"An ambitious and exciting book about creativity . . . chart[s] new territory." — ScienceConsider Miles Davis, horn held high, sculpting a powerful musical statement full of tonal patterns, inside jokes, and thrilling climactic phrases—all on the fly. Or a comedy troupe riffing on cues from the audience until the whole room erupts with laughter; a team of software engineers brainstorming their way to the next Google; or the Einsteins of the world code-crack...

Hailed as "a feast" (Washington Post) and "a modern-day bestiary" (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Beginning at the time of Alexander the Great, the monsters come fast and furious--Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenste...

"Mr. Asma offers a rightly critical diagnosis of our obsession with egalitarianism." — The Wall Street JournalIn our zealous pursuit of fairness, we have banished our urges to like one person more than another, one thing over another, hiding them away as dirty secrets of our humanity. In Against Fairness, polymath philosopher Stephen T. Asma drags them triumphantly back into the light. Through playful, witty, but always serious arguments and exampl...

An authentic, inclusive, and approachable guide to practicing Buddhism.Profound and amusing, this book provides a viable approach to answering the perennial questions: Who am I? Why am I here? How can I live a meaningful life? For author Stephen Asma, the answers are to be found in Buddhism.There have been a lot of books that have made the case for Buddhism. What makes this book fresh and exciting is Asma's approach to the subject. He is distressed that muc...

How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel t...

Despite the widespread popularity of Buddhist practices (like meditation), there is little understanding of the complex philosophy behind Buddhism. The historical Buddha, Gautama, was a real person—a radical—who challenged the religious leaders of his day. Buddha For Beginners introduces the reader to the historical Buddha, to the ideas that made him change his life, and to the fascinating philosophical debates that engaged him and formed the core of Buddhism. Buddha For Beginners compares...

The natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes--where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun. Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, sc...

The natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes--where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun. Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, sc...

Despite the widespread popularity of Buddhist practices (like meditation), there is little understanding of the complex philosophy behind Buddhism. The historical Buddha, Gautama, was a real person—a radical—who challenged the religious leaders of his day. Buddha For Beginnersintroduces the reader to the historical Buddha, to the ideas that made him change his life, and to the fascinating philosophical debates that engaged him and formed the core of Buddhism.Buddha For...

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel.Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers ...

Foreword by Paul GiamattiAn exploration of the enduring worldview that has inspired individuals across time, from Ancient Greece to modern Hollywood—a sustained combination of magic, mysticism, and animism.We are experiencing a crisis of meaning. Instead of deepening our lives, religion often fuels division. Curious to understand the hidden divine aspects of existence, spiritual seekers are rejecting conventional faiths and turning to alter...

Global Perspectives on Eco-Aesthetics and Eco-Ethics: A Green Critique focuses on the interface of the Anthropocene, sustainability, ecological aesthetics, multispecies relationality, and the environment as reflected in literature and culture. This book examines how writers have addressed ecological crises and environmental challenges that transcend national, cultural, political, social, and linguistic borders. It demonstrates how, as the environmental humanities developed and emerged as a...