Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

"Religion poisons everything." So say Christopher Hitchens and the entire cast of New Atheists. Thus, if you want to make the world a better place, the New Atheists would recommend getting rid of religion. But John Gravino disagrees. In The Immoral Landscape, John Gravino argues that the real problem with the world is not religion; it is human nature. And the problem with our human nature is located in our minds. The key to making the world a better place, therefore, depends on the healing of the human mind. But how exactly do we go about the important business of healing our minds? The world of science has been amazingly successful in so many areas, but the one glaring exception to the nearly flawless track record of the sciences is in the study of mental disorder. While science has been able to find cures for so many physical diseases, a cure for mental illness has proven elusive. John Gravino offers an explanation. Science is unable to cure the mind because the mind is a fundamentally different organism. The human mind is spiritual, not physical; and thus, it obeys the spiritual laws of the universe. If you want to make the world a better place, John Gravino argues that getting rid of religion-the true source of the spiritual laws of the universe-is the worst thing you can do. In The Immoral Landscape, John Gravino presents his case, based on empirical evidence, that the only thing that can save the world is true religion because only true religion has the power to heal the human mind. And what is that true religion? It is true Christianity, of course! This book is a real game-changer for sure. It will knock you out! You can follow John Gravino online at newwalden.org.

Taking sharp aim at complacent geography scholars, this irreverent book turns the world of academic geography upside down. The author, a foremost figure in the field, joins forces with his alter ego, the incorrigible Korski, to draw fire from his own personal and professional experience. No one knows better than they the stuffy censorship and skewed logic: that inform the geography establishment and stifle the valiant geographer—and they tell all. With an unsparing eye, Geography Inside Out exposes a discipline soiled by cerebral litter and shamed by intellectual cowardice. Symanski shows no mercy for the pompous, the mediocre, or the hypocritical. And he reveals the devastating truth about a geographer blackballed for life for writing about prostitution and for his intellectual attack of a major figure within the discipline. A shrewd look at high-profile geographers, this book sheds light on how geographers write and think. It also helps explain why geography "has long been seen as the poor and neglected sister of the social sciences." Unprecedented in subject and scope, Geography Inside Out is certain to be as controversial as it is edifying.

While sex work has long been controversial, it has become even more contested over the past decade as laws, policies, and enforcement practices have become more repressive in many nations, partly as a result of the ascendancy of interest groups committed to the total abolition of the sex industry. At the same time, however, several other nations have recently decriminalized prostitution. Legalizing Prostitution maps out the current terrain. Using America as a backdrop, Weitzer draws on extensive field research in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany to illustrate alternatives to American-style criminalization of sex workers. These cases are then used to develop a roster of “best practices” that can serve as a model for other nations considering legalization. Legalizing Prostitution provides a theoretically grounded comparative analysis of political dynamics, policy outcomes, and red-light landscapes in nations where prostitution has been legalized and regulated by the government, presenting a rich and novel portrait of the multifaceted world of legal sex for sale.

This book explores the relationship between literary politics and the politics of place in fin-de-siècle travel and place-based literature.

Can we still watch Woody Allen's movies? Can we still laugh at Bill Cosby's jokes? Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, Dave Chappelle, Louis C. K., J.K. Rowling, Michael Jackson, Roseanne Barr. Recent years have proven rife with revelations about the misdeeds, objectional views, and, in some instances, crimes of popular artists. Spurred in part by the #metoo movement, and given more access than ever thanks to social media and the internet in general, the public has turned an alert and critical eye upon the once-hidden lives of previously cherished entertainers. But what should we members of the public do, think, and feel in response to these artists' actions or statements? It's a predicament that many of us face: whether it's possible to disentangle the deeply unsettled feelings we have toward an artist from how we respond to the art they produced. As consumers of art, and especially as fans, we have a host of tricky moral question to navigate: do the moral lives of artists affect the aesthetic quality of their work? Is it morally permissible for us to engage with or enjoy that work? Should immoral artists and their work be canceled? Most of all, can we separate an artist from their art? In Drawing the Line, Erich Hatala Matthes employs the tools of philosophy to offer insight and clarity to the ethical questions that dog us. He argues that it doesn't matter whether we can separate the art from the artist, because we shouldn't. While some dismiss the lives of artists as if they are irrelevant to the artist's work, and others instrumentalize artwork, treating it as nothing more than a political tool, Matthes argues both that the lives of artists can play an important role in shaping our moral and aesthetic relationship to the artworks that we love and that these same artworks offer us powerful resources for grappling with the immorality of their creators. Rather than shunning art made by those who have been canceled, shamed, called out, or even arrested, we should engage with it all the more thoughtfully and learn from the complexity it forces us to confront. Recognizing the moral and aesthetic relationships between art and artist is crucial to determining when and where we should draw the line when good artists do bad things.