James Fowler – författare

Is happiness catching? Are your friends making you fat? Can your sibling make you smart? Is wealth contagious? Where is true love found? Does free will exist?Based on exciting discoveries in mathematics, genetics, psychology and sociology, ‘Connected’ is an innovative and fascinating exploration of how social networks operate. Think it's all about who you know? It is. But not the way you think.Turns out your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. And a happy friend is more relevant to your happiness than a bigger income.Our connections – our friends, their friends, and even their friends' friends – have an astonishing power to influence everything from what we eat to who we sleep with. And we, in turn, influence others. Our actions can change the behaviours, the beliefs, and even the basic health of people we've never met.In this brilliantly original and effortlessly engaging exploration of how much we truly influence one another. Pre-eminent social scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler explain why obesity is contagious, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, with revelatory implications for everything from our notion of the individual to ideas about public health initiatives, ‘Connected’ will change the way you think about every aspect of your life, and how you live it.

This book inquires why the philosophes converge on Samuel Richardson and with what results. It focuses on the two-way or 'cross-Channel' flow in texts and ideas that continued between Britain and France throughout the long eighteenth century.

This book discusses Fowler's thesis on the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between the libertine and the prude in a number of key eighteenth-century texts. He stresses that prude and libertine need each other to define themselves, a symbiosis most graphically enacted in the Sadean orgy.

The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713-84) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.

The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713-84) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.

Drawing on a wide variety of historical and media sources, this book tells the story of London’s transport during an unexplored era in a novel way. It takes the passengers’ perspective to explain fares, services and competitors through a new, accessible and challenging set of arguments, describing the users’ experience. To do that, the book approaches London’s commuters in the three ways that they have been seen by providers and politicians: as passive passengers, recipients of a service designed for them by experts; as active citizens, prepared to be directly involved in running a municipal system; and as discerning customers with choices about how, where and when they travel. The 1948–2000 period saw these viewpoints move in and out of fashion, and since each was intrinsically linked to politics and represented a complete prescription for how a transport system should work, the clashes were dramatic and had palpable effects on the daily experience of millions of people. Here James Fowler explains what ensued on London’s transport, why it happened, and how the hard lessons for Transport for London’s later success were learned in the preceding decades.

'I think this might be the best [money] you could spend on a language course. It is aimed at beginner to intermediate students and... is comprehensive in content and moves along in such a way as to not 'panic' the student.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Praise for Teach Yourself CompletesComplete French from Teach Yourself is the bestselling course designed for the self-learner. Now updated with new content, this still retains all the core elements of the same series with over 1000+ 5* reviews that language learners have come to rely upon for over 85 years.Comprehensive yet flexible, it empowers you to take control of your learning journey and study at your own pace - either on your own, with an accompanying online programme or as part of a classroom setting. Whether you're an absolute beginner or looking to rekindle your love of the French language and culture, this course provides everything you need to enjoy exploring and learning French.What You're Getting Inside: Clear and Simple Explanations: Understand French step by step, even if you're just starting out, taking you from A1-B1 CEFR level/Beginner to Intermediate-High ACTFL level. All-Skills Practice: Strengthen your speaking, listening, reading, and writing with a wide variety of activities. Engaging Storyline: Stay motivated with a captivating story that connects all lessons. 5+ hours of Authentic Conversations: Hear native French speakers and absorb the natural rhythm and flow of the language to improve your pronunciation and speaking skills. Accessible Cultural Insights: Gain a deeper understanding of French culture with accessible notes and QR codes that link to real content to bring your learning to life. Unique Discovery Method: Spot language patterns on your own to boost memory and retention. Goal setting and progress checker: Includes progress checklist and goal setting embedded throughout, as well as online tools like grammar guides and CEFR-level assessments.Keen to keep learning with Teach Yourself?You might find that reading for pleasure with our Olly Richards Short Stories series is a great place to keep momentum and pick up new vocabulary, or that you prefer a more bite-sized practice option with 50 French Coffee Breaks.

In a speech delivered in 1794, roughly one year after the execution of Louis XVI, Robespierre boldly declared Terror to be an ‘emanation of virtue’. In adapting the concept of virtue to Republican ends, Robespierre was drawing on traditions associated with ancient Greece and Rome. But Republican tradition formed only one of many strands in debates concerning virtue in France and elsewhere in Europe, from 1680 to the Revolution. This collection focuses on moral-philosophical and classical-republican uses of ‘virtue’ in this period – one that is often associated with a ‘crisis of the European mind’. It also considers in what ways debates concerning virtue involved gendered perspectives. The texts discussed are drawn from a range of genres, from plays and novels to treatises, memoirs, and libertine literature. They include texts by authors such as Diderot, Laclos, and Madame de Staël, plus other, lesser-known texts that broaden the volume’s perspective. Collectively, the contributors to the volume highlight the central importance of virtue for an understanding of an era in which, as Daniel Brewer argues in the closing chapter, ‘the political could not be thought outside its moral dimension, and morality could not be separated from inevitable political consequences’.

The London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was a unique hybrid public body accountable only to a small number of stakeholders, yet it delivered substantial improvements in public services and provided good working conditions for its employees at the cost of its investors.  London Transport: A Hybrid in History 1905-48 innovatively combines a revisionist historical narrative with a systematic analysis of quantitative and qualitative research to explore how and why the LPTB achieved rare popularity amongst its customers. Divided into three sections, the book explores the financial operations of the Board, the Board as a system of governance and the leadership and management within the LPTB. Using the extensive Transport for London archives, James Fowler conducts a timely assessment of the public network utility that once made London transport domestically popular and internationally admired.  With debates about British transport policy ongoing, this book is an illuminating read for scholars and students researching within the areas of business management history, transport and public sector governance and administration.

Why do organisations decline, and what happens when they do? Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 is a historical case study looking at how London Transport, a world beater in 1948, declined from being an international exemplar to dilapidation in 30 years.Strategy and Managed Decline considers the inheritance left by the founders of London Transport and subjects their legacy to a strategic and political audit. In three sections, the book examines archival data from the Transport for London (TfL) Archive covering the car revolution, strategic political clashes and the performance of the chairmen to challenge existing theory and extant histories. It offers hypotheses situated in management, leadership, politics and strategy which explain the decades of deterioration followed by a dramatic revival in the late 1980s.Examining the turbulent politics of the long conflict between London Transport, municipal and national government in detail, Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 offers novel interpretations of events by objectively analysing the strategic stories that politics created about London’s transport. It concludes by asking whether a shift in managerial strategy away from maximising utility and towards cost minimisation caused, or was just coincident with, resurgence and explores what lessons there are for TfL today.

This book discusses Fowler's thesis on the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between the libertine and the prude in a number of key eighteenth-century texts. He stresses that prude and libertine need each other to define themselves, a symbiosis most graphically enacted in the Sadean orgy.

This book inquires why the philosophes converge on Samuel Richardson and with what results. It focuses on the two-way or 'cross-Channel' flow in texts and ideas that continued between Britain and France throughout the long eighteenth century.

This book offers a novel explanation of the transformation of London’s transport from a free market to a public corporation rooted in social and political legitimacy rather than economic rationality. To become a single corporation London Transport first had to gain a ‘social licence’ to operate, and this book explains how and why. It considers how a revolution in data gathering during this period helped to justify the transition to a central, unified provider, while also investigating how reputational damage to key figures in the transport industry jeopardized the political and social legitimacy needed to manage public corporation on a large scale. The book combines archival research with academic insights from theories of legitimacy, statistical accounting and scientific management to explore how the employment of statistical information combined with skilful media repositioning allowed a new generation of figureheads in the transport business to emerge as honest, professional, and patriotic, making them suitable business leaders of a transport monopoly in London after 1933. This account of events combines the concepts of trust in numbers and trust in character to produce a wide-ranging, qualitative historical account of the creation a major public monopoly. It will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including business and management history, transport policy, management and organization studies, public administration and public sector studies.

This book offers a novel explanation of the transformation of London’s transport from a free market to a public corporation rooted in social and political legitimacy rather than economic rationality. To become a single corporation London Transport first had to gain a ‘social licence’ to operate, and this book explains how and why. It considers how a revolution in data gathering during this period helped to justify the transition to a central, unified provider, while also investigating how reputational damage to key figures in the transport industry jeopardized the political and social legitimacy needed to manage public corporation on a large scale. The book combines archival research with academic insights from theories of legitimacy, statistical accounting and scientific management to explore how the employment of statistical information combined with skilful media repositioning allowed a new generation of figureheads in the transport business to emerge as honest, professional, and patriotic, making them suitable business leaders of a transport monopoly in London after 1933. This account of events combines the concepts of trust in numbers and trust in character to produce a wide-ranging, qualitative historical account of the creation a major public monopoly. It will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including business and management history, transport policy, management and organization studies, public administration and public sector studies.

This book presents articles at the interface of two active areas of research: classical topology and the relatively new field of geometric group theory. It includes two long survey articles, one on proofs of the Farrell–Jones conjectures, and the other on ends of spaces and groups. In 2010–2011, Ohio State University (OSU) hosted a special year in topology and geometric group theory. Over the course of the year, there were seminars, workshops, short weekend conferences, and a major conference out of which this book resulted.Four other research articles complement these surveys, making this book ideal for graduate students and established mathematicians interested in entering this area of research.