What's Wrong with the World


G.K. Chesterton - 1910
    A steadfast champion of the working man, family, and faith, Chesterton eloquently opposed materialism, snobbery, hypocrisy, and any adversary of freedom and simplicity in modern society.Culled from the thousands of essays he contributed to newspapers and periodicals over his lifetime, the critical works collected for this edition pulse with the author's unique brand of clever commentary. As readable and rewarding today as when they were written over a century ago, these pieces offer Chesterton's unparalleled analysis of contemporary ideals, his incisive critique of modern efficiency, and his humorous but heartfelt defense of the common man against trendsetting social assaults.

The Communist Manifesto


Karl Marx - 1848
    Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom.This new edition includes an extensive introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones, Britain's leading expert on Marx and Marxism, providing a complete course for students of The Communist Manifesto, and demonstrating not only the historical importance of the text, but also its place in the world today.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Essays on Woman


Edith Stein - 1986
    Teresa Benedicta of the Cross O.C.D.) 2d ed., revised (1996), translated by Freda Mary Oben, Ph.D. Eight essays on the theme of woman and her vocation, with index.  With reason Edith Stein has been called "the most significant German woman of this century." Her writings on woman are the fruit of both reflection and debate with other leaders of the Catholic feminist movement in German-speaking countries between the World Wars.      This second revised edition of Essays on Woman includes textual corrections, important new supplementary data, and previously unavailable material on the spirituality of the lay and religious woman. These essays crystallize long hours of experience teaching in the classroom and on the speaker's platform in the pursuit of fulfilling roles for women in all walks of life. Reviews      "Every page of these essays reveals a mind, never doctrinaire or ruffled, but rather serene, graceful, wide-ranging, fearless, and deeply dedicated to a search for truth." - Keith J. Egan, Horizons      "This newly revised edition…is a valuable text." - Review of Metaphysics      "One would hope that these essays will be read widely and carefully by both men and women." - The Thomist

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents


Rod Dreher - 2020
    Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to "safety". Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance: - SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation. - JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true. - ACT: Take action to protect truth.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

City of God


Augustine of Hippo
    And since medieval Europe was the cradle of modern Western society, this work is vital for understanding our world and how it came into being.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State


Friedrich Engels - 1884
    This suggestion, coming from the pulpit, platform and press, has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest pillars of exploitation. The history of the family dates from 1861, the year of the publication of Bachofen's Mutterrecht (maternal law) Engles makes the following propositions: 1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitously, hetaerism. 2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of determining parentage; that consequently descent could only be traced by the female line in compliance with maternal law; and that this was universally practiced by all the nations of antiquity. 3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents of younger generations, received a high tribute of respect and deference, amounting to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), according to Bachofen's idea. 4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman exclusively to one man, implied the violation of the primeval religious law (i.e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for its permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a limited time.

The Hegel Variations: On the Phenomenology of Spirit


Fredric Jameson - 2010
    Hegel's mind is revealed to be a less systematic mechanism than normally thought, one whose ideas never solidify into pure abstractions. The conclusion of the Phenomenology, on the aftermath of the French Revolution, is examined as a provisional stalemate between the political and the social—a situation from which Jameson draws important lessons for our own age.

The Abolition of Man


C.S. Lewis - 1943
    Alternative cover for ISBN: 978-0060652944The Abolition of Man, Lewis uses his graceful prose, delightful humor, and keen understanding of the human mind to challenge our notions about how to best teach our children--and ourselves--not merely reading and writing, but also a sense of morality.

A Biblical Defense of Catholicism


Dave Armstrong - 2001
    With a mastery of Scripture equal to that of the most committed Protestants, author David Armstrong shows that the Catholic Church is the "Bible Church par excellence," and that many common Protestant doctrines are in fact not biblical.

The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto


Slavoj Žižek - 2018
    Translated into over 100 languages, this clarion call to the workers of the world radically shaped the events of the twentieth century. But what relevance does it have for us today?In this slim book Slavoj Zizek argues that, while exploitation no longer occurs the way Marx described it, it has by no means disappeared; on the contrary, the profit once generated through the exploitation of workers has been transformed into rent appropriated through the privatization of the 'general intellect'. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have become extremely wealthy not because they are exploiting their workers but because they are appropriating the rent for allowing millions of people to participate in the new form of the 'general intellect' that they own and control. But, even if Marx's analysis can no longer be applied to our contemporary world of global capitalism without significant revision, the fundamental problem with which he was concerned, the problem of the commons in all its dimensions - the commons of nature, the cultural commons, and the commons as the universal space of humanity from which no one should be excluded - remains as relevant as ever.This timely reflection on the enduring relevance of The Communist Manifesto will be of great value to everyone interested in the key questions of radical politics today.

Rerum Novarum: On The Condition Of Working Classes


Pope Leo XIII - 1891
    It was an open letter, passed to all Catholic bishops, that addressed the condition of the working classes.It discussed the relationships and mutual duties between labor and capital, as well as government and its citizens. Of primary concern was the need for some amelioration of "The misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class." It supported the rights of labor to form unions, rejected socialism and unrestricted capitalism, whilst affirming the right to private property."Rerum Novarum" is considered a foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching. Many of the positions in Rerum novarum were supplemented by later encyclicals, in particular Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno (1931), John XXIII's Mater et magistra (1961), and John Paul II's Centesimus annus (1991).

A Secular Age


Charles Taylor - 2007
    This book takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Science, Politics, and Gnosticism


Eric Voegelin - 1959
    one of the most distinguished interpreters to Americans of the non-liberal streams of European thought,-- American Political Science Review

Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction


Edward Feser - 2014
    The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics, so as to facilitate the analytic reader's understanding of Scholastic ideas and the Scholastic reader's understanding of contemporary analytic philosophy.The Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality provides the organizing theme, and the crucial dependence of Scholastic metaphysics on this theory is demonstrated. The book is written from a Thomistic point of view, but Scotist and Suarezian positions are treated as well where they diverge from the Thomistic position.

One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society


Herbert Marcuse - 1964
    This second edition, newly introduced by Marcuse scholar Douglas Kellner, presents Marcuse's best-selling work to another generation of readers in the context of contemporary events.