Simon Vance
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Series
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English
Description
"A clear and accessible introduction to philosophy's first superstar" by the author of On Truth and Think, one of our great contemporary philosophers (Kirkus Reviews).
Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who ever lived and The Republic, composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city—and the perfect mind—laid the foundations...
Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who ever lived and The Republic, composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city—and the perfect mind—laid the foundations...
Author
Language
English
Description
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the...
Author
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English
Description
Many readers know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker? Jason Baxter argues that Lewis was deeply formed not only by the words of Scripture...
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English
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"Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books or letters has ever been found. The search for Shakespeare's library...
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English
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"From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time as well as a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a century, an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Falstaff--Shakespeare's greatest enduring and complex comedic character. Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays: Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future...
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English
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Following The Broken Estate, The Irresponsible Self, and How Fiction Works-books that established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation-The Fun Stuff confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of the contemporary novel. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches- that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leon Tolstoy, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov-Wood offers a panoramic...
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Lexile measure
1330L
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English
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Description
Freud considers why we dream and what it means in the larger picture of our psychological lives. Delving into theories of manifest and latent dream content, the special language of dreams, dreams as wish fulfillments, the significance of childhood experiences, and much more, Freud, widely considered the "father of psychoanalysis," thoroughly and thoughtfully examines dream psychology. Encompassing dozens of case histories and detailed analyses of...
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English
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Christopher Hitchens, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of God Is Not Great has been called a Tom Paine for our times, and in this addition to the Books that Changed the World Series, he vividly introduces Paine and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, the world's foremost defense of democracy. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defense of man's inalienable rights, and the...
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English
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From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, Harold Bloom presents Othello's Iago, perhaps the Bard's most compelling villain--the fourth in a series of five short books about the great playwright's most significant personalities. In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen:...
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English
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"Harold Bloom, regarded by some as the greatest Shakespeare scholar of our time, presents an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of King Lear--the third in his series of five short books about the great playwright's most significant personalities, hailed as Bloom's "last love letter to the shaping spirit of his imagination" on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. King Lear is perhaps the most poignant character in literature. The...
Author
Pub. Date
2013
Language
English
Description
Richard Jefferies remains one of the most thoughtful and most lyrical writers on the English countryside. Best known for his articles and stories published in the Live Stock Journal, he draws from a wealth of knowledge of the rural community into which he had been born.
Here he examines the habitats of the Downs and the birds and animals that live there. Written in Jefferies' highly descriptive style, the essay conveys a sense of
...Author
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English
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The author of such classics as Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow critically examines classic American literature in this collection of essays. This anthology provides a deep look at D. H. Lawrence's thoughts on American literature, including notable essays on Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Originally published in 1923, this volume has corrected and uncensored the text, and presents earlier...
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English
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In this first of a groundbreaking multivolume set, “The McCartney Legacy, Vol 1: 1969-73” captures the life of Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which McCartney recreated himself as both a man and a musician. Informed by hundreds of interviews, extensive ground up research, and thousands of never-before-seen documents “The McCartney Legacy, Vol 1” is an in depth, revealing exploration...
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English
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In this brilliant book, Francis Wheen, the author of the most successful biography of Karl Marx, tells the story of Das Kapital and Marx's twenty-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Born in a two-room flat in London's Soho amid political squabbles and personal tragedy, the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867 to muted praise. But after Marx's death, the book went on to influence thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries,...
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English
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Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country roughly the size of the state of Maryland. Humid, jungle covered, and rife with unpleasant diseases, natives call it Devil Island. Its president in 2004, Obiang Nguema, had been accused of cannibalism, belief in witchcraft, mass murder, billion-dollar corruption, and general rule by terror. With so little to recommend it, why in March 2004 was Equatorial Guinea the target of a group of salty British, South African...
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English
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Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls in the First and Second World Wars, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But On War, which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. What Clausewitz declares in book one, he...
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English
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In this brilliantly analytical yet personal book, non-democratic societies are put under a microscope to reveal the mechanics of tyranny that sustain them. In exposing the inner workings of a “fear society;” the authors explain why democracy is not beyond any nation's reach, why it is essential for our security and why there is much that can be done to promote it around the world.
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James M. May is professor of classics, the Kenneth O. Bjork Distinguished Professor, and former provost and dean at St. Olaf College. An award-winning teacher, he is a widely recognized expert on Cicero and classical rhetoric and has written and edited many books on these topics. He lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
Timeless techniques of effective public speaking from ancient Rome's greatest orator
All of us are faced countless times with the challenge...
20) The Goshawk
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English
Description
The predecessor to Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk, T. H. White's nature-writing classic, The Goshawk, asks the age-old question. What is it that binds human beings to other animals? White, author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence-"the bird reverted to a feral state"-seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing...