Mark O'Connell

A Story of Truth, Invention and Murder.

'The Book of Revelation with a Bill Bryson touch... At least you'll die laughing' Sunday Telegraph **NOW UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE LATEST APOCALYPSE** Of late, Mark O'Connell has found himself particularly anxious about the end of the world. As things fall apart around him, he sets out to meet the people preparing to survive: environmentalists meditating in remote Scottish forests, billionaires dreaming of life on Mars or a villa in New Zealand, and conspiracy theorists yearning for a lost American idyll. Journeying with him through this landscape of anxiety, we learn just what it takes to make it to the other side.

The exciting story of the queer talents, beats and personalities that have fantastically shaped the James Bond phenomenon in all its forms. Blending historical insight with new observations, interviews, understanding and exploration, Bond scholar Mark O’Connell deftly examines the fascinating gay forces behind the openly straight 007. At a time when fierce debate rages about identity politics versus cultural visibility, what if the world of Bond and its diverse myriad of creators, artists and influences were already a fierce bastion of queer? Bond, Queer Bond is not just the fascinating story about how LGBTQ creativity, temperaments, battles, and voices stretched into Bond from the gay map pins of San Francisco, London, New York, Paris, and beyond. It is also a rich chronicle of rainbow artistry, fortitude and visibility featuring Commander Bond alongside some of the most iconic names and pivotal beats of all LGBTQ history. It is a distinctive, energetic, and original compendium about identity in pop culture, the difference between gay history and queer expression, and how the deceptively diverse Bond world has always operated alongside both. In Bond, Queer Bond what might begin as a thoughtful new dive into an adjacent world of 007 fast becomes a rich, colourful, compelling, and fun manifesto about the vital and varied queer DNA of a cultural icon.

In 1957, 60,000 scientists from sixty-six countries around the world temporarily erased Earth’s artificial borders and joined forces for eighteen months to unlock the mysteries of our home planet. Their shared mission: to explore, measure, map, and study the Earth’s geology, oceans, volcanos, and atmosphere, to study the impact of the sun on the Earth's climate, to explore the many ways that human activity affects the health of our planet, and to apply every branch of geophysical science for the first time ever as "a potent force in international affairs." It was The International Geophysical Year (IGY), and the discoveries made during that year established a new foundation for science that affects our lives nearly every day.In The Year Science Changed Everything, author Mark O’Connell charts the struggles and successes of 1957’s International Geophysical Year alongside interviews with today’s leading environmental scientists to show that the time is right for another global environmental initiative. The IGY lit the fuse to the space race, produced a historic international treaty to protect Antarctica, led to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts circling our planet, produced the first map of the underwater Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and spearheaded scientific breakthroughs that have proven foundational to our understanding of the planet. More than a half century later, top climate experts and activists illustrate the political, financial, and media-centered obstacles they face working as individual researchers and fighting against rampant disinformation spread by sectors of the public and even of the scientific community, from Christiana FigueresandTom Rivett-Carnac, who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015, former vice-president and climate activist Al Gore, marine biologist and climate researcher Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, and Sameh Shoukry, President of the 27th session of the Conference of Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).The idea of global collaboration is as valid now as it was in 1957, and perhaps more necessary than ever to stave off the harmful effects of a deteriorating climate. The Year Science Changed Everything reframes the climate change discussion in a positive way through IGY’s example of how to unite scientists, and what we can achieve when we come together for the pursuit of scientific knowledge. ,

A NEW YORK TIMES AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - From the award-winning author comes the gripping tale of one of the most scandalous murderers in modern Irish history, at once a propulsive work of true crime and an act of literary subversion. "A masterpiece"--The Observer - "Disturbing and] compelling"--Colm To b n - "Superb and unforgettable"--Sally Rooney - "Brilliant"--New York Times Book Review - "A masterly work"--John Banville - "Fascinating"--Emmanuel Carr re - "Morally complex and mesmerizing"--Fintan O'Toole Malcolm Macarthur was a well-known Dublin socialite. Suave and urbane, he passed his days mingling with artists and aristocrats, reading philosophy, living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a desperate threat to his lifestyle. Macarthur hastily conceived a plan: He would commit bank robbery, of the kind that had become frightfully common in Dublin at the time. But his plan spun swiftly out of control, and he needlessly killed two innocent civilians. The ensuing manhunt, arrest, and conviction amounted to one of the most infamous political scandals in modern Irish history, contributing to the eventual collapse of a government. Winner of the Wellcome and Rooney Prizes, Mark O'Connell spent countless hours in conversation with Macarthur--interviews that veered from confession to evasion. Through their tense exchanges and O'Connell's independent reporting, a pair of narratives unspools: a riveting account of Macarthur's crimes and a study of the hazy line between truth and invention. We come to see not only the enormity of the murders but the damage that's inflicted when a life is rendered into story. At once propulsive and searching, A Thread of Violence is a hard look at a brutal act, its subterranean origins, and the long shadow it casts. It offers a haunting and insightful examination of the lies we tell ourselves--and the lengths we'll go to preserve them.

In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history. Mark O'Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. But in recent years this haunting has become mutual. When O'Connell sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur himself, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk. As the two men circle one another, O'Connell is pushed into a confrontation with his own narrative: what does it mean to write about a murderer?

What does it mean to write about a killer? From an award-winning author comes a tale of a notorious double-murder, a political scandal, and a writer who found himself entangled in this strange, true story.

Many symbols carry an elemental power that transcends boundaries and holds significance for other cultures. This new and updated edition is a comprehensive and beautiful book that discusses and illustrates thousands of these symbols and assesses their position in language, art, literature, mythology, magic, religion and psychology. In the second half of the book, how we dream and how we interpret dreams is analysed as a way of accessing our subconscious fears, desires and preoccupations. The erudite text provides a wealth of cultural background to primal metaphors that are part of mankind's universal language. The book is both a journey of discovery into the importance of symbolism and dreaming and a vast visual resource of signs and symbols.

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - An absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense--and coming to grips with the future, by the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine. "Deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects." --EsquireWe're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell is consumed by these questions--and, as the father of two young children, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization's collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited--real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. What emerges is an absorbing, funny, and deeply felt book about our anxious present tense--and coming to grips with what's ahead.

The Performing Art of Therapy explores the myriad ways in which acting techniques can enhance the craft of psychotherapy. The book shows how, by understanding therapy as a performing art, clinicians can supplement their theoretical approach with techniques that fine-tune the ways their bodies, voices, and imaginations engage with and influence their clients. Broken up into accessible chapters focused on specific attributes of performance, and including an appendix of step-by-step exercises for practitioners, this is an essential guidebook for therapists looking to integrate their theoretical training into who they are as individuals, find joy in their work, expand their empathy, increase self-care, and inspire clients to perform their own lives.

The Performing Art of Therapy explores the myriad ways in which acting techniques can enhance the craft of psychotherapy. The book shows how, by understanding therapy as a performing art, clinicians can supplement their theoretical approach with techniques that fine-tune the ways their bodies, voices, and imaginations engage with and influence their clients. Broken up into accessible chapters focused on specific attributes of performance, and including an appendix of step-by-step exercises for practitioners, this is an essential guidebook for therapists looking to integrate their theoretical training into who they are as individuals, find joy in their work, expand their empathy, increase self-care, and inspire clients to perform their own lives.

Mark O'Connell didn't want to be Luke Skywalker, He wanted to be one of the mop-haired kids on the Star Wars toy commercials. And he would have done it had his parents had better pine furniture and a condo in California. Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman didn't just change cinema – they made lasting highways into our childhoods, toy boxes and video stores like never before. In Watching Skies, O'Connell pilots a gilded X-Wing flight through that shared universe of bedroom remakes of Return of the Jedi, close encounters with Christopher Reeve, sticker album swaps, the trauma of losing an entire Stars Wars figure collection and honeymooning on Amity Island. From the author of Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan, Watching Skies is a timely hologram from all our memory systems. It is about how George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, a shark, two motherships, some gremlins, ghostbusters and a man of steel jumper a whole generation to hyperspace.

WINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2018 Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2017 A stunning new non-fiction voice tackles an urgent question... what next for mankind? 'Troubling and humorous, this is one of my current give-it-to-everyone books - I buy six copies at a time' Jeanette Winterson

"This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians' pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters." --New York Times Book ReviewTranshumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our biology--of our senses, intelligence, and lifespans--with technology. Its supporters have reached a critical mass and now include some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and beyond, among them Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Ray Kurzweil. In this provocative and eye-opening account, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering (and terrifying) possibilities that present themselves when you think of your body as an outmoded device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death, discovers an underground collective of biohackers boosting their senses by implanting electronics under their skin, and meets with members of a team urgently investigating how to protect mankind from rogue artificial superintelligence. In investigating what it means to be a machine, O'Connell shines a light on our ancient desire to transcend the animal condition--and offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.

Symbols can be as graphic as a cross, square or circle, or they can be conceptual representations of themes such as the soul, resurrection, love or desire. The meaning of these signs and symbols is complex and diverse, and depends on many variables. Over 1600 symbols and signs are covered in this comprehensive volume, analysing the definitions and interpretations that have been made across the boundaries of time, culture and tradition. Lavishly illustrated, this book contains a vast source of images and an erudite and informative text that will inform any scholar, dream-reader, magician, psychological historian, astrologer or psychotherapist.

The wildly entertaining and eye-opening biography of J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who invented the concept of "Close Encounters" with alien life, inspired Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic science fiction epic film, and made a nation want to believe in UFOs. In June 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold looked out his cockpit window and saw a group of nine silvery crescents weaving between the peaks of the Cascade Mountains at an estimated 1,200 miles an hour. The media, the military, and the scientific community-led by J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer hired by the Air Force-debunked this and many other Unidentified Flying Object sightings reported across the country. But after years of denials, Hynek made a shocking pronouncement: UFOs are real. Thirty years after his death, Hynek's agonizing transformation from skepticism to true believer remains one of the great misunderstood stories of science. In this definitive biography, Mark O'Connell reveals for the first time how Hynek's work both as a celebrated astronomer and as the U. S. Air Force's go-to UFO expert for nearly twenty years stretched the boundaries of modern science, laid the groundwork for acceptance of the possibility of UFOs, and was the basis of the hit film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With unprecedented access to Hynek's personal and professional files, O'Connell smashes conventional wisdom to reveal the intriguing man and scientist beneath the legend. Tracing Hynek's career, O'Connell examines Hynek's often-ignored work as a professional astronomer to create a complete portrait of a groundbreaking enthusiast who became an American cult icon and transformed the way we see our world and our universe.

This is a practical guide to understanding and decoding the universal icons, signs and symbols that are used in literature, art, religion, astrology, communication, advertising, mythology and science. It shows how signs and symbols have been used from the dawn of humanity to the modern age as a means of conveying belief, concepts, identity, emotions, and ideas. It explores major thematic concepts, including patterns and graphics, myth and the cosmos, the cycle of life, flora and fauna, and the living planet. It includes special sections on the signs and symbols used in alchemy and astrology, which still have echoes in modern art, advertising and the media. It focuses on the most important cultural symbols of all: the wheel, cross, gateway, rainbow, dragon, sun, serpent, and the labyrinth, and how they are used through the centuries in different civilizations. Signs and symbols are integral to the world in which we live: from letters and words on a page to constellations in the night sky; from the figures in our dreams to the uniformed authority figures keeping order in the streets.This fascinating book examines the use of symbols across all the different ranges and aspects of human experience - from the mundane to the sacred, from the temporal to the eternal. Written by leading authorities in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy, and lavishly illustrated with beautiful fine art paintings that are rich in allegorical symbolism, and contemporary photographs showing the way signs are used today, the book contains a wealth of visual and textual information that will inform anyone interested in the timeless value of these iconic symbols.

What they mean and how we use them. It offers a fascinating visual examination of how signs and symbols developed as a means of communication throughout history in art, religion, psychology, literature and everyday life. It shows how signs weave a continuous fabric of communication throughout our cultures, and how modern systems still depend on ancient symbols. It contains a visual directory of more than 1000 icons, graphic motifs, ideograms and symbols, together with 170 stunning photographs and fine art paintings. Throughout history hundreds of icons and symbols have been developed, interpreted and reproduced; from cave paintings to computer iconography and advertising. This book brings together these variant themes and shows the iconographical and symbolic strands that connect them all, whether it is the universal circle, the hammer and sickle, or the cross that goes far beyond being a symbol of Christianity. The book includes a directory of over 1,000 signs and symbols, from alchemical symbols to the Adinkra signs of Ghana, demonstrating the extraordinary breadth of subject matter and concepts that can be expressed with such simplicity.

This fascinating book examines the use of symbols across all the different ranges and aspects of human experience - from the mundane to the sacred, from the temporal to the eternal. Written by leading authorities in psychology and psychotherapy, the book contains chapters on symbols in society, in nature, in myth and sacred tradition, and in the human life cycle, as well as abstract symbols. The structure of the book is thematic, related signs and symbols are complemented and contrasted, giving a unique guide to their cross-cultural aspects. Some of those symbols that have the most complex meanings - such as the cross, the serpent, the rainbow and the wheel - have been singled out and are discussed in individual essays.