Why It's OK

In Why It's OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is no: it's entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat-and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants. Shahar's examination forcefully echoes vegetarians' concerns about the meat industry's impacts on animals, workers, the environment, and public health. However, he shows that the most influential ethical arguments for avoiding meat on the basis of these considerations are ultimately unpersuasive. Instead of insisting we all become vegetarians, Shahar argues each of us has broad latitude to choose which of the world's problems to tackle. Key Features include: • First book-length defense of meat-eating written for a popular audience • Punchy, accessible introduction to the multifaceted debate over the ethics of eating meat • Includes pioneering new examinations of humane labeling practices • Shows why appeals to universalized patterns of behavior can't vindicate vegetarians' claims that there's a duty to avoid meat • Develops a novel theory of ethical activism with potential applications to a wide range of other issues

Most of us experience the world through competing perspectives. A job or a religion seems important and fulfilling when looked at in one way, but from a different angle they seem tedious or ridiculous. A friend is obtuse from one point of view, wise from another. Continuing to hold both views at once can be unsettling, highlighting conflicts between our own judgments and values and undermining our ability to live purposefully and effectively. Yet, as Jennifer Church argues in this book, inner conflict can be a good thing, and not just as a temporary road bump on the road to resolution. This book describes several desirable types of "double consciousness" – or being of two minds – and explains why and how they should be maintained. Church looks critically at some common ideas about identity, including a popular belief about narratives that suggests our lives should "make sense" as a story. She also examines how empathy can helpfully cause us to be of two minds, and how various forms of irony and laughter enable us to benefit from holding onto opposing views. Finally, Church shows the merit of acknowledging reality while sometimes being guided by fantasy. Why It's OK to Be of Two Minds is for anyone who's held two opposing views simultaneously, which is to say it's for everyone.

Do you feel like you're the only person at your office without an "I Voted!" sticker on Election Day? It turns out that you're far from alone – 100 million eligible U.S. voters never went to the polls in 2016. That's about 35 million more than voted for the winning presidential candidate. In this book, Christopher Freiman explains why these 100 million need not feel guilty. Why It's OK to Ignore Politics argues that you're under no obligation to be politically active. Freiman addresses new objections to political abstention as well as some old chestnuts ("But what if everyone stopped voting?"). He also synthesizes recent empirical work showing how our political motivations distort our choices and reasoning. Because participating in politics is not an effective way to do good, Freiman argues that we actually have a moral duty to disengage from politics and instead take direct action to make the world a better place.

Finger-wagging moralizers say the love of money is the root of all evil. They assume that making a lot of money requires exploiting others, and that the best way to wash off the resulting stain is to give a lot of it away. In Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich, Jason Brennan shows that the moralizers have it backwards. He argues that, in general, the more money you make, the more you already do for others, and that even an average wage earner is productively "giving back" to society just by doing her job. In addition, wealth liberates us to have the best chance of leading a life that's authentically our own. Brennan also demonstrates how money-based societies create nicer, more trustworthy, and more cooperative citizens. And in another chapter that takes on the new historians of capitalism, Brennan argues that wealthy nations became wealthy because of their healthy institutions, not from their horrific histories of slavery or colonialism. While writing that the more money one has, the more one should help others, Brennan also notes that we weren't born into a perpetual debt to society. It's OK to get rich and it's OK to enjoy being rich, too.