Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths

by Joseph N. Abraham
Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths
Author: Joseph N. Abraham
Publisher: University of Louisiana
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Authoritarianism
ISBN: 9781946160324
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Right wing populists increasingly draw attention around the globe, but the attention is misdirected. The real problem is not the authoritarian, but the authoritarian personalities who follow him. If people do not blindly follow and obey the despot, he is irrelevant. Why do we attach ourselves to demagogues and mountebanks? Why do we defend even their most obvious hypocrisies and lies? The answer is found in the history of civilization. For the past 10,000 years, those who disagreed with the king or his nobles risked ruin and death. But that is only part of the answer. The other part is that, despite our romantic traditions, kings and conquerors were vicious criminals. They represent the most evil psychopaths, narcissists, and sadists in the history of humanity. As author Jon Ronson has suggested: "I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it wasn't? . . . What if it was built on insanity?"

Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths

by Joseph Abraham
Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths
Author: Joseph Abraham
Publisher:
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2018-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9780578680590
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Conquest is murder and theft. Conquerors are vicious criminals. Vicious criminals become kings. Kings designed civilization.And we are the products of civilization.Right wing populists increasingly draw attention around the globe, but the attention is misdirected. The real problem is not the authoritarian leader, but the fanatics who unquestioningly follow him. Without them, the despot is irrelevant.Why do we attach ourselves to demagogues and mountebanks? Why do we defend even their most obvious hypocrisies and lies?The answer lies in the roots of civilization. Despite our romantic traditions, monarchs were never wise, just, nor generous. Even the briefest reading of history shows that, without exception, kings were the most vicious psychopaths, narcissists, and sadists who ever lived. And the only path for survival in the ancient world required blindly believing anything the king said.

The Death of Carthage

by Robin E. Levin
The Death of Carthage
Author: Robin E. Levin
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2011-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1426996071
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The Death of Carthage tells the story of the Second and third Punic wars that took place between ancient Rome and Carthage in three parts. The first book, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, covering the second Punic war, is told in the first person by Lucius Tullius Varro, a young Roman of equestrian status who is recruited into the Roman cavalry at the beginning of the war in 218 BC. Lucius serves in Spain under the Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, the Proconsul Cneius Cornelius Scipio. Captivus, the second book, is narrated by Lucius's first cousin Enneus, who is recruited to the Roman cavalry under Gaius Flaminius and taken prisoner by Hannibal's general Maharbal after the disastrous Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC. Enneus is transported to Greece and sold as a slave, where he is put to work as a shepherd on a large estate and establishes his life there. The third and final book, The Death of Carthage, is narrated by Enneus's son, Ectorius. As a rare bilingual, Ectorius becomes a translator and serves in the Roman army during the war and witnesses the total destruction of Carthage in the year 146 BC. This historical saga, full of minute details on day-to-day life in ancient times, depicts two great civilizations on the cusp of influencing the world for centuries to come.

An Integrative Paradigm for Mental Health Care

by James H. Lake
An Integrative Paradigm for Mental Health Care
Author: James H. Lake
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3030152855
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This crucial volume provides a concise overview of the conceptual foundations and clinical methods underlying the rapidly emerging subspecialty of integrative mental healthcare. It discusses methods for guiding practitioners to individualized integrative strategies that address unique symptoms and circumstances for each patient and includes practical clinical techniques for developing interventions addressed at wellness, prevention, and treatment. Included among the overview: Meeting the challenges of mental illness through integrative mental health care. Evolving paradigms and their impact on mental health care Models of consciousness: How they shape understandings of normal mental functioning and mental illness Foundations of methodology in integrative mental health care Treatment planning in integrative mental health care The future of mental health care A New Paradigm for Integrative Mental Healthcare is relevant and timely for the increasing numbers of patients seeking integrative and alternative care for depressed mood, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental health problems such as fatigue and chronic pain. “Patients are crying out for a more integrative approach, and this exemplary book provides the template for achieving such a vision.” -Jerome Sarris, MHSc, PhD, ND “For most conventionally trained clinicians the challenge is not “does CAM work?” but “how do I integrate CAM into my clinical practice?” Lake’s comprehensive approach answers this central question, enabling the clinician to plan truly integrative and effective care for the mind and body.” -Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH

Mein Kampf

by Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Publisher: ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2024-02-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
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Madman, tyrant, animal—history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a laborer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker's party. In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch" was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler's political and military campaign. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust.

Ashoka in Ancient India

by Nayanjot Lahiri
Ashoka in Ancient India
Author: Nayanjot Lahiri
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2015-08-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674915259
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In the third century BCE, Ashoka ruled an empire encompassing much of modern-day India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. During his reign, Buddhism proliferated across the South Asian subcontinent, and future generations of Asians came to see him as the ideal Buddhist king. Disentangling the threads of Ashoka’s life from the knot of legend that surrounds it, Nayanjot Lahiri presents a vivid biography of this extraordinary Indian emperor and deepens our understanding of a legacy that extends beyond the bounds of Ashoka’s lifetime and dominion. At the center of Lahiri’s account is the complex personality of the Maurya dynasty’s third emperor—a strikingly contemplative monarch, at once ambitious and humane, who introduced a unique style of benevolent governance. Ashoka’s edicts, carved into rock faces and stone pillars, reveal an eloquent ruler who, unusually for the time, wished to communicate directly with his people. The voice he projected was personal, speaking candidly about the watershed events in his life and expressing his regrets as well as his wishes to his subjects. Ashoka’s humanity is conveyed most powerfully in his tale of the Battle of Kalinga. Against all conventions of statecraft, he depicts his victory as a tragedy rather than a triumph—a shattering experience that led him to embrace the Buddha’s teachings. Ashoka in Ancient India breathes new life into a towering figure of the ancient world, one who, in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, “was greater than any king or emperor.”

The World

by Simon Sebag Montefiore
The World
Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 1345
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0525659544
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families • From the author of The Romanovs “Succession meets Game of Thrones.” —The Spectator • “The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life...An epic that both entertains and informs.” —The Economist, Best Books of the Year Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us. In this epic, ever-surprising book, Montefiore chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama. It features a cast of extraordinary diversity: in addition to rulers and conquerors, there are priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives, and children. There is Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare, the Leopard-King of Benin; Henry Christophe, King of Haiti; Kamehameha, the conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, the Moroccan pirate-queen. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Here are the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single, masterful narrative.