The Good Life

From growing your own tea, to building a DIY water tank, making yoghurt to co-housing, with The Good Life you’ll gain the skills, self-reliance and confidence needed to engage meaningfully with your space, your food and your community. Whether you have a half-acre, a backyard, a tiny balcony or no balcony at all, there are tips and tricks to suit everyone.

This text is an essay on the relationship between ways of thinking, the rich seams of contemporary thought and the forms of the house, of planning and living in it. The descriptive method is based on seven guided visits to a group of real or imaginary houses that make up a sufficiently extended panorama for understanding what the 20th century has bequeathed to us in the way of a heritage. In order to choose the houses to visit it was necessary to narrow things down, simplify them, by highlighting a series of archetypes defined by their most pronounced features. The reader, then, won't find any of the masterworks built by modern architects -neither the Villa Savoye, nor Fallingwater, nor the Villa Tugendhat-but mostly imaginary houses, houses constructed by manipulating different references. In short, this book invites the reader on a fantasy tour, one whose aim is not just to celebrate the diversity of the 20th-century house but also to stimulate the pleasure of thinking, planning and living intensely, to promote the appearance of a house that does not yet exist.

Two Philosophers Ask and Answer the Big Questions About the Search for Faith and Happiness For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages.

What could middle-class German supermarket shoppers buying eggs and impoverished coffee farmers in Guatemala possibly have in common? Both groups use the market in pursuit of the "good life." But what exactly is the good life? How do we define wellbeing beyond material standards of living? While we all may want to live the good life, we differ widely on just what that entails. In The Good Life, Edward Fischer examines wellbeing in very different cultural contexts to uncover shared notions of the good life and how best to achieve it. With fascinating on-the-ground narratives of Germans' choices regarding the purchase of eggs and cars, and Guatemalans' trade in coffee and cocaine, Fischer presents a richly layered understanding of how aspiration, opportunity, dignity, and purpose comprise the good life.

Sharing from his own life, as well as the stories of others, Chuck Colson exposes the counterfeits of the good life and leads readers to the only true source of meaning and purpose, Jesus Christ. But he does that in an unusual way, allowing powerful stories to illustrate how people have lived out their beliefs in ways that either satisfy or leave them empty. Colson addresses seekers—people looking for the truth. He shows through stories that the truth is knowable and that the truly good life is one that lives within the truth. Through the book, readers get to understand their own stories and find answers to their own search for meaning, purpose, and truth.

The Good Life is a deeply reasoned but entertaining polemic about how the notion of morality has been co-opted by the political right, as the culture increasingly embraces the shallow charms of celebrity, gives a pass when it comes to failings in the realm of marital fidelity, and lives comfortably with the notion that we are all driven, more or less, by greed and the desire for power over others. Mendelson, who is for gay rights, sexual equality, labor unions, and the strong regulation of business and finance, is decidedly conservative when it comes to personal morality. She believes that while the right manages to effectively portray its opponents as socialist slackers, it claims a moral superiority it doesn't at all exhibit, lacking, as she says, moral compassion, one of the essential moral virtues. Provocative, inspiring, and deeply grounded, The Good Life shows that while the moral life is a hard road, the more of us who recognize that it is out there to be attempted, the better our culture will be.

David Patchell-Evans is the founder and CEO of GoodLife Fitness Clubs, Canada’s largest and fastest-growing fitness empire. Patchell-Evans, or “Patch,” as everyone calls him, is a five-time Canadian rowing champion and an active rower, runner, and skier today. Two weeks into his first year in university he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident. A lengthy and arduous period of rehabilitation at a sports clinic sparked his interest in sports and exercise, and he went on to combine courses in physical fitness and business, and to found his business empire. In this sane approach to health and exercise, Patch recounts his own personal story and gives balanced and inspiring tips on exercise, diet, and life.

Professionals and business people in midlife are increasingly asking themselves "what's next?" in their careers and personal lives. Creating the Good Life draws on the wisdom of the ages to help contemporary men and women plan for satisfying, useful, moral, and meaningful second halves of their lives. For centuries, the brightest people in Western societies have looked to Aristotle for guidance on how to lead a good life and how to create a good society. Now James O'Toole--the Mortimer J. Adler Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute--translates that classical philosophical framework into practical, comprehensible terms to help professionals and business people apply it to their own lives and work. His book helps thoughtful readers address some of the profound questions they are currently struggling with in planning their futures: • How do I find meaning and satisfaction? • How much money do I need in order to be happy? • What is the right balance between work, family, and leisure? • What are my responsibilities to my community? • How can I create a good society in my own company? Bridging philosophy and self-help, O'Toole's book shows how happiness ultimately is attainable no matter one's level of income, if one uses Aristotle's practical exercises to ask the right questions and to discipline oneself to pursue things that are "good for us." The book is the basis for O'Toole's new "Good Life" seminar, where thoughtful men and women gather to create robust and satisfying life plans.