Nolan Bushnell Recommended Books

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately.

This is the most comprehensive anthology of Soren Kierkegaard's works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative Kierkegaard's Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard's extraordinary career. They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard's writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history.The anthology begins with Kierkegaard's early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final The Changelessness of God. The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard's landmark works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death, and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. The selections are carefully chosen to reflect the unique character of Kierkegaard's work, with its shifting pseudonyms, its complex dialogues, and its potent combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. We see the esthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious ways of life initially presented as dialogue in two parallel series of pseudonymous and signed works and later in the "second authorship" as direct address. And we see the themes that bind the whole together, in particular Kierkegaard's overarching concern with, in his own words, "What it means to exist; . . . what it means to be a human being.?Together, the selections provide the best available introduction to Kierkegaard's writings and show more completely than any other book why his work, in all its creativity, variety, and power, continues to speak so directly today to so many readers around the world.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.

The Republic by Plato is a landmark achievement in Ancient Greek philosophy - this edition combines an authoritative translation with affordability.The Republic is the most famous text written by Plato, which takes the form of a philosophical dialogue. The text is part conversation between a group of friends active in the Athens intellectual community, and part monologue from various participants in the discussion. The narrator and lead character is Socrates, Plato's friend and mentor, who appears in most of his pupil's dialogues and acts as surrogate to Plato's ideas. Throughout the text the 'Socratic method', whereby Socrates feigns ignorance and questions an adversary to receive insight on a given subject, is demonstrated.Ten books in total comprise The Republic , the divisions thought to have been made due to the length of a roll of papyrus in Ancient Greece. The discussion begins with an attempt to find a definition for justice, wherein a disagreement between Thrasymachus - who believes justice is what is good for who is strongest at a given place and time - and Socrates, who believes that all members of society should, for the highest benefit of all, conform to just action.In Book II, the discussion expands to include justice in the sense of a social contract. Whether or not justice happens only due to fear of reprisal, and whether justice is truly a high virtue of itself, are among the questions considered. Eventually the discussion expands further into the idea of a just city ideas of how such a society, embodying justice and order, might work commences with Socrates proposing an educated 'guardian' class of able-bodied men and women who would uphold order and defend such a city against threats from outside.After expanding their ideas on the guardians, the dialogue proceeds onto other classes. It is here that Plato's famous idea of the philosopher king arises - the notion of a ruler who is appointed for holding the highest understanding of good and just rule, imparted to him at an early age by capable educators.Plato as Socrates eventually proposes that the essence of justice is fulfilling one's role in society. The correct assignment of an occupation to each citizen, to which they can happily commit, will result in a just and capable society. Further stipulations upon this ideal society are given; that education be strictly regulated and human reproduction made a matter for the state, with no offspring knowing their parents.The Republic then covers four forms of injustice manifested in systems of government - timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and finally tyranny. How these unjust societies occur is talked about at length, with examples from Ancient society cited as Socrates/Plato develops theories on how societies go astray. The most unjust ruler - the tyrant - is discussed at length, and determined to be among the most unhappy, unfree and unfulfilled types of man owing to his thrall to passions, and friendless owing to his commitment to hierarchy. Such malfeasant politics are excoriated; in the end, Socrates says, all are harmed and none benefit from tyranny.Between books VII and VIII Socrates establishes the famous Allegory of the Cave as a way of demonstrating education's effects upon the human mind. By using the image of people who have only lived in a dark caves their whole lives, he illustrates how mere shadows against the walls are the closest such individuals come to seeing reality. Philosophy, Socrates argues, is the way by which humans are freed from this cave of ignorance and propelled to an enlightenment.Socrates concludes the discussion of city politics and rulers, and commences to focus upon the nature of art and its place in the just and ideal city. He also discusses reincarnation, the indestructible nature of the human soul, concluding the epic text on a spiritual note.

Mr. Tompkins is back! The mild-mannered bank clerk with the short attention span and vivid imagination has inspired, charmed, and informed young and old alike since the publication of the hugely successful Mr Tompkins in Paperback (by George Gamow) in 1965. Now, this highly affable character returns to embark on a set of adventures that explore the extreme edges of the universe--the smallest, the largest, the fastest, and the farthest. Just by following the experiences and dreams of Mr. Tompkins, readers discover and come to know the merry dance of cosmic mysteries, including: Einstein's theory of relativity, bizarre effects near light-speed, the birth and death of the universe, black holes, quarks, space warps and antimatter, the fuzzy world of the quantum, and that ultimate cosmic mystery--love. The story of Mr. Tompkins' journey to the frontiers of modern physics will delight and inform all readers. Russell Stannard is a best-selling popular science writer and the author of the critically acclaimed Uncle Albert series of science books for children.

Since it was first published in English, in 1946, Albert Camus's first novel, THE STRANGER (L'etranger), has had a profound impact on millions of American readers. Through this story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."Now, in an illuminating new American translation, extraordinary for its exactitude and clarity, the original intent of THE STRANGER is made more immediate. This haunting novel has been given a new life for generations to come.

Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape. Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition