Bloomsbury film classics

"After a high profile case that put him in the headlines, private detective John Shaft is looking for something low profile and easy that will keep him out of the spotlight and out of danger. Shaft takes a missing person case that proves to be more difficult than he initially thought. At the same time, he is hired to be a consultant on a low budget film that may or may not be based on his life, and proves to be as dangerous as any job he's ever had. But when there's danger all about, John Shaft is the cat that won't cop out--even if it means squaring off against sadistic gangsters that want him dead"--Excerpt of summary from the book.

"Straw Dogs is a work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the Earth. Even in the present day, despite Darwin's discoveries, nearly all schools of thought take as their starting point the belief that humans are radically different from other animals. John Gray argues that this humanist belief is an illusion. The aim of Straw Dogs is to explore how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned." "Straw Dogs explores philosophical issues such as the nature of the self, free will, morality, progress and the value of truth. Drawing his inspiration from art, poetry, and the frontiers of science as well as philosophy itself, John Gray presents a post-humanist view of the world and of human life. Straw Dogs is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question their deepest beliefs."--Jacket.