This Friday, December 15, is the last day to order from Amazon.com using free Super Saver Shipping and still receive books in time for Christmas giving. So I’m gonna put aside my regular look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and instead point out some matching sets of books perfect for readers of your list.

Monday: books for conspiracy buffs
Tuesday: celebrating the season
Today: armchair traveling
Thursday: on the lookout for UFOs and strange creatures
Friday: lost classics of literature

continue reading »

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This Friday, December 15, is the last day to order from Amazon.com using free Super Saver Shipping and still receive books in time for Christmas giving. So I’m gonna put aside my regular look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and instead point out some matching sets of books perfect for readers of your list.

Monday: books for conspiracy buffs
Today: celebrating the season
Wednesday: armchair traveling
Thursday: on the lookout for UFOs and strange creatures
Friday: lost classics of literature

continue reading »

no comments »

This Friday, December 15, is the last day to order from Amazon.com using free Super Saver Shipping and still receive books in time for Christmas giving. So I’m gonna put aside my regular look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and instead point out some matching sets of books perfect for readers of your list.

Today: books for conspiracy buff
Tuesday: celebrating the season
Wednesday: armchair traveling
Thursday: on the lookout for UFOs and strange creatures
Friday: lost classics of literature

continue reading »

no comments »

One of the things I love about working at Cosimo is that I’m constantly discovering wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully weird!) old books that I’ve never even heard of before, as well as getting regular reminders of great classics that I either haven’t read since school or have never read at all (and should). But even more surprising is that the more I look through books published 50, 100, 150, even 200 years ago, the more I see that the topics that fascinate readers today are, in many instances, the same ones that booklovers were gobbling up decades and centuries ago.

Every week, I take a look at the current New York Times best-seller lists and point out a few Cosimo Classics that connect to today’s hottest books. Cuz all true readers know that too much of a good thing is never enough.

Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes fame is back on the Times paperback nonfiction list with his Teacher Man: A Memoir, at No. 8. His concerns seems a bit less philosophical than what legendary and influential educator Maria Montessori was dealing with when she developed her groundbreaking The Montessori Method, but her ideas continue to be urgently necessary today as “traditional” methods of early-childhood schooling seem to be failing us. Published in Italian in 1909 and first translated into English in 1912, these revolutionary theories focus on the individuality of the child and on nurturing her inherent joy of learning to create schools and other learning environments that are oriented on the child. Eschewing rote memorization and drilling, Montessori’s method helps to foster abstract thinking and to fulfill a child’s highest potential, emotionally, physically and intellectually, and parents and teachers today still find the ideas herein immensely valuable.

Over on the Times paperback fiction list this week at No. 16 is The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream, by Paulo Coelho, which features a journey to mystical Egypt. That fabled land has long inspired travelers and seekers after wisdom, as in Pierre Loti’s mesmerizing Egypt. Called one of the finest descriptive writers of his day, and certainly one of the most original, Loti, a French writer and sailor, traveled the world in the late 19th century and painted what he saw in prose acclaimed as extraordinarily rhythmic and lyrical. This 1909 novel is a dreamlike reverie of travels through Egypt just before it became overrun by Western tourists. For readers today, it serves as a window into a world forever lost.

(Technorati tags: Frank McCourt, Teacher Man, Maria Montessori, Montessori Method, Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, Egypt, Pierre Loti)

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One of the things I love about working at Cosimo is that I’m constantly discovering wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully weird!) old books that I’ve never even heard of before, as well as getting regular reminders of great classics that I either haven’t read since school or have never read at all (and should). But even more surprising is that the more I look through books published 50, 100, 150, even 200 years ago, the more I see that the topics that fascinate readers today are, in many instances, the same ones that booklovers were gobbling up decades and centuries ago.

Every Monday, I take a look at the current New York Times best-seller lists and point out a few Cosimo Classics that connect to today’s hottest books. Cuz all true readers know that too much of a good thing is never enough.

Travel to strange and distant lands — by fictional characters and real people alike — has always been an adventure to expand the heart, soul, and mind. The queen of escapist soap opera, Danielle Steel, puts the plot to good use in her new book H.R.H., at No. 11 on the Times hardcover fiction list, about a spoiled European princess who journeys to Africa to work with the Red Cross. Evangelist and teacher Emma Hillmon Haviland wrote of her real-life experiences as a missionary in late-19th-century Zulu country in Under the Southern Cross: Or, A Woman’s Life Work for Africa… though her travels seem to have done little to widen her horizons. Privately published, this is one woman’s account of her Christian work in Africa, from her childhood on farms in Iowa and Kansas, where she had a youthful brush with death that led to her conversion to an active Christianity, to her return home after long years doing the Lord’s work. The time in between is fraught with culture shock: her difficulties in learning the Zulu language, her disdain for Zulu tradition and mythology, even a particular scorn for the food she found unpalatable. Stolid and unbending, this is a curious document of a less enlightened time, a firsthand look at the mindset of a bygone time.

Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck sits at No. 9 on the Times hardcover nonfiction list. A tale of intrigue fueled by modern science, it’s about the attempts, at the turn of the 20th century, to bridge the Atlantic with wireless communication… and how it took a sensational murder to bring the success of the endeavor to public prominence. One of the first great business and technology journalists, Herbert N. Casson, covered the development of a wired communication device in his 1910 book, The History of the Telephone. This charming and highly readable overview of the impact of the telephone in its first quarter-century discusses not only the scientific innovators and business pioneers involved in its creation, but also the social impact of the new technology. Writes Casson:

With the use of the telephone has come a new habit of mind. The slow and sluggish mood has been sloughed off. The old to-morrow habit has been superseded by “Do It To-day”; and life has become more tense, alert, vivid.

(Technorati tags: H R H, Danielle Steel, Under the Southern Cross, Emma Hillmon Haviland, Thunderstruck, Erik Larson, Herbert Casson, History of the Telephone)

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One of the things I love about working at Cosimo is that I’m constantly discovering wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully weird!) old books that I’ve never even heard of before, as well as getting regular reminders of great classics that I either haven’t read since school or have never read at all (and should). But even more surprising is that the more I look through books published 50, 100, 150, even 200 years ago, the more I see that the topics that fascinate readers today are, in many instances, the same ones that booklovers were gobbling up decades and centuries ago.

Every Monday, I take a look at the current New York Times best-seller lists and point out a few Cosimo Classics that connect to today’s hottest books. Cuz all true readers know that too much of a good thing is never enough.

It’s way too early to be thinking about Christmas as far as I’m concerned, but it seems that many other readers don’t feel that way: the Times hardcover fiction list this week features two sentimental holiday selections: Christmas Letters, by Debbie Macomber, at No. 13, and at No. 15, Finding Noel, by Richard Paul Evans. Washington Irving might be best remembered for a story revolving around another holiday, but his Old Christmas, first published in 1896, deserves to be a holiday tradition alongside Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in the celebrations of the winter solstice. Warmly convivial and delightfully festive, this charming and long forgotten holiday classic was inspired in part by Dickens and other celebrations of oldtime Yule. Splendid suppers and rural churches, cheerful dances and hearty spirits imbue this short novel with the magic of the season. If you’re one of those insufferable shoppers who has her Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving (the rest of us are secretly terribly jealous of you), consider this for an unusual stocking stuffer for the bookworm on your list.

Over on the Times hardcover nonfiction list, it’s much more serious business with two books about the selling of the American war in Iraq: Bob Woodward’s State of Denial is at No. 3, and The Greatest Story Ever Sold, by Frank Rich, is at No. 12. Philosopher Bertrand Russell was pondering how leaders coerce men to war back in 1916 in Why Men Fight, which grew out of the devastation of World War I. Russell explores ideas of war, pacifism, reason, impulse, and personal liberty and argues that when individuals live passionately, they will have no desire for war or killing. Eminently relevant to our modern world, Russell provides critiques of war and social institutions such as marriage and the state, and offers his thoughts on what we can do to rid our world of violence.

(Technorati tags: Christmas Letters, Finding Noel, Washington Irving, Old Christmas, State of Denial, Bob Woodward, Greatest Story Ever Sold, Frank Rick, Why Men Fight, Bertrand Russell)

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One of the things I love about working at Cosimo is that I’m constantly discovering wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully weird!) old books that I’ve never even heard of before, as well as getting regular reminders of great classics that I either haven’t read since school or have never read at all (and should). But even more surprising is that the more I look through books published 50, 100, 150, even 200 years ago, the more I see that the topics that fascinate readers today are, in many instances, the same ones that booklovers were gobbling up decades and centuries ago.

Every Monday, I take a look at the current New York Times best-seller lists and point out a few Cosimo Classics that connect to today’s hottest books. Cuz all true readers know that too much of a good thing is never enough.

Nora Roberts has two supernatural thrillers on the Times paperback fiction list: Morrigan’s Cross, at No. 6, and its sequel, Dance of the Gods, at No. 1. The series is about a magical war waged against a powerful demon by a team that includes a wizard, a witch, a shapeshifter, a demon hunter, and a vampire… beings that have fascinated us since the dawn of time. In his 1932 book Wild Talents, maven of the paranormal Charles Fort regales us with accounts of vampires, werewolves, talking dogs, poltergeist activity, teleportation, witchcraft, vanishing people, spontaneous human combustion, and the escapades of the “mad bats of Trinidad,” and more. Fort is at his wittiest and most provocative here, in this early work of research into the mysteries of the world.

No. 6 on the Times paperback advice list this week is The South Beach Diet, just one of a long string of popular books in recent years advocating low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss and overall health. But low-carb is hardly the modern “fad” it has been derided as. In fact, William Banting’s Letter on Corpulence was first published in 1864, with this advice:

Bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer, and potatoes, which had been the main (and, I thought, innocent) elements of my subsistence, or at all events they had for many years been adopted freely.

These, said my excellent adviser, contain starch and saccharine matter, tending to create fat, and should be avoided altogether.

Banting’s book was so popular in the late 19th century that “banting” became slang for that era’s version of low-carb dieting. The more things change…

(Technorati tags: Nora Roberts, Charles Fort, vampires, South Beach Diet, Letter on Corpulence, William Banting)

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One of the things I love about working at Cosimo is that I’m constantly discovering wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully weird!) old books that I’ve never even heard of before, as well as getting regular reminders of great classics that I either haven’t read since school or have never read at all (and should). But even more surprising is that the more I look through books published 50, 100, 150, even 200 years ago, the more I see that the topics that fascinate readers today are, in many instances, the same ones that booklovers were gobbling up decades and centuries ago.

Every Monday, I’ll take a look at the current New York Times best-seller lists and point out a few Cosimo Classics that connect to today’s hottest books. Cuz all true readers know that too much of a good thing is never enough.

Brad Meltzer’s political thriller The Book of Fate — currently No. 4 on the Times hardcover fiction list — is about the Masonic secrets behind a murder in the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C. If you’re enjoying Meltzer’s book, check out The Ancient Mysteries and Modern Masonry, a 1909 work by Rev. Charles H. Vail. Though the author cannot, alas, “lift the veil from the secrets of the Order,” Vail, a 32nd-degree Freemason, endeavors to lead the curious toward a more complete understanding of the ancient knowledge of the eternal truth of the universe of which the Masons are the keepers. From the great antiquity of Masonic symbols and traditions to the formation of the organization with their perpetuation as its goal, this is an intriguing glimpse inside one of the most enigmatic fraternities in existence. It is required reading for those fascinated by arcane wisdom and secret societies.

The Times hardcover nonfiction list includes two books criticizing Christianity, and in particular the harm organized and widespread religion has done to the modern world: Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation is at No. 6 on the list, and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is at No. 8. For more about the roots of modern Christian criticism, you’ll want to read Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s timeless masterpiece The Anti-christ. In this scathing critique, Nietzsche writes:

The Christian concept of a god — the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit — is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world… In him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy.

His works have been by turns vilified, lauded, and subjected to numerous contradictory interpretations, and yet Nietzsche remains a figure of profound import, and this insightful and entertaining book in particular is vital to any meaningful understanding of the roots of contemporary religious criticism.

(Technorati tags: Book of Fate, Brad Meltzer, Freemasons, Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris, God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, Nietzsche, Anti-Christ, New York Times best seller lists)

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Montague Ullman, M.D., author of the Cosimo-on-Demand book Appreciating Dreams, is presenting a paper at the fifth annual online Psiber Dreaming Conference, in progress now and running through October 8. Events and papers to be presented include:

• • The Physics of Psi Dreaming, featuring papers by Dr. Montague Ullman and Dr. Mark Schroll
• • Spanish language thread with featured paper by Drs. Stanley Krippner and Rosa Anwandter
• • Dream Telepathy and Precognitive Dreaming Contests
• • and an all new Virtual Dream Ball

At Cosimo we’re terribly interested in the borderland between psychology and the paranormal, and so there are a few books about dreams in our backlist. In addition to Appreciating Dreams — which is about exploring our nighttime visions in a trusting small-group setting — we also offer Families and the Interpretation of Dreams, by Edward Bruce Bynum, an intriguing discussion of how family dynamics express themselves in our dreams.

Our untapped psychic abilities were of tremendous interest to the parapyschologists and New Thought philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, too. In the two-volumes-in-one A Handbook of Dreams and Fortune-Telling, from Cosimo Classics, early pop astrologer Zadkiel presents a dictionary-style guide, dating from the mid 19th century, to interpreting your nocturnal hallucinations. And the 1897 work The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, by legendary folklorist Andrew Lang, explores how the dead supposedly manifest themselves through our dreams.

All together, these four books represent a fascinating look at how our understanding of our ability to dream — and our wisdom in interpreting our dreams — has evolved from one based in the supernatural to one rooted in science.

(Technorati tags: dreams, interpreting dreams)

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Not that politicians have ever enjoyed a reputation for honesty, but two stunning scandals currently rocking Washington are so profoundly disturbing because they involve lies about matters that few would dispute are not to be lied about.

First, there’s Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial, which the British Guardian says:

lifts the lid on an administration in crisis, claiming that Bush and his top officials have deliberately covered up the seriousness of the violence in the war-torn country [of Iraq].

And then there’s the outrage surrounding not only the behavior of Congressman Mark Foley, who is either a sexual predator of children or damn close to being one, and that of the Republican House leadership, which to all appearances has covered up and protected Foley — and hence potentially endangering teenage House pages — for months, perhaps years. In this case, it’s both the sex and the lying… and the hypocrisy of the party that holds itself up as the defenders of morality while shielding one of its offending own.

More than 250 years ago, Scottish philosopher David Hume was thinking about what constitutes morality and what makes humans moral (or not). In his 1751 book An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals — available from Coismo Classics — Hume writes:

Sympathy, we shall allow, is much fainter than our concern for ourselves, and sympathy with persons remote from us much fainter than that with persons near and contiguous; but for this very reason it is necessary for us, in our calm judgments and discourse concerning the characters of men, to neglect all these differences and render our sentiments more public and social.

Basically, self-preseveration is an undeniable human instinct, but decent, moral people manage to overcome our own inclination to cover our asses when the situation calls for it. Read more of Hume… and perhaps send a copy to your congressman, too.

(Technorati tags: State of Denial, Bob Woodward, Mark Foley, Republican sex scandal, lies, lying, David Hume, philosophy)

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