Interesting views

Ludlam subtly combines the attributes of the detective genre - pursuit, chase, gunfire, murder - and deep psychologism in the portrayal of the protagonist, who by virtue of circumstances faces the question: who is he really...

1981 - James A. Michener, The Accord. The novel tells the story of interaction and conflict between populations living in South Africa.

1982 - Robert Ludlum, The Mosaic of Parsifal. A scout never becomes an ex. Michael Havelock has experienced the truth of this statement firsthand. The past, in which he was a double agent of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, by no means ended with a bloody moonlit night on the beach in the Costa Brava, but only lay dormant for a while. It turned out that among the fragmentary memories in Havelock's brain hidden key - a code sequence of words and signs, firmly linking him to the invisible manipulator of the fate of humanity - the sinister Parsifal ...

1983 - John Le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl. A spy novel about the struggle of Western intelligence agencies against terrorism in Europe and the Middle East at the end of the 20th century.

1984 - Robert Ludlum, The Aquitaine Conspiracy. Aquitaine is not just one of the French provinces. It is the name of a secret organization formed by retired generals from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Israel and South Africa. They decided that the political system of their countries was rotten to the core and that their people deserved a better future. Which the conspirators envisioned as a total military-fascist dictatorship...

1985 - Stephen King, Skeleton Team. A collection of 19 short stories, 2 poems, and 1 novel.

1986 - Stephen King, "It." According to the main storyline, seven friends from the fictional town of Derry, Maine battle a monster that kills children and can take on any physical form.

1987 - Daniela Steele, All is Well. The novel is about a successful businessman, Bernie Fine, whose life suddenly and irrevocably changes.

1988 - Tom Clancy, The Kremlin Cardinal. A suspense novel by popular contemporary American author Tom Clancy, written in the form of a political detective about a high-ranking Soviet officer recruited by the CIA.

1989 - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses. The novel is written in the genre of magical realism. The main theme of the novel is emigrants and emigration, the impossibility of assimilation in the new culture, and the inevitability of returning to one's roots.

1990-е

1990 - Scott Thurow, The Burden of Proof. Acclaimed lawyer Alexandro "Sandy" Stern returns home from work and discovers that his wife of 30 years, Clara, has committed su***de.

1991 - Alexandra Ripley, "Scarlett." The book continues the storyline of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind. The indomitable Scarlett and the irresistible Rhett love and suffer again, struggle with fate and hope for happiness.

1992 - John Grisham, The Pelican Case. A young law student conducts her own investigation into the mysterious deaths of two Supreme Court members. And the closer she gets to solving it, the closer the unknown killer gets to herself.

1993 - Robert James Waller, "Bridges of Madison County". "The Bridges of Madison County" is an absolute phenomenon of twentieth-century American literature. The novel lasted more than ninety weeks on the national bestseller list, rightfully winning the prestigious EBBI Literary Award. The book's first print run alone totaled seven million copies. Clint Eastwood's film of the same name was one of his best. And the brilliant American actress Meryl Streep was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the title role.

1994, 1995 - James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecies. The protagonist of the novel goes on a journey to Peru to find and understand 9 ancient revelations made by Mayan Indians.

1996 - Joe Klein, Primary Colors. A fictional political drama about the presidential race of Jack Stanton, a womanizing Southern governor battling Democratic candidates in 1992.

1997 - Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. The novel tells a love story set against the backdrop of the last days of the War of Independence, when a deserter from the front

From shyness to confidence

Have you tried to pick up and decide to be confident? It sounds primitive. It seems too easy. Okay, let's change the approach.

Do you know what a confident person looks like? How he acts, how he walks, what he says, how he behaves, what his manners are?

In perceiving these questions, you have probably imagined some kind of image. You have seen his unsteady gait, his clear diction, his firm steps, his strong gaze.

So there's an image, great. And now the climax: what if you copied him? What if you looked like a confident person and tried your best?

When you decide to be confident, the brain starts to move. Neurons force it to activate areas that will help with the realization of the idea.

The brain is amazing. It doesn't distinguish well between what came before. It sticks to images. It doesn't care if it's an image you made up or if it's a real confidence you have.

If you don't believe it, try it. Stand up and step away from your device, and then clearly say, "I will be confident. Repeat this three times, increasing in volume and determination with each attempt.

The difference may seem insignificant, but it's there. And, as you can see, it only took you a couple of seconds to get something out of a choice based on absolutely nothing.

It's possible to decide to feel confident for no reason. No techniques, no affirmations, no coaching, no paid courses or anything else. Deciding and imitating is all it takes. It's simple and free. Give it a try.

My father slowed down in his later years. He would stop after any number of steps and was averse to any active physical activity. It was not a matter of lack of energy or ordinary ailments and pains of age, but literally matters of the soul. This organ, so often associated with emotions, is also responsible for pumping blood, and the pump is an energy-intensive apparatus. And so, when the heart wall became a victim of modest circulation, the pump worked intermittently, and Dad, so as not to overload it, had to reduce physical activity to a minimum. As far as our long-term well-being is concerned, nature is an easy-going mistress. She doesn't command us to give up bacon and milkshakes or require continuous exercise. But in acute situations, she won't let us down. Try eating human f***s and you'll be pulled right out. Set you down with a ferocious beast - you'll recoil. Walk briskly when the soul muscle lacks blood - and nature will contradict you. Especially if the pulse rate increases, the nerves of the mental muscle send a strong alarm signal to the brain, and there is a severe blow of crushing pain. This pain is called angina pectoris. In the middle of the XX century, surgeons believed that they had discovered an ingenious remedy for angina pectoris. Their reasoning was that if a certain artery in the chest cavity was dragged, blood flow through the bypass vessels would increase and thereby improve circulation in the affected area. In physics, it is often possible to look at a theory from different angles, scribbling any math in a notebook. Doctors, on the other hand, began to perform surgery. It was as if the theory was backed up: patients reported significant pain relief. Soon surgeons mastered the procedure everywhere. Why confirm anything with controlled studies when the efficacy was already known? There were, however, a couple of clouds in that clear surgical sky. Pathologists reported that they had had to dissect into patients who had undergone such surgery, and no signs of improved circulation were found in them. Even though the patients themselves said that the operation had helped them, their hearts claimed the opposite. In addition, the scientists who operated on the dogs also confirmed that they saw no effect. The doctors suspected that the improvements were occurring in the patients' heads. In 1959 and 1960, two teams of doctors set out to find out about the paradox in control experiments, which today would not be allowed for ethical reasons: both real and fake operations were performed, after which the results were compared. In the fake surgeries, the doctors opened the patient's chest, exposed the target artery, and then sewed up the patient without ligating the artery. Both studies certified the assumption that the surgeries were affected for psychological rather than medical reasons. In one, three-quarters of the patients who had the actual surgery said their angina was relieved. But the same thing happened to the five patients operated on falsely. The placebo result as it were. In an article published from the study, a patient who underwent fake surgery informed, "I actually felt better immediately... [in the eight months] after surgery, I took ten units of nitroglycerin, and before surgery, I took five units a day." Another patient reported no chest pain at all and was "optimistic" about his future, but the next day, alas, he "dropped dead after moderate exertion. The degree of cardiac malaise in the patients, as the doctors noted in the article, did not correlate with the strength of the angina they were experiencing. Just as the strength of anger that different people experience for the same insult, exactly the same way pain is experienced differently by different people, even when the physical harm to the body is identical. And just as some people may not be at all angry at something that will arouse rage in another person, some people feel no pain at all from an injury that will torment others. In the simplification of pain, the placebo effect is exceptionally powerful owing to a strong psychological component. The surgical operation in question is called "internal thoracic artery ligation," and it was eventually completely discontinued, and by the 1990s a less invasive and more difficult technology was developed: stenting. A stent is a tiny wire mesh that is inserted through an artery on the hip or arm into a pathologically narrowed artery to increase its lumen and blood flow. As with ligation of the internal thoracic artery, patients were informed about the healing effect of stents, and the operation, which costs 10,000 to 40,000 bucks in the States, became commonplace, although no large-scale follow-up studies confirming its benefit have not taken place. After that, in the year two thousand seventeen, the authoritative medical journal "The Lancet" published an article stating that, like the old dressing, stenting was no better than a fake placebo procedure.