How to Think about the Great Ideas

How to Read a Book

The Art of Getting a Liberal Education

Mortimer Jerome Adler

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Aristotle for Everybody

Difficult Thought Made Easy

Mortimer Jerome Adler

Offers an imaginative perspective on Aristotelian logic, presenting an exploration of nature, society, and man in light of commonplace events and reexamining concepts of body, mind, change, cause, part, whole, one, and many.

Philosopher at Large

An Intellectual Autobiography

Mortimer Jerome Adler

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Art, the Arts, and the Great Ideas

Mortimer Jerome Adler

Continuing his exploration of the substance of a basic education, Mortimer J. Adler examines the inherent values of various art forms and considers their significance within a well-rounded curriculum. He maintains that imaginative literature and works of science, philosophy, theology, and history act upon our intellects and stimulate the discussion of ideas. The non-verbal arts, which act directly and powerfully on our emotions and sentiments without the intermediation of thought, are to be valued for their beauty, their workmanship, and the pleasure they give rather than their contributions to a body of ideas. Elucidating his ideas through the discussion of specific works, Adler concludes that an appreciation of all the human arts is essential to the development of a fully cultivated and well-educated person.

A Guidebook to Learning

For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom

Mortimer Jerome Adler

Provides the guidelines that set up a ladder of learning to be scaled step by step in a lifelong pursuit of the understanding that leads to wisdom.

How to Speak, how to Listen

Mortimer Jerome Adler

Explains how to apply communication skills to speaking, listening and conversation.

Civilization and Its Discontents

Sigmund Freud

What influences led to the creation of civilization? How did it come to be? What determines its course? In this seminal volume of 20th-century thought, Freud elucidates the contest between aggression, the death drive, and its adversary eros.

City of Sacrifice

The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization

David Carrasco

At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence? In City of Sacrifice,Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity. Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.

Radical Enlightenment

Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750

Jonathan Irvine Israel

Readership: Readers with an interest in the European Enlightenment; intellectual and cultural historians; scholars and students of philosophy.

The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808

A World on the Move

A. J. R. Russell-Wood

By approaching the history of the Portuguese empire thematically, historian A.J.R. Russell-Wood paints a broad portrait of the first and one of the greatest colonial empires--its birth, apotheosis, and decline. Russell-Wood shows unique insight into the diversity and balance between competing interests and priorities that characterized the Portuguese culture and its expansion, spanning four centuries's events on four different continents. 84 illustrations.

The WEIRDest People in the World

How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

Joseph Henrich

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.

Cities in Civilization

Peter Hall

Ranging over 2,500 years,Cities in Civilizationis a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque. Hall identifies four distinct expressions of civic innovation: artistic growth, technological progress, the marriage of culture and technology, and solutions to evolving problems. Descriptions of Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, and nineteenth-century Vienna bring to life those seedbeds of artistic and intellectual creativity. Explorations of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, of Henry Ford's Detroit, and of Palo Alto at the dawn of the computer age highlight centers of technological advances. Tales of the creation of Los Angeles' movie industry and the birth of the blues and rock 'n' roll in Memphis depict the marriage of culture and technology. Finally, Hall celebrates cities that have been forced to solve problems created by their very size. With Imperial Rome came the apartment block and aqueduct; nineteenth-century London introduced policing, prisons, and sewers; twentieth-century New York developed the skyscraper; and Los Angeles became the first city without a center, a city ruled instead by the car. And in a fascinating conclusion, Hall speculates on urban creativity in the twenty-first century. This penetrating study reveals not only the lives of cities but also the lives of the people who built them and created the civilizations within them. A decade in the making,Cities in Civilizationis the definitive account of the culture of cities.