In Consolations David Whyte unpacks aspects of being human that many of us spend our lives trying vainly to avoid - loss, heartbreak, vulnerability, fear - boldly reinterpreting them, fully embracing their complexity, never shying away from paradox in his relentless search for meaning.

Beginning with 'Alone' and closing with 'Withdrawal', each piece in this life-affirming book is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling overwhelmed and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness something that accompanies the first stage of revelation.

Consolations invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.

Few artworks have been the subject of more extensive modern interpretation than Melencolia I by renowned artist, mathematician, and scientist Albrecht Durer (1514). And yet, did each of these art experts and historians miss a secret manifesto that Durer included within the engraving? This is the first work to decrypt secrets within Melencolia I based not on guesswork, but Durer's own writings, other subliminal artists that inspired him (i.e., Leonardo da Vinci), the Jewish and Christian Bibles, and books that inspired Durer (De Occulta Philosophia and the Hieorglyphica). To read the covert message of Melencolia I is to understand that Durer was a humanist in his interests in mathematics, science, poetry, and antiquity. This book recognizes his unparalleled power with the burin, his mathematical skill in perspective, his dedication to precise language, and his acute observation of nature. Melencolia I may also be one of the most controversial (and at the time most criminal) pieces of art as it hid Durer's disdain for the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the Kaiser, and the Holy Roman Empire from the general public for centuries. This book closely ties the origins of philosophy (science) and the work of a Renaissance master together, and will be of interest for anyone who loves scientific history, art interpretation, and secret manifestos.

Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion’s writing, from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and screen plays, it may appear that there is no unifying thread, but Matthew R. McLennan argues that ‘the ethics of memory’ – the question of which norms should guide public and private remembrance – offers a promising vision of what is most characteristic and salient in Didion’s works. By framing her universe as indifferent and essentially precarious, McLennan demonstrates how this outlook guides Didion’s reflections on key themes linked to memory: namely witnessing and grieving, nostalgia, and the paradoxically amnesiac qualities of our increasingly archived public life that she explored in famous texts like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking and Salvador. McLennan moves beyond the interpretive value of such an approach and frames Didion as a serious, iconoclastic philosopher of time and memory. Through her encounters with the past, the writer is shown to offer lessons for the future in an increasingly perilous and unsettled world.