Speaking of Wagner compiles in a new and highly accessible format celebrated author, lecturer, and Metropolitan Opera commentator William Berger’s collection of talks and presentations about Richard Wagner, the most controversial, and perhaps the most widely influential, artist in history. These talks have been successful with diverse audiences, ranging from newcomers to the field to the most exacting experts, often at the same time!

No dramatist has treated identity in as many ways and in such depth as William Shakespeare. In Shakespeare’s Identities, James P. Driscoll shows how the Bard used history, comedy, tragedy, and romance to develop comprehensive treatments of personal identity.

In this book eminent philosopher Burton Porter examines the concept of “forbidden knowledge” in religion, science, government, and psychology. From the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden (forbidden fruit), to world altering scientific research (nuclear power, stem-cells, cloning) to damning government secrets (Abu Ghraib, domestic spying), to traumatic experiences that individuals want to repress (sexual abuse), humanity has encountered knowledge that has been hidden and suppressed.

In this daring new study, the renowned Turkish sociologist and public intellectual Suheyb Öğüt seeks a new explanation of political sovereignty demystified from traditional descriptions of the political process.

(Author of The Torchlight List, Fate and Philosophy, and 16 other books)

In our contemporary world, the competing narratives of nation states bypass their common origins in antiquity - not only those fought over between Greece and Rome but the cohesion of evolution's first community recorded in the myth of Gilgamesh and its Biblical equivalent. As far as philosophy is concerned, David Kuhrt argues in this incisive collection of essays, doubt about the motivation of human conduct and truthfulness is prerequisite.

Edited by veteran Czech diplomat and senior religion scholar Glenn Hughes, The Presence of the Past presents new insights from a conference hosted by the Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy at Florida International University, in cooperation with the Czech non-profit organization Post Bellumand the Vaclav Havel Library. Its fundamental topic is memory, the human capacity to retain its contents in the flux of time, which is explored and discussed both theoretically and in terms of current action-oriented public discourse.

The phrase “solidarity of the shaken” was introduced into the today’s political vocabulary by Jan Patočka, one of the last students of the philosopher Edmund Husserl and undoubtedly the most important Czech philosopher of the twentieth century. In January 1977, Patočka became – together with Vaclav Havel and Jiri Hajek -- one of the first three spokespersons of Charter 77, Czechoslovakia’s anti-communist resistance movement. He died less than three months later, as a result of total exhaustion caused by days-long police interrogations.

Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is a Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Her books include "The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World", "Notes From the Other Side of Night", "Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve"; "Why America is Such a Hard Sell": "Beyond Pride and Prejudice", and "The Bloody Flag: Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe -- Spotlight on Romania".

In ancient Roman myth and religion, Janus was the god of physical and emotional gateways. He is traditionally shown as having two faces pointing in opposite directions, representing different perspectives, or perhaps a reconciliation of two points of view. He is the god of the past and the future, looking fore and aft, as Homer says. He is the god of transitions, doorways, beginnings and endings, passageways, options, change, entrances and exits.