When E. B. White said “analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies,” he hadn’t seen Al Gini’s hilarious, incisive, and informative take on jokes, joke-telling, and the jokers who tell jokes. For Gini, humor is more than just foolish fun: it serves as a safety valve for dealing with reality that gives us the courage to endure that which we cannot understand or avoid. Not everyone tells jokes. Not everyone gets a joke, even a good one. But, Gini arg...

Far too many people think philosophy is an intellectual exercise that is beyond them, over their heads, or an intellectual waste of time. In Seeking the Truth of Things, Gini attempts to reestablish philosophy at the center and not the periphery of the public square by relating bits of wisdom that are both manageable yet imaginative and flavorful enough to entice and satisfy readers without ever overwhelming them.Known for his books on practical philosophy, such as The Importance of Being ...

Drawing upon in-depth case studies of vacation habits and the observations of philosophers, writers, and sociologists such as Aristotle, Mark Twain and Thorstein Veblen, Al Gini argues why vacations are so venerated and why 'doing nothing' is a fundamental human necessity.From shopping sprees and extreme sports to the ultimate vacation - retirement - The Importance of Being lazy demonstrates that without true leisure, we are diminished as individuals and as a society.

In a series of brief chapters, Al Gini lays out ideas for 'stepping out of the shadow of the self' - an argument for stopping thinking of yourself as the centre of the universe. It's hard to be good, he explains, until we realize that being good only has meaning in relation to other people. Ideas of justice, fairness, and ethical behavior are just that - abstract ideas - until they are put into action with regard to people outside ourselves. We may worry too much about good versus evil - b...

In My Job My Self, Gini plumbs a wide range of statistics, interviews with workers, surveys from employers and employees, and his own experiences and memories, to explore why we work, how our work affects us, and what we will become as a nation of workers. My Job, My Self speaks to every employed person who has yet to understand the costs and challenges of a lifetime of labor.

In a field dominated by books that focus exclusively on the perspective of business in large corporations or that assume that business has a moral deficiency in need of reform, Al Gini and Alexei Marcoux offers students and business people alike a concise guide to what everyone ought to do when doing business. Where other books are organized topically, Gini and Marcoux look at the moral features of business that recur across topical areas, stressing the considerations that bear on business...

It is a platitude that most people, as they say, 'work to live' rather than 'live to work.' And in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, work weeks have expanded and the divide between work time and personal time has significantly blurred due to innovations in such things as electronic communications. Concerns over the value of work in our lives, as well as with the balance or use of time between work and leisure, confront most people in contemporary society. Discussions ove...

Political humor and satire are, perhaps, as old as comedy itself, and they are crucial to our society and our collective sense of self. Satire is confrontational. It’s about pushback, dissent, discord, disappointment, and demonstrating the absurdity of the status quo. This book is an attempt to explore how these aspects of satire help secure our sanity.Aristotle famously said that humans are naturally political animals. We need political community to flourish and live good lives. B...

What makes a good leader? Ten leaders, ten key virtuesThis readable distillation of the core common features of successful leaders shows how an individual's character, and especially their virtue, is the defining factor. Without these ten vital virtues, leadership becomes "misleadership." The authors, both renowned business ethicists, combine theory with fascinating biographical detail on exemplary leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Oprah Winfr...

Join us for a feast!Step into a roadside diner run by witches. Attend a banquet with aliens who are as crass as they are brutal. Eat oysters on the half shell with a pair of conjurers, or scratch out a meal with warring pilots marooned on a desolate planet. Pity the ghost who must cook her way to freedom, and mourn with the warrior who seeks a final delicacy for his lost love. Search the far reaches of space for sustenance or descend into a hellscape of culinary horrors.In ...