Professor Erickson discusses how some of the greatest minds of the past three centuries have pondered why we are here and what journey we might be on: post-Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and other European philosophers. These ideas persist to the present day, as contemporary philosophers have taken up the intellectual route so irresistible to the likes of later intellectuals -- Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger,...

Professor Calhoone explores modern and contemporary western philosophy of reality (metaphysics) and knowledge (epistemology), from the 17th to the 20th century, spanning movements such as empircism, rationalism, idealism, philosophy of language, logical positivism, existentialism, pragmatism, phenomenology, and postmodernism.

A magisterial history of the centuries-long conflict between “progress” and “tradition” in the world’s largest international institution. The story of Roman Catholicism has never followed a singular path. In no time period has this been more true than over the last two centuries. Beginning with the French Revolution, extending to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and concluding with present-day crises, John T. McGreevy chronicles...

This volume is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to literature and culture in the 'English Renaissance' or 'Early modern' period.

Israel is a tiny state, and yet since its creation, it has captured the world's attention, earned its admiration, and, often, been the object of its opprobrium. Why is so much of the international community focused on a small country like Israel? Why are Israelis so deeply divided on so many key issues? Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? Weaving together historical documents, letters, and interviews with his own...

In Dearly, Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry in over a decade, she addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature, and... zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone but wide ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived. While many are familiar with Atwood's fiction-including...

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of supposition arranged around scant facts. With his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through