Two Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark

Sam Shepard

“There can be a real meeting between two people at the point where they always felt marooned. Right at the edge.”

Sam Shepard in love, on love:

Darwin’s Worms: On Life Stories and Death Stories

Adam Phillips

How to live with death:

Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation

Josef Pieper

How Bach will save your soul – German philosopher Josef Pieper on the hidden source of music’s supreme power:

Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall

Sir Thomas Browne

“United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other.”

Sir Thomas Browne, writing centuries ago and insightful as ever, on the divine heartbreak of romantic friendship:

The Blue Songbird

Vern Kousky

A tenderhearted and lyrical Japanese-inspired parable about finding your voice and coming home to yourself:

Lyrical and Critical Essays

Albert Camus

“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity.”

Camus on the three antidotes to life’s absurdity:

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Work with love, embrace the unexpected, let no one else make intellectual decisions for you, always remain in direct touch with the fountain-head, and more advice to the young from pioneering astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin:

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson on making sense of loss – reflections on silence and eternity from the poet laureate of death:

John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1779-1821

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams on efficiency vs. effectiveness, the proper aim of ambition, and his daily routine:

Sun and Moon

Stunning illustrations of celestial myths by 10 of India’s finest indigenous artists:

Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals

Paul Gauguin

“Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling too, inwardly, a sort of struggle was preparing.”

What actually happened the night Van Gogh cut off his ear – a stirring first-hand account by his best friend, Paul Gauguin:

Democracy and Poetry

Robert Penn Warren

“[Art] is the process by which, in imagining itself and the relation of individuals to one another and to it, a society comes to understand itself, and by understanding, discover its possibilities of growth.”

Terrific, timely read on power, tenderness, and art’s role in a thriving democracy:

Letters from a Stoic (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

Seneca

“Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul.”

Seneca on true and false friendship:

The Topography of Tears

Rose-Lynn Fisher

The Topography of Tears – a stunning aerial tour of human emotion, from grief to compassion to elation, through an optical microscope:

Ideas and Opinions

Albert Einstein

“There is [a] human right which is infrequently mentioned but which seems to be destined to become very important: this is the right, or the duty, of the individual to abstain from cooperating in activities which he considers wrong or pernicious.”

Einstein on the interconnectedness of our fates and our mightiest counterforce against injustice – timely wisdom from a man who lived through two World Wars and never relinquished his faith in the human spirit: