The
Happy Life by David Malouf $19.95 Paperback (Black Inc)
In
this elegant treatise, David Malouf returns to one of the most fundamental
questions and gives it a modern twist: what makes for a happy life? With grace
and profundity, Malouf discusses new and old ways to talk about contentment and
the self. In considering the happy life – what it is, and what makes it
possible – David Malouf returns to the 'highest wisdom' of the classics, looks
at how, thanks to Thomas Jefferson's way with words, happiness became a 'right',
and examines joy in the flesh as depicted by Rubens and Rembrandt. In a world
becoming ever larger and impersonal, he finds happiness in an unlikely place. The
Happy Life is writing to savour and reflect upon by one of Australia's
greatest intellectuals.
The
Good Book by A
C Grayling Hardback $49.99 (Bloomsbury)
Drawing
on the wisdom of 2,500 years of contemplative non-religious writing on all that
it means to be human - from the origins of the universe to small matters of
courtesy and kindness in everyday life - A. C. Grayling, Britain's most popular
and widely read philosopher and atheist, has created a secular bible. Designed
to be read as narrative and also to be dipped into for inspiration,
encouragement and consolation, The Good Book offers a thoughtful,
non-religious alternative for the many people who do not follow one of the
world’s great religions.
Man's
search for meaning by
Viktor
E Frankl Hardback $24.95 (Rider)
A
handsome gift edition of one of the seminal pieces of literature to emerge from
the Second World War: Viktor Frankl's moving account of his experiences in
Auschwitz. A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was
uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in Auschwitz coped (or
didn't) with the experience. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others
and gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who
offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to
choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.