Who is Bill Cooney? Is he a poet, a madman, a former candidate for the priesthood, a son of one of the most prosperous and well-liked men in the tiny town of Kilbeggan, Ireland, an apple thief, a man spared three times from certain death, a gadfly, a fearless Saxon warrior, a student of medicine at Trinity College, a truck driver, a store clerk, an insurance inspector, a night watchman, a businessman, a writer of hundreds of unpublished puns, a husband, a father, a grandfather, an animal lover? Yes, and he's also the author of this memoir.

The authors of this book consult 15 thinkers, from various fields, who have a profound understanding of the important role that education plays in our world. Each chapter opens with an introduction and concludes with a discussion and questions.

The Quest for Meaning explores the deep-seated human need to create a life that is meaningful. In an effort to understand this need, author William Cooney examines the works of philosophers from Plato to Sartre as well as the insights of artists, poets, writers, psychologists, and film-makers. He discusses the nature of humanness, creation, freedom, and choice, all of which are facets of a meaningful life. Cooney also addresses postmodernism, arguing that it does not offer real guidance for those seeking a life of significance. Maintaining that some ways of creating meaning are preferable to...

The search for happiness has been an enduring quest for us all. The greatest minds from history--Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Gandhi, Einstein and many others--all confirm that happiness is the one thing we all crave after. The Wild Longing of the Human Heart is divided into two parts. Part one examines the brief history of happiness which has not always meant exactly the same thing to all cultures and individuals, and then moves on to summarize the latest information from the areas of brain science as well as the field of positive psychology. Part two proposes that it is...