Shakespeare’s Brain - Reading with Cognitive Theory by Mary Thomas Crane
Here Mary Thomas Crane considers the brain as a site where body and culture meet to form the subject and its expression in language. Taking Shakespeare as her case study, she boldly demonstrates the explanatory power of cognitive theory--a theory which argues that language is produced by a reciprocal interaction of body and environment, brain and culture, and which refocuses attention on the role of the author in the making of meaning. Crane reveals in Shakespeare's texts a web of structures and categories through which meaning is created. The approach yields fresh insights into a wide range of his plays, including The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest.
Crane's cognitive reading traces the complex interactions of cultural and cognitive determinants of meaning as they play themselves out in Shakespeare's texts. She shows how each play centers on a word or words conveying multiple meanings (such as "act," "pinch," "pregnant," "villain and clown"), and how each cluster has been shaped by early modern ideological formations. The book also chronicles the playwright's developing response to the material conditions of subject formation in early modern England. Crane reveals that Shakespeare in his comedies first explored the social spaces within which the subject is formed, such as the home, class hierarchy, and romantic courtship. His later plays reveal a greater preoccupation with how the self is formed within the body, as the embodied mind seeks to make sense of and negotiate its physical and social environment.
The book was originally prepared as an aid in Nature Study, and this thought has been retained in the present
edition. By reading these myths the child will gain in interest and sympathy for the life of beast, bird, and tree;
he will learn to recognize those constellations which have been as friends to the wise men of many ages. Such
an acquaintance will broaden the child's life and make him see more quickly the true, the good, and the
beautiful in the world about him.
The academic job search handbook
(3ed., U. Pennsylvania, 2001)
Review:
Nice, generic handbook
I bought this book at the late stages of my job hunting process, days before my first, phone interview. Therefore, I did not read the first half of the book which has to do with planning the job search and searching (assisted with sample vitas, cover letters, etc. which cover half of this book's pages). My focus was in the interviewing, and later on in the negotiating phases. In that respect, I think that this book is what its title implies: a handbook giving generic guidelines to most of the situtations one might face while interviewing ( covering off-site, conference, phone, on-campus interviews), including a list of possible questions that might be asked. It gives you advise on how to prepare for each type of interview, what to expect, what to wear etc. in a brief manner, something that was very useful for my case, since I had only a few days to prepare for my first, phone interview. I also found some useful points in the "negotiating the job" section. Another aspect I liked about this book was that it covered specific situations such as dual-carrer couples, foreign nationals seeking US employment, etc. The last part of this book covers the "after you take the job" phase, which I plan to read.
Overall, this is a nice handbook, which outlines the basics, but doesn't get into much detail. I had to buy another book and combine information of both to better prepare for my job interviews. Half of the book is covered by sample materials, which I found useless, but given its low price, I would recommend it to anyone seeking for an academic job, as a start-up, quick reference guide, or a complementary book to another, more detailed one.
Option Theory Option Theory takes the reader from first principles to the frontiers of modern finance theory. The book is aimed at busy financial engineers at all levels, providing formulas and techniques that can be readily applied to real life problems; yet the theoretical basis of the subject is explored in detail so that the book will also appeal to students and researchers.
Written in a clear and accessible manner, the author covers the various approaches to option pricing: risk neutral expectations by integration, trees, analytical and numerical solutions of partial differential equations and Monte Carlo methods, demonstrating the close relationship between them.
This is a no-nonsense professional book which demystifies and simplifies the subject, and which will appeal to both practitioners and students.
Discovering Language: The Structure of Modern English This book introduces the levels model of language, which enables students to learn about the smallest linguistic items (sounds) and work through the subsequent levels (morphology and syntax) until the sentence is reached. Many introductory books address the structural issues considered here, but they also usually include contextual and theoretical discussions that are dealt with in the other volumes in this series. As a result there is enough room to include a chapter on the basic lexical semantics without which the rest of the levels of language would not work.
The academic job search handbook 
