An InsideHook Best Book of the Year “Riveting fun to read.”—New York Times Book Review A TIME Magazine Best Book of Summer A Vol. 1 Brooklyn Book of the Month A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of Summer An Evening Standard Summer Reading Pick An InsideHook Best Book of the Month “An unforgettable debut. Mancusi is a writer to watch.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel A young philosophy professor finds himself in the middle of a drug-running operation after his personal life derails in this taut, white-knuckle debut for fans of Breaking Bad Oscar Boatwright, a disenchanted philosophy professor, receives terrible news. His mother, on her way home from Hawaii with Oscar’s father, has died midflight, her body cooling for hours until the plane can land. Deeply grieving, Oscar feels his life slipping out of his control. His family is in debt, and desperate to help them, Oscar agrees to help his student Dawn with a drug run. A Philosophy of Ruin rumbles with brooding nihilism, then it cracks like a whip, hurtling Oscar and Dawn toward a terrifying threat on the road. Can Oscar halt the acceleration of chaos? Or was his fate never in his control? Taut, ferocious and blazingly intelligent, A Philosophy of Ruin is a heart-pounding thrill ride into the darkest corners of human geography, and a philosophical reckoning with the forces that determine our destiny.

This book constructs a theory of ruins that celebrates their vitality and unity in aesthetic experience. Its argument draws upon over 100 illustrations prepared in 40 countries. Ruins flourish as matter, form, function, incongruity, site, and symbol. Ruin underlies cultural values in cinema, literature and philosophy. Finally, ruin guides meditations upon our mortality and endangered world.

An argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of “methodologically omnivorous” geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress. Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation.

This collection of newly published essays examines our relationship to physical objects that invoke, commemorate, and honor the past. The recent destruction of cultural heritage in war and controversies over Civil War monuments in the US have foregrounded the importance of artifacts that embody history. The book invites us to ask: How do memorials convey their meanings? What is our responsibility for the preservation or reconstruction of historically significant structures? How should we respond when the public display of a monument divides a community? This anthology includes coverage of the destruction of Palmyra and the Bamiyan Buddhas, the loss of cultural heritage through war and natural disasters, the explosive controversies surrounding Confederate-era monuments, and the decay of industry in the U.S. Rust Belt. The authors consider issues of preservation and reconstruction, the nature of ruins, the aesthetic and ethical values of memorials, and the relationship of cultural memory to material artifacts that remain from the past. Written by a leading group of philosophers, art historians, and archeologists, the 23 chapters cover monuments and memorials from Dubai to Detroit, from the instant destruction of Hiroshima to the gradual sinking of Venice.

While Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and George Santayana (1863-1952) may never have met or even have studied one another's work, they experienced similar cultural conditions and their thinking took similar shapes. Yet, until now, their respective bodies of work have been examined separately and in isolation from one another. Santayana is often regarded as an aesthetician and metaphysician, but Wittgenstein's work is usually seen as antithetical to the philosophical approaches favored by Santayana. In this insightful new study, Michael Hodges and John Lachs argue that behind the striking differences in philosophical style and vocabulary there is a surprising agreement in position. The similarities have largely gone unnoticed because of their divergent styles, different metaphilosophies, and separate spheres of influence. Hodges and Lachs show that Santayana's and Wittgenstein's works express their philosophical responses to contingency. Surprisingly, both thinkers turn to the integrity of human practices to establish a viable philosophical understanding of the human condition. Both of these important twentieth-century philosophers formed their mature views at a time when the comfortable certainties of Western civilization were crumbling all around them. What they say is similar at least in part because they wished to resist the spread of ruin by relying on the calm sanity of our linguistic and other practices. According to both, it is not living human knowledge but a mistaken philosophical tradition that demands foundations and thus creates intellectual homelessness and displacement. Both thought that, to get our house in order, we have to rethink our social, religious, philosophical, and moral practices outside the context of the search for certainty. This insight and the projects that flowed from it define their philosophical kinship. Thinking in the Ruins will enhance our understanding of these monumental thinkers' intellectual accomplishments and show how each influenced subsequent American philosophers. The book also serves as a call to philosophers to look beyond traditional classifications to the substance of philosophical thought.

The celebrated New York Times Bestseller A Best Book of the Year pick at the New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, TIME, Washington Post, Oprahmag.com, Thrillist, Shelf Awareness, Good Housekeeping and more. What does it take to come back to life? For Jessa-Lynn Morton, the question is not an abstract one. In the wake of her father’s suicide, Jessa has stepped up to manage his failing taxidermy business while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the taxidermy shop to make provocative animal art, while her brother, Milo, withdraws. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. It’s not until the Mortons reach a tipping point that a string of unexpected incidents begins to open up surprising possibilities and second chances. But will they be enough to salvage this family, to help them find their way back to one another? Kristen Arnett’s breakout bestseller is a darkly funny family portrait; a peculiar, bighearted look at love and loss and the ways we live through them together.

“Oddný Eir is an authentic author, philosopher and mystic. She weaves together diaries and fiction. She is the writer I feel can best express the female psyche of now and has bridged the gap between rural Iceland and Western philosophy. A true pioneer!!!!!!!!” —Björk The winner of the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize in 2012, Land of Love and Ruins is the debut novel by a daring new voice in international fiction: Oddný Eir. Written in the form of a diary but with fantastical linguistic verve, the narrator sets out on a universal quest: to find a place to belong—and a way of being in the world. Paradoxically, her longing to settle down drives her to embark on all kinds of journeys, physical and mental, through time and space, in order to find answers to questions that concern not only her personally, but also the whole of humankind. She explores various modes of living, ponders different types of relationships and contemplates her bond with her family, land and nation; trying to find a balance between companionship and independence, movement and stability, past, present, and future. An enchanting blend of autobiography, diary, philosophical inquiry, and fantasy, Land of Love and Ruins is a richly imagined and utterly unique book about being human in the modern world.