Daniel Shanahan Books

Badges, Bullets and Bars is brutally honest, raw, and gritty autobiographical book. It depicts the good, the bad and the awful experiences and encompasses the continuous struggle between good and evil, righteousness and injustices, suffered throughout the author's career as a former Baltimore City Police Officer.This courageous and compelling book charts the course of the author, who descends into a deep abyss from his beginning positions as a recruit, rookie, and generally innocent police cadet and later as a journeyman officer. His early life's yearning was to become a law enforcement officer and motor patrolman which he achieved. However, his shining pride, loyalty and respect for the badge began to erode over time. He was driven to alcoholism.The author ultimately disgraced the badge and became a racist, callused, hardened, jaded officer, and at times, totally uncaring, dysfunctional, troubled and possibly, mentally unstable police officer and human being all fostered by the criminal element that he had to endure during his 14-year tenure on the police force in the highest crime ridden district in Baltimore City - the Eastern District.This District was notorious for its violence, murders, rapes, drugs, filth and disregard for human life. How the good and especially the bad, horrible and jaw dropping unfathomable experiences a police officer encounters in a City overrun with violence and death, is graphically depicted in the former TV series "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "The Wire."The book also follows the author through his two criminal indictments and subsequent incarcerations, both in Federal and local correctional institutions. It allows the reader to enter a world of prison uncertainty and at times, fear and anxiety for his own life, as a former policeman. The contents of this book display how being a police officer in such an area can and will, completely change an officer's demeanor, racist thoughts, actions, and life's questions. And, at times, bring forth tears as one reflects at the inner core of all the good we learned, were raised to expect and to respect, and that which we encounter thru life's journey. This book is MUST READ for anyone, who might want to examine and understand the trials, tribulations, pressures and stress put upon a police officer working in one of the highest crime areas of our country.

Současný politický diskurs v USA - a i v dalších průmyslových demokraciích - byl až doposud založen na bezmezné víře v "prosperitu", která pramenila z pocitu vítězství nad chudobou a zápasem o přežití. Dnes, když demokracie získala spíše materiální rozměr, se již málo bavíme o tom, kam by měla vlastně směrovat. Stejně tak se neptáme na otázku, jaký vztah by ve skutečnosti měl být mezi menšinou lidstva, která si užívá prosperity a většinou , která k prosperitě přístup nemá. Kniha Waiting for Something That Never Arrived vychází z několika výměn názorů mezi autorem a nedávno zesnulým britským historikem Tony Judtem a postupně se snaží o vybudování filosofického základu pro progresivní myšlení a rozvážnou politickou diskuzi. Kniha je v anglickém jazyce. Autor knihy Dan Shanahan je profesorem komunikace na Fakultě humanitních studií Univerzity Karlovy v Praze. Působil na fakultách Monterey Institute of International Studies v Kalifornii a na Ecole des hautes etudes commerciales v Paříži. Dvakrát také přednášel v rámci stipendií Fulbrightova programu. Je autorem knih Towards a Genealogy of Individualism (UMass Press, 1992) a Language, Feeling and the Brain (Transaction Publishers, 2007).

This engaging interdisciplinary study examines the emergence, rise, and decline of individualism as a central feature of the Western world view. Building on research into the concept of self, Daniel Shanahan argues that the seeds of individualism - "that system of beliefs in which the individual becomes the final arbiter of truth" - were sown in ancient civilizations where subjective consciousness first became apparent. He then traces the evolution of the Western self-concept through its various historical the "analog self" of the Greeks and Hebrews; the "authorized self" of Augustine and the Christian era; and the "empowered self" of modernity.In Shanahan's view, the current collapse of individualism reflects growing skepticism about the capacity of the self alone to determine truth. These doubts can be attributed in part to the inherent tensions of a self-referential epistemology and in part to the increasing alienation of the individual from modern society.In a final chapter, Shanahan draws on cross-cultural and anthropological studies of non-Western cultures to show that alternatives to the individualistic paradigm not only exist, but may already signal the advent of a new world view based on the recognition of human interdependence.