Books by William James

Synopsis coming soon.......

This is the ''Bible'' for the many enthusiasts of British Naval history in the age of Nelson. What Sir Charles Oman did for the Peninsular War, William James (d.1827) did for the Napoleonic Wars at sea: writing a comprehensive, massively detailed account of the real-life actions that lay behind the fiction of C. S. Forester and Patrick O''Brian. James had the advantage of writing at the time of the events he describes so well, and wrote hundreds of letters to survivors of the wars at sea, as well as scrutinising every despatch, ship''s log, foreign report and private narrative that he could lay his hands on. ''Never,'' wrote the ''Fortnightly Review'', ''was there a man more painstaking, more indefatigable, more scrupulously conscientious.'' Vol. I (1793-96) gives a brief history of the Royal Navy from 1488 until 1793 and the outbreak of the first war with Revolutionary France when the main narrative begins with Lord Howe''s operations at Toulon, his victory on the ''Glorious 1st June'' and the capture of French islands in the West Indies. Vol II (1797-1800) covers Lord Hood''s victory at the battle of Cape St Vincent and Nelson''s triumph at the Nile. Vol III covers the Battle of Copenhagen and concludes with Nelson''s great victory and death at Trafalgar. Vol IV (1805-1809) concentrates on Vice-Admiral Colloingwood''s post-Trafalgar operations and the actions of Sir Richard Strachan, and Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge. Vol V ( 1809-1813) looks at actions in the Dutch East Indies and the 1812 War with the United States. Finally, Vol VI (1813-1827) wraps up the Napoleonic Wars by examining the war at sea during Napoleon''s 100 days campaign which ended at Waterloo, and the exploits of Admiral Duncan. Illustrated with charts, diagrams, and frontispiece engravings of famous Admirals, this is quite simply the definitive account of the Napoleonic Wars at sea, finally back in print.

From 1865-1866, James accompanied the director of the recently established Museum of Comparative Zoology on a research expedition to Brazil. This critical, bilingual (English-Portuguese) edition of his diaries and letters includes reproductions of his drawings. This original material belongs to the Houghton Archives at Harvard University.

William James (1842-1910) originally published these ten non-technical essays in popular journals and reviews. Collected in this 1897 volume, they illustrate his pragmatic approach to questions of morality and religious belief. He argues that in cases of insufficient evidence we both can and must act on the best hypothesis.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, first delivered as the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, was published in 1902 and quickly established itself as a classic. It ranks with its great predecessor, The Principles of Psychology, as one of William James's masterworks.

Chapter I. 9 PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART The American educational organization, -What teachers may expect from psychology, -Teaching methods must agree with psychology, but cannot be immediately deduced therefrom, -The science of teaching and the science of war, -The educational uses of psychology defined, -The teacher's duty toward child-study. Chapter II. 15 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Our mental life is a succession of conscious 'fields, '-They have a focus and a margin, -This description contrasted with the theory of 'ideas, '-Wundt's conclusions, note. Chapter III. 19 THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM Mind as pure reason and mind as practical guide, -The latter view the more fashionable one to-day, -It will be adopted in this work, -Why so?-The teacher's function is to train pupils to behavior. Chapter IV. 23 EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR Education defined, -Conduct is always its outcome, -Different national ideals: Germany and England. Chapter V. 25 THE NECESSITY OF REACTIONS No impression without expression, -Verbal reproduction, -Manual training, -Pupils should know their 'marks'. Chapter VI. 28 NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS The acquired reactions must be preceded by native ones, -Illustration: teaching child to ask instead of snatching, -Man has more instincts than other mammals. Chapter VII. 31 WHAT THE NATIVE REACTIONS ARE Fear and love, -Curiosity, -Imitation, -Emulation, -Forbidden by Rousseau, -His error, -Ambition, pugnacity, and pride. Soft pedagogics and the fighting impulse, -Ownership, -Its educational uses, -Constructiveness, -Manual teaching, -Transitoriness in instincts, -Their order of succession. Chapter VIII. 40 THE LAWS OF HABIT Good and bad habits, -Habit due to plasticity of organic tissues, -The aim of education is to make useful habits automatic, -Maxims relative to habit-forming: 1. Strong initiative, -2. No exception, -3. Seize first opportunity to act, -4. Don't preach, -Darwin and poetry: without exercise our capacities decay, -The habit of mental and muscular relaxation, -Fifth maxim, keep the faculty of effort trained, -Sudden conversions compatible with laws of habit, -Momentous influence of habits on character. Chapter IX. 48 THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS A case of habit, -The two laws, contiguity and similarity, -The teacher has to build up useful systems of association, -Habitual associations determine character, -Indeterminateness of our trains of association, -We can trace them backward, but not foretell them, -Interest deflects, -Prepotent parts of the field, -In teaching, multiply cues. Chapter X. 54 INTEREST The child's native interests, -How uninteresting things acquire an interest, -Rules for the teacher, -'Preparation' of the mind for the lesson: the pupil must have something to attend with, -All later interests are borrowed from original ones. Chapter XI. 59 ATTENTION Interest and attention are two aspects of one fact, -Voluntary attention comes in beats, -Genius and attention, -The subject must change to win attention, -Mechanical aids, -The physiological process, -The new in the old is what excites interest, -Interest and effort are compatible, -Mind-wandering, -No