At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell
Paris, near the turn of 1932/1933. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new philosophical method known as phenomenology. Pointing to his drink, he says, ‘You see – with phenomenology you can make philosophy out of this cocktail!’
From this moment of revelation, Sartre will be inspired to create his own extraordinary philosophy of real, experienced life – a philosophy of love and desire, of freedom and being, of cafés and waiters, of friendships and rivalries and political revolutions. His philosophy will fascinate Paris and sweep through the world, leaving its mark on post-war liberation movements from the student uprisings of 1968 to the pioneers of civil rights.
At the Existentialist Café explores modern existentialism as a story of encounters between ideas and between people – from the ‘king and queen of existentialism’ (Sartre and Beauvoir) to their wider circle of friends, followers and adversaries, including Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Iris Murdoch and many more. Weaving biography and philosophy, it investigates a philosophy that concerned life, but that also changed lives – and that tackled the biggest questions of all: what we are and how we are to live.
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Immortality
Milan Kundera's Immortality (and 6th) novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that cre-ates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnès becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
The Republic
Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, this classic text is an enquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation, other questions are raised: what is goodness?; what is reality?; and what is knowledge? The Republic also addresses the purpose of education and the role of both women and men as guardians of the people. With remarkable lucidity and deft use of allegory, Plato arrives at a depiction of a state bound by harmony and ruled by philosopher kings.
Looking at philosophy
Distilled from Donald Palmer’s more than thirty years of teaching experience, this text exemplifies his very successful approach to teaching introductory philosophy. Through the use of humor and nearly 400 drawings, charts, and diagrams, serious philosophical topics come alive for the reader without compromising the importance of the subject matter. In the author’s words, “This book takes philosophy seriously, but not gravely.”
The 2nd Sex
Simone de Beauvoir’s essential masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a revolutionary exploration of inequality and otherness. Unabridged in English for the first time, this long-awaited edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.
Left bank
In this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant eras, Agnes Poirier unspools the stories of the poets, writers, painters, and philosophers whose lives collided to extraordinary effect between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human drama behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, from Richard Wright’s Native Son, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Saul Bellow's Augie March, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd, New Journalism, bebop, and French feminism.
We follow Arthur Koestler and Norman Mailer as young men, peek inside Picasso’s studio, and trail the twists of Camus's Sartre's, and Beauvoir’s epic love stories. We witness the births and deaths of newspapers and literary journals and peer through keyholes to see the first kisses and last nights of many ill-advised bedfellows. At every turn, Poirier deftly hones in on the most compelling and colorful history, without undermining the crucial significance of the era. She brings to life the flawed, visionary Parisians who fell in love and out of it, who infuriated and inspired one another, all while reconfiguring the world's political, intellectual, and creative landscapes. With its balance of clear-eyed historical narrative and irresistible anecdotal charm, Left Bank transports readers to a Paris teeming with passion, drama, and life.
Demian
A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual fulfillment. A brilliant psychological portrait, Demian is given new life in this translation, which together with James Franco’s personal and inspiring foreword will bring a new generation to Hesse’s widely influential coming-of-age novel.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The last day of socrates
The Last Days of Socrates, written by legendary author Plato, is widely considered to be one of the greatest classic texts of all time. This great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, The Last Days of Socrates is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless pieces of classic literature, this gem by Plato is highly recommended. Published by Classic Books International and beautifully produced, The Last Days of Socrates would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone's personal library.
life of pi
The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.
The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true?