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The Art of War in the Middle Ages
Weapons and tactics change rarely but quickly, and history is unkind to those who do not keep pace.
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For the Win
If the actuality of human triumphs and tragedies overflowing the bounds of video games isn't enough to defeat claims that it's “not the real world,” then economics and politics will do the trick.
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The Emperor of All Maladies
To fight cancer cells is to do battle with “more perfect versions of ourselves.”
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Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
The highest perfection contains just the right degree of imperfection.
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The Closing of the American Mind
Convictions are forged in argument, values forged in conflict. If we act as if everyone is entitled not only to one's opinion, but entitled not to be challenged on it, then we deprive ourselves and each other of the possibility of forming real convictions and values.
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True Grit
Even a 14 year-old girl can be a badass.
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The Persistence of Poverty
Traditional thinking about what motivates the poor is precisely backwards.
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Within The Context of No Context
We sign contracts with our attention, the terms of which we haven't read.
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A Week at the Airport
Who we are at the airport is who we truly are.
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The Emperor's Handbook
“Nothing outside the mind can disturb it.”
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Eating the Dinosaur
As a species, we have never been less human than we are right now.
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The Windup Girl
If our species doesn't survive, it will be because we didn't deserve to.
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When Corporations Rule the World
Markets are useful, but perfectly free markets are unsustainable.
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The Architecture of Happiness
Who and how we are depend in some measure on where we are.
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The Anthologist
Pluck the day.
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How We Decide
The brain is an argument.
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Guns, Germs, and Steel
Europe's conquest of much of the world was due not to any innate superiority, but rather the region's disproportionate share of the world's grain and domesticable animal species, which supported a larger non-farming class of soldiers and engineers and turned the people themselves into biological weapons.
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True Enough
Due to flaws in our perception and the money to be made by exploiting them, you have to work really hard to live in the real world nowadays, so most of us don't.
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The Consolations of Philosophy
Philosophy can be practical and philosophers can be badasses.
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Mediated
Life is a supermarket.