John Carroll

Humanism built Western civilisation as we know it today. Its achievements include the liberation of the individual, democracy, universal rights, and widespread prosperity and comfort. Its ambassadors are the heroes of modern culture: Erasmus, Holbein, Shakespeare, Velázquez, Descartes, Kant, and Freud. Those who sought to contain humanism’s pride within a frame of higher truth — Luther, Calvin, Poussin, Kierkegaard — could barely interrupt its torrential progress. Those who sought to reform humanism’s tenets — Marx, Darwin, and Nietzsche — were tested by the success of their own prophecies. So runs the approved view; it is not shared by John Carroll. Rather he articulates a disruptive and compelling alternative version of Western civilisation since the Renaissance and the Reformation contrived to unleash Reason, Will, and a superhuman Man on the world. Here, Carroll significantly reworks his bracing study of humanism’s rise to pre-eminence and its headlong tumble into contradiction. This revised look at the failure of the West’s 500-year experiment with humanism, and its dire cultural consequences, concludes with 11 September, 2001.

humanism revisited

The Wreck of Western Culture

A collection of texts that you can repurpose for your own poems. Make your own ingenious remix of words by Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and Victor Hugo. Find hidden gems in vintage etiquette manuals, slang dictionaries, newspapers, and more

Turn These Pages into Poems

Make Blackout Poetry

Celebrates the spectacular and avant garde Harley, a motorcycle described in one of its many incarnations as a beautiful, graceful machine ... nearly perfect mechanically.

The Custom Harley

In "On Liberty," John Stuart Mill begins by writing, "The subject of this essay is not the so-called 'liberty of the will', so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of philosophical necessity; but civil, or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." It is this concept that is at the heart of this work. John Stuart Mill eloquently ponders the question of where the line should be drawn between the freedom of individuals and the authority of the state. As he puts it, "The struggle between liberty and authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar..."

Illustrated Edition

On Liberty

In 1971, a British Army team undertook the challenge of driving the Pan-American Highway in its entirety from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego. This included crossing the notorious Darién Gap, the approximately 200-mile-long missing link in the intercontinental highways length. It took almost 100 days of concerted effort for the expedition to drive, winch and float two Range Rovers through this trackless jungle terrain. This book looks at the regions history and previous expeditions as well as the epic 197172 journey. It contains reminiscences from eight members of the expedition as well as previously unpublished photographs, decorative maps and commemorative postal covers.

The 197172 British Trans-Americas Expedition

Making the Range Rover Legend

This is the most exhaustive study to date on natural gas hydrates. In spite of their importance, hydrates are misunderstood, and misconceptions abound. This book provides an accurate review of what hydrates are and under what conditions they will form, and it provides the engineer with the methods to predict the occurrences of hydrates. The petroleum industry spends millions every year to combat the formation of hydrates, the solid, crystalline compounds that form from water and small molecules, damaging equipment and plugging transmission lines. Understanding how, when, and where they form and using this knowledge to apply remedies in practical applications are crucial. * The most comprehensive study of natural gas hydrates * A manual for the engineer or textbook for the student * Contains cutting-edge solutions to natural gas hydrate problems

A Guide for Engineers

Natural Gas Hydrates

A Walker's Guide to Yokohama, Kamakura, and Vicinity

Trails of Two Cities

Past and Present, Or, A Description of Persons and Events Connected with Canadian Methodism for the Last Forty Years

The Legend of Indian

Successful project management is not rocket science but is based on two elements: sound common sense and proven methods and processes. This book covers both and deals with successful project management in a way that is easy to follow for novice project managers while still providing a valuable source of inspiration for the more experienced. It covers a well-proven approach to risk management, together with valuable insights on how to plan, lead, organise and control a project. The book takes the reader through the typical project stages with helpful lists of applicable tasks and deliverables. This effectively provides a blueprint for planning an entire project.

Project Management in Easy Steps

John Carroll contends that since 1918 sociology has distinguished itself by making society appear as dull as it is at its worst. Using barbaric jargon, legalistic syntax and vacuous statistical tables, and driven by an obsession with the humdrum, it has exhibited some of the worst traits of the culture it should have been laying bare. Sceptical Sociology examines where sociology went wrong, and what ought to be done to transform it into a worthwhile enterprise. In a series of studies of contemporary Western society, the author puts into practice the principles of a ‘sceptical sociology’. There are enquiries into the cleanliness compulsion among housewives, the conflicting dream and reality of the tourist, the moral centrality of the car, the tactics of the latest shopping palaces. There is an allegory on fur hats, a dark portrait of a typical modern marriage, a putting of intellectuals in their place, and a pursuit of the sociology of space through the universal longing for home. The author contends that sociology ought to be the important stories about a society and its times, well told. Sceptical Sociology attempts to show that it can be well done.

Sceptical Sociology (RLE Social Theory)

Or, The Canadian Itinerant's Memorial: Constituting a Biographical History of Methodism in Canada, from Its Introduction Into the Province, Till the Death of the Rev. Wm. Case in 1855

Case and His Contempories

Project Program and Portfolio Management (P3M) represents project management taken to the enterprise level. It is increasingly being recognised as critical to the success of projects in large organizations, such as governments and multinational corporations. Conversely, it is also being recognised that failure to implement it in an organization will often result in a string of poor performing and failed projects. While P3M should therefore be considered critical for large organisations, it can also play a significant part in improving the success and financial payback of projects in any size of business. Whether you will be commissioning, running, involved in the delivery of, or are just interested in the possibilities that program and portfolio management can bring, Project Program and Portfolio Management in easy steps will give you a good understanding of the subject. The few books that have been published on the subject to date tend to be technical manuals or theoretical text books, rather than hands-on guides. So, if you need to get up to speed on the subject quickly, this book is for you. It will show you how to implement program and/or portfolio management in easy steps and how to get the greatest benefit from using one or both in your organisation. Table of Contents Introduction: why every organization can benefit from P3MProject Management: establishing the starting pointProgram Management: moving on from project managementPortfolio Management: turning enterprise strategy into business realityBusiness Environment: preparing the organizationImplementing Program ManagementImplementing Portfolio ManagementBenefits ManagementStakeholder ManagementRisk ManagementCorporate GovernanceAction Plan and Road Map Note from the author In case you were wondering why there isn’t a comma after ‘Project’ in the title of the book, it’s because the book doesn’t cover project management, it covers project program management and portfolio management, which are developments from and extensions to project management. A project program refers to a series of projects that are related, and together will achieve a major change in a business. A portfolio refers to the total set of all the projects and programs being carried out in a business at any given time. Although I have included a chapter on project management, it is not intended to be a complete coverage of the subject. It is only included to establish a baseline from which to compare and contrast program management and portfolio management. For a complete coverage of project management, I would recommend Effective Project Management in easy steps (or Agile Project Management in easy steps, if you are working in an agile project environment).

Project Program and Portfolio Management in easy steps

Are you struggling to stay afloat in a sea of paperwork, emails, meetings and an ever-growing to-do list? Are you working longer and longer hours in a vain attempt to catch up and, any time you do, there's another pile of work for you? Don't worry, you are not alone and help is at hand. Effective Time Management in easy steps shows how to work smarter by making the time you spend at work really effective. You can do it, and you'll be amazed at how much more you can get done when you optimize your time. Effective Time Management in easy steps even offers practical help to plan your future, have more free time outside work - and the energy to enjoy it!

Effective Time Management in Easy Steps

The crisis of meaning is the issue of our time. The old beliefs that guided the West have faded, without credible replacement. Who lives well? What characterizes the good life? More particularly, what may we in the modern West claim about ourselves? And, ultimately, does how we live and what we do make any sense? Concerned for today's society and its problems as they relate to meaning, faith, belief, morale, moral attachment, and social direction, John Carroll surveys these questions in Ego and Soul. He examines how people in their ordinary and everyday lives grope unconsciously for direction, casting lines into the transcendent in the hope of a catch. He focuses on the main areas of modern life—work, sport, popular culture, family, friendship, intimacy, shopping, tourism, computers, cars, do–it–yourself renovation, our democratic temper, and the retreat into nature. He also examines high culture, the upper–middle–class elites, and the universities, tracing why they have lost their way and failed to provide a language that might help modern people understand their condition. Ego and Soul offers a surprising and compelling new look at the way we live today, and the way we try to make sense of our lives.

The Modern West in Search of Meaning

Ego and Soul

We are used to the term 'dreaming' being associated with the spirituality of the Aboriginal people. Here, John Carroll argues that there is also a Western Dreaming, originating in the 16th Century as part of a third Reformation. At the heart of this western dreaming is story. In 'the Western Dreaming', John Carroll identifies and explores these key stories or archetypes which are at the source of western culture. the story of Mary Magdalene is one of these. In the 1990's we have been witnesses to this story through the story of Diana, Princess of Wales: hers the cardinal story of the second half of the twentieth century. While the modern Diana myth is deep the primal force driving through it is Magdalene. John Carroll argues that the spirit of the western world cannot survive without stories, and identifying them is part of our search for understanding. 'the Western Dreaming' is a provocative work, which urges readers to consider the story in western culture in a refreshingly new light.

The Western Dreaming

A Meditation on the Meaning of September 11

Terror

This is a travel book in the grand sense. The horizons it explores are of land and sea, and of the mind. Greek Pilgrimage is a meditation on classical Greece, journeying through its great sites, monuments, and cultural works. On the way, it examines the country’s pivotal role in the foundation of the modern world. We who are born into the West are all Greeks. Here lie our roots. The ancient Greeks invite us to think about who we are, and the best ways to organise ourselves, to build institutions, and to make our cities beautiful. They lead us into a sceptical orientation to ourselves and the world we inhabit, questioning the meaning of it all. They have bequeathed to us science and philosophy, drama and sport, our engagement with nature, and much else that graces our modern world. In Greece, our metaphysical perspective was set. We were introduced to the mystery — an abiding sense that there is a deep secret, one which somehow holds the key to the big questions about life. An aura lives on, a mysterious vitality, among the ruins that remain today — in Delphi, at Olympia, and on the Acropolis. Greek Pilgrimage is also designed to serve as a practical guide for the modern traveller to Greece. Two itineraries are recommended at the end, with maps and illustrations.

John Carroll

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