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.

In the ›Book of Penitents‹ (›Buch der Büßer‹), Walter Nigg traces the confusions, fears and problems in the lives of nine famous personalities and shows, through vivid descriptions, that they are the same confusions, fears and problems of modern man. However, he also shows how these can be overcome: by means of insight. On his journey through the centuries, Walter Nigg introduces the reader to extraordinary men and women whose lives can be called exemplary: we encounter Maria Magdalena, a woman whose life initially lacked direction; desert saint Makarius who is called the great; passionate Margareta von Cortona; fiery spirit Savonarola who was fated to die on the pyre; we hear of the thunderous words of de Rancé; take a close-up view of Dostoevsky the prophet; the man who voluntarily demeaned himself: Albert from Poland; God's own adventurer, Charles de Foucauld; and the voice that came out of silence: Simone Weil.

The history of European thought offers a breathtaking panorama. A single life is usually not sufficient to gain an overview of it. Ludwig Marcuse has compiled a reader in three volumes, which combines selected sample passages of the great European thinkers with introductory words on their lives and works. The result is an introduction to the pantheon of European thinking – and a standard work for every age. Volume I : Book of Job, Diogenes Laertius, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Caesar, Sallustius, Ovid, Plutarch, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, and others Volume II : Aurelius Augustinus, Hildegard of Bingen, Dante, Thomas More, Ignatius of Loyola, Friedrich Schiller, Novalis, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Ludwig Börne, and others Volume III : Karl Marx, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Georg Büchner, Richard Wagner, Gottfried Keller, Søren Kierkegaard, Gustave Flaubert, Karl Kraus, Oswald Spengler, Sigmund Freud, Karl Jaspers, Thomas Mann, and others

Based on her in-depth, first-hand conversations, Felizitas von Schönborn has been able to bring together the views and core values of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism. This book is as significant for interested laymen as it is for people with a particular involvement in politics, philosophy and religion. It is concerned as much with personal happiness and the search for meaning in life as with ecological problems and world peace, because: »Happiness exists on many levels. I visualise happiness as a harmonious interplay between inner peace in the heart of the individual and outer peace among the peoples of the world. It is my wish that all of the inhabitants of the Earth can enjoy as much prosperity as possible. Poverty and misery do not create a happy life. One must be able to satisfy one's basic needs; one requires food, clean water and a roof over one's head. This is true of all cultures.«

Christianity is a backdrop to much culture, literature and many people’s lives. Even for those of us who are not religious, Christian concepts and rituals, interpretations of Biblical texts, their laws and prohibitions, shape our everyday lives. Yet what do we really know about our beliefs, the ideas upon which our conceptions of morality are based, the festivals we celebrate?
A glimpse behind the divine curtain, full of compelling insights and lots of a-ha moments.