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The Celestine
Prophecy Author: James Redfield
The Celestine Prophecy tells of an ancient
manuscript found in the rainforests of Peru, containing nine insights predicted
to have a momentous impact on civilization.
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The Tenth Insight
Author: James Redfield
The Tenth Insight continues the story in the
American Southeast where the narrator's friend has seemingly vanished. This
work of fiction explores the afterlife, sexual energy and the spiritual history
of the human race.
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Walden
Author: Henry D. Thoreau
On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved
into the cabin he had built on the shore of Walden Pond. Now, on the 150th
anniversary of that event, Houghton Mifflin is proud to publish an exceptional
new edition of what is perhaps the most important book in our history as a
publisher. Walden: An Annotated Edition features the definitive text of the
book with extensive notes on Thoreau's life and times by the distinguished
biographer and critic Walter Harding. In the third chapter, Thoreau writes,
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?"
For many readers, Walden is that book.
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1984
Author: George Orwell
Written in 1948 this book is a satire on the
possible horrors of a totalitarian regime in England in 1984.
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Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
A farm is taken over by its overworked,
mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to
create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for
one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned--a razor-edged fairy tale
for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a
totalitarianism just as terrible.
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God Can Wait
Author: Fred I Cairns
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Sand County Almanac
Author: Aldo Leopold
First published in 1949 and praised in The
New York Times Book Review as "a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite," A
Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau
with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the
land. Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the
book includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin countryside;
another part that gathers informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year
period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona,
Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and a final section in which Leopold
addresses the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. As the
forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilrim at Tinker Creek,
Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this
classic work remains as relevant today as it was forty years ago.
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The Outsiders
Author: S.E. Hinton
A heroic story of friendship and belonging.
Ponyboy can count on his brothers. And on his friends. But not on much else
besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good
time is beating up "greasers" like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to
expect-until the night someone takes things too far.
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Tom Sawyer
Author: Mark Twain
It is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt
Polly; a tale of adventures, pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun.
Written by the author sometimes called "the Lincoln of literature," The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer was surprisingly neither a critical nor a financial
success when it was first published in 1876. It was Mark Twain''s first novel.
However, since then Tom Sawyer has become his most popular work, enjoying
dramatic, film, and even Broadway musical interpretations
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MidSummer Night Dream
Author: William Shakespeare
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Romeo & Juliet
Author: William Shakespeare
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Socrates
Author: Richard Bowen
A biography of Socrates, a philosopher and
teacher in ancient Greece who held that wisdom comes from questioning ideas and
values rather than simply accepting what is passed on by parents and teachers.
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Solitude
Author: Philip Koch
From Publishers Weekly In exploring the
phenomenon of solitude, Koch dismisses physical isolation and reflection,
stillness and balance, as inessential. Freely chosen social disengagement, "the
absence of others in one's experiential world," comes closer to the mark. He
also differentiates solitude from loneliness (a desire for human interaction),
isolation (a sense of separation from others), privacy (freedom from personal
invasion) and alienation (a condition of fractured relationships). In solitude
one has no encounter with others, even in consciousness or negatively by their
absence. After Koch makes these distinctions, sometimes too pedantically, the
reader expects him to celebrate solitude. He does defend it against the charges
that it is pathological, escapist and antisocial, and he extols its virtues of
freedom and creativity, attunement to self and to nature, but his conclusion is
more inclusive. Solitude, he asserts, is only one aspect of our being. "The
human way leads through both human relationships and inner transcendence"; it
involves, in essence, a balance between encounter and solitude. Koch's book is
itself illustrative of this because it results from reading the work of
others--Goethe, Jesus, Plato, Whitman, Proust, Tillich, Petrarch and many
others--as well as disengaged meditations on solitude carried out alone.
Overall, Koch has written an excellent study of solitude which is flawed by the
banal conclusion that life involves both the self and others.
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The Interpretation of
Dreams Author: Sigmund Freud
It is in our dreams that we can understand
much of our waking reality. Sigmund Freud understood this well and was a
pioneer in the field of dream interpretation at the turn of the 20th century.
Freud discovered that dreams can be the means through which people can
understand their unconsciousness and The Interpretation of Dreams is his
classic and thoroughly provocative text.
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Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
The year is 632 AF, After Ford, in Utopia,
once Great Britain. The state legislates happiness, with "Community, Identity,
Stability" as its motto. Ten World Controllers maintain a society where
everyone thinks alike, natural births are forbidden and those who aren’t
happy enough with the state of things receive a tranquilizer. Brave New World
chronicles the discovery of a natural-born savage named John and his arrival in
Utopian society. |
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