This tightly argued, hugely controversial work convincingly demonstrates how the world's three major monotheistic religions-Christianity, Judaism, and Islam-have attempted to suppress knowledge, science, pleasure, and desire, often condemning nonbelievers to death. If Nietzsche proclaimed the "Death of God," Onfray starts from the premise...more

A veil of secrecy surrounds Mormon temple worship. While officially intended to preserve the sacredness of the experience, this silence often leaves Latter-day Saints mystified. Until now there has been no scholarly examination of the derivation and development of the temple—something David John Buerger suggests all Mormons should know. By gr...more

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy. Defy...more

In this short, buoyant essay, Harry G. Frankfurt looks closely at the differences (and the similarities) between bullshit and lies. Interestingly, he sees purveyors of bullshit as people who, even if they're telling the truth, are fundamentally uninterested in it: what's striking is that they don't care what they say as long as they sound convincin...more

Now available in mass market, the revised, definitive edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic. In this second book in the saga set 3,000 years after the terrible war, Ender Wiggin is reviled by history as the Xenocide--the destroyer of the alien Buggers. Now, Ender tells the true story of the war and seeks to stop history from repeatin...more

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time become increasingly focused on money and pleasure--a phenomenon the high-liv...more