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This week I'm going to recommend Power Over People, Classical and Modern Political Theory,

by Dennis Dalton from the Great

Courses series.

This is another little thing that I've used to get ready for teaching my philosophy class this

year, and I can't say enough how valuable it's been.

Professor Dalton's overview of political theory is both wide-ranging and very accessible,

so if you're at all interested in the subject, go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 369, The Wandering Brush.

Who are we as people, really? How can we sum up the complexities of our human lives in ways others can understand?

It's an abstract question, and a hard one, and one that people have answered in many different ways throughout the years.

Some have posited that man, in the end, is nothing more than a miserable little pile of secrets.

Others have taken a more

positive view, describing human beings as the ultimate moral end with incalculable value

because of their unlimited potential. The Italian writer and journalist Itoe

Calvino, however, had a slightly different answer. Quote, who are we, if not a combinatorial of experiences,

information, books we have read, things imagined. Each life is an encyclopedia, a library,

...