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A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced "a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally" (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

Why do people choose authoritarianism over freedom? The classic study of the psychological appeal of fascism by a New York Times–bestselling author.  The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination. This freedom, however, can make people feel unmoored, and is often accompanied by feelings of isolation, fear, and the loss of self, all leading to a desire for authoritarianism, conformity, or destructiveness. It is not only the question of freedom that makes Fromm’s debut book a timeless classic. In this examination of the roots of Nazism and fascism in Europe, Fromm also explains how economic and social constraints can also lead to authoritarianism. By the author of The Sane Society and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, this is a fascinating examination of the anxiety that underlies our darkest impulses, an enlightening volume perfect for readers of Eric Hoffer or Hannah Arendt.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.   

"A perfect book"—the film version won Maggie Smith an Academy award—about a controversial teacher and her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune)."Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!"So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to mold—and she doesn''t stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie''s indelible imprint proves a gift to some and a curse to others."Muriel Spark is one of the few writers on either side of the Atlantic with enough resources, daring, and stamina to be altering, as well as feeding, the fiction machine." —John Updike, The New Yorker"Surprises are systematically reduced until there is only one left, and it is like the stab of a stiletto." —The Spectator"Beautifully constructed, extremely amusing, and deeply serious." —Saturday ReviewThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author''s archive at the National Library of Scotland.

The world''s most influential and enduring text on human sexualityLong before The Joy of Sex, Masters and Johnson, or Dr. Ruth, there was Vatsyayana''s Kama Sutra, or "Aphorisms on Love." This ancient text, translated from Sanskrit into English in the nineteenth century by Sir Richard Burton, along with Bhagavanlal Indragit and Shivaram Parashuram Bhide, has stood the test of time as a thoughtful treatise on the art of lovemaking.An insightful consideration of the connections between sensual pleasure and spiritual enlightenment, this classic work presents a sincere and civilized approach to sexuality that modern readers will find refreshing and inspirational.This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Pythagoras taught that the simple counting numbers are the basic building blocks of reality. A century and a half later, Plato argued that the world we live in is but a poor copy of the world of ideas. Neither realized that their numbers and ideas might also be the most basic components of the human psych: archetypes. This book traces the modern evolution of this idea from the Renaissance to the 20th century, leading up to the archetypal hypothesis of psychologist C. G. Jung, and the mirroring of mathematical ideas of Kurt Gödel.

An epic saga of love, blood, and destiny in twentieth-century Vietnam: “This superb novel could well be the War and Peace of our age” (San Francisco Chronicle).   Joseph Sherman first visits Saigon—the capital of French colonial Cochin-China—as a young man on his father’s hunting trip in 1925. But the exotic land lures him back again and again as a traveler, soldier, and reporter. He returns because of his fascination for the enchanting city—and for Lan, a mandarin’s daughter he cannot forget.   Over five decades Joseph’s life becomes enmeshed with the political intrigues of two of Saigon’s most influential families, the French colonist Devrauxs, and the native Trans. In this sweeping saga of tragedy and triumph, Joseph witnesses Vietnam’s turbulent, war-torn fate. He is there when millions of coolies rise against the French, and during their bloody last stand at Dien Bien Phu. And he sees US military “advisors” fire their first shots in America’s hopeless war against the Communist revolution. A story of adventure, love, war, and political power, Saigon presents an enthralling and enlightening depiction of twentieth-century Vietnam.  

The award-winning sword and sorcery classic that introduced Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, from a Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. First in the influential fan-favorite series, Swords and Deviltry collects four fantastical adventure stories from Fritz Leiber, the author who coined the phrase “sword and sorcery” and helped birth an entire genre.   In “Induction,” in the realm of Nehwon, fate brings young prince Fafhrd and apprentice magician the Gray Mouser together to mark the beginning of a loyal and lifelong friendship. Consumed by his wicked mother’s enchantments, Fafhrd finds freedom by pursuing the love of a beautiful actress in the Nebula and Hugo Award–nominated “The Snow Women.” Studying sorcery under a great wizard in a land where it is forbidden, Mouse crosses the thin line between white and black magic to avenge a great wrong in “The Unholy Grail.” And in the Nebula and Hugo Award–winning novella “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser disguise themselves as beggars to infiltrate the Thieves’ Guild—only to pay a horrible price for their greed when they come face-to-face with a monstrous evil.    

From the O. Henry Award–winning author of Rich Man, Poor Man, a collection of short stories revealing a wide-ranging portrait of life in postwar America.New York Times–bestselling author Irwin Shaw was a star of the New Yorker''s fiction pages in the 1930s and ''40s. His prose helped shape the landscape of post-war fiction, and his work drew from a remarkable life that spanned from American football fields to European battlefields, Broadway to Hollywood, Depression-era saloons to the McCarthy hearings. Among these sixty-three stories are iconic works such as "The Eighty-Yard Run," a tale of an American dream crippled on Black Monday, and "Main Currents in American Thought," in which a hack radio copywriter is tormented by the glitz of show business. Through the decades, Shaw''s writing —as demonstrated in these pages—maintains the clear-eyed moral purpose, rich in wit and startling insight, of a tough kid with a philosopher''s soul."Shaw remains a genial, seductive storyteller, especially adept with money matters and comfy milieus." —Kirkus Reviews"[Shaw] always writes immensely readable books." —The New York TimesThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Irwin Shaw including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author''s estate.

From the O. Henry Award–winning author of Rich Man, Poor Man, three novels plus collected short fiction.The Young Lions: Irwin Shaw''s New York Times–bestselling debut is widely considered one of the four great World War II novels, along with From Here to Eternity, The Naked and the Dead, and The Caine Mutiny. Ambitious in its scope and robust in its prose, this "masterpiece" is also deeply humanistic, presenting the reality of war as seen through the eyes of three ordinary soldiers: a Nazi sergeant, a Jewish American infantryman, and an idealistic urbanite from New York City (The Boston Globe).Bread Upon the Waters: No good deed goes unpunished? The Strands are a happy family, though not without their financial struggles. When their daughter helps a mugging victim by bringing him home, he turns out to be a Wall Street lawyer whose gratitude is as boundless as his bank account. But with each successive "reward," the Strand family moves farther away from the wealth of happiness they already possessed.Shaw''s prolific output of short stories appeared regularly in the pages of the New Yorker and Esquire for over half a century. These sixty-three stories include such iconic works as "The Eighty-Yard Run" and "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses."The Troubled Air: Five employees of Clement Archer''s popular radio show are accused Communists. He will have to fire them to keep his show on the air. But it''s not a simple choice—whatever Archer decides, he won''t be able to keep his hands clean, in Shaw''s provocative classic about courage and morality at the height of McCarthyism."Shaw remains a genial, seductive storyteller, especially adept with money matters and comfy milieus." —Kirkus Reviews

A professor discourages his wife''s witchcraft to disastrous ends in this Hugo Award–winning novel—that inspired three films—by an SFWA Grand Master.Ethnology professor Norman Saylor is shocked to discover that his wife, Tansy, has been putting his research on "Conjure Magic" into practice. She only wants to protect him from the other spell-casting faculty wives who would stop at nothing to advance their husbands'' careers. But Norman, as a man of science, demands she put an end to it. And when Tansy''s last charm is burned . . . Norman''s life starts falling apart.First, Norman has a disastrous run-in with a former protégé. Then his student secretary accuses him of seducing her. He''s even passed over for a promotion that had been certain. Plus he''s become exceedingly accident prone: from shaving to carpet tacks to letter openers, hazards are suddenly everywhere. At his wit''s end, he begins to worry that a dark presence is exploiting his fear of trucks. But the worst is yet to come—when Tansy takes his curse upon herself. Now, in order to save his wife, Norman must overcome his disbelief and embrace the dark magic he disdains.From the Nebula Award–winning Grandmaster of Science Fiction, Fritz Leiber''s Hugo Award-winner Conjure Wife is widely celebrated as a modern classic of horror-fantasy and has been adapted for film three times: Burn, Witch Burn (1962), Weird Woman (1944), and Witch''s Brew (1980).

A flu epidemic ushers in a plague of dark magic in this spooktastic mystery featuring teenage sleuth Johnny Dixon from The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost. Though forty miles away, Duston Heights is not safe from the flu that''s raging through Boston. When Johnny Dixon''s grandmother falls ill, he''s sent to live with his neighbor to avoid infection. So many locals are getting sick that school is canceled for a week, and the reclusive Dr. Abram Ashburn comes out of retirement to make house calls. After seeing a scary vision of his bedridden grandmother outside of a window, Johnny starts to feel on edge. Then he and his best friend find what looks to be a weird map of a cemetery in Dr. Ashburn''s house. One specific grave is marked with an "X," the burial place of a woman who practiced witchcraft in the seventeenth century. The townspeople recover from the flu, but they can''t escape the terrifying illusions and shadow people that now haunt them, unless Johnny and his friends find the key to unlock the secrets of the graveyard before a dreadful prophecy comes to pass . . . Praise for The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost "Fans of the series will enjoy this new supernatural adventure, which reads so much like Bellairs''s books that they won''t believe he didn''t write it." —School Library Journal "Strickland''s story is eerie, suspenseful, and true to the personalities and writing style of Bellairs, who began the Johnny Dixon series . . . This is good reading for adventure enthusiasts as well as for series fans." —Booklist

The New York Times–bestselling author of Fear of Flying celebrates witches in a gorgeously illustrated brew of witchcraft lore, potions, secrets, and myth. With a mix of genuine fascination, passionate enthusiasm, and keen feminist insight, Erica Jong wades through a bog of myths, misinformation, historical hysteria, and contemporary Halloween costumes to offer a generous exploration and celebration of witches. From their origins as descendants of ancient goddesses to contemporary practitioners of the craft, the evolution of the concept of "witch" has been as changeable as the centuries themselves. From evil crone to sexual seductress, they are the embodiment of both light and dark, fertility and death, divinity and paganism, baleful curses and healing cures. They have been scapegoated as the object of men''s worst fears and embraced as heroines of female empowerment. As muses, they have influenced popular culture from Shakespeare and Yeats to Anne Sexton and Ken Russell. With reverence and a hint of mischief, Jong reveals witches'' rites, rituals, and magical recipes, including authentic spells and incantations. "A steaming cauldron of beautifully illustrated prose, poetry, love potions and flying lotions" (Glamour) from the renowned author of Fanny, Witches is "nothing less than a complete transformation of our concept of witches . . . accomplishe[d] with panache in this sumptuously and provocatively illustrated book" (Publishers Weekly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erica Jong, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author''s personal collection.

A "rollicking and bawdy" tale of eighteenth-century England, inspired by Fanny Hill, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Fear of Flying (The Plain Dealer). Galloping from England to Africa to the high seas of the Caribbean, bestselling author Erica Jong''s "perverse epic" follows the amorous adventures of a woman of pleasure and pluck (The New York Times). Falling in with randy highwaymen, witches, kidnappers, pirate queens, prostitutes, and such luminaries as Jonathan Swift, William Hogarth, and Alexander Pope, Fanny is seeking much more than fortune. In this unexpurgated "memoir" by the girl made famous in John Cleland''s notorious Fanny Hill, our dauntless heroine finally reveals what really made her. Life begins somewhat ignobly for Fanny Hackabout-Jones. Abandoned as an infant on the doorstep of Lord and Lady Bellars''s grand Wiltshire manor, she contemplates the literary life as she grows to ripe young womanhood. Fanny chooses, however, to pursue a very different future when she flees to London to escape the mortifying advances of her adoptive father. There, on the road, her life truly begins. Cast by pernicious Fate—and her own audacious will—into a series of astonishing escapades, Fanny learns that a woman''s lot is not an easy one in these oppressive times. But she will not be discouraged, nor will she falter, on the uneven path toward notoriety, self-discovery, motherhood, and love. This is a delightful twist on classic literature—and "Erica Jong was the right person to write it" (Anthony Burgess, Saturday Review). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erica Jong including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author''s personal collection.

A courageous and enthralling collection of poems by Fear of Flying author Erica Jong celebrating life, art, sex, and womanhoodseven lives,then webecome light . . .Erica Jong''s novels are fearless and passionate. So, too, is her poetry. Though renowned—and sometimes vilified—for her unabashedly sensual fiction, the author considers herself a poet first and foremost. "It was my poetry," Jong writes, "that kept me sane, that kept me whole, that kept me alive."Becoming Light contains poems personally selected by Jong from her complete oeuvre of acclaimed published works—poems of love, sex, witches, gods, and demons; word-songs brimming with wit, heart, bitterness, sorrow, and truth. From the earliest poetic musings of a brilliant young artist first trying out her wings to later works born of experience and maturity, unpublished before appearing in this collection, Jong''s pure artistry shines like a beacon as she writes, fearlessly and passionately, about being a woman, about being alive.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erica Jong including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author''s personal collection.

Four volumes of history and biography for fans of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, with lore on the Royal Navy and much more.What is a sandgrouse, and where does it live? What are the medical properties of lignum vitae, and how did Stephen Maturin use it to repair his viola? Who is Adm. Lord Keith, and why is his wife so friendly with Capt. Jack Aubrey? More than any other contemporary author, Patrick O''Brian knew the past. His twenty Aubrey–Maturin novels, beginning with Master and Commander (1969), are distinguished by deep characterization, heart-stopping naval combat, and an attention to detail that enriches and enlivens his stories. In the revised edition of A Sea of Words, Dean King and his collaborators dive into Jack Aubrey''s world. In the revised edition of Harbors and High Seas, King details not just where Aubrey and Maturin went, but how they got there. Packed with maps and illustrations from the greatest age of sail, it is an incomparable reference for devotees of O''Brian''s novels and anyone who has dreamed of climbing aboard a warship, as well as a captivating portrait of life on the sea during a time when nothing stood between man and ocean but grit, daring, and a few creaking planks of wood. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the British navy was the mightiest instrument of war the world had ever known. The Royal Navy patrolled the seas from India to the Caribbean, connecting an empire with footholds in every corner of the earth. Such a massive navy required the service of more than 100,000 men—from officers to deckhands to surgeons. Their stories are collected in Every Man Will Do His Duty. The inspiration for the bestselling novels of Patrick O''Brian and C. S. Forester, these twenty-two memoirs and diaries, edited by Dean King, provide a true portrait of life aboard British warships during one of the most significant eras of world history. Patrick O''Brian was well into his seventies when the world fell in love with his greatest creation: the maritime adventures of Royal Navy Capt. Jack Aubrey and ship''s surgeon Stephen Maturin. But despite his fame, little detail was available about the life of the reclusive author, whose mysterious past King uncovers in this groundbreaking biography. King traces O''Brian''s personal history from his beginnings as a London-born Protestant named Richard Patrick Russ to his tortured relationship with his first wife and child to his emergence from World War II with the entirely new identity under which he would publish twenty volumes in the Aubrey–Maturin series. What King unearths is a life no less thrilling than the seafaring world of O''Brian''s imagination. Patrick O''Brian: A Life Revealed is a penetrating and insightful examination of one of the modern world''s most acclaimed historical novelists.

The World Fantasy Award winner by the author of the Hyperion Cantos and Carrion Comfort: An American finds himself encircled by horrors in Calcutta. Praised by Dean Koontz as "the best novel in the genre I can remember," Song of Kali follows an American magazine editor who journeys to the brutally bleak, poverty-stricken Indian city in search of a manuscript by a mysterious poet—but instead is drawn into an encounter with the cult of Kali, goddess of death. A chilling voyage into the squalor and violence of the human condition, this novel is considered by many to be the best work by the author of The Terror, who has been showered with accolades, including the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Hugo Award.