Product Description: This book follows the genealogy of the Tasker and Blackburn families who originated in the area around Goole in Yorkshire. There were branches of the Tasker family in Rawcliffe, Airmyn, Hook, Cowick and Snaith. The Blackburn family farmed at Spaldington and Holme on Spalding Moor, near Howden in the East Riding, before moving to Goole Fields...read more

The fable of the Emperor's New Clothes is a classic example of a conspiracy of silence, a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth. But the denial of social realities -- whether incest, alcoholism, corruption, or even genocide -- is no fairy tale. In this book, the author sheds new light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial -- the keeping of 'open secrets.' The author shows that conspiracies of silence exist at every level of society, ranging from small groups to large corporations, from personal friendships to politics. Drawing on examples from newspapers and comedy shows to novels, children's stories, and film, the book travels back and forth across different levels of social life, and from everyday moments to large-scale historical events. At its core, the book helps us understand why we ignore truths that are known to all of us. The author shows how such conspiracies evolve, illuminating the social pressures that cause people to deny what is right before their eyes. We see how each conspirator's denial is symbiotically complemented by the others, and we learn that silence is usually more intense when there are more people conspiring -- and especially when there are significant power differences amongthem. He concludes by showing that the longer we ignore 'elephants,' the larger they loom in our minds, as each avoidance triggers an even greater spiral of denial. Social life in families, organizations, communities and even entire nations is full of situations where the emperor has no clothes. The book illuminates the dynamics behind these situations, revealing why we ignore obvious and alarming realities.

What do we mean when we say an explorer discovered a particular piece of land? Do we mean he saw it first?  Or he was the first to set foot on it?  Or he was the first to recognize the importance of his discovery?  It is the third possibility that fascinates Eviatar Zerubavel, the only author to look at the mental discovery of America.      When Columbus landed on an island in the Antilles in 1492, he thought he had discovered a few islands off the coast of Asia. He did not realize he had found a previously unknown continent. In our action-oriented civilization, we value the 'actual' physical discovery of land more than the 'merely' intellectual activity of recognizing the true geographical nature of discovery. It is one thing to discover a coast; it is another and more significant thing to realize that that coast constitutes the outline of an entirely "new world".      Our image what we now call North and South America emerged slowly, over two and a half centuries.  Europeans had to place the information brought back by explorers about hundreds of often disjointed pieces into a jigsaw puzzle to complete their picture of America. They had to figure out that all the lands, including British Columbia and Patagonia, were part of a single geographic entity, a full-fledged continent that is cut off by water from Asia. They also had to realize that the various lands discovered only appeared to be separate, independent discoveries but were actually part of the same landmass. Using fascinating old maps to prove his point, Zerubavel explains that as late as 1546, many Europeans failed to recognize that North and South America were connected by land, or that America was detached from Asia. Vespucci, Balboa, and Magellan were more instrumental than Columbus in recognizing these facts, especially for South America. But there remained confusion for another eighty years over whether North America could be a part of Asia. Not until 1778, when Cook sailed along America's entire northwest shore, could Europeans be abolutely certain that Asia and America were not connected in the far north.        Zerubavel discusses the process of the mental discovery, in terms of new explorations. More importantly, he discusses the psychology of discovery. Columbus was reluctant to give up on his idea that he had found Asia, no matter how many facts he learned that called his sense of geography into question. Other explorers, and a number of creative mapmakers were more open to new ideas. We actually celebrate the discovery of an explorer who was a cognitive coward, unusually resistant to change. Zerubavel thus gives us a new way to think about discovery. It requires an open mind as well as physical bravery.

Why do we eat sardines, but never goldfish; ducks, but never parrots? Why does adding cheese make a hamburger a "cheeseburger" whereas adding ketchup does not make it a "ketchupburger"? By the same token, how do we determine which things said at a meeting should be included in the minutes and which ought to be considered "off the record" and officially disregarded? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Eviatar Zerubavel argues that cognitive science cannot answer these questions, since it addresses cognition on only two levels: the individual and the universal. To fill the gap between the Romantic vision of the solitary thinker whose thoughts are the product of unique experience, and the cognitive-psychological view, which revolves around the search for the universal foundations of human cognition, Zerubavel charts an expansive social realm of mind--a domain that focuses on the conventional, normative aspects of the way we think. With witty anecdote and revealing analogy, Zerubavel illuminates the social foundation of mental actions such as perceiving, attending, classifying, remembering, assigning meaning, and reckoning the time. What takes place inside our heads, he reminds us, is deeply affected by our social environments, which are typically groups that are larger than the individual yet considerably smaller than the human race. Thus, we develop a nonuniversal software for thinking as Americans or Chinese, lawyers or teachers, Catholics or Jews, Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers. Zerubavel explores the fascinating ways in which thought communities carve up and classify reality, assign meanings, and perceive things, "defamiliarizing" in the process many taken-for-granted assumptions.

Product Description: For anyone who has blanched at the uphill prospect of finishing a long piece of writing, this book holds out something more practical than hope: it offers a plan. The Clockwork Muse is designed to help prospective authors develop a workable timetable for completing long and often formidable projects...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Explores the psychological processes by which people make distinctions and define relationships to others and to the surrounding environment (view table of contents)

Shows how an artificial system devised to order our activities, the seven-day week, has been shaped by religion, politics, and economics from the biblical era through varied, exotic civilizations and into the twentieth century

"A pathbreaking book on an important subject which, surprisingly, has been paid little attention by social scientists. Zerubavel writes with both learning and lucidity. His book is a pleasure to read." -Peter Berger "Others have written about the structuring of time, but few so insightfully and compellingly as Zerubavel." -Neil J. Smelser "This is a jewel of a book, one of the most important contributions to cultural sociology in recent years. Professor Zerubavel's easy blend of history, religion, science, politics, and social values makes this a study a delightful voyage of unexpected discovery and new awareness. It hink the title has misled some people into thinking this is a book on music or something of the sort. All the more reason to rejoice at this reissue in paperback." -David S. Landes "Hidden Rhythms is an exciting study of a subject that has net yet gained the attention it deserves among sociologists and other social scientists . . . Zerubavel's book has the distinctive merit to discuss earlier approaches to the study of schedules and calendars and to add a series of extremely shrewd observations and calendars to add a series of extremely shrewd observations of his own on the sociology of time. His work seems indispensable for all those social scientists who have become conscious of the central position of the temporal dimension in the life of people and their society." -Lewis A. Coser "Eviatar Zerubavel's Hidden Rhythms is an original and highly imaginative analysis of the role time schedule plays in social life. Continuing the distinctive focus on social time Zerubavel develops in Patterns of Time in Hospital life, he provides in Hidden Rhythms more penetrating and profound analysis of the subtle and diverse significance of time in organizing our social relationships and lives. A joy to read." -Peter M. Blau