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From Dimension 20 fandom to homebrewed campaigns, the game of Dungeons & Dragons offers neurodivergent players a space to create and celebrate new systems of thinking, connect with others, and have fun. The Beginner’s Guide to Tabletop Role­ playing Games for Neurodivergent Players is for anyone—neurodivergent or neuro­typical—who has ever wanted to give D&D a try but felt overwhelmed by its scope. Combining research, resources, testimonials, and interviews with experts, Lucas Maxwell illuminates the bridge between Dungeons & Dragons and those who seek to play it. Maxwell even provides two one-shot adventures and everything you need to play them, whether in the classroom, a club, or at home.

For over a decade now, we’ve been hearing the wrong messages about burnout: we are told that we have to fix ourselves in order to fix burnout. This misguided wisdom says that better time management, stronger boundaries, and more yoga-mindfulness-gratitude-exercise-vacation are the solution. Nope. Stronger, healthier communities are the solution. Lisa M. Nunn shows us that the same dynamics that create the social bonds of belonging, when absent, become the drivers of burnout. Greedy communities drive burnout; respectful communities foster belonging. Unfair communities drive burnout; trustworthy communities foster belonging. Negligent communities drive burnout; attentive communities foster belonging. The book offers 35 strategies to cultivate strong belonging—and in doing so minimize burnout—in our workplaces, families, friendship circles, volunteer organizations, athletic clubs, and every other community in our lives.

Henry David Thoreau is best known as a writer, naturalist, and social critic, but he was also a schoolteacher, surveyor, and pencil-­maker. In The Gospel According to This Moment, Unitarian minister Barry M. Andrews reveals how an idiosyncratic and unconventional religious faith was central to Thoreau’s many-­faceted life—­a dimension that has been largely unexamined.

Through close readings of his writings and a focus on his Unitarian upbringing, Harvard education, mentoring by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and immersion in ancient Eastern and Western philosophies, Andrews explores the nature of Thoreau’s spiritual message, what he called the “Gospel according to this moment,” which enables a flourishing and deliberate life. Today, Thoreau is widely recognized as an advocate for simple living, environmental preservation, and civil disobedience. As Andrews uncovers, Thoreau is also a spiritual guide who can teach us an alternative way of being religious in the world.

An insightful and intimate look at aging and masculinity that includes interviews and portraits of men from around the world.

What do men really think? From a taxi driver to a prince, a fishmonger to a professional boxer, The Other Half reveals the inner thoughts of men over fifty from different nationalities and different walks of life in their own words, illuminated by their portraits. Author and photojournalist Ellen Warner traveled the world to find out what men really think about love, work, and aging, speaking with well-known figures like film director James Ivory and journalist Bill Keller, as well as a philosopher, a chess grandmaster, a hair stylist, a financier, and more. Interviewing men from Colombia, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sweden, and everywhere in between, Warner assembles a moving portrait of their reflections, insights, challenges, and hard-won triumphs.

A companion to The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After Fifty, Warner’s latest book shares the diverse, vibrant experiences of men over fifty.

An incisive and erudite survey of Machiavelli, the catastrophes of his times and ours, and his counsel for responding to an era of constant crises.

Catastrophe looms. Political, environmental, epidemic, and military crises arrive with increasing frequency. In The Way to Hell, Nathan Crick argues that our perilous times call for the strongest medicine in the Western canon: Machiavelli. Crick reminds contemporary readers about the Florentine master’s advice—that one must learn the road to Hell precisely to avoid taking it.

Like a knowledgeable friend, Crick offers contemporary readers a guide to Machiavelli’s world, work, and warnings. He takes in the sweep of Western history, comparing Machiavelli’s work with ancient sources such as Cicero and Thucydides. And as Machiavelli has never stopped provoking comment, Crick treats readers to a feast of responses to Machiavelli’s work—caustic, learned, and humorous—in the five centuries since he lived.

Including both Machiavelli’s best-known works, The Prince and Discourses on Livy, as well as his personal correspondence and comic plays, Crick asks anew the questions that bedeviled Machiavelli’s beloved Florentine republic: When is force necessary? When are lies justified? Is cruelty defensible? When does social protest slip into violent revolution? What is the correct response to catastrophe?

Like Machiavelli himself, The Way to Hell is witty, stimulating, and challenging. In a world seemingly on the road to Hell, Machiavelli offers an alternative route. His bracing vision exhorts readers to see the dangers in their path and to take action with vigor and determination. Far from a vision of cynicism, Machiavelli offers a beacon of hope for a world that seems on the brink.

A compelling exploration of the idea that enables diverse people to live together with respect, dignity, and understanding.

Most regard toleration as an unattractive fallback position of compromise and so tend to overlook it in favor of such active concepts as freedom, equality, and justice. Fotion and Elfstrom argue that toleration offers us the useful possibility of responding to a difficult situation with a degree of flexibility not possible with the dichotomous concepts of good-bad, right-wrong, ethical-unethical, Right-Left.

Tolerating saturates ordinary human life and infuses public discussions of religion, morality, and politics. It forms a major strand in the history of Western European thought. Yet the word “toleration” and similar terms are rarely used. Unnoticed and unremarked, they are like the air that surrounds us, vitally important yet invisible.The authors seek to address this oversight in several ways. They begin with a thorough conceptual analysis of toleration and its kindred concepts. They are convinced that an appreciation of the importance of the family of toleration concepts must be founded on an understanding of the various ways in which they function in our language and our lives. In addition, they examine the historical development of the concept of toleration and canvass the major arguments people have employed either to urge toleration or to disparage it. They examine the role of toleration in liberal political philosophy and respond to the major critics of liberal toleration.

The authors also discuss a number of factors that cause toleration to be overlooked in political debate and personal reflection and offer evidence to support the view that this omission is unfortunate. In particular, they argue that toleration has the crucial role of helping people live with one another with respect and dignity in the fractious and contentious world we inhabit. With the rise of racism and other forms of religious, political, and social intolerance, people on all sides of the present debates concerning multi-culturalism and diversity will benefit from this timely and lucidly argued philosophical discussion of the concepts of toleration and its possible application in a less-than-perfect world.