LIVING TOGETHER – Thoughts on Politics & Society

In this widely acclaimed work from 1983, Benedict Anderson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Anderson and http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/benedict-anderson/) examines the creation and global spread of the ‘imagined communities’ of nationality. He explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. […]

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

In these coolly observant essays, Joan Didion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Didion) looks at the American political process and at ‘that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life’. Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals

Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn) reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression, the state within the state, that ruled the lives of millions. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims, men, women, and children, we encounter

A central bond, a cherished value, a unique relationship, a profound human need, a type of love. What is the nature of friendship, and what is its significance in our lives? How has friendship changed since the ancient Greeks began to analyze it, and has modern technology altered its very definition? In this fascinating exploration