Books to help you think through your personal values.

Are the Rich Necessary?
Great Economic Arguments and How They Reflect Our Personal Values
UPDATED AND EXPANDED PAPERBACK EDITION!!!

by Hunter Lewis

Are the rich necessary? Are the rich compatible with democracy? Should we accept so much inequality in our society? Does the profit system glorify greed?

Lewis addresses these and other provocative questions in a clear, objective and easy-to-follow journey through the great economic arguments of our day. In an always lively point-counterpoint style, he challenges conventional positions on both sides of each issue.

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Where Keynes Went Wrong
And Why World Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts

by Hunter Lewis

When the world financial system failed in 2008, world governments intervened decisively. Guided by economics teams with impeccable credentials, they intended not only to “stimulate” the economy, but to “jolt” it back to borrowing and spending as usual. All of these actions were taken from a playbook devised by British economist John Maynard Keynes, by far the most influential social thinker of the past century.

But . . . not all economists agree. Some critics of Keynesian orthodoxy ask: Isn’t the root problem that Americans have borrowed too much? Will even more borrowing, this time by government, really help us out of the bind we are in? Should we be relying so completely on Keynes? What if he is wrong? What evidence is there that he is right?

These are important questions. If Keynes is wrong, then so are the economic policies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and virtually all world governments today.

Where Keynes Went Wrong presents the economic arguments that will shape our future in a lively, stimulating, and transparently clear style.

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The Wisdom of the Jewish Mystics

by Alan Unterman

The Wisdom of the Jewish Mystics is a selection of the most important writings, commentary, and ideas of the Jewish mystical tradition through the ages. The sayings are drawn primarily from the great Hasidic writers, who produced a new genre of mystical literature for laypeople. In his introduction, Dr. Unterman explains the background of kabbalistic thought and distills the quintessence of the mystics’ wisdom. “Reality is the clothing of . . . the Godhead itself,” he writes. “The mystic breaks through [the] perceptions which only tell us about the clothing, not about that which is clothed.”

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The Wisdom of the Sufis

by Kenneth Cragg

In his introduction to the anthology The Wisdom of the Sufis, Kenneth Cragg offers the Western reader valuable insight into the religion and richly poetic literature of the Middle East, and the esoteric, deeply experiential inner tradition of Islam. Bishop Cragg’s selections of prayers and legends concern the task, search, and goal of the Sufi mystic—the dervish—and his introduction explains the unlikely growth of mysticism out of medieval orthodox Islam.

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Sicilian Carousel

by Lawrence Durrell

Although Durrell spent much of his life beside the Mediterranean, he wrote relatively little about Italy; it was always somewhere that he was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sicilian Carousel is his only piece of extended writing on the country and, naturally enough for the islomaniac Durrell, it focuses on one of Italy's islands. Sicilian Carousel came relatively late in Durrell's career, and is based around a slightly fictionalized bus tour of the island. As Time Magazine put it, “His travel books arrive like long letters from a civilized and very funny friend—the prose as luminous as the Mediterranean air he loves.”

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Moral Foundations: An Introduction to Ethics

by Alexander Skutch

Moral Foundations embodies Skutch’s lifelong inquiry into the structure of moral relations and the sources of morality. Skutch—naturalist, ornithologist, philosopher and author of over 30 books—completed his life’s work with Moral Foundations, a tour de force of analysis, research and critical thinking and an important contribution to the study of ethics and philosophy.

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Bohemia: Where Art, Angst, Love, and Strong Coffee Meet

by Herbert Gold

Bruce Cook of the Washington Post Book World has written that “Bohemia has become an acceptable, even desirable lifestyle all around America, and indeed the world over.” But to understand how this happened, how an “alternative” lifestyle became so mainstream, and also to visit what many consider to be Bohemia’s golden age, there is no better source than Gold.

Herbert Gold was awarded the Sherwood Anderson Prize for fiction in 1989. Raised in Cleveland, he has lived in various Islands of Bohemia, including Greenwich Village, Paris, Haiti, and South Beach in Miami. He is a longtime resident of San Francisco.

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Ethics Since 1900, 3rd Edition

by Mary Warnock

About Ethics Since 1900, the Times Literary Supplement (London) has said, “In this lively and fascinating book Mrs. Warnock tells with admirable clarity the story of the development of English moral philosophy in the twentieth century . . . most attractively written, spontaneous, forthright and unfuzzy.”

Mary Warnock has taught philosophy at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. She is the author of a number of books on philosophy, including The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Ethics, and most recently Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?

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Alternative Values: The Perennial Debate about Wealth, Power, Fame, Praise, Glory, and Physical Pleasure

edited with an introduction by Hunter Lewis

Money, power, fame, sex. Most of us want these things, but should we? Set up as a lively debate between the best thinkers of today and yesterday.

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Alexander Skutch: An Appreciation

by Alexander Skutch

Scientist, botanist, pioneering expert on Central American birds, environmentalist, unmatched writer about nature, advocate of simple living, inspiring moral philosopher. If you haven't read his work, this book is an ideal introduction.

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The Beguiling Serpent:
A Re-evaluation of Emotions and Values

by Hunter Lewis

The Beguiling Serpent looks at emotions, and emotional values in particular. On one level a sequel to A Question of Values, it is also an excellent introduction to emotions and values, and ideal course material.

"Takes us on a provocative and intriguing journey into the imperfectly understood world of human emotions. More philosophy than science, Hunter Lewis’s highly original yet simple framework for observing, understanding, and managing emotions invites reading at one sitting, but reflection long after."

—Kathryn S. Fuller, president, World Wildlife Fund

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The Words of Jesus

A valuable teaching tool and research resource in the classroom. Useful for Christians and non-Christians alike. Non-Christians will find it an ideal introduction to Jesus' ethical teachings.

Chapter divisions:

• Section 1: Important Sayings
• Section 2: Other Sayings
• Section 3: Complete Sayings

Complete Sayings are arranged chronologically, with similar sayings from different gospels grouped together.

The Words of Jesus presents every one of Jesus' words, as recorded in the New Testament, without the intervening stories and other dialogue. It's a new way to study Jesus' teachings, startling in its simplicity, freshness, and immediacy.

Taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

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A Question of Values:
Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives

by Hunter Lewis

What personal values are. How we decide about them. What the alternatives are. Seventy-eight value systems featured. Used in classrooms at Harvard and around the world. Praised by educators from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of Virginia, Berea College and elsewhere. The editor of the Washington Post Book World wrote: "I am fascinated by A Question of Values."

“An important book.”

—HENRY ROSOVSKY, former dean of arts and sciences and currently Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

"Enormously worthwhile....provides a unique way of organizing our thinking about values."

—Adele Simmons, president, MacArthur Foundation

"Gives readers a framework with which to clarify their own beliefs and to understand the beliefs of others...helps to make sense of...the diversity of values in our society."

—Patricia H. Werhane, Ollson Center for Applied Ethics, The Darden School, University of Virginia

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