training deeper models were enabled by the availability of massive datasets and high-performance computer hardware. It also reviews representative workloads, including the most commonly used datasets and seminal networks across a variety of domains. In addition to discussing the workloads themselves, it also details the most popular deep learning tools and show how aspiring practitioners can use the tools with the workloads to characterize and optimize DNNs. The remainder of the book is dedicated to the design and optimization of hardware and architectures for machine learning. As high-performance hardware was so instrumental in the success of machine learning becoming a practical solution, this chapter recounts a variety of optimizations proposed recently to further improve future designs. Finally, it presents a review of recent research published in the area as well as a taxonomy to help readers understand how various contributions fall in context.

A writer questions the architecture of words, struggling to capture his ideas before they are lost; a husband excavating beneath his house becomes mesmerised by silence and disappears in search of solitude; a lighthouse keeper dreams that he is a man dreaming that he is the keeper of a lighthouse. Magnificent in its scope and imagery, David Brooks’ mastery of the written word is eclipsed in this thought-provoking collection. Both evocative and experimental, Brooks’ stories conjure fragments of memory and time, capturing streetscapes and heartscapes in a mosaic-style splendour.Lyrical and perceptive, brave and illuminating, Napoleon’s Roads explores the richness of language and the possibilities of expression, while exemplifying some of the most sophisticated, polished and beautiful contemporary literature in Australia today.

Hardware acceleration in the form of customized datapath and control circuitry tuned to specific applications has gained popularity for its promise to utilize transistors more efficiently. Historically, the computer architecture community has focused on general-purpose processors, and extensive research infrastructure has been developed to support research efforts in this domain. Envisioning future computing systems with a diverse set of general-purpose cores and accelerators, computer architects must add accelerator-related research infrastructures to their toolboxes to explore future heterogeneous systems. This book serves as a primer for the field, as an overview of the vast literature on accelerator architectures and their design flows, and as a resource guidebook for researchers working in related areas.

Evidently she knew who I was, or thought she did, since I had apparently needed no introduction and certainly hadn’t received one... She told stories. One could almost say she rushed into them, on the merest of pretexts, as if the world was ending very shortly and they had to be got through before it happened.A century of family secrets starts to unravel when Benedict Waters is summoned to an audience with an old friend of his mother. He is seduced by her storytelling and it takes time and an astonishing revelation before he realises that it is his own family he has been hearing about, his own life that is being undone.From the Blue Mountains to the Hawkesbury and from Sydney to the south coast of New South Wales, The Fern Tattoo takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through several generations of three families. We meet a range of extraordinary characters including a bigamist bishop, a librarian tattooed from neck to knee, a young girl who kills her best friend in a tragic shooting accident and a pair of lovers who live each other’s lives for years after they have separated. As with all families, there are lost loves, tragic passions and unspoken - sometimes unspeakable - histories. The Fern Tattoo is a beguiling novel about the certainty of fate and the randomness of love that announces David Brooks’ return as one of Australia’s most distinctive literary novelists.

No sooner had the EPA established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the nation’s toxic waste dumps and other abandoned hazardous waste sites, than a little Montana town found itself topping the new program’s National Priority List. Milltown, a place too small to warrant a listing in the U.S. Census, sat alongside a modest hydroelectric dam at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. For three-quarters of a century, arsenic-laced waste from some of the world’s largest copper-mining operations had accumulated behind the dam. Soon, Milltown became the site of Superfund’s first dam removal and watershed restoration, marking a turning point in U.S. environmental history. The story of this dramatic shift is the tale of individuals rallying to reclaim a place they valued beyond its utility. In Restoring the Shining Waters, David Brooks gives an intimate account of how local citizens—homeowners, university scientists, county health officials, grassroots environmentalists, business leaders, and thousands of engaged residents—brought about the removal of Milltown Dam. Interviews with townspeople, outside environmentalists, mining executives, and federal officials reveal how the everyday actions of individuals got the dam removed and, in the process, pushed Superfund to allow more public participation in decision making and to emphasize restoration over containment of polluted environments. A federal program designed to deal with the toxic legacies of industrialization thus became a starting point for restoring America’s most damaged environments, largely through the efforts of local communities. With curiosity, conviction, and a strong sense of place, the small town of Milltown helped restore an iconic western river valley—and in doing so, shaped the history of Superfund and modern environmentalism.

David Brooks is an anthropologist who has worked with the Ngaanyatjarra people, including the people at Wanarn, for over twenty-five years. He researched and wrote the connection reports through which they gained native title rights over the huge tract of the Australian Western Desert that is their home, and has worked with them on matters from negotiating with mining companies to facing the challenges of making education meaningful to the youth. He has written extensively on the rich desert Tjukurrpa and art, and on the layers of social and cultural interconnectedness of the people. Brooks is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. Darren Jorgensen lectures in art history in the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia. He has written on Australian art, especially from the Kimberley and the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, for academic journals, art magazines and newspapers. He also writes on music and science fiction, enjoys surfing badly and drinking whisky well, and lives with his partner and two children in Perth.

Writing well, and persuasively, is not only a discipline that can be learned, it is one deeply rooted in the classical arts of rhetoric and polemic. This book introduces the essential skills, rules, and steps for producing effective political prose appropriate to many contexts, from the editorial, the op-ed, and the polemical essay to others both weighty and seemingly slight.