In this urgently relevant, wholly enlightening discussion of modern moral decisions, the Harvard theology professor Harvey Cox considers Jesus"s contemporary significance. Moving far beyond the simple question "What Would Jesus Do?" Cox shows how we can extrapolate moral guidance from the parables of Jesus. As he did in his undergraduate class "Jesus and the Moral Life"-a course that grew so popular that the lectures were held in a theater often used for rock concerts-Cox holds contemporary dilemmas in the light of lessons gleaned from the Gospels. Delving into centuries of theological exploration, he "pulls off a near miracle as he gathers disparate scholarly and religious views of Jesus, while demonstrating respectful, deep knowledge of Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions, and various Christian teachings" (Seattle Times). Invigorating and incisive, this book encourages an intellectual approach to faith and inspires a clear way of thinking about moral choices for all readers.

News from Germany traces why Germans became interested in international communications around 1900 and how they sought to control it for the next 45 years. They used new communications technologies, like wireless and radio, and they used the central businesses of news supply - news agencies. An astonishing array of German politicians, industrialists, military generals, and journalists became obsessed with news. At home, a news agency helped to start the Weimar Republic; competition over news agencies helped to usher in the Weimar Republic's demise. Abroad, news from Germany reached around the world and was surprisingly successful in places as far-flung as China and Chile. Although news is often seen as part of soft power, Germans used it to achieve hard power aims. Communications infrastructure and information became crucial parts of power politics. The Nazis seemed to be the master propagandists, but their efforts built on decades of German obsessions with news.--

Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian “Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator… This is the place where science comes to life.” ―Neil Gaiman “One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book” ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Anaximander. One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious. As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness. Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.

A hundred years after William James delivered the celebrated lectures that became The Varieties of Religious Experience, one of the foremost thinkers in the English-speaking world returns to the questions posed in James's masterpiece to clarify the circumstances and conditions of religion in our day. An elegant mix of the philosophy and sociology of religion, Charles Taylor's powerful book maintains a clear perspective on James's work in its historical and cultural contexts, while casting a new and revealing light upon the present. Lucid, readable, and dense with ideas that promise to transform current debates about religion and secularism, Varieties of Religion Today is much more than a revisiting of James's classic. Rather, it places James's analysis of religious experience and the dilemmas of doubt and belief in an unfamiliar but illuminating context, namely the social horizon in which questions of religion come to be presented to individuals in the first place. Taylor begins with questions about the way in which James conceives his subject, and shows how these questions arise out of different ways of understanding religion that confronted one another in James's time and continue to do so today. Evaluating James's treatment of the ethics of belief, he goes on to develop an innovative and provocative reading of the public and cultural conditions in which questions of belief or unbelief are perceived to be individual questions. What emerges is a remarkable and penetrating view of the relation between religion and social order and, ultimately, of what "religion" means.

J.K. Rowling, one of the world's most inspiring writers, shares her wisdom and advice. In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, VERY GOOD LIVES presents J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.

This book is the story of one death among many in the war in eastern Ukraine. Its author is a historian of war whose brother was killed at the frontline in 2017 while serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Olesya Khromeychuk takes the point of view of a civilian and a woman, perspectives that tend to be neglected in war narratives, and focuses on the stories that play out far away from the warzone. Through a combination of personal memoir and essay, Khromeychuk attempts to help her readers understand the private experience of this still ongoing but almost forgotten war in the heart of Europe and the private experience of war as such. This book will resonate with anyone battling with grief and the shock of the sudden loss of a loved one.

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'Punchy, funny and invigorating ... Pinker is the high priest of rationalism' Sunday Times 'If you've ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead. It's cheaper, more entertaining, and more effective' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower. 'A terrific book, much-needed for our time' Peter Singer

In the 1960s and 70s the American press forged a new set of values. Threatened with obsolescence by the proliferation of new competitors, pressured to rectify their treatment of minorities and women, denounced as biased by both the left and the right, the country's leading news organizations made fundamental changes. They shifted from simply reporting the news to analyzing it. They adopted a more adversarial approach to those in power. They continued to strive for objectivity, but they did so in a way that left many outside their newsrooms (and many on the inside) deeply dissatisfied. In many ways they became more liberal. Powerful institutions like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times--the two newspapers this book scrutinizes--transformed themselves, with major ramifications for the rest of the news media and for the country as a whole. On Press shows how these changes occurred, why they persisted for three decades after the 1970s, and why the media is reassessing long-held values once again in the Trump era.--

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century. • “Timely and essential."—The Washington Post “A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions--how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

"An exquisitely timed book ... Code Red is a worthwhile exploration of the shared goals (and shared enemies) that unite moderates and progressives. But more than that, it is a sharp reminder that the common ground on which Dionne built his career has been badly eroded, with little prospect that it will soon be restored.” —The New York Times Book Review New York Times bestselling author and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. sounds the alarm in Code Red, calling for an alliance between progressives and moderates to seize the moment and restore hope to America’s future for the 2020 presidential election. Will progressives and moderates feud while America burns? Or will these natural allies take advantage of the greatest opportunity since the New Deal Era to strengthen American democracy, foster social justice, and turn back the threats of the Trump Era? The United States stands at a crossroads. Broad and principled opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency has drawn millions of previously disengaged citizens to the public square and to the ballot boxes. This inspired and growing activism for social and political change hasn’t been seen since the days of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and the Progressive and Civil Rights movements. But if progressives and moderates are unable—and unwilling—to overcome their differences, they could not only enable Trump to prevail again but also squander an occasion for launching a new era of reform. In Code Red, award-winning journalist E. J. Dionne, Jr., calls for a shared commitment to decency and a politics focused on freedom, fairness, and the future, encouraging progressives and moderates to explore common ground and expand the unity that brought about Democrat victories in the 2018 elections. He offers a unifying model for furthering progress with a Politics of Remedy, Dignity, and More: one that solves problems, resolve disputes, and moves forward; that sits at the heart of the demands for justice by both long-marginalized and recently-displaced groups; and that posits a positive future for Americans with more covered by health insurance, more with decent wages, more with good schools, more security from gun violence, more action to roll back climate change. Breaking through the partisan noise and cutting against conventional wisdom to provide a realistic look at political possibilities, Dionne offers a strategy for progressives and moderates to think more clearly and accept the responsibilities that history now imposes on them. Because at this point in our national story, change can’t wait.