Books about Unbearable from Amazon.com

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

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Price: $7.09 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Distilled from Donald Palmer's more than 30 years of teaching experiences, this approachable text exemplifies Dr. Palmer's very successful light-hearted approach to teaching introduction to philosophy. Through the use of humor, drawings, charts, and diagrams, serious philosophical topics come alive for the readers--without compromising the seriousness of the subject matter. The text can be used as a core text or as a supplement to any reader..
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For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is an astonishment Whether Nathan Englander is creating the last days of 27 condemned Soviet writers or the first in which a Park Avenue lawyer finds religion (in a taxi, no less), his gift is everywhere in evidence. Englander's specialty is the collision of Jewish law and tradition with secular realities, whether in Brooklyn, Tel Aviv, or Stalinist Russia. In one tale, a wigmaker from an ultra-orthodox Brooklyn enclave journeys into Manhattan for supplies and, more importantly, inspiration--frequenting a newsstand where she pays for the right to flip through forbidden fashion magazines. If all Ruchama wants to do is be beautiful again and momentarily free of communal constraints, others ask only to survive. In "The Tumblers," set in World War II Poland (with a metafictional twist), followers of the Mahmir Rebbe get into a train filled with circus performers rather than into a cattle car. Their only chance is to camouflage themselves as part of the troupe:

Their acceptance as acrobats was a stretch, a first-glance guess, a benefit of the doubt granted by circumstance and only as valuable as their debut would prove. It was an absurd undertaking. But then again, Mendel thought, no more unbelievable than the reality from which they'd escaped, no more unfathomable than the magic of disappearing Jews.

Another story, "Reb Kringle," is almost breezy by comparison. Each year, one Brooklynite dreads his holiday job from hell, playing Santa Claus in a Manhattan department store: "There were elves posted on each side of Itzik; one--a humorless, muscular midget--wore a pair of combat boots that gave him the look of elf-at-arms. His companion might have been a twin. He wore black high-tops but had the same vigilant paramilitary demeanor." Itzik can put up with the children's accidents and greed, with his sciatica, and even with a mischief maker's attempt to cut off his beard. But when one boy admits that what he really wants to do is celebrate Hanukkah, "the infamous Reb Santa" loses it. Though this is undoubtedly the collection's lightest piece--proof positive that you have to be a saint to be a Jewish Santa--it is no less piercing an examination of identity and obligation than Englander's more heavyweight entries. --Kerry Fried.
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Revised edition with new preface and foreword .
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Esta es una extraordinaria historia de amor, o sea de celos, de sexo, de traiciones, de muerte y también de las debilidades y paradojas de la vida cotidiana de dos parejas cuyos destinos se entrelazan irremediablemente. En efecto, los celos de Teresa por Tomás, el terco amor de éste por ella opuesto a su irreflenable deseo de otras mujeres, el idealismo lírico y cursi de Franz, amante de Sabina, y la necesidad de ésta, amante también de Tomás, de perseguir incansable, una libertad que tan sólo la conduce a la insoportable levedad del ser, se convierten de simple anécdota en reflexión sobre problemas filosóficos que, afectan a cada uno directamente, cada día.

This is an extraordinary love story about jealousy, sex, treason, death, and also about weakness and complexity in the everyday life of two couples whose destinies have crossed. The author weaves a fascinating plot of thoughts and actions around his characters with diabolic wisdom..
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Saki is the acknowledged master of the short story. His writing is elegant, economical, and witty, its tone worldly, flippant irreverence delivered in astringent exchanges and epigrams more neat, pointed, and poised even than Wilde's. The deadpan narrative voice allows for the unsentimental recitation of horrors and the comically grotesque, and the generation of guilty laughter at some very un-pc statements.
Saki's short stories have been much reprinted as well as adapted for radio, stage, and television, but his novels, The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came, are almost unknown, his journalism and travel writing forgotten, and his plays rarely performed. Sandie Byrne argues that his reputation has been unfairly overshadowed by his predecessor Oscar Wilde, contemporary George Bernard Shaw, and successors P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh.
In a well-meaning introduction to the Penguin Complete Saki, Noel Coward reinforced the received image of Saki's work as celebrating an Edwardian or even Victorian milieu of privilege, luxury, and affectation; comedies of manners and light satire. Byrne shows that Saki's writing was no nostalgic evocation of a lost golden age, and that he was rarely concerned with the charm and delight Coward describes. His preoccupations were with England, the values of Empire, and the dangerous beauty of the feral ephebe. The threat to the first two of these triggered his alleged metamorphosis from cosmopolitan cynic and dandy-about-town to patriotic, even jingoistic, NCO, in a manner worthy of his blackest humor..
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The late Dr. Viktor Frankl, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century and the author of the bestselling book, Man's Search for Meaning, wrote over 50 years ago: "Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."

The gist of this book, This Unbearable Boredom of Being, is that the most burning problems of today's America: crime, drugs, greed, ugly gender polarization, disintegration of family, decay in morals, racism, and so on, are the direct consequences of a crisis of meaning that has engulfed America. The author, Genrich Krasko, an acclaimed scientist and follower of Viktor Frankl, analyzes the causes of this existential crisis.

Genrich Krasko identifies one powerful factor that plays an enormous and decisive role in exacerbating our crisis and virtually all our problems: the degradation of our educational system. He also discusses the roots of this degradation and a future, true, educational reform. However, what Genrich Krasko suggests is almost diametrically opposed to the measures that are being widely discussed (and implemented) today.

This Unbearable Boredom of Being is an eye opener. It will also help you to envisage a new America, healthy and flourishing, a light unto the nations..
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