Includes index.

Machine generated contents note: DESTRUCTIONS and DECONSTRUCTIONS -- The First World War -- The Ethics of Drones -- Irredentism and Associated Evils -- Guns -- The Berlin--Baghdad Railway -- The Killing of Osama Bin Laden -- The Future of the World -- When China Rules the World -- China and Human Rights -- China's Games -- Opium -- A Christian Nation? -- Unjust Justice -- What We Owe the Dead -- Black Poison -- Death and Taxes -- Religion and Education -- `Many Faiths, One Truth' -- Religion and Public Service -- The Power of the Press and the Press of a Button -- Irrationality, Immaturity, Braggadocio, Putin -- Spain and Rome -- Superstition -- The Advantages of Atheist Political Leaders -- Hard-Wired for God? -- The Prophetess -- The New Puritanism -- The Global Financial Crisis -- Climate Change -- The Force of Nature -- CONSTRUCTIONS and CREATIONS -- The Public Intellectual -- Wisdom, Mind and Brain -- Neurophilosophy -- The Brain and History -- The Triumph of Science --

Contents note continued: Science and Democracy -- Making Mistakes and Apologising -- Does Government Know Best? -- Beyond Subsistence -- A Hard Choice -- Archiepiscopal Ethics -- Free Speech -- The Care and Maintenance of Friends -- The Book of the Dead -- Darwin in Scotland -- Tocqueville on America -- Quantum Dirac -- Thucydides -- Montaigne -- Socrates -- Edmund Burke -- The Unity of the Good -- H. G. Wells and Mr Lewisham -- Fishing with a Golden Hook -- Speeches -- Sleep -- Success -- Retirement -- Happiness -- Teachers -- Education and Rationality -- What is the Point of the Arts? -- Darkness -- The Hinges of History -- The Whole Life: The Point of the Humanities -- Optimism -- Making the World a Better Place.

A. C. Grayling's lucid and stimulating books, based on the idea that philosophy should engage with the world and make itself useful, are immensely popular. The Challenge of Things joins earlier collections like The Reason of Things and Thinking of Answers, but this time to collect Grayling's recent writings on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the deadly impasses of conflicts of all kinds. Whether he is writing about the First World War and its legacy, free speech, the advantages of an atheist prime minister or the role of science in the arts, his essays are always enlightening, enlivening and hopeful.