Introducing: EALA Fall 2022 Non-Fiction Catalogue!

We are thrilled to present our Non-Fiction Catalogue for Fall 2022: Are you ready to experience meaningful work? Or learn more about Finland’s most beloved artist or about the destructive power of money in football?

From our new catalogue, we’ve picked some hot titles for you – take a look at them below!

View the full Fall 2022 Non-Fiction Catalogue here!

The Meaning Manifesto

by Frank Martela

Are you ready to experience meaningful work and make it possible? Start your journey with this book!   

Work occupies a more central role in our lives than just a way of making ends meet. At best, work fills our lives with meaningfulness, making our whole existence more worth living. At worst, it is a desperate toil that alienates us from who we are and what’s good in life.

How, then, can we make work more meaningful? In principle, the recipe for meaningful work is surprisingly simple: do personally interesting and engaging things, while making a positive contribution to other people. However, making that into reality is the tough part.

THE MEANING MANIFESTO by Frank Martela, the acclaimed author of the internationally-bestselling A WONDERFUL LIFE, helps you navigate modern work life towards a more purposeful career and meaningful everyday work experience.

 

Ella – Helene Schjerfbeck

by Mari Tossavainen

The story of the most well-known Finnish artist in the world, supplemented by previously unpublished correspondence

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is one of the most well-known Finnish artists in the world. Her modernist and realist works have been on display in galleries all over Europe, North America and Asia, a biographical film based on her life was released in 2020, and her birthday, July 10th, is a national day for the painted arts in Finland.

This fascinating book, drawing on previously unpublished correspondence and archival materials, paints a far more multithreaded picture of the life of Helene Schjerfbeck and brings into light the significance of previously forgotten people in her creative work. In her letters, Schjerfbeck divulged both her works and her thoughts not only to fellow artists, but also to people outside the artistic world.

 

The Black Book of Football

by Hannu Aaltonen and Tapio Keskitalo

A critical depiction of the destructive power of money in professional association football

During the 2000s, international association football has become a pompous, money-driven business. ‘The Beautiful Game’ has developed into a playing field with its own laws where oligarchs, sheikhs, and American billionaires run amok.

This startling book delves into the outrageously wealthy and powerful football clubs that do not abide by football’s own economic rules. Influential football bosses and governing bodies have become bogged down in bribe scandals, while small football countries like Finland have to count pennies.

The grotesque development culminates with the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, where the authorities and organizers do not care about costs or construction worker deaths.

 

Stalin and the Fate of Finland

by Kimmo Rentola

A meticulously researched insight into critical points in the history of relations between Finland and the Soviet Union.

Winner of the Lauri Jäntti Prize for non-fiction literature!

How did Finland evade Joseph Stalin’s crosshairs three times? Did Stalin have a special relationship with Finland and the Finns? Why didn’t he continue the Soviet onslaught on Finland during the Winter War in 1940? The answers lie in the relations between Finland and Russia which remain highly timely to this day.

Joseph Stalin has been one of the individuals with the most influence on the history of independent Finland. There are few who have made so many far-reaching decisions as Stalin: he decreed the beginning and the end of the Winter War, the Moscow Armistice of 1944 that ended the Continuation War was signed with his authorization, and when, in 1948, it was time to decide whether Finland would become a ‘people’s republic’ or not, he initially pushed forward but eventually backed down. All of these decisions can be seen as pivotal to the fate of Finland, its society, its independence, the life and death of the Finnish people.

The book focuses on the decisions of Stalin in which the entire existence or, at the very least, the essential nature of that existence, of Finland was at stake.

About author


Frank Martela

Professor Frank Martela, PhD, is a philosopher and researcher of psychology specializing in the question of meaning in life. His articles have appeared in Scientific American Mind, Harvard Business Review, Salon, CNBC and his work has been featured on Quartz and on the BBC. His research has been published extensively in numerous academic journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Journal of Personality, Metaphilosophy, Southern Journal of Philosophy, and Academy of Management Review. He has spoken to more than one hundred audiences worldwide, including invited lectures in universities on five continents, including Stanford University and Harvard University. He’s been interviewed by the New York Times, Discover Magazine, New Scientist, Vice News, Fox News, and Monocle Observer among others. He is Assistant Professor at Aalto University in Finland.

Outside of work, Frank is a father to three lovely children, an amateur-level soccer player, with an occasional skiing trip in the winters. He is made in Green Bay, so Packers holds a special place in his heart.