Ikigai: The Japanese Secret Philosophy for a Happy Healthy Long Life with Joy and Purpose Every Day


Marie Xue
    Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that will make your life worth living? Is it the large amount of money that you have in the bank? The prestigious education that you have? The family and friends that surround you? Or your spiritual belief that there is someone greater than you in the world? Most people will spend their entire lifetimes trying to figure it out, but only a few will have the privilege of really understanding and experiencing themselves what it means to live a fulfilled life. Over the past years, we’ve seen many life philosophies take center stage, all claiming to hold to secret to happiness and fulfillment. While all of them may have very convincing premises, only one truly stands out. Ikigai, or the Japanese concept of finding your purpose, is the key to living a meaningful life. If there’s one people group who have mastered the art of living - and living well, it’s definitely the Okinawans of Japan. Famous for being the world’s longest-living people, they attribute their joy and contentment to finding their ikigai. It’s the reason why they live longer, happier, and better lives than the rest of us. So how does knowing your ikigai change your life? And what should you do to help you uncover your ikigai? Well, you’ll discover all that and more after you’ve listened to this audiobook. This audiobook is packed with helpful insights that will change not just the way you think, but also the way you live. You’ll learn how to slow down and let go of the things that stop you from finding your ultimate purpose. This audiobook will also give you the blueprint to living the life that you always wanted so you won’t have to feel your life is meaningless ever again. I hope that through this audiobook, you will see joy, meaning, and purpose in every single day of your life.©2018 Zen Mastery (P)2018 Zen Mastery

Direct Action: An Ethnography


David Graeber - 2009
    The case study at the center of Direct Action is the organizing and events that led to the one of the most dramatic and militant mass protests in recent years—against the Summit of the Americas in Québec City. Written in a clear, accessible style (with a minimum of academic jargon), this study brings readers behind the scenes of a movement that has changed the terms of debate about world power relations. From informal conversations in coffee shops to large “spokescouncil” planning meetings and tear gas-drenched street actions, Graeber paints a vivid and fascinating picture.Along the way, he addresses matters of deep interest to anthropologists: meeting structure and process, language, symbolism and representation, the specific rituals of activist culture, and much more. Starting from the assumption that, when dealing with possibilities of global transformation and emerging political forms, a disinterested, “objective” perspective is impossible, Graeber writes as both scholar and activist. At the same time, his experiment in the application of ethnographic methods to important ongoing political events is a serious and unique contribution to the field of anthropology, as well as an inquiry into anthropology’s political implications.David Graeber is an anthropologist and activist who teaches at the University of London. Active in numerous direct-action political organizations, he has written for Harper’s Magazine and is the author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, and Possibilities.In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.

Banksy's Bristol: Home Sweet Home


Steve Wright - 2007
    The images were taken when Banksy joined Bristol's radical football team The Easton Cowboys on a tour of Mexico to play football against the Zapatista freedom fighters. The new edition also contains sections on the Banksy vs Bristol Museum show, Exit Through The Gift Shop, The Tesco Value Petrol Bomb, an interview with John Nation and more. The book is a celebration of Banksy's street art in his home city of Bristol and places him in the context of 3D, John Nation from the Barton Hill Youth Club, Inkie, Nick Walker and the other artists and musicians who were instrumental in linking Bristol to the original New York hip-hop scene. It is the most revealing account of Banksy's formative years and contains more than one hundred images of his Bristol art, as well as pictures of Banksy at work, many of which have never been published before. Steve Wright, traces Banksy's roots back to the rave culture of the Nineties and draws a rounded picture of an artist who is most famous for being anonymous.

Outsmart Waste: The Modern Idea of Garbage and How to Think Our Way Out of It


Tom Szaky - 2013
    Our garbage has become a massive and exponentially growing problem in modern society. Eco-entrepreneur Tom Szaky explores why this crisis exists and explains how can we solve it by eliminating the very idea of garbage. To outsmart waste, he says, we first have to understand it, then change how we create it, and finally rethink what we do with it.By mimicking nature and focusing on the value inherent in our by-products, we can transform the waste we can’t avoid creating from useless trash to a useful resource. Szaky demonstrates that there is value in every kind of garbage, from used chewing gum to juice pouches to cigarette butts. After reading this mind-expanding book, you will never think about garbage the same way again.

Existentialism (Beginner's Guides)


Thomas E. Wartenberg - 2008
    In this lively and topical introduction, Wartenberg reveals a vibrant mode of philosophical inquiry that addresses concerns at the heart of the existence of every human being. Wartenberg uses classic films, novels, and plays to present the ideas of now-legendary Existentialist thinkers from Nietzsche and Camus to Sartre and Heidegger and to explore central concepts, including Freedom, Anxiety, and the Absurd. Special attention is paid to the views of Simone de Beauvoir and Franz Fanon, who use the theories of Existentialism to address gender and colonial oppression.

Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away from It All


Dan Bongino - 2013
    "He swore to take a bullet for the President and left it all behind to take a bullet for the American people"  Why would a successful, twelve-year Secret Service agent resign his position in the prime of his career to run for political office against all the odds?  New York Times bestseller, Life Inside the Bubble is an intimate look at life inside the presidential “bubble,” a haze of staffers, consultants, cronies, acolytes, bureaucrats and lobbyists that creates the “alternate reality” in which monumental policy decisions are made. And it is the story of a dedicated Secret Service professional who, after years inside the “bubble,” walked away in favor of sounding a clarion call to the American people in defense of sane government and the US Constitution.    Finally, why the Fast & Furious scandal, the bombings in Boston and the terrorist attacks in Benghazi are harbingers of what’s to come without a bold change in direction.

Neorealism and Its Critics


Robert O. Keohane - 1985
    The debate was sparked by the 1979 publication of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Relations, which systematized realism as a coherent, deductive theory. This volume provides a unique summary of current thinking on neorealism. Ideal for course use, it presents key portions of Waltz's book along with the most significant critical evaluations of the topic by other leading scholars.Neorealism's supporters stress how much we can learn by focusing rigorously on the level of the international system, particularly by examining the effects of the distribution of power among states. Critics point out what they feel are neorealism's shortcomings: continuing ambiguities in the concepts of power and balance of power, the importance of internal determinants of foreign policy, difficulties of neorealist theory accounting for change, and what some regard as its tendency to ignore both history and the material conditions on which any international system rests. These issues are not merely of abstract interest, but relate to fundamental values as well as to the question of how humanity can survive in today's nuclear world.Neorealism and Its Critics addresses these and other vital questions in its critiques of the theory, and of Waltz's book in particular. Featuring contributions by John Ruggie, Robert Cox, Richard Ashley, and Robert Gilpin, with an introductory essay by Keohane and a concluding chapter by Waltz, this book is essential reading for both students and scholars as an up-to-date assessment of neorealism.

The Ethics of Redistribution


Bertrand De Jouvenel - 1951
    Rather, he stresses the commonly disregarded ethical arguments showing that redistribution is ethically indefensible for, and practically unworkable in, a complex society.A new introduction relates Jouvenel's arguments to current discussions about the redistributionist state and draws out many of the points of affinity with the works of Buchanan, Hayek, Rawls, and others.

Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought - Expanded Edition


Sheldon S. Wolin - 1960
    Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political thinkers from Plato to Mill, and adds seven chapters about theorists from Marx and Nietzsche to Rawls and the postmodernists. The new chapters, which show how thinkers have grappled with the immense possibilities and dangers of modern power, are themselves a major theoretical statement. They culminate in Wolin's remarkable argument that the United States has invented a new political form, inverted totalitarianism, in which economic rather than political power is dangerously dominant. In this new edition, the book that helped to define political theory in the late twentieth century should energize, enlighten, and provoke generations of scholars to come.Wolin originally wrote Politics and Vision to challenge the idea that political analysis should consist simply of the neutral observation of objective reality. He argues that political thinkers must also rely on creative vision. Wolin shows that great theorists have been driven to shape politics to some vision of the Good that lies outside the existing political order. As he tells it, the history of theory is thus, in part, the story of changing assumptions about the Good.In the new chapters, Wolin displays all the energy and flair, the command of detail and of grand historical developments, that he brought to this story forty years ago. This is a work of immense talent and intense thought, an intellectual achievement that will endure.

Habermas and the Public Sphere


Craig J. Calhoun - 1992
    The relationship between civil society and public life is in the forefront of contemporary discussion. No single scholarly voice informs this discussion more than that of J�rgen Habermas. His contributions have shaped the nature of debates over critical theory, feminism, cultural studies, and democratic politics. In this book, scholars from a wide range of disciplines respond to Habermas's most directly relevant work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. From political theory to cultural criticism, from ethics to gender studies, from history to media studies, these essays challenge, refine, and extend our understanding of the social foundations and changing character of democracy and public discourse.ContributorsHannah Arendt, Keith Baker, Seyla Benhabib, Harry C. Boyte, Craig Calhoun, Geoff Eley, Nancy Fraser, Nicholas Garnham, J�rgen Habermas, Peter Hohendahl, Lloyd Kramer, Benjamin Lee, Thomas McCarthy, Moishe Postone, Mary P. Ryan, Michael Schudson, Michael Warner, David Zaret

The Market for Liberty


Morris Tannehill - 1970
    But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time when a new understanding brings in the world into focus for the first time. The Market for Liberty is that second type of classic, and what a treasure it is. Written by two authorsMorris and Linda Tannehilljust following a period of intense study of the writings of both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, it has the pace, energy, and rigor you would expect from an evening's discussion with either of these two giants. More than that, these authors put pen to paper at precisely the right time in their intellectual development, that period rhapsodic freshness when a great truth had been revealed, and they had to share it with the world. Clearly, the authors fell in love with liberty and the free market, and wrote an engaging, book-length sonnet to these ideas. This book is very radical in the true sense of that term: it gets to the root of the problem of government and provides a rethinking of the whole organization of society. They start at the beginning with the idea of the individual and his rights, work their way through exchange and the market, expose government as the great enemy of mankind, and thenand here is the great surprisethey offer a dramatic expansion of market logic into areas of security and defense provision. 169 page softcover

Strange Crime


Portable Press - 2018
    Dumb crooks, celebrities gone bad, unsolved mysteries, odd laws, and more—Strange Crime has plenty of stories that will make you ask yourself, “What could they possibly have been thinking?” This easily portable paperback book is ideal for readers on the go. Take it to school, to work, to jury duty!

Think Differently: Open your mind. Philosophy for modern life: 20 thought-provoking lessons


Adam Ferner - 2018
     Using a clear and effective methodology and stunning graphics to visually guide you, Think Differently discusses the important, sometimes challenging, but always relevant topics of today – taking theories off the page through relatable examples.  Dip in and out of lessons as you explore how philosophy is at the heart of your everyday. From people skills to lifestyle choices, self-help to politics – and how you spend your free time.  As Adam Ferner explains, 'like the sugar from a donut, philosophy covers absolutely everything'.

Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements


Bill Moyer - 2001
    But the road to success for social movements is often complex, usually lasting many years, with few guides for evaluating the precise stage of a movement's evolution to determine the best way forward.Doing Democracy provides both a theory and working model for understanding and analyzing social movements, ensuring that they are successful in the long term. Beginning with an overview of social movement theory and the MAP (Movement Action Plan) model, Doing Democracy outlines the eight stages of social movements, the four roles of activists, and case studies from the civil rights, anti-nuclear energy, Central America, gay/lesbian, women's health, and globalization movements.Bill Moyer is the originator of the MAP Model; he and his coauthors combine several decades of movement experience.

The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century


Helena Rosenblatt - 2018
    Taking readers from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words “liberal” and “liberalism,” revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning.In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights. She shows that it was the French Revolution that gave birth to liberalism and Germans who transformed it. Only in the mid-twentieth century did the concept become widely known in the United States—and then, as now, its meaning was hotly debated. Liberals were originally moralists at heart. They believed in the power of religion to reform society, emphasized the sanctity of the family, and never spoke of rights without speaking of duties. It was only during the Cold War and America’s growing world hegemony that liberalism was refashioned into an American ideology focused so strongly on individual freedoms.Today, we still can’t seem to agree on liberalism’s meaning. In the United States, a “liberal” is someone who advocates big government, while in France, big government is contrary to “liberalism.” Political debates become befuddled because of semantic and conceptual confusion. The Lost History of Liberalism sets the record straight on a core tenet of today’s political conversation and lays the foundations for a more constructive discussion about the future of liberal democracy.