Hope Against Hope is Nadezhda Mandelstam's harrowing account of her life with her husband, Osip Mandelstam, a renowned Russian poet. The memoir details Osip's arrest, interrogation, and eventual death in a Siberian gulag in 1938, following his satirical poem about Joseph Stalin. Nadezhda's narrative provides a vital eyewitness account of Stalin's Soviet Union, highlighting the persecution of Russia's literary intelligentsia and her own courageous efforts to preserve her husband's poems and uncover the truth about his death. The book is also a profoundly inspiring love story that underscores their determination to keep love and art alive in desperate circumstances.
This book provides a detailed and panoramic account of the development of the atomic bomb, starting from the early 19th-century discoveries in physics to the culmination of the Manhattan Project during World War II. It includes the contributions of key scientists such as Niels Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and others, and explores the scientific, political, and human aspects that led to the creation and use of the atomic bomb. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for its rigorous scholarship and compelling narrative[2][3][4].
Written in 1959, 'Life and Fate' is a monumental novel that narrates the story of the Shaposhnikov family during the Great Patriotic War. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Battle of Stalingrad and delves into the lives of numerous characters, including Soviet physicist Viktor Shtrum, who grapples with anti-Semitism and moral dilemmas in a totalitarian state. The book juxtaposes the horrors of war and the Gulag with the intimate lives of its characters, exploring profound philosophical and moral questions. Despite its initial suppression by the KGB, the novel was eventually smuggled out of the Soviet Union and has since been recognized as one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century.
This book is a transcript of the only public speech David Foster Wallace gave on his views on life, delivered as a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005. The speech delves into the difficulties of empathy, the unimportance of being well-adjusted, and the apparent loneliness of adult life. Wallace argues that true freedom comes from the ability to be fully conscious and sympathetic, and he emphasizes the importance of learning how to think and exercise control over one's thoughts. The speech is known for its blend of casual humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, offering advice that renews readers with every reading. After his death, the speech became a treasured piece of writing, reprinted in various publications and widely discussed online[1][2][4].
Menachem Fisch's 'Rational Rabbis' explores the intersection of scientific rationality and Talmudic culture, challenging traditional views by highlighting rational elements within Talmudic texts. The book develops insights from Karl Popper into a fuller theory of rational endeavor, bridging Talmudic study with modern Western intellectual traditions.
Jordan Peterson sits down with author, professor, and Dean of Intellectual Foundations at the University of Austin, Jacob Howland. They discuss man’s finitude and his grasping for the infinite, how orientation can provide limitless abundance or a bottomless fall, where Socrates and the Talmud overlap, and why God offers Abraham adventure as the covenant.
Jacob Howland is the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of Intellectual Foundations at the University of Austin. Previously he was McFarlin Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Tulsa, where he taught from 1988 to 2020.
Howland has published five books and roughly sixty scholarly articles and review essays on the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Kierkegaard, the Talmud, the Holocaust, ideological tyranny, and other subjects A past winner of the University of Tulsa Outstanding Teacher Award and the College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award, he has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Littauer Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Koch Foundation, and has lectured in Israel, France, England, Romania, Brazil, Denmark, Norway, and at universities around the United States. His most recent book is Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s Republic, Paul Dry Books, 2018.
This episode was filmed on March 15th, 2025.
| Links |
For Jacob Howland:
Read Howland’s most recent publication “Glaucon's Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato's Republic” https://a.co/d/7EGH57y
Howland’s philosophy website and blog https://www.jacobhowland.com/?_sm_nck=1
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast 
