An entertaining and realistic account of life as part of an intentional community.

Our homes have a big impact on what kind of lives we lead—whether we are lonely, how much we are contributing to climate change, how hard we have to work to cover the cost of our housing. When Barbara Nothegger started looking for a new home for her young family, she became fascinated by these very questions. Despite many objections, she decided to risk an experiment, moving with her family into a communal living project in Vienna. A hundred people built a home for themselves, which included various shared areas and open spaces for residents to come together, share and interact. After more than ten years in the building, Nothegger explores in this humorous guidebook what makes modern communities succeed, and how being a good neighbour can help facilitate climate-friendly living.

True stories: tracking down unknown heirs.

A homeless person bequeaths £100,000—but to whom? An heir in Australia turns down a huge inheritance because he doesn’t want it to change his life, and a nun inherits a brothel—life writes the best stories. Some are tragic, like the tale of two sisters who were separated as children and never reunited, even though they lived only a few streets away. The tumult of history and the twists of personal fate are intertwined again when there is money to inherit but no obvious heirs. The Family Research Office tracks down these heirs across the whole world. This book is an account of the stories, coincidences and curiosities they come across in the course of their work.

Moving everyday stories from a year of chaos

Spring, 1945: caught between the advancing Allied armies, Austria was temporarily transformed into a political no-man’s land. There was chaos, hope and fear. Drawing on the everyday lives of ordinary people, Kurt Bauer vividly explores this tumultuous year. There is the Wehrmacht soldier who takes a long and winding road home; the Jewish emigre forced into exile in 1938, returning to his home town as part of the victorious army—only to find that the old Vienna of his childhood is gone; the Jewish woman who survived the war in Vienna and now wants to get to the USA as quickly as possible … a multifaceted and gripping book.

Living for science, music and peace

The great physicist Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002) studied under Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger in Leipzig and Berlin. He was forced to leave his native Austria before the Nazi occupation on account of his Jewish heritage. He subsequently joined the team of scientists on the Manhattan Project in the USA, where he was involved in the development of the atom bomb. By the time he fully realized the consequences of his work, however, it was already too late. From then on, he became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. A belated realization in the moral dilemma of atomic physics, or a logical conclusion for the man who later became a professor at MIT and the director of CERN? An enthralling, well-founded biography of this physicist and passionate pianist.

Death, wood and eternal life

Few things are as diverse as deadwood. So much more than the remnants of old trees on the forest floor, it comes in an array of forms, providing habitats for insects and other organisms. Dead roots under the water, wooden coffins buried beneath the ground in urban spaces – this close interplay of decay and new life is all around us. If we look closely, we can see how the once-extinct beaver is now paving the way for other species, like the endangered saproxylic beetle. Deadwood also teaches us to have a positive outlook for our coexistence with local biodiversity, showing that there have already been a number of improvements in the past hundred years. An exciting journey through the secret world of insects, fungi and other creatures that live in the deadwood in our forests, parks and gardens.

Viktor Frankl’s long-time collaborator prompts readers to think more closely about answers to life’s most important questions.

What is it that really matters in life? Are there traces of meaning in my life that I can explore further? How can I make time for that? Are there other ways we can obtain a deeper understanding of ourselves? Or get answers to life’s big questions? This book addresses the big-ticket questions as well as everyday problems and issues of meaning in brief fragments. Meditative questions prompt an individual and creative approach to a broad range of themes in the search for life, fulfilment and meaning. These prompts encourage readers to think, to question, to draw connections with their own experiences, to consider their own answers— often leading to unexpected new paths, as well as old ones.

A legendary linguistic legacy – in a new, extended edition complete with foreword and new word-pictures to celebrate what would have been Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 95th birthday.

One of the keys to Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s artistry was his ingenious talent for conveying musical content in verbal images. Author and choral singer Sabine M. Gruber – both a participant and an observer – kept a record of Harnoncourt’s rehearsal instructions in her notes for 30 years. Combining original quotes with essays, she sheds light on the personality of the man and artist, while exploring the essence of his musical and artistic process. A book full of humour, musical truth and essential wisdom.

The ultimate questions in one book

Should we follow those who seek the truth, or those who say they have found it? Sven Michaelsen’s answer is clear: the key to whether we consider our lives successful or misspent is in asking ourselves and our neighbours the right questions. Opinions and claims aren’t what bring insights; the curvy question mark is what matters. Whether love or happiness, loneliness or shame, desire or fidelity: the art of living means adopting a different approach to the fraught space between contradictory answers, perceiving it as poetry of thought and the basis for smart choices. After 777 questions, we understand: unless we are willing to face ourselves, we will not find anyone else, either.

The new paradigm is that of regenerability.

We live in an age where we find ourselves confronted with seemingly insoluble problems, many of them stemming from humanity’s increasing alienation from nature and from ourselves. We cannot hold back this development with sustainability, factual knowledge and technological innovation alone. We are on the verge of a paradigm shift: regenerability. It is nature’s own processes and principles – from the tiniest cells to the biggest ecosystems – that serve as a model here. They are a testament to billions of years of evolution towards self-organised, resilient systems. Human beings, too, are a part of this process. Grassberger shows how a fundamental shift in values can regenerate human health, society and economics, allowing them to thrive long-term.

Biologist Martin Reich guides us through the new world of fermentation laboratories and a host of new possibilities.

If we make the switch from agriculture to brewing kettles, we could drastically reduce the catastrophic impact of our diet on the environment and the climate. The thousands-of-years-old tradition of fermentation is having something of a renaissance thanks to advances in biotechnology. Now, with bioreactors, scientists are looking to produce real cheese without cows, real eggs without hens, and much more. The vision: much more food on much less land. But how are these new products made? What do they mean for us, and what will become of agriculture? Are we even ready for a fermentation revolution? To find the answers to these questions, Martin Reich has set out on a journey through laboratories, breweries and the intellectual world of researchers, critics and dreamers.