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Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama “A powerhouse drama. . . . Lynn Nottage’s beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports.”—Linda Winer, Newsday “An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world’s brutalities. Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won’t expect.”—David Cote, Time Out New York A rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage’s extraordinary new play. The establishment’s shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already “ruined” by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution. Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with Congo refugees, Nottage has crafted an engrossing and uncommonly human story with humor and song served alongside its postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage. Lynn Nottage’s plays include Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Fabulation, and Intimate Apparel, winner of the American Theatre Critics’ Steinberg New Play Award and the Francesca Primus Prize. Her plays have been widely produced, with Intimate Apparel receiving more productions than any other play in America during the 2005-2006 season.

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Amid the smoky dance clubs and seedy sections of town, there exist a thriving pornography industry. But it doesn?t end there, and so the danger to men is all the greater. For in hotel rooms, trendy bookstores, television screens, and internet websites, there is enough viewing of pornographic materials to trap lives forever. It is the world that author Henry Rogers reveals to us in a book that has too few peers. The Silent War, through interviews, statistics, and other facts, traces the unraveling of American men by the claws of pornography. Rogers, chaplain for Interstate Batteries, discusses his own battle with this terrible addiction, then builds concrete steps for helping others climb out of the pit. The Silent War is a lifeline in a world in love with evil.

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"Philosophy is not a theory," asserted Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), «but an activity.» In this 1921 opus, his only philosophical work published during his lifetime, Wittgenstein defined the object of philosophy as the logical clarification of thoughts and proposed the solution to most philosophic problems by means of a critical method of linguistic analysis. In proclaiming philosophy as a matter of logic rather than of metaphysics, Wittgenstein created a sensation among intellectual circles that influenced the development of logical positivism and changed the direction of 20th-century thought.Beginning with the principles of symbolism and the necessary relations between words and objects, the author applies his theories to various branches of traditional philosophy, illustrating how mistakes arise from inappropriate use of symbolism and misuses of language. After examining the logical structure of propositions and the nature of logical inference, he discusses the theory of knowledge as well as principles of physics and ethics and aspects of the mystical.Supervised by the author himself, this translation from the German by C. K. Ogden is regarded as the definitive text. A magisterial introduction by the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell hails Wittgenstein's achievement as extraordinarily important, «one which no serious philosopher can afford to neglect.» Introduction by Bertrand Russell.

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"One of the greatest of all philosophical works, covering knowledge, imagination, emotion, morality, and justice." — Baroness Warnock, The ListPublished in the mid-18th century and received with indifference (it «fell dead-born from the press,» noted the author), David Hume's comprehensive three-volume A Treatise of Human Nature has withstood the test of time and has had enormous impact on subsequent philosophical thought. Hume — whom Kant famously credited with having «interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction» — intended this work as an observationally grounded study of human nature. He employed John Locke's empiric principles, constructing a theory of knowledge to serve as a foundation for the evaluation of metaphysical ideas.Reprinted here in one volume, the Treatise begins with an examination of the nature of ideas: their origins and connections, modes and substance, and abstract qualities. The work's considerations of existence, knowledge, and identity explore the ways in which people use these concepts as a basis for firm but unproven beliefs. The second part surveys the passions, from pride and humility to contempt and respect, analyzing their roles in human choices and actions. The book concludes with a meditation on morals and an in-depth explanation of the perceived distinctions between virtue and vice.One of philosophy's most important works and a key to modern studies of 18th-century Western thought, A Treatise of Human Nature is essential reading for all students of philosophy and history.

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First published in 1903, this volume revolutionized philosophy and forever altered the direction of ethical studies. It clarifies some of moral philosophy's most common confusions and redefines the science's terminology. 6 chapters explore: the subject matter of ethics, naturalistic ethics, hedonism, metaphysical ethics, ethics in relation to conduct, and the ideal.

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Along with Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, and George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky (1878 –1947) was one of the most important and influential figures in the occult movements of the twentieth century. With such books as The Fourth Dimension (incorporated in this present volume), Tertium Organum, In Search of the Miraculous, and The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, he earned a loyal following among those seeking a deeper knowledge of themselves and their lives, and of the meaning of human existence.In the present book, Ouspensky analyzes certain older schools of thought, of both East and West, connects them with modern ideas and explains them in the light of twentieth-century discovery and speculations in physics and philosophy. In the process he explores relativity, the fourth dimension, Christian symbolism, the tarot, yoga, dreams, hypnotism, eternal recurrence, and various psychological theories.The book closes with an examination of the role of sex in the evolution of man toward superman. Anyone interested in the occult, mysticism and the relationship of those elements to scientific developments in the modern world will find much to ponder in these stimulating, thought-provoking pages.

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Immensely intelligible, thought-provoking guide by Nobel Prize winner considers such topics as the distinction between appearance and reality, the existence and nature of matter, idealism, inductive logic, intuitive knowledge, many other subjects. For students and general readers, there is no finer introduction to philosophy than this informative, affordable and highly readable edition.

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Although dour in appearance and formidable in reputation, Friedrich Nietzsche was an ardent practitioner of the art of poetry—called in twelfth-century Provencal «the gay science.» This volume, which Nietzsche referred to as «the most personal of all my books,» features the largest collection of his poetry that he ever chose to publish. It also offers an extensive and sophisticated treatment of the philosophical themes and views most central to his thinking, as well as the ideas that proved most influential to later philosophers.Dating from the era when Nietzsche was at the peak of his intellectual powers, most of this book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the rest of it five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. Zarathustra makes his first appearance in these pages, along with the author's well-known proclamation of the death of God—a concept to which much of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Readers will find this volume a wellspring for some of Nietzsche's most sustained and thought-provoking discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience, and the origin of logic.

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Considered the preeminent verse satirist in English, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) brought wide learning, devastating wit and masterly technique to his poems. Models of clarity and control, they exemplified the classical poetics of the Augustan age.This volume contains a rich selection of Pope's work, including such well-known poems as the title selection — a philosophical meditation on the nature of the universe and man's place in it — and «The Rape of the Lock,» a mock-epic of rare charm and skill. Also included are «Ode on Solitude,» «The Dying Christian to His Soul,» «Elegy  to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,» «An Essay on Criticism,» «Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog,» «Epistle [IV] to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington: Of the Use of Riches,» «Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; or, Prologue to the Satires» and more.Taken together, these poems offer an excellent sampling of Pope's imaginative genius and the felicitous blending of word, idea and image that earned him a place among the leading lights of 18th-century literature.

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Thorough and lucid survey of Western philosophy from pre-Socratics to mid 20th century: major figures, currents, trends, literature, significance, and more. Valuable section on contemporary philosophy — Brentano, Ortega, Heidegger, others. One of the best elementary history of philosophy available. «Brevity and clarity of exposition…» — Ethics.

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