Fans pick 61 books like Cosmic Miniatures and the Future Sense

By Leslie A. Adelson,

Here are 61 books that Cosmic Miniatures and the Future Sense fans have personally recommended if you like Cosmic Miniatures and the Future Sense. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Chinese Sympathies: Media, Missionaries, and World Literature from Marco Polo to Goethe

Peter Uwe Hohendahl Author Of Perilous Futures: On Carl Schmitt's Late Writings

From my list on German thought.

Why am I passionate about this?

Spending my childhood in Nazi Germany, the nature and the horrific consequences of Nazi ideology have occupied me as a student of German history and later as a teacher of intellectual and literary history. In 1933 Car Schmitt opted to support the Nazis. While he was banned from the public sohere in post-war Germany, his ideas remained influential on the far right and the far left, fortunately without significantly impacting the democratic reconstruction of West Germany. It was the growing international visibility of Schmitt’s writings that became my personal concern after 2000. In particular, Schmitt’s increasing influence in the United States energized me to reread and respond to his writings.

Peter's book list on German thought

Peter Uwe Hohendahl Why did Peter love this book?

Lately, the news about China and the West has been discouraging. The media focus on the dangers of authoritarianism. But was this always the case? This book tells the fascinating story of the unexpected and multifaceted influence of classical Chinese culture on early modern Europe (1600-1800) and in particular Germany. German thinkers and writers felt that they could learn from China. The study was an eye-opener for me that changed my understanding of the intellectual formation of modern Europe and especially modern Germany. It is a crucial narrative that contrasts with the well-known narrative of European expansion and domination.

By Daniel Leonhard Purdy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Chinese Sympathies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Chinese Sympathies examines how Europeans-German-speaking writers and thinkers in particular-identified with Chinese intellectual and literary traditions following the circulation of Marco Polo's Travels. This sense of affinity expanded and deepened, Daniel Leonhard Purdy shows, as generations of Jesuit missionaries, baroque encyclopedists, Enlightenment moralists, and translators established intellectual regimes that framed China as being fundamentally similar to Europe.

Analyzing key German literary texts-theological treatises, imperial histories, tragic dramas, moral philosophies, literary translations, and poetic cycles-Chinese Sympathies traces the paths from baroque-era missionary reports that accommodated Christianity with Confucianism to Goethe's concept of world literature, bridged by Enlightenment debates over cosmopolitanism and…


Book cover of Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History

Peter Uwe Hohendahl Author Of Perilous Futures: On Carl Schmitt's Late Writings

From my list on German thought.

Why am I passionate about this?

Spending my childhood in Nazi Germany, the nature and the horrific consequences of Nazi ideology have occupied me as a student of German history and later as a teacher of intellectual and literary history. In 1933 Car Schmitt opted to support the Nazis. While he was banned from the public sohere in post-war Germany, his ideas remained influential on the far right and the far left, fortunately without significantly impacting the democratic reconstruction of West Germany. It was the growing international visibility of Schmitt’s writings that became my personal concern after 2000. In particular, Schmitt’s increasing influence in the United States energized me to reread and respond to his writings.

Peter's book list on German thought

Peter Uwe Hohendahl Why did Peter love this book?

Are you tired of Hollywood clichés about Nazi culture? The Princeton historian Anson Rabinbach is your man. His brilliant essays on aspects of Nazi culture as diverse as the popular novel under Nazism, the Nazi-organized leisure industry, and the fate of the humanities at German universities between 1933 and 1945, provide the sharp, well-informed analysis you never got at school. Get started with the interview the author gave to two younger colleagues (pp. 450-480); here things become personal. Of course, Rabinbach is a pro, he knows the critical literature on the topic and cites it to differentiate his argument. But more importantly, his insights and arguments force you to rethink your response to German fascism, and to question the facile opposition of democracy and Nazism portrayed in American pop culture.  

By Anson Rabinbach, Stefanos Geroulanos (editor), Dagmar Herzog (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Staging the Third Reich as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A widely celebrated intellectual historian of twentieth-century Europe, Anson Rabinbach is one of the most important scholars of National Socialism working over the last forty years. This volume collects, for the first time, his pathbreaking work on Nazi culture, antifascism, and the after-effects of Nazism on postwar German and European culture. Historically detailed and theoretically sophisticated, his essays span the aesthetics of production, messianic and popular claims, the ethos that Nazism demanded of its adherents, the brilliant and sometimes successful efforts of antifascist intellectuals to counter Hitler's rise, the most significant concepts to emerge out of the 1930s and 1940s…


Book cover of Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters

Peter Uwe Hohendahl Author Of Perilous Futures: On Carl Schmitt's Late Writings

From my list on German thought.

Why am I passionate about this?

Spending my childhood in Nazi Germany, the nature and the horrific consequences of Nazi ideology have occupied me as a student of German history and later as a teacher of intellectual and literary history. In 1933 Car Schmitt opted to support the Nazis. While he was banned from the public sohere in post-war Germany, his ideas remained influential on the far right and the far left, fortunately without significantly impacting the democratic reconstruction of West Germany. It was the growing international visibility of Schmitt’s writings that became my personal concern after 2000. In particular, Schmitt’s increasing influence in the United States energized me to reread and respond to his writings.

Peter's book list on German thought

Peter Uwe Hohendahl Why did Peter love this book?

Most of us are familiar with or have at least heard of the novelist Thomas Mann, the author of Buddenbrooks (for which he received the Nobel Prize) and The Magic Mountain. He is less remembered for his important work as a public intellectual, as a formidable defender of liberal democracy and bold critic of Nazism during World War II. Tobias Boes’s lucid and well-researched study focuses on Mann’s critical contributions to the public discourse in the United States from 1938 until 1948, first as a refugee and later as an American citizen, through public lectures, numerous essays, and radio addresses. This is the fascinating story of a writer who started out as a German conservative and turned into Hitler’s most vocal critic. Thomas Mann’s War is a timely book, reminding us of what it meant to stand up for democracy and defeat Fascism in the 1940s and what it takes…

By Tobias Boes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Thomas Mann's War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Thomas Mann's War, Tobias Boes traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America's most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted.

Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly…


Book cover of Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist, 4 vols.

Anthony K. Jensen Author Of An Interpretation of Nietzsche's on the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life

From my list on interpreting Friedrich Nietzsche.

Why am I passionate about this?

I don’t especially like Nietzsche, and rarely agree with him. As a professor of philosophy, I find that he is less original than is popularly assumed and less clear than he should be—not out of some mysterious profundity—so much as a recalcitrance or maybe inability to make plain what he thinks. Even so, I find it quite impossible to break away from Nietzsche. For my part, and I suspect for many readers who came upon him during their formative years, Nietzsche’s thought is so close to me that I’m always wrestling with it. Maybe that’s not a ‘result of’ but a ‘condition for’ reading it?

Anthony's book list on interpreting Friedrich Nietzsche

Anthony K. Jensen Why did Anthony love this book?

If the previous text was a trusty aid for readers, then Krummel’s monumental assemblage of ‘Nietzscheana’ is a treasure chest, the single most comprehensive resource for understanding what Nietzsche meant to Germany. Much more than a bibliography, it is a ‘Wirkungsgeschichte’ or ‘history of influence’ of seemingly everything and everybody touched by the person or thought of Nietzsche from 1867-1945. Krummel, who was an American Germanist, offers the reader excerpts of more than five thousand articles, letters, published speeches, and even diary entries on the subject of Nietzsche. In fact, the massive cultural-historical library that Krummel amassed while compiling these volumes became the foundational collection of the Nietzsche-Dokumentationszentrum in Naumburg. 

By Richard Frank Krummel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist, 4 vols. as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Die Reihe Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) setzt seit mehreren Jahrzehnten die Agenda in der sich stetig verändernden Nietzsche-Forschung. Die Bände sind interdisziplinär und international ausgerichtet und spiegeln das gesamte Spektrum der Nietzsche-Forschung wider, von der Philosophie über die Literaturwissenschaft bis zur politischen Theorie. Die Reihe veröffentlicht Monographien und Sammelbände, die einem strengen Peer-Review-Verfahren unterliegen.

Die Buchreihe wird von einem internationalen Redaktionsteam geleitet.


Book cover of Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything

Kristin Cashore Author Of Winterkeep

From my list on mysteries—and solutions—you never saw coming.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a reader and writer, I work with a pretty broad definition of “mystery.” You’ll find my own novels in the fantasy section of the bookstore, but my books are mysteries too — and romances, and tales of adventure, and intimate character studies, and reflections on our reality, no matter how fantastical the worlds in which they take place. I love melding genres! So when I think of my favorite mysteries, I try not to limit myself to the mystery section of the bookstore. Few things make me happier than discovering partway through a book that a mystery has been building that I didn’t even notice.

Kristin's book list on mysteries—and solutions—you never saw coming

Kristin Cashore Why did Kristin love this book?

The less I say about the plot of this book, the better your reading experience will be. I avoided reading the flap copy, and I recommend you do too. What I can promise you is this: a book set in Arizona and firmly grounded in the reality of racism and deportation in the USA, mixed together with spirituality, mythology, sci-fi pop culture, a surprising solution to a mystery, and, just possibly, aliens from outer space. Plus, beautiful writing! This is one of those books with super short chapters, each of which is a little gem. I loved it.

By Raquel Vasquez Gilliland,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“In a world where we are so often dividing ourselves into us and them, this book feels like a kind of magic, celebrating all beliefs, ethnicities, and unknowns.” —The New York Times Book Review

Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe meets Roswell by way of Laurie Halse Anderson in this astonishing, genre-bending novel about a Mexican American teen who discovers profound connections between immigration, folklore, and alien life.

It’s been three years since ICE raids and phone calls from Mexico and an ill-fated walk across the Sonoran. Three years since Sia Martinez’s mom disappeared. Sia wants to…


Book cover of The Writer's Compass: From Story Map to Finished Draft in 7 Stages

John Irvin Author Of Make Your Writing Zing With Proofreading A Through Z!: Tips for Writers, Authors, and Publishers Alike

From my list on for writers who care about their words.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a writer since I was fourteen (possibly before that) and I’ve been an official freelance proofreader/copyeditor since 2019. I’ve published over thirty books and proofread or copyedited over sixty-two manuscripts as of this writing. I’ve garnered enough experience in both fields to, at least, be considered.

John's book list on for writers who care about their words

John Irvin Why did John love this book?

If you’re struggling to find the right plot progression, this book helps with tips on how to map out the storyline. It’s helped me tremendously in several of my own novels. Any writer who cares about making an exceptional plot should have this book in their personal library.

By Nancy Ellen Dodd,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Writer's Compass as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Map out your idea and finish your story in 7 stages!

This book will show writers how to develop their ideas into a finished novel by working through it in 7 stages, while learning how to mapping out their story's progress and structure so they can evaluate and improve their work. It teaches writers to visualize their story's progress with a story map that helps them see all the different components of their story, where these components are going, and, perhaps most importantly, what's missing.

The book simplifies Aristotle's elements of good writing (a.k.a. that each story should have a…


Book cover of Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine

Jerry Toner Author Of The Roman Guide to Slave Management: A Treatise by Nobleman Marcus Sidonius Falx

From my list on Roman slavery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm the Director of Studies in Classics at Churchill College, Cambridge University. My research looks at Roman cultural history, with a focus on history "from below," meaning that I'm most interested in ordinary Romans, slaves and the poor. There have been thirty-five translations of my books into sixteen languages. I come from a modest background and was the first in my family to go to university. I found moving up the social ladder a bewildering and sometimes terrifying experience. Classics back then was still an elite subject, dominated by people from wealthy backgrounds. My research interests have always reflected my fascination with those at the bottom of the social ladder.

Jerry's book list on Roman slavery

Jerry Toner Why did Jerry love this book?

Peter Garnsey was my PhD supervisor and he is a generous soul with a love of big topics. This book gives an overview of the many ways in which the ancients thought about slavery. It is true that there was no Roman abolition movement, but many ancient writers thought deeply about slavery and the issues involved. Sometimes they justified it, other times they criticised it, but throughout slavery was seen as unavoidable. The Christians called their God “dominus” just as slaves would have done their master.

By Peter Garnsey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This study, unique of its kind, asks how slavery was viewed by the leading spokesmen of Greece and Rome. There was no movement for abolition in these societies, nor a vigorous debate, such as occurred in antebellum America, but this does not imply that slavery was accepted without question. Dr Garnsey draws on a wide range of sources, pagan, Jewish and Christian, over ten centuries, to challenge the common assumption of passive acquiescence in slavery, and the associated view that, Aristotle apart, there was no systematic thought on slavery. The work contains both a typology of attitudes to slavery ranging…


Book cover of Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism

James Bernard Murphy Author Of Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

From my list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I experienced being a parent as a return to my own childhood. As much as I enjoyed teaching my children, I loved learning from them as well. That got me thinking about how one might recapture the joys and insights of childhood. As a philosopher interested in education, I have long wondered whether we leave childhood behind or somehow carry it with us into old age. I discovered that several important philosophers, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Rousseau have keen insights about the relation of childhood to adulthood. And the biblical Jesus seems to have been the first person to suggest that adults can learn from children. 

James' book list on live wisely in relation to your childhood and age

James Bernard Murphy Why did James love this book?

David Norton really shakes up our assumptions about human lives. According to him, we develop within the stages of life but not across them. The goal of life, he says, is self-actualization, meaning to become who we really are, but this goal excludes childhood because children don’t have a self to actualize and old age because the elderly cannot actualize their selves.

At each stage, we solve problems unique to that stage: for example, reconciling ourselves to death is a stage that might happen at any age from 18 to 80. Each stage is unique and cannot be compared to other stages. I found Norton’s book to be very insightful and thought-provoking. 

By David L. Norton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Personal Destinies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What is the meaning of life? Modern professional philosophy has largely renounced the attempt to answer this question and has restricted itself to the pursuit of more esoteric truths. Not so David Norton. Following in the footsteps of Plato and Aristotle, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Jung and Maslow, he sets forth a distinctive vision of the individual's search for his place in the scheme of things. Norton's theory of individualism is rooted in the eudaimonistic ethics of the Creeks, who viewed each person as innately possessing a unique potential it was his destiny to fulfill. Very much the same idea resurfaced…


Book cover of On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse

Robin Reames Author Of The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times

From my list on transforming how you think about language.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by the power of language to propel everything we think—from our values and beliefs, to political views, to what we take for absolute truth. Once I learned there’s a whole field devoted to studying language called “rhetoric”—the field in which I’m now an expert—there was no turning back. Rhetoric has been around for more than 2,000 years, and since its inception, it has taught people to step back from language and appraise it with a more critical eye to identify how it works, why it’s persuasive, and what makes people prone to believe it. By studying rhetoric, we become less easily swayed and more comfortable with disagreement. 

Robin's book list on transforming how you think about language

Robin Reames Why did Robin love this book?

I love tracing things back to their roots. Rhetoric was the first discipline devoted to the study of language, and this was the first book written on that subject. Although it’s over 2,000 years old, many of Aristotle’s insights floor me with their timely relevance. 

Aristotle was the first to explain how language creates emotional effects and how negative emotions especially prompt us to act. Because it feels as though emotions well up inside our bodies, we feel that what stirs them must be real. Negative emotions are particularly persuasive in this regard because, Aristotle observed, we enjoy feeling them.

It’s fascinating to me that Aristotle discovered what brain science has discovered only recently: We’re negativity junkies, and the way we talk can change the way we feel.

By Aristotle, George A. Kennedy (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked On Rhetoric as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Based on careful study of the Greek text and informed by the best modern scholarship, the second edition of this highly acclaimed translation offers the most faithful English version ever published of On Rhetoric. Updated in light of recent scholarship, the new edition features a revised introduction--with two new sections--and revised appendices that provide new and additional supplementary texts (relevant ancient works).


Book cover of Legacy of Courage: A Holocaust Survival Story in Greece

Linda Reid Author Of Deep Waters

From my list on virtual odyssey in ancient and modern Greece.

Why am I passionate about this?

I wrote my first thriller at age 8 about a girl who ran away and joined the circus. For later works, I, a pediatric physician, did opt to follow my English teachers’ guidance to write about what you know, including science, medicine, psychology, journalism, and my twin home countries of America and Greece. As YS Pascal, I wrote the Zygan Emprise Trilogy, which blended ancient Greek history, mythology, and literature. As Linda Reid, I co-authored the award-winning Sammy Greene thriller series with Dr. Deborah Shlian and was eager to fly investigative reporter Sammy and her ex-cop friend Gus Pappajohn to the shores of modern Athens to solve an ancient and modern mystery.

Linda's book list on virtual odyssey in ancient and modern Greece

Linda Reid Why did Linda love this book?

Frederic Kakis, a brilliant scientist and moving writer, shares a personal story of survival and fortitude for a Jewish family in Northern Greece during the Nazi occupation. Close to 80,000 were relocated to Nazi concentration campus far from their homes in Thessaloniki and close to 60,000 did not survive the Holocaust. Dr. Kakis describes the terror experienced as well as the courage shown by Greek Jews and their local Christian neighbors during this tragic invasion, and how their efforts helped as many of the vulnerable as possible survive. 

By Frederic Kakis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Legacy of Courage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Armed only with sheer guts and determination this Jewish family took on the whole German Army. Stubbornly refusing to surrender, they remained defiant throughout the occupation of Greece and survived by fighting and outsmarting the Nazis. This is their fascinating story.


Book cover of Chinese Sympathies: Media, Missionaries, and World Literature from Marco Polo to Goethe
Book cover of Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History
Book cover of Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters

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