To his fellow conservatives, John Derbyshire makes a plea: Don't be seduced by this nonsense about "the politics of hope." Skepticism, pessimism, and suspicion of happy talk are the true characteristics of an authentically conservative temperament. And from Hobbes and Burke through Lord Salisbury and Calvin Coolidge, up to Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn in our own time, these beliefs have kept the human race from blindly chasing its utopian dreams right off a cliff. Recently, though, various comforting yet fundamentally idiotic notions of political correctness and wishful thinking have taken root beyond the "Kumbaya"-singing, we're-all-one crowd. These ideas have now infected conservatives, the very people who really should know better. The Republican Party has been derailed by legions of fools and poseurs wearing smiley-face masks. Think rescuing the economy by condemning our descendents to lives of spirit-crushing debt. Think nation-building abroad while we slowly disintegrate at home. Think education and No Child Left Behind. . . . But don't think about it too much, because if you do, you'll quickly come to the logical conclusion: We are doomed. Need more convincing? Dwell on the cheerful promises of the diversity cult and the undeniable reality of the oncoming demographic disaster. Contemplate the feminization of everything, or take a good look at what passes for art these days. Witness the rise of culturism and the death of religion. Bow down before your new master, the federal apparatchik. Finally, ask yourself: How certain am I that the United States of America will survive, in any recognizable form, until, say, 2022? A scathing, mordantly funny romp through today's dismal and dismaler political and cultural scene, We Are Doomed provides a long-overdue dose of reality, revealing just how the GOP has been led astray in recent years–and showing that had conservatives held on to their fittingly pessimistic outlook, America's future would be far brighter. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to embrace the Audacity of Hopelessness.

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

Politics & Social Sciences

Derbyshire, John

Politics & Government

Crown Forum

Sociology

Random House Publishing Group

Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra

Prime Obsession taught us not to be afraid to put the math in a math book. Unknown Quantity heeds the lesson well. So grab your graphing calculators, slip out the slide rules, and buckle up! John Derbyshire is introducing us to algebra through the ages -- and it promises to be just what his die-hard fans have been waiting for. "Here is the story of algebra." With this deceptively simple introduction, we begin our journey. Flanked by formulae, shadowed by roots and radicals, escorted by an expert who navigates unerringly on our behalf, we are guaranteed safe passage through even the most treacherous mathematical terrain. Our first encounter with algebraic arithmetic takes us back 38 centuries to the time of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Ur and Haran, Sodom and Gomorrah. Moving deftly from Abel's proof to the higher levels of abstraction developed by Galois, we are eventually introduced to what algebraists have been focusing on during the last century. As we travel through the ages, it becomes apparent that the invention of algebra was more than the start of a specific discipline of mathematics -- it was also the birth of a new way of thinking that clarified both basic numeric concepts as well as our perception of the world around us. Algebraists broke new ground when they discarded the simple search for solutions to equations and concentrated instead on abstract groups. This dramatic shift in thinking revolutionized mathematics. Written for those among us who are unencumbered by a fear of formulae, Unknown Quantity delivers on its promise to present a history of algebra. Astonishing in its bold presentation of the math and graced with narrative authority, our journey through the world of algebra is at once intellectually satisfying and pleasantly challenging. Table of Contents <ul>
<li>Front Matter</li>
<li>Introduction</li>
<li>Part 1 The Unknown Quantity -1 Four Thousand Years Ago</li>
<li>2 The Father of Algebra</li>
<li>3 Completion and Reduction</li>
<li>Math Primer: Cubic and Quartic Equations</li>
<li>4 Commerce and Competition</li>
<li>5 Relief for the Imagination</li>
<li>Part 2 Universal Arithmetic - 6 The Lion\'s Claw</li>
<li>Math Primer: Roots of Unity</li>
<li>7 The Assault on the Quintic</li>
<li>Math Primer: Vector Spaces and Algebras</li>
<li>8 The Leap into the Fourth Dimension</li>
<li>9 An Oblong Arrangement of Terms</li>
<li>10 Victoria\'s Brumous Isles</li>
<li>Part 3 Levels of Abstraction - Math Primer: Field Theory</li>
<li>11 Pistols at Dawn</li>
<li>12 Lady of the Rings</li>
<li>Math Primer: Algebraic Geometry</li>
<li>13 Geometry Makes a Comeback</li>
<li>14 Algebraic This, Algebraic That</li>
<li>15 From Universal Arithmetic to Universal Algebra</li>
<li>Endnotes</li>
<li>Picture Credits</li>
<li>Index</li>
<li>Photos, Illustrations, and Drawings</li>
</ul>

Science & Math

Research

Joseph Henry Press

Former Red Guard and middle-aged Chinese immigrant Chai pursues an obsession with the late American president Calvin Coolidge, while Chai's wife, Ding, is forced to save their marriage when he is tempted by a women from his past

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream

Literature & Fiction

United States

St Martins Pr

This is a magical novel of a Chinese immigrant's coming to terms with himself, his marriage, and America--and the unlikely moral force that guides his life. Chai is middle-aged, a disillusioned formed Red Guard who escaped China for Hong Kong and then America, where he works in New York as a banker. He and his wife, Ding, are the parents of an infant and enjoy a contented marriage; he develops a fond obsession with President Calvin Coolidge, the taciturn New Englander whose wry wit and wisdom delights Chai. One day, a chance discovery leads him astray: He learns that a lover from his youth is now in Boston, living with her husband and their son. The son is Chai's very image, and the staid banker is inflamed by the implications of the resemblance. Confused by his emotions, he becomes determined to revive the affair. How Ding schemes to win back her wayward husband--and teach him the necessary truths about love--forms the plot and beguiling conclusion to John Derbyshire's tale.

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream: A Novel

Genre Fiction

St. Martin's: Griffin

Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics

The definitive story of the Riemann Hypothesis, a fascinating and epic mathematical mystery that continues to challege the world. In 1859, Bernhard Riemann, a little-known thirty-two year old mathematician, made a hypothesis while presenting a paper to the Berlin Academy titled “On the Number of Prime Numbers Less Than a Given Quantity.” Today, after 150 years of careful research and exhaustive study, the Riemann Hyphothesis remains unsolved, with a one-million-dollar prize earmarked for the first person to conquer it.Alternating passages of extraordinarily lucid mathematical exposition with chapters of elegantly composed biography and history, Prime Obsession is a fascinating and fluent account of an epic mathematical mystery that continues to challenge and excite the world.

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Plume

Perfect for history buffs and armchair algebra experts, Unknown Quantity tells the story of the development of abstract mathematical thought. John Derbyshire discovers the story behind the formulae, roots, and radicals. As he did so masterfully in Prime Obsession, Derbyshire brings the evolution of mathematical thinking to dramatic life by focusing on the key historical players. Unknown Quantity begins in the time of Abraham and Isaac and moves from Abel's proof to the higher levels of abstraction developed by Galois through modern-day advances. Derbyshire explains how a simple turn of thought from "this plus this equals this" to "this plus what equals this?" gave birth to a whole new way of perceiving the world. With a historian's narrative authority and a beloved teacher's clarity and passion, Derbyshire leads readers on an intellectually satisfying and pleasantly challenging historical and mathematical journey.

History & Philosophy

Penguin Publishing Group

This book describes the psychological strategies the world class sailors use to set goals, manage stress and build confidence. Part 3 contains photo sequences of sailing-specific exercises that can be used to build an individual training programme.
<ul>
<li>Set goals for confidence building and competition.</li>
<li>Learn effective self-talk and straight thinking.</li>
<li>Make stress work for you, not against you.</li>
<li>Harness the power of visualisation.</li>
<li>Learn to stay focussed so that you can cope with distractions.</li>
<li>Build and maintain the on-boat relationships that really work.</li>
<li>Plan your own fitness programme.</li>
<li>Aerobic and Anaerobic exercises.</li>
<li>Recognise the value of rest and recovery.</li>
</ul>
Learn now to train both on the water and in the gym.

Mental and Physical Fitness for Sailing

Sports & Outdoors

Whitmore, John

Beggs, Alan

Water Sports

wiley

This book is mainly a collection of essays I published between 2001 and 2013. Most of those essays appeared on Vdare.com, an online magazine dedicated to frank discussion of the National Question. The penultimate essay in this collection defines the National Question and offers an answer to it. That essay also describes the work of Vdare.com in more detail. It concludes with an unofficial Vdare.com mission statement.

From the Dissident Right

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

lulu.com

This book is mainly a collection of speeches made and essays published in 2013. Most of the material appeared on VDARE.com, an online magazine dedicated to frank discussion of the National Question, which embraces issues of immigration, population, race, culture, language, religion, and national identity.

From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013

Essays & Correspondence

VDARE

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Derbyshire, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Derbyshire, John