Primary experience, gained through the senses, is our most basic way of understanding reality and learning for ourselves. Our culture, however, favors the indirect knowledge gained from secondary experience, in which information is selected, modified, packaged, and presented to us by others. In this controversial book, Edward S. Reed warns that secondhand experience has become so dominant in our technological workplaces, schools, and even homes that primary experience is endangered. Reed calls for a better balance between firsthand and secondhand experience, particularly in our social institutions. He contends that without opportunities to learn directly, we become less likely to think and feel for ourselves. Since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, Western epistemological tradition has rejected primary experience in favor of the abstractions of secondhand experience. Building on James Gibson's concept of ecological psychology, Reed offers a spirited defense of the reality and significance of ordinary experience against both modernist and postmodernist critics. He expands on the radical critiques of work, education, and art begun by William Morris and John Dewey, offering an alternative vision of meaningful learning that places greater emphasis on unmediated experience, and he outlines the psychological, cultural, and intellectual conditions that will be needed to foster that crucial change.

This study is a critique of Quine's views on three interrelated topics that figure prominently in his work and on which he has developed very distinctive opinions. Dr. Dilman provides detailed criticism of these views and contrasts them with Wittgenstein's understanding of the same topics. Throughout this systematic analysis, the author questions basic assumptions on which the Quinean edifice rests. The book argues that Quine's notion of ontology is riddled with inconsistencies and singles out examples for discussion. It argues that Quine's rejection of the distinction between necessary and contingent truths is unwarranted, and that the notion of analyticity, in terms of which he conducts this discussion, is a red herring. And it argues that the notion of experience and subordinate notion of the senses, which Quine uses to discuss the confirmation of propositions and to expound his brand of empiricism, are crude.

Louis Hartz is best known for his classic study, The Liberal Tradition in America. At Harvard University, his lecture course on nineteenth-century politics and ideologies was memorable. Through the editorial hand of Paul Roazen, we can now share the experience of Hartz's considerable contributions to the theory of politics. At the root of Hartz's work is the belief that revolution is not produced by misery, but by pressure of a new system on an old one. This approach enables him to explain sharp differences in revolutionary traditions. Because America essentially was a liberal society from its beginning and had no need for revolutions, America also lacked reactionaries, and lacked a tradition of genuine conservatism characteristic of European thought. In lectures embracing Rousseau, Burke, Comte, Hegel, Mill, and Marx among others, Hartz develops a keen sense of the delicate balance between the role of the state in both enhancing and limiting personal freedom. Hartz notably insisted on the autonomy of intellectual life and the necessity of individual choice as an essential ingredient of liberty.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • Good Morning America • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • The Economist • Financial Times • Newsday • New York Post • theSkimm • Refinery29 • Bloomberg • Self • Real Simple • Town & Country • Bustle • Paste • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • LibraryReads • Book Riot • Pamela Paul, KQED • New York Public Library

Research Shows Organizations That Focus on Employee Experience Far Outperform Those That Don't Recently a new type of organization has emerged, one that focuses on employee experiences as a way to drive innovation, increase customer satisfaction, find and hire the best people, make work more engaging, and improve overall performance. The Employee Experience Advantage is the first book of its kind to tackle this emerging topic that is becoming the #1 priority for business leaders around the world. Although everyone talks about employee experience nobody has really been able to explain concretely what it is and how to go about designing for it...until now. How can organizations truly create a place where employees want to show up to work versus need to show up to work? For decades the business world has focused on measuring employee engagement meanwhile global engagement scores remain at an all time low despite all the surveys and institutes that been springing up tackle this problem. Clearly something is not working. Employee engagement has become the short-term adrenaline shot that organizations turn to when they need to increase their engagement scores. Instead, we have to focus on designing employee experiences which is the long term organizational design that leads to engaged employees. This is the only long-term solution. Organizations have been stuck focusing on the cause instead of the effect. The cause is employee experience; the effect is an engaged workforce. Backed by an extensive research project that looked at over 150 studies and articles, featured extensive interviews with over 150 executives, and analyzed over 250 global organizations, this book clearly breaks down the three environments that make up every single employee experience at every organization around the world and how to design for them. These are the cultural, technological, and physical environments. This book explores the attributes that organizations need to focus on in each one of these environments to create COOL spaces, ACE technology, and a CELEBRATED culture. Featuring exclusive case studies, unique frameworks, and never before seen research, The Employee Experience Advantage guides readers on a journey of creating a place where people actually want to show up to work. Readers will learn: The trends shaping employee experience How to evaluate their own employee experience using the Employee Experience Score What the world's leading organizations are doing around employee experience How to design for technology, culture, and physical spaces The role people analytics place in employee experience Frameworks for how to actually create employee experiences The role of the gig economy The future of employee experience Nine types of organizations that focus on employee experience And much more! There is no question that engaged employees perform better, aspire higher, and achieve more, but you can't create employee engagement without designing employee experiences first. It's time to rethink your strategy and implement a real-world framework that focuses on how to create an organization where people want to show up to work. The Employee Experience Advantage shows you how to do just that.

The Necessity of Aesthetic Education is a manifesto. That which is experienced through engagement with art, through the many various and diverse art forms and media, is uniquely and essentially valuable to the lives of human beings. In order to fully appreciate and gain the most out of the arts, which offer a variety of aesthetic experience, there are concepts, skills and techniques integral to such understanding. In this book, Laura D'Olimpio argues that aesthetic education ought to be a compulsory part of education for all school-aged students, from pre-primary to high school, on the basis of its distinctive value. Such an argument is timely, given the so-called crisis in the arts and humanities, with declining student numbers in subjects that do not have a direct vocational correlative, and increased focus on science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) subjects. As funding cuts increasingly slash the support for the arts, there is a need to argue for why the arts and arts education is valuable, for their own sake, as well as for the positive contributions they can and do make to society. Through critical engagement with a range of thinkers including Maxine Greene, John Dewey and Elliot Eisner, D'Olimpio offers a unique and important contribution to aesthetic education, and to research within philosophy of education.