Like many others of my generation, I first read Camus in high school. I carried him in my backpack while traveling across Europe, I carried him into (and out of) relationships, and I carried him into (and out of) difficult periods of my life. More recently, I have carried him into university classes that I have taught, coming out of them with a renewed appreciation of his art. To be sure, my idea of Camus thirty years ago scarcely resembles my idea of him today. While my admiration and att...

Exploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus--absurdity, silence, revolt, fidelity, and moderation--Robert Zaretsky portrays a moralist who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions, and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status quo. For Camus, rebellion against injustice is the human condition.

When Albert Camus died in a car crash in January 1960 he was only 46 years old - already a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and a world figure - author of the enigmatic The Stranger, the fable called The Plague, but also of the combative The Rebel - which attacked the politically correct’ among his con-temporaries.Thanks to his early literary achievement, his work for the under-ground newspaper Combat and his editorship of that daily in its Post-Liberation incarnation, Cam...

Edited by Philip Thody, translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy."Here now, for the first time in a complete English translation, we have Camus' three little volumes of essays, plus a selection of his critical comments on literature and his own place in it. As might be expected, the main interest of these writings is that they illuminate new facets of his usual subject matter."--The New York Times Book Review"...a new single work for American readers that stands among th...

A highly ambitious and lucid history of ideas from the very earliest times to the present day.'A masterpiece' NEW STATESMAN'An extraordinary new book ... This is the history of "ideas" as it has never presented before' SUNDAY TELEGRAPHIn this hugely ambitious and exciting book Peter Watson tells the history of ideas from prehistory to the present day, leading to a new way of telling the history of the world. The book begins over a m...

"Gazzaniga is a giant in cognitive neuroscience . . . [He] advances a fascinating argument that both limits and contextualizes brain research." —Forbes.comThe author of Human, Michael S. Gazzaniga has been called the "father of cognitive neuroscience." In his remarkable book, Who's in Charge?, he makes a powerful and provocative argument that counters the common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control. Hi...

This collection of reflective essays forms a "spiritual autobiography" of André Gide, a key figure of French lettersAndré Gide, a literary and intellectual giant of twentieth-century France, mines his memories and personal observations in this collection of essays. Gide's reflections and commentary masterfully showcase his delicate writing style and evocative sensibility, yielding new insights on writers such as Goethe and contemporaries Joseph Con...

The Poem of Hashish brings together decadent poetics, psychological observation, and proto-modernist inquiry into altered consciousness through Charles Baudelaire's influential meditation on intoxication, here presented in Aleister Crowley's complete translation. Part literary essay, part moral anatomy, the work explores hashish as both imaginative catalyst and perilous illusion, moving between lyric intensity, philosophical speculation, and clinical description. Its significance lies in t...

The books in this bite-sized new series contain no complicated techniques or tricky materials, making them ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious. Existentialism Made Easy is a short, simple and to-the-point guide to existentialism. In just 96 pages, the reader will discover all the key ideas, from altruism to utilitarianism. Ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious, Existentialism Made Easy is a quick, no-effort way to break into this fascinating ...

Fate and Freedom Volume 2 builds on the paths of thought opened up in volume 1 with a series of investigations engaging significant figures in both modern and ancient, eastern and western thought. 'Energy and Freedom' uses Pierre Klossowski's thought-provoking book Sade My Neighbour as a spur to probe the ambiguous relationship between these two terms and the ambiguous status of desire in connection with both. Buddhist thought is deployed as a counterpoint, but ...

This is a collection of 12 short stories, accompanied by author's notes at the end. Looking Beyond the Universe - Jack Lee is a therapist called to diagnose a curious case - a man is claiming to be a superhero. Jack listens to his story and the patient is so vehement part of Jack wonders if he could be telling the truth... The Hollow World - Sam is trapped in a simulated world but she fears it means more to her than the real one. She struggles with the conflict between h...

From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that—in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy.The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports . . . is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher...