NCW Libraries

"Spanning many historical and literary contexts, Moral Imagination brings together a dozen recent essays by one of America's premier cultural critics. David Bromwich explores the importance of imagination and sympathy to suggest how these faculties may illuminate the motives of human action and the reality of justice. These wide-ranging essays address thinkers and topics from Gandhi and Martin Luther King on nonviolent resistance, to the dangers of...

"We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable? Despite our constant search for new ways to "hack" our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. This manifesto helps us break free of our unhealthy devotion to efficiency and shows us how to reclaim our time and humanity with a little more leisure"--

"As seen on the Netflix documentaries Minimalism & Less is Now. How might your life be better with less? Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent--a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment--a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you're imagining is...

"Anger is not just ubiquitous, it is also popular. Many people think it is impossible to care sufficiently for justice without anger at injustice. Many believe that it is impossible for individuals to vindicate their own self-respect or to move beyond an injury without anger. To not feel anger in those cases would be considered suspect. Is this how we should think about anger, or is anger above all a disease, deforming both the personal and the political?...

"An enchanting collection of lists, musings, prompts, and illustrations that will inspire you to cherish all of the things--from the extraordinary to the everyday, from the big to the little--that bring hope into our lives On March 11, 2020, the day the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic and all of our lives began to change in unprecedented ways, Todd Doughty knew he needed to do something to help him stay connected...

Traditional areas of civic agreement are vanishing. We can't agree on what makes America special. We can't even agree that America is special. We're coming to the point that we can't even agree what the word America itself means. "Disintegrationists" say we're stronger together, but their assault on America's history, philosophy, and culture will only tear us apart. Who are the disintegrationists? From Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United...

"From the acclaimed writer and thinker--whose award-winning books include both fiction and non-fiction--a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden but essential role in today's debates on love, religion, politics, and science. Imagine that Plato came to life in the 21st century and set out on a multi-city speaking tour: How would he handle a host on Fox News who challenges him on religion and morality? How would...

What happens when you try to recreate a woolly mammoth-fascinating science, or conservation catastrophe? In Rise of the Necrofauna, Wray takes us deep into the minds and labs of some of the world's most progressive thinkers to find out. She introduces us to renowned futurists like Stewart Brand and scientists like George Church, who are harnessing the powers of CRISPR gene editing in the hopes of "reviving" extinct passenger pigeons, woolly mammoths,...

"...Clear-eyed manifesto for re-centering our economics and politics on the idea of the common good. Robert B. Reich...demonstrates that a common good not only exists but in fact constitutes the very essence of any society or nation...We must weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership...A fundamental statement about the purpose...

First published posthumously in 1779, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" is Scottish philosopher David Hume's classic work of religious philosophy. This detailed and exhaustive examination of the nature and existence of God was begun by Hume in 1750, but not completed until shortly before his death in 1776. Hume was an important and influential English Empiricist, along with other English philosophers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Thomas...