Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is an analysis of the central work of the Western canon, and of the playwright who not only invented the English language, but also, as Bloom argues, created human nature as we know it today. Before Shakespeare there was characterization; after Shakespeare, there were characters, men and women capable of change, with highly individual personalities. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is a companion to...

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the headlines and prophecies of doom and instead follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, he posits that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction...

Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was a Dutch humanist, scholar, and social critic, and one of the most important figures of the Renaissance. The Praise of Folly is perhaps his best-known work. Originally written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, this satiric celebration of pleasure, youth, and intoxication irreverently pokes fun at the pieties of theologians...

"[Elie Wiesel] taught at Boston University for nearly four decades, and with this book, Ariel Burger--devoted protégé, apprentice, and friend--takes us into the sacred space of Wiesel's classroom. There, Wiesel challenged his students to explore moral complexity and to resist the dangerous lure of absolutes. In bringing together never-before-recounted moments between Wiesel and his students, Witness serves as a moral education in and of itself--a...

How can we explain man's lust for cruelty? In a world in which violence seems to be increasing, social philosopher Erich Fromm has treated this haunting question with depth and scope in the most original and far-reaching work of his brilliant career. Fromm goes beyond the controversy between instinctivists like Lorenz, who argue that man's destructiveness has been inherited from his animal ancestors, and behaviorists like Skinner, who maintain that...

Echoing Edward Said's belief that "Western humanism is not enough, we need a universal humanism," renowned critic Clive James presents here his life's work. Containing over one hundred original essays, organized by quotations from A to Z, this book illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. In discussing, among others, Louis...

"...Grayling has distilled the work of hundreds of authors and more than one thousand texts using the same techniques...that produced the holy books of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions. Their wit and advice, human stories, tragedies and yearnings, love and consolations are shaped into fourteen constituent parts that recall the Bible in structure: Genesis, Wisdom, Parables, Concord, Lamentations, Consolations, Sages, Songs, Histories, Proverbs,...

Humanism, in both its rhetoric and practice, attempted to transform the relationships between men that constituted the fabric of early modern society. So argues Alan Stewart in this ground-breaking investigation into the impact of humanism in sixteenth-century England. Here the author shows that by valorizing textual skills over martial prowess, humanism provided a new means of upward mobility for the lowborn but humanistically trained scholar: he...