Humans have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishing, but they can also be dangerous. Beginning around the Enlightenment, western intellectual culture has written off ecstasy as ignorance or delusion. But philosopher Jules Evans argues that this diminishes our reality and denies us the healing, connection and meaning that ecstasy can bring. He sets out to discover how people find ecstasy in a post-religious culture, how it can be good for us, and also harmful. Along the way, he explores the growing science of ecstasy, to help the reader - and himself - learn the art of losing control. Jules' exploration of ecstasy is an intellectual and emotional odyssey balancing personal experience, interviews and readings from ancient and modern philosophers that will change the way you think about how you feel. From Aristotle and Plato, via the Bishop of London and Sister Bliss, radical jihadis and Silicon Valley transhumanists, The Art of Losing Control is a funny and life-enhancing journey through under-explored terrain.

On one terrible night, 17-year-old Harley's life changes forever. At a party she discovers her younger sister, Audrey, hooking up with her boyfriend, Mike, who then drunkenly attempts to drive Audrey home, crashing and leaving Audrey in a coma. Now Harley is left with guilt, grief, pain and the undeniable truth that her ex-boyfriend has a drinking problem. She finds herself reconnecting with Raf, a neighbour and childhood friend. He starts to show Harley a path forward that she never would have believed possible - one guided by honesty, forgiveness, and redemption.

When philosophy rescued him from an emotional crisis, Jules Evans became fascinated by how ideas invented over two thousand years ago can help us today. He interviewed soldiers, psychologists, gangsters, astronauts, and anarchists and discovered the ways that people are using philosophy now to build better lives. Ancient philosophy has inspired modern communities — Socratic cafés, Stoic armies, Epicurean communes — and even whole nations in the quest for the good life. This book is an invitation to a dream school with a rowdy faculty that includes twelve of the greatest philosophers from the ancient world, sharing their lessons on happiness, resilience, and much more. Lively and inspiring, this is philosophy for the street, for the workplace, for the battlefield, for love, for life.

Willa Loveridge likes to be in control....of everything and everyone. And when things start to spin out of her control, she only knows how to do one thing: panic.So she failed her Foundations of Western Art class. Her ex-boyfriend sent her naked pictures to all of his friends. Her roommate hates her. Her mom and stepdad are having a baby. And her estranged father appeared after nineteen years of radio silence for the sole purpose of paying her college tuition.Seriously? He couldn't even introduce himself first?But at least this one, she can handle. She can't change her grades, wipe her pictures from the internet, force her roommate to love her, or stop her mom from replacing her. But the father she's never met dropping serious cash on her floundering education? A girl can handle that.Or so she thinks.In an effort to regain some control of her rapidly spiralling life, Willa boards a plane to New Zealand to find the man who thinks he can just throw eighty-five grand at her and then disappear again. She's done with the absent father act. She at least wants to meet him face-to-face before a panic attack sends her into an early grave. But after an unexpected emergency landing and a brief encounter with a cult, Willa somehow finds herself in a caravan with a YouTuber, the star of a million Korean Dramas, and a Scottish kid with an unhealthy attachment to his guitar. Together, they navigate the backroads of New Zealand one wrong turn at a time.Which is basically her worst nightmare.Between some unnecessary hand-holding and a swift shove out of her comfort zone, Willa soon finds herself learning the fine art of losing control.

Winner of the Dublin Literary Award A Best Historical Novel of the Year at The New York Times Book Review "[An] extraordinary achievement." —Liesl Schillinger, The Wall Street Journal Across three generations, three wars, two continents, and the mythic waters of the Mediterranean, one family’s history leads to an inevitable question: What price do our descendants pay for the choices that we make? Naïma knows Algeria only by the artifacts she encounters in her grandparents’ tiny apartment in Normandy: the language her grandmother speaks but Naïma can’t understand, the food her grandmother cooks, and the precious things her grandmother carried when they fled. Naïma’s father claims to remember nothing; he has made himself French. Her grandfather died before he could tell her his side of the story. But now Naïma will travel to Algeria to see for herself what was left behind—including their secrets. The Algerian War for Independence sent Naïma’s grandfather on a journey of his own, from wealthy olive grove owner and respected veteran of the First World War, to refugee spurned as a harki by his fellow Algerians in the transit camps of southern France, to immigrant barely scratching out a living in the north. The long battle against colonial rule broke apart communities, opened deep rifts within families, and saw the whims of those in even temporary power instantly overturn the lives of ordinary people. Where does Naïma’s family fit into this history? How do they fit into France’s future? Alice Zeniter’s The Art of Losing is a powerful, moving family novel that spans three generations across seventy years and two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a resonant people’s history of Algeria and its diaspora. It is a story of how we carry on in the face of loss: loss of country, identity, language, connection. Most of all, it is an immersive, riveting excavation of the inescapable legacies of colonialism, immigration, family, and war.

When her brother dies of AIDS and her husband dies of cancer in the same year, Rosemary is left on her own with two young daughters and antsy addiction demons dancing in her head. This is the nucleus of The Art of Losing It a young mother jerking from emergency to emergency as the men in her life drop dead around her; a high-functioning radio show host waging war with her addictions while trying to raise her two little girls who just lost their daddy; and finally, a stint in rehab and sobriety that ushers in a fresh brand of chaos instead of the tranquility her family so desperately needs. Heartrending but ultimately hopeful, The Art of Losing It is the story of a struggling mother who finds her way—slowly, painfully—from one side of grief and addiction to the other.

This work looks at the way in which the new global economy works, examining its effect on the power and legitimacy of individual states. It argues that national sovereignty has not eroded, but states have begun to reconfigure, to decide where their resonsi