Books, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Aesthetics

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Terry Tempest Williams
Finding Beauty in a Broken World
by Pantheon (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-10-07)

In her most original, provocative, and eloquently moving book since Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams gives us a luminous chronicle of finding beauty in a broken world. Always an impassioned and far-sighted advocate for a just relationship between the natural world and humankind, Williams has broadened her concerns over the past several years to include a reconfiguration of family and community in her search for a deeper understanding of what it means to be human in an era of physical and spiritual fragmentation.Williams begins in Ravenna, Italy, where “jeweled ceilings became lavish tales” through the art of mosaic. She discovers that mosaic is not just an art form but a form of integration, and when she returns to the American Southwest, her physical and spiritual home, and observes a clan of prairie dogs on the brink of extinction, she apprehends an ecological mosaic created by a remarkable species in the sagebrush steppes of the Colorado Plateau. And, finally, Williams ...

Maira Kalman
The Principles of Uncertainty
by Penguin Press HC, The (Hardcover)

Alain De Botton
The Architecture of Happiness (Vintage)
by Vintage (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-04-08)

The Achitecture of Happiness is a dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations.One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

Jacques Ranciere
The Future of the Image
by Verso (Paperback)

Leading philosopher presents a radical manifesto for the future of art and film.In The Future of the Image, Jacques Rancière develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, and thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard and Greenberg, Rancière argues that contemporary theorists of the image are suffering from religious tendencies. He suggests that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Rancière there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution will always embrace egalitarian ideals.

Denis Dutton
The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
by Bloomsbury Press (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-12-23)

In a groundbreaking new book that does for art what Stephen Pinker’s The Language Instinct did for linguistics, Denis Dutton overturns a century of art theory and criticism and revolutionizes our understanding of the arts.The Art Instinct combines two fascinating and contentious disciplines—art and evolutionary science—in a provocative new work that will change forever the way we think about the arts, from painting to literature to movies to pottery. Human tastes in the arts, Dutton argues, are evolutionary traits, shaped by Darwinian selection. They are not, as the past century of art criticism and academic theory would have it, just “socially constructed.”Our love of beauty is inborn, and many aesthetic tastes are shared across remote cultures—just one example is the widespread preference for landscapes with water and distant trees, like the savannas where we evolved. Using forceful logic and hard evidence, Dutton shows that we must premise art criticism on an ...

John O'Donohue
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
by Sounds True, Incorporated (CD)

In this eagerly awaited follow-up to his international bestsellers Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes, John O'Donohue turns his attention to the subject of beauty -- the divine beauty that calls theimagination and awakens all that is noble in the human heart. In these uncertain times of global conflict and crisis, we are riven with anxiety; our trust in the future has lost its innocence, from one second to the next. In such an unsheltered world, it may sound naive to suggest that this might be the moment to invoke and awaken beauty, yet this is exactly the claim that this book seeks to explore. Beauty is a gentle but urgent call to awaken. O'Donohue opens our eyes, hearts, and minds to the wonder of our own relationship with beauty. Rather than "covering" this theme, he uncovers it, exposing the infinity and mystery of its breadth. His words return us to the dignity of silence, the profundity of stillness, the power of thought and perception, and the eternal grace and generosity of ...

Gregory Pence
Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics, with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Backgrounds
by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages (Paperback)

This rich collection, popular among teachers and students alike, provides an in-depth look at major cases that have shaped the field of medical ethics. The book presents each famous (or infamous) case using extensive historical and contextual background, and then proceeds to illuminate it by careful discussion of pertinent philosophical theories and legal and ethical issues.

Thomas A Mappes, David DeGrazia
Biomedical Ethics
by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages (Paperback)

This best-selling anthology of readings with case studies provides insightful and comprehensive treatment of ethical issues in medicine. Appropriate for courses taught in philosophy departments as well as in schools on medicine and nursing, the collection covers provocative topics such as conflicts of interest in medicine, advance directives, physician-assisted suicide, and the rationing of health care. The effective pedagogical features include chapter introductions, argument sketches, explanations of medical terms, headnotes, and annotated bibliographies.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Free Play Improvisation in Life and Art
by Tarcher (Paperback)

This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity. Filled with unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors, it reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life, and how finally it can be liberated - how we can be liberated - to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice. The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, ...

Leonard Koren
Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
by Imperfect Publishing (Paperback)

This is an updated version of the enduring classic that first introduced the concept of “imperfect beauty” to the West. Text, images, and book design seamlessly meld into a wabi-sabi-like experience. Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete . . .. . . wabi-sabi could even be called the “Zen of things,” as it exemplifies many of Zen’s core spiritual-philosophical tenets . . .Wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty. It occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West . . .Wabi-sabi, in its purest, most idealized form, is precisely about the delicate traces, the faint evidence, at the borders of nothingness . . . Author Leonard Koren was trained as an architect but never built anything—except an eccentric Japanese tea house—because he found large, permanent objects too ...

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