Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light.
Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony?
In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.
Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis.
Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of the modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.
No Judgement: Essays is a forthcoming collection by Lauren Oyler, known for her sharp wit and insightful commentary. While the descriptive copy is not yet available from the Publisher, readers can expect a series of compelling essays that delve into the art of being critical.
Oyler's work often explores the intersection of culture, social media, and literature, offering a unique perspective on contemporary issues. This collection promises to be an essential read for anyone interested in the power of critique in our modern world.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning, fable-like short novel—by the author of Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth—has been beloved around the world for nearly a century. This splendid and profoundly moving novel begins with a simple and seemingly senseless tragedy. "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." A traveling monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the catastrophe and becomes obsessed with investigating the lives of the five victims in order to prove that their deaths had meaning. His mission is doomed to fail, but over the course of the story, the five unlucky individuals—a noblewoman, a maid, an orphan, an old man, and a child—come to life for the reader in all of their glorious complexity. Their intertwined lives—snuffed out in one shattering moment—illuminate the biggest questions that we can ask ourselves about the nature of love and meaning of the human condition.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is described as a dazzling entertainment that is arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous. It calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius.
Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, this novel brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than just its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. “Urgent and accessible . . . Its moral force is a gut punch.”—The New Yorker
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Exit West, comes a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first, he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them.
Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different hue—an opportunity for a kind of rebirth, a chance to see ourselves anew.
In Mohsin Hamid’s lyrical and urgent prose, The Last White Man powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.
The Invisible Kingdom is a landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases.
A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans. These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.
Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. As America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color.
Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.
You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have. So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. There is a fix, Acho says. But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.
In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask—yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and “reverse racism.”
In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader’s curiosity—but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.
The Gay Science, often considered the most personal of all Nietzsche's works, presents a rich tapestry of philosophical reflections and poetic expressions. In this book, Nietzsche proclaims the death of God and introduces readers to his doctrine of eternal recurrence.
Walter Kaufmann's commentary, enriched with many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. This work contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions on art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience, and the origin of logic.
Written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra and finalized five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil, this book captures many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his poetry that he ever published himself.
Engage with Nietzsche's thought and explore themes of art, science, morality, and human existence with a spirit of joy and inquiry.
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits is a remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms penned by the renowned philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. This collection was first published in three installments, with the first volume appearing in 1878, just before Nietzsche left academic life due to health issues. It was later republished in a two-volume edition in 1886.
This work marks a significant shift in Nietzsche's philosophical approach, showcasing his new "positivism" and skepticism. Here, Nietzsche challenges his earlier metaphysical and psychological assumptions with characteristic perceptiveness and honesty, not to mention suspicion and irony.
In this wide-ranging work, Nietzsche first employed his celebrated aphoristic style, perfectly suited to his iconoclastic, penetrating, and multi-faceted thought. Many themes of his later works make their initial appearance here, expressed with unforgettable liveliness and subtlety. This book well deserves its subtitle, "A Book for Free Spirits," and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment found a new champion in Nietzsche.
The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center—a women’s reproductive health services clinic—its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.
After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.
But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order to save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester disguised as a patient, who now stands in the crosshairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy. And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.
Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day. Jodi Picoult—one of the most fearless writers of our time—tackles a complicated issue in this gripping and nuanced novel. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, conversation . . . and, hopefully, understanding.
Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No explores the lives of those who are childfree or childless, whether by choice or circumstance. This book delves into how these individuals find meaning, connection, and joy in a society that often emphasizes parenthood.
Kate Kaufmann weaves together wisdom from women aged twenty-four to ninety-one, sharing candid insights about their lives. This book is an exhaustively researched guide that challenges societal norms and expectations, offering alternate routes to fulfilling lives.
Today, about one in five adults over the age of 40 will never have children. Despite this growing demographic, conversations around childlessness or being childfree are often stifled by social taboos. This book provides a platform for these much-needed discussions, illuminating a perfectly normal way of being.
Join the conversation and explore the unexpected aspects of life when the answer is no.
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him...
The Antidote is a thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting guide to understanding the much-misunderstood idea of happiness. Self-help books don't seem to work, and few of the many advantages of modern life seem capable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth—even if you can get it—doesn't necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can't even agree on what "happiness" means.
So, are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way? Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether they are experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modern-day gurus, they argue that in our personal lives and in society at large, it's our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable.
There is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty—the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. This book is a series of journeys among people who share this surprising way of thinking about life. Burkeman talks to life coaches paid to make their clients' lives a living hell, and to maverick security experts such as Bruce Schneier, who contends that the changes we've made to airport and aircraft security since the 9/11 attacks have actually made us less safe. And then there are the "backwards" business gurus, who suggest not having any goals at all and not planning for a company's future.
It's a witty, fascinating, and subversive message, which turns out to have a long and distinguished philosophical lineage ranging from ancient Roman Stoic philosophers to Buddhists.
One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.
In the taut opening, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act?
In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned.
And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is.
A hapless, deluded owner of an antique store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders' signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.
Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight.
On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, offering invaluable ideas for preserving our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew: the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.
Short, emotional, literary, powerful—Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations will want to read.
As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man's voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop—a provocative and deeply personal call for change.
Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress, we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
The time is at hand for reckoning with the past, recognizing the truth of the present, and moving together to redeem the nation for our future. If we don't act now, if you don't address race immediately, there very well may be no future.
From the author of the award-winning novels Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic comes an eponymous novella and three stories that range fluidly across time, tenderly exploring the act of writing and the moment of creation when characters come alive on the page.
The collection delves into the lifetime consequences that can come from a simple act, and the way our lives play across the world, marking language, image, and each other. Thirteen Ways of Looking is framed by two author’s notes, each dealing with contemporary issues at home and in Ireland, the author's birthplace.
Brilliant in its clarity and deftness, this collection reminds us why Colum McCann is considered among the very best contemporary writers. Accompanied by three equally powerful stories set in Afghanistan, Galway, and London, this is a tribute to humanity's search for meaning and grace.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a groundbreaking narrative by renowned historian Dr. Yuval Noah Harari that explores the creation and evolution of humanity. This insightful work integrates history and science, examining how biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be "human."
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Through a unique lens, Harari dives into the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem, the rise of empires, and the bending of natural selection's laws.
Starting 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition, Harari compels us to look ahead as humans gain the ability to design not only the world around us but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?
Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, Sapiens is essential reading for those interested in understanding our past and contemplating our future.
In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.
What does “feminism” mean today? That is the question at the heart of We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from her much-viewed TEDx talk of the same name—by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. With humor and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century—one rooted in inclusion and awareness. She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences—in the U.S., in her native Nigeria, and abroad—offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike. Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Adichie a bestselling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.
A nameless character. A faceless figure. A disturbing, thought-provoking journey through the facts of the world we live in that we often refuse to acknowledge.
By taking full advantage of their author's lack of identity and extreme levels of introspection, The Unwords unleash a full scale attack on all fronts of cultural and social decay. Education, religion, politics, language, relationships and common every day social activities are stripped down to their bare foundations and deconstructed through the eyes of a man who has rejected any notion of self in his quest for truth and justice.
Written in fluent poetic verse which expands into full-page illustrations that carry the theme into artistic territory, the words blend seamlessly with the arts as they form novel-like chapters; a new, refreshing form of writing known as "Graphic-verse."
Originally published in 2012, The Unwords introduced Graphic-verse to the public and readers quickly embraced this newly created genre. This expanded second edition of The Unwords features 35 pages of additional material, including 54 full color illustrations as well as an introduction by the author himself, revealing his entire creative process, his influences, as well as his motivations and the reasoning behind the book's unusual structure.
Words are meant to be spoken. In a dishonest world, what remains unspoken can only be the truth. In a dishonest world... the pen is never mightier than the sword!
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I was raised with a chimpanzee,” she explains. “I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion...she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her as a sister.” As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.
In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.
Through the tender voice of her protagonist, Fowler explores themes of family, memory, language, science, and indeed the question of what constitutes a human being. This gripping, big-hearted book provides a heartfelt exploration of what it means to be part of a family, and the complexities that can arise within.
A guy walks into a bar car and...
From here, the story could take many turns. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and intelligence and leave you deeply moved.
Sedaris remembers his father's dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants), his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant), and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered Pygmy.
With Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris shows once again why his work has been called hilarious, elegant, and surprisingly moving.
Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner in Penguin Classics. Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world.
This edition includes a commentary on the text by the translator and Michael Tanner's introduction, which explains some of the more abstract passages in Beyond Good and Evil.
Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. A powerfully original thinker, Nietzsche's influence on subsequent writers, such as George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre, was considerable.
If you enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil you might like Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also available in Penguin Classics.
Jemima Jones is overweight. About one hundred pounds overweight. Treated like a maid by her thin and social-climbing roommates, and lorded over by the beautiful Geraldine (less talented but better paid) at the Kilburn Herald, Jemima finds that her only consolation is food. Add to this her passion for her charming, sexy, and unobtainable colleague Ben, and Jemima knows her life is in need of a serious change.
When she meets Brad, an eligible California hunk, over the Internet, she has the perfect opportunity to reinvent herself–as JJ, the slim, beautiful, gym-obsessed glamour girl. But when her long-distance Romeo demands that they meet, she must conquer her food addiction to become the bone-thin model of her e-mails–no small feat.
With a fast-paced plot that never quits and a surprise ending no reader will see coming, Jemima J is the chronicle of one woman's quest to become the woman she's always wanted to be, learning along the way a host of lessons about attraction, addiction, the meaning of true love, and, ultimately, who she really is.
Americans are a "positive" people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: This is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness." Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.
With the myth-busting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster.
This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.
Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago's brilliant new novel poses the question: what happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death? On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, of course, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially mass celebration. Flags are hung out on balconies; people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently dying; life-insurance policies become meaningless; and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots.
Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small d, were to become human and fall in love?
Three Days To See is a remarkable essay by the renowned author and activist, Helen Keller. This work invites readers into the imaginative and perceptive world of Keller, who, despite being blind and deaf, offers an inspiring perspective on experiencing life.
In this essay, Keller imagines what she would do if she were given just three days to see the world. She shares her desires to witness the beauty of nature, the faces of loved ones, and the vibrant life of a bustling city. Her reflections are both profound and heartfelt, encouraging readers to appreciate the simple joys and wonders of the world around them.
This essay not only highlights Keller's incredible insight but also serves as a powerful reminder of the value of sight and the richness of human experience. It is a timeless piece that continues to inspire and move readers across generations.
The acclaimed #1 New York Times-bestselling author presents a spellbinding tale of a mother's tragic loss and one man's last chance at gaining salvation. Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?
One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.
For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
Once again, Jodi Picoult mesmerizes and enthralls readers with this story of redemption, justice, and love.
No One Belongs Here More Than You is the bestselling debut story collection by the extraordinarily talented Miranda July, an award-winning filmmaker, artist, and author. In this collection, July gives the most seemingly insignificant moments a sly potency. A benign encounter, a misunderstanding, or a shy revelation can reconfigure the world.
Her characters engage awkwardly—they are sometimes too remote, sometimes too intimate. With great compassion and generosity, July reveals her characters’ idiosyncrasies and the odd logic and longing that govern their lives. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice.
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.
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.
Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own.
In this masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written, Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.
The bestselling novels from the foremost philosopher of the modern age, this set includes Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.
Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found.
The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other.
Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America.
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein presents a deep dive into the philosophies of mind, language, and meaning. This work is a distillation of two decades of intensive philosophical exploration.
Wittgenstein's approach in this book challenges traditional views and provides a new perspective on how we understand and interact with the world through language. His unique insights make this book a cornerstone in the field of philosophy.
Explore the intricacies of language and its role in shaping our thoughts and perceptions. Philosophical Investigations invites you to question and ponder the very nature of understanding and communication.
In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.
Fully corrected, this edition also includes Jung's VII Sermones ad Mortuos.
For centuries, people have been tormented by one question above all: If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain? And what of the suffering of animals, who neither deserve pain nor can be improved by it?
The greatest Christian thinker of our time sets out to disentangle this knotty issue. With his signature wealth of compassion and insight, C. S. Lewis offers answers to these crucial questions and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungry for a true understanding of human nature.
Letter to a Child Never Born is a poignant and deeply moving narrative written by Oriana Fallaci. This book takes the form of a tragic monologue of a woman speaking with the child she carries in her womb.
This letter confronts the intense theme of abortion and the meaning of life by posing challenging questions: Is it fair to impose life even if it means suffering? Would it be better not to be born at all?
The story delves into the true essence of being a woman: the power to give life or not. The protagonist grapples with the realization of her pregnancy, understanding that this being depends wholly on her choices. The creation of life within one's own body is depicted as a profound and shocking experience, laden with responsibility.
The narrative invites reflection on the origins of our existence, the burden of selfishness, and the philosophical question: If the child could choose, would he prefer to be born, to grow up, and to suffer, or return to the joyful limbo from which he came?
A woman's freedom and individuality are scrutinized in light of impending motherhood—should she renounce her freedom, her job, and her personal choices? What path should she take at this crossroads?
The Portable Nietzsche is a fascinating collection of Friedrich Nietzsche's seminal works that have captivated readers worldwide since the publication of his first book over a century ago. Walter Kaufmann, a leading authority on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction that "few writers in any age were so full of ideas," and Nietzsche is no exception.
This volume includes Kaufmann's definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche's four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from Nietzsche's other books, notes, and letters to provide a comprehensive picture of Nietzsche's development, versatility, and inexhaustibility.
Nietzsche's works offer a profound exploration of human existence, truth, and morality, making this collection a must-read for anyone interested in philosophy and literature. "In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature."
America has had it with Smoke Screens, Mirrors, and Fake News. We are being heard and making a difference.
One voice can change the world. One heart can lead to healing. One answer can lead to truth. One word can lead to encouragement. One time in history can lead to hope. One book can lead to strength. One movement can lead to victory.
This book is dedicated to those who seek the truth. May the Lord guide you to a higher level of enlightenment.
في هذا الكتاب يبدو أن محمود درويش ما زال قادراً على الإدهاش ومنح الشعر العربي مزيداً من الأناقة والجاذبية المسيطرة في وقت يتراجع فيه ذلك الشعر ويسترسل في هذيانية بائسة وجهل مطبق.
هنا يسأل درويش الشعر ويقيم حواجز للبلاغة وينقضّ على العبارة المعلبة في تمرد أسلوبي على المعنى والصورة في سياق اختراق للمفاهيم المتعارف عليها والمكررة والمملة.
إنها أسئلة الشعر الأصلية من السرير وفاتورة الكهرباء إلى نخلة السومرية إلى نيويورك إلى وردة أريحا.. ونحن نلهث وراء الشاعر الذي يسابق الزمن ويحاول المستحيل.