"All those who care about France, Jews, East-West relations, and, indeed, our entire modern culture, must read this book." —Tom Reiss, Pulitzer Prize–winning authorWhat is the connection between a rise in the number of random attacks against Jews on the streets of France and strategically planned terrorist acts targeting the French population at large? Before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan night club, and others made international headlines, Marc Weitzma...

A New York Times Notable Book. A literary exploration that is "surely destined to become the quintessential companion to Camus's most enduring novel" ( PopMatters).The Stranger is a rite of passage for readers around the world. Since its publication in France in 1942, Camus's novel has been translated into sixty languages and sold more than six million copies. It's the rare novel that's as likely to be found in a teen's backpack as in a g...

How can we apply the teachings of the greatest ancient philosopher to modern life?Socrates is the quintessential Athenian philosopher, the source of the entire Western philosophical tradition, and Godfather to the Stoics. He spent his life teaching practical philosophy to ordinary people in the streets of Athens, yet few people today are familiar with the wisdom he has to offer us.How to Think Like Socrates is an accessible and informative guide to...

"Irresistible. . . . Slowness is an ode to sensuous leisure, to the enjoyment of pleasure rather than just the search for it." — MirabellaMilan Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, Slowness is also the first of this author's fictional works to have been written in French.Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer's nig...

The work of explorers, surveyors and spies in the race to conquer Southern Asia is vividly recounted in this history of British imperial cartography.In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires were engaged in bitter rivalry for the acquisition of Southern Asian. Although India was the ultimate prize, most of the intrigue and action took place along its northern frontier in Afghanistan, Turkestan and Tibet. Mapping the region and gaining knowledge of the ene...

The Nobel Prize winner's most influential and enduring personal writings, newly curated and introduced by acclaimed Camus scholar Alice Kaplan.Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Personal Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope and depth of his interior life. Grappling with an i...

From the author of Memory and the Mediterranean, a comprehensive history of the Italian city states from 1450 to 1650.In the fifteenth century, even before the city states of the Apennine Peninsula began to coalesce into what would become, several centuries later, a nation, "Italy" exerted enormous influence over all of Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. Its cultural, economic, and political dominance is utterly astonishing and unique in world history...

The famed mathematician and philosopher takes readers on a journey into a new scientific age, exploring topics from relativity to religion.Alfred North Whitehead, one of the great figures in the philosophy of science, wrote this prescient work nearly a century ago. Yet, in an era that has us reckoning with science and technology's place and meaning in our lives, it remains as relevant as ever. Science and the Modern World puts scientific discovery into his...

A collection of essays from the acclaimed author of Mrs. Dalloway on such subjects as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, and her own literary philosophy.A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.Not written for scholars or critics, these essays are a collection of Virginia Woolf's everyday thoughts about literature and the world—and the art of re...

A call to arms for artists, in particular those who came from an immigrant background, like he did. • “To create today means to create dangerously. Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a century that forgives nothing.”In 1957, Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Albert Camus gave a speech entitled "Create Dangerously." Camus understood the necessity of those making art as a part of civil society. A bold cry for arti...

This history of the pivotal WWII Battle of Stalingrad reveals newly translated firsthand accounts from Russian and German soldiers as well as civilians.In August of 1942, the German Army and Axis Powers invaded the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The ensuing battle was one of the most protracted and bitterly fought conflicts of the Second World War. More than five months later, Germany was forced to retreat in what would be a major turning point in the war.

This military memoir examines one of the most vicious and tragically forgotten battles of the Vietnam War from a variety of perspectives.In June of 1967, the Viet Cong sought to isolate and destroy an elite South Vietnamese unit as part of a new offensive strategy. They sent a voluntary POW as an "informant" to dupe the 52nd Vietnamese Ranger Battalion into taking a dangerous position in the III Corps sector of South Vietnam. In the midst of an ambush, the members ...