From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical exploration. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch fleshes out our understanding of the past with explorations of lived experiences of embodiment from the middle ages to modernity. This intimate and sensuous approach to history makes it possible to foreground the tactile foundations of Western culture--the ways in which feelings shaped society. Constance Classen explores a variety of tactile realms including the feel of the medieval city; the tactile appeal of relics; the social histories of pain, pleasure, and affection; the bonds of touch between humans and animals; the strenuous excitement of sports such as wrestling and jousting; and the sensuous attractions of consumer culture. She delves into a range of vital issues, from the uses--and prohibitions--of touch in social interaction to the disciplining of the body by the modern state, from the changing feel of the urban landscape to the technologization of touch in modernity. Through poignant descriptions of the healing power of a medieval king's hand or the grueling conditions of a nineteenth-century prison, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject, touches us to the quick.

In 1839 fifty-eight men left Montreal for the penal colony of New South Wales. They were ordinary people who had been caught up in the political whirlwind of the 1838 rebellion. Even though they were all civilians, they had been tried by court martial. Convicted of treason, their properties forfeited to the crown, they paid a heavy price for rebellion. And as convicts in Australia, they were considered the lowest of a bad lot. During their years there, however, they earned the respect of Sydney’s citizens.

This book is a reminder of the frightening days in Montreal, Canada, when a group of French Quebecers tried to overthrow the government by violence and fear. The October crises did involve bombings in a wealthy mountainside community in Montreal. Mailboxes, armories and homes were destroyed by separatists who were ready to die for their cause. It is the story of Professor Paul Rusk, of Local, Jewish heritage and Esme Jonas, a student from Newfoundland, who are poles apart politically, but very much in love. Anyone who lived through these times or anyone interested in history will be drawn into the two- sided argument about the horrific days of the FLQ, or Front Liberation de Quebec. There are two sides to every story. This one is a story of love and hate.

In the aftermath of 9/11 . . . Larry, a successful young Los Angeles lawyer, and his dog, Zeus, negotiate a life-changing, two-and-a-half-day odyssey that leads them to Joshua Tree National Park. There, Larry encounters an array of unlikely teachers including talking trees and stones, white buffaloes, and a rap-spouting raccoon. These unorthodox characters mock conventional wisdom with irreverential humor to reveal to him the back-stage mechanics of Creation. Larry for the first time understands who he really is and why he has chosen to be born on Earth at this precise time. He also comes to appreciate the perfection of the Great Experiment and the extraordinary possibilities awaiting the human race; should it awaken before it's too late.

A fascinating new book that helps us make sense of our senses.

The national bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses tackles the realm of creativity, by exploring one of the most essential aspects of our characters: the ability to play. "Deep play" is that more intensified form of play that puts us in a rapturous mood and awakens the most creative, sentient, and joyful aspects of our inner selves. As Diane Ackerman ranges over a panoply of artistic, spiritual, and athletic activities, from spiritual rapture through extreme sports, we gain a greater sense of what it means to be "in the moment" and totally, transcendentally human. Keenly perceived and written with poetic exuberance, Deep Play enlightens us by revealing the manifold ways we can enhance our lives.

This accessible and thought-provoking introduction to philosophy shows how the eternal questions can shed light on our lives and struggles. These days, we generally leave philosophical matters to professional philosophers. Scott Samuelson thinks this is tragic, for our lives as well as for philosophy. In The Deepest Human Life, he restores philosophy to its proper place at the center of our humanity, rediscovering it as our most profound effort toward understanding, as a way of life that anyone can live. Exploring the works of some of history’s most important thinkers in the context of the everyday struggles of his students, Samuelson guides readers through the most vexing quandaries of existence—and shows just how enriching the examined life can be. Samuelson begins at the beginning: with Socrates, and the method he developed for approaching our greatest mysteries. From there he embarks on a journey through the history of philosophy, demonstrating how it is encoded in our own personal quests for meaning. Through heartbreaking stories, humanizing biographies, accessible theory, and evocative interludes like “On Wine and Bicycles” or “On Zombies and Superheroes,” Samuelson invests philosophy with the personal and vice versa. The result is a book that is at once a primer and a reassurance—that the most important questions endure, coming to life in each of us. Winner of the 2015 Hiett Prize in the Humanities

FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • “Kang viscerally explores the limits of what a human brain and body can endure, and the strange beauty that can be found in even the most extreme forms of renunciation.”—Entertainment Weekly One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “Ferocious.”—The New York Times Book Review (Ten Best Books of the Year) “Both terrifying and terrific.”—Lauren Groff “Provocative [and] shocking.”—The Washington Post Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her. A Best Book of the Year: BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Time, Elle, The Economist, HuffPost, Slate, Bustle, The St. Louis Dispatch, Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly

A quest to find something new by excavating the "deep time" of media's development—not by simply looking at new media's historic forerunners, but by connecting models, machines, technologies, and accidents that have until now remained separated. Deep Time of the Media takes us on an archaeological quest into the hidden layers of media development—dynamic moments of intense activity in media design and construction that have been largely ignored in the historical-media archaeological record. Siegfried Zielinski argues that the history of the media does not proceed predictably from primitive tools to complex machinery; in Deep Time of the Media, he illuminates turning points of media history—fractures in the predictable—that help us see the new in the old. Drawing on original source materials, Zielinski explores the technology of devices for hearing and seeing through two thousand years of cultural and technological history. He discovers the contributions of "dreamers and modelers" of media worlds, from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles and natural philosophers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods to Russian avant-gardists of the early twentieth century. "Media are spaces of action for constructed attempts to connect what is separated," Zielinski writes. He describes models and machines that make this connection: including a theater of mirrors in sixteenth-century Naples, an automaton for musical composition created by the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, and the eighteenth-century electrical tele-writing machine of Joseph Mazzolari, among others. Uncovering these moments in the media-archaeological record, Zielinski says, brings us into a new relationship with present-day moments; these discoveries in the "deep time" media history shed light on today's media landscape and may help us map our expedition to the media future.