Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization


Spencer Wells - 2010
    Using the latest genetic and anthropological data, Spencer Wells demonstrates that although humankind's decision to control our own food supply is what propelled us into the modern world, it had many downsides that we're just now beginning to recognize.

Veronica Mars and Philosophy: Investigating the Mysteries of Life (Which Is a Bitch Until You Die)


George A. Dunn - 2014
    Though it ran from 2004 to 2007, the dramatic hit show has achieved a cult-like status and has even inspired a new feature film. Couched in the popular show’s intricate plotting, witty dialog, and highly intelligent scripts, this book explores issues relating to trust, friendship, revenge, knowledge, skepticism, race, class, gender, and feminism. The authors reveal the complex moral make-up of Veronica, the smartly sarcastic high school teen and amateur investigator, as she solves mysteries and deals with life-changing events. Veronica Mars and Philosophy offers fans and newcomers alike insights into the philosophical issues related to crime solving and to some of the larger mysteries of life, illustrated by our street-wise, smart, and fascinating hero.

Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World


Fred E. Basten - 2008
    Even the word was taboo in polite society - until Max Factor entered the scene. Born in Poland in 1877, Factor worked as a beautician for the Russian royal family, the Romanovs, then for the stars of early Hollywood, revolutionising the world of beauty as he went.

The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology


Joseph Campbell - 1959
    The author of such acclaimed books as Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth discusses the primitive roots of mythology, examining them in light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.

Age of Anger: A History of the Present


Pankaj Mishra - 2017
    Today, however, botched experiments in nation-building, democracy, industrialization, and urbanization visibly scar much of the world.As once happened in Europe, the wider embrace of revolutionary politics, mass movements, technology, the pursuit of wealth, and individualism has cast billions adrift in a literally demoralized world.It was from among the ranks of the disaffected and the spiritually disorientated, that the militants of the nineteenth century arose—angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.Many more people today, unable to fulfill the promises—freedom, stability, and prosperity—of a globalized economy, are increasingly susceptible to demagogues and their simplifications. A common reaction among them is intense hatred of supposed villains, the invention of enemies, attempts to recapture a lost golden age, unfocused fury and self-empowerment through spectacular violence.In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra explores the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world—from American “shooters” and ISIS to Trump, Modi, and racism and misogyny on social media.

The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century


Peter Watson - 2010
    From Bach, Goethe, and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein, from the arts and humanities to science and philosophy, The German Genius is a lively and accessible review of over 250 years of German intellectual history. In the process, it explains the devastating effects of World War II, which transformed a vibrant and brilliantly artistic culture into a vehicle of warfare and destruction, and it shows how the German culture advanced in the war’s aftermath.

Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path


Mariana Caplan - 2008
    Perhaps the best way to avoid them is through discernment, the quality of open-eyed awareness and honest perception that helps us turn challenges into opportunity, lessons into growth. In Eyes Wide Open, Mariana Caplan invites readers to join her on a quest for truth along the often bumpy journey of the spiritual life. Building on the foundation she laid with her previous works Halfway Up the Mountain (Hohm, 1999) and Do You Need a Guru? (Thorsons, 2002), Caplan challenges us to take full responsibility for our lives, as we investigate: What is spirituality anyway? Feeding the hungry heart in contemporary Western culture. Spiritually transmitted diseases: the common traps of modern spirituality, and how to avoid them. The universal theme of the Healing Crisis, and how discernment provides a "life raft" for such times. Fully integrated spirituality: balancing body, psyche, and spirit for potent transformation. We evolve spiritually by cultivating discernment that is powerful enough to pierce through confusion on every level of our experience, explains Mariana Caplan. To help us along the way, this fellow traveler now offers Eyes Wide Open.Mariana Caplan, PhD, has spent over two decades researching and practicing many of the world's great mystical traditions. She is a professor of yogic and transpersonal psychologies and has authored seven books in the fields of psychology and spirituality.

Parallel Myths


J.F. Bierlein - 1994
    . . An eye-opener to readers into the universality and importance of myth in human history and culture."--William E. Paden, Chair, Department of Religion, University of Vermont For as long as human beings have had language, they have had myths. Mythology is our earliest form of literary expression and the foundation of all history and morality. Now, in Parallel Myths, classical scholar J. F. Bierlein gathers the key myths from all of the world's major traditions and reveals their common themes, images, and meanings.Parallel Myths introduces us to the star players in the world's great myths--not only the twelve Olympians of Greek mythology, but the stern Norse Pantheon, the mysterious gods of India, the Egyptian Ennead, and the powerful deities of Native Americans, the Chinese, and the various cultures of Africa and Oceania. Juxtaposing the most potent stories and symbols from each tradition, Bierlein explores the parallels in such key topics as creation myths, flood myths, tales of love, morality myths, underworld myths, and visions of the Apocalypse. Drawing on the work of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Karl Jaspers, Claude L�vi-Strauss, and others, Bierlein also contemplates what myths mean, how to identify and interpret the parallels in myths, and how mythology has influenced twentieth-century psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and literary studies."A first-class introduction to mythology . . . Written with great clarity and sensitivity."--John G. Selby, Associate Professor, Roanoke College

Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft


Raymond Buckland - 1986
    The workbook formats includes exam questions at the end of each lesson, so you can build a permanent record of your spiritual and magical training.

The Knee Of Listening: The Divine Ordeal of the Avataric Incarnation of Conscious Light (The Seventeen Companions of the True Dawn Horse, Book 4)


Adi Da Samraj - 1972
    Containing simple narrative, ecstatic poetry, complex argument, and discourse, Adi Da’s autobiography reveals the miraculous story of his unique incarnation and revelation in the west for “the sake of liberating all beings.” The revised edition includes an expanded description of Adi Da’s early life leading up to his divine reawakening in 1970, as well as revelations about the spiritual work of the great realizers in his lineage. "From time to time, there is a book that challenges, and eventually changes, the entire perspective of a civilization. In modern times, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was such a book–and, centuries before Darwin, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres of Copernicus (the first publication of the theory that the earth orbits the sun). The Knee Of Listening is such an epoch-making book–in an entirely different way. Appearing at the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era, it carries a Revelation that has the potential to transform all future time. This book is not about how life on earth physically evolved, nor the design of the solar system (of which this planet is a part). The Knee Of Listening is about Reality Itself, the Reality within which this earth and its cosmic locale arise—the Blissful, Effulgent, Conscious Force of Being which is always so, and which can be located and enjoyed under every possible condition, and in every dimension of space-time."—from the Introduction by Carolyn Lee, PhD

People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil


M. Scott Peck - 1983
    M. Scott Peck brilliantly probes into the essence of human evil.People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of those around them. He presents, from vivid incidents encountered in his psychiatric practice, examples of evil in everyday life.This book is by turns disturbing, fascinating, and altogether impossible to put down as it offers a strikingly original approach to the age-old problem of human evil.

The Library of Greek Mythology


Apollodorus
    Apollodorus' Library has been used as a source book by classicists from the time of its compilation in the 1st-2nd century AD to the present, influencing writers from antiquity to Robert Graves. It provides a complete history of Greek myth, telling the story of each of the great families of heroic mythology, and the various adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines, from Jason and Perseus to Heracles and Helen of Troy. As a primary source for Greek myth, as a reference work, and as an indication of how the Greeks themselves viewed their mythical traditions, the Library is indispensable to anyone who has an interest in classical mythology. Robin Hard's accessible and fluent translation is supplemented by comprehensive notes, a map and full genealogical tables. The introduction gives a detailed account of the Library's sources and situates it within the fascinating narrative traditions of Greek mythology.

The Little Black Book of Big Red Flags


Natasha Burton - 2011
    Saw something wrong with him--whether it was suspect grooming habits or ridiculously childish behavior--but let it slide. It's not that big of a deal. Except it totally was. You wanted to fall in love, but ended up going insane. You swore you'd never do it again. But did.Don't beat yourself up. In the search for love, we've all either blatantly ignored or completely missed red flags. Instead, smarten up. It's time to figure out what you missed and learn how to avoid similar flagtastic fiascos in the future. If you raise your red flag awareness now, you'll be able to greenlight a real relationship down the road.

The Holographic Universe


Michael Talbot - 1991
    Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicists David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding of the brain -- believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains not only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.

Player One: What Is to Become of Us (CBC Massey Lectures)


Douglas Coupland - 2010
    Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end.In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J. G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion, and the afterlife. The book asks as many questions as it answers, and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species — and that there is no turning back.