National Network for Equitable Library Service

Monty was just like any other dog. A scruffy and irascible Maltese terrier, he enjoyed barking at pugs and sniffing at trees. But after Monty has yet another dramatic confrontation with the local Rottweiler, Anthony McGowan realizes it's high time he and Monty had a chat about what makes him a good or a bad dog. Taking his lead from Monty's canine antics, McGowan takes us on a hilarious and enlightening jaunt through the major debates of philosophy. Will Kant convince Monty to stop stealing cheesecake? How long will they put up with Socrates poking holes in every argument?

"This book is a wonderful introduction to one of history's greatest figures: Marcus Aurelius. His life and this book are a clear guide for those facing adversity, seeking tranquility and pursuing excellence." - Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way and The Daily Stoic The life-changing principles of Stoicism taught through the story of its most famous proponent. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was the final famous Stoic philosopher of the ancient world.

Should we believe in God? In this brisk introduction to modern atheism, one of the world's greatest science writers tells us why we shouldn't. Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he'd felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind. Now one of the world's best and bestselling science communicators, Dawkins has given readers, young and old, the same opportunity to rethink the big questions.

Walden is a classic of American philosophy that describes Thoreau's concepts of self-reliance and individualism. In "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," he develops the philosophy of nonviolent political protest.

Alain de Botton draws on the work of six of the world's most uncommonly brilliant thinkers to offer this panoply of accessible, entertaining wisdom to guide us through our most common problems.

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of chairs, walls, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet, a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

Alain de Botton examines the origins of status anxiety--the universal anxiety about what others think of us--and reveals ingenious ways in which people have been able to overcome their worries in the search for happiness.

This is a hilarious take on the philosophy, theology, and psychology of mortality, Death, the Big D. Humorists have kept pace with philosophers by creating gags about dying. Death's funny that way: it gets everybody's attention.

A collection of essays grounded in the author's belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth's remotest corners as well as from our own backyards, and that answers may lie in those places, too.

This original and insightful book establishes a reciprocal relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of ethics and the experience of war. It puts forth an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s early moral philosophy that relates it to the philosopher’s own war experience and applies Wittgenstein’s ethics of silence to analyze the ethical dimension of literary and artistic representations of the Great War.