The Dutch Golden Age, the age of Grotius, Spinoza, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and a host of other renowned artists and writers was also remarkable for its immense impact in the spheres of commerce, finance, shipping, and technology. It was in fact one of the most spectacularly creative episodes in the history of the world. Jonathan Israel gives the definitive account of the emergence of the United Provinces as a great power, and explains the subsequent decline in the eighteenth century. He places the thought, politics, religion, and social developments of the Golden Age in their broad context, and examines the changing relationship between the northern Netherlands and the south, which was to develop into modern Belgium.

Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question examines the image of "the Jew" in Sartre's work to rethink not only his oeuvre but also the role of the intellectual in France and the politics and ethics of existentialism. It explores more broadly how French identity is defined through the abstraction and allegorization of "the Jew" and examines the role anti-antisemitic intellectuals play in this process. Jonathan Judaken reconsiders the origins of the intellectual in France in the context of the Dreyfus affair and Sartre's interventions in the parallel Franco-French conflicts in the 1930s and during the Vichy regime. He considers what it was possible to say on behalf of Jews and Judaism during the German occupation, Sartre's contribution after the war to the Vichy syndrome, his positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the ways Sartre's reflections on the Jewish Question served as a template for his shift toward Marxism, his resistance to colonialism, and for the defining of debates about Jews and Judaism in postwar France by both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals. Judaken analyzes the texts that Sartre devoted to these issues and argues that "the Jew" constituted a foil Sartre consistently referenced in reflecting on politics in general and on the role of the intellectual in particular.

Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 brings together the murderers and the master­minds, the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true-crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling author of more than twenty crime novels, most recently Compulsion and the forthcoming Bones .

A short story collection by the author of THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Limited to only 1500 copies.

Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She's looking for her friend's missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. A laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer, Heist intrigues the sarcastic and garrulous Phoebe. Reluctantly, he agrees to help. The unlikely pair navigate the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and find that Arabella is in serious trouble caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end. Phoebe's trip to the desert was always going to be strange, but it was never supposed to be dangerous.

The Beginner Books -- "Their cartoon format and irreverent wit make difficult ideas accessible and entertaining." -- Newsday aking us through the upheavals in biological thought which made The Origins of Species possible, Jonathan Miller introduces us to that odd revolutionary, Charles Darwin -- a remarkably timid man who spent most of his life in seclusion; a semi-invalid riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash; yet also the man who finally undermined belief in God's creation. Along the way we meet a fascinating cast of characters: Darwin's scientific predecessors, his contemporaries (including Alfred Russell Wallace, whose anticipation of natural selection forced Darwin to publish), his opponents, and his successors whose work in modern genetics provided necessary modifications to Darwin's own work. Splendidly illustrated, this clever, witty, highly informative book is the perfect introduction to Darwin's life and thought.

A young boy sitting on a piano bench realizes one day that he will never marry. At the time this seems merely a simple, if odd, fact, but as his attraction to boys grows stronger, he is pulled into a vortex of denial. Not just for one year or even ten, but for 25 years, he lives in an inverted world, a place like a photographic negative, where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster--until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in. Equal parts Oliver Sacks and George Orwell, with a dash of Woody Allen, Jonathan Rauch's memoir is by turns harrowing and funny, a grippingly intimate journey through a bizarre maze of self-torment that ends with an unexpected discovery. Many people, gay and straight, have lived through their own versions of this story, seeking to twist their personality in directions it just wouldn't go. Not all have been lucky enough to escape. First published in 2013, Denial has been revised for this new edition, which includes a new afterword by the author.

"The Talmud and the Internet," in which Jonathan Rosen examines the contradictions of his inheritance as a modern American and a Jew, is a moving and exhilarating meditation on modern technology and ancient religious impulses. Blending memoir, religious history and literary reflection Rosen explores the remarkable parallels between a page of Talmud and the homepage of a web site, and reflects on the contrasting lives and deaths of his American and European grandmothers.

In this pioneering study of Jewish thought, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks addresses a crucial dilemma for Jews and Judaism today. The Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel have combined to create a strong contemporary awareness of peoplehood - of Jews as sharing a common history, destiny and responsibility. But can there be peoplehood across the deep religious and cultural divisions that are the heritage of the Jewish encounter with modernity? Crisis and Covenant, first published in 1992, is essential reading, not only for students of Jewish thought and modern Jewish history, but for all those concerned with the fate of religious traditions in a secular age.

We are in danger, says Rabbi Sacks, of forgetting what Judaism’s place is within the global project of humankind. The Jewish people exist for a reason, and it is not for themselves alone. They must recommit themselves to their foundational purpose: to the task of creating a just world in which the divine presence can dwell among us all. Without compromising one iota of Jewish faith, Rabbi Sacks declares, Jews must stand alongside their friends—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and secular humanist—in defense of freedom against those who desecrate life. And they should do this not to win friends or the admiration of others but because it is what a people of God is supposed to do. Rabbi Sacks’s powerful message of tikkun olam—using Judaism as a blueprint for repairing an imperfect world—will resonate with people of all faiths.

The Dignity of Difference is Rabbi Jonathan Sackss radical proposal for reconciling hatreds.

This special collection drawn from the archives of Foreign Affairs traces, in real time, the great intellectual debates that defined the twentieth century-and are molding the twenty-first. Also featuring new essays, including works by Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, and Francis Fukuyama, author of the End of History, this intellectual narrative explains how and why modern politics look the way they do, and where we go from here.

Zachary King is getting married, but having second thoughts. He lost his best friend Rael in a car crash several years earlier, and he find that he now has feeling for Rael's widow Tamara. When Zack's viagra-popping father resurfaces after a twenty-year abscence, Zack decides to make some changes, but his once carefully structured existence is left spinning hoeplessly out of control.....

Turning thirty was never supposed to be like this. Ten years ago, Ben, Lindsey, Chuck, Alison, and Jack graduated from New York University and went out into the world, fresh-faced and full of dreams for the future. But now Ben's getting a divorce; Lindsey's unemployed; Alison and Chuck seem stuck in ruts of their own making; and Jack is getting more publicity for his cocaine addiction than his multimillion-dollar Hollywood successes. Suddenly, turning thirty-- past the age their parents were when they were born, older than every current star athlete or pop music sensation-- seems to be both more meaningful and less than they'd imagined ten years ago. Jonathan Tropper's wonderful debut novel is about more than friendship, love, celebrity, addiction, kidnapping, or even turning thirty-- it's a heartfelt comic riff on what it means to be an adult against your will, to be single when you thought you'd have a family, to discover you are not, in fact, immortal, and to learn that Star Wars is as good a life lesson today as it was when you were six years old.

“[A] searching and surprisingly witty look at the scientific odds against tomorrow.” —Timothy Ferris Jonathan Weiner—winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and one of the most distinguished popular science writers in America—examines “the strange science of immortality” in Long for This World. A fast-paced, sure-to-astonish scientific adventure from “one of our finest science journalists” (Jonah Lehrer), Weiner’s Long for This World addresses the ageless question, “Is there a secret to eternal youth?” And has it, at long last, been found?

With more than 7,000 zingers, the right crushing retort is always at hand! No more thinking of an apt reply after it's too late: just store up a collection of choice rejoinders from over 1,000 ways to call somebody a fool and 600 ways to say someone's acting stupid. Pick from hundreds of little-known terms for know-it-alls, egotists, flatterers, and nags. Really want to hit below the belt? Try a politically incorrect insult that zaps somebody for being too fat or thin, too young or old, or too socially unacceptable, sexually inept, or spiritually impoverished. So from now on, the weird, fussy, boring, loathsome and intolerable, or merely irritating had better watch out!

Have some good "dirty" fun with more than 6,500 off-color phrases, all vividly, explicitly defined. Categories include body sites; arousal and frustration; masturbation; orgasm; intercourse in a dazzling variety of positions; oral, kinky, gay, bi, and safe sex; and many other aspects of sex. Sources range from street jargon and popular music lyrics to literary allusions, fascinating etymologies, and rhyming slang. Bonus : George Carlin's famous 1970s "12 words you can't say on TV," and their latest competitors

This scholarly & readable history of lexicography celebrates the dictionary maker who is the interpreter & arbiter of language itself. The story begins 4,500 years ago in Sumeria, where the first lexicon was created to render the codes of a vanquished nation accessible to its inferior conquerors. He traces the evolution of the practice to Greece, Rome, & Byzantium before arriving at English-lang. dict. & todays computerized compendiums. From clay tablets to CD-ROMs, from the philosophy of a pure lang. in Nazi Germany to the banning of the Amer. Heritage Dict. in Texas, Green explores the influence that language has had on culture & vice versa.