Through more than fifty Koans—pleasingly paradoxical vignettes following the ancient Zen tradition—leading physicist Anthony Aguirre takes the reader across the world from West to East, and through ideas spanning the age, breadth, and depth of the Universe.Using these beguiling Koans (Could there be a civilization on a mote of dust? How much of your fate have you made? Who cleans the universe?) and a flair for explaining complex science, Aguirre covers cosmic questions that scientific giants from Aristotle to Galileo to Heisenberg have grappled with, from the meaning of quantum theory and the nature of time to the origin of multiple universes.A playful and enlightening book, Cosmological Koans explores the strange hinterland between the deep structure of the physical world and our personal experience of it, giving readers what Einstein himself called “the most beautiful and deepest experience” anyone can have: a sense of the mysterious.

    When it did, there stood the central figure in one of the biggest scandals in sports history: Kirk Radomski. Radomski was a regular New York kid who, from the age of fifteen had the amazing fortune of working in the Mets clubhouse. The focus of his job was to give the players whatever they wanted or needed—he got their uniforms ready, packed up their homes at the end of the season, cashed their checks, and helped them beat the drug tests that would have led to suspension. And at the end of the 1986 season he even led the World Champions down Broadway during their victory parade. Eventually, he graduated to helping in other ways: providing them with steroids and human growth hormones. By the time the Feds knocked on his door, he was the main clubhouse supplier of performance-enhancing drugs to almost three hundred baseball players. Under threat of a long prison sentence—and after being identified by players he’d helped—he cooperated with Senator George Mitchell to produce the Mitchell Report, providing names and dates. Now he’s ready to tell the whole story to the world. Radomski made little money from these transactions, and in this stunning book he will recount what baseball knew about the problem, his life since the report came out, and who took what. This is the tale of a young man seeing his heroes turn into clay, and the degradation of a once great sport into the drug-addicted spectacle it has become.

    They actively applied a deceptively simple tool to think both smarter and faster: the doodle. And so can the rest of us-zero artistic talent required.Visual thinking expert Sunni Brown has created The Doodle Revolution as a kick-starter guide for igniting and applying simple visual language to any challenge. The instinctive and universal act of doodling need only be unleashed in order to innovate, solve problems, and elevate cognitive performance instantly.

    Powers, Boston Globe. "Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading."--Richard Bernstein, New York Times. "Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise."--Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal. These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

    The author’s final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man’s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.

    This book follows various political and economic stories, and deals with topics which include comedy, cars, Sixties anarchists, oil-men and punks.

    James White, author of The Potter's Freedom, takes the Calvinist position. Dave Hunt, author of What Love Is This, opposes him. The exchange is lively and at times intense as these two articulate men wrestle over what the Scriptures tell us about God's sovereignty and man's free will. This thought-provoking, challenging book provides potent responses to the most frequently asked questions about Calvinism.Is God free to love anyone He wants?Do you have any choice in your own salvation? It’s time to find out. Calvinism has been a topic of intense discussion for centuries. In this lively debate, two passionate thinkers take opposing sides, providing valuable responses to the most frequently asked questions about Calvinism. Only you can decide where you stand on questions that determine how you think about your salvation. Story Behind the BookThe subject of Calvinism has been hotly debated for many years, and now two prominent authors and researchers will debate this controversial topic in a book debate. This project came about when Mr. Hunt wrote What Love is This- Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God. Mr. Hunt was challenged by many on the Calvinist bench and he eventually agreed to do a debate in a book format. The books purpose is to get you to think and come to your own conclusions.

    Get out of debt (and stay that way).Estate Planning & Long-Term Care: Learn how to protect yourself and your family.

    Here, in one of his most popular of his more than thirty books, Thomas Merton provides further meditations on the spiritual life in sixteen thoughtful essays, beginning with his classic treatise "Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away." This sequel to Seeds of Contemplation provides fresh insight into Merton's favorite topics of silence and solitude, while also underscoring the importance of community and the deep connectedness to others that is the inevitable basis of the spiritual life—whether one lives in solitude or in the midst of a crowd.

    Illuminating Dogen’s enigmatic teachings in plain language, Warner intertwines sharp philosophical musings on sex, evil, anger, meditation, enlightenment, death, God, sin, and happiness with an exploration of the power and pain of the punk rock ethos. Riffing on his triumphant return to Ohio for a reunion concert of Akron punk bands, Brad uncovers the real heart of Zen, in teachings and stories with a sharp smack of truth.

    In this book Eugene Thacker suggests that we look to the genre of horror as offering a way of thinking about the unthinkable world. To confront this idea is to confront the limit of our ability to understand the world in which we live – a central motif of the horror genre.In the Dust of This Planet explores these relationships between philosophy and horror. In Thacker’s hands, philosophy is not academic logic-chopping; instead, it is the thought of the limit of all thought, especially as it dovetails into occultism, demonology, and mysticism. Likewise, Thacker takes horror to mean something beyond the focus on gore and scare tactics, but as the under-appreciated genre of supernatural horror in fiction, film, comics, and music. This relationship between philosophy and horror does not mean the philosophy of horror, if anything, it means the reverse, the horror of philosophy: those moments when philosophical thinking enigmatically confronts the horizon of its own existence. For Thacker, the genre of supernatural horror is the key site in which this paradoxical thought of the unthinkable takes place.

    For all ages and all levels of difficulty, these puzzles range from those that can be solved in minutes to those that will beguile for hours.

    New from Helen Palmer, a "leading teacher and practitioner of the Enneagram" (San Francisco Chronicle), the first Enneagram book to give practical advice, in fascinating detail, on how to have the best possible relationships in love and business.

    With Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein shares the wisdom of his four decades of teaching and practice in a book that will serve as a lifelong companion for anyone committed to mindful living and the realization of inner freedom.Goldstein's source teaching is the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's legendary discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness that became the basis for the many types of Vipassana (or insight meditation) found today. Exquisite in detail yet wholly accessible and relevant for the modern student, Mindfulness takes us through a profound study of: Ardency, clear knowing, mindfulness, and concentration--how to develop these four qualities of mind essential for walking the path wiselyThe Satipatthana refrain--how deeply contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness opens us to bare knowing and continuity of mindfulnessMindfulness of the body, including the breath, postures, activities, and physical characteristicsMindfulness of feelings--how the experience of our sense perceptions influences our inner and outer worldsMindfulness of mind--learning to recognize skillful and unskillful states of mind and thoughtMindfulness of dhammas (or categories of experience), including the Five Hindrances, the Six Sense Spheres, the Seven Factors of Awakening, and much more"There is a wealth of meaning and nuance in the experience of mindfulness that can enrich our lives in unimagined ways," writes Goldstein. In Mindfulness you have the tools to mine these riches for yourself.

    But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity--for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot's most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire.In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot's tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.