EGGHEAD CHOICE – Crack open for a hard boiled think

The war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations, and so on. Contemporary American society is characterized by divisive anger, profound loss, and danger. Wendell Berry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry and http://www.wendellberrybooks.com/), one of the America’s foremost cultural critics, addresses the menace, responding with hope and intelligence in a series of essays that tackle […]

Required reading for anyone interested in the sociology of religion. In one of the true classics of twentieth-century political economy, R. H. Tawney (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._H._Tawney and http://infed.org/mobi/richard-henry-tawney-fellowship-and-adult-education/) addresses the question of how religion has affected social and economic practices. The author tracks the influence of religious thought on capitalist economy and ideology since the Middle Ages, shedding light

This book is a highly influential work in philosophy of science. More broadly, in intellectual history it has attracted attention far beyond its own field. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is written with a combination of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of aphorisms. Thomas Kuhn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn and http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/weinberg.html) does not permit

Mythologies (1957) shows Roland Barthes’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes) interest in the meaning of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life. For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at

By looking at the brilliant minds of mathematician Kurt Godel, graphic artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, computer-science and cognitive-science professor Douglas Hofstadter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_hofstadter) ties together the aesthetic gift of pattern recognition and manipulation with theories on artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and the essence of self-awareness. Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) is not a

In this highly impressive volume, first published in 1932, T.S. Eliot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot and http://www.eliotsociety.org.uk/) gathered his choice of the miscellaneous reviews and literary essays he had written since 1917 when he became assistant editor of The Egoist. In his preface to the third edition in 1951 he wrote: ‘For myself this book is a kind of historical record of

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere – inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In a newly revised and expanded edition of 1995, author Peter Singer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer) exposes

Homage to Catalonia (1938) is George Orwell‘s personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. An excellent summary is offered at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_catalonia. This is a ‘must read’ of our cultural heritage. Available in paperback at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Homage-Catalonia-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141183055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389871149&sr=8-1&keywords=homage+to+catalonia There are two excellent episodes of the BBC Radio 4 programmes to go with this. First