This remarkable book--the fruit of almost two decades of study--traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Aries shows how, from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the...
This remarkable book--the fruit of almost two decades of study--traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying f...
In his acclaimed book Lincoln's Virtues, William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's intellectual and moral development. Now he completes his "ethical biography," showing how the amiable and inexperienced backcountry politician was transformed by constitutional alchemy into an oath-bound head of state. Faced with a radical moral contradiction left by the nation's Founders, Lincoln struggled to find a balance between the universal ideals of Equality and Liberty and the monstrous injustice of human slavery. With wit and penetrating sensitivity, Miller brings together the great...
In his acclaimed book Lincoln's Virtues, William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's intellectual and moral development. Now he completes his...
A sequel to the critically acclaimed My First Movie, Stephen Lowenstein once again talks to some of our most celebrated filmmakers about their debut films. Lowenstein interviews ten directors about their career-launching film and how they got the movie off the ground: how they raised the finance, found actors, searched for locations, worked with the crew and saw the project through to completion. Filmmakers interviewed include Richard Linklater on Slacker; Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on Amores Perros; Terry Gilliam on Jabberwocky; and Sam Mendes on American...
A sequel to the critically acclaimed My First Movie, Stephen Lowenstein once again talks to some of our most celebrated filmmakers about their ...
American doctors dispense approximately 230 million antidepressant prescriptions every year, more than any other class of medication. Charles Barberexplores this disturbing phenomenon, examining the ways in which pharmaceutical companies first create the need for a drug and then rush to fill it. Most importantly, he convincingly argues that, without an industry to promote them, non-pharmaceutical approaches are tragically overlooked in favor of an instant cure for all emotional difficulties.Compulsively readable and urgently relevant, Comfortably Numb is an unprecedented...
American doctors dispense approximately 230 million antidepressant prescriptions every year, more than any other class of medication. Charles Barber
From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes a provocative and unlikely love story that starts on a New York subway car and blossoms under the windmills of the Mojave Desert.Both Sebastian and Maria live in worlds ruled by fear. Sebastian, a lonely seventeen-year-old, is suffocating under his dominant father's control; Maria, a young mother of two, is trying to keep peace at home despite her boyfriend's abuse. When their eyes meet across a subway car one night, these two strangers find a connection that neither can explain or ignore. They dream of a new future and agree to run...
From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes a provocative and unlikely love story that starts on a New York subway car and blossoms und...
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction. If the fear of death is the most rational thing in the world, how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty and an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for, against, and with God, and at his own bloodline,...
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on...
In this incisive and unflinching study, Randall Kennedy, author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, tackles another stigma of America's racial discourse: -selling out.- He explains the origins of the concept and shows how fear of this label has haunted prominent members of the black community--including, most recently, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama. Sellout also contains a rigorously fair case study of America's quintessential racial -sellout---Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In the book's final section, Kennedy recounts how he himself...
In this incisive and unflinching study, Randall Kennedy, author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, tackles another stigma of ...