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.

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.

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.

The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire was written by English historian Edward Gibbon and originally published in six quarto volumes. Volume 1 was published in 1776, going through six printings; volumes 2-3 in 1781; and volumes 4-6 in 1788-89. It was a major literary achievement of the 18th century, adopted as a model for the methodologies of historians.

The books cover the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius, from 180 to 1590. They delve into the behavior and decisions that led to the eventual fall of the Empire in both the East and West, offering explanations. Gibbon is called the first modern historian of ancient Rome due to his objective approach and accurate use of reference material, setting a standard for 19th and 20th-century historians.

His work is characterized by pessimism and detached irony, common to the historical genre of his era. Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life (1772-89) to this one work. His Memoirs of My Life & Writings reflect on how this book virtually became his life.

Gibbon offers explanations for why the Roman Empire fell, a task made difficult by the scarcity of comprehensive written sources. According to Gibbon, the Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions due to the loss of civic virtue. They had become weak, outsourcing defense to barbarian mercenaries who eventually took over. Romans had become effeminate, incapable of maintaining a tough military lifestyle. Additionally, Christianity fostered a belief in a better life after death, sapping patriotism and martial spirit. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, Gibbon held the Middle Ages in contempt as a superstitious, priest-ridden dark age, believing only the age of reason could progress history.

In Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel or The Prodigy, Hans Giebenrath lives among the dull and respectable townsfolk of a sleepy Black Forest village. When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious scholarship.

Hans dutifully follows the regimen of tireless study and endless examinations, his success rewarded only with more crushing assignments. When Hans befriends a rebellious young poet, he begins to imagine other possibilities outside the narrowly circumscribed world of the academy.

Finally sent home after a nervous breakdown, Hans is revived by nature and romance, and vows never to return to the gray conformity of the academic system.

Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia) is a satirical work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More (1478–1535) published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society as described by the character Raphael Hythloday who lived there some years, who describes and its religious, social and political customs.

The Symposium is a fascinating discussion on sex, gender, and human instincts, as relevant today as ever. In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society, and the sublimation of basic human instincts.

The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love—as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action, and as a means of ethical education.

Adam Smith's masterpiece, first published in 1776, is the foundation of modern economic thought and remains the single most important account of the rise of, and the principles behind, modern capitalism. Written in clear and incisive prose, The Wealth of Nations articulates the concepts indispensable to an understanding of contemporary society.

As Reich writes, "Smith's mind ranged over issues as fresh and topical today as they were in the late eighteenth century--jobs, wages, politics, government, trade, education, business, and ethics."

The eighteen chapters of The Bhagavad Gita (c. 500 b.c.), the glory of Sanskrit literature, encompass the whole spiritual struggle of a human soul. Its three central themes—love, light, and life—arise from the symphonic vision of God in all things and of all things in God.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature. Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).

In the final years of his prominent life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist, and also produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces.

The poignant 'The Lady with the Little Dog' and 'About Love' examine the nature of love outside of marriage - its romantic idealism and the fear of disillusionment.

And in stories such as 'Peasants', 'The House with the Mezzanine' and 'My Life', Chekhov paints a vivid picture of the conditions of the poor and of their powerlessness in the face of exploitation and hardship.

With the works collected here, Chekhov moved away from the realism of his earlier tales - developing a broader range of characters and subject matter, while forging the spare minimalist style that would inspire modern short-story writers such as Hemingway and Faulkner.

Hagakure ("In the Shadow of Leaves") is a manual for the samurai classes consisting of a series of short anecdotes and reflections that give both insight and instruction in the philosophy and code of behavior that foster the true spirit of Bushido—the Way of the Warrior.

It is not a book of philosophy as most would understand the word; rather, it is a collection of thoughts and sayings recorded over a period of seven years, covering a wide variety of subjects, often in no particular sequence. The work represents an attitude far removed from our modern pragmatism and materialism, and possesses an intuitive rather than rational appeal in its assertion that Bushido is a Way of Dying, and that only a samurai retainer prepared and willing to die at any moment can be totally true to his lord.

While Hagakure was for many years a secret text known only to the warrior vassals of the Hizen fief to which the author belonged, it later came to be recognized as a classic exposition of samurai thought and came to influence many subsequent generations. This translation offers 300 selections that constitute the core texts of the 1,300 present in the original.

Creation is a sweeping novel of politics, war, philosophy, and adventure. In this restored edition, featuring never-before-published material from Gore Vidal’s original manuscript, Creation offers a captivating grand tour of the ancient world.

Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and lifelong friend of Xerxes, spent most of his life as Persian ambassador for the great king Darius. He traveled to India, where he discussed nirvana with Buddha, and to the warring states of Cathay, where he learned of Tao from Master Li and fished on the riverbank with Confucius.

Now blind and aged in Athens—the Athens of Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Socrates—Cyrus recounts his days as he strives to resolve the fundamental questions that have guided his life’s journeys: how the universe was created, and why evil was created with good.

In revisiting the fifth century B.C.—one of the most spectacular periods in history—Gore Vidal illuminates the ideas that have shaped civilizations for millennia.

The Prince of Darkness has been given one last shot at redemption, provided he can live out a reasonably blameless life on Earth. Highly sceptical, naturally, the Old Dealmaker negotiates a trial period - a summer holiday in a human body, with all the delights of the flesh.

The body, however, turns out to be that of Declan Gunn, a depressed writer living in Clerkenwell, interrupted in his bath mid-suicide. Ever the opportunist, and with his main scheme bubbling in the background, Luce takes the chance to tap out a few thoughts - to straighten the biblical record, to celebrate his favourite achievements, to let us know just what it's like being him.

Neither living nor explaining turns out to be as easy as it looks. Beset by distractions, miscalculations and all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the Father of Lies slowly begins to learn what it's like being us.

Glen Duncan's brilliantly written novel is an investigation of the world of the senses - the seductiveness of evil, and the affection which keeps us human.

Cosmos has 13 heavily illustrated chapters, corresponding to the 13 episodes of the Cosmos television series. In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science.

The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth.

The Last of the Wine takes you on a captivating journey through ancient Greece. Follow the lives of two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, as they compete in the palaestra, embark on a quest to the Olympic games, and fight in the wars against Sparta. Their path also leads them to the teachings of the great philosopher, Socrates.

As their relationship deepens, Mary Renault masterfully conveys Greek culture and illustrates the profound impact of Socratic philosophy, whose influence has transcended epochs.

The final novel of one of America’s most beloved writers—a tale of degeneration, corruption, and spiritual crisis A Penguin Classic In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had “resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American.” Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of Steinbeck’s last novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With Ethan no longer a member of Long Island’s aristocratic class, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty, and today ranks alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Adventures of Augie March introduces us to Augie, an exuberant narrator-hero who is a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Depression. From the very first line, Augie captivates us with his free-spirited approach to life: "I am an American, Chicago born, and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted."

With a style reminiscent of Dickens, Saul Bellow fills this novel with a rich tapestry of characters and experiences. Augie is a "born recruit," making himself available for a series of occupations, and then proudly rejecting each as unworthy. His journey is filled with colorful companions—plungers, schemers, risk-takers, and "hole-and-corner" operators like the would-be tycoon Einhorn or the would-be siren Thea, who travels with an eagle trained to hunt small creatures.

Augie's nonconformity leads him into an eventful, humorous, and sometimes earthy way of life. His quest for reality, fulfillment, and love takes him from the depths of poverty to the peaks of worldly success, standing as an irresistible, poignant incarnation of the American idea of freedom.

This novel is written in the cascades of brilliant, biting, ravishing prose that would come to be known as “Bellovian,” re-writing the language of Bellow’s generation.

This edition of The Trial and Death of Socrates presents G. M. A. Grube's distinguished translations, as revised by John Cooper for Plato, Complete Works. A number of new or expanded footnotes are also included along with a Select Bibliography. John M. Cooper is Stuart Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University.

What is the relationship of the individual to the state? What is the ideal state, and how can it bring about the most desirable life for its citizens? What sort of education should it provide? What is the purpose of amassing wealth? These are some of the questions Aristotle attempts to answer in one of the most intellectually stimulating works.

Both heavily influenced by and critical of Plato's Republic and Laws, Politics represents the distillation of a lifetime of thought and observation. Encyclopaedic knowledge has never, before or since, gone hand in hand with a logic so masculine or with speculation so profound.

Students, teachers, and scholars will welcome this inexpensive new edition of the Benjamin Jowett translation, as will all readers interested in Greek thought, political theory, and depictions of the ideal state.

هزمتك يا موت الفنون جميعها

هكذا وفي عبارة واحدة يكثف الشاعر محمود درويش في جداريته ما حاول أن يقوله بأساليب متنوعة على مدى هذه القصيدة - الديوان. إنها لحظة التحدي الأخيرة بين لغة وذاكرة من جهة، ونهاية كانت تقترب بسرعة.

فمن غير الشاعر يتطيع منازلة الموت بهذه الطريقة وذاك الدفق وهذا البوح؟ محمود درويش هنا جديد، تتصاعد درجة انتباهه على شرفة الموت، فيهدي إلينا تلك التجربة شعرًا آسرًا، يتوقف فيه الزمن وتتباطأ حركته، فتتأبد اللحظات واللقطات والمشاهد، لنعثر بعد رحلة جلجامش الشهيرة على سفر مبتكر للخلود.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in Portuguese in 1968 and subsequently translated and published in English in 1970, presents the methodology of the late Paulo Freire. His work has been instrumental in empowering countless impoverished and illiterate individuals globally. The book gains particular relevance in the United States and Western Europe as it addresses the increasing acceptance of a permanent underclass among underprivileged and minority populations in urban areas.

The 30th Anniversary Edition includes a significant new introduction detailing Freire's life and the profound influence of this book, contributed by Donaldo Macedo, a writer and authoritative voice on Freire's work. This edition aims to motivate a new wave of educators, students, and general readers to engage with Freire's influential teachings.

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

Some laws teach the need for prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), others teach the value of confidence ("Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness"), and many recommend absolute self-preservation ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally"). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing.

The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion — and indeed our future.

Dr. Tom More has created a unique invention: a stethoscope of the human spirit. With this remarkable device, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu.

This novel confronts the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin. Set amid the decadence and polarization of a future American society, it is a journey through the complexities of the human psyche, highlighting both its potential and its pitfalls.

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. The Consolation of Philosophy was written in the period leading up to his brutal execution. It is a dialogue of alternating prose and verse between the ailing prisoner and his 'nurse' Philosophy.

Her instruction on the nature of fortune and happiness, good and evil, fate and free will, restore his health and bring him to enlightenment. The Consolation of Philosophy was extremely popular throughout medieval Europe and his ideas were influential on the thought of Chaucer and Dante.

The purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason consists in the attempt to change the old procedure of metaphysics and to bring about a complete revolution. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is the central text of modern philosophy. It presents a profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together the two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.

Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence.

Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818—1883) co-wrote The German Ideology in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labor, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism.

They chart the course of "true" socialism based on G. W.F. Hegel's dialectic, while criticizing the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx's death and published by Engels in 1888.

Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components: birth and death. He suggests that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, "that laughable accident."

In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. In all his writing, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience.

In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century?

Here, too, is a rare, private glimpse of Sagan's thoughts about love, death, and God as he struggled with fatal disease. Ever forward-looking and vibrant with the sparkle of his unquenchable curiosity, Billions & Billions is a testament to one of the great scientific minds of our day.

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to—and obtain absolution from—a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing.

But even years after the war had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place?

In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China, and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past.

Often surprising, always thought-provoking, The Sunflower will challenge you to define your beliefs about justice, compassion, and responsibility.

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his life. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme brilliance, it captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers.

For Wittgenstein, logic was something we use to conquer a reality which is in itself both elusive and unobtainable. He famously summarized the book in the following words: What can be said at all can be said clearly; and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

David Pears and Brian McGuinness received the highest praise for their meticulous translation. The work is prefaced by Bertrand Russell's original introduction to the first English edition.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott, is an essential work that delves into the reasons behind the failure of states to execute large-scale social planning successfully. It presents an analysis of various disasters, from Russia to Tanzania, probing why such efforts often result in calamity.

The book argues that disasters occur when states impose oversimplified visions on complex realities that they cannot fully comprehend. Scott emphasizes the importance of recognizing local, practical knowledge alongside formal, systematic knowledge. He critiques 'development theory' and state planning that ignores the values and wishes of the people it affects. This persuasive narrative identifies four conditions common to all planning disasters: the state's administrative ordering of nature and society; a 'high-modernist ideology' that overestimates the role of science in improving human life; the use of authoritarian power to implement broad interventions; and the inability of a weakened civil society to resist such plans.

Written with clarity, Seeing Like a State brings to light the intricate nature of the world we inhabit and serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of grand societal engineering.

An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?