Being Human: Core Readings in the Humanities

An excellent collection of short stories, essays, poems, and excerpted books. Asking the most important question: what is human excellence?

I've been reading this as a required reading for my honors college program and while I have a few comments regarding the inclusion of spoilers in the summaries, it's overall a very well put together anthology with excerpts I wouldn't have thought to read on my own. Really worth a read, professor assigned or otherwise.

college readings. Good compilation of short stories and great authors for discussion group.I received the book in a couple days.

Great group of readings

college readings. Loved them. Good compilation of short stories and great authors for discussion group.

This is an amazing compilations of humanities readings; however I felt like the excerpts were a bit too short for my liking. Considering I have read some of the stories in their entirety outside of this book I felt like there were some cut short without making their point effectively.

Everyone interested in the philosophy of science, psychology, or what it means to be human should read this book. Written to guide the President's Council on Bioethics through the intense ethical dilemmas presented by biotechnology, from life-extension to genetic enhancement, these excerpts of literature were selected to provide material for reflection and guidance for those who will have the power to change what it means to be human.

I bought it for a class... so I guess it's a textbook...But it's full of great excepts from literature on the subject of life. I like to pick it up sometimes and just read random parts of it. Poems, short stories, long stories, etc. One of my most interesting textbooks and I like it. A good thing to have on one's shelf if they occasionally want to read a small aount of really powerful philosophy on life, but don't want to read Socrates or Aristotle. Just good normal literature... :)