According to an ancient and still popular view -- sometimes known as 'eudaimonism' -- a person's well-being, or quality of life, is ultimately determined by his or her level of happiness. According to this view, the happier a person is, the better off he is. The doctrine is controversial in part because the nature of happiness is controversial. In What Is This Thing Called Happiness? Fred Feldman presents a study of the nature and value of happiness. Part One contains critical dis...

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

This book presents and defends a novel theory of distributive justice, according to which political economic distributive justice reigns in a state if the government of that state ensures that citizens receive the benefits and burdens they deserve from it. The book starts with a more precise characterization of the target of this inquiry - political economic distributive justice. It then proceeds to explicate the concept of desert, evaluate proposed ways of justifying desert claims, formul...

What is death? Do people survive death? What do we mean when we say that someone is "dying"? Presenting a clear and engaging discussion of the classic philosophical questions surrounding death, this book studies the great metaphysical and moral problems of death. In the first part, Feldman shows that a definition of life is necessary before death can be defined. After exploring several of the most plausible accounts of the nature of life and demonstrating their failure, he goes on to propo...

A story ultimately without a time and ultimately without a place. It's a memoir of families across generations of peace and of war, of homes that become lost and hopes that are kept, and a belief in a future that's better than the present.The book is a compelling and exhilarating experience exploring the threads of times now long gone and the memories that arose from them to generate the stories that lived on. In each family, a fundamental life event spawns ripples...

The Lower East Side of New York City, now famous for its gentrification, was once a very different place. It was, of course, very well-known for the role it played housing the immigrants from Eastern Europe. But as 1900 was turning into the twenty-first century, the Lower East Side was alive with singers, musicians, actors, writers, and directors. They would form companies and rent fifty-seat storefronts and put on their plays and musicals.It was in this time that the one-a...

This edition of the collected short stories is a distillation of many works written by Fred Feldman. They focus on the private lives of outwardly successful middle class Americans. These stories examine their personal successes and many hidden insecurities.

How to Save the World on $5 a Day provides a fascinating, multi-cultural look at the history and traditions of charitable giving, and offers innovative instruction on the theory and practice of a new form of altruism dubbed personal philanthropy - all in the form of an inspirational novelette.Designed to be read in a single sitting, this Parable of Personal Philanthropy” uses the unexpected meeting and burgeoning romance between a passio...

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

‘A dazzling and virtuosic adventure’ Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the SeaInternationally Bestselling Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008‘With Ilustrado, Miguel Syjuco obliges us to remake the canons of our great classics of contemporary literature. Ilustrado is, literally, a masterpiece’ Alberto ManguelIt begins with a body. One anonymous winter day, the corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River. Gone is the controver...

This enduring bestseller remains the most comprehensive examination of constructivism and its relationship to teaching and learning. Closing the gap between theory and practice, well-known scholars make constructivism accessible by showing its application in everyday classrooms. Building on the success of the first edition, the authors have completely updated this popular text and expanded its scope to include examples of constructivist teaching across all grade levels and disciplines....

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Bullshit, the case for worrying less about the rich and more about the poorEconomic inequality is one of the most divisive issues of our time. Yet few would argue that inequality is a greater evil than poverty. The poor suffer because they don't have enough, not because others have more, and some have far too much. So why do many people appear to be more distressed by the rich than by the poor...