William Burns

The future ain't what it used to be. Is nostalgia revitalizing or killing 21st-century culture? The concept of nostalgia has seeped into almost all aspects of modern-day media, none more so than horror culture and its borderlands of Hauntology, Folk Horror, and found footage film. From film and TV franchises building endlessly on past glories, to musicians whose work now spans decades, modern media borrows heavily from the past. Ghost of an Idea: Hauntology, Folk Horror, and the Spectre of Nostalgia examines the use and effect of nostalgia in the Horror and Hauntological realms. It asks why these genres hold such a fascination in popular culture, often inspiring devoted fanbases. From Candyman to The Blair Witch Project, and Dark Shadows to American Horror Story, are the folk horror and found footage phenomena significant artistic responses to political, social, and economic conditions, or simply an aesthetic rebranding of what has come before? How has nostalgia become linked to other concepts (psychogeography, residual haunting) to influence Hauntological music such as Boards of Canada, The Rowan Amber Mill, Hawksmoor, or The Caretaker? What can the 'urban wyrd' or faux horror footage tell us about our idealized past? And how will these cultures of nostalgia shape the future? Combining the author's analysis with first-hand accounts of fans and creators, this book offers a critical analysis of our cultural quest to recognize, resurrect, and lay to rest the ghosts of past and present, also summoning up those spectres that may haunt the future.New angle on the Folk Horror and Hauntology genres made popular by writers such as Mark Fisher;Folk Horror is a major trend in contemporary horror culture (e.g. the 2021 documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched);Found footage films - a key focus of the book - have a strong presence on all major streaming services and a devoted fanbase;Combines the author's analysis with first-hand accounts of fans and creators;The book was the focus of an author talk at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in March 2024.

Would you sign up for an early death just to earn more money?Section 16 officers often earn $1 million or more per year, but a high-stress career along with limited exercise and poor eating habits can take years off your life. What about your financial life? SEC regulations make it difficult to diversify away from your company stock. The leveraged nature of employee stock options could turn a 25 percent decline in that stock into a 50 percent hit to your net worth-or worse.What if you could address both problems at once? Welcome to the Section 16 GPS process-a roadmap to diversify away from company stock and options. Then, you can use just 1 percent of your wealth to "buy back" some of the health you might have lost, reinvigorating your body and mind through the Healthspan Extender mindset.William Burns helps Section 16 executives and high-net-worth families take control of their finances and reclaim time from their busy lives. Get ready to discover his Section 16 Secrets as you start on your path to better wealth and health.

Would you sign up for an early death just to earn more money?Section 16 officers often earn $1 million or more per year, but a high-stress career along with limited exercise and poor eating habits can take years off your life. What about your financial life? SEC regulations make it difficult to diversify away from your company stock. The leveraged nature of employee stock options could turn a 25 percent decline in that stock into a 50 percent hit to your net worth-or worse.What if you could address both problems at once? Welcome to the Section 16 GPS process-a roadmap to diversify away from company stock and options. Then, you can use just 1 percent of your wealth to "buy back" some of the health you might have lost, reinvigorating your body and mind through the Healthspan Extender mindset.William Burns helps Section 16 executives and high-net-worth families take control of their finances and reclaim time from their busy lives. Get ready to discover his Section 16 Secrets as you start on your path to better wealth and health.

Knowledge and Power presents and explores science not as something specifically for scientists, but as an integral part of human civilization, and traces the development of science through different historical settings from the Middle Ages through to the Cold War. Five case studies are examined within this book: the creation of modern science by Muslims, Christians and Jews in the medieval Mediterranean; the global science of the Jesuit order in the early modern world; the relationship between "modernization" and "westernization" in Russia and Japan from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century; the role of science in the European colonization of Africa; and the rivalry in "big science" between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Each chapter includes original documents to further the reader’s understanding, and this second edition has been enhanced with a selection of new images and a new chapter on Big Science and the Superpowers during the Cold War.Since the Middle Ages, people have been working in many civilizations and cultures to advance knowledge of, and power over, the natural world. Through a combination of narrative and primary sources, Knowledge and Power provides students with an understanding of how different cultures throughout time and across the globe approached science. It is ideal for students of world history and the history of science.

Knowledge and Power presents and explores science not as something specifically for scientists, but as an integral part of human civilization, and traces the development of science through different historical settings from the Middle Ages through to the Cold War. Five case studies are examined within this book: the creation of modern science by Muslims, Christians and Jews in the medieval Mediterranean; the global science of the Jesuit order in the early modern world; the relationship between "modernization" and "westernization" in Russia and Japan from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century; the role of science in the European colonization of Africa; and the rivalry in "big science" between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Each chapter includes original documents to further the reader’s understanding, and this second edition has been enhanced with a selection of new images and a new chapter on Big Science and the Superpowers during the Cold War.Since the Middle Ages, people have been working in many civilizations and cultures to advance knowledge of, and power over, the natural world. Through a combination of narrative and primary sources, Knowledge and Power provides students with an understanding of how different cultures throughout time and across the globe approached science. It is ideal for students of world history and the history of science.

Knowledge and Power shows how science has developed in different historical settings by focusing on four episodes in the history of world science from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century. The title of this book comes from a famous saying by the English Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon: "Knowledge is Power." Through a combination of narrative and primary sources, author William Burns explores the following topics in order to provide students with an understanding of how different cultures throughout time and across the globe approached science: Science in the Medieval Mediterranean, The Jesuits and World Science ca. 1540-1773, Science in Russia and Japan ca. 1684-1860s, and Africa in the Age of Imperialism and Nationalism ca. 1860-1960.

This collection of carefully curated lists, articles, and interviews celebrates the beleaguered horror genre across different media while tracing the history of its acceptance into popular culture. Divided into four sections—Film, Television, Literature & Comic Books, and Music—this book groups horror movies from the Silent Era to today, as well as classic horror books and cult musical albums, into top-13 lists. Enjoy detailed reviews and analysis in categories such as the 13 Most Deranged Horror Director Debuts, the 13 Horror Movie Adaptations That Are Better Than the Book, and the 13 Most Terrifying Horror Film Soundtracks. These chapters, together with in-depth conversations with musicians, demonstrate how horror has penetrated our culture in more ways than we know. Fans of experimental cinema, heavy metal, industrial music, comics, and the occult will be delighted to see their favorite, yet far too often critically marginalized, works of art reviewed with a fresh, exhilarating voice.

In The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective, William Burns places the Scientific Revolution, its causes and effects, in a global context. It breaks with the Eurocentric tradition of previous surveys to fully reimagine the emergence of modern science on a global scale. Based on cutting-edge scholarship, Burns fluidly integrates the history of the Scientific Revolution in a convincing and seamless fashion, providing the reader with a new appreciation for the origins of the global, technological world around them.

Monstrous births, rains of blood, apparitions of battles in the sky – people in early modern England found all of these events to carry important religious and political meanings. In An age of wonders, available in paperback for the first time, William E. Burns explores the process by which these events became religiously and politically insignificant in the Restoration period. The story involves the establishment of early modern science, the shift from ‘enthusiastic’ to reasonable religion, and the fierce political combat between the Whigs and the Tories.This historical study is based on close readings of a variety of primary sources, both print and manuscript. Burns claims that prodigies lost their religious meaning and became subjects of scientific enquiry as a result of political struggles, first by the supporters of the restored monarchy and the Church of England against Protestant dissenters, and then by the Whig defenders of the Revolution of 1688 against the Tories and the Jacobites.By integrating religious and political history with the history of science, An age of wonders will be of great use to those working in the field of early modern history.