War is often characterised as one percent terror, 99 per cent boredom. Whilst much ink has been spilt on the one per cent, relatively little work has been directed toward the other 99 per cent of a soldier's time. As such, this book will be welcomed by those seeking a fuller understanding of what makes soldiers endure war, and how they cope with prolonged periods of inaction. It explores the issue of military boredom and investigates how soldiers spent their time when not engaged in battle, work or training through a study of their creative, imaginative and intellectual lives. It examines the efforts of military authorities to provide solutions to military boredom (and the problem of discipline and morale) through the provisioning of entertainment and education, but more importantly explores the ways in which soldiers responded to such efforts, arguing that soldiers used entertainment and education in ways that suited them. The focus in the book is on Australians and their experiences, primarily during the First World War, but with subsequent chapters taking the story through the Second World War to the Vietnam War. This focus on a single national group allows questions to be raised about what might (or might not) be exceptional about the experiences of a particular national group, and the ways national identity can shape an individual's relationship and engagement with education and entertainment. It can also suggest the continuities and changes in these experiences through the course of three wars. The story of Australians at war illuminates a much broader story of the experience of war and people's responses to war in the twentieth century.

“If you’ve been looking for something different to level up your health, fitness, and personal growth, this is it.”—Melissa Urban, Whole30 CEO and New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Boundaries “Michael Easter’s genius is that he puts data around the edges of what we intuitively believe. His work has inspired many to change their lives for the better.”—Dr. Peter Attia, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlive Discover the evolutionary mind and body benefits of living at the edges of your comfort zone and reconnecting with the wild—from the author of Scarcity Brain, coming in September! In many ways, we’re more comfortable than ever before. But could our sheltered, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged lives actually be the leading cause of many our most urgent physical and mental health issues? In this gripping investigation, award-winning journalist Michael Easter seeks out off-the-grid visionaries, disruptive genius researchers, and mind-body conditioning trailblazers who are unlocking the life-enhancing secrets of a counterintuitive solution: discomfort. Easter’s journey to understand our evolutionary need to be challenged takes him to meet the NBA’s top exercise scientist, who uses an ancient Japanese practice to build championship athletes; to the mystical country of Bhutan, where an Oxford economist and Buddhist leader are showing the world what death can teach us about happiness; to the outdoor lab of a young neuroscientist who’s found that nature tests our physical and mental endurance in ways that expand creativity while taming burnout and anxiety; to the remote Alaskan backcountry on a demanding thirty-three-day hunting expedition to experience the rewilding secrets of one of the last rugged places on Earth; and more. Along the way, Easter uncovers a blueprint for leveraging the power of discomfort that will dramatically improve our health and happiness, and perhaps even help us understand what it means to be human. The Comfort Crisis is a bold call to break out of your comfort zone and explore the wild within yourself.

"An unnamed American city feeling the effects of a war waged far away and suffering from bad weather is the backdrop for this startling work of fiction. The protagonists are aimless young men going from one blue collar job to the next, or in a few cases, aspiring to middle management. Their everyday struggles--with women, with the morning commute, with a series of cruel bosses--are somehow transformed into storytelling that is both universally resonant and wonderfully uncanny. That is the unsettling, funny, and ultimately heartfelt originality of Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's short fiction, to be at home in a world not quite our own but with many, many lessons to offer us"--

A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of the Year A Guardian “Best Book about Ideas” of the Year No one likes to be bored. Two leading psychologists explain what causes boredom and how to listen to what it is telling you, so you can live a more engaged life. We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it? Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance. When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working—we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective. Too many of us respond poorly. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness, and ennui, and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need. The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives. Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance.

Most of us often feel empty at heart even after achieving success, or we are confused about where life is taking us. This book reveals the reason behind the feeling of emptiness and why we feel that we are pushing our life instead of living life. PSTAS will also provide you solutions to come out of the vicious cycle of events and inspire you to start your journey from an unfulfilled life to a happy and fulfilled life by helping you to: • Identify the basic mistakes of daily life which lead us nowhere. • Understand the basic foundation of a fulfilled life. • Discover the reasons why we feel trapped in our life and provide solutions to come out of it. • Take control of your life in your own hands. • Balance money, health and relationships without feeling empty at heart. • Direct your energies towards a higher purpose.

“In these lyrical, searing pages, Guest manages to break our hearts and put them back together again.” —Ann Hood In the tradition of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, One More Theory About Happiness is a bold and original memoir from the acclaimed, Whiting Award-winning poet Paul Guest, author of My Index of Horrifying Knowledge. A remarkable account of the accident that left him a quadriplegic, and his struggle to find independence, love, and a life on his own terms, One More Theory About Happiness has been praised by Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children, as, “Smart and honest and clear eyed and above all, humane.”

The incisive and often hilarious story of one of our most interesting cultural phenomena: boredom It’s the feeling your grandma told you was only experienced by boring people. Some people say they’re dying of it; others claim to have killed because of it. It’s a key component of depression, creativity, and sex-toy advertisements. It’s boredom, the subject of Yawn, a delightful and at times moving take on the oft-derided emotion and how we deal with it. Deftly wrought from interviews, research, and personal experience, Yawn follows Mary Mann’s search through history for the truth about boredom, spanning the globe, introducing a varied cast of characters. The Desert Fathers—fourth-century Christian monks who made their homes far from civilization—offer the first recorded accounts of lethargy; Thomas Cook, grandfather of the tourism industry, provided escape from the mundane for England’s working class; and contemporarily, we meet couples who are disenchanted by monogamous sex, deployed soldiers who seek entertainment and connection in porn, and prisoners held in solitary confinement, for whom boredom is a punishment for crimes they may or may not have committed. With sharp wit and impressive historical acumen, Mann tells the unexpected story of the hunt for a deeper understanding of boredom, in all its absurd, irritating, and inspiring splendor.

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom--what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers--spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Durer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. "Boredom: A Lively History "is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens.

Smart strategies for pragmatic, science-based growth and sustainable achievement. The Science of Intelligent Achievement teaches you the scientific process of finding success through your most valuable assets: · Selective focus – how selective are you with who and what you let into your life? · Creative ownership – how dependent are you on others for your happiness and success? · Pragmatic growth – how consistently and practically are you growing daily? First, this book will show you how to develop your focus by being very selective with where you spend your mental energy. If you've failed to reach an important goal because you were distracted, misinformed, or overcommitted, then you know the role focus and selectivity play in achievement. Second, you will learn how to stop allowing your happiness and success to be dependent on other people and instead, start taking ownership over your life through creative work. Finally, you will learn the art of changing your life through pragmatic decisions and actions. Self-improvement is not the result of dramatic changes. Instead, science has shown that personal and professional change is initiated and sustained by consistent, practical changes. To grow, you must leverage the power of micro-decisions, personality responsibility, and mini-habits. Your own biology will not let you improve your life in any other way. What do you currently value? What are working to attain? Have you been taught to value your job title or your relationship with some other person above all else? Have you been convinced that the most valuable things in life are your paycheck, the number of people who say 'hello' to you at the office, and the number of people who say 'I need you' at home? Or, have you become so passive in what you value that you let anyone and anything into your life, as long as whatever you let in allows you to stay disconnected from the cold hard truth that when things really go wrong in your life, the only person who will be able to fix it and the only person will be responsible for it is you. If so...welcome to fake success. Passivity, dependence, and the sacrifice of practical thinking and personal responsibility to fuzzy, grandiose ideals and temporary feelings — these are markers of fake success. Intelligent Achievement, on the other hand, is not a moving target. It's not empty either. Instead, it's sturdy, full, and immovable. It's not something that's just handed to you. It's not something you're nudged to chase or coerced into wanting. Intelligent Achievement comes from within you. It's a collection of values that are aligned with who you are—values you have to protect and nurture. These values do not increase your dependence on other people and things. Instead, they relieve you of dependence. This kind of achievement is something that you have a part in building from the ground up—you know what's in it—you chose it, someone else didn't choose it for you. Achieving real success means you must focus, create, and grow daily. The Science of Intelligent Achievement will show you how.

In the wake of a devastating disease, everyone sixteen and older is either dead or a decomposing, brainless creature with a ravenous appetite for flesh. Teens have barricaded themselves in buildings throughout London and venture outside only when they need to scavenge for food. The group of kids living a Waitrose supermarket is beginning to run out of options. When a mysterious traveler arrives and offers them safe haven at Buckingham Palace, they begin a harrowing journey across London. But their fight is far from over???the threat from within the palace is as real as the one outside it. Full of unexpected twists and quick-thinking heroes, The Enemy is a fast-paced, white-knuckle tale of survival in the face of unimaginable horror.