K.T.'s bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 21:53:06 -0700 60 K.T.'s bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 34083908
On TyrannyÌęis a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]>
110 Timothy Snyder 0804190127 K.T. 0 4.45 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2017
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<![CDATA[Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction]]> 100018
Miller first investigates how political philosophy tackles basic ethical questions such as 'how should we live together in society?' He furthermore looks at political authority, discusses the reasons society needs politics in the first place, explores the limitations of politics, and asks if there are areas of life that shouldn't be governed by politics. Moreover, he explores the connections between political authority and justice, a constant theme in political philosophy, and the ways in which social justice can be used to regulate rather than destroy a market economy.

In his travels through this realm, Miller covers why nations are the natural units of government and wonders if the rise of multiculturalism and transnational co-operation will change all this, and asks in the end if we will ever see the formation of a world government.

About the Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.]]>
160 David Miller 0192803956 K.T. 0 3.67 2003 Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
author: David Miller
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2003
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The Foucault Reader 770902 The Foucault Reader was commissioned precisely to serve that purpose.

The Reader contains selections from each area of Foucault's work as well as a wealth of previously unpublished writings, including important material written especially for this volume, the preface to the long-awaited second volume of The History of Sexuality, and interviews with Foucault himself, in the course of which he discussed his philosophy at first hand and with unprecedented candor.

This philosophy comprises an astonishing intellectual enterprise: a minute and ongoing investigation of the nature of power in society. Foucault's analyses of this power as it manifests itself in society, schools, hospitals, factories, homes, families, and other forms of organized society are brought together in The Foucault Reader to create an overview of this theme and of the broad social and political vision that underlies it.]]>
390 Michel Foucault 0394713400 K.T. 0 to-read 4.08 1984 The Foucault Reader
author: Michel Foucault
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1984
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Japanese Death Poems 60376
Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei , or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life.

Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined—from the poems of longing of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries.

Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.]]>
368 Yoel Hoffmann 0804831793 K.T. 0 to-read 4.24 1985 Japanese Death Poems
author: Yoel Hoffmann
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1985
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Hegel's Philosophy of Right 31412552 In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel expounds on the social, moral and legal philosophies the author conceived of - together, these provide the cornerstone of law for the modern state.
Acting to summarise several key tenets of his philosophy, Hegel commences with a discussion of the notion of free will. Linking this process to the complex arrangements of property rights, family life, economics and other core aspects of a civilised society, the philosopher argues that free will is maximised when a person is able and willing to participate in all of these societal aspects.
Successively, Hegel sets out the three spheres of right - each of which subsume the previous, being part of a larger overall mechanism referred to as the state. Hegel pointedly state that his is by no means a complete list - the history of human society, as viewed by Hegel, has seen a succession of corrections and refinements of the state's role in individual society.
Translated by academic S. W. Hyde, this edition of Hegel's Philosophy of Right - also known by its complete title Elements of the Philosophy of Right - is authoritative, comprehensive and unabridged.]]>
144 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1536822132 K.T. 0 to-read 4.00 1821 Hegel's Philosophy of Right
author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.00
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<![CDATA[Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo]]> 30292 Five Dialogues presents G. M. A. Grube's distinguished translations, as revised by John Cooper for Plato, Complete Works (Hacket, 1997). Cooper has also contributed a number of new or expanded footnotes and updated Suggestions for Further Reading.]]> 156 Plato 0872206335 K.T. 0 to-read 4.17 -385 Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo
author: Plato
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.17
book published: -385
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The Symposium 81779
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love--as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.

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.]]>
90 Plato 0140449272 K.T. 0 to-read 4.11 -380 The Symposium
author: Plato
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.11
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<![CDATA[Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?]]> 6452731
Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets―Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.

Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise―an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.]]>
308 Michael J. Sandel 0374180652 K.T. 0 currently-reading 4.30 2007 Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
author: Michael J. Sandel
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[An Introduction to Political Philosophy]]> 31851 240 Jonathan Wolff 019929609X K.T. 0 to-read 4.15 1996 An Introduction to Political Philosophy
author: Jonathan Wolff
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1996
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<![CDATA[My Heart and Other Black Holes]]> 18336965 A stunning novel about the transformative power of love, perfect for fans of Jay Asher and Laurie Halse Anderson

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There's only one she's not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel's convinced she's found her solution—Roman, a teenage boy who's haunted by a family tragedy, is looking for a partner. Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other's broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together.]]>
302 Jasmine Warga 0062324691 K.T. 3 3.97 2015 My Heart and Other Black Holes
author: Jasmine Warga
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X K.T. 0 to-read 4.38 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1946
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<![CDATA[Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)]]> 902715
Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country. Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory. There is only one problem � he commands the worst-armed, worst-trained, worst-led army in the world.

And Bayaz, the First of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past. The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish boy in the Union make a strange alliance, but a deadly one. They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters. If they didn't hate each other quite so much.

Ancient secrets will be uncovered. Bloody battles will be won and lost. Bitter enemies will be forgiven � but not before they are hanged.]]>
441 Joe Abercrombie 0575077883 K.T. 3 4.35 2007 Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2025/04/21
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The Republic 30289 416 Plato 0140449140 K.T. 0 to-read 3.97 -400 The Republic
author: Plato
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average rating: 3.97
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Mrs. Dalloway 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 K.T. 0 to-read 3.80 1925 Mrs. Dalloway
author: Virginia Woolf
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average rating: 3.80
book published: 1925
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The God Delusion 14743
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament, to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.

The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.]]>
374 Richard Dawkins 0618680004 K.T. 0 to-read 3.89 2006 The God Delusion
author: Richard Dawkins
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average rating: 3.89
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Two Treatises of Government 364550 464 John Locke 0521357306 K.T. 0 to-read 3.87 1689 Two Treatises of Government
author: John Locke
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1689
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The Elements of Style 33514 105 William Strunk Jr. K.T. 0 4.15 1918 The Elements of Style
author: William Strunk Jr.
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1918
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<![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]>
374 Suzanne Collins K.T. 4 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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Bird by Bird 12543 A newer edition of this title can be found here.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said. 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"

With this basic instruction always in mind, Anne Lamott returns to offer us a new gift: a step-by-step guide on how to write and on how to manage the writer's life. From "Getting Started,' with "Short Assignments," through "Shitty First Drafts," "Character," "Plot," "Dialogue." all the way from "False Starts" to "How Do You Know When You're Done?" Lamott encourages, instructs, and inspires. She discusses "Writers Block," "Writing Groups," and "Publication." Bracingly honest, she is also one of the funniest people alive.

If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive. And always, from the life of the artist she turns to the art of life.

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238 Anne Lamott K.T. 0 to-read 4.24 1994 Bird by Bird
author: Anne Lamott
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1994
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<![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]>
464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 K.T. 0 to-read 4.36 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
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Beach Read 52195137
They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.]]>
380 Emily Henry K.T. 3 4.10 2020 Beach Read
author: Emily Henry
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order]]> 413179 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the most important books to have emerged since the end of the Cold War." --HENRY A. KISSINGER

Based on the author's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism. In this incisive work, the renowned political scientist explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.

"An intellectual tour de force: bold, imaginative, and provocative. A seminal work that will revolutionize our understanding of international affairs." --ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

"The book is studded with insights, flashes of rare brilliance, great learning, and in particular, an ability to see the familiar in a new and provocative way." --MICHAEL ELLIOTT, THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

"A benchmark for informed speculation on those always fascinating questions: Just where are we in history? What hidden hand is controlling our destiny?...A searching reflection on our global state." --RICHARD BERNSTEIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"This is what is so stunning about The Clash of Civilizations: It is not just about the future, but may actually help to shape it." --WANG GUNGWU, THE NATIONAL INTEREST]]>
368 Samuel P. Huntington 0684844419 K.T. 0 to-read 3.76 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
author: Samuel P. Huntington
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1996
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To the Lighthouse 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]>
209 Virginia Woolf K.T. 0 to-read 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
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The Waves 46114 The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.]]> 297 Virginia Woolf 0156949601 K.T. 0 to-read 4.17 1931 The Waves
author: Virginia Woolf
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1931
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A Room of One’s Own 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf K.T. 0 to-read 4.22 1929 A Room of One’s Own
author: Virginia Woolf
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1929
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<![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]>
151 Becky Chambers K.T. 0 to-read 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
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average rating: 4.25
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Critique of Pure Reason 18288 'The purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason consists in the attempt to change the old procedure of metaphysics and to bring about a complete revolution'

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is the central text of modern philosophy. It presents a profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together the two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.]]>
785 Immanuel Kant 0521657296 K.T. 0 to-read 3.95 1781 Critique of Pure Reason
author: Immanuel Kant
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1781
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<![CDATA[The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression]]> 13932
The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has had on various demographic populations around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness.

The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the reader's view of the world.]]>
576 Andrew Solomon 0684854678 K.T. 0 currently-reading 4.18 2000 The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
author: Andrew Solomon
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
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<![CDATA[Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon]]> 2067
For a growing number of people, there is nothing more important than religion. It is an integral part of their marriage, child rearing, and community. In this daring new book, distinguished philosopher Daniel C. Dennett takes a hard look at this phenomenon and asks why. Where does our devotion to God come from and what purpose does it serve? Is religion a blind evolutionary compulsion or a rational choice? In "Breaking the Spell," Dennett argues that the time has come to shed the light of science on the fundamental questions of faith. In a spirited narrative that ranges widely through history, philosophy, and psychology, Dennett explores how organized religion evolved from folk beliefs and why it is such a potent force today. Deftly and lucidly, he contends that the "belief in belief" has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and the relationship between divinity and human need.

"Breaking the Spell" is not an antireligious screed but rather an eyeopening exploration of the role that belief plays in our lives, our interactions, and our country. With the gulf between rationalists and adherents of "intelligent design" widening daily, Dennett has written a timely and provocative book that will be read and passionately debated by believers and nonbelievers alike.]]>
464 Daniel C. Dennett 067003472X K.T. 0 to-read 3.89 2006 Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
author: Daniel C. Dennett
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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All the Bright Places 18460392 The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Elle Fanning!
Ìę
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Ìę
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
Ìę
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wondersâ€� of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
Ìę
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.]]>
388 Jennifer Niven 0385755880 K.T. 0 to-read 4.12 2015 All the Bright Places
author: Jennifer Niven
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2015
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Speak 39280444
"Speak up for yourself—we want to know what you have to say."

From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.

In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.

Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.]]>
224 Laurie Halse Anderson 0374311250 K.T. 0 to-read 4.13 1999 Speak
author: Laurie Halse Anderson
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy]]> 123637491 Ìę
To understand world politics, you need to understand how states think. Are states rational? Much of international relations theory assumes that they are. But many scholars believe that political leaders rarely act rationally. The issue is crucial for both the study and practice of international politics, for only if states are rational can scholars and policymakers understand and predict their behavior.
Ìę
John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato argue that rational decisions in international politics rest on credible theories about how the world works and emerge from deliberative decision‑making processes. Using these criteria, they conclude that most states are rational most of the time, even if they are not always successful. Mearsheimer and Rosato make the case for their position, examining whether past and present world leaders, including George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, have acted rationally in the context of momentous historical events, including both world wars, the Cold War, and the post–Cold War era. Ìę
Ìę
By examining this fundamental concept in a novel and comprehensive manner, Mearsheimer and Rosato show how leaders think, and how to make policy for dealing with other states.]]>
304 John J. Mearsheimer 0300269307 K.T. 2 3.73 How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy
author: John J. Mearsheimer
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.73
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rating: 2
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date added: 2025/04/05
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<![CDATA[Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness]]> 36505581
In the summer of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.

Darkness Visible tells the story of Styron’s recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and “once again behold the stars.â€�

This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.]]>
98 William Styron K.T. 5 4.15 1990 Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
author: William Styron
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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The Anatomy of Melancholy 557658 1392 Robert Burton 0940322668 K.T. 0 to-read 4.17 1621 The Anatomy of Melancholy
author: Robert Burton
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1621
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<![CDATA[The Perks of Being a Wallflower]]> 22628 offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see
what it looks like from the dance floor.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

(back cover)]]>
213 Stephen Chbosky K.T. 0 to-read 4.24 1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower
author: Stephen Chbosky
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Essence of Christianity (Great Books in Philosophy)]]> 148488 364 Ludwig Feuerbach 0879755598 K.T. 0 to-read 3.79 1841 The Essence of Christianity (Great Books in Philosophy)
author: Ludwig Feuerbach
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1841
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Putting the Fact in Fantasy: Expert Advice to Bring Authenticity to Your Fantasy Writing]]> 58735039
Whether it's correctly naming the parts of a horse, knowing how lords and ladies address one another, or building a realistic fantasy army, getting the details right takes fantasy writing to the next level. Featuring some of the most popular articles from Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy blog as well as several never-before-seen essays, this book gives aspiring and established fantasy writers alike an essential foundation to the fascinating history and cultures of our own world, which serve as a jumping-off point for more inspired and convincing fantasy.]]>
352 Dan Koboldt 0593331990 K.T. 0 to-read 4.10 2022 Putting the Fact in Fantasy: Expert Advice to Bring Authenticity to Your Fantasy Writing
author: Dan Koboldt
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
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Letter to a Christian Nation 51299 The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his argument, he addresses current topics ranging from intelligent design and stem-cell research to the connections between religion and violence. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in our nation.]]> 96 Sam Harris 0307265773 K.T. 0 to-read 3.98 2006 Letter to a Christian Nation
author: Sam Harris
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam]]> 3873 496 Karen Armstrong 0517223120 K.T. 0 to-read 3.89 1993 A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
author: Karen Armstrong
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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Mortality 13529055 Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for "Vanity Fair," he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis.

Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this account of his affliction, he describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of mortality.]]>
104 Christopher Hitchens 1455502758 K.T. 0 to-read 4.09 2012 Mortality
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
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<![CDATA[The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason]]> 29501 The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.

Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.]]>
348 Sam Harris 0393327655 K.T. 0 to-read 3.89 2004 The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
author: Sam Harris
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
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<![CDATA[God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]> 43369 307 Christopher Hitchens 0446579807 K.T. 0 to-read 3.94 2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 1]]> 58093348
Though she looks ordinary, Maomao has a quick wit, a sharp mind, and an extensive knowledge of medicine. That’s her secret, until she encounters a resident of the palace at least as perceptive as she is: the head eunuch, Jinshi. He sees through Maomao’s façade and makes her a lady-in-waiting to none other than the Emperor’s favorite consort... so she can taste the lady’s food for poison!

At her lady’s side, Maomao starts to learn about everything that goes on in the rear palace—not all of it seemly. Can she ever lead a quiet life, or will her powers of deduction and insatiable curiosity bring her ever more adventures, and ever more dangers?]]>
226 Natsu Hyuuga K.T. 0 to-read 4.51 2014 The Apothecary Diaries (Light Novel): Volume 1
author: Natsu Hyuuga
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The World in Conflict: Understanding the world's troublespots]]> 29855928 320 John Andrews 1781253684 K.T. 0 to-read 3.79 2016 The World in Conflict: Understanding the world's troublespots
author: John Andrews
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]]> 130119 96 David Hume 1420926993 K.T. 0 to-read 3.93 1748 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
author: David Hume
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1748
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and ... Conceptions of the Human Condition (Paradigm)]]> 2430265 112 Marshall Sahlins 0979405726 K.T. 0 to-read 4.14 2008 The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and ... Conceptions of the Human Condition (Paradigm)
author: Marshall Sahlins
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)]]> 45857086 The exciting end to The Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect.

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead.Ìę

Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.Ìę

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?Ìę]]>
622 R.F. Kuang 0008339147 K.T. 0 to-read 4.29 2020 The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)
author: R.F. Kuang
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
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<![CDATA[The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)]]> 41212753
With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.

But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance

The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.]]>
654 R.F. Kuang 0062662635 K.T. 0 to-read 4.35 2019 The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)
author: R.F. Kuang
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction � but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]>
845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 K.T. 0 to-read 4.18 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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Air Awakens (Air Awakens, #1) 23127048 A library apprentice, a sorcerer prince, and an unbreakable magic bond...

The Solaris Empire is one conquest away from uniting the continent, and the rare elemental magic sleeping in seventeen-year-old library apprentice Vhalla Yarl could shift the tides of war.

Vhalla has always been taught to fear the Tower of Sorcerers, a mysterious magic society, and has been happy in her quiet world of books. But after she unknowingly saves the life of one of the most powerful sorcerers of them all—the Crown Prince Aldrik—she finds herself enticed into his world.

Now she must decide her future: Embrace her sorcery and leave the life she’s known, or eradicate her magic and remain as she’s always been. And with powerful forces lurking in the shadows, Vhalla’s indecision could cost her more than she ever imagined.]]>
342 Elise Kova 1932549935 K.T. 0 to-read 3.96 2015 Air Awakens (Air Awakens, #1)
author: Elise Kova
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy K.T. 3 4.18 1985 Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2025/03/26
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<![CDATA[A Study in Drowning (A Study in Drowning, #1)]]> 75302266 Angharad—Emrys Myrddin’s epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, then destroys him—is the only thing keeping her afloat. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain it’s her destiny.

But musty, decrepit Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task, and its residents are far from welcoming. Including Preston HĂ©loury, a stodgy young literature scholar determined to expose Myrddin as a fraud. As the two rivals piece together clues about Myrddin’s legacy, dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspire against them—and the truth may bring them both to ruin.]]>
378 Ava Reid 0063211505 K.T. 0 to-read 3.73 2023 A Study in Drowning (A Study in Drowning, #1)
author: Ava Reid
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 767171 No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

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1147 William L. Shirer 0671728687 K.T. 0 to-read 4.20 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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Leviathan 91953 'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'

Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a 'common-wealth' under a powerful sovereign - or 'Leviathan' - to enforce security and the rule of law, shocked his contemporaries, and his book was publicly burnt for sedition the moment it was published. But his penetrating work of political philosophy - now fully revised and with a new introduction for this edition - opened up questions about the nature of statecraft and society that influenced governments across the world.]]>
736 Thomas Hobbes 0140431950 K.T. 0 to-read 3.71 1651 Leviathan
author: Thomas Hobbes
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1651
rating: 0
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The Silent Patient 211422402 Only I can make her speak.

I love him so totally, completely, sometimes it threatens to overwhelm me.
Sometimes I think-
No. I won't write about that.

ALICIA
Alicia Berenson writes a diary as a release, an outlet - and to prove to her beloved husband that everything is fine. She can't bear the thought of worrying Gabriel, or causing him pain.

Until, late one evening, Alicia shoots Gabriel five times and then never speaks another word.

THEO
Forensic psychotherapist Theo Faber is convinced he can successfully treat Alicia, where all others have failed. Obsessed with investigating her crime, his discoveries suggest Alicia's silence goes far deeper than he first thought.

And if she speaks, would he want to hear the truth?

]]>
340 Alex Michaelides K.T. 2 4.18 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/22
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<![CDATA[Paladin's Grace (The Saint of Steel, #1)]]> 50702014 Stephen's god died on the longest day of the year�

Three years later, Stephen is a broken paladin, living only for the chance to be useful before he dies. But all that changes when he encounters a fugitive named Grace in an alley and witnesses an assassination attempt gone wrong. Now the pair must navigate a web of treachery, beset on all sides by spies and poisoners, while a cryptic killer stalks one step behind�

From the Hugo and Nebula Award winning author of Swordheart and The Twisted Ones comes a saga of murder, magic, and love on the far side of despair.]]>
366 T. Kingfisher K.T. 0 to-read 4.08 2020 Paladin's Grace (The Saint of Steel, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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The Social Contract 12651
These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contractâ€�, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.]]>
168 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 0143037498 K.T. 0 3.80 1762 The Social Contract
author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1762
rating: 0
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Being and Time 92307 589 Martin Heidegger 0060638508 K.T. 0 to-read 4.04 1927 Being and Time
author: Martin Heidegger
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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Anarchy, State, and Utopia 479572 It won the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the "100 most influential books since the war" (1945�1995) by the U.K. Times Literary Supplement.]]> 367 Robert Nozick 0465097200 K.T. 0 to-read 3.75 1974 Anarchy, State, and Utopia
author: Robert Nozick
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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A Treatise of Human Nature 80311 434 David Hume 1406927554 K.T. 0 to-read 3.94 1739 A Treatise of Human Nature
author: David Hume
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1739
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Second Treatise of Government (Hackett Classics)]]> 448836 Second Treatise of Government (1690). The principles of individual liberty, the rule of law, government by consent of the people, and the right to private property are taken for granted as fundamental to the human condition now. Most liberal theorists writing today look back to Locke as the source of their ideas. Some maintain that religious fundamentalism, "post-modernism," and socialism are today the only remaining ideological threats to liberalism. To the extent that this is true, these ideologies are ultimately attacks on the ideas that Locke, arguably more than any other, helped to make the universal vocabulary of political discourse.]]> 124 John Locke 0915144867 K.T. 0 to-read 3.79 1689 Second Treatise of Government (Hackett Classics)
author: John Locke
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1689
rating: 0
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The Stand 87591651
For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are listening to The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.]]>
Stephen King K.T. 3 4.42 1978 The Stand
author: Stephen King
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2025/03/18
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Common Sense 161744 Pennsylvania Magazine. On January 10, 1776, he published his pamphlet Common Sense, a persuasive argument for the colonies' political and economic separation from Britain.

Common Sense cites the evils of monarchy, accuses the British government of inflicting economic and social injustices upon the colonies, and points to the absurdity of an island attempting to rule a continent. Credited by George Washington as having changed the minds of many of his countrymen, the document sold over 500,000 copies within a few months.

Today, Common Sense remains a landmark document in the struggle for freedom, distinguished not only by Paine's ideas but also by its clear and passionate presentation. Designed to ignite public opinion against autocratic rule, the pamphlet offered a careful balance between imagination and judgment, and appropriate language and expression to fit the subject. It immediately found a receptive audience, heartened Washington's despondent army, and foreshadowed much of the phrasing and substance of the Declaration of Independence.]]>
104 Thomas Paine 0143036254 K.T. 0 to-read 3.96 1776 Common Sense
author: Thomas Paine
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1776
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Discourses and Selected Writings]]> 4143812 Enchiridion, a manual of his main ideas, and the fragments collected here, The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of Stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love, and leaves an intriguing document of daily life in the classical world.

In the introduction that accompanies his lively new translation, Robert Dobbin discusses Epictetus' life, his place in the Stoic tradition, his influence on world philosophies and his relevance in the modern day. This edition also includes a bibliography, notes and a glossary of names.]]>
276 Epictetus 0140449469 K.T. 0 to-read 4.41 108 Discourses and Selected Writings
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<![CDATA[On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas)]]> 97412 106 Seneca 0143036327 K.T. 0 to-read 4.20 49 On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas)
author: Seneca
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average rating: 4.20
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Ten Myths About Israel 31171856
In this groundbreaking book, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Occupation, the outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel.

The “ten mythsâ€� that Pappe explores—repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, accepted without question by the world’s governments—reinforce the regional status quo. He explores the claim that Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration, as well as the formation of Zionism and its role in the early decades of nation building. He asks whether the Palestinians voluntarily left their homeland in 1948, and whether June 1967 was a war of “no choice.â€� Turning to the myths surrounding the failures of the Camp David Accords and the official reasons for the attacks on Gaza, Pappe explains why the two-state solution is no longer viable.]]>
192 Ilan Pappé 1786630192 K.T. 0 4.39 2017 Ten Myths About Israel
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<![CDATA[Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy]]> 31862
This edition also includes the "Meditations" and the letter-preface to "The Principles of Philosophy".]]>
103 René Descartes 0872204200 K.T. 0 to-read 3.78 1637 Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
author: René Descartes
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.78
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<![CDATA[The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)]]> 186074
The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.]]>
662 Patrick Rothfuss 075640407X K.T. 4 4.52 2007 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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Swordheart 42747739 426 T. Kingfisher 1614504636 K.T. 0 to-read 4.06 2018 Swordheart
author: T. Kingfisher
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
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<![CDATA[Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life]]> 2068 588 Daniel C. Dennett 068482471X K.T. 0 to-read 4.07 1995 Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
author: Daniel C. Dennett
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1995
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Utopia 18414 Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.]]> 113 Thomas More 0140449108 K.T. 0 to-read 3.53 1516 Utopia
author: Thomas More
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.53
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World Order 20821140 World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era—advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the central foreign policy events of recent decades—Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.

There has never been a true “world order,â€� Kissinger observes. For most of history, civilizations defined their own concepts of order. Each considered itself the center of the world and envisioned its distinct principles as universally relevant. China conceived of a global cultural hierarchy with the Emperor at its pinnacle. In Europe, Rome imagined itself surrounded by barbarians; when Rome fragmented, European peoples refined a concept of an equilibrium of sovereign states and sought to export it across the world. Islam, in its early centuries, considered itself the world’s sole legitimate political unit, destined to expand indefinitely until the world was brought into harmony by religious principles. The United States was born of a conviction about the universal applicability of democracy—a conviction that has guided its policies ever since.

Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historical concepts of world order are meeting. Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Yet there is no consensus among the major actors about the rules and limits guiding this process, or its ultimate destination. The result is mounting tension.

Grounded in Kissinger’s deep study of history and his experience as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, World Order guides readers through crucial episodes in recent world history. Kissinger offers a unique glimpse into the inner deliberations of the Nixon administration’s negotiations with Hanoi over the end of the Vietnam War, as well as Ronald Reagan’s tense debates with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavík. He offers compelling insights into the future of U.S.–China relations and the evolution of the European Union, and examines lessons of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking readers from his analysis of nuclear negotiations with Iran through the West’s response to the Arab Spring and tensions with Russia over Ukraine, World Order anchors Kissinger’s historical analysis in the decisive events of our time.

Provocative and articulate, blending historical insight with geopolitical prognostication, World Order is a unique work that could come only from a lifelong policymaker and diplomat.]]>
420 Henry Kissinger 1594206147 K.T. 0 to-read 4.04 2014 World Order
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average rating: 4.04
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Perpetual Peace 691272 72 Immanuel Kant 1596055499 K.T. 0 to-read 3.67 1795 Perpetual Peace
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average rating: 3.67
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Phenomenology of Spirit 9454 640 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 0198245971 K.T. 0 to-read 3.96 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit
author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.96
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<![CDATA[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]> 90078 355 John Locke 1406790273 K.T. 0 to-read 3.87 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
author: John Locke
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average rating: 3.87
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A Theory of Justice 129237
Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition - justice as fairness - and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.]]>
824 John Rawls 0674017722 K.T. 0 to-read 3.95 1971 A Theory of Justice
author: John Rawls
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.95
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Diplomacy 781183
The seminal work on foreign policy and the art of diplomacy.

Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America’s approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations.

Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifetime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is vital reading for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.]]>
912 Henry Kissinger 0671510991 K.T. 0 to-read 4.25 1994 Diplomacy
author: Henry Kissinger
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The Myth of Sisyphus 91950 The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.]]> 192 Albert Camus 0141182008 K.T. 0 to-read 4.25 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus
author: Albert Camus
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.25
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The Midnight Library 52578297
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]>
288 Matt Haig 0525559477 K.T. 0 to-read 3.96 2020 The Midnight Library
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average rating: 3.96
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The Birth of Tragedy 2823 The Birth of Tragedy has become a key text in European culture and in literary criticism.]]> 121 Friedrich Nietzsche 0140433392 K.T. 0 to-read 4.01 1871 The Birth of Tragedy
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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average rating: 4.01
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<![CDATA[The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs]]> 94578 "[This book] mirrors all of Nietzsche's thought and could be related in hundreds of ways to his other books, his notes, and his letters. And yet it is complete in itself. For it is a work of art." —Walter Kaufmann in the Introduction

Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.

Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.

Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.

Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche.]]>
396 Friedrich Nietzsche 0394719859 K.T. 0 to-read 4.29 1882 The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.29
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On the Genealogy of Morals 80449 On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is a book about the history of ethics and about interpretation. Nietzsche rewrites the former as a history of cruelty, exposing the central values of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal traditions - compassion, equality, justice - as the product of a brutal process of conditioning designed to domesticate the animal vitality of earlier cultures. The result is a book which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both ethics and interpretation. Nietzsche questions moral certainties by showing that religion and science have no claim to absolute truth, before turning on his own arguments in order to call their very presuppositions into question. The Genealogy is the most sustained of Nietzsche's later works and offers one of the fullest expressions of his characteristic concerns. This edition places his ideas within the cultural context of his own time and stresses the relevance of his work for a contemporary audience.]]> 208 Friedrich Nietzsche 019283617X K.T. 0 to-read 4.16 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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average rating: 4.16
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Letters from a Stoic 97411 No man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-AD 65) is one of the most famous Roman philosophers. Instrumental in guiding the Roman Empire under emperor Nero, Seneca influenced him from a young age with his Stoic principles. Later in life, he wrote Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, or Letters from a Stoic, detailing these principles in full.

Seneca’s letters read like a diary or a handbook of philosophical meditations. Often beginning with observations on daily life, the letters focus on many traditional themes of Stoic philosophy, such as the contempt of death, the value of friendship, and virtue as the supreme good.

Using Gummere’s translation from the early twentieth century, this selection of Seneca’s letters shows his belief in the austere, ethical ideals of Stoicism â€� teachings we can still learn from today.]]>
254 Seneca 0140442103 K.T. 0 to-read 4.33 64 Letters from a Stoic
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra 51893 Thus Spoke Zarathustra is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale in Penguin Classics.

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche's utterance 'God is dead', his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life passionate, chaotic and free.]]>
327 Friedrich Nietzsche K.T. 0 to-read 4.10 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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average rating: 4.10
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Meditations 30659 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.]]> 254 Marcus Aurelius 0140449337 K.T. 0 to-read 4.29 180 Meditations
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.29
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<![CDATA[Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)]]> 17332218 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance, Book Two of the Stormlight Archive, continues the immersive fantasy epic that The Way of Kings began.

Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status "darkeyes." Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.

The Assassin, Szeth, is active again, murdering rulers all over the world of Roshar, using his baffling powers to thwart every bodyguard and elude all pursuers. Among his prime targets is Highprince Dalinar, widely considered the power behind the Alethi throne. His leading role in the war would seem reason enough, but the Assassin's master has much deeper motives.

Brilliant but troubled Shallan strives along a parallel path. Despite being broken in ways she refuses to acknowledge, she bears a terrible burden: to somehow prevent the return of the legendary Voidbringers and the civilization-ending Desolation that will follow. The secrets she needs can be found at the Shattered Plains, but just arriving there proves more difficult than she could have imagined.

Meanwhile, at the heart of the Shattered Plains, the Parshendi are making an epochal decision. Hard pressed by years of Alethi attacks, their numbers ever shrinking, they are convinced by their war leader, Eshonai, to risk everything on a desperate gamble with the very supernatural forces they once fled. The possible consequences for Parshendi and humans alike, indeed, for Roshar itself, are as dangerous as they are incalculable.]]>
1088 Brandon Sanderson 0765326361 K.T. 0 to-read 4.76 2014 Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.76
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Mere Christianity 11138 191 C.S. Lewis 0684823780 K.T. 0 4.32 1952 Mere Christianity
author: C.S. Lewis
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1952
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White Nights 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky K.T. 4 4.16 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy]]> 224127 484 John J. Mearsheimer 0374177724 K.T. 0 to-read 4.06 2006 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
author: John J. Mearsheimer
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
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The Cold War: A New History 28432 The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.

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352 John Lewis Gaddis 0143038273 K.T. 0 to-read 3.93 2005 The Cold War: A New History
author: John Lewis Gaddis
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.93
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<![CDATA[The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution]]> 9704856
Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last ManÌęand one of our mostÌęimportant political thinkers,Ìęprovides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The OriginsÌęof Political OrderÌębegins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning ofÌęthe rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.

Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.]]>
585 Francis Fukuyama 0374227349 K.T. 0 to-read 4.17 2011 The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
author: Francis Fukuyama
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
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All the Seas of the World 58863528 A Brightness Long Ago and Children of Earth and Sky, international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay deploys his signature ‘quarter turn to the fantasticâ€� to tell a story of vengeance, power, and love.

On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small.

One of those arriving at that beach is a woman abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude. Having escaped, she is trying to chart her own course � and is bent upon revenge. Another is a seafaring merchant who still remembers being exiled as a child with his family from their home, for their faith, a moment that never leaves him. In what follows, through a story both intimate and epic, unforgettable characters are immersed in the fierce and deadly struggles that define their time.

All the Seas of the World is a page-turning drama that also offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives � in the past, and today.

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528 Guy Gavriel Kay 0593441044 K.T. 0 to-read 4.06 2022 All the Seas of the World
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name: K.T.
average rating: 4.06
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Autocracy, Inc. 183932735 224 Anne Applebaum 0241627893 K.T. 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Autocracy, Inc.
author: Anne Applebaum
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.21
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<![CDATA[Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages]]> 57347786 An epic reappraisal of the medieval world--and the rich and complicated legacy left to us by the rise of the West--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars.

When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era--and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation. In a gripping narrative bursting with big names--from St Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet Muhammad and Eleanor of Aquitaine--Dan Jones charges through the history of the Middle Ages. Powers and Thrones takes readers on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West, and culminates in the first contact between the old and new worlds in the sixteenth century.

The medieval world was forged by the big forces that still occupy us today: climate change, pandemic disease, mass migration, and technological revolutions. This was the time when the great European nationalities were formed; when our basic Western systems of law and governance were codified; when the Christian Churches matured as both powerful institutions and the regulators of Western public morality; and when art, architecture, philosophical inquiry and scientific invention went through periods of massive, revolutionary change. At each stage in this story, successive western powers thrived by attracting--or stealing--the most valuable resources, ideas, and people from the rest of the world.

The West was rebuilt on the ruins of an empire and emerged from a state of crisis and collapse to dominate the region and the world. Every sphere of human life and activity was transformed in the thousand years of Powers and Thrones. As we face a critical turning point in our own millennium, the legacy and lessons of how we got here matter more than ever.]]>
636 Dan Jones 198488087X K.T. 0 to-read 4.37 2021 Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages
author: Dan Jones
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
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<![CDATA[The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)]]> 123224262 624 Brandon Sanderson K.T. 0 to-read 4.51 2007 The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[The Constitution of the United Kingdom: A Contextual Analysis (Constitutional Systems of the World)]]> 503540 239 Peter Leyland 1841136662 K.T. 0 to-read 3.32 2007 The Constitution of the United Kingdom: A Contextual Analysis (Constitutional Systems of the World)
author: Peter Leyland
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England]]> 15811559
We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights.

This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Year’s War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of 'Game of Thrones.]]>
534 Dan Jones 0670026654 K.T. 0 to-read 4.22 2012 The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
author: Dan Jones
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 14201
Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange.

Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.]]>
1006 Susanna Clarke K.T. 0 to-read 3.84 2004 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
author: Susanna Clarke
name: K.T.
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
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Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]>
272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X K.T. 5 4.22 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
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<![CDATA[The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)]]> 13662
Then a wizard, Ged Sparrowhawk, comes to steal the Tombsâ€� greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. Tenar’s duty is to protect the Ring, but Ged possesses the light of magic and tales of a world that Tenar has never known. Will Tenar risk everything to escape from the darkness that has become her domain?]]>
180 Ursula K. Le Guin 0689845367 K.T. 3 4.12 1971 The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: K.T.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
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