With A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman let her free-ranging intellect loose on the natural world.  Now in Deep Play she tackles the realm of creativity, by exploring one of the most essential aspects of our characters: the abitlity to play."Deep play" is that more intensified form of play that puts us in a rapturous mood and awakens the most creative, sentient, and joyful aspects of our inner selves.  As Ackerman ranges over a panoply of artistic, spiritual, and athletic activities, from spiritual rapture through extreme sports, we gain a greater sense of what it means to be "in the moment" and totally, transcendentally human.  Keenly perceived and written with poetic exuberance, Deep Play enlightens us by revealing the manifold ways we can enhance our lives.

    However, scant attention has been paid to the two women who were closest to him: Renee Pelagie de Sade, his adoring wife, and his powerful mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil.Francine du Plessix Gray draws on thousands of pages of letters exchanged by the married couple, few of which have been published before in English, to explore in the fullest historical and psychological detail what it was like to be married to one of the most maverick spirits of modern history. Gray brings to life two remarkable women and their complex relationship to Sade as they dedicated themselves to protecting him from the law, curbing his excesses, and ultimately confining him. With immediacy, irony, and verve, At Home with the Marquis de Sade also conjures up the extravagant hedonism and terror of late eighteenth-century France.

    First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosopher’s enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood. A work that predicted the demise of the Third Reich and that still holds relevance in today’s security-obsessed society, this volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of political science. “Carl Schmitt is surely the most controversial German political and legal philosopher of this century. . . . We deal with Schmitt, against all odds, because history stubbornly persists in proving many of his tenets right.”—Perspectives on Political Science “[A] significant contribution. . . . The relation between Hobbes and Schmitt is one of the most important questions surrounding Schmitt: it includes a distinct, though occasionally vacillating, personal identification as well as an association of ideas.”—Telos

    Ever since, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. He calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left--and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum.In probing chapters on C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, Wolin discovers an unsettling commonality: during the 1930s, these thinkers leaned to the right and were tainted by a proverbial "fascination with fascism." Frustrated by democracy's shortcomings, they were seduced by fascism's grandiose promises of political regeneration. The dictatorships in Italy and Germany promised redemption from the uncertainties of political liberalism. But, from the beginning, there could be no doubting their brutal methods of racism, violence, and imperial conquest.Postmodernism's origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin's suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance--they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect.Those who take Wolin's conclusions to heart will never view the history of modern thought in quite the same way."For anyone who has passed through the academic humanities in the last quarter-century and has been exposed to the dubious legacy of postmodernism, The Seduction of Unreason is an indispensable book. It is another important installment in what has become one of the major intellectual enterprises of our time: Richard Wolin's principled defense of liberalism against its most sophisticated enemies."--Adam Kirsch, New York Sun"In this impressive book Wolin does for the Left what Bloom did for the Right; he makes a powerful case for a return to moral seriousness."--Daniel P. Murphy, Magill's Literary Annual 2005"The topic of Richard Wolin's book is the nexus between postmodernism and politics. . . . Wolin's book raises the right questions at the right time. He forces us to think critically about the deepest philosophical underpinnings of our moral and political ideals. We simply cannot rest content with an unmeasured assault on reason."--Andy Wallace,Ethics

    Along the way, Stevenson troubles our commonsense understanding of what life is and what it means to care for the life of another. Through close attention to the images in which we think and dream and through which we understand the world, Stevenson describes a world in which life is beside itself: the name-soul of a teenager who dies in a crash lives again in his friend’s newborn baby, a young girl shares a last smoke with a dead friend in a dream, and the possessed hands of a clock spin uncontrollably over its face. In these contexts, humanitarian policies make little sense because they attempt to save lives by merely keeping a body alive. For the Inuit, and perhaps for all of us, life is "somewhere else," and the task is to articulate forms of care for others that are adequate to that truth.

    G. Jung laid the groundwork for a psychology of the spirit. The excerpts here illuminate the concept of the unconscious, the central pillar of his work, and display ample evidence of the spontaneous spiritual and religious activities of the human mind. This compact volume will serve as an ideal introduction to Jung's basic concepts.Part I of this book, "On the Nature and Functioning of the Psyche, " contains material from four works: "Symbols of Transformation, " "On the Nature of the Psyche, " "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, " and "Psychological Types." Also included in Part I are "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" and "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype." Part II, "On Pathology and Therapy, " includes "On the Nature of Dreams, " "On the Pathogenesis of Schizophrenia, " selections from "Psychology of the Transference." In Part III appear "Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy" and two sections of "Psychology and Religion." Part IV, called "On Human Development, " consists of the essay "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship."

    Almost two hundred years later, a charismatic preacher founded a utopian community in Oneida, New York, that practiced socialism and free love. In the 1960s and ’70s, a new generation of seekers gathered in vegetarian restaurants in Los Angeles, Satanic coffee shops in New Orleans, and fortified communes in Philadelphia. And in the twenty-first century, gurus use self-help seminars and get-rich-quick schemes to evangelize to their flocks.Across the decades, Americans in search of divine truths have turned to unconventional prophets for the answers. Some of these prophets have demanded their faith, fortunes, and even their very lives. In American Cult, over twenty cartoonists explore the history of these groups with clarity and empathy—looking beyond the scandalous headlines to find the human stories within.Featuring the talents of Lara Antal, Brian “Box” Brown, Ryan Carey, Rosa Colón Guerra, Mike Dawson, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg, Mike Freiheit, Emi Gennis, Andrew Greenstone, Janet Harvey, Josh Kramer, Jesse Lambert, Ellen Lindner, Lonnie Mann, Ben Passmore, Jim Rugg, Robert Sergel, Vreni Stollberger, Steve Teare, and J.T. Yost.

    The Industrial Revolution brought not simply misery and poverty. On the contrary, Griffin shows how it raised incomes, improved literacy, and offered exciting opportunities for political action. For many, this was a period of new, and much valued, sexual and cultural freedom. This rich personal account focuses on the social impact of the Industrial Revolution, rather than its economic and political histories. In the tradition of best-selling books by Liza Picard, Judith Flanders, and Jerry White, Griffin gets under the skin of the period and creates a cast of colorful characters, including factory workers, miners, shoemakers, carpenters, servants, and farm laborers.

    In her perceptive introduction to this edition, Irene Diggs sets this classic autobiography against its broad historical context and critically analyzes its theoretical and methodological significance.

    It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date.Barkun discusses a range of material—involving inner-earth caves, government black helicopters, alien abductions, secret New World Order cabals, and much more—that few realize exists in our culture. Looking closely at the manifestions of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material from religious and political literature, to New Age and UFO publications, to popular culture phenomena such as The X-Files, and to websites, radio programs, and more, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millennarian activity. His book underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is now spreading into more mainstream segments of American culture.

    Yet, David Wootton argues, from the fifth century BC until the 1930s, doctors actually did more harm than good. In this controversial new account of the history of medicine, he asks just how much good it has done us over the years, and how much harm it continues to do today.

    In this magisterial book, Hans Belting traces the longhistory of the sacral image and its changing role in European culture.Likeness and Presence looks at the beliefs, superstitions, hopes,and fears that come into play as people handle and respond to sacredimages, and presents a compelling interpretation of the place of theimage in Western history."A rarity within its genre—an art-historical analysis of iconographywhich is itself iconoclastic. . . . One of the most intellectuallyexciting and historically grounded interpretations of Christianiconography." —Graham Howes, Times Literary Supplement"Likeness and Presence offers the best source to survey the facts ofwhat European Christians put in their churches. . . . An impressivelydetailed contextual analysis of medieval objects." —Robin Cormack,New York Times Book Review"I cannot begin to describe the richness or the imaginative grandeur ofHans Belting's book. . . . It is a work that anyone interested in art,or in the history of thought about art, should regard as urgent reading.It is a tremendous achievement."—Arthur C. Danto, New Republic

    John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography, "The Lost Art of Finding Our Way" puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death.Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fogbank off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena the way the Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and read waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way.Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth s compelling account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world into sharper view."

    Some view taking another person's life as just and reasonable punishment while others see it as an inhumane and barbaric act. But the intensity of feeling that capital punishment provokes often obscures its long and varied history in this country.Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive history of the death penalty in the United States. Law professor Stuart Banner tells the story of how, over four centuries, dramatic changes have taken place in the ways capital punishment has been administered and experienced. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the penalty was standard for a laundry list of crimes--from adultery to murder, from arson to stealing horses. Hangings were public events, staged before audiences numbering in the thousands, attended by women and men, young and old, black and white alike. Early on, the gruesome spectacle had explicitly religious purposes--an event replete with sermons, confessions, and last minute penitence--to promote the salvation of both the condemned and the crowd. Through the nineteenth century, the execution became desacralized, increasingly secular and private, in response to changing mores. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ironically, as it has become a quiet, sanitary, technological procedure, the death penalty is as divisive as ever.By recreating what it was like to be the condemned, the executioner, and the spectator, Banner moves beyond the debates, to give us an unprecedented understanding of capital punishment's many meanings. As nearly four thousand inmates are now on death row, and almost one hundred are currently being executed each year, the furious debate is unlikely to diminish. The Death Penalty is invaluable in understanding the American way of the ultimate punishment.

    Noll examines writings about slavery and race from Americans both white and black, northern and southern, and includes commentary from Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada. Though the Christians on all sides agreed that the Bible was authoritative, their interpretations of slavery in Scripture led to a full-blown theological crisis.