Modern Man in Search of a Soul

The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell

Aldous Huxley · 151 pages

"Doors of perception" describes how the author submitted himself as a guinea pig to mescaline. "Heaven and hell" explains how drugs can take the experimenter into an unexplored world of the mind. This world can have the characteristics of heaven, but negative emotions will turn it into hell.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

William James · 470 pages

This is one of the most remarkable books ever written about religious experience. James captures the reader’s attention with vivid instances of religious experience collected from diverse sources, including classical religious texts, newspaper articles, and clinical studies. In this collection of Gifford lectures given in Scotland in 1901, James analyzes religious experience, using wonderful examp

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Jordan B Peterson · 416 pages

What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research. Humorous, surprising and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate a

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.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, what it Is, with All the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, & Several Cures of It. In Three Partitions, Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up

Robert Burton · 1,064 pages

Civilization and Its Discontents

Sigmund Freud · 116 pages

Originally published in 1930, this book seeks to answer ultimate questions. What influences led to the creation of civilization? How did it come to be? What determines its course? In this classic work, Freud addresses the contest between aggression and eros, and speaks to issues of human creativity and fulfillment, the place of beauty in culture, and the effects of repression.

Écrits

Jacques Lacan · 878 pages

Presents an English translation of Jacques Lacan's most famous work, with translations of all the papers featured in the original French edition.

Man and His Symbols

C.G. Jung, Joseph L. Henderson, Aniela Jaffe, Jolande Jacobi, Marie-Louise von Franz · 320 pages

Excerpt from back cover: "This book, which was the last piece of work undertaken by Jung before his death in 1961, provides a unique opportunity to assess his contribution to the life and thought of our time, for it was also his first attempt to present his life-work in psychology to a non-technical public...What emerges with great clarity from the book is that Jung has done immense service bot

Existentialism and Human Emotions

Jean-Paul Sartre · 96 pages

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell · 456 pages

A thoroughly intense and all-embracing read. In the 2-page preface written in 1948, he states such ground-shakingly obvious facts about the human psyche, that you'll wonder why these ideas had never dawned on you before. Then, into the main text of the book, and you're spirited away into an adventure that explores all forms of mythology and their importance in founding different cultures all aroun

Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson · 78 pages

Fear and Trembling/Repetition

Soren Kierkegaard · 464 pages

The two books comprised in this volume are in greater demand than any other works of Kierkegaard. This preference is a credit to the public taste, for Kierkegaard himself called them "the most perfect books I have written," though in this commendation he included The Concept of Dread, and later stretched it to include Training in Christianity.

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Wassily Kandinsky · 92 pages

A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his o

Toward a Psychology of Being

Abraham H. Maslow · 184 pages

First published in 1962, ‘Toward a Psychology of Being’ was written by Abraham H. Maslow, an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.\ This book develops on Maslow’s key theories of motivation and self-actualization, which were firs

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

Gustave Le Bon · 208 pages

"Gustave LeBon's The Crowd is not only a classic, but one of the best-selling scientific books in social psychology and collective behavior ever written. Here, LeBon analyzes the nature of crowds and their role in political movements. He presents crowd behavior as a problem of science and power, a natural phenomenon with practical implications. Originally published in 1895, LeBon's book was the fi

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

Charles T. Munger · 512 pages

Orthodoxy

G.K. Chesterton · 156 pages

Orthodoxy is G. K. Chesterton’s response to his critics’ assertion that his earlier collection of essays, Heretics, had “merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy.” In his intellectual journey from pagan to agnostic to positivist philosopher, he had attempted to build a philosophy “some ten minutes in advance of the truth.” But when he compared his modern p

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Jonathan Haidt · 297 pages

Applies the latest findings in psychology and brain research to the wisdom of the ancients to define what makes people happy and how you can find more happiness in your life. Confirms and builds on the happiness formula defined by other psychologists: H=S+C+V or Happiness = your biological Setpoint + the Conditions of your life + the Voluntary activities you do

On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo

Friedrich Nietzsche · 378 pages

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought

Pascal Boyer · 430 pages

Formerly at Princeton, King's College, Cambridge and the University of Lyon, Pascal Boyer is Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St Louis, MissouriWhile human religious practice and belief are extraordinarily varied, they are nevertheless not infinitely so. The varieties of belief have provided generations of anthropologists and religious scholars with material for research; ther

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.

Psychoanalysis and Religion

Erich Fromm · 119 pages

The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

M. Scott Peck · 316 pages

Confronting and solving problems is a painful process which most of us attempt to avoid. Avoiding resolution results in greater pain and an inability to grow both mentally and spiritually. Drawing heavily on his own professional experience, Dr M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, suggests ways in which facing our difficulties - and suffering through the changes - can enable us to reach a higher level of

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

Marilynne Robinson · 254 pages

In the tradition of nineteenth-century novelists who turned to the essay, Marilynne Robinson offers an authoritative approach to refining the ideas our culture has handed down to us. Whether considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by midwestern abolitionists; how creationism, "long owned by the Religious Right," has spurred on contemporary Darwinism; or how John Calvin, who was a French