"Over the past two centuries, humanity has experienced unprecedented progress. Extreme poverty has declined, life expectancy has doubled, illiteracy has declined. While we as a species are becoming more prosperous, more educated, healthier, and more peaceful, it is useful to remind ourselves of the underlying cause of this progress: innovation. Human innovation--whether it be new ideas, inventions, or systems-is the primary way people create wealth and escape poverty. The health and wealth of the modern world rests on the shoulders of dozens of unsung heroes whose work has saved millions, if not billions, of lives. Despite their contribution to improving humanity, few people know the names of these pioneers. Heroes of Progress takes readers on a journey through the lives of the most important people who have ever lived. From agronomists whose hybrid crops saved billions of lives and intellectuals who changed public policy for the better, to businesspeople whose innovations helped millions rise from poverty, or scientists whose medical breakthroughs eliminated diseases and ended pandemics. If it weren't for the heroes profiled in this book, we'd all be far poorer, sicker, hungrier, ignorant, and less free--if we were fortunate enough to be alive at all. Considering their impact on humanity, perhaps it's time to learn their story?"--

Melville's story is that of the young neophyte's quest for a distinctive hero in his own image and of that hero's pursuit of ultimate knowledge and authority. The controlling theme, basic to American literature, is that of the necessary fall, the innocent's emergence into manhood by means of a literal ordeal that offers, in all its pain and difficulty, important perceptions into the nature of the world. The first, and decisive, discovery is mortality. Only by confronting the fact that he will die, recognizing, as Melville often put it, the universal sentence of annihilation, does a boy become a man. Testing that perception, probing ever deeper into the mystery of things, asking questions of the meaning of annihilation as well as of its agent, man becomes a potential hero. The fullest understanding causes, inevitably, the greatest pain. Few penetrate the deepest mystery of things, and those who do are Melville's heroes.

In search of national unity and state control in the decade following the Korean War, North Korea turned to labor. Mandating rapid industrial growth, the government stressed order and consistency in everyday life at both work and home. In Heroes and Toilers, Cheehyung Harrison Kim offers an unprecedented account of life and labor in postwar North Korea that brings together the roles of governance and resistance. Kim traces the state’s pursuit of progress through industrialism and examines how ordinary people challenged it every step of the way. Even more than coercion or violence, he argues, work was crucial to state control. Industrial labor was both mode of production and mode of governance, characterized by repetitive work, mass mobilization, labor heroes, and the insistence on convergence between living and working. At the same time, workers challenged and reconfigured state power to accommodate their circumstances—coming late to work, switching jobs, fighting with bosses, and profiting from the black market, as well as following approved paths to secure their livelihood, resolve conflict, and find happiness. Heroes and Toilers is a groundbreaking analysis of postwar North Korea that avoids the pitfalls of exoticism and exceptionalism to offer a new answer to the fundamental question of North Korea’s historical development.

Issued in the interests of university and worlds congress extension.

"In collaboration with Patricia Driscoll"--Cover.

This optimistic guide to Ireland at 100 tells our national story through facts and stats, placing Ireland under the microscope to chart 100 achievements of the past 100 years. Ireland remained one of the most poverty-stricken nations in Europe for decades after the State was formed. Yet now, it has the second-highest standard of living in the world. Author Mark Henry has gathered the data to tell an under-told story of our national progress across every aspect of Irish life. He identifies the factors that account for Ireland's extraordinary success, as well as the five most prominent psychological biases that prevent us from recognising how far we have come. He also highlights the greatest challenges that we must now address if we are to continue to progress in the century ahead. While there is still more to be done, In Fact illustrates that Ireland, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than you might think.