We are what we read
Kenneth’s picks
THE HUMAN CONDITION: HANNAH ARENDT
(From Wikipedia)The Human Condition, first published in 1958, is Hannah Arendt's account of how "human activities" should be and have been understood throughout Western history. Arendt is interested in the vita activa (active life) as contrasted with the vita contemplativa (contemplative life) and concerned that the debate over the relative status of the two has blinded us to important insights about the vita activa and the way in which it has changed since ancient times. She distinguishes three sorts of activity (labor, work, and action) and discusses how they have been affected by changes in Western history. Read more
TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF THE ACT: MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH BAKHTIN
(From Wikipedia) Toward a Philosophy of the Act was first published in the USSR in 1986 with the title K filosofii postupka. The manuscript, written between 1919–1921, was found in bad condition with pages missing and sections of text that were illegible. Consequently, this philosophical essay appears today as a fragment of an unfinished work.Toward a Philosophy of the Act comprises only an introduction, of which the first few pages are missing, and part one of the full text. However, Bakhtin's intentions for the work were not altogether lost, for he provided an outline in the introduction in which he stated that the essay was to contain four parts.[11] The first part of the essay deals with the analysis of the performed acts or deeds that comprise the actual world; "the world actually experienced, and not the merely thinkable world." For the three subsequent and unfinished parts of Toward a Philosophy of the Act Bakhtin states the topics he intends to discuss. He outlines that the second part will deal with aesthetic activity and the ethics of artistic creation; the third with the ethics of politics; and the fourth with religion. Read more
MEETING THE UNIVERSE HALFWAY. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE ENTANGLEMENT OF MEANINGAND MATTER: KAREN BARAD
(From dukeupress.edu) Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Read more
ILLUMINATIONS: WALTER BENJAMIN
(From Amazon) Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history. Read more
NOTES TOWARDS A PERFORMATIVE THEORY OF ASSEMBLY: JUDITH BUTLER
(From Amazon) Judith Butler elucidates the dynamics of public assembly under prevailing economic and political conditions, analyzing what they signify and how. Understanding assemblies as plural forms of performative action, Butler extends her theory of performativity to argue that precarity―the destruction of the conditions of livability―has been a galvanizing force and theme in today’s highly visible protests. Read more
DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH. THE BIRTH OF PRISON: MICHEL FOUCAULT
(From Wikipedia) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (French: Surveiller et punir : Naissance de la prison) is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks. Read more
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA: ERNEST HEMINGWAY
(From Wikipedia) The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952.[1] It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. Read more
THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED: PRIMO LEVY
(From Wikipedia) The Drowned and the Saved (Italian: I sommersi e i salvati) is a book of essays by Italian-Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi on life and death in the Nazi extermination camps, drawing on his personal experience as a survivor of Auschwitz (Monowitz). The author's last work, written in 1986, a year before his death, The Drowned and the Saved is an attempt at an analytical approach, in contrast to his earlier books If This Is a Man (1947) and The Truce (1963), which are autobiographical. Read more
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
(From Wikipedia) One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad, American Spanish: [sjen ˈaɲos ðe soleˈðað]) is a landmark 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the (fictitious) town of Macondo, Colombia. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature. Read more
BELOVED: TONI MORRISON
(From Wikipedia) Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. Set after the American Civil War (1861–1865), it is inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an African American who escaped slavery in Kentucky in late January 1856 by crossing the Ohio River to Ohio, a free state. Captured, she killed her child rather than have her taken back into slavery. Read more
Lena’s picks
Min Kamp: Karl Ove Knausgård
(From Wikipedia) My Struggle (Norwegian: Min kamp) is a series of six autobiographical novels written by Karl Ove Knausgård and published between 2009 and 2011. The books cover his private life and thoughts, and unleashed a media frenzy upon its release, with journalists attempting to track down the mentioned members of his family. The series has sold half a million copies in Norway alone and has been published in 35 languages. Read more
The Wisdom of the Enneagram: Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
(From Amazon) The ancient symbol of the Enneagram has become one of today's most popular systems for self-understanding, based on nine distinct personality types. Now, two of the world's foremost Enneagram authorities introduce a powerful new way to use the Enneagram as a tool for personal transformation and development. Whatever your spiritual background, the Enneagram shows how you can overcome your inner barriers, realize your unique gifts and strengths, and discover your deepest direction in life. Read more
Mogens’ picks
THE STUPIDITY PARADOX: MATS ALVESSON & ANDRÉ SPICER
(From profilebooks.com) The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge. Read more
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY: PETER L. BERGER & THOMAS LUCKMANN
(From Wikipedia) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge is a 1966 book about the sociology of knowledge by the sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann.
Berger and Luckmann introduced the term social construction into the social sciences and were strongly influenced by the work of Alfred Schütz. Their central concept is that people and groups interacting in a social system create, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized. In the process, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people's conceptions (and beliefs) of what reality is become embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Reality is therefore said to be socially constructed. Read more
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION: JOHN DEWEY
(From Wikipedia) In Democracy and Education, Dewey argues that the primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of education. On one hand, there is the contrast between the immaturity of the new-born members of the group (its future sole representatives) and the maturity of the adult members who possess the knowledge and customs of the group. On the other hand, there is the necessity that these immature members be not merely physically preserved in adequate numbers, but that they be initiated into the interests, purposes, information, skill, and practices of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its characteristic life. Read more
TRUTH AND METHOD: HANS-GEORG GADAMER
(From Wikipedia) Truth and Method (German: Wahrheit und Methode) is a 1960 book by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, in which the author deploys the concept of "philosophical hermeneutics" as it is worked out in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927). The book is considered Gadamer's major work. Read more
Anete’s picks
Meeting the Universe Halfway – Quantum Physics and the entanglement of Meaning and Matter: Karen Barad
(From Amazon) Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity. Read more
The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible: Charles Eisenstein
(From charleseisenstein.org) In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power. By fully embracing and practicing this principle of interconnectedness—called interbeing—we become more effective agents of change and have a stronger positive influence on the world. Read more
Staying with the Trouble – making Kin in the Chthulucene: Donna Haraway
(From Wikipedia) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene is a 2016 book by Donna Haraway, published by Duke University Press. In it, Haraway offers "making kin" as a way to consider multiple species and interact in a multiple species world.
By emphasizing connectedness, Staying with the Trouble can be thought of as a continuation of major themes from "A Cyborg Manifesto" and The Companion Species Manifesto. Haraway's book can also be thought of as a critique of the Anthropocene as a way of making sense of the present, de-emphasizing human exceptionalism in favor of multispecism.
Myths of Light – Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal: Joseph Cambell
(From Amazon) Master mythologist Joseph Campbell had a genius for finding the unifying symbols and metaphors in apparently distinct cultures and traditions. In Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, Campbell explores, with his characteristic clarity and humor, the principle that underlies all the great religions of India and East Asia, from Jainism and Hinduism to Buddhism and Taoism: the transcendent World Soul. Read more
The Prophet: Kahlil Gibran
(From Amazon) Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.
The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. Read more
Jens’ picks
Baboon – short stories: Naja Marie Aidt
(from Amazon) Beginning in the middle of crisis, then accelerating through plots that grow stranger by the page, Naja Marie Aidt’s stories have a feel all their own. Though they are built around the common themes of sex, love, desire, and gender, Aidt pushes them into her own desperate, frantic realm. Read more
Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence: Gregory Cajete
(from goodreads) In Native Science, Gregory Cajete "tells the story" of Indigenous science as a way of understanding, experiencing, and feeling the natural world. He points to parallels and differences between the Indigenous science and Western science paradigms, with special emphasis on environmental/ecological studies. After discussing philosophical foundations, Cajete addresses such topics as history and myth, primal elements, social ecology, animals in myth and reality, plants and human health, and cosmology and astronomy. Read more
A Philosophy of Walking: Frédéric Gros
(from penguinrandomhouse)“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” —Nietzsche
In A Philosophy of Walking, a bestseller in France, leading thinker Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B – the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble – and reveals what they say about us.
Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. Read more
The Human condition: Hannah Arendt
(From Wikipedia)The Human Condition, first published in 1958, is Hannah Arendt's account of how "human activities" should be and have been understood throughout Western history. Arendt is interested in the vita activa (active life) as contrasted with the vita contemplativa (contemplative life) and concerned that the debate over the relative status of the two has blinded us to important insights about the vita activa and the way in which it has changed since ancient times. She distinguishes three sorts of activity (labor, work, and action) and discusses how they have been affected by changes in Western history. Read more
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life: Soren Kierkegaard
Either/Or is the earliest of the major works of Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most startlingly original thinkers and writers of the nineteenth century, and the first which he wrote under a pseudonym, as he would for his greatest philosophical writings. Read more
Everyday Zen: Charlotte Joko Beck
(from Amazon) Charlotte Joko Beck offers a warm, engaging, uniquely American approach to using Zen to deal with the problems of daily living—love, relationships, work, fear, ambition, and suffering. Everyday Zen shows us how to live each moment to the fullest. This Plus edition includes an interview with the author.
What is philosophy: Deleuze, Guattari
(from Wikipedia) What is Philosophy? (French: Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?) is a 1991 book by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. The two had met shortly after May 1968 when they were in their forties and collaborated most notably on Capitalism & Schizophrenia (Volume 1: Anti-Oedipus (1972); Volume 2: A Thousand Plateaus 1980) and Kafka: Towards a Minority Literature (1975). In this, the last book they co-signed, philosophy, science, and art are treated as three modes of thought.
Julia’s picks
THE WORLD WE HAVE: THICH NHAT HANH
(From Amazon) In this provocative book, noted Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh offers a dramatic vision of the future of a planet overheated by rapidly disappearing fossil fuels, degraded by massive overconsumption, and besieged by unsupportable population growth. Hanh finds answers to these critical problems in the Buddhist teaching of the impermanence of all things. He demonstrates how this teaching can offer inner peace and help us use our collective wisdom and technology to restore the Earth's balance. Mixing inspiring insights with practical strategies, Hanh cites projects his own monastic community has undertaken that can serve as models for any community. Read more
Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth: R. Buckminster Fuller
(from Wikipedia) Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth is a short book by R. Buckminster Fuller, first published in 1969, following an address with a similar title given to the 50th annual convention of the American Planners Association in the Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., on 16 October 1967.
The book relates Earth to a spaceship flying through space. The spaceship has a finite amount of resources and cannot be resupplied. Read more
THE PERRENIAL PHILOSOPHY: ALDOUS HUXLEY
(From Wikipedia) The Perennial Philosophy is a comparative study of mysticism by the British writer and novelist Aldous Huxley. Its title derives from the theological tradition of perennial philosophy.
The book offers readers, who are assumed to be familiar with the Christian religion and the Bible, a fresh approach employing Eastern and Western mysticism. Read more
DIE RENAISSANCE DER MENSCHHEIT (TRANSLATED VERSION FROM THE ASCENT OF HUMANITY): CHARLES EISENSTEIN
(From charleseistenstein.org) The Ascent of Humanity is about the history and future of civilization from a unique perspective: the evolution of the human sense of self. This book describes how all the expressions of our civilization—its miraculous technology as well as the pillage of earth, culture, goodness, and beauty—arise from our identity, our way of being, “the discrete and separate self”. The gathering crises of our age demonstrate that this way of being is on the verge of collapse. And this collapse is setting the stage for a revolution in human beingness whose stirrings we already begin to feel. Read more
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
(from Amazon) In this classic work that continues to inspire many readers, Jim Lovelock puts forward his idea that the Earth functions as a single organism. Written for non-scientists,Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence in support of a radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that life is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter influences air, ocean, and rock to form a complex, self-regulating system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life.
Duncan’s picks
Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett
(From Amazon) 2013 Reprint of 1940 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) was an American social worker, management consultant and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. She also authored a number of books and numerous essays, articles and speeches on democracy, human relations, political philosophy, psychology, organizational behavior and conflict resolution. Read more
Process and reality: Alfred North Whitehead
(From Simanandschuster) One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy.
Whitehead’s master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.
The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds. Read more
A process theory of organization: Tor Hernes
(From Amazon) This book presents a novel and comprehensive process theory of organization applicable to "a world on the move," where connectedness prevails over size, flow prevails over stability, and temporality prevails over spatiality. Read more
Apprendre à entreprendre: Alain Fayolle
(From leslibraires) De nos jours, de plus en plus de salariés et d’étudiants considèrent l’entrepreneuriat comme une alternative pour réaliser des projets qui leur apparaissent plus conformes à leurs aspirations et plus adaptés au monde actuel. Ils s’engagent aussi dans cette voie pour s’épanouir dans leurs vies personnelle et professionnelle. Mais l’entrepreneuriat est une discipline dont il faut maîtriser les règles et les subtilités afin de parvenir à concrétiser ses projets et à les pérenniser. Read more
The adventures of Robinson crusoe: Daniel Defoe (1872)
(From Amazon) This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. Read more
Beowulf: Seamus Heany
(From faberandfaber) Composed towards the end of the first millennium, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. In his new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work which is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his own creative gift. Read more