by William Irwin

The Matrix conveys the horror of a false world made of nothing but perceptions. Based on the premise that reality is a dream controlled by malevolent forces, it is one of the most overtly philosophical movies ever to come out of Hollywood. These thought-provoking essays by the same team of young philosophers who created <i>The Simpsons and Philosophy</i> discuss different facets of the primary philosophical puzzle of The Matrix: Can we be sure the world is really there, and if not, what should we do about it? Other chapters address issues of religion, lifestyle, pop culture, the Zeitgeist, the nature of mind and matter, and the reality of fiction.

by Robert M. Pirsig

A teenage boy falls in love with an "upper-class" girl and gets to know his estranged grandfather in one heartbreaking summer which climaxes in a shattering search for Nazi war criminals

by Mitch Albom

Tuesdays with Morrie is a memoir by American author Mitch Albom about a series of visits Albom made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS. The book topped the New York Times Non-Fiction Best-Sellers List for 23 combined weeks in 2000, and remained on the New York Times best-selling list for more than four years after. In 2006, Tuesdays with Morrie was the bestselling memoir of all time.

by Atul Gawande

<p><b>Named a Best Book of the Year by <i>The Washington Post</i>, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i>, NPR, and <i>Chicago Tribune, </i>now in paperback with a new reading group guide</b><br><br>Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.<br><br>Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.<br><br>In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he examines its ultimate limitations and failures—in his own practices as well as others'—as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, <i>Being Mortal</i> shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life—all the way to the very end.</p>

by Richard E. Nisbett

A professor of psychology examines the divergent ways in which eastern and western cultures view the world, offering suggestions about how today's interdependent global cultures may be bridged.

by Fritjof Capra

The Tao of Physics is a book about the relationship between physics and spirituality. The book explores the parallels between Eastern mysticism and modern physics. It discusses the similarities between the two fields, and how they can be used to help understand each other. The book also discusses the concept of the Tao, or the way, and how it relates to physics. The Tao of Physics is considered to be one of the first books to popularize the concepts of modern physics for a general audience. It has been translated into many languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

by Albert Camus

One of the most influential works of this century, this is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide: the question of living or not living in an absurd universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Camus posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.--From publisher description.

by Thomas S. Kuhn

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

by Henry David Thoreau

Walden first published in 1854 as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance. Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature as well as metaphorical and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the color and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to measure the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden))

by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was Nietzsche's first book; The Genealogy of Morals (1887) one of his last. Both are about the conflict between the moral and aesthetic approaches to life, the impact of Christianity on human values, the meaning of science, the famous contrast between the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits, and the other themes that dominated Nietzsche's life and have made him a figure of the first magnitude for contemporary thought.

by Marcus Aurelius

Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life. Few ancient works have been as influential as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor of Rome (A.D. 161–180). A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, it remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. Marcus’s insights and advice—on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others—have made the Meditations required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. For anyone who struggles to reconcile the demands of leadership with a concern for personal integrity and spiritual well-being, the Meditations remains as relevant now as it was two thousand years ago. In Gregory Hays’s new translation—the first in thirty-five years—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. Never before have Marcus’s insights been so directly and powerfully presented. With an Introduction that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work’s ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era.

by Douglas R. Hofstadter

<b>Winner of the Pulitzer Prize</b><b><br>A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll</b><br>Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence.<i> Gödel, Escher, Bach</i> is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

by Michael Pollan

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, a panoptic exploration of consciousness—what it is, who has it, and why—and a meditation on the essence of our humanity<br/><br/>When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: that it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, considering we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.<br/><br/>When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy grey matter could generate a subjective point of view—assuming that the brain is the source of our felt reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants; scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.<br/><br/>In Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with our deepest selves.

by Alain De Botton

A wise and utterly original book of travel essays from an international bestselling author that will “give one an expansive sense of wonder” (The Baltimore Sun). Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow. Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a “refreshing and profoundly readable" book (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Don’t leave home without it.

by Brown, Bryan Gibson

<p>Few works of history make as well-structured a case for the importance of studying continuity, rather than change, than Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples. </p> <p>Hourani’s work had three major aims: to refute the idea that Arab society stagnated between 1000 and 1800; to study the period through the lens of diverse Arab, rather than Muslim, history; and to stress intellectual and cultural continuity. All of these intentions were the product of the author’s evaluation of a great mass of secondary sources, many of them devoted to arguing for ideas that contradicted his, and it demanded considerable skill to synthesize from them a coherent and well-evidenced counter-argument. </p> <p>Hourani was able to do this largely because his grasp of the relevance and adequacy of his predecessors' arguments was second to none; his achievement lies in his ability to reject the reasoning of other historians while still making good use of their evidence. In this task, he was aided by an interpretative skill almost equal to his powers of evaluation; A History of the Arab Peoples is also a monument to the importance of properly understanding the meaning of available evidence. </p>

by Simone De Beauvoir

The essential masterwork that has provoked and inspired generations of men and women. “From Eve’s apple to Virginia Woolf’s room of her own, Beauvoir’s treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge.” —Vogue This unabridged edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

by Aldous Huxley

<p> Half an hour after swallowing the drug I became aware of a slow dance of golden lights . . . </p> <p> Among the most profound explorations of the effects of mind-expanding drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books—<i>The Doors of Perception</i> and <i>Heaven and Hell</i>—in which Aldous Huxley, author of the bestselling <i>Brave New World</i>, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. This new edition also features an additional essay, "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," which is now included for the first time. </p>

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

<b>An Instant <i>New York Times</i> Bestseller</b><br> <br><b>From the #1 <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i>, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.</b><br><br>As Indigenous scientist and author of <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i> Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”<br> <br> As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” <i>The Serviceberry</i> is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”<br> <br> <i>Robin Wall Kimmerer is donating her advance payments from this book as a reciprocal gift, back to the land, for land protection, restoration, and justice.</i>

by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a dystopian vision of the future society called*Soma*for stability, efficiency and superficial pleasure through genetic manipulation, psychological conditioning, and a joyous-induction drug. In this strictly controlled world state, personality, deep emotions and personal freedom have been sacrificed for conformity and consumerism. The story follows Bernard Marx, which is dissatisfied with an outsider system, and John, "Savage", which was raised outside the world state and struggles to cover its natural human emotions with its sterile, joy-brown culture. Through his experiences, Huxley criticized the dangers of inhumanization, loss of personality and comfort and order for real humanity business for order.

by Marie Kondo

<b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER • The book that sparked a revolution and inspired the hit Netflix series <i>Tidying Up with Marie Kondo</i>: the original guide to decluttering your home once and for all.</b><br><br><b>ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE—CNN</b><br> <br>Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?<br><br>Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list). <br><br>With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.