A novel of soldiers and spies in the Highlands of Vietnam Army cop Erik Rider is enjoying his war until he's sent to disrupt Vietcong opium fields in a remote Highland province. Rider lands in Cheo Reo, home to hard-pressed soldiers, intelligence operatives, and profiteers of all stripes. The tiny U.S. contingent and their unenthusiastic Vietnamese allies are hopelessly outnumbered by infiltrating enemy infantry. And they're all surrounded by sixty thousand Montagnard tribespeople who want their mountain homeland back. The Vietcong are onto Rider's game and have placed a bounty on his head. As he hunts the opium fields, skirmishes with enemy patrols, and defends the undermanned US base, Rider makes a disturbing discovery: someone close to home has a stake in the opium smuggling ring-and will kill to protect it. Written by a master, and as authentic as Matterhorn or Dog Soldiers, Red Flags is a riveting new addition to espionage fiction.
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Introspection means finding peace in a busy and eventful world. The most exciting journey is the discovery of one's own personality: Every aspect of this world is a part of us, in a unique and individual manner. The more aware we are of our own inner world, the more peace we gain in our lives. This practise-oriented book introduces Naikan – a simple method that allows you to look inward and discover your own possibilities and potentials, on the one hand in everyday life, and on the other hand as a retreat. The tools of Naikan are peace and these three questions: 1. What has a person done for me? 2. What have I done for this person? 3. What difficulties have I caused this person? It is about finding your own answers instead of looking for them on the outside. You are the expert of your own life. How does Naikan work? Why does one do it? What does power of silence mean? And what's the point? Naikan guide Johanna Schuh highlights many questions that one asks before, during or after the Naikan practice. With clear words, a lot of information, and a delightful sense of humor, she invites you into the world of introspection.
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A daring wager. A ticking clock. One unforgettable journey across the globe. When the enigmatic Phileas Fogg bets he can circle the world in just eighty days, he sets off with his loyal valet Passepartout on a whirlwind race through oceans, deserts, jungles, and bustling cities. But every step brings new obstacles—runaway trains, unexpected delays, breathtaking rescues, and a relentless detective convinced Fogg is a criminal in disguise. Celebrated as "one of the most delightful adventures ever written," Jules Verne's classic blends humor, suspense, and discovery into a story that has captivated readers for generations. If you love fast-paced travel, clever twists, and heroes who never lose their cool, this timeless novel will sweep you away. Start the journey now—and race around the world without leaving your chair.
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It was, of all people, to a Scottish philosopher of morality that there fell the role of intellectual forefather of capitalism. It was Adam Smith who was the first to recognize and describe, in 1776, the basic principle of the market economy. His magnum opus, “The Wealth of Nations”, is still looked on today as “the Bible of capitalism”. And indeed, for a period of ten years it was, after the Bible itself, the most-translated book on earth. Smith created the “magic formula” of the free play of supply and demand and his theory of “the invisible hand” spread like wildfire around the world, remaining still today the core of the capitalist market model. What is more, Smith provided a philosophical justification for capitalism in the form of a theory of human nature: Man, he argued, is by nature egoistic and self-interested. And nothing suits such a being so well as a market economy, because it gives everyone the chance to increase their wealth. But this, in the end, benefits all, since each of us, working at improving his or her own quality of life, is led willy-nilly, as if by an “invisible hand”, to promote also the welfare of society as a whole. Do egoistic energies really tend to be transformed into social prosperity in this way? Is capitalism “natural”? The book “Smith in 60 Minutes” explains the incisive theories of this philosopher and economist in a clear and comprehensible way, using over 50 key passages from Smith’s own works. The final chapter on “what use Smith’s discovery is for us today” discusses both the triumphal progress of Smith’s market model and the catastrophic crises that capitalism’s triumph has brought with it. The mechanism of the “invisible hand” and the free play of supply and demand are more than just theories. They form the very heart of the capitalist world and it is indispensable to know the economic and philosophical foundations of the social order in which we live. The book forms part of the popular series Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes.
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Already as a student Hegel was often reprimanded for excessive drinking and gambling and he is surely one of the most unconventional – today, one might say “coolest” – thinkers of all time. He is sometimes mockingly accused of having been drunk when he hit on his key idea of a “World Spirit”. Nevertheless, his philosophy remains fascinating and highly relevant even today. Hegel was the first philosopher to realize the full implications of the dimension of “becoming”. Human life has as much the character of a process as do Nature and History. A human being comes into the world as a baby and becomes a child, an adolescent and finally an adult. Likewise, human history marches onward from small beginnings. One epoch follows another. The expression “spirit of the times” that we use so casually today is in fact one we owe to Hegel’s great discovery that every epoch possesses a specific spirit that completely permeates it. This “spirit of the age” – or, as Hegel also called it, “World Spirit” – manifests itself in all the ideas held by this age’s people regarding morality, justice, art, music and architecture. A second contention central to his great philosophical discovery was that these different epochs and their “spirits” do not follow one another merely randomly and by chance but rather obey a logical principle of movement: the so-called “dialectic”. The pendulum of history swings, “dialectically”, first in one direction, then in the other. But human history is nonetheless steering its way, slowly but unstoppably, toward a great final goal. The book “Hegel in 60 Minutes” explains, how this “dialectic”, and thus the motor of human history, is argued by him to function. All the exciting questions raised by Hegel’s fascinating philosophical vision are answered here: at what point do we reach “the end of History”? Are we only spectators of this History, or actors in it? What is the meaning of life? The book forms part of the popular series “Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes”.
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Plato’s great discovery was radically new but has echoed down the ages. His “theory of Ideas” has shaped the whole of Western culture and his name is known worldwide. More than 2000 years ago Plato used his “allegory of the cave” – which envisaged people looking at shadows on a cavern wall and taking them for realities – to express a terrible suspicion. He saw his fellow Athenians living in a manipulated world of appearances – cut off from reality and put to sleep by material pleasures, wealth and demagogic politicians – and hoped, with this image, to shake them out of this sleep. Plato’s suspicions here are astonishingly relevant still in our Digital Age. Do we not also risk getting entirely lost in the shadows and projections of our TV-, Internet- and mobile-phone-dominated lives? To know truth, argued Plato, Man must learn to see again with his “inner eye”. We are able to sense the truth if we succeed in looking beyond the mere appearances. For behind the everyday objects and the immediately visible world, there is another invisible reality, a sort of higher level of Being, which can reveal to us the world as it truly is. This second, higher reality is the realm of the “Ideas”: above all the Ideas of the Good, the True and the Beautiful by which we must be guided in our lives. But what exactly are these Ideas? What does Plato mean when he speaks of “the Good”? And, most importantly, how can we know this “Good” and live a life in accordance with it? The book Plato in 60 Minutes uses three of Plato’s marvellous allegories – “the chariot”, “the sun”, and “the cave” – to explain the philosopher’s fascinating vision of the Ideas. But it also presents, citing key passages, Plato’s great political vision of an ideal state ruled by philosopher-kings. Finally, in a chapter on “what use Plato’s discovery is for us today”, it is shown how burningly relevant the ancient philosopher’s thoughts still are. The book forms part of the popular series Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes.
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Never before or since has a single philosopher produced such a tremendous effect as Karl Marx. His great vision of a society without private property was heeded worldwide and had huge historical effects. Allegiance to his ideas was proclaimed by revolutionaries, parties, governments and states. Marxism spread all around the globe. Marxist revolutions occurred in countries as different as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua and Mozambique as well as many others, until at one point almost a third of humanity were living under communism. But some hundred years after Marx’s death the communist world that he had inspired fell apart. After the fall of the Iron Curtain many claimed that Marx had been entirely in error and that the sole viable economic system is really capitalism after all. But the global economic and financial crises of recent decades have profoundly shaken belief in the power of the market to regulate itself. It has become ever clearer that capitalism does indeed display the structural flaws that Marx described in his main work, “Capital”. Certain of Marx’s predictions, such as the forming of powerful economic monopolies and the ever-growing gulf between rich and poor, have already come true. His acute critique of capitalism is, then, more relevant today than ever. There is no question but that Marx still has a lot to say to us. The book “Marx in 60 Minutes” explains in clear and perspicuous terms, using some seventy key quotations from Marx’s works, such topics as the materialist philosophy of history, the doctrine of “base and superstructure”, Marx’s critique of religion, and the analyses developed in Capital of “surplus value”, capital accumulation, and the immiseration of the workers. In the second part of the book, entitled “Of what use is Marx’s discovery to us today?”, Marx’s insights are applied to the present situation. The book forms part of the popular series “Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes”.
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Immanuel Kant is thought to be perhaps the greatest of all philosophers. And Kant did make, in the 18th Century, two great discoveries which engage us still today. Firstly, he founded the globally acknowledged ‘categorical imperative’ in moral philosophy; secondly, he became the first philosopher to succeed in answering that question as old as humanity of how knowledge arises in our brains. In his main work, the 1000-page “Critique of Pure Reason”, Kant analysed the working of Man’s thinking apparatus. He posed the critical question: what can a human being know with certainty and what can he not? His famous answer: Our reason can provide true and certain knowledge only of that which we have already perceived through our five senses (i.e. seen, heard, smelt, tasted, or touched). For this reason one cannot prove the existence of God, say, or really have “knowledge” of Him, because He is bodiless and imperceptible. Kant thus gave researchers, for the first time, a set of logical tools which was sensationally simple and yet quite perfect, and that still remains valid today and makes all scientific results achieved worldwide mutually comparable. Every theory, however good, had thenceforth to be proven in terms of actual sense-perceptions, for example through repeatable experiments. In his second main work, the Critique of Practical Reason, he tackled the equally ambitious question: ‘what is the right way for a human being to act?’ Is there a single valid standard for morally right action? Here too Kant provided a spectacular solution that is still passionately debated, globally, today. The book “Kant in 60 Minutes” explains both these major works of Kant’s in a lively way, using over eighty key passages from the works themselves and many examples. The final chapter on “what use Kant’s discovery is for us today” shows the enormous importance of his ideas for our personal lives and our society. The book forms part of the popular series “Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes”.
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