In this perceptive collection of essays, Doris Lessing addresses directly the prime questions before us all: how to think for ourselves, how to understand what we know, how to pick a path in a world deluged with opinions and information, and how to look at our society and ourselves with fresh eyes.

Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare's greatest plays--A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest.

In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by the essays of Montaigne that were translated into English while Shakespeare was writing. In addition...

For the first time in one volume--an extraordinary spiritual odyssey of the making of the Taoist master Kwan Saihung. Born into a wealthy family in a remote province of China, Kwan defies his parents' wishes and enters into the rigorous and mysterious discipline of Taoist practice. Renamed "Little Butterfly" by his Taoist masters, he survives the upheaval of the Japanese occupation, and the later the Chinese Revolution, all the while becoming adept in the Taoist arts. Eventually his inner and outer journey lead him to America, where he becomes a Golden Gloves boxer and martial arts...

This anthology of readings in contemporary Western philosophy focuses on 19th-century philosophers who represent a variety of responses to the issue of their day: whether or not there was a knowable, nonhuman rational order upon which thinking persons could willfully choose to act. The selections are readable and accessible, yet remain faithful to the original works. Accompanying the text are drawings, diagrams, photographs, and a timeline; all of which allow the reader to really study the major philosophical thinkers of the 19th-century: Bentham, Wollstonecraft, Fichte, Hegel,...