Nothing captivates our attention more than a face. Is it friendly, open, beautiful? Bare of makeup, airbrushed, disfigured? Does it draw us in, or repel us? And why?

The way people style themselves reveals much about their desires, but also about their society. From the Pharaosʼ large eyes to the even faces of social media beauties, Rabea Weihser guides us into the insane, multifaceted cosmos of ideals. This exciting expedition to the heart of our aesthetic preferences changes our view on beauty and the faces of our time. Smart, inspiring and insightful.

Magnificent and infuriating, loving and stifling, self-sacrificing yet interfering – Michel Bergmann loves his mother Charlotte, and sometimes he can’t stand her. In this unvarnished book, he tells the story of a strong, obstinate woman who was driven out of Germany, lost nearly her entire family, and was ultimately happily reunited with her future husband, yet too often had to face her troubles alone.

Dr. Isidor Geller has made it: he is a highly respected business man, an advisor to the Austrian government, a multi-millionaire, an opera lover, art collector and, after two failed marriages, is in a relationship with a beautiful singer. He has come a long way: from a shtetl in the furthest, most impoverished recesses of Galicia to the most elite circles of Viennese society. 
No one can touch him now, Isidor is sure of that – and certainly not those vulgar National Socialists.
But in 1938, everything changes from one day to the next.

An expert in the study of German language and literature, Walter Muschg was originally trained as a psychoanalyst, and it was from this perspective that he gained profound and surprisingly modern insights into the subconscious and mythical nature of literary texts. These insights gave rise to original, often provocative but invariably convincing, literary interpretations. His collection of essays ›The Destruction of German Literature‹ caused a sensation in 1956, as Muschg was the first critic to draw attention to the »burnt-out poets« of expressionism after 1945. Compiled from this as well as other works by Muschg, the volume contains the critic's most important essays on »his« authors Brecht, Döblin, Goethe, Hebel, Kafka, Barlach, Keller, Stifter as well as many others.

A book that was a sensation when it was published. A literary history that is unique because it is tracing literature back to its tragic origins and answers the question: what makes a man become an artist? Numerous examples from world literature make up this gallery of brilliant minds and their works against the background of their personal tragedies.

The questions Schlink examines are often provoked by current conflicts: the debate surrounding the Christian crucifix and Muslim headscarves in schools, stem cell and embryonic research, the threat to human dignity posed by the battle against crime and terrorism. Other questions find their roots in literary and Biblical texts: in the poetry of Heinrich Heine, the novels of Hans Fallada, Imre Kertész, Pat Barker and Jeffrey Eugenides, the story of Jacob's struggle on the Jabbok, the narrative of Pentecost. In his treatment of these questions, Schlink verifies his standpoint. Writing as both a novelist and a lawyer, his prose is never legally abstract in discussing the law and justice, all the while retaining its narrative force when dealing with politics, the economy, literature or the Church. His writing is refreshingly clear, accessible and vivid.

The fact that Szczypiorski is not only a great narrator but also a brilliant essayist was already evident in his ›Notes on the State of Things‹. Now all his essays and speeches are united in one volume with which Szczypiorski became a household word in recent years, above all the speech on the anniversary of the reunification of Germany on October 3rd 1994 in Bremen.

Matussek made these reportages during a time of radical change - the end of the Reagan/Bush era and Clinton's first year of presidency. The national intoxication with the success of the Gulf War was followed by a hangover in the face of America's home-made problems: the economic crisis, the financial deficit, the street fights in Los Angeles. The stuff of which the American dream is made is worn-out and shabby, but these Stories from America make it clear that it still remains the accepted point of reference. A celebration of the great colonial myth. The basketball-playing ghetto boy who hopes for a big career. The media mogul who conquers continents in the »war of pictures«. And Matussek shows us how the artist and the critic handle this »stuff that dreams are made on«. Cocktail parties and homeless desolation, Broadway fever, the intoxication of consumption and the death sentence of aids – New York, America, has seldom been so intensively experienced as it is here. Linguistic brilliance, wit and an unerring feeling for unexpected details characterise Matussek's impressive and provocative writing.

In Kindling, Meienberg writes of diverse acts of violence, harsh realities and broken dreams. There is the alleged Allied victory in the Gulf War, presented as cleanly fought, and the rise of fundamentalism in Algeria; there is the misery in the Maghreb and the racism in the Paris banlieues; the collapse of Marxist thought and the rapid growth of esotericism; the ethnic cleansing in Karabakh, which we have grown accustomed to; our habituation to the everyday slaughter in Bosnia and the death of his mother. The essay collection also contains a letter to Salman Rushdie, living under the threat of a fatwa, and another to the editor-in-chief of Oslobodenje in Sarajevo, a man producing a newspaper in deadly danger.

In 1461, Jan enthusiastically participates in the persecution of the Jews and witches blamed for an outbreak of plague and famine, but the burgeoning violence threatens Jan himself as he faces choices that have allegorical links to contemporary issues.

On the lives and thoughts of Meister Eckhart, Jan Hus, Martin Luther, Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Blaise Pascal, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Leo Tolstoy and many more.

In time for the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses: This book puts the reformer into another perspective – the church and its critics throughout 20 centuries.

A vivid and lively read – packed full of knowledge.

The standard work – now made available again.

The Book of Heretics tells us about ›unsuccessful saints‹, as Walter Nigg calls them. With great empathy, he writes about seekers of the divine and the truth, internally liberated but expelled from the church, or leavers by choice. His subjects include ›witches‹ and Cathars, famous philosophers and theologians, writers and scholars.

»Heretics are often among the greatest pioneers of new ideas. Their contemporaries could often not yet understand them.«
Walter Nigg

English translation available.