It’s hard to imagine a cockroach being bored. It simply gets on with what a cockroach does and then dies. Boredom seems only to be a possibility for organisms capable of reflective consciousness. Schopenhauer treated boredom as worthy of philosophical consideration. He thought it was lethal and that it proved the vanity of human existence. Heidegger, […]

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.

Ian Frazier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Frazier and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111023952) trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the expanse of Asiatic Russia with a grim renown. In Travels in Siberia (2010), Frazier reveals Siberia’s role in history – its science, economics, and politics – with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we’ll never think about it in the same way again. He tells the stories

E. B. White (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4155/the-art-of-the-essay-no-1-e-b-white ) conjures up clear and beautiful images in this collection of essays (1977). With detailed descriptions of sights, sounds, and transitory moments he brings his experiences vividly to life. You will find yourself immersed in technicolour New England, New York, or Florida. His crystalline depictions of all the moods and colours of

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