Books in the The Art of Living series

Most of us care about certain people and things, and some of these concerns become personal commitments, involving our values, our relationships, our work and our religious or political stances. This book delves into the relationship between commitment and meaningful life, and asks whether commitment must be based on truth to provide such meaning.

Clothes protect our vulnerable skin and they keep us warm or cool. They help us show that we are young or old, rich or poor, at work or play, and whether we may be good to know. This title considers the overlapping values that clothes have for us.

Fame was once associated with excellence or achievement in some or other field of endeavour. One of the most distinctive cultural phenomena over the years has been the rise and rise of fame. This book shows why this new fame is simultaneously fascinating and worthless.

Why do we live with pets? Is there something more to our relationship with them than simply companionship? This title explores the nature of this most complex of relationships and the difficulties of knowing what it is that one is living with when one chooses to share a home with an animal.

Colin Feltham brings a much needed perspective on our perpetual striving towards perfectibility. Time to accept our non-omniscience and to rethink what it means to fail.

An exploration of love, a subject that has occupied philosophers since the time of Plato. Tackling the mood of pessimism about the nature of love that reaches back through Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, it examines the links between love and grief, love and nature, and between love of others and loving oneself.

For Aristotle being hopeful was part of a well-lived life, a virtue. For Aquinas it was a fundamentally theological virtue and for Kant a basic moral motivation. Drawing on everyday examples as well as discussion of hope in the arenas of medicine, politics and religion, this title shows how hopefulness in not the same as hope.

"This warm and witty book does something wonderful: it brings the great ideas of philosophy into our lives. Young is a bright new voice."John Armstrong, author of Love, Life, Goethe: How to be Happy in an Imperfect World

Forgiveness usually gets a very good press in our culture. This book offers an understanding of forgiveness allows us to avoid cheap and shallow forms of it, and enables us to see why it is right and admirable to forgive even unrepentant wrongdoers.

Investigates the gap between what we are and what others perceive us to be to ascertain whether we are genuinely knowable entities. This book explores the central dilemma of how one can have a fixed idea of 'me' to shape and direct one's life when, in a world of constant change, events will rob us of that fixed idea at any moment.

Shows how we might think about and, more importantly, live our lives in view of the inescapability of our dying. This book considers the possibility that our mortal deaths are the end of us, and asks what this might mean for our living.

Argues that positive psychology has overlooked and sidelined the ancient wisdom on wellbeing, notably from the Greek philosophers. This work shows that wellbeing is not found in a focus on pleasure, or even the pursuit of happiness itself. Rather, it is a question of meaning and responding to the great challenge: the search for transcendence.

Understanding hunger is the key to understanding ourselves. While they seem the most obvious things about us, our hungers are also deeply mysterious, arising out of, and casting light on, the unique character of human consciousness. This book takes us through the different levels of our hunger.

Most of us think we are about 15 per cent cleverer, more attractive and better drivers than others think we are. Drawing on insights from philosophy, psychology and literature, this work explores the implications for living well in the shadow of Kant's humbling thought that "out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made".

A memoir of McGinn that discusses many of the sports he was engaged in - from pole-vaulting and gymnastics to windsurfing and tennis - and describes the athletic experience from the inside, as a participant, articulating what is uniquely valuable about sport as an activity.

Middle age, for many, marks a key period for a radical reappraisal of one's life and way of living. This book explores the moods, emotions and experiences of middle age in the contemporary world, seeking to describe and analyze that period of life philosophically. It is suitable for those heading for a 'mid-life crisis'.

Explores the notion of faith and the role it plays in our lives. The author unpacks the concept to ask whether faith is dependent on religion or whether it is also a general secular phenomenon.

Contends that our continuing faith in science in the face of its actual history is best understood as the secular residue of a religiously inspired belief in divine providence.