Why are fiberglass vaulting poles and hinged skates accepted in sport - while performance-enhancing drugs are forbidden? Are the rules that forbid them arbitrary? Should we level the playing field by allowing all competitors to use drugs that allow them to run faster or longer, leap higher, or lift more? In this provocative exploration of what draws us to sport as participants and spectators, Thomas Murray argues that the values and meanings embedded within our games provide the guidance we need to make difficult decisions about fairness and performance-enhancing technologies. Good Sport reveals what we really care about in sport and how the reckless use of biomedical enhancements undermines those values. Implicit in sports history, rules, and practices are values that provide a sturdy foundation for an ethics of sport that celebrates natural talents and dedication. You see these values when the Paralympics creates multiple level playing fields among athletes with different kinds of impairments. They appear again in sports struggles to be fair to all when an extraordinary woman athlete emerges who appears to possess a mans hormone profile and muscles. They are threatened when the effort to assure athletes a fair chance to win without doping is subverted by cheating or by corruption, as in the case of Russias state-supported doping operation. Performance-enhancing drugs distort the connection between natural talents, the dedication to perfect those talents, and success in sport. Explaining the fundamental role of values and meanings, Good Sport reveals not just what we champion in the athletic arena but also, more broadly, what we value in human achievement.

Good Sport: Why Our Games Matter -- and How Doping Undermines Them

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Murray, Thomas H.

Addiction & Recovery

Oxford University Press

Thomas Murray's graceful and humane book illuminates one of the most morally complex areas of everyday life: the relationship between parents and children. What do children mean to their parents, and how far do parental obligations go? What, from the beginning of life to its end, is the worth of a child? Ethicist Murray leaves the rarefied air of abstract moral philosophy in order to reflect on the moral perplexities of ordinary life and ordinary people. Observing that abstract moral terms such as altruism and selfishness can be buried in the everyday doings of families, he maintains that ethical theory needs a richer description than it now has of the moral life of parents and children. How far should adults go in their quest for children? What options are available to women who do not want to bear a child now? Should couples be allowed to reject a child because of genetic disability or "wrong" gender? How can we weigh the competing claims of the genetic and the rearing parents to a particular child? The Worth of a Child couples impressive learning with a conversational style. Only by getting down to cases, Murray insists, can we reach moral conclusions that are unsentimental, farsighted, and just. In an era of intense public and private acrimony about the place and meaning of "family values," his practical wisdom about extraordinary difficult moral issues offers compelling reading for both experienced and prospective parents, as well as for ethicists, social and behavioral scientists, and legal theorists.

The Worth of a Child

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

University of California Press

Which Babies Shall Live?: Humanistic Dimensions of the Care of Imperiled Newborns (Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society)

The fate of seriously ill newborns has captured the atten tion of the public, of national and state legislators, and of powerful interest groups. For the most part, the debate has been cast in the narrowest possible terms: "discrimination against the handicapped"; "physician authority"; "family autonomy." We believe that something much more profound is happening: the debate over the care of sick and dying babies appears to be both a manifestation of great changes in our feelings about infants, children, and families, and a reflection of deep and abiding attitudes toward the newborn, the handi capped, and perhaps other humans who are "less than" nor mal, rational adults. How could we cast some light on those feelings and attitudes that seemed to determine silently the course of the public debate? We chose to enlist the humanities-the dis players and critics of our cultural forms. Rather than closing down the public discussion, we wanted to open it up, to illuminate it with the light of history, religion, philosophy, literature, jurisprudence, and humanistically oriented sociol ogy. This book is a first effort to place the hotly contested Baby Doe debate into a broader cultural context.

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Caplan, Arthur L.

Gardening & Landscape Design

Humana

One clever rat, one tramp steamship, one hungry lynx ... When Nuno, an Iberian Lynx, decides to escape his struggling endangered life in scrubland eastern Portugal, he learns of Southern California, where the rabbits are fat, slow, and many. He boards a tramp steamer where he meets Figo, a streetwise ship rat. Figo introduces him to the different exotic cultures, music, and cuisines of the ports they visit along the way. Despite the odds, they form an unlikely friendship, but will it endure the journey? How will they survive the different perils lurking around every corner? Even if they do, what worse dangers await them in California? Madalena Bastos, an esteemed Portuguese artist, lovingly illustrated this book. The author will donate 10% of net proceeds to one or several organizations whose mission is to save the wonderful Iberian Lynx.Get you copy today

The Adventures of Nuno and Figo: An Illustrated Journey of Two Unlikely Friends (What Happens When an Iberian Lynx and a Maine Coon Cat Meet in Southern California?)

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Bastet Publishing

"Ghosts and goddesses are foolish things to believe in." So one successful American author claims as he rents an abandoned crumbling palace in post-Revolution Portugal in the late 1970’s, eager to make progress on his next bestselling novel. A chance encounter with an unnamed, yet shockingly sensual woman pulls aside the veil of the world to reveal an alluring existence defined by unnatural delights and mind-twisting hedonism. As his mysterious lover draws him further into her realm of shadows and ultimate pleasure, how much is he willing to sacrifice to keep hold of her? And will there be anything left of his sanity when his would-be goddess is through with him?\nA tale told in the vein of Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe.

Only After Dark: One Man's Descent Into Obsession and Madness

Ponce de León: A Modern Sequel

The Amazing Tale of Gwennie: Homeless to Palace (What Happens When an Iberian Lynx and a Maine Coon Cat Meet in Southern California?)

Contemporary

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Books by Murray, Thomas H.