A preeminent scientist - and the world's most prominent atheist - asserts the irrationality of belief in God, and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.

With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament, to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.

The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best.

Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

This controversial scientific vision predicts a time in which humans and machines will merge and create a new form of non-biological intelligence, explaining how the occurrence will solve such issues as pollution, hunger, and aging.

Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.

A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel by the French professor of philosophy, Muriel Barbery. Set within an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris, the story revolves around two main characters: Renée, the concierge, who is typically short, plump, middle-aged, and inconspicuous, with an unexpected passion for art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture; and Paloma, a twelve-year-old resident of the building, who is talented, precocious, and has decided to end her own life on her thirteenth birthday unless she can find something worth living for.

The narrative follows Renée who, despite her position, conceals a world of intellectual wealth and refined tastes beneath a veneer of simplicity. Similarly, Paloma hides her exceptional intelligence behind the facade of a mediocre pre-teen. When a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives at the building, their lives begin to change as they discover kindred spirits in each other.

Humorous and full of biting wit, the story exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous and explores rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors, evoking a sense of kinship and understanding of human complexities.

In a Norwegian coastal town, society's carefully woven threads begin to unravel when an unsettling stranger named Johan Nagel arrives. With an often brutal insight into human nature, Nagel draws out the townsfolk, exposing their darkest instincts and suppressed desires.

At once arrogant and unassuming, righteous and depraved, Nagel's bizarre behavior and feverish rants seduce the entire community even as he turns it on its head—before disappearing as suddenly as he had arrived.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich has been classified as the best example of a novella ever written. Leo Tolstoy remains one of the greatest writers to put pen to paper, revolutionizing the form of the novel, the short story, and with Ivan Ilyich, the novella.

The story revolves around the titular Ivan Ilyich Golovin, who has discovered that he will die. Ivan is a well-liked official, but he has spent his life pursuing his career, eschewing his domestic life. Forced to confront his mortality, Ivan has the time to consider his life and discovers he has fled from an authentic life. Ivan has turned away from his wife, his daughter, and his son, and the lack of any real connection with them only exacerbates the pain of his impending demise.

Only through conversation with the simple peasant boy Geresim does Ivan find some solace, and that realization allows him to find a new joy in his last moments. Tolstoy wrote Ivan Ilyich late in his career, well after his major novels Anna Karenina and War and Peace. His religious and philosophical convictions shine through in this work, showing how Tolstoy has developed a deep understanding of the meaning of life itself.

Although the subject of the novella may be macabre, the story gives hope for a better life for us all.

A community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear. A man persecuted by the ghosts of his painful past. A young woman searching for happiness. In one eventful week, each will face questions of life, death, and power, and each will choose a path. Will they choose good or evil?

In the remote village of Viscos -- a village too small to be on any map, a place where time seems to stand still -- a stranger arrives, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are human beings, in essence, good or evil? In welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever mark their lives.

Paulo Coelho's stunning novel explores the timeless struggle between good and evil, and brings to our everyday dilemmas fresh perspective: incentive to master the fear that prevents us from following our dreams, from being different, from truly living. The Devil and Miss Prym is a story charged with emotion, in which the integrity of being human meets a terrifying test.

Sesher Kobita, The Last Poem is a profound work by the illustrious author Rabindranath Tagore. This novel strips away societal and familial supports to bring forth an intimate dialogue between two captivating characters: Amit Rai and Labanyalata.

Within its pages, Tagore navigates the emotional evolution of these characters through a series of scintillating conversations. At its surface, it's an unusual love story, but as one delves deeper, other significant themes emerge.

Is love important in marriage?
Does marriage allow space, both physical and mental, for both partners? These questions are explored with Tagore's characteristic depth.

Moreover, Tagore's mastery over the Bengali language is evident as he plays elaborate language games, making this work not only a romantic drama but also a reflection on the language itself.

The novel’s engagement with issues of romantic love and the everyday responsibilities of marriage remains relevant, prompting readers to reflect deeply on these timeless questions.

After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked—on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing.

As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy.

In this fascinating, lyrical tale, Umberto Eco tells of a young dreamer searching for love and meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps, has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and the Flood.

Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of the incredible breakthrough of mapping the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome. This achievement raises questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, longevity, and free will.

By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome.

This book will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.

Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that our genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.

Drawing fascinating examples from every field of biology, he paved the way for a serious re-evaluation of evolution. He also introduced the concept of self-reproducing ideas, or memes, which (seemingly) use humans exclusively for their propagation. If we are puppets, he says, at least we can try to understand our strings.

30th Anniversary Edition - Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of The Blind Watchmaker features a unique biomorph. No two covers are exactly alike.

Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?

The teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) has come to be recognized as one of the most original, enduring, and penetrating of our century. While Gurdjieff used many different means to transmit his vision of the human dilemma and human possibility, he gave special importance to his acknowledged masterwork, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.

Beelzebub's Tales is an "ocean of story" and of ideas that one can explore for a lifetime. It is majestic in scale and content, challengingly inventive in prose style, and often approached with apprehension. This revised edition, prepared under the direction of Gurdjieff's closest pupil, Jeanne de Salzmann, offers a new experience of Gurdjieff's masterpiece for contemporary readers.

This edition provides a translation that clarifies the verbal surface while respecting the author's thought and style. It is presented in a sturdy cloth edition, echoing its original publication.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a story for those who follow their hearts and make their own rules...people who derive special pleasure from doing something well, even if only for themselves...people who understand there's more to this living than meets the eye. They'll be right there with Jonathan, soaring higher and faster than they ever dreamed.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is no ordinary bird. He believes it is every gull's right to fly, to reach the ultimate freedom of challenge and discovery, finding his greatest reward in teaching younger gulls the joy of flight and the power of dreams.

The special 20th anniversary release of this spiritual classic!

From Shel Silverstein, the celebrated author of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, comes The Missing Piece, a charming fable that gently probes the nature of quest and fulfillment.

It was missing a piece. And it was not happy. What it finds on its search for the missing piece is simply and touchingly told. This inventive and heartwarming book can be read on many levels, and Silverstein’s iconic drawings and humor are sure to delight fans of all ages.

So it set off in search of its missing piece. And as it rolled, it sang this song:

Oh I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
Hi-dee-ho, here I go,
Lookin' for my missin' piece.

The missing piece sat alone, waiting for someone to come along and take it somewhere...

The different ones it encounters—and what it discovers in its helplessness—are portrayed with simplicity and compassion in the words and drawings of Shel Silverstein.

Philosopher David Hume was considered one of the most important figures in the age of Scottish enlightenment. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume discusses the weakness that humans have in their abilities to comprehend the world around them, what is referred to in the title as human understanding.

This work, now commonly required reading in philosophy classes, exposed a broad audience to philosophy when it was first published. A great introduction to the philosophy of David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and the ideas within it are as intriguing today as when they were first written.

Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and soul-stirring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried near the Pyramids.

Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles in his path. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.

8 octobre 1908 : Adolf Hitler recalé. Que se serait-il passé si l'École des beaux-arts de Vienne en avait décidé autrement? Que serait-il arrivé si, cette minute-là, le jury avait accepté et non refusé Adolf Hitler, flatté puis épanoui ses ambitions d'artiste?

Cette minute-là aurait changé le cours d'une vie, celle du jeune, timide et passionné Adolf Hitler, mais elle aurait aussi changé le cours du monde...

Sodom and Gomorrah explores the complex themes of homosexual love, both male and female, and the destructive nature of sexual jealousy. Within its pages, Proust offers an unforgiving analysis of the decadent high society of Paris and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie poised to supplant it.

Characters who had lesser roles in earlier volumes now reappear in a different light and take center stage, notably Albertine, with whom the narrator believes he is in love, and the insanely haughty Baron de Charlus.

This volume is a testament to Proust's ability to weave intricate narratives that delve deeply into the human psyche, making it a critical piece of his monumental series, À la recherche du temps perdu.

The highly anticipated follow-up to the 2,000,000 copy bestselling inspirational book, The Power of Now, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Eckhart Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

The Power of Now was a question-and-answer handbook. A New Earth has been written as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a history teacher in a secondary school. He is divorced, involved in a rather one-sided relationship with a bank clerk, and he is depressed. To lift his depression, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film and is unimpressed. During the night, noises in his apartment wake him. He goes into the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video, and as he watches in astonishment, he sees an actor who looks exactly like him—or, more specifically, exactly like the man he was five years before, moustachioed and fuller in the face.

He sleeps badly. Against his own better judgement, Tertuliano decides to pursue his double. As he establishes the man's identity, what begins as a whimsical story becomes a dark meditation on identity and, perhaps, on the crass assumptions behind cloning—that we are merely our outward appearance rather than the sum of our experiences.

Just because you can't explain it, doesn't mean it's a miracle. Religion is a controversial business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods, who come in all shapes and sizes. In such a competitive environment, there is a pressing need to make one's presence felt. And it's certainly not remotely helpful to be reduced to be appearing in the form of a tortoise, a manifestation far below god-like status in anyone's book. In such instances, you need an acolyte, and fast. Preferably one who won't ask too many questions...

In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities.

While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.

Anton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels. Here, brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

The Steppe—the most lyrical of the five—is an account of a nine-year-old boy’s frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia.

The Duel sets two decadent figures—a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility—on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals.

In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers that his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in startling ways.

Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant.

In My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labor. The resulting conflict between the moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human nature culminates in a brief apocalyptic vision that is unique in Chekhov’s work.

Published shortly after his death, the Ethics is undoubtedly Spinoza's greatest work - an elegant, fully cohesive cosmology derived from first principles, providing a coherent picture of reality, and a guide to the meaning of an ethical life.

Following a logical step-by-step format, it defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, human bondage to the emotions, and the power of understanding - moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order, the nature of freedom and the path to attainable happiness.

A powerful work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through intense thought and philosophical reflection.

The Ethics is presented in the standard translation of the work by Edwin Curley. This edition also includes an introduction by Stuart Hampshire, outlining Spinoza's philosophy and placing it in context.

The narrator of this funny and poignant novel is searching for meaning, going back to his childhood, onto the web and off to New York to find it. He writes lists, obsesses over the nature of time, and finds joy in bouncing balls—all in an effort to find out how best to live life.

An utterly enchanting meditation on experience, Naive. Super was a #1 best-seller in Erlend Loe's native Norway.

The Darkness That Comes Before is the enthralling first book in R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series. It masterfully crafts a world from scratch, complete with its own language, classes of people, cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals.

This world is scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years into the future. As untold thousands gather for a crusade, four individuals—a mysterious traveler, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerer, and a charismatic presence—ensnare two men and two women in their journey.

The Darkness That Comes Before is a gripping history of this great holy war, where like all histories, the survivors will write its conclusion.

The Guermantes Way is the third volume in Marcel Proust's monumental series, In Search of Lost Time. After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes, this installment opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century.

The narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to, and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, this novel defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world.

This elegantly packaged new translation introduces a new generation of readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust.

The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of New Biology. Author Dr. Bruce Lipton, a former medical school professor and research scientist, presents a profound synthesis of the latest research in cell biology and quantum physics.

Dr. Lipton's experiments, along with those of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information.
The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life, demonstrating that genes and DNA do not control our biology. Instead, DNA is influenced by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts.

This book is hailed as a major breakthrough, showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking. It illustrates how the new science of Epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species.

At the age of 14, Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and, without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew.” In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider.

The genius of Imre Kertesz’s unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg’s dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses—or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.

From the author of SOPHIE'S WORLD, a modern fairy tale with a philosophical twist. 'My father died eleven years ago. I was only four then. I never thought I'd hear from him again, but now we're writing a book together' To Georg Røed, his father is no more than a shadow, a distant memory. But then one day his grandmother discovers some pages stuffed into the lining of an old red pushchair. The pages are a letter to Georg, written just before his father died, and a story, 'The Orange Girl'. But 'The Orange Girl' is no ordinary story - it is a riddle from the past and centres around an incident in his father's youth. One day he boarded a tram and was captivated by a beautiful girl standing in the aisle, clutching a huge paper bag of luscious-looking oranges. Suddenly the tram gave a jolt and he stumbled forward, sending the oranges flying in all directions. The girl simply hopped off the tram leaving Georg's father with arms full of oranges. Now, from beyond the grave, he is asking his son to help him finally solve the puzzle of her identity.

Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings—as well as Civil Disobedience, his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty—have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature.

Teaching, for the First Time in the History of the World, the True Philosophy upon which all Personal Success is Built.

You Can Do It if You Believe You Can!

THIS is a course on the fundamentals of Success.

Success is very largely a matter of adjusting one’s self to the ever-varying and changing environments of life, in a spirit of harmony and poise.

Epictetus was born into slavery about 55 C.E. in the eastern outreaches of the Roman Empire. Sold as a child and crippled from the beatings of his master, Epictetus was eventually freed, rising from his humble roots to establish an influential school of Stoic philosophy. Stressing that human beings cannot control life, only how they respond to it, Epictetus dedicated his life to outlining the simple way to happiness, fulfillment, and tranquility.

By putting into practice the ninety-three witty, wise, and razor-sharp instructions that make up The Art of Living, readers learn to successfully meet the challenges of everyday life and face life's inevitable losses and disappointments with grace. Epictetus's teachings rank among the greatest wisdom texts of human civilization.

Sharon Lebell presents this esteemed philosopher's invaluable insights for the first time in a splendidly down-to-earth rendition. The result is the West's first and best primer for living the best possible life—as helpful in the twenty-first century as it was in the first.

Essays on life that will resonate deeply as readers discover how universal insights can be found in ordinary events. More than thirty years ago, Robert Fulghum published a simple credo—a credo that became the phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Today, after being embraced around the world and selling more than seven million copies, Fulghum’s book retains the potency of a common though no less relevant piece of wisdom: that the most basic aspects of life bear its most important opportunities.

Here Fulghum engages us with musings on life, death, love, pain, joy, sorrow, and the best chicken-fried steak in the continental United States. The little seed in the Styrofoam cup offers a reminder about our own mortality and the delicate nature of life . . . a spider who catches (and loses) a full-grown woman in its web one fine morning teaches us about surviving catastrophe . . . the love story of Jean-Francois Pilatre and his hot-air balloon reminds us to be brave and unafraid to “fly” . . . life lessons hidden in the laundry pile . . . magical qualities found in a box of crayons . . . hide-and-seek vs. sardines—and how these games relate to the nature of God. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is brimming with the very stuff of life and the significance found in the smallest details.

In the editions since the first publication of this book, Robert Fulghum has had some time to ponder, to reevaluate, and to reconsider, adding fresh thoughts on classic topics including a short new introduction.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a leading German metaphysician of the 19th century, whose influence extended far beyond the hermetic world of philosophy. His adherents ranged from Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche to Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Mann. Schopenhauer rejected the idealism of his contemporaries and embraced a practical variety of materialism. He discarded traditional philosophic jargon for a brisk, compelling style, using direct terms to express the metaphysics of the will.

In The Wisdom of Life, an essay from his final work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), Schopenhauer advocates for individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation over acting on irrational impulses. He examines how life can be arranged to derive the highest degree of pleasure and success, offering guidelines for achieving a full and rich manner of living. Schopenhauer advises that even a life well-lived must always aspire to grander heights. This work abounds in subjects of enduring relevance and is highly readable in an excellent translation.

Il existe des êtres qui ne subissent pas la loi de l'évolution. Ce sont les légumes cliniques, ou des tubes par où circule seule la nourriture. Ces tubes ne sont pas pour autant sans cervelle puisqu'il arrive que celle-ci, suite à un "accident fatal", se réveille soudain, et déclenche la vie.

C'est exactement ce qu'a vécu la (très) jeune narratrice de Métaphysique des tubes durant les deux premières années de sa vie qui furent muettes, immobiles, végétatives, bref divines. Au sens propre, car ce singulier bébé n'ignore pas qu'il est Dieu lui-même, méditant sur ce monde qu'il hésite à rejoindre.

Sous forme de monologues intérieurs et considérations philosophico-drolatiques, on déguste le récit de ces trois premières années d'une vie française au Japon, pays merveilleux où de la naissance à la maternelle, l'enfant est un dieu.

From the New York Times bestselling author of All About Love, a brave and astonishing work that challenges patriarchal culture and encourages men to reclaim the best part of themselves.

Everyone needs to love and be loved—even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it's so deeply ingrained in our society that it's hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women.

Inferno, the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, is one of the most elusive and challenging works to render into English verse. In this translation, Anthony Esolen tackles the daunting task with finesse, striving for a marriage of sense and sound, poetry and meaning. Esolen's translation captures the poem's line-by-line vigor while remaining faithful to its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure. This rendition of Inferno is designed to be as popular with general readers as it is with teachers and students, reflecting Dante's unyielding insistence on the absence of sentimentality or intellectual compromise—even Hell, as depicted by Dante, is a work of divine art.

Esolen's critical Introduction and endnotes, along with appendices containing Dante’s most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic theologians—definitively illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited, providing readers with a comprehensive understanding of the spiritual context of Dante's epic journey.

Hans Thomas and his father set out on a car trip through Europe, from Norway to Greece—the birthplace of philosophy—in search of Hans Thomas's mother, who left them many years earlier. On the way, Hans Thomas receives a mysterious miniature book—the fantastic memoir of a sailor shipwrecked in 1842 on a strange island where a deck of cards come to life.

Structured as a deck of cards—each chapter is one card in the deck—The Solitaire Mystery weaves together fantasy and reality, fairy tales and family history. Full of questions about the meaning of life, it will spur its readers to reexamine their own.

In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Marcel Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence. The narrative is charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside.

At the heart of the story lies his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup.

It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who are to dominate the narrator’s life—the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.

José Saramago is a master at pacing. Readers unfamiliar with the work of this Portuguese Nobel Prize winner would do well to begin with The Cave, a novel of ideas, shaded with suspense. Spare and pensive, The Cave follows the fortunes of an aging potter, Cipriano Algor, beginning with his weekly delivery of plates to the Center, a high-walled, windowless shopping complex, residential community, and nerve center that dominates the region.

What sells at the Center will sell everywhere else, and what the Center rejects can barely be given away in the surrounding towns and villages. The news for Cipriano that morning isn't good. Half of his regular pottery shipment is rejected, and he is told that the consumers now prefer plastic tableware. Over the next week, he and his grown daughter Marta grieve for their lost craft, but they gradually open their eyes to the strange bounty of their new condition: a stray dog adopts them, and a lovely widow enters Cipriano's life.

When they are invited to live at the Center, it seems ungracious to refuse, but there are some strange developments under the complex, and a troubling increase in security, and Cipriano changes all their fates by deciding to investigate. In Saramago's able hands, what might have become a dry social allegory is a delicately elaborated story of individualism and unexpected love.

Ignorance is a brilliant novel set in contemporary Prague, crafted by the distinguished writer Milan Kundera. The story unfolds with a chance meeting between a man and a woman as they return to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they chose to become exiles.

Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence, "their memories no longer match." We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion.

Only those who return after twenty years, like Ulysses returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance firsthand. Kundera is the only author today who can take dizzying concepts such as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a poignant novel by Mitch Albom that delves into the intriguing connections that shape our lives, suggesting that heaven offers answers rather than just being a destination. The story revolves around Eddie, a war veteran whose life seems unremarkable. On his 83rd birthday, a fatal accident at the amusement park where he works propels him into the afterlife.

In this new existence, Eddie encounters five individuals who each played a pivotal role in his earthly journey. These encounters shed light on the seemingly inconsequential moments of his life, bringing clarity and understanding to his existence. One by one, they unravel the significance behind the lingering question: "Why was I here?"

Mitch Albom crafts an original and moving narrative that challenges preconceived notions of the afterlife and the meaning of our time on earth. The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a story that resonates with anyone who has pondered their life's purpose and the impact of their actions.

The Kreutzer Sonata is a gripping novella by Leo Tolstoy, exploring themes of jealousy, murder, and the complexities of marriage. When Marshal of the Nobility, Pozdnyshev, suspects his wife of having an affair with her music partner, his jealousy consumes him, leading to a tragic act of murder.

Controversial upon its publication in 1890, The Kreutzer Sonata illuminates Tolstoy’s then-feverish Christian ideals, his conflicts with lust, and the hypocrisies of nineteenth-century marriage. It also delves into his thoughts on the role of art and music in society.

This work remains relevant in understanding Tolstoy as an artist and offers insights into feminism and literature. The novella also includes Tolstoy’s sequel to the story, providing a deeper understanding of its themes.

In "The Blank Slate," Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology).

Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them. Pinker injects calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about a rich human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Pinker shows that an acknowledgement of human nature that is grounded in science and common sense, far from being dangerous, can complement insights about the human condition made by millennia of artists and philosophers. All this is done in the style that earned his previous books many prizes and worldwide acclaim: wit, lucidity, and insight into matters great and small.