**AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARA gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century**The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe's wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes...

'The question Eilenberger sets out to answer in this ambitious, enthralling book: what use is philosophy in the middle of a war?' The Sunday TimesThe year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen café. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame of liberty in her...

Brought to you by Penguin.The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a jobbing critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein signs away his inheritance to teach schoolchildren in a provincial Austrian village, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and align his fortunes with the phenomenological school of Edmund Husserl. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture at the back of a cramped Berlin tram. The ...

A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram EilenbergerThe period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of hi...

**“[A] fascinating and accessible account . . . In his entertaining book, Mr. Eilenberger shows that his magicians’ thoughts are still worth collecting, even if, with hindsight, we can see that some performed too many intellectual conjuring tricks.” —Wall Street JournalA grand narrative of the intertwining lives of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer, major philosophers whose ideas shaped the twentieth century**The year is 191...

The grand finale to Wolfram Eilenberger's epic narrative of philosophy in the twentieth century, The Haunted Present follows the footsteps of Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault, and Paul K. Feyerabend, to reveal the true fault lines of our eraIt is the winter 1949: Theodor W. Adorno returns from the USA to Frankfurt, a city devastated by bombing; Paul K. Feyerabend arrives back in Vienna, disabled and suffering from chronic pain, having been ...

An unflinching, rare account of living with severe mental illness that is also a bold commentary on how we misunderstand this often debilitating disease.The Complications is an intimate portrait of what it’s like to live with schizoaffective disorder of the bipolar type as well as a biting, revelatory critique of America’s mental health culture. Emmett Rensin has written and edited articles for major national media outlets, and taught writing and literatur...

This “fascinating” (Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times bestselling author of Outliers) examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, shows how writers have created technical breakthroughs—rivaling scientific inventions—and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere—from Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others—each made a u...

The quintessential biography of Eve Babitz (1943-2021), the brilliant chronicler of 1960s and 70s Hollywood hedonism and one of the most original American voices of her time.“I practically snorted this book, stayed up all night with it. Anolik decodes, ruptures, and ultimately intensifies Eve’s singular irresistible glitz.” —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker“The Eve Babitz book I’ve been waiting for. What emerges isn’t just a p...

Richard Hanania has emerged as one of the most talked-about writers in the nation, and in this book, he puts forward a stunning new theory about the culture war that could turn our debates upside down.Richard Hanania has come out of nowhere to become one of the best-known writers in the nation in the last few years. In this book, he directs his attention to the culture war that has driven society apart and presents a stunning new theory about what is going on....

Discover how—and why—Black, Indigenous, and people of color in America experience societal, economic, and infrastructural inequality throughout history covering everything from Columbus’s arrival in 1492 to the War on Drugs to the Black Lives Matter movement.From reparations to the prison industrial complex and redlining, there are a lot of high-level concepts to systemic racism that are hard to digest. At a time where everyone is inundated with information on stru...

From one of the most admired admirals of his generation—and the only admiral to serve as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO—comes a remarkable voyage through all of the world’s most important bodies of water, providing the story of naval power as a driver of human history and a crucial element in our current geopolitical path.From the time of the Greeks and the Persians clashing in the Mediterranean, sea power has determined world power. To an extent that is often un...