People are always asking me when my Thomas Aquinas commentaries will be released in paperback editions because the hardcover editions are so expensive.  The law commentary and the virtue commentary are already in paperback, and I’m pleased to announce that Cambridge University Press has just released the paperback edition of Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose too.  Better yet, until February 28, there is a 20% discount, knocking the paperback price from $39.99 to $31.99.  To get the discount, go to www.cambridge.org/9781108745406 and enter the code CTATHUP22 at checkout.

That’s good timing, because my new book from Regnery, How and How Not to Be Happy, will be released in hardcover on March 1.  Although I always try to make all my books accessible to everyone, The Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose is primarily for students and scholars, but How and How Not to Be Happy is aimed squarely at general readers.  More about the latter book in a few weeks!

Cambridge says about the Commentary,

“This monumental, line-by-line commentary makes Thomas Aquinas’s classic Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose accessible to all readers.  Budziszewski illuminates arguments that even specialists find challenging  …. This book’s luminous prose makes Aquinas’s treatise transparent, bringing to light profound underlying issues concerning knowledge, meaning, human psychology, and even the nature of reality.”

The main sections are I. Man's Ultimate Purpose (Question 1); II. Happiness Itself; A. Where Does Complete Happiness Lie? Failed Candidates (Question 2); B. What Then Is Complete Happiness in Itself, and In What Does It Really Lie? (Question 3); C. Its Attainment; 1. What Complete Happiness Requires (Question 4); 2. How Complete Happiness Is Finally Attained (Question 5).

“Budziszewski's Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose provides an in-depth, detailed, accessible, and comprehensive commentary on the Summa theologiae's questions on happiness.  This commentary is a gem. It can be read with profit by philosophers, theologians, and intellectual historians, as well as by their students. If you are interested in Aquinas, want insight about happiness, or both, this book is for you.”  -- Christopher Kaczor, author of The Gospel of Happiness and Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues.