"Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one's family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? ... My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age twelve, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers....

Contains over one thousand entries that explore issues of philosophy, psychology, and the physiology of the brain, touching on topics such as sleep, bilingualism, criminology, language, and the workings of the nervous system, and includes biographies of major authorities on the workings of the mind.

New York Times bestselling author David Horowitz is famous for his conversion from 1960s radicalism. In A Point in Time, his lyrical yet startling new book, he offers meditations on an even deeper conversion, one which touches on the very essence of every human life. Part memoir and part philosophical reflection, A Point in Time focuses on man's inevitable search for meaning—and how for those without religious belief, that search...

"A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young Jesuit into crisis. A boy's mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the...

""Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine...

"Drawing on the Academy Award-winning actor's journals and diaries from the last 40 years, this book presents a uniquely McConaughey approach to achieving success and satisfaction"-- "I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five." McConaughey sat down with those diaries. He found lessons he learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions,...

Surveys science from flint tools to the theory of relativity.

"A clear-eyed warning about the increasingly destructive influence of America's "shame industrial complex" in the age of social media and hyperpartisan politics from the New York Times bestselling author of Weapons of Math Destruction. Shame is a powerful and sometimes useful tool: When we publicly shame corrupt politicians, abusive celebrities, or predatory corporations, we reinforce values of fairness and justice. But as Cathy O'Neil argues in this...

Confucius (551-479 BC) was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. His followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following...

"What is happiness? Does life have a meaning? If so, is that meaning available in an ordinary life? The philosopher Zena Hitz confronted these questions head-on when she spent several years living in a Christian religious community. Religious life -- the communal life chosen by monks, nuns, friars, and hermits -- has been a part of global Christianity since earliest times, but many of us struggle to understand what could drive a person to renounce...