What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAgainst the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity
Paul Kingsnorth · 366 pages
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
Martin Heidegger · 182 pages
The Abolition of Man
C.S. Lewis · 116 pages
C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.
Brave New World Revisited
Aldous Huxley · 155 pages
In 1958, Aldous Huxley wrote what might be called a sequel to his novel Brave New World, published in 1932, but it was a sequel that did not revisit the story or the characters, or re-enter the world of the novel. Instead, he revisited that world in a set of 12 essays. Taking a second look at specific aspects of the future Huxley imagined in Brave New World, Huxley meditated on how his fantasy s
Everything Is F*cked: A Book about Hope
Mark Manson · 288 pages
We live in an interesting time. Materially, everything is the best it’s ever been—we are freer, healthier and wealthier than any people in human history. Yet, somehow everything seems to be irreparably and horribly f*cked—the planet is warming, governments are failing, economies are collapsing, and everyone is perpetually offended on Twitter. At this moment in history, when we have access to techn
You Are Not a Gadget
Jaron Lanier · 224 pages
A computer-age visionary argues that the Internet has failed to live up to its early promises, sharing cautionary perspectives on the Web 2.0 design concept while optimistically evaluating the Internet as a positive cultural vehicle.
Representations of the Intellectual
Edward Said · 121 pages
Celebrated humanist, teacher, and scholar, Edward W. Said here examines the ever-changing role of the intellectual today. In these six stunning essays - delivered on the BBC as the prestigious Reith Lectures - Said addresses the ways in which the intellectual can best serve society in the light of a heavily compromised media and of special interest groups who are protected at the cost of larger co
Waiting for God
Simone Weil · 208 pages
"Emerging from the thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains the renowned philosopher and social activist's most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendent. An enduring masterwork and "one of the most neglected resources of our century" (Adrienne Rich), Wa
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
David Foster Wallace · 137 pages
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The spee
The Argonauts
Maggie Nelson · 160 pages
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes the author’s account of falling in love with Dodge, as well as her journe
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan · 457 pages
A prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace “A glorious book . . . A spirited defense of science . . . From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought.”—Los Angeles Times How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don
Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings
Thomas Paine · 416 pages
Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self
Marilynne Robinson · 158 pages
What's Wrong With the World
G.K. Chesterton · 176 pages
I originally called this book "What is Wrong," and it would have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title. Many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually, I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning. And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it)
But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
Chuck Klosterman · 272 pages
"We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there's nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions inv
Image-Music-Text
Roland Barthes · 220 pages
'Image-Music-Text' brings together major essays by Roland Barthes on the structural analysis of narrative and on issues in literary theory, on the semiotics of photograph and film, on the practice of music and voice. Throughout the volume runs a constant movement 'from work to text': an attention to the very 'grain' of signifying activity and the desire to follow -- in literature, image, film, son
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Annie Dillard · 279 pages
What is the true nature of Nature? Is it a harmonious, interconnected system, operating according to the principles of co-dependence and benevolence? Or is it red in tooth and claw, an unfeeling, unthinking force, in which the individual is overwhelmed and subsumed to serve a larger purpose, one mysterious and obscure? This is what this volume is all about: an exploration into the nature of Nature
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Christopher Hitchens · 499 pages
Presents excerpts on the subject of religion from the writings of such notable non-believers as John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Richard Dawkins, and Salman Rushdie.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Alain de Botton · 326 pages
TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (New Autonomy)
Hakim Bey, Peter Lamborn Wilson · 153 pages
This is It & Other Essays on Zen & Spiritual Experience
Alan W. Watts · 158 pages