In the essay, Twain laments the dour ways in which men of America's Gilded Age employ man's "most faithfull friend." He concludes by insisting that: "the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling."

    I’m Tim. I’m a single cell in society’s body. U.S. society, to be specific.So let me explain why we’re here.As a writer and a generally thinky person, I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about the society I live in, and societies in general. I’ve always imagined society as a kind of giant human—a living organism like each of us, only much bigger.When you’re a single cell in the body of a giant, it’s hard to understand what the giant’s doing, or why it is the way it is, because you can’t really zoom out and look at the whole thing all at once. But we do our best.The thing is, when I’ve recently tried to imagine what society might look like, I haven’t really been picturing this:Giant stick figure: "I am grown up."Based on what I see around me, in person and online, it seems like my society is actually more like this:Giant stick figure throwing a giant tantrum because their chocolate ice cream fell on the ground.Individual humans grow older as they age—but it kind of seems like the giant human I live in has been getting more childish each year that goes by.So I decided to write a blog post about this. But then something else happened.When I told people I was planning to write a post about society, and the way people are acting, and the way the media is acting, and the way the government is acting, and the way everyone else is acting, people kept saying the same thing to me.Don’t do it. Don’t touch it. Write about something else. Anything else. It’s just not worth it.They were right. With so many non-controversial topics to write about, why take on something so loaded and risk alienating a ton of readers? I listened to people’s warnings, and I thought about moving on to something else, but then I was like, “Wait what? I live inside a giant and the giant is having a six-year-old meltdown in the grocery store candy section and that’s a not-okay thing for me to talk about?”It hit me that what I really needed to write about was that—about why it’s perilous to write about society."

    From classrooms built around group learning to open-plan offices that encourage endless meetings, it sometimes seems that the 21st century is designed for the extroverted. This TIME Spotlight Story explores the Upside of Being an Introvert.

    Heinlein was sixty-six, at the height of his literary career; J. Neil Schulman was twenty and hadn't yet started his first novel. Because he was looking for a way to meet his idol, Schulman wangled an assignment from the New York Daily News--at the time the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S.--to interview Heinlein for its Sunday Book Supplement. The resulting taped interview lasted three-and-a-half hours. This turned out to be the longest interview Heinlein ever granted, and the only one in which he talked freely and extensively about his personal philosophy and ideology. "The Robert Heinlein Interview" contains Heinlein you won't find anywhere else--even in Heinlein's own "Expanded Universe." If you wnat to know what Heinlein had to say about UFO's, life after death, epistemology, or libertarianism, this interview is the only source available. Also included in this collection are articles, reviews, and letters that J. Neil Schulman wrote about Heinlein, including the original article written for The Daily News, about which the Heinleins wrote Schulman that it was, "The best article--in style, content, and accuracy--of the many, many written about him over the years." This book is must-reading for any serious student of Heinlein, or any reader seeking to know him better.

    He writes with conversational ease and emotional insight, drawing on contemporary politics, literature, film, and his knowledge of American history.

    In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).

    One - now the minority - functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other - the majority - is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority - which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected - presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture - attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies - to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

    Along the way, he shares exclusive interviews with political commentator Sean Hannity, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, cooking sensation Paula Deen, and pop singer Amy Grant, always hoping to go from bitter to better.Endorsements:"In Dispatches From Bitter America this 'Great American' finds that not only is our American way of life under attack, but also that most Americans do in fact love God, this country, their families, and are anything but bitter!"Sean Hannity, New York Times best-selling author, FOX News host of Hannity"Todd Starnes combines sound research with his signature wit to tell the stories of regular Americans who are standing up to a secular movement that seeks to remove all religious expression from the public square. This is a compelling book that puts our entire existence into the perspective of eternity."Tony Perkins, president, Family Research Council"You will cheer for America while laughing your head off!"Matt Patrick, News/Talk 740 KTRH in Houston, TX"Todd Starnes captures the sentiments many Americans feel as they helplessly watch the traditional values they grew up with being stomped out and over-ruled by political correctness.  Todd's stories will strike a chord, whether it's 'The War on Christmas,' 'Tag, You're Out,' or 'The Chocolate Czar.' Brownies now banned from school?  Bah humbug."Gretchen Carlson, co-host, Fox and Friends"Dispatches from Bitter America features Todd Starnes at his best. With his trademark wit, Todd tackles questions being asked by Americans who wonder what is happening to our country. Starnes manages to get to the heart of the matter in a way that is both packed with information and sprinkled with humor. Todd Starnes is a man of immense faith, madly in love with our country, and endowed by his Creator with the unique talent to tell a story like very few can. Simply put, Dispatches From Bitter America is the best book that I have read this year!"Jeff Katz, morning host, Talk Radio 1200 in Boston, MA"Todd Starnes is a masterful storyteller. In Dispatches of a Bitter America, he offers commentary on today's current events through the lens of a self-proclaimed gun toting, fried-chicken-eating son of a Baptist. Todd has always been one of my favorite news personalities and good friends. Now he is one of my favorite storytellers. Warning: don't start reading this book unless you are prepared to finish it. It's just that good."Thom S. Rainer, president and CEO, LifeWay Christian Resources

    The Lucifer Priciple is a revolutionary work that explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture to put forth the thesis that “evil” is a by-product of nature’s strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric.

    Evil is found in words such as force, compulsion, tax, violence, theft, censure, and politics. Notice that in such things, there is no joy. None have any value to humanity. This book defines the doctrine of liberty, and teaches you why choices that affect your life can only rightfully be made by you.

    We answer a colleague's questions from the stands at a child's soccer game; we pay the bills while watching TV; we order groceries while stuck in traffic. In a time when no one seems to have enough time, our devices allow us to be many places at once--but at the cost of being unable to fully inhabit the place where we actually want to be. Mindfulness says we can do better. This TIME Spotlight Story explores The Art of Mindfulness.

    

    Fukuyama sketches a brief history of man's changing understanding of human nature: from Plato and Aristotle to the modernity's utopians and dictators who sought to remake mankind for ideological ends. Fukuyama argues that the ability to manipulate the DNA of all of one person's descendants will have profound, and potentially terrible, consequences for our political order, even if undertaken with the best of intentions. In Our Posthuman Future, one of our greatest social philosophers begins to describe the potential effects of genetic exploration on the foundation of liberal democracy: the belief that human beings are equal by nature.

    He calls for boycotting Canada, says Adolf Hitler would have been a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and thinks Hurricane Katrina victims seen carrying televisions should be shot on sight. Amann and Breuer – the creators of the hugely popular website www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com — take a close look at O'Reilly's own assertions and arguments — taken from his TV and radio shows, books and columns — to expose him for what he is: a self-righteous boob and a sham newsman. The ongoing themes explored in Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly are that O'Reilly is a bit crazy, not all that sharp and, as the authors put it, about "as self-aware as a legume." The result is a hilariously funny book, a great read for anyone who enjoys seeing a puffed-up blowhard taken down a notch or two — whether they're an O'Reilly hater, fan, or something in between.

    The twentieth century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it. In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization, with the geographical shifts of emphasis and influence it brings in its wake, has altered the structures of thought that had been essentially unchanged since the European industrial revolution. Quite literally, we don't know where we came from. The results have proved calamitous thus far, with the prospect of far worse. We have lost touch with a century of social thought and socially motivated social activism. We no longer know how to discuss such concepts and have forgotten the role once played by intellectuals in debating, transmitting, and defending the ideas that shaped their time. In Reappraisals, Tony Judt resurrects the key aspects of the world we have lost in order to remind us how important they still are to us now and to our hopes for the future. Reappraisals draws provocative connections between a dazzling range of subjects, from the history of the neglect and recovery of the Holocaust and the challenge of "evil" in the understanding of the European past to the rise and fall of the "state" in public affairs and the displacement of history by "heritage." With his trademark acuity and Žlan, Tony Judt takes us beyond what we think we know to show us how we came to know it and reveals how many aspects of our history have been sacrificed in the triumph of mythmaking over understanding, collective identity over truth, and denial over memory. His book is a road map back to the historical sense we so vitally need.