Social Philosophy

In The End Is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.

Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and Aurelius's own emotions.

The Red Book, published to wide acclaim in 2009, contains the nucleus of C. G. Jung's later works. It was here that he developed his principal theories of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation that would transform psychotherapy from treatment of the sick into a means for the higher development of the personality.

The ancient Toltecs believed that life, as we perceive it, is a dream. We each live in our own personal dream, and these come together to form the dream of the planet, or the world in which we live. Problems arise when our perception of the dream becomes clouded with negativity, drama, and judgment (of ourselves and others), because it's in these moments of suffering that we have forgotten that we are the architects of our own reality and we have the power to change our dream if we choose.

To most of us, learning something 'the hard way' implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head and will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant best seller, attracting fans with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing.

In Talking Across the Divide, social justice activist Justin Lee explains how to break through the five key barriers that make people resist differing opinions. With a combination of psychological research, pop-culture references, and anecdotes from Justin's many years of experience mediating contentious conversations, this book will help you understand people on the other side of the argument and give you the tools you need to change their minds - even if they've fallen for "fake news."

Fue Bertrand Russell quien dijo que la filosofía es siempre un ejercicio de escepticismo. Aprender a dudar implica distanciarse de lo dado y poner en cuestión los tópicos y los prejuicios, cuestionar lo incuestionable. No para rechazarlo sin más, sino para examinarlo, analizarlo, razonarlo y, por fin, decidir.

Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well-to-do family in wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. He finally decided to go into politics, but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrates, to death. He began teaching in his twenties and later founded the Academy, the world's first higher-educational research and teaching establishment. Eventually, he returned to practical politics and spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to create a constitution for Syracuse in Sicily.

Mindfulness doesn't have to be about complicated rituals, expensive retreats and difficult spiritual how-to manuals! It all comes down to diving deep, making friends with your emotions (both good and bad) and understanding your awareness. In this book you will find effective techniques to step out of your mindless, stressful thinking and allow your mind to finally embrace mindfulness so that you can achieve peace and happiness in all areas of your life.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro examines the current state of America and Western civilization, and poses a question: will we be Lions, or will we be Scavengers? In Lions and Scavengers, Shapiro invites you to take up the mantle of the Lion and defend the principles that shape the freedom of a fair, powerful society. With the stakes higher than ever, this book is a gripping exploration of the ongoing war between those who cherish our nation and those who seek to undermine it.

The inspiring true story of how a group of inner-city school kids taught their teacher how to overcome personal adversity and achieve success and happiness. Crash Course chronicles the life lessons that Kim Bearden has learned during an award-winning career in education. From her challenges as a first-year teacher to her triumphs as the co-founder of the highly acclaimed Ron Clark Academy, Kim shares how children can teach each of us the importance of building relationships, abandoning fear, discovering resilience, embracing one's unique gifts, and living with passion.

This 24-hour collection delivers the complete wisdom of Eastern philosophy, thoughtfully adapted for the modern listener in one comprehensive audiobook.

Stoicism, a school of Hellenistic thought founded in Athens in the third century BC, was one of the most sublime philosophies in the history of Western civilization. It is a way of living that focuses on reality instead of fantasy or idealism. According to its teachings, the path to peace and happiness is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be ruled by the desire for pleasure or by the fear of pain.

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.

In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker's experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America.

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 is karma? Most people understand karma as a balance sheet of good and bad deeds, virtues and sins. The mechanism that decrees that we cannot evade the consequences of our own actions. In reality, karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment. Karma simply means action: your action, your responsibility. It isn’t some external system of crime and punishment, but an internal cycle generated by you. Accumulation of karma is determined only by your intention and the way you respond to what is happening to you.

On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel's most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn't want to serve in the occupied territories.

Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention.

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.