The Trouble With Being Born

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components, birth and death, suggesting that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, "that laughable accident." In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. Through sharp observation and patient contemplation, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience. “A love of Cioran creates an urge to press his writing into someone’s hand, and is followed by an equal urge to pull it away as poison.”—The New Yorker “In the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."—Publishers Weekly "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."—Boston Phoenix

A fierce portrait of memory, family, and regret The Trouble with Being Born is a stark meditation on memory and the struggle-both necessary and impossible-to remember.

‘Fresh and authoritative, written with brio and precision.’ Thomas Plate, author of Yo-Yo Diplomacy ‘An important and timely guide to one of the most dangerous potential flashpoints for future conflict between the West and China.’James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China ‘Brown and Wu Tzu-hui help situate a Taiwan whose “place” in the world is otherwise plagued by uncertainty.’ Benjamin Zawacki, author of Thailand

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. David Benatar presents a startling challenge to these assumptions. He argues that people systematically overestimate the quality of their life, and suffer quite serious harms by coming into existence.

“We’re doomed.” So begins the work of the philosopher whose unabashed and aphoristic indictments of the human condition have been cropping up recently in popular culture. Today we find ourselves in an increasingly inhospitable world that is, at the same time, starkly indifferent to our species-specific hopes, desires, and disappointments. In the Anthropocene, pessimism is felt everywhere but rarely given its proper place. Though pessimism may be, as Eugene Thacker says, the lowest form of philosophy, it may also contain an enigma central to understanding the horizon of the human. Written in a series of fragments, aphorisms, and prose poems, Thacker’s Cosmic Pessimism explores the varieties of pessimism and its often-conflicted relation to philosophy. “Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?”

"Parker hasn't spoken since he watched his father die five years ago. He communicates through writing on slips of paper and keeps track of his thoughts by journaling. A loner, Parker has little interest in school, his classmates, or his future. But everything changes when he meets Zelda, a mysterious young woman with an unusual request: 'treat me like a teenager'"--

Lewis Sullivan lives less than a mile from his childhood home. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup, and he spends his evenings at his second favorite pub for half a shandy and sausage. But when an old friend appears, Lewis finds his comfortable life shaken up, and he longs for more excitement. A modern-day Death in Venice by the author of Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse, He Wants is charged and unpredictable. Alison Moore is the author of one previous novel, The Lighthouse, and a short story collection The Pre-War Horse. She lives in Nottingham, England.

Born to be Riled is a collection of hilarious vintage journalism from Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy Clarkson, it has to said, sometimes finds the world a maddening place. And nowhere more so than from behind the wheel of a car, where you can see any number of people acting like lunatics while in control (or not) of a ton of metal. In this collection of classic columns, first published in 1999, Jeremy takes a look at the world through his windscreen, shakes his head at what he sees - and then puts the boot in. Among other things, he explains: • Why Surrey is worse than Wales • How crossing your legs in America can lead to arrest • The reason cable TV salesmen must be punched • That divorce can be blamed on the birth of Jesus Raving politicians, pointless celebrities, ridiculous 'personalities' and the Germans all get it in the neck, together with the stupid, the daft and the ludicrous, in a tour de force of comic writing guaranteed to have Jeremy's postman wheezing under sackfuls of letters from the easily offended. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson: 'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph 'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time Out Number-one bestseller Jeremy Clarkson writes on cars, current affairs and anything else that annoys him in his sharp and funny collections. Clarkson On Cars, Don't Stop Me Now, Driven To Distraction, Round the Bend, Motorworld and I Know You Got Soul are also available as Penguin paperbacks; the Penguin App iClarkson: The Book of Cars can be downloaded on the App Store. Jeremy Clarkson because his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun and the Sunday Times. Today he is the tallest person working in British television, and is the presenter of the hugely popular Top Gear.

When you're born poor, you quickly learn the difference between needs and wants. You want a new pair of shoes, but your parents can't afford them. Instead, you need to make the old shoes last. So, your mother cuts out a piece of cardboard to fit inside the shoes you have. The cardboard covers a hole in the sole and the lesson sticks with you for the rest of your life.Ernie Buresh wore those shoes more than 80 years ago. While the shoes are long gone, Ernie's memories of them provided the foundation for building his own soul thanks to many similar examples given to him by his mother.Now 88, Ernie reflects on a life that turned out to be more adventurous, more successful and more rewarding than he ever imagined. More than a biography, "The Advantage of Being Born Poor" not only examines one man's life, but passes on the valuable advantages of hard work, learning from other people's examples and making your own luck.From a poor childhood where earning a quarter to mow a lawn seemed unbelievably fortunate, Ernie forged a successful 52-year career in banking that has allowed him to give away millions of dollars to causes close to his heart. But, more importantly, this shy and quiet child grew up to embrace the notion that giving of yourself can come back two-fold, that a positive attitude makes you look forward to waking up every morning and that developing hundreds of friendships along the way is the real secret to success.Yes, follow Ernie Buresh as he makes a few false career starts, learns that risk can lead to reward, builds his own house so he can live mortgage free and mourns the death of a daughter who needed special attention after her heart surgeries as a child. In the end, the ups and downs of "The Advantage of Being Born Poor" will give you an appreciation for the opportunities in your own life.

This collection of eleven essays originally appeared in France thirty years ago and created a literary whirlwind on the Left Bank. Cioran writes incisively about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, mystics, apostles, and philosophers. The Temptation to Exist first introduced this brilliant European thinker twenty years ago to American readers, in a superb translation by Richard Howard. This literary mystique around Cioran continues to grow, and The Temptation to Exist has become an underground classic. In this work Cioran writes about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, about mystics, apostles, philosophers. For those to whom the very word philosophy brings visions of arduous reading, be assured: Cioran is crystal-clear, his style quotable and aphoristic. “A sort of final philosopher of the Western world. His statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning”—The Washington Post