Bücher veröffentlicht von Important Books

Over forty years after the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark's expedition, this year marks the point at which men and women from the east began to travel westward and populate the land near the Pacific.Bernardo DeVoto's fascinating study of this movement fully captures this moment when Western frontier was first truly settled by adventurers and explorers. Immigrant trains spread across the breadth of the country and men and women aspired to make new lives for themselves in the west. Some of these made in through the treacherous passes, but others like the Donner Party ended in tragedy. DeVoto uncovers the famous adventurers and explorers who were instrumental in forging new paths westwards like Jim Bridger, Frances Parkman and Jim Clyman.This brilliant book uncovers how through the course of the year and through a variety of different reasons the United States greatly expanded as areas that would become known as Texas, new Mexico, California, Oregon and Utah came under its sway.Bernard DeVoto was a Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian of the American West. He was a lifelong champion of American Public lands and the conservation of public resources as well as an outspoken defender of civil liberties. His book The Year of Decision, 1846 was first published in 1942 and he passed away in 1955.

The Man Without Qualities as a novel is a "story of ideas", which takes place in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's last days, and the plot often veers into allegorical digressions on a wide range of existential themes concerning humanity and feelings. It has a particular concern with the values of truth and opinion and how society organizes ideas about life and society. A 32-year-old mathematician named Ulrich who is in search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. His ambivalence towards morals and indifference to life has brought him to the state of being "a man without qualities", depending on the outer world to form his character. A kind of keenly analytical passivity is his most typical attitude.Musil once said that it is not particularly difficult to describe Ulrich in his main features. Ulrich himself only knows he is strangely indifferent to all his qualities. Lack of any profound essence and ambiguity as a general attitude to life are his principal characteristics.Meanwhile, we meet a murderer and rapist, Moosbrugger, who is condemned for his murder of a prostitute. Other protagonists are Ulrich's mistress, Bonadea, and Clarisse, his friend Walter's neurotic wife, whose refusal to go along with commonplace existence leads to Walter's insanity.Robert McCrum ranked it one of the top 10 books of the 20th century: "This is a meditation on the plight of the little man lost in a great machine. One of Europe's unquestioned 20th-century masterpieces."

This volume pulls together and republishes, with some editing, updating, and additions, articles written during 1978-86 for internal use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. The information is relatively timeless and still relevant to the never-ending quest for better analysis. The articles are based on reviewing cognitive psychology literature concerning how people process information to make judgments on incomplete and ambiguous information. The essays selected are the most relevant to intelligence analysis and most in need of communication to intelligence analysts. The articles are intended to help the intelligence analysts understand and interpreted the issues that most intelligence analysts face.