Essays Social

Called a “chronicler of a world on the move” by The New York Review of Books, Anna Badkhen seeks what separates and binds us at a time when one in seven people has left their birthplace, while a pandemic dictates the direst season of rupture in humankind’s remembering. Her new essay collection, Bright Unbearable Reality, comprises 11 essays set on four continents—roving everywhere from Oklahoma to Azerbaijan—and united by a common thread of communion and longing.

Demokratie gegen Demokratie - illiberale gegen liberale, direkte gegen repräsentative Demokratie, vielleicht sogar "the people vs. democracy"? Es scheint, die Demokratie war noch nie so unumstritten wie heute, während zugleich noch nie so umstritten war, was aus ihr folgt. Jeder tritt in ihrem Namen an und beschuldigt den Gegner, ein Gegner der Demokratie zu sein. Der Demokratie droht heute nur noch Gefahr von ihr selbst. Unsere Lage, so die These Philip Manows, ist von der gleichzeitigen Demokratisierung und Ent-Demokratisierung der Demokratie gekennzeichnet.

The essays contained in this volume treat of various subjects. With the exception of perhaps one we must consider all these papers as fragments. Written during the early Seventies, and intended mostly as prefaces, they are extremely interesting, since traces of Nietzsche's later tenets - like Slave and Master morality, the Superman - can be found everywhere. But they are also very valuable on account of the young philosopher's daring and able handling of difficult and abstruse subjects.

What is the Internet doing to us? What is college for? What are the myths and metaphors we live by? What is the purpose of art, and what can we learn from the past? The End of Solitude brings together more than forty essays from such publications as Harper's and the Atlantic and introduces four that are published here for the first time. Drawing on the past, they ask how we got where we are. Scrutinizing the present, they seek to understand how we can live more mindfully, more meaningfully, more freely.

When Phil Klay left the marines a decade ago after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself a part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences—for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war—from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens?

Taming the Rascal Multitude is a judicious selection of essays and interviews from Z Magazine from 1997 to 2014. In each, Chomsky takes up some question of the moment. As such, in sum, the essays provide a historical overview of the history that preceded Trump and the reaction to Trump. The essays situate what followed even without having known what would follow. They explicate what preceded the current era and provide a step-by-step revelation, or how-to, for successfully comprehending social events and relations.

This collection is an attempt to showcase the phenomenon of Hindu nationalism in terms of how it perceives itself. Many of the concerns that drive the Indian Right are located in the country's nationalist culture. In trying to locate some of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that define the Indian Right, Awakening Bharat Mata also seeks to identify the nature of Indian conservatism and identify its similarities and differences with political thought in the West.

Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O'Connell studies each book on Bowie's list and contextualizes it in the artist's life and work. Heartfelt, analytical, and totally original, Bowie's Bookshelf is one part epic reading guide and one part biography of a music legend.

For more than a decade, New York University president John Sexton has used baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life in a wildly popular course at NYU. Using great works of baseball literature as well as the actual game’s fantastic moments, its legendary characters, and its routine rituals - from the long-sought triumph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers to the heroic achievements of players like the saintly Christy Mathewson and the sinful Ty Cobb to the loving intimacy of a game of catch between a father and son - Sexton teaches that through the game we can touch the spiritual dimensions of life.

In Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, acclaimed satirist Alexandra Petri offers perfectly logical, reassuring reasons for everything that has happened in recent American politics that will in no way unsettle your worldview. In essays both new and adapted from her viral Washington Post columns, Petri reports that the Trump administration is as competent as it is uncorrupted, white supremacy has never been less rampant, and men have been silenced for too long. The "woman card" is a powerful card to play! Q-Anon makes perfect sense!

One of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels - works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, pop culture, and philosophy, his books are the products of a keen and adventurous intellect. Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; and more.

Although he is guided and inspired by the people he respects, and despite the insufficiency of his knowledge and experience - an insufficiency shared by most (or all) other humans, Wallace Shawn can’t see any real alternative to trying to figure out his own answers to the most essential questions about the world he lives in.

The conversation about masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny has never been so prominent or heated. Alarmed by a new generation of angry, broken young men, genderqueer writer Jacob Tobia sets out to explore what’s going on and comes to a shocking conclusion: Emotionally and spiritually speaking, men and boys may be the ones suffering the most under the gender binary right now.

Solitude offers us that other space of thinking, another modality where we can meet different ingredients of perfection. The author is letting his pen engrave what the fuel of the holy history of solitude may inspire.

Ferdinand von Schirach beschäftigt sich in seinen Essays mit den großen Themen unserer Zeit - warum der Terrorismus letztlich über die Demokratie entscheidet - und geht zugleich sehr persönlichen Gedanken nach, über das Schreiben, das Lesen mit dem iPad und das Rauchen.

Paula Deitz has delighted readers for more than 30 years with her vivid descriptions of both famous and hidden landscapes. Her writings allow readers and listeners to share in the experience of her extensive travels, from the waterways of Britain's Castle Howard to the Japanese gardens of Kyoto, and home again to New York City's Central Park.

These are easily the most challenging essays on the planet. Pinwill is an original conceptual thinker with a dry sense of humor and turn of phrase. Whether its politics, national economics, history, theology, or money, his writing all comes from somewhere different. You’ll need to buy his essays to discover whether you love or hate them.

This is an essay on the unique teaching of J. Krishnamurti. It starts with the question "What is consciousness?" - and carefully proposes a holistic definition, after reviewing the various psychological and spiritual theories that deal with this subject. The author actually goes a step ahead and focuses on a more particular issue, a provocative question asked by K: “How to empty consciousness of its content?”

More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Much has transpired in the half-century since, and progress has been made in the issues that were close to Dr. King’s heart. Thankfully, the burning crosses, biting police dogs, and angry mobs of that day are long gone. But in their place, passivity has emerged. A passivity that must be addressed. That’s the aim of Letters to a Birmingham Jail. A collection of essays written by men of various ethnicities and ages.

Public school is a daunting, tedious, occasionally bloody experience shared by millions of students, current and former. Classroom fights, incompetent teachers, sex in bathrooms, rigid social castes - it's shocking most of us graduated able to read. Take Out Your Earrings Before You Fight takes a dry, witty look at all the things you learn - and everything you don't - while slogging through the K-12 system.