Essays Social

Landmark Essays, Volume 2 continues a wonderful journey to the heart of the matter of our lives, to what matters most. It points out what's possible if we step outside of what we know, and recognize and embrace our capacity to bring forth an entirely new possibility for living—not because it is better, but simply because that is what human beings can do.

How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.

This work presents twelve eclectic, far-ranging, and brilliant essays exploring myth in all its dimensions: its history; its influence on art, literature, and culture; and its role in everyday life. This second volume of Campbell’s essays (following The Flight of the Wild Gander) brings together his uncollected writings from 1959 to 1987. Written at the height of Campbell’s career - and showcasing the lively intelligence that made him the twentieth century’s premier writer on mythology - these essays investigate links between myth, the individual, and societies ancient and contemporary.

A collection of A.J. Jacobs’s hilarious adventures as a human guinea pig, including “My Outsourced Life,” “The Truth About Nakedness,” and a never-before-published essay. One man. Ten extraordinary quests. Bestselling author and human guinea pig A.J. Jacobs puts his life to the test...

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives—or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

In On the Firmness of the Wise Man Seneca argues that Stoicism is not as harsh as it first appears. Recalling the figure of Cato the Younger, Seneca argues that Cato as a wise person suffered neither injury nor insult. Although Serenus objects to this paradox, Seneca provides further analogies to emphasize the impervious nature of the wise person. In chapter 5 Seneca distinguishes between contumelia (insults) and iniuria (injuries).

The Cold War was fought in every corner of society, including in the sport and entertainment industries. Recognizing the importance of culture in the battle for hearts and minds, the United States, like the Soviet Union, attempted to win the favor of citizens in nonaligned states through the soft power of sport. Athletes became de facto ambassadors of US interests, their wins and losses serving as emblems of broader efforts to shield American culture - both at home and abroad - against communism.

This book brings together Erich Fromm's basic statements on the application of psychoanalytic theory to social dynamics. At the same time, it offers an image of man consonant with the hopes of radical humanism. The Crisis of Psychoanalysis is a collection of nine brilliant essays. Although his work is deeply rooted in Freudian theory, Fromm further develops Freud's doctrines by including both social and ethical dimensions, and applies his discoveries and insights to address the problems we face in society at large.

In a time of chaos, the number one New York Times best-selling political humorist asks his fellow Americans to take it down a notch.

A princess of White Russian descent, Marie Vassiltchikov was 23 years old when she was trapped in Berlin by the outbreak of World War II. In these secret diaries, she chronicles the glamorous rise and shattering fall of the Nazi Party, as seen from the vantage point of her desk at the Foreign Ministry. She also describes how she and her friends became involved in a desperate conspiracy to murder Hitler.

Author and essayist Kiese Laymon is one of the most unique, stirring, and powerful new voices in American social and cultural commentary. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of Laymon's essays, touching on subjects ranging from family, race, violence, and celebrity to music, writing, and coming of age in the rural Mississippi Gulf Coast. Laymon's writing is unflinchingly honest, while also being smart, lacerating, and unexpectedly funny.

Elena Ferrante is the best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend, now an HBO original series. Collected here for the first time are the seeds of future novels, the timely reflections of this internationally beloved storyteller, the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called “one of the great novelists of our time” (New York Times).

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000 volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading.

A collection of four essays by noted Masonic scholar Frank C. Higgins. The first explores the labyrinthine paths of solutions that attempt to define the exact character of the "riddle of the ages" that is known as Freemasonry, as it has survived throughout history, in multiple cultures

The Voluntaryists are libertarians who have organized to promote non-political strategies to achieve a free society. We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice as incompatible with libertarian goals. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Voluntarists seek instead to delegitimize the state through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which state power ultimately depends.

Ostensibly about death and its attendant rituals, The Undertaking is in the end about life. In each case, he writes, it is the one that gives meaning to the other. A funeral director in Milford, Michigan, Lynch is that strangest of hyphenates, a poet-undertaker, but according to Lynch, all poets share his occupation, "looking for meaning and voices in life and love and death." Looking for meaning takes him to all sorts of unexpected places, both real and imagined. He embalms the body of his own father, celebrates the rebuilt bridge to his town's old cemetery, and more.

W. E. B. Du Bois was the foremost Black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk, his most influential work, is a collection of 14 beautifully written essays, by turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and explores the paradoxical "double-consciousness" of African American life.

Thirty years have passed since Cornel West's book Race Matters rose to the top of the bestseller lists in 1993. Yet his book remains as relevant as ever to American culture-even more so, if one considers its influence on contemporary racial justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, prison justice, and the fight for police reform. Prophetic Leadership and Visionary Hope looks back to the original 1993 text and forward into the future of racial understanding and healing in our current century.

It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island 90 miles to the south.