Michael O'Brien – författare

The essays in this book demonstrate the breadth and vitality of American intellectual history. Their core theme is the diversity of both American intellectual life and of the frameworks that we must use to make sense of that diversity. The Worlds of American Intellectual History has at its heart studies of American thinkers. Yet it follows these thinkers and their ideas as they have crossed national, institutional, and intellectual boundaries. The volume explores ways in which American ideas have circulated in different cultures. It also examines the multiple sites--from social movements, museums, and courtrooms to popular and scholarly books and periodicals--in which people have articulated and deployed ideas within and beyond the borders of the United States. At these cultural frontiers, the authors demonstrate, multiple interactions have occurred - some friendly and mutually enriching, others laden with tension, misunderstandings, and conflict. The same holds for other kinds of borders, such as those within and between scholarly disciplines, or between American history and the histories of other cultures.The richness of contemporary American intellectual history springs from the variety of worlds with which it must engage. Intellectual historians have always relished being able to move back and forth between close readings of particular texts and efforts to make sense of broader cultural dispositions. That range is on display in this volume, which includes essays by scholars as fully at home in the disciplines of philosophy, literature, economics, sociology, political science, education, science, religion, and law as they are in history. It includes essays by prominent historians of European thought, attuned to the transatlantic conversations in which Europeans and Americans have been engaged since the seventeenth century, and American historians whose work has carried them not only to different regions in North America but across the North Atlantic to Europe, across the South Atlantic to Africa, and across the Pacific to South Asia.

The essays in this book demonstrate the breadth and vitality of American intellectual history. Their core theme is the diversity of both American intellectual life and of the frameworks that we must use to make sense of that diversity. The Worlds of American Intellectual History has at its heart studies of American thinkers. Yet it follows these thinkers and their ideas as they have crossed national, institutional, and intellectual boundaries. The volume explores ways in which American ideas have circulated in different cultures. It also examines the multiple sites--from social movements, museums, and courtrooms to popular and scholarly books and periodicals--in which people have articulated and deployed ideas within and beyond the borders of the United States. At these cultural frontiers, the authors demonstrate, multiple interactions have occurred - some friendly and mutually enriching, others laden with tension, misunderstandings, and conflict. The same holds for other kinds of borders, such as those within and between scholarly disciplines, or between American history and the histories of other cultures.The richness of contemporary American intellectual history springs from the variety of worlds with which it must engage. Intellectual historians have always relished being able to move back and forth between close readings of particular texts and efforts to make sense of broader cultural dispositions. That range is on display in this volume, which includes essays by scholars as fully at home in the disciplines of philosophy, literature, economics, sociology, political science, education, science, religion, and law as they are in history. It includes essays by prominent historians of European thought, attuned to the transatlantic conversations in which Europeans and Americans have been engaged since the seventeenth century, and American historians whose work has carried them not only to different regions in North America but across the North Atlantic to Europe, across the South Atlantic to Africa, and across the Pacific to South Asia.

The Bird Guide is a landmark field guide to the birds of North America, combining unmatched illustration, field expertise, and modern data to redefine how birds are identified and understoodPublished in association with the Cornell Lab of OrnithologyRepresenting a new era in bird identification, The Bird Guide illustrates North America’s spectacular avifauna in unparalleled depth, precision, and beauty. The written accounts provide an unprecedented view of birds, bringing together decades of field expertise with insights drawn from billions of bird observations, photos, sounds, and videos contributed by birders to the Cornell Lab’s eBird project and Macaulay Library. Designed to work with the digital tools that have introduced millions of people to birding, this guide delivers an experience no screen can replicate: side-by-side comparisons of similar species, quick access to key field marks, and detailed facing-page accounts that train the eye and sharpen field identification skills.Covers 818 regularly occurring species and 158 rare visitors across the United States and CanadaFeatures more than 7,000 illustrations covering plumage, age, sex, and subspecies and hundreds of vignettes showing birds in habitatIntuitively designed ID plates and facing-page text allow side-by-side comparison of similar species and provide deep ID context that is impossible to achieve on mobile screensComprehensive “Sounds” sections offer expert guidance for interpreting vocalizations and separating confusing speciesComplements the strengths of the Merlin Bird ID app, bridging page and smartphone in a field-ready system for sound IDeBird integration includes global nomenclature, including subspecies, across the guide and Merlin, ensuring ease of identification and data sharingDistribution maps powered by eBird data transform millions of observations into new insights about bird distribution and abundanceThe Bird Guide brings together a world-class team that fuses decades of unsurpassed field expertise with incomparable artistry. Brian L. Sullivan and Christopher Wood are leaders of eBird. Tour leading and teaching have made Michael O’Brien a legendary birder, and North America’s premier bird sound expert. Prolific author and international tour leader Steve N. G. Howell’s uncompromising field expertise has shaped modern bird identification. Paired with the artistic mastery of Ian Lewington and Lorenzo Starnini, two of the world’s finest bird illustrators, The Bird Guide is the most comprehensive, beautifully illustrated, and technologically integrated field guide to North American birds ever produced.

Michael O'Brien has masterfully abridged his award-winning two-volume intellectual history of the Old South, Conjectures of Order, depicting a culture that was simultaneously national, postcolonial, and imperial, influenced by European intellectual traditions, yet also deeply implicated in the making of the American mind. Here O'Brien succinctly and fluidly surveys the lives and works of many significant Southern intellectuals, including John C. Calhoun, Louisa McCord, James Henley Thornwell, and George Fitzhugh. Looking over the period, O'Brien identifies a movement from Enlightenment ideas of order to a Romanticism concerned with the ambivalences of personal and social identity, and finally, by the 1850s, to an early realist sensibility. He offers a new understanding of the South by describing a place neither monolithic nor out of touch, but conflicted, mobile, and ambitious to integrate modern intellectual developments into its tense and idiosyncratic social experience.

Father Theodore Hesburgh was known for his rare energy and ability to carry out a staggering variety of assignments with distinction. This biography traces his life and career, examining his leadership qualities, management strategies and central role as a priest.

From the pages of forgotten journals and literary magazines Michael O'Brien assembles fourteen pieces that effectively challenge the long-prevailing notion that the mind of the Old South was superficial, unintellectual, and obsessed with race and slavery. In this book are discourses on subjects ranging from English empirical thought to neoclassical aesthetics, from the enfranchisement of women to transcendental theology, from the works of Hawthorne and Emerson to the social system of Virginia.

JONES’ CLINICAL PAEDIATRIC SURGERY Jones’ Clinical Paediatric Surgery provides clear-sighted advice on the surgical options available for young patients. Building on the popular and successful style of previous editions, this fully revised seventh edition employs a systematic approach to the childhood diseases that need surgical treatment. It includes more case vignettes and colour photographs, expanded coverage on the use of imaging, and updated approaches to management including laparoscopic operations. Key subject areas are supported by case vignettes in a familiar format similar to what might appear in an OSCE viva. Jones’ Clinical Paediatric Surgery is the ideal guide for paeditricians, surgeons and trainees, as well as primary care physicians, junior doctors and medical students.

Originally published in 1979. The idea of the "South" has its roots in Romanticism and American culture of the nineteenth century. This study by Michael O'Brien analyzes how the idea of a unique Southern consciousness endured into the twentieth century and how it affected the lives of prominent white Southern intellectuals. Individual chapters treat Howard Odum, John Donald Wade, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Frank Owsley, and Donald Davidson. The chapters trace each man's growing need for the idea of the South—how each defined it and how far each was able to sustain the idea as an element of social analysis. The Idea of the American South moves the debate over Southern identity from speculative essays about the "central theme" of Southern history and, by implication, past the restricted perception that race relations are a sufficient key to understanding the history of Southern identity.

Spinal Injuries and Conditions in Young Athletes provides a comprehensive, in-depth review of the mechanisms and management of back injuries and problems occurring in this ever-growing and active population. Led by Dr. Lyle Micheli and his co-editors, an award-winning group of orthopedists discusses and explores common adolescent spine injuries and procedures, in addition to breakthroughs in gene therapy, tissue engineering, and complex operations. As spine surgery is among the most complex and challenging procedures performed in orthopedics, special considerations and procedures are required in pediatric populations. Since many corrective surgeries run the risk of arthritis later in life, particular efforts must be made in young populations to prevent future injury in a child's adolescence and young adulthood while maximizing return-to-play potential. Chapters cover acute spinal injuries, concussions, overuse injuries, spinal malformations, tumors, infections and inflammatory diseases across the range of athletics, including swimming and combat sports. Spinal Injuries and Conditions in Young Athletes​ provides an immeasurable guide for back surgery in pediatric populations and will be a go-to resource for practitioners and residents in pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine.

Spinal Injuries and Conditions in Young Athletes provides a comprehensive, in-depth review of the mechanisms and management of back injuries and problems occurring in this ever-growing and active population. Led by Dr. Lyle Micheli and his co-editors, an award-winning group of orthopedists discusses and explores common adolescent spine injuries and procedures, in addition to breakthroughs in gene therapy, tissue engineering, and complex operations. As spine surgery is among the most complex and challenging procedures performed in orthopedics, special considerations and procedures are required in pediatric populations. Since many corrective surgeries run the risk of arthritis later in life, particular efforts must be made in young populations to prevent future injury in a child's adolescence and young adulthood while maximizing return-to-play potential. Chapters cover acute spinal injuries, concussions, overuse injuries, spinal malformations, tumors, infections and inflammatory diseases across the range of athletics, including swimming and combat sports. Spinal Injuries and Conditions in Young Athletes​ provides an immeasurable guide for back surgery in pediatric populations and will be a go-to resource for practitioners and residents in pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine.

Author Michael O'Brien authoritatively paints the consummate Paterno portrait, the result of more than ten years of work that included 137 interviews and study of 150 previously published works. Paperback includes an epilogue that reviews the 1998 season in which Paterno won his landmark 300th career victory.

Placing the South offers a selection of work published between 1985 and 2005 by one of the most incisive historians and literary critics of the South. The pieces seek to situate the South in a variety of contexts and offer a compelling defense of what Kwame Anthony Appiah has called ""rooted cosmopolitanism."" This is a mode of understanding based on respect for what is local and an awareness that regionalism is not enough. Hybridity, in both culture and literature, is inescapable and desirable. The first section of the book (""Placing"") contains three comparative analyses that look at how regionalism has recently been conceptualized globally, how the modern South has acquired pertinence for those outside the United States, and how the relationship between Britain and the South has worked. The second section (""Ideologies"") scrutinizes political ideas--freedom, imperialism, nationalism, racial ideology--which have transformed American discourse. The third section (""Forms"") examines genre and how the South has been constructed and reconstructed by such literary forms as autobiography, biography, history, and literary history. The final section (""Writers"") contains critical appreciations of political thinkers, novelists, poets, critics, historians, and sociologists important to southern intellectual life. Taken together, the essays offer a robust analysis of a dynamic region. Michael O'Brien is professor of American intellectual history at University of Cambridge and a fellow at Jesus College. He is the author of Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 and other books.

Michael O’Brien was notoriously falsely imprisoned for the murder of a Cardiff newsagent in 1988. His sentence was overturned in 1999 and he successfully sued South Wales Police, eventually receiving a large financial compensation in 2006.In the first part of The Dossier he presents new evidence concerning his own case, which further calls into question the actions of the police which led to his conviction. The second part of the book considers nine other case of miscarriages of justice in South Wales between 1982-2016 for a variety of crimes including murder. These cases concern the convictions of twenty-three people, who between them have spent eighty years in prison. The earliest is Anthony Yellen, convicted of murder on a manufactured confession in 1983. The book includes the Welsh conspiracy trial, the case of the Darvell brothers in Swansea, the Cardiff Three, Jonathan Jones, the Merthyr arson case, and the Clydach murders. It concludes with an analysis of the Miscarriage of Justice Unit at South Wales Police.The Dossier calls into question methods of policing and a judicial system in which too little have changed over the past thirty years, and calls for a judicial inquiry to investigate the culture which has resulted in so many dubious and plainly wrongful convictions. No police officer has been brought to book for their part in these cases, despite the evidence produced for the convictions to be judged unsafe. Some officers have been involved in more than one of the cases considered, and some have been promoted to senior levels in the force. Many are now retired and are no longer subject to police disciplinary procedures. How, asks O’Brien, could so many important cases have resulted in unsafe conviction, and what can be done to improve procedures in future? As part of the answer, he calls for a judicial enquiry into these cases.

Sills gathers together poems from four of O’Brien’s early books and combines them with later work, forming a selection from 1960-1999. O'Brien writes, “The poems dance their dance of stillness and motion. The issue is a quiet, patterned music, animated, disciplined, ecstatic; not closure, but recognition.”This new edition provides the reader with the best introduction to O’Brien’s work, a poet hailed as a modern master of the lyric form and a poet of genuine significance in the American canon.

Many organizations are engaged in a race to prevent the execution by lethal injection of death sentenced prisoners in Texas (and elsewhere in the USA). Some of these men and women claim to be completely innocent, as described in this book. Texas is the most punitive place within one of the harshest penal systems in the world. Michael O'Brien - who was himself wrongly convicted of murder - dissects a selection of Death Row cases with the eye of a man who has spent years watching how miscarriages of justice happen and why. He explains how practitioners, politicians and others are in denial and how livelihoods depend on a conveyer belt from the courts to the execution chamber. Aided by bias, discrimination and prejudice he describes a killing process triggered by unfair trials, supposed expert evidence and closed minds. This is just one hallmark of a country obsessed with guns, violence and the ultimate penalty. No legal system should take away human lives, especially one tarnished by defects of the kind the author sets out in this book. Extract: 'Can you just imagine being an individual who is innocent but facing execution, whether in Texas or elsewhere? Or you were on Death Row but you did not take part in any killings, just got caught up in the hysteria? Can you picture the pressure and abject loneliness of serving 15 years or more, and then the State setting a date to kill you?'