Hard eBooks
eBooks di Titolo Hard editi da Bookrix
Hard times in the slum. E-book. Formato EPUB Todd Hicks - Bookrix, 2021 -
Born in a section of Detroit where almost all the residents are people of color and living in poverty, Ramar, Lamar, Shamar and Shamarla Ricks are black (brown) kids who must circumvent drugs, gang activity and other vices to survive. Can these siblings who were born just months apart ward all this off long enough to make it through high school and progress to a better life? Ramar, Shamarla and Lamar will stand up to any bad person who tries to influence them into going down the wrong path. This catches up to them later; after they refuse to join a gang at one point then do something even bigger to rile shady people later on, they face lethal retaliation. They must persist through being shot at and more to make it through high school. Shamar is on a morality track opposite that of his sister and brothers, getting into trouble occasionally and sometimes not taking school seriously. His parents finally run out of patience. Now that he’s running the streets with nowhere to go, he is headed for an even tougher fate. By the age of 18 all four kids have sealed their fate for adulthood.
Hard Times By Charles Dickens. E-book. Formato EPUB Charles Dickens - Bookrix, 2014 -
‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.
Hard Times (Illustrated). E-book. Formato EPUB Charles Dickens - Bookrix, 2014 -
The Utilitarians were one of the targets of this novel. Utilitarianism was a prevalent school of thought during this period, its founders being Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, father to political theorist John Stuart Mill. Theoretical Utilitarian ethics hold that promotion of general social welfare is the ultimate goal for the individual and society in general: "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people." Dickens believed that in practical terms, the pursuit of a totally rationalised society could lead to great misery.Bentham's former secretary, Edwin Chadwick, helped design the Poor Law of 1834, which deliberately made workhouse life as uncomfortable as possible. In the novel, this is conveyed in Bitzer's response to Gradgrind's appeal for compassion.Dickens was appalled by what was, in his interpretation, a selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism in the education of some children at the time, as well as in industrial practices. In Dickens's interpretation, the prevalence of utilitarian values in educational institutions promoted contempt between mill owners and workers, creating young adults whose imaginations had been neglected, due to an over-emphasis on facts at the expense of more imaginative pursuits.