Needless Suffering offers a sociological examination of a complex medical problem: chronic pain and the inability of doctors and other health professionals to understand and manage it in their patients. People in pain, writes Dr. David Nagel, are the poor of the medical world. Like the poor, they are stigmatized and left at the mercy of powerful social actors who tend to work in their own self-interest, frequently at the expense of those they propose to serve. This leaves those who suffer with little control over their own destinies and creates a dysfunctional status quo that harms instead of helps. Drawing on his own experience witnessing his mother's chronic pain and numerous clinical stories from over thirty years' expertise as a pain management specialist, Nagel looks first at patients, their families, and their doctors (usually not trained in pain management), and then broadens his canvas to elaborate a pain power structure that includes the entire healthcare community, insurers, lawyers, government regulators, employers, politicians, law enforcement agencies, and painkilling drugs. Concluding with concrete reforms to create more effective and compassionate pain care, this book is designed for pain patients and their families, healthcare providers, legislators and other public policymakers, judges, personal injury and other attorneys, insurers, government regulators, law enforcement personnel, and health care businesspeople.

This book has two aims, the first as a stand-alone guide to, and practices for, Awakening. Once this has taken place then anxiety and unnecessary mental suffering disappear, for these are caused by misidentifying oneself as a separate object in a world of separate objects. This causes us to see each other, and the world, through a murky filter of self-interest, self-concern, self-promotion etc. On Awakening one discovers that there truly is no separate self and so this filter is removed allowing us to see the world 'as it is' with no self-concern for the future or past. The second aim is to provide the reader with information on my spiritual journey. This will show the influences that have moulded my understanding so that the reader can understand the basis of my 'pointers to awakening' which constitute my books on the subject. One other thing that makes this book unique is that it is the first that contains all of the various practices that I have developed, and use(d), over the last eighteen years.

The Emotive Theory was theory ahead of its time, and a theory which was, perhaps understandably, misinterpreted, misrepresented, and ridiculed by its critics from the outset. In this work, the author acquaints the reader with what the original emotivists actually claimed, and enriches their claims by psychologically expanding them. He thus develops an enriched emotive theory.

Critical Theory: The Basics brings clarity to a topic that is confusingly bandied about with various meanings today in popular and academic culture. First defined by Max Horkheimer in the 1930s, “critical theory” now extends far beyond its original German context around the Frankfurt School and the emergence of Nazism. We now often speak of critical theories of race, gender, anti-colonialism, and so forth. This book introduces especially the core program of the first-generation of the Frankfurt School (including Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse), and shows how this program remains crucial to understanding the problems, ideologies, and systems of the modern world, including capitalism, racism, sexism, and the enduring problems of colonialism. It explores basic questions like: What is critical theory? What can critical theory be? What should it be? Why and how does critical theory remain vital to understanding the contemporary world, including notions of self, society, politics, art, religion, culture, race, gender, and class? With suggestions for further reading, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking an accessible but robust introduction to the richness and complexity of this tradition and to its continuing importance today.

Everyday Ethics is an engaging treatment of the ethical questions that we all must answer on a regular basis. Each of the book’s forty chapters provides short pro and con arguments on a particular issue, designed to get readers talking and thinking about obligations, rights, societal expectations, and ethical principles. Instructors are sure to appreciate the way in which Everyday Ethics generates interest and participation from their students on day one. And students will appreciate the opportunity to engage with concerns that actually arise in their day-to-day lives and over which they have control.

Why believe in God? Renowned philosopher Stephen Davis argues that belief in God is indeed a rational and intellectually sound endeavor. Drawing on a lifetime of rigorous reflection and critical thinking, he appraises objections fairly and openly, offering thoughtful approaches to common intellectual problems. Examine for yourself the rationality of the Christian faith.