Avishai Margalit builds his social philosophy on this foundation: a decent society, or a civilized society, is one whose institutions do not humiliate the people under their authority, and whose citizens do not humiliate one another. What political philosophy needs urgently is a way that will permit us to live together without humiliation and with dignity. Most of the philosophical attention nowadays is drawn to the ideal of the just society based on the right balance between freedom and equality. The ideal of the just society is a sublime one but hard to realize. The decent society is an ideal which can be realized even in our children's lifetime. We should get rid of cruelty first, advocated Judith Shklar. Humiliation is a close second. There is more urgency in bringing about a decent society than in bringing about a just one. Margalit begins concretely where we live, with all the infuriating acts of humiliation that make living in the world so difficult. He argues in a concrete way in the spirit of Judith Shklar and Isaiah Berlin. This is a social philosophy that resists all those menacing labels that promote moral laziness, just as it urges us to get beyond the behavior that labels other human beings. Margalit can't be earmarked as liberal or conservative. If a label is necessary, then the most suitable is George Orwell's humane socialism, a far cry from "Animal farm" socialism with its many tools of oppression. How to be decent, how to build a decent society, emerges out of Margalit's analysis of the corrosive functioning of humiliation in its many forms. This is a thoroughly argued and, what is much more, a deeply felt book that springs from Margalit's experience at the borderlands of conflicts between Eastern Europeans and Westerners, between Palestinians and Israelis.

An unprecedented portrait of Moses's inner world and perplexing character, by a distinguished biblical scholar No figure looms larger in Jewish culture than Moses, and few have stories more enigmatic. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, acclaimed for her many books on Jewish thought, turns her attention to Moses in this remarkably rich, evocative book. Drawing on a broad range of sources--literary as well as psychoanalytic, a wealth of classical Jewish texts alongside George Eliot, W. G. Sebald, and Werner Herzog--Zornberg offers a vivid and original portrait of the biblical Moses. Moses's vexing personality, his uncertain origins, and his turbulent relations with his own people are acutely explored by Zornberg, who sees this story, told and retold, as crucial not only to the biblical past but also to the future of Jewish history.

In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.

Ayn Rand is the best-selling author of The Fountainhead and the most philosophically challenging novel of the century—Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy, Objectivism, influences an ever-growing number of "new intellectuals" throughout the world. As Ayn Rand read books and periodicals by various writers, she habitually wrote critical comments in the margins. Ayn Rand's Marginalia contains these philosophical analyses and the texts to which they refer. Though not her final, considered viewpoint, her marginalia do offer a fascinating glimpse of her unique mind at work.

The definitive edition of Ayn Rand's famous play, incorporating the author's final changes. On one level, Night of January 16th is a totally gripping drama about the rise and destruction of a brilliant and ruthless man. On a deeper level, it is a superb dramatic objectification of Ayn Rand's vision of human strength and weakness. Since its original Broadway success, it has achieved vast worldwide popularity and acclaim. To the world, he was a startlingly successful international tycoon, head of a vast financial empire. To his beautiful secretary-mistress, he was a god-like hero to be served with her mind, soul and body. To his aristocratic young wife, he was an elemental force of nature to be tamed. To his millionaire father-in-law, he was a giant whose single error could be used to destroy him. What kind of man was Bjorn Faulkner? Only you, the reader, can decide.

Culled from sixteen informal lectures Ayn Rand delivered to a select audience in the late 1960s, this remarkable work offers indispensable guidance to the aspiring writer of nonfiction while providing readers with a fascinating discourse on art and creation. Based on the concept that the ability to create quality nonfiction is a skill that can be learned like any other, The Art of Nonfiction takes readers through the writing process, step-by-step, providing insightful observations and invaluable techniques along the way.In these edited transcripts, Rand discusses the psychological aspects of writing, and the different roles played by the conscious and subconscious mind. From choosing a subject to polishing a draft to mastering an individual writing style -- for authors of theoretical works or those leaning toward journalistic reporting -- this crucial resource introduces the words and ideas of one of our most enduring authors to a new generation.

Rand, Ayn

Published together for the first time are three of Ayn Rand's most compelling stage plays. The courtroom drama Night of January 16th, famous for its open-ended verdict, is presented here in its definitive text. Also included are two of Rand's unproduced plays, Think Twice, a clever philosophical murder mystery, and Ideal, a bitter indictment of people's willingness to betray their highest values-symbolized by a Hollywood goddess suspected of a crime.

The social media star offers personal anecdotes, doodles, and previously unreleased photographs that trace her struggles with heartbreak and anxiety, while counseling readers to be true to themselves.

"This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy--or any--translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J.C. Young, and many more. The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas."--Book jacket

"From the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians bought, sold, and owned Africans and African Americans as slaves, a fact that persisted after the tribes' removal from the Deep South to Indian Territory. The tribes formulated racial and gender ideologies that justified this practice and marginalized free black people in the Indian nations well after the Civil War and slavery had ended. Through the end of the nineteenth century, ongoing conflicts among Choctaw, Chickasaw, and U.S. lawmakers left untold numbers of former slaves and their descendants in the two Indian nations without citizenship in either the Indian nations or the United States. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara Krauthamer rewrites the history of southern slavery, emancipation, race, and citizenship to reveal the centrality of Native American slaveholders and the black people they enslaved."--Publisher's description

Kruger's practice reflects the discovery, evident throughout contemporary art, of the formative power of images, the capacity of signs to affect deep structures of belief. Her art is concerned with positioning of the social body, with the ways in which out thoughts, attitudes and desires are determined by society's dictates.

As compelling and as insightful as Hot Flashes, Loose Ends is a sharply drawn portrait of modern marriage and morals that will strike familiar chords in all who read it. Packed with the punchy, preposterous poignancy of real life, Loose Ends is a novel about picking up the pieces when life falls apart.

Jacqueline Susann broke all the rules. Her life was flamboyant, outrageous, a mile-a-minute trip through the gossip columns and casting couches of the entertainment world. At 50, she knew herself a failure. She had missed the brass ring and now lived under a possible death sentence. It was then that she wrote the novel that would become one of the bestselling novels of all time--VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. LOVELY ME gives us the real woman behind the legends and the lies. She was amoral, loving, vulgar, brilliant, intensely loyal and capable of viciousness--a woman who lived at full throttle and without regret. She may shock you, but one thing is You will never forget her.

In their bestselling Wishcraft, Sher and Gottlieb provided the blueprints that can transform wishes into reality; now, in this companion volume, they present a step-by-step program to help readers form the success teams that assist in realizing their dreams.

A journalistic tour de force, this wide-ranging collection by the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography Stilwell and the American Experience in China is a classic in its own right. During the summer of 1972—a few short months after Nixon’s legendary visit to China—master historian Barbara W. Tuchman made her own trip to that country, spending six weeks in eleven cities and a variety of rural settlements. The resulting reportage was one of the first evenhanded portrayals of Chinese culture that Americans had ever read. Tuchman’s observations capture the people as they lived, from workers in the city and provincial party bosses to farmers, scientists, and educators. She demonstrates the breadth and scope of her expertise in discussing the alleviation of famine, misery, and exploitation; the distortion of cultural and historical inheritances into ubiquitous slogans; news media, schools, housing, and transportation; and Chairman Mao’s techniques for reasserting the Revolution. This edition also includes Tuchman’s “fascinating” ( The New York Review of Books ) essay, “If Mao Had Come to Washington in 1945”—a tantalizing piece of speculation on a proposed meeting between Mao and Roosevelt that would have changed the course of postwar history. “Shrewdly observed . . . Tuchman enters another plea for coolness, intelligence and rationality in American Asian policies. One can hardly disagree.”— The New York Times Book Review

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). 20 gems of the great American songbook as song by the inimitable Ms. Streisand, including: But Beautiful * It Had to Be You * More Than You Know * Second Hand Rose * Smile * Some Day My Prince Will Come * Taking a Chance on Love * and more.

Barnett Newman (1905-1970) was one of the most profound and influential artists of the twentieth century. A master of expansive spatial effects and evocative color, he pioneered painting that was both abstract and emotive, suffused with powerful philosophical and spiritual meaning. This landmark book surveys the breadth of Newman's career from his founding role in the New York School in the 1940s to his key influence on both minimalism and conceptual art in the 1960s. Featuring more than 100 of his paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, the book also offers significant new scholarly findings based on the archives of the Barnett Newman Foundation. Despite the apparent simplicity of his signature, the "zip, " Newman's art is richly complicated and unexpectedly diverse. His works include such masterpieces as Onement 1 (1948), the series Stations of the Cross (1958-66), and the monumental sculpture Broken Obelisk (1967). Each work of art in this book is reproduced in full color and accompanied by its own entry. A comprehensive chronology of the artist's life based on new documentation, a selected bibliography, and a selected exhibition history complete the volume.