reviews

Escapades on Scottish Seascapes... Author:  Kathleen Jamie If remote and desolate geographical names like Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands stir your inner voyager and send you scampering for your atlas, I’ve got a fine collection of nature essays for you.  Having endured her fair share of sea sickness, windburn and guano stains, award winning Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie has compiled fourteen essays to create Sightlines, a remarkable exploration of the nature of the North Atlantic. Revealing a particular fondness for the fringes of her homeland, Jamie manages to repeatedly squeeze her way on to various research expeditions to places like North [...]

From Auden to Zweig... Author:  Peter Watson The prognosis was terminal when Friedrich Nietzsche first declared “Gott ist tot” (“God is dead”) in 1882.   But it wasn’t until several years after the German philosopher’s death in 1900 that his pronouncement gained widespread recognition and people began to wonder if the traditional Christian God was actually in charge anymore.  Throw in the horrors of World War I and it’s entirely understandable that Western Civilization’s previously solid belief in an all-powerful God was on shaky ground.  In The Age of Atheists historian Peter Watson explores how people of many varied walks of [...]

What's on your mind...? Author:  Sam Harris What’s going on inside your head? Who’s in charge of your thoughts? If your brain is nothing more than 100 billion neurons and a liter or two of accompanying goo, where does your consciousness reside?  Is it something extra?  If so, where the heck is it? If you find these kinds of questions intriguing, you’re likely to find Waking Up quite thought provoking.  In this exploration of the mysteries of human consciousness, prominent atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris intriguingly exposes many of the illusions that humans take for granted. But first, he defends [...]