The remarkable story behind one of the world's most enduring and best-loved books. Offering new insights into the true origins and meaning of L. Frank Baum's 1900 masterwork, author Schwartz delves into the personal turmoil and spiritual transformation that fueled Baum's fantastical parable of the American Dream. Before becoming an impresario of children's adventure tales, Baum failed at a series of careers and nearly lost his soul before setting...

"A meditation instructor and former English teacher shows how the great classics of Western literature illustrate the essential concepts of Eastern philosophy. The discussion includes works by authors such as John Keats, William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Frederick Douglass, and many others"--

Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare's greatest plays–A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest. In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates...

"A woman finds solace in Jane Austen following the death of her father and the birth of her child"-- In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing, and imagining through Austen's novels. This is...

This collection of essays explores Thoreau's Walden, and discusses the importance of Thoreau and Emerson on American thought.

Despised by the intellectual establishment, Ayn Rand continues to attract many thousands of devoted followers. Her "Objectivist" movement preaches an uncompromising hard line on politics, art, sex, and psychological health. Though much has been written about Rand, The Ayn Rand Cult is the first book to explain the true origin of her ideas and to show how they were shaped into a new, atheistic religion. Jeff Walker shatters many myths about Rand, exposing...

"Haunting us with such unforgettable stories as The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, Salem's Lot, Carrie, The Green Mile, and Pet Semetary, Stephen King has been an anchor of American horror, science fiction, psychological thrillers, and suspense for over forty years. His characters have brought chills to our spines and challenged our notions of reality while leaving us in awe of the perseverance of the human spirit. As the first book in the new Great...

Harry Potter has put a spell on millions of readers, and they all want to find out more about the deeper meaning of his adventures. In Harry Potter and Philosophy, 17 experts in the field of philosophy unlock some of Hogwarts' secret panels, uncovering surprising insights that are enlightening both for wizards and for the most discerning muggles. Individual chapters look at such topics as life revealed in the Mirror of Erised; the ethics of magic;...