In this book, Bakewell describes the philosophy of Michel de Montaigne in, as she writes, one question and twenty attempts at an answer.
Although I spent much of my time during the early 1990s reading philosophy, I read little of Montaigne’s work. I had focused on the writing of the ancient Greeks and, as a result, I had failed to notice the important work of Montaigne. Bakewell’s clever, question-based approach is engaging.
I strongly recommend it, even if you are familiar with philosophy and Montaigne’s abundance of writing.
How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love? How to live?
This question obsessed Renaissance nobleman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. Into these essays he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, events in the appalling civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, readers still come to…
At the Existentialist Café introduced me to Sarah Bakewell. The text represents an overview of the philosophical work conducted by Jean-Paul Sartre and his polyamorous partner, Simone de Beauvoir, along with many other philosophers.
The writings of Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and many others are critically evaluated by Bakewell in this capacious romp through the world of modern philosophy. If you seek an overview of philosophical writing with implications for your own life, this is the book for you.
Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live and Humanly Possible Sarah Bakewell.
Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you…
Edward Abbey is among my favorite writers. The Serpents of Paradise represents an editorial masterpiece by John MacRae that is clearly different from any other book by Abbey.
An editorial masterpiece, it includes essays, travel pieces, and extracts from Abbey’s fiction and non-fiction books. Although I read this book when it was first published more than 25 years ago, it was worth re-reading. In this book, MacRae arranges incidents in Abbey’s life chronologically, rather than by date of publication.
A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book to explain the lifelong journey of Cactus Ed from his childhood as “Ned” in Pennsylvania until his death in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 62 years.
This book is different from any other Edward Abbey book. It includes essays, travel pieces and fictions to reveal Ed's life directly, in his own words.
The selections gathered here are arranged chronologically by incident, not by date of publication, to offer Edward Abbey's life from the time he was the boy called Ned in Home, Pennsylvania, until his death in Tucson at age 62. A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book and attempts to identify what's happening in the author's life at the time. When relevant, some details of publishing history are provided.
This new edition of Killing the Natives critically evaluates the original edition published in 2004, McPherson’s first book of cultural criticism. Nearly two decades of hindsight, along with the subsequent accumulation of evidence, allows for an important retrospective analysis. Earth is now experiencing a Mass Extinction Event, abrupt climate change, and the needs and desires of more than eight billion people. It has become increasingly clear that we have failed in our, “responsibility to use our wealth and power to preserve—rather than exploit—other cultures, languages, and species.”
Killing the Natives connects the world of economics, the government, and social justice—three enterprises that are inextricably linked despite the appearance given by laissez-faire economic policies.
