A courageous and brilliant lawyer and jurist, Thurgood Marshall won the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, ending legal racial segregation in America—a significant step in the continuing struggle of Black Americans for equal treatment in their own country. In 1967, Marshall became the first Black Supreme Court justice, and he continues to inspire us decades after his death.

This accessible collection of Marshall’s own words spans his entire career, from his fearless advocacy with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s and 1950s, to his arguments as the first Black solicitor general under LBJ and his Supreme Court opinions and dissents. Introductions to the writings provide historical and legal context.

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent a lifetime defying notions about “the way women are.” This collection of her legal briefs, opinions, and dissents—newly updated to include her final days on the Court—illuminates the intellect, humor, and toughness that made “the Notorious R.B.G.” a cultural icon and a profoundly influential jurist. An introduction summarizes her life and legacy, and explanatory notes make these writings more accessible to a nonlegal audience.

“This book is a must-read for any citizen wondering about the where and how of some of the most pertinent laws of our time.” — Amy Miller, Trial News

This new collection is O’Rourke’s third volume of a diverse mixture of long and short articles and it extends his reputation as a brilliant social historian and curmudgeonly contrarian. More political than his previous two volumes (Signs of the Literary Times, 1993; Confessions of a Guilty Freelancer, 2012), it additionally serves as an illuminating memoir of his literary generation. These provocative pieces analyze the contemporary turbulent period, from the Obama years to the dawn of the Trump era.

These essays skillfully reverse the lens on Henry James’s internationalist theme and focus on it from a European perspective. Multilingual and multicultural, Sergio Perosa interprets afresh the meetings and clashes between European and American characters in James’s work, as well as their attitudes, customs, and values

Translated from the Spanish by Jack Sage
Foreword by Herbert Read

This is the classic reference for studies of symbology. Many of the entries--such as Cross, Dragon, Graphics, Numbers, Serpent, Tree, Water, and Zodiac--can be read as independent essays.

The Dictionary of the Opera features entries on nearly 300 composers, as well as 800 singers, conductors, producers, set designers, librettists, and others, plot summaries of 570 operas, and historical and contemporary critical receptions of the works and performances. 170 photographs and illustrations, spanning the history of opera from its beginnings to the present, accompany the text.

"A great asset to students of opera." - Joan Sutherland

Erik Ronningen was on the 71st floor of the North Tower on September 11, 2001 when American Airlines Flight 767 struck the building. After an incredible, even miraculous journey down through the acrid, smoke-filled building lit by occasional fireballs, Erik tried to get to the Security Command Center in the South Tower. Unable to do so, he was the last person to make it out of the South Tower alive.


Here is the story of his harrowing escape interwoven with the accounts of fourteen others who were lucky enough to be able to recount them.

"The best single book I have seen on the history, sociology, literature, cultures, and philosophy of money. This book is my pick of the year for any intelligent and broadly curious reader." - Worth Magazine

"Buchan's unusual and inspired history of money resembles his fiction more than his reporting for the Financial Times because it is so imaginative, impressionistic, anecdotal, and philosophical...mixing facts with astute observations, and writing lovely comples sentences that seem to unwind from a far more gracious era than the present. - The Library Journal

For ten years, John Wareham, author of the best-selling Secrets of a Corporate Headhunter, has been leading a double life. Four days a week he identifies and develops leaders for major international corporations. On the fifth day he heads to some of New York's toughest prisons to teach the life altering class that he created for the inmates. To his surprise, John found that many of the negative thinking patterns that led to the incarceration of his students were also pervasive among executives...

"The world's most important book since the Bible." - Ramsay MacDonald

First published in 1928 and addressed to the The Intelligent Woman (specifically his sister-in-law, Lady Mary Stewart Cholomondely), George Bernard Shaw’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism should be read by every American in the twenty-first century who has benefited, or ever will benefit, from Social Security...

"James Haskins has approached the majesty and mystery of the African-American preacher with wonderful respect and appreciation. In Keeping the Faith, the reader can hear the great drama that is enacted in the pulpit of the African-American church and the melody the preacher composes as he speaks." - Maya Angelou

Sermons by Martin Luther King, Jr., C.L. Franklin and others downloadable from the book page.

Photography by Derek Kendall
More than 1700 photographs, most of which have been taken specifically for this book, offer panoramic and detailed views of 180 interiors ranging from Harrow School, to the timbered barn at Harmondsworth, to an Art Deco masterpiece, the Daily Express Building at Fleet Street...

Lovers of architecture, and especially lovers of London, will welcome this new tool for exploring the glories of the city.

Photographs from the Royal Geographical Society, London

Mountains have left mankind awestruck since the beginning of time, with their beauty, mystery, danger, and spiritual appeal. The most forbidding of these, named after George Everest, who undertook in 1823 to survey the Himalayan mountain chain, has become the dernier cri for anyone adventurous (or crazy) enough to challenge the most inhospitable place on earth (also known as “The Third Pole”), the highest mountain on earth.

The immense expanse that opens up between Asia and the coast of America represents an ancient and fascinating world. On the routes traced by the winds and currents, populations and cultures appeared, integrated and split up over the course of the centuries, adapting themselves to a powerful nature that generated unique religious practices whose artistic manifestations are well known.
The history of Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Easter Island, and Polynesia originated with ancient migrations from the continent of Asia. The most distant in time, which took place about 40,000 years ago...

A Philosophical Library Book

Translated and Introduced by Wade Baskins

This anthology of thoughts, opinions and observations by one of the most original thinkers of the Italian Renaissance is a fine introduction to the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

"With Tapped Out, Paul Simon has issued an important warning which, if heeded, has the potential to avert a devastaing natural disaster." - Jimmy Carter

“In the past fifty years nations have gone to war over oil. In the next fifty years we are going to war over water,” according to Dr. Wally N'Dow, whom the Los Angeles Times called “the world's foremost specialist on cities.”

A Philosophical Library Book

The title piece expresses the deadliness of the academic approach to the past, and shows how the reading of history can be a vivid intellectual pleasure.

In "The Value of Free Thought," Russell once again proves himself a ruthless for of stifling orthodoxy and a fearless champion of free thought, free action, and free speech.

Then in a series of articles on a subject near and dear to his heart, he explores the effect of atomic physics on such philosophic concepts as materialism, idealism, determination, and faith.

Unless we’re actual combatants, the lens through which we view war is almost always that of the war correspondent, using either images, or words, or both. Here is an oversized volume which portrays in stark, and often horrifying detail how wars were documented over the past two centuries, since the dawn of photography. Graphics, propaganda posters, newspaper headlines, and other ephemera are liberally interspersed, as are seldom seen photos of lesser known wars.

In the post-World War I era, until the Second World War, newly empowered women enjoyed greater buying power and control over their lives than ever before. Into this gap, stepped the Daily Mail, which provided news and current affairs reporting for many decades, and also guidance and style commentary on fashion, etiquette and entertainment to its readers.

The facsimile pages from 1930s editions of the Daily Mail are reprinted with startling clarity in this book, giving a revealing and entertaining insight ranging from beauty and fashion to counsel on how to remove butter stains using gasoline...

A Philosophical Library Book

A collection of twelve essays by the Nobel Prize winner railing charmingly and persuasively against facile thinking and conformity; as relevant and pertinent today as when they were written.

Essays include "Can Men Be Rational," "Free Thought and Official Propaganda," "On the Value of Scepticism," "On Youthful Cynicism," "Is Science Superstitious?," ""Useless" Knowledge," "What is the Soul?," "The Ancestry of Fascism," "Stoicism and Mental Health," "Modern Homogeneity," "Men versus Insects," and "On Comets."