Philosophy & Religion
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by R. J. Magill (Get the Book)
When Sarah Palin told a 2010 radio interviewer that she yearned to connect with the real people, the sincere people, few heard echoes of eighteenth-century romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But Magill did. And here Magill explores the surprising implications of such echoes, tracing the tangled cultural history of sincerity as a moral and emotional ideal. That ideal, readers learn, first emerged in the theological firestorms of the sixteenth-century Reformation but metamorphosed when romantics (Rousseau and Diderot in France; Shelley and Byron in England) invested it with secular meanings in republican politics and emotive literature. But sincerity acquired dark, new connotations when Nietzsche reinterpreted it as a license for ruthless self-assertion, and Freud plumbed its depths for hidden lust and violence. Avoiding the depths, advertisers have transformed sincerity into a marketing formula, while self-help gurus have championed it as a success strategy. No wonder many artists and intellectuals have recast the question of sincerity as one of existential authenticity, while others have retreated into a cagey cynicism! Yet Magill sees Palin as just one of many twenty-first-century Americans on the Left and on the Right who still crave sincerity, even it if they must mask that craving with a hipster's protean irony. A wide-ranging and penetrating cultural inquiry. --Booklist
by Joyce Meyer. (Get the Book)
In her most popular bestseller ever, the beloved author and minister shows readers how to change their lives by changing their minds. This expanded commemorative edition features an additional Introduction and updated material. (Summary)
by Dan Ariely. (Get the Book)
The author of Predictably Irrational (rev. ed., 2009) again turns his keen mind to the realm of irrational decision-making, this time in an effort to understand the causes of and reveal interesting ways to limit our seemingly intrinsic capacity for dishonesty. Through a remarkable series of experiments, Ariely presents a convincing case that while we all want to view ourselves as honest, we have a strong desire to reap the benefits cheating brings while continuing to view ourselves as honest, wonderful people. We rationalize our misbehaviors by chalking them up to lack of willpower, the what-the-hell effect, creativity, or even a blatant desire for retribution. Ariely argues that in so doing, however, we increase the fudge factor, a process that produces further dishonesty that can quickly lead to future actions and even become contagious to those around us. Lucid and succinct as always, Ariely ably identifies the primary reasons for dishonesty and adds a few pointers, such as moral reminders, to help us curb future actions. Required reading for politicians and Wall Street executives. --Booklist
by Michael J. Sandel (Find the Book)
Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay?In What Money Can't Buy , Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life--medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?In his New York Times bestseller Justice , Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy , he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society--and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets don't honor and that money can't buy? --Summary
by Huangbo. (Get the Book)This complete translation of the original collection of sermons, dialogues, and anecdotes of Huang Po, the illustrious Chinese master of the Tang Dynasty, allows the Western reader to gain an understanding of Zen from the original source, one of the key works in its teachings; it also offers deep and often startling insights into the rich treasures of Eastern thought. Nowhere is the use of paradox in Zen illustrated better than in the teaching of Huang Po, who shows how the experience of intuitive knowledge that reveals to a man what he is cannot be communicated by words. With the help of these paradoxes, beautifully and simply presented in this collection, Huang Po could set his disciples on the right path. It is in this fashion that the Zen master leads his listener into truth, often by a single phrase designed to destroy his particular demon of ignorance. --Summary
by James Barrett.
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From the assessment of one's capability of working with abstract visual objects to the measurement of practical verbal skills, this book includes 21 specific psychometric tests. Each of the 8 sections includes a one or two page introduction. The book closes with five pages on calculating one's IQ, including a chart enabling the translation of one's score on the 21 aptitude tests and their integration into a total. --Summary
by Brett C. Hoover. (Find the Book) We begin our lives, Hoover points out, in the comfort of the womb, where everything we need is provided for us. And, to a certain extent, we spend the rest of our lives seeking comfort. Drawing on his own experiences and those of others, Hoover explores the notion of comfort from a variety of angles: comfort food, creature comforts, the rise of comfort as a lifestyle (which roughly coincided with the rise of technologies such as running water and indoor heating), the idea of intellectual comfort, and the seemingly paradoxical idea that comfort can be a restraint on us (because, in seeking comfort, we may turn away from challenge). He also explores the cultural relativity of comfort, the idea that different societies place different values on some comfort: some cultures derive comfort from being paid attention to (say, in a hospital setting) whereas others derive it from being left alone. Comfort is one of those concepts that has far more depth and variety than we realize; thankfully, there's this insightful, engaging book to set us straight. --Booklist
by Mario Beauregard (Find the Book)
In this exploration of the nature of the mind, neuroscientist Beauregard (psychology & radiology, Univ. of Montreal; coauthor, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul) covers a wide range of topics including placebos (and nocebos), neurofeedback, neuroplasticity, psychoneuroimmunology, hypnosis, psi (e.g., extrasensory perception and psychokinesis), near death and mystical experiences, and quantum physics. The 1990s were "the decade of the brain," he writes, and neuroscience remains one of the few largely unexplored scientific frontiers. Discussing imaging technologies, such as functional MRIs, that can noninvasively measure brain activity in new and exciting ways, Beauregard suggests that today's science fiction may become tomorrow's science, particularly in the field of biology. His book makes clear that, in the profound relationship between mind and body, there is a great deal about both that nobody yet knows. VERDICT Provocative and accessible, this book is ultimately less about hard science and more about the mind-body problem and philosophy of materialistic science. It will be of interest to readers of Andrew Newberg's How God Changes Your Brain. --Library Journal
by Matti Friedman. (Find the Book)Written in the tenth century, the Aleppo Codex is the most accurate copy of the Hebrew Bible. Named for the Syrian city in which it was kept, the codex is also known as the Crown of Aleppo and was said to protect those who cared for it and curse those who defiled it. Friedman, a Jerusalem journalist, came across part of the Crown in a museum and decided he wanted to write about it in doing so, he opened a treasure box of history, mystery, conspiracy, and convolutions that would do any biblical thriller proud. There are several intriguing strands in play here. First, there is the history of a vibrant Syrian community, under siege when Israel became a state. Add a cast of academics, spys, merchants, refugees, and bureaucrats, high and low, whose roles in getting the Crown out of Syria and into Israel loop and reloop throughout the narrative. Then there is the ever-evolving topic of the underground market for antiquities, fascinating in itself, but Friedman shows us, in addition, just how much is lost when the very rich purchase rarities and remove them from the public eye. The time line sometimes gets confusing, and so do the players (though an introductory cast list helps), but Friedman has done a remarkable job finding sources and digging through archives of getting the Crown's fascinating story out of the shadows and into the light. In the process, he's become the latest in the long line of the Crown's protectors. --Booklist
by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Since it was first published more than twenty years ago, The Way of the Heart has helped millions of men and women cast off the anger and greed that trouble the world-and find love, compassion, and peace in the heart of God. Inspired by the ancient teachings of St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers, The Way of the Heart clears before us a spiritual path consisting of three stepping-stones: Solitude (learning not to be alone but to be alone with God); Silence (the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive); and Prayer (standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart). Distinguished theologian Henri Nouwen brilliantly illuminates each of these disciplines. In reflections that are beautifully clear and practical, as uplifting on the fourth reading as on the first, he helps us separate the wheat from the chaff in our spiritual lives-and reconnects us with what truly matters. Within this one small book lies the most relevant and inspiring challenge that we shall ever face: to surrender the compulsive noise of the world for the way of the heart that leads us to God. --Summary (Check Catalog)
