Philosophy Social Science

Zen master Thick Nhat Hanh, best-selling author of Peace is Every Step and one of the most respected and celebrated religious leaders in the world, delivers a powerful path to happiness through mastering life's most important skill: How do we say what we mean in a way that the other person can really hear? How can we listen with compassion and understanding? Communication fuels the ties that bind, whether in relationships, business, or everyday interactions.

Death might seem to render pointless all our attempts to create a meaningful life. Doesn't meaning require transcending death through an afterlife or in some other way? On the contrary, Dean Rickles argues, life without death would be like playing tennis without a net. Only constraints—and death is the ultimate constraint—make our actions meaningful. In Life Is Short, Rickles explains why the finiteness and shortness of life is the essence of its meaning-and how this insight is the key to making the most of the time we do have.

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes & Kybalion compose two pillars of Hermetic thought. Combined here in one volume, these two works share true wisdom with those ready to receive it. The Kybalion was first published anonymously in 1908 by “The Three Initiates.” The true authorship of the work is unknown, although theories suggest it was written entirely or in part by William Walker Atkinson. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes is a short, ancient text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. The brief Emerald Tablet has been puzzling and fascinating scholars for over 1,000 years.

Take a magic-carpet ride through Disney's wonderful world of films and entertainment experiences and discover the wisdom within its most popular and enduring stories.

We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self. Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs.

For the ancients, everything worth pursuing in life flowed from a strong sense of justice—or one’s commitment to doing the right thing, no matter how difficult. In order to be courageous, wise, and self-disciplined, one must begin with justice. The influence of the modern world often tells us that acting justly is optional. Holiday argues that that’s simply untrue—and the fact that so few people today have the strength to stand by their convictions explains much about why we’re so unhappy.

Nearly everyone is familiar with holograms - three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Two of the world's most eminent thinkers believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. University of London physicist David Bohm, one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, an architect of our modern understanding of the brain, have developed a remarkable new way of looking at the universe.

Modern humans have come a long way in the 70,000 years they’ve walked the earth. Art, science, culture, trade - on the evolutionary food chain, we’re true winners. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and sometimes - just occasionally - we’ve managed to truly f--k things up.

What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Do individual rights and the common good conflict? These questions are at the core of our public life today - and at the heart of Justice, in which Michael J. Sandel shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us to make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.

Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion.

The book draws its inspiration from stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience. Stoics focus on the things they can control, let go of everything else, and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better, stronger, tougher. As Marcus Aurelius put it nearly 2000 years ago: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

This pamphlet, first published in 1776, set in print the word every American was thinking about, but none dared say: independence! It was published anonymously in New York, selling 120,000 copies in the first 3 months and half a million in that same year. Its author, Thomas Paine, wrote in a language that could be understood by any reasonably literate colonist. But more important than it being so well received, is that it captured the American colonists' imaginations and was a primary catalyst to the independence movement in the United States. Noted American historian Bernard Bailyn called it "the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant ever written in the English language."

From Rhonda Byrne, creator of the international bestselling movie and book, The Secret, comes HERO, her latest world-changing project and the most important to date. What is your true calling and why aren't you already living it? Imagine if there was a map that showed you step by step how to get from where you are now to your true calling and the life you were born to live - the most brilliant, rich, fulfilling, and dazzling life you could ever dream of. You are holding in your hands such a map. HERO is the map for your life.

As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss was astonished and skeptical when one of his patients began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from the “space between lives”, which contained remarkable revelations about Dr. Weiss’ family and his dead son. Using past-life therapy, he was able to cure the patient and embark on a new, more meaningful phase of his own career.

We are being watched. That this statement no longer shocks is itself shocking. Post-Snowden, we know that the government - everywhere - has been reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, and watching whatever we do on the Internet. The only thing concealed is the nature of our watchers. In Watchlist, some of today's most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, reflect on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live.

Seeing self-possession as the key to an existence lived 'in accordance with nature', the Stoic philosophy called for the restraint of animal instincts and the importance of upright ethical ideals and virtuous living. Seneca's writings are a profound, powerfully moving and inspiring declaration of the dignity of the individual mind.

A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Are examines the immense impact intelligent technology will have on humanity. These machines, while challenging our personal beliefs and our socio-economic world order, also have the potential to transform our health and well-being, alleviate poverty and suffering, and reveal the mysteries of intelligence and consciousness. International human rights attorney Flynn Coleman deftly argues that it is critical we instill values, ethics, and morals into our robots, algorithms, and other forms of AI.

One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning.

The transgender movement has hit breakneck speed. In the space of a year, it’s gone from something that most Americans had never heard of to a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights. But can a boy truly be “trapped” in a girl’s body? Can modern medicine really “reassign” sex? Is sex something “assigned” in the first place? What’s the loving response to a friend or child experiencing a gender-identity conflict? What should our law say on these issues? When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment provides thoughtful answers to all of these questions.