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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis To Lucy Barfield My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky Verily, verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. John xii,24 Preface I N STARTING out on the life of my hero, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, I feel somewhat at a loss. By this I mean that, although I refer to Alexei (Alyosha) as my hero, I am well aware that he is by no means a great man, and this leads me to anticipate such obvious questions as: “What is so remarkable about your Alexei Karamazov that you should choose him as your hero? What exactly did he accomplish? Who has heard of him and what is he famous for? And why should I, the reader, spend time learning the facts of his life?” The last question is the fateful one because all I can answer is: “You may find that out for yourself from the novel.” But what if they read the novel and are still unconvinced that my Alexei is a remarkable man? I say this because I sadly anticip...

Night by Elie Wiesel Preface to the New Translation IF IN MY LIFETIME I WAS TO WRITE only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past lingers in the present, all my writings after Night , including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear its stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind? Was it to leave behind a legacy of words, of memories, to help prevent history from repeating itself? Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as an adolescent, at an age when one's knowledge of death and evil should be limited to what one discovers in literature? There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write this text. I am not convinced. I don't k...

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck Introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition Tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self Reliance” The most common response I have received to The Road Less Traveled in letters from readers has been one of gratitude for my courage, not for saying anything new, but for writing about the kind of things they had been thinking and feeling all along, but were afraid to talk about. I am not clear about the matter of courage. A certain kind of congenital obliviousness might be a more proper term. A patient of mine during the book’s early days happened to be at a cocktail party where she overheard a conversation between my mother and another elderly woman. Referring to the book, the other woman said, “You certainly must be very proud of your son, Scotty.” To which my mother replied, in the sometimes tart way of the elderly, “Proud? No, not ...

Three Quests in Philosophy by Etienne Gilson Foreword [by  James K. Farge] This slim volume contains seven previously unpublished lectures by Etienne Gilson. [1] He delivered the first of them, “The Education of a Philosopher,” in Montréal in 1963. The next three, grouped under the title “In Quest of Species,” were delivered in Toronto in January 1972. Gilson composed the last three, which he titled “In Quest of Matter,” at his home in Cravant (Yonne), France ; but his advanced age and declining health prevented his travelling to Canada . He therefore sent them to Laurence K. Shook in Toronto with the hope that they might eventually be published. “That is why I am anxious to do the job,” wrote the late Father Armand Maurer, Gilson’s student and disciple, in 2006. [2] The first lecture was prompted when a group of students in philosophy at the Université de Montréal invited Gilson to speak at their inaugural “Semaine de Philosophie” on Tuesday, 19 March 1963. ...

Lyrical and Critical Essays by  Albert Camus Preface 1958 [by Albert Camus] The essays collected in this volume were written in 1935 and 1936 (I was then twenty-two) and published a year later in Algeria in a very limited edition. This edition has been unobtainable for a long time and I have always refused to have   The Wrong Side and the Right Side   reprinted. There are no mysterious reasons for my stubbornness. I reject nothing of what these writings express, but their form has always seemed clumsy to me. The prejudices on art I cherish in spite of myself (I shall explain them further on) kept me for a long time from considering their republication. A great vanity, it would seem, leading one to suppose that my other writings satisfy every standard. Need I say this isn’t so? I am only more aware of the inadequacies in   The Wrong Side and the Right Side   than of those in my other work. How can I explain this except by admitting that the...