Governor General's Award Winner Tenth Anniverary Edition, with a new preface Our society, John Ralston Saul argues in his 1995 CBC Massey Lectures, is only superficially based on the individual and democracy. Increasingly it is...

In Malaise of Modernity, Charles Taylor focuses on the key modern concept of self-fulfillment, often attacked as the central support of what Christopher Lasch has called the culture of narcissism. To Taylor, self-fulfillment, although...

This volume presents an in-depth examination of France and England in the first half of the eighteenth century. In this masterful work, listeners will encounter the salons of Paris, the philosophes, Voltaire himself, and more.

The study of everyday life is fundamental to our understanding of modern society. This book provides a coherent, interdisciplinary way to engage with everyday activities and environments. Arguing for an innovative, ethnographic approach...

In our society, cultural activity - or the arts - usually refers to the high culture of the elites and popular mass culture. Clarke Mackey argues for a third category that is as old as human society itself but seldom discussed:...

Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers...

Writer and scholar George Steiner's Massey Lectures are just as cogent today as when he delivered them in 1974 -- perhaps even more so. He argues that Western culture's moral and emotional emptiness stems from the decay of formal...

An electrifying collection of thought-provoking interviews from recent broadcasts of CBC Radio’s Ideas. In these remarkable dialogues— most of them in the company of Ideas host Paul Kennedy — some of the great intellectuals of our time...