A Clarion Book

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living. [Man’s Search for Meaning pdf](

Children's historical novel about early Christianity Brought to Rome from the British campaign by a kindly Roman officer, young Gretorix is made body slave to Diomed, the crippled son of a Roman senator. Both captives in their own way, the two boys become fast friends, and when Diomed hears of the man called Simon Peter, who heals the sick, he sends Gretorix to learn more about the new religion. Woven into this moving story of friendship and faith is the account of St. Peter's last days in Rome. This is a beautifully told tale of the early Christian movement, set against the flamboyant era of Nero's decadent reign.

Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence. Gerald Livingstone is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.” Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram.

A classic collection of Bertrand Russell's more controversial works, reaffirming his staunch liberal values, Unpopular Essays is one of Russell's most characteristic and self-revealing books. Written to "combat... the growth in Dogmatism", on first publication in 1950 it met with critical acclaim and a wide readership and has since become one of his most accessible and popular books.

"In a crucial essay written forty years ago, A. J. Muste explained the concept of revolutionary nonviolence that was the guiding principle of an extraordinary life. 'In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.'" --Noah Chomsky, on Muste's essay "Pacifism and Class War", which appears in this book