Book picks similar to
Death of the PostHuman: Essays on Extinction, Vol. 1 by Claire Colebrook
philosophy
theory
non-fiction
anticiv
More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction
Kodwo Eshun - 1999
The Condition of Secrecy
Inger Christensen - 2000
As The New York Times proclaimed, “Despite the rigorous structure that undergirds her work—or more likely, because of it—Ms. Christensen’s style is lyrical, even playful.” The same could be said of Christensen’s essays. Here, she formulates with increasing clarity the basis of her approach to writing, and provides insights into how she composed specific poetry volumes. Some essays are autobiographical (with memories of Christensen’s school years during the Nazi occupation of Denmark), and others are political, touching on the Cold War and Chernobyl. The Condition of Secrecy also covers the Ars Poetica of Lu Chi (261-303 CE); William Blake and Isaac Newton; and such topics as randomness as a universal force and the role of the writer as an agent of social change. The Condition of Secrecy confirms that Inger Christensen is “a true singer of the syllables” (C. D. Wright), and “a formalist who makes her own rules, then turns the game around with another rule” (Eliot Weinberger).
The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less
Neel Burton - 2020
Socrates certainly knew it, as did the Buddha, and more recently, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, and Emily Dickinson. It is a secret not because it is hidden as such, but because it is so difficult to see, running counter to so many of our most basic assumptions.Each of the book’s ten chapters exposes a particular aspect and practical application of the secret, while also keeping it carefully under wraps. On the surface, the chapters may seem to have little in common, but they are all built around the same wisdom. Your challenge, as you read, is to find the common thread that runs through all the chapters. The secret is discussed at the end, but don’t peek or you’ll spoil the fun.ContentsIntroduction1. How to see2. How to dream3. How to be religious4. How to be wise5. How to be fearless6. How to live7. How to love8. How to win9. How to party10. How to thinkThe Secret to EverythingAbout the authorDr Neel Burton is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine-lover who lives and teaches in Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Richard Asher Prize, the British Medical Association’s Young Authors’ Award, the Medical Journalists’ Association Open Book Award, and a Best in the World Gourmand Award. His work has featured in the likes of Aeon, the Spectator, and the Times, and been translated into several languages.
On Love
Alain de Botton - 1993
The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love. He loves her chestnut hair and pale nape and watery green eyes, the way she drives a car and eats Chinese food, the gap that makes her teeth Kantian and not Platonic, her views on Heidegger's Being and Time - although he hates her taste in shoes. On Love plots the course of their affair from the initial delirium of infatuation to the depths of suicidal despair, through the (Groucho) "Marxist" stage of coming to terms with being loved by the unattainable beloved, through a fit of anhedonia, defined in medical texts as a disease resulting from the terror brought on by the threat of utter happiness, and finally through the nausea induced and terrorist tactics employed when the beloved begins, inexplicably, to drift away. Alain de Botton is simultaneously hilarious and intellectually astute, shifting with ease among such seminal romantic texts as The Divine Comedy, Madame Bovary, and The Bleeding Heart, a self-help book for those who love too much. He is schematically flawless, funny, funky, and totally engaging. Filled with profound observations and useful diagrams, On Love displays and examines for all of us the pain and exhilaration of love, asking, "Can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams? Can we not be excused a certain superstitious faith in a creature who will prove the solution to our relentless yearnings?"
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
Julia Kristeva - 1980
. . Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on paraphilosophical modes of discourse. The sections on Céline, for example, are indispensable reading for those interested in this writer and place him within a context that is both illuminating and of general interest." -Paul de Man
The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1
Arthur Schopenhauer - 1818
It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest work. Conceived and published before the philosopher was 30 and expanded 25 years later, it is the summation of a lifetime of thought.For 70 years, the only unabridged English translation of this work was the Haldane-Kemp collaboration. In 1958, a new translation by E. F. J. Payne appeared that decisively supplanted the older one. Payne's translation is superior because it corrects nearly 1,000 errors and omissions in the Haldane-Kemp translation, and it is based on the definitive 1937 German edition of Schopenhauer's work prepared by Dr. Arthur Hübscher. Payne's edition is the first to translate into English the text's many quotations in half a dozen languages. It is thus the most useful edition for the student or teacher.
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery
Jeanette Winterson - 1995
For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf's The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us."Art Objects is a book to be admired for its effort to speak exorbitantly, urgently and sometimes beautifully about art and about our individual and collective need for serious art."--Los Angeles Times
The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training for Climbers
Arno Ilgner - 2003
Rock Warriors Way: Mental Training
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
C.G. Jung - 1959
Bollingen Series XXEssays which state the fundamentals of Jung's psychological system: "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" & "The Relations Between the Ego & the Unconscious," with their original versions in an appendix.
Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul
Jack Canfield - 2008
They have inspired people, given them hope, helped them overcome obstacles: it's no surprise that every title has been a bestseller. Now, the Chicken Soup series brings to you a collection of stories written for the Indian reader, by Indians. In Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul, the authors of these 101 stories share with you some of their most meaningful life experiences, focussing on subjects as varied as love, learning and letting go. These are heart-warming tales, about becoming the best person you can be, having hope in the face of adversity, and being happy with who you are. These stories will help you move forward towards a richer, more fulfilling and rewarding life.
Prohibition in the United States: A History From Beginning to End
Hourly History - 2019
For thirteen years, from 1920 to 1933, the transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages were prohibited in America. This “Noble Experiment” was undertaken because its supporters believed that alcohol was the single major cause of both crime and poverty. They believed that prohibiting alcohol would lead to the end of poverty and slum housing in the United States and that prisons and jails would no longer be needed. However, the precise opposite proved to be true. Prohibition led directly to rising crime rates, widespread illegal behavior amongst ordinary Americans, and a loss of respect for laws, law enforcement, and for the apparatus of government. How could something based on such good intentions go so disastrously wrong? Inside you will read about... ✓ Alcohol in Colonial America ✓ Prohibition Propaganda ✓ The Noble Experiment ✓ Life under Prohibition ✓ Organized Crime and Corruption ✓ Repeal Day And much more! This book tells the story of the temperance movement in America, of its rise over a period of one hundred years to encompass the growing women’s movement, and how it eventually attained its goal in 1920. It tells the story of Prohibition itself, of how people exploited loopholes in the law to continue drinking legally, and of how they simply ignored the law and drank illegally. It tells the story of the bootleggers and corrupt officials who made fortunes from Prohibition and the politicians who supported and attacked it. This is the story of a bold experiment undertaken for the very best of reasons which led to the worst of outcomes.
Noise: The Political Economy of Music
Jacques Attali - 1977
. . . In its general theoretical argument on the relations of culture to economy, but also in its specialized concentration, Noise has much that is of importance to critical theory today.” SubStance“For Attali, music is not simply a reflection of culture, but a harbinger of change, an anticipatory abstraction of the shape of things to come. The book’s title refers specifically to the reception of musics that sonically rival normative social orders. Noise is Attali’s metaphor for a broad, historical vanguardism, for the radical soundscapes of the western continuum that express structurally the course of social development.” EthnomusicologyJacques Attali is the author of numerous books, including Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order and Labyrinth in Culture and Society.
The Courage to be Happy: True Contentment Is In Your Power
Ichiro Kishimi - 2016
In The Courage To Be Happy, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga again distil their wisdom into simple yet profound advice to show us how we, too, can use twentieth-century psychological theory to find true happiness.
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
Nick Srnicek - 2015
Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite. Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitaiist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.
The Revolution of Everyday Life
Raoul Vaneigem - 1967
Published in early 1968, it both kindled and colored the May 1968 upheavals in France, which captured the attention of the world. Naming and defining the alienating features of everyday life in consumer society: survival rather than living in full, the call to sacrifice, the cultivation of false needs, the dictatorship of the commodity, subjection to social roles, and the replacement of God by the economy, the book argues that the countervailing impulses that exist within deep alienation - creativity, spontaneity, poetry present an authentic alternative to nilhilistic consumerism. This carefully edited new translation marks the first North American publication of this important work and includes a new preface by the author.