So, after studying Muay Thai, Krav Maga, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and boxing, he decided, at age forty, that it was finally time to fight his first—and only—mixed martial arts match: all in the name of experience and transcending ancient fears.An insightful and moving rumination on the nature of fighting, Why We Fight takes us on his journey from the bleachers to the ring. Using his own training as an opportunity to understand how the sport illuminates basic human impulses, Rosenblatt weaves together cultural history, criticism, biology, and anthropology to understand what happens to the human body and mind when under attack, and to explore why he, a self-described “cowardly boy from the suburbs,” discovered so much meaning in putting his body, and others’, at risk.From the psychology of fear to the physiology of pain, from Ukrainian shtetls to Brooklyn boxing gyms, from Lord Byron to George Plimpton, Why We Fight is a fierce inquiry into the abiding appeal of our most conflicted and controversial fixation, interwoven with a firsthand account of what happens when a mild-mannered intellectual decides to step into the ring for his first real showdown.

    Now available in a paperback edition, Sabina Flanagan's book makes her remarkable life accessible to the general reader. Drawing on contemporary sources, the text unfolds Hildegard's life from the time of her entrance into an anchoress's cell--where a woman would remain in pious isolation--to her death as a famed visionary and writer, abbess and confidante of popes and kings, more than seventy years later. Against this background the author explores Hildegard's vast creative work, encompassing theology, medicine, natural history, poetry, and music.