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What if everything we experience comes down to luck? Humans have struggled with anxiety about the pervasiveness of luck since the concept first arose in ancient societies, and attempts to address the problem have shaped the modern world. Yet the problem of luck has persisted because resolving it requires letting go of a tenacious group of deeply rooted illusions centered on the need to feel that people mostly get what they deserve.

In Luckpilled: Compassion, Justice, and Hope in a World Nobody Deserves, Aaron Rabinowitz combines cutting-edge work on the philosophy, psychology, politics, and pedagogy of luck to argue that we are better off embracing the pervasiveness of luck and abandoning harmful illusions that preserve an unjust status-quo. Using the luckpilling techniques offered in this book can help readers to cultivate compassion, empathy, gratitude and humility, as well as a stronger connection to activities they find meaningful.

Teaching with Tenderness follows in the tradition of bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inviting us to draw upon contemplative practices (yoga, meditation, free writing, mindfulness, ritual) to keep our hearts open as we reckon with multiple injustices. Teaching with tenderness makes room for emotion, offers a witness for experiences people have buried, welcomes silence, breath and movement, and sees justice as key to our survival. It allows us to rethink our relationship to grading, office hours, desks, and faculty meetings, sees paradox as a constant companion, moves us beyond binaries; and praises self and community care.

Tenderness examines contemporary challenges to teaching about race, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, religion, and other hierarchies. It examines the ethical, emotional, political, and spiritual challenges of teaching power-laden, charged issues and the consequences of shifting power relations in the classroom and in the community. Attention to current contributions in the areas of contemplative practices, trauma theory, multiracial feminist pedagogy, and activism enable us to envision steps toward a pedagogy of liberation. The book encourages active engagement and makes room for self-reflective learning, teaching, and scholarship.

2022 PROSE Award Finalist in Classics

Although the era of the Enlightenment witnessed the rise of philosophical debates around benevolent social practice, the origins of European humane discourse date further back, to Classical Athens. The Ancient Greek Roots of Human Rights analyzes the parallel confluences of cultural factors facing ancient Greeks and eighteenth-century Europeans that facilitated the creation and transmission of humane values across history. Rachel Hall Sternberg argues that precursors to the concept of human rights exist in the ancient articulation of emotion, though the ancient Greeks, much like eighteenth-century European societies, often failed to live up to those values.

Merging the history of ideas with cultural history, Sternberg examines literary themes upholding empathy and human dignity from Thucydides’s and Xenophon’s histories to Voltaire’s Candide, and from Greek tragic drama to the eighteenth-century novel. She describes shared impacts of the trauma of war, the appeal to reason, and the public acceptance of emotion that encouraged the birth and rebirth of humane values.

Showing that everyday people offer the deepest, most relatable lessons in grace

Offering an intimate glimpse into the lives of individuals connected to one of the world’s foremost centers for cancer care and research, The Light That Endures reveals how ordinary people at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute demonstrate extraordinary resilience in the face of life’s most challenging moments. Through eight captivating profiles, readers meet a world-renowned pediatric oncologist who rode on horseback at Eisenhower’s inauguration, delivered a secret message in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, and hosted the future King of England; a florist-turned-nurse-turned-teacher whose life changed drastically after a chance encounter on a train; an administrator who has faced adversity his entire life, from a violent father, to confronting his own identity, to being held up at gunpoint; a teenage patient whose battle with cancer was just one of many challenges he has navigated; and a woman who, despite spending her life bringing comfort to others, wonders whether she’s been enough as she reflects after a terminal diagnosis.

These remarkable people, diverse in their backgrounds, share a common bond through cancer and Dana-Farber, that much is obvious. However, it is their quiet acts of grace and service—woven into both their professional paths and personal journeys—that more deeply unite them. Their stories reveal a deeper truth: despite hardship and loss, the arc of life bends toward goodness. Fractured childhoods, family estrangement, mental health strains, winding career paths, and the ever-present shadow of self-doubt are not just obstacles but catalysts. The individuals profiled have found hope and meaning in community and their work, shaping lives of purpose, service, and gratitude. More than a recounting of lives touched by cancer, The Light That Endures is a celebration of the profound impact of compassion and human connection. It captures the essence of Dana-Farber’s ethos, where a shared mission of care fosters an environment of empathy and hope.