The Poetics of Reverie

Written by Gaston Bachelard

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: June 1, 1971
Price: $22.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6413-9 (0-8070-6413-0)

In this, his last significant work, an admired French philosopher provides extraordinary meditations on the relation between the imagining consciousness and the world, positing the notion of reverie as its most dynamic point of reference. Read more >

The Poetics of Space

Written by Gaston Bachelard

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: April 1, 1994
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6473-3 (0-8070-6473-4)

“A magical book. . . . A prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of... Read more >

Irrational Man
A Study in Existential Philosophy
Written by William Barrett

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: July 1, 1962
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-03138-7 (0-385-03138-6)

Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist Philosophy, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett discusses the views of 19th and 20th century existentialists Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre and interprets the impact of their thinking on literature, art, and philosophy. Read more >

The Second Sex

Written by Simone de Beauvoir
Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

Format: Hardcover, 832 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: April 13, 2010
Price: $40.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-26556-2 (0-307-26556-0)

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to postulate on the power of sexuality.

Sixty years after its initial publication, The Second Sex is still... Read more >

The Second Sex

Written by Simone de Beauvoir
Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

Format: Trade Paperback, 832 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 3, 2011
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27778-7 (0-307-27778-X)

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English... Read more >

Illuminations
Essays and Reflections
Written by Walter Benjamin

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Schocken
On Sale: January 13, 1969
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8052-0241-0 (0-8052-0241-2)

Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"... Read more >

Reflections
Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings
Written by Walter Benjamin

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Schocken
On Sale: March 12, 1986
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-8052-0802-3 (0-8052-0802-X)

Walter Benjamin is recognized as one of the most acute analysts of literary and sociological phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries. A companion volume to Illuminations (also available in Schocken paperback), Reflections presents a new sampling of his wide-ranging work. In addition to literary criticism, it contains autobiographical narration and... Read more >

The American Transcendentalists
Essential Writings
Edited by Lawrence Buell

Format: Trade Paperback, 608 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: January 10, 2006
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7509-3 (0-8129-7509-X)

Transcendentalism was the first major intellectual movement in U.S. history, championing the inherent divinity of each individual, as well as the value of collective social action. In the mid-nineteenth century, the movement took off, changing how Americans thought about religion, literature, the natural world, class distinctions, the role of women, and... Read more >

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
Essays
Written by Albert Camus

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 29, 1995
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-76401-4 (0-679-76401-1)

In the speech he gave upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus said that a writer "cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it." In these twenty-three political essays, he demonstrates his commitment to history's victims, from the fallen maquis... Read more >

The Essential How to Know God
The Essence of the Soul's Journey Into the Mystery of Mysteries
Written by Deepak Chopra

Format: Hardcover, 144 pages
Publisher: Harmony
On Sale: October 30, 2007
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-40774-0 (0-307-40774-8)

You don't have to believe in God in order to experience God.
--- Deepak Chopra

The celebrated author of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success has written his most ambitious and important work yet, a runaway international bestseller that has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers to rethink... Read more >

Why Is God Laughing?
The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism
Written by Deepak Chopra
Foreword by Mike Myers

Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: Harmony
On Sale: June 3, 2008
Price: $21.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-40888-4 (0-307-40888-4)

In this refreshing new take on spirituality, bestselling author Deepak Chopra uses a fictional tale of a comedian and his unlikely mentor to show us a path back to hope, joy, and even enlightenment—with a lot of laughter along the way.

Meet Mickey Fellows. A successful L.A. comedian, he’s just a... Read more >

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 1, 2010
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27725-1 (0-307-27725-9)

We spend most of our waking lives at work—in occupations most often chosen by our inexperienced younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our jobs mean to us.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the... Read more >

Religion for Atheists
A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 8, 2013
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-47682-1 (0-307-47682-0)

What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? Alain de Botton’s bold and provocative book argues that we can benefit from the wisdom and power of religion—without having to believe in any of it.

He suggests that rather than mocking religion, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from it—because the... Read more >

Religion for Atheists
A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: March 6, 2012
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-37910-8 (0-307-37910-8)

What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? The long-running and often boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved forward by Alain de Botton’s inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are entirely false—but that it still has some very important... Read more >

Status Anxiety

Written by Alain De Botton

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 10, 2005
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-72535-7 (0-375-72535-0)

Anyone who’s ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor’s Lexus had better read Alain de Botton’s irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents turns his attention to the insatiable quest for status, a quest that has... Read more >

Learning to Live Finally
The Last Interview
Written by Jacques Derrida
Translated by Pascal-Anne Brault and Michael Naas

Format: Trade Paperback, 96 pages
Publisher: Melville House
On Sale: December 6, 2011
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-61219-094-5 (1-61219-094-4)

With death looming, Jacques Derrida, the world’s most famous philosopher-known as the father of “deconstruction”-sat down with journalist Jean Birnbaum of the French daily Le Monde. They revisited his life’s work and his impending death in a long, surprisingly accessible, and moving final interview.

Sometimes called “obscure” and branded “abstruse” by his... Read more >

The Rationalists
Descartes: Discourse on Method & Meditations; Spinoza: Ethics; Leibniz: Monadology & Discourse on Metaphysics
Written by Rene Descartes, Benedict de Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz

Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: August 23, 1960
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-09540-2 (0-385-09540-6)

Founded in the mid-17th century, Rationalism was philosophy's first step into the modern era. This volume contains the essential statements of Rationalism's three greatest figures: Descartes, who began it; Spinoza, who epitomized it; and Leibniz, who gave it its last serious expression. Read more >

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
On Objects and Intimacy
Written by Mark Doty

Format: Trade Paperback, 80 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 19, 2002
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6609-6 (0-8070-6609-5)

Mark Doty’s prose has been hailed as “tempered and tough, sorrowing and serene” (The New York Times Book Review) and “achingly beautiful” (The Boston Globe). In Still Life with Oysters and Lemon he offers a stunning exploration of our attachment to ordinary things-how we invest objects with human store, and why.

“Books... Read more >

The Vices

Written by Lawrence Douglas

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Other Press
On Sale: August 16, 2011
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-59051-415-3 (1-59051-415-7)

Oliver Vice, forty-one, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2.Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas, moving backward through time, tells a mordantly humorous... Read more >

The Four Global Truths
Awakening to the Peril and Promise of Our Times
Written by Darrin Drda

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: EVOLVER EDITIONS
On Sale: October 25, 2011
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-321-2 (1-58394-321-8)

With the planet increasingly threatened with catastrophe and perhaps even collapse, many seekers are looking to past, proven models to create meaningful change in their lives. One such model is Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths: the reality of suffering, the root cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to... Read more >

On Ugliness

Written by Umberto Eco

Format: Trade Paperback, 456 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli
On Sale: October 18, 2011
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-8478-3723-6 (0-8478-3723-8)

In the mold of his acclaimed History of Beauty, renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts. What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the magnetic appeal of... Read more >

The Ascent of Humanity
Civilization and the Human Sense of Self
Written by Charles Eisenstein

Format: Trade Paperback, 576 pages
Publisher: EVOLVER EDITIONS
On Sale: February 5, 2013
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-535-3 (1-58394-535-0)

Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. In this landmark book, Eisenstein explains how a disconnection from the natural world and one another is built into the foundations of civilization: into science, religion, money... Read more >

The Ascent of Humanity
Civilization and the Human Sense of Self
Written by Charles Eisenstein

Format: Hardcover, 576 pages
Publisher: EVOLVER EDITIONS
On Sale: February 5, 2013
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-636-7 (1-58394-636-5)

Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. In this landmark book, Eisenstein explains how a disconnection from the natural world and one another is built into the foundations of civilization: into science, religion, money... Read more >

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Written by Michel Foucault

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 12, 1982
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-71106-5 (0-394-71106-8)

Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge--are these facts of life or simply parts of speech?  The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of "things said" and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal.  A summing up of Foucault's own methodological assumptions, this... Read more >

The Foucault Reader

Written by Michel Foucault

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 12, 1984
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-71340-3 (0-394-71340-0)

Edited by Paul Rainbow.  Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world, someone whose work has affected the teaching of half a dozen disciplines ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. The Foucault Reader contains selections from each area of Foucault's work as well as... Read more >