Summer Reading Suggestions 2015: Philosophy & Psychology

This collection of highly readable, debate-style arguments contributed by many of today's top bioethics scholars, focuses on core bioethical concerns of the twenty-first century. Written in an engaging, debate-style format for accessibility to non-specialists, it features general introductions to each topic that precede scholarly debates and presents the latest, cutting-edge thoughts on relevant bioethics ideas, arguments, and debates.

The first installment of the planned How to Live trilogy describes how the power of habit and the lure of the ordinary conspire to make change and improvement difficult, and offers routine-breaking challenges to inspire positive transformation.

Is philosophy obsolete? Are the ancient questions still relevant in the age of cosmology and neuroscience, not to mention crowd-sourcing and cable news? The acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today's debates on religion, morality, politics, and science. With a philosopher's depth and a novelist's imagination and wit, Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he takes on the modern world.

'The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them', cautioned acclaimed author and award-winning journalist Anna Quindlen, in a commencement speech for Grinnell College. With more than a dozen contemporary graduation speeches that dissect the world as it is and imagine what it could be, The World is Waiting for You brings forth the courageous people who've dared to transform the podium into a pulpit for championing peace, justice, protest and a better world.

In this book, David Edmonds tells the riveting story of why and how philosophers have struggled with this ethical dilemma, sometimes called the trolley problem. In the process, he provides an entertaining and informative tour through the history of moral philosophy. Most people feel it's wrong to kill the fat man. But why? After all, in taking one life you could save five. As Edmonds shows, answering the question is far more complex--and important--than it first appears. In fact, how we answer it tells us a great deal about right and wrong.