Modern Politics

Alain de Botton believes that philosophy can help people enjoy happier lives. And in his numerous best sellers, from Status Anxiety to The Art of Travel, his unique blend of erudition and self-help has reached an audience eager to listen. In On Seeing and Noticing, Alain de Botton takes everyday concerns such as expressing sadness or being romantic and dispenses advice and observations based on the works of some of history's greatest writers, artists and thinkers.

Written in the tradition of historians like Stacy Schiff and Amanda Foreman who find modern lessons in ancient history, this provocative narrative explores the lives of five remarkable pharaohs who ruled Egypt with absolute power, shining a new light on the country's 3,000-year empire and its meaning today.

The Star Wars films continue to revolutionize science fiction, creating new standards for cinematographic excellence and permeating popular culture around the world. The films feature many complex themes ranging from good versus evil and moral development and corruption to religious faith and pragmatism, forgiveness and redemption, and many others.

Twenty-seven years ago, Matthieu Ricard gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism - not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters. Years later, this project was born, and Richard met with his father, Jean-Francois Revel - a French philosopher who became world famous for his challenges to both Communism and Christianity. At an inn, these two profoundly thoughtful men explored questions that have occupied humankind throughout its history.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented.

In 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was able to visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore - the outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses, and that, Campbell attested, changed his career.

In the tradition of Daniel Boorstin, the co-founder of Omni delivers an original work of history that demonstrates why modern science rests on a foundation built by ancient and medieval non-European societies. "If you think that modern science is rooted in the golden age of Greece, you owe it to yourself to [hear this] book," says Library Journal.

This 50th anniversary edition of Men, Machines, and Modern Times, though ultimately concerned with a positive alternative to an Orwellian 1984, offers an entertaining series of historical accounts taken from the 19th century to highlight a main theme: the nature of technological change, the fission brought about in society by such change, and society's reaction to that change.

Schopenhauer is considered to be the most accessible of German philosophers. This book gives a succinct explanation of his metaphysical system, concentrating on the original aspects of his thought, which inspired many artists and thinkers including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Wittgenstein. Schopenhauer's central notion is that of the will-a blind, irrational force that he uses to interpret both the human mind and the whole of nature.

Precariously positioned between China and India, Burma's population has suffered dictatorship, natural disaster, and the dark legacies of colonial rule. But when decades of military dictatorship finally ended and internationally beloved Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi emerged from long years of house arrest, hopes soared. As historian, former diplomat, and presidential advisor, Thant Myint-U saw the cracks forming. In this insider's diagnosis of a country at a breaking point, he dissects all of the elements that came together to challenge the incipient democracy.

A History of Modern Britain confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade political leaders think they know what they are doing but find themselves confounded. Every time the British people turn out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted.

The choice is yours, and you'll have to live with the consequences for at least the rest of your life. Will you take the blue pill - skip this audiobook and go on thinking of The Matrix as just a movie? Or will you take the red pill - listen to this book, and find out just how far down the rabbit-hole goes?

From one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Europe and the author of the definitive biography of Hitler, Personality and Power is a masterful reckoning with how character conspired with opportunity to create the modern age’s uniquely devastating despots—and how and why other countries found better paths. The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and death. Whole societies were reshaped and wars were fought, often with a merciless contempt for the most basic norms.

There are times when we've all felt that we haven't been treated as we deserve—that we've been misjudged, shortchanged, or given a raw deal. And, at one time or another, other people have probably felt that we've treated them just as unfairly. How to Do the Right Thing draws on the principles of ancient Stoicism as articulated by the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca to help listeners better navigate one of the most important practical questions of daily life—how to do right by others.

Find the answers to your money questions. Whether you want to learn more about general financial planning principles or delve into issues that disproportionately affect women, The Feminist Financial Handbook has stories and advice from women who have been there, worked through the struggle, and achieved personal success.

Hoy día, el exceso de información, de transparencia y de rendimiento nos ha conducido a un tiempo incapaz de callar ni de concluir ningún proceso, un tiempo que ya no exhala ningún aroma. Pero el pensamiento no es posible sin silencio.

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).

Both Stoicism and Minimalism go hand in hand, decluttering your mind as well as decluttering your life, leaving space and energy for the things that matter and are important to you. Having strategies for both is essential to making the most out of these timeless teachings. Life moves at a very fast pace these days, and the Stoic teachings will enable you to not "sweat the small stuff".

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a classic work of philosophy by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Written during World War I, the Tractatus consists of seven propositions. In the propositions, Wittgenstein discusses language, thought, reality, and the natural science.