Philosophy Adventure

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high.

Solon of Pergamon, healer of the great entertainment-warriors of a glittering age, turns detective when a cherished acquaintance is murdered. Torn between his growing love for a beguiling student and a dark secret that threatens imperial power, he must find a route into the human heart to uncover the truth. Classic storytelling in an unforgettable setting.

17th-CENTURY METAPHYSICAL ADVENTURE. French swordsman Rene Gilbert must unlock the secrets of his past lives if he has any hope of saving those he loves. The award-winning Sun God's Heir trilogy melds the high seas adventure of "Master and Commander" with ancient Egyptian lore for an epic story that is utterly unique. Integrity, loyalty, and courage become more than words, and a young hero becomes more than just a man. Rapier sharp pulse pounding-action across the warp and weave of the seventeenth century. Sailing ships, pirates, and past lives contend in this award-winning trilogy. Read ...

He is a man capable of abandoning two sailors in an open boat, yet he is an avid and thoughtful reader of the moral philosophers. He is Wolf Larsen, captain of the seal-hunting Ghost and the unforgettable protagonist of one of the world's great sea novels. Tormented by his own convictions, Larsen is an enigma both fascinating and repellent to his reluctant crewman, Humphrey Van Weyden. Throughout their long and perilous voyage together, the captain's ruthless belief in the survival of the fittest is pitted against Van Weyden's "civilization".

Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, and Nobel Laureate. In The Problems of Philosophy, written in 1912, Russell attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics.

A novel of terror, depravity, hatred, romance, and selfless love

When a baby girl is abandoned at the gate of a monastery in ancient China, the monks have no choice but to adopt her into their exclusively male society of world-renown masters of the art of kung fu. She is raised within the monastery with a small group of boys, watching the monks beautiful training exercises during the days and listening to recounts of glorious battles of great kung fu masters at nighttime. Her favorite stories are those of the grand tournament battles between the monastery grand master, Bai Chen, and the legendary Black Dragon, an unknown masked competitor with unequaled ...

Martha Barnette has spent two decades as the co-host of A Way with Words, lauded by Mary Norris in The New Yorker as “a virtual treasure house” and “‘Car Talk’ for Lexiphiles.” Over that time, she’s developed a keen sense of what fascinates people about language. They are curious about etymology and revel in slang, are surprised by regional vocabulary and celebrate linguistic diversity. Idioms both puzzle and delight word lovers, and they are eager to share family neologisms and that weird phrase Grandma always used to say.

Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.

Marjorie Dawe is a librarian and takes her job - and indeed the truth of words - very seriously. She doesn't know it, but her world and ours - Roundworld - is in big trouble. On Discworld, a colossal row is brewing. The Wizards of the Unseen University feel responsible for Roundworld (as one would for a pet gerbil). After all, they brought it into existence by bungling an experiment in Quantum ThaumoDynamics.

In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis and ascended to prominent, dangerous roles. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

The What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic listenership. Already published titles in this series include: literature, salvation, mercy, being Catholic, God, and philosophy.

Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called "modern myths." But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did.

At the age of 48, film critic David Denby returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, to re-experience the core humanities courses he had taken as a freshman 30 years before. Facing the question of what he really knows, Denby re-examines the besieged Western classics, ranging from Homer, Sappho, and Sophocles to Dante, Nietzsche, and Woolf. What relevance do the writers and thinkers of the past have to our current life? The answer surprised Denby and will surprise and enlighten his listeners.

Inside are true stories that happened to a formerly successful American starting with nothing in a new state. Most attempting Florida transplants arrive, get chewed on, and leave. Max wasn’t that smart. It’s difficult being afraid with little to lose. "Discomforts Of (Non) Conformity" then challenges commonly held beliefs about our falling-apart world. As a former nightmare boss taught Max, even a loud irritable elephant fears a modest mouse making obvious statements. Redemption In Florida surprisingly lays groundwork for Discomforts Of (Non) Conformity. The two books are woven together...

A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.

Author A.J. Jacobs discovers that his coffee - and every other item in our lives - would not be possible without hundreds of people we usually take for granted: farmers, chemists, artists, presidents, truckers, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers, and goatherds. By thanking these people face-to-face, Jacobs finds some much-needed brightness in his life. Gratitude does not come naturally to Jacobs, but he sets off on the journey on a dare from his son. And by the end, it’s clear to him that scientific research on gratitude is true. Gratitude’s benefits are legion.

In Animals, Robots, Gods, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane provides a new vision of ethics, defined less by our minds, religion or society, and more by our interactions with those around us. Drawing on ground-breaking research by fieldworkers around the world, he explores the underpinnings of our moral universe. Along the way we investigate the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, Japanese robot fanciers -- even macho cowboys.

In this classic 1948 memoir, now in its fourth edition, Caroline Pratt recounts, in a wry authorial voice much closer to Will Rogers than John Dewey, how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City; invented the maple "unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms and children’s homes around the globe; and came to play an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that resound in the tumultuously creative age before us.

Although content in their temple high up in the mountains, Tiny Dragon realises that something feels incomplete. So it is that they decide to make a journey together, to new and distant lands. As they encounter dangers and challenges, they learn that everything they need is already inside them and that change, though sometimes scary, is possible and, with patience, can lead to better things.