"From the best-selling author of Traffic, a brilliant and entertaining exploration of our personal tastes--why we like the things we like, and what it says about us,"--NoveList. From the tangled underpinnings of our food taste to the complex dynamics of our playlists, our preferences and opinions are constantly being shaped by countless forces. In the digital age, a nonstop procession of "thumbs up" and "likes" is helping dictate our choices. Vanderbilt...

Told in rhyming verse, a stone is considered from a variety of environmental and emotional perspectives, as it sits where it is, surrounded by grass, dirt, and water, an unchanging certainty in the world.

The subject of this book, as per the title, is music (from the Greek μουσική τέχνη - musiké téchne, i.e. "the art of the muses") in the works of Pythagoras, the first intellectual in the history of Philosophy to make that art the center of their worldview, even including it in the so called "Exact Sciences". In order to have more comprehension and clarity with regards to the intellectual production of Pythagoras, whose written works...

Wabi Sabi, a cat living in the city of Kyoto, learns about the Japanese concept of beauty through simplicity as she asks various animals she meets about the meaning of her name.

"An incisive and vulnerable yet powerful and provocative collection of essays, Savala offers poignant reflections on living between society's most charged, politicized, and intractably polar spaces: between black and white, between rich and poor, between thin and fat - as a woman. The daughter of an Afro-Latinx father and a white mother, Savala's light complexion has always contrast her kinky hair and broad nose to embody what old folks used to call...

Discusses the arts, life styles, politics, and fashions while tracing the story of bohemians, radicals, hipsters, and hippies from Paris in the nineteenth century to contemporary America.

A collection of essays follows the author as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor; her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her; and the responsibility she has inherited from the great thinkers and writers of the past.

Dorian Gray est un jeune homme d'une très grande beauté. Son ami artiste peintre Basil Hallward est obsédé par cette dernière et en tire toute son inspiration. Sa fascination pour le jeune homme le mène à faire son portrait, qui se révèle être la plus belle œuvre qu'il ait jamais peinte, et qu'il ne souhaite pas exposer : « J'y ai mis trop de moi-même ».
Dorian va faire la connaissance de Lord Henry, dit Harry, un ami de Basil.

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This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Susan Wolf, the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This fascinating conversation explores what it is to live an ethical, meaningful life in keeping with her book, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters, the role that love, fulfillment, self-interest and happiness play in giving meaning to one's life, and how meaningful...