This Focus Philosophical Library edition includes a new translation of Descartes' seminal discourse, with an original essay by Richard Kennington. This text is designed to provide the student with a close translation, notes, and a glossary of key terms, facilitating access to ideas as they originally were presented and helping to make the translato...more

The first narrative history of gambling, spanning the Stone Age to the Internet era, examining how it evolved with—and influenced—human civilization In Roll the Bones, historian David G. Schwartz tells the epic story of gambling, beginning with its early emergence from divination rituals and ending with today’s global gaming culture. In a sw...more

The widely respected social philosopher embarks on his most gripping and broadly appealing work, asking the ultimate question of human nature: Why do we repeatedly violate our most deeply held values and beliefs? After nearly forty years of weighing humanity's deepest dilemmas-working in settings ranging from university and high school classrooms ...more

In his New York Times bestseller What Jesus Meant, Garry Wills offered a fresh and incisive reading of Jesus’ teachings. Now Wills turns to Paul, whose writings have provoked controversy throughout Christian history. Upending many common assumptions, Wills argues eloquently that what Paul meant was not something contrary to what Jesus meant. Rath...more

A physicist himself, Gino Segrè writes about what scientists do—and why they do it—with intimacy, clarity, and passion. In Faust in Copenhagen, he evokes the fleeting, magical moment when physics—and the world—was about to lose its innocence forever. Known by physicists as the miracle year, 1932 saw the discovery of the neutron and antimat...more

This penetrating literary-journalistic memoir depicts the clash between promise and reality within the movement that virtually defined alternative spirituality in America: Transcendental Meditation and its iconic guru, the Maharishi. Like hundreds of thousands of young people, Geoff Gilpin entered the Transcendental Meditation movement in the ea...more

As our first technology for contemplation of the self, the mirror is arguably as important an invention as the wheel and perhaps even more universal. Mirror Mirror is the fascinating story of the mirror's invention, refinement, and use in an astonishing range of human activities-from the bloodthirsty smoking gods of the Toltecs, to the fantastic mi...more

Does violence in movies, on television and in comic strips and cartoons rot our children's brains and make zombies-or worse, criminals-of adults at the fringes? In this cogent, well-researched book, American pop-culture expert Harold Schechter argues that exactly the opposite is true: a basic human need is given an outlet through violent images in ...more

The companion book to What Would Jesus Buy?, the forthcoming feature-length documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock, creator of Super Size Me! Reverend Billy's revival tour across America is the subject of the upcoming Morgan Spurlock film What Would Jesus Buy?, his first movie since the national hit Super Size Me! The book is an inspiri...more

After Jeri Laber earned a Master's degree in Russian studies at Columbia University, she became a part-time writer and editor and a full-time wife and mother. Then one day in 1973 she read an article about torture that altered her life and subsequently the lives of countless others around the world. The Courage of Strangers tells how Laber became ...more