books tagged “modernity”

›
› Find signed collectible books by ''

English

via
All That Is Solid Melts into the Air: The Experience of Modernity
by Marshall Berman

ISBN 0140109625 (0-14-010962-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'All That Is Solid Melts into the Air: The Experience of Modernity'
Book summary:
"A bubbling caldron of ideas . . . Enlightening and valuable." Mervyn Jones, New Statesman.
The political and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, the pivotal writings of Goethe, Marx, Dostoevsky, and others, and the creation of new environments to replace the oldall have thrust us into a modern world of contradictions and ambiguities. In this fascinating book, Marshall Berman examines the clash of classes, histories, and cultures, and ponders our prospects for coming to terms with the relationship between a liberating social and philosophical idealism and a complex, bureaucratic materialism.
From a reinterpretation of Karl Marx to an incisive consideration of the impact of Robert Moses on modern urban living, Berman charts the progress of the twentieth-century experience. He concludes that adaptation to continual flux is possible and that therein lies our hope for achieving a truly modern society.

[via]
More editions of All That Is Solid Melts into the Air: The Experience of Modernity:
via
The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830
by Paul Johnson

ISBN 0060922826 (0-06-092282-6)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Birth of the Modern World Society, 1815-1830'
Book summary:
From the prizewinning author of Modern Times comes an extraordinary chronicle of the period that laid the foundations of the modern world. [via]
More editions of The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830:
- The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830: ISBN 006016574X (0-06-016574-X)
  Hardcover, Harpercollins
- The Birth of the Modern World Society, 1815-1830: ISBN 0060922826 (0-06-092282-6)
  Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change
by David Harvey

ISBN 0631162941 (0-631-16294-1)
Softcover, Blackwell Pub

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change'
Book summary:
The Condition of Postmodernity is David Harvey's seminal history of this, our most equivocal of eras. What does postmodernism mean? Where did it come from? Harvey, a Professor of Geography, and a key mover behind extending the scope and influence of the discipline of geography itself, does a thorough job here delineating the passage through to postmodernity and the economic, social and political changes that underscored and accompanied it. As he clearly states, the rise in postmodernist cultural forms is related to a new intensity in what Harvey terms "time-space compression" but this new intensity is a qualitive and not a quantitive change in social organisation and does not point to a era beyond capitalism as "the basic rules of capitalistic accumulation" remain unchanged. Unlike Fredric Jameson (whose equally rewarding Postmodernism stands as the twin pillar to Harvey's critique), who explicitly relies on Ernest Mandel's periodisation of Late Capitalism, Harvey eschews a narrowly economic focus, the limits and contradictions of production that have led to the rise in the service sector, and takes a more multidisciplinary approach to his history: as comfortable discussing Manet as he is labour markets. Harvey is an excellent writer and The Condition of Postmodernity is an exceptionally informative and enjoyable read. Mark Thwaite [via]
More editions of The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change:
- The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change: ISBN 0631162925 (0-631-16292-5)
  Softcover, Blackwell Pub
- The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change: ISBN 0631162941 (0-631-16294-1)
  Softcover, Blackwell Pub
The Consequences of Modernity
by Anthony Giddens

ISBN 0745609236 (0-7456-0923-6)
Softcover, Polity Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Consequences of Modernity'
Book summary:
In this major theoretical statement, the author offers a new and provocative interpretation of institutional transformations associated with modernity. What is modernity? The author suggests, "As a first approximation, let us simply say the following: 'modernity' refers to modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence."

We do not as yet, the author argues, live in a post-modern world. The distinctive characteristics of our major social institutions in the closing years of the twentieth century suggest that, rather than entering into a period of post-modernity, we are moving into a period of "high modernity" in which the consequences of modernity are becoming more radicalized and universalized than before. A post-modern social universe may eventually come into being, but this as yet lies on the other side of the forms of social and cultural organization that currently dominate world history.

In developing a fresh characterization of the nature of modernity, the author concentrates on the themes of security versus danger and o trust versus risk. Modernity is a double-edged phenomenon. The development of modern social institutions has created vastly greater opportunities for human beings to enjoy a secure and rewarding existence than in any type of pre-modern system. But modernity also has a somber side that has become very important in the present century, such as the frequently degrading nature of modern industrial work, the growth of totalitarianism, the threat of environmental destruction, and the alarming development of military power and weaponry.

The book builds upon the author's previous theoretical writings and will be of great interest to those who have followed his work through the years. However, this book covers issues the author has not previously analyzed and extends the scope of his work into areas of pressing practical concern.

[via]
More editions of The Consequences of Modernity:
via
Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity
by Stephen Toulmin

ISBN 0226808386 (0-226-80838-6)
Softcover, Univ of Chicago Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity'
Book summary:
Toulmin offers a radically new interpretation of Western intellectual history that humanizes our conception of modernity and reconciles the precision of scientific theory with the reality of human experience. [via]
More editions of Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity:
- Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity: ISBN 0029326311 (0-02-932631-1)
  Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
- Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity: ISBN 0226808386 (0-226-80838-6)
  Softcover, Univ of Chicago Pr
The Degenerate Moderns
by E. Michael Jones

ISBN 0898704472 (0-89870-447-2)
Softcover, Ignatius Press

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Degenerate Moderns'
More editions of The Degenerate Moderns:
- The Degenerate Moderns: ISBN 0898704472 (0-89870-447-2)
  Softcover, Ignatius Press
via
Dialectic of Enlightenment
by Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, John Cumming

ISBN 0826400930 (0-8264-0093-0)
Softcover, Continuum Intl Pub Group

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'
Book summary:
This celebrated work is the keystone of the thought of the Frankfurt School. It is a wide-ranging philosophical and psychological critique of the Western categories of reason and nature, from Homer to Nietzsche. "A classic of twentieth-century thought". TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. [via]
More editions of Dialectic of Enlightenment:
via
Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments
by Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Edmund Jephcott

ISBN 0804736332 (0-8047-3633-2)
Softcover, Stanford Univ Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments'
Book summary:
Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.

The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.

Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.

This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.
[via]
More editions of Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments:
- Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments: ISBN 0804736324 (0-8047-3632-4)
  Hardcover, Stanford Univ Pr
- Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments: ISBN 0804736332 (0-8047-3633-2)
  Softcover, Stanford Univ Pr
Dialektik Der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente
by Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer

ISBN 3100318293 (3-10-031829-3)
Hardcover, S. Fischer

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dialektik Der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente'
More editions of Dialektik Der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente:
- Dialektik Der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente: ISBN 3100318293 (3-10-031829-3)
  Hardcover, S. Fischer
via
Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity
by OS Guinness

ISBN 0801038553 (0-8010-3855-3)
Softcover, Baker Pub Group

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity'
Book summary:
What shapes the message of the church? The Bible and Spirit? Or society and culture? Os Guinness points out perils of compromise in the church growth movement. [via]
More editions of Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity:
- Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity: ISBN 0801038553 (0-8010-3855-3)
  Softcover, Baker Pub Group
via
Dracula
by Bram Stoker, Glennis Byron

ISBN 1551111365 (1-55111-136-5)
Softcover, Broadview Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dracula'
Book summary:
Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power.

Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.

Brooke Allen is a book critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hudson Review. A collection of her essays, Twentieth-Century Attitudes, will be published in 2003.
[via]
More editions of Dracula:
Dracula
by Steven P. Jones

ISBN 0944735479 (0-944735-47-9)
Softcover, Heroes World

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dracula'
More editions of Dracula:
- Dracula: ISBN 0944735479 (0-944735-47-9)
  Softcover, Heroes World
via
Dracula
by Tim Wynne-Jones, Bram Stoker, Laszlo Gal

ISBN 1550139002 (1-55013-900-2)
Hardcover, Key Porter Kids

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dracula'
Book summary:
After discovering the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire. [via]
More editions of Dracula:
- Dracula: ISBN 1550139002 (1-55013-900-2)
  Hardcover, Key Porter Kids
Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin
by David Frisby

ISBN 0262560461 (0-262-56046-1)
Softcover, MIT Press

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin'
More editions of Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin:
- Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin: ISBN 0262061031 (0-262-06103-1)
  Hardcover, Mit Pr
- Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin: ISBN 0262560461 (0-262-56046-1)
  Softcover, MIT Press
via
Frakenstein
by Mary W. Shelly

ISBN 846630407X (84-663-0407-X)
Softcover, Ediciones Urano

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frakenstein'
More editions of Frakenstein:
- Frakenstein: ISBN 846630407X (84-663-0407-X)
  Softcover, Ediciones Urano
via
Frankenstein
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 1561561428 (1-56156-142-8)
Softcover, Kidsbooks

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein'
Book summary:
Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]
More editions of Frankenstein:
via
Frankenstein
by Deanna McFadden, Jamel Akib

ISBN 140272666X (1-4027-2666-X)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein'
Book summary:
Mary Shelleys tragic story of a scientist who created a monster is perhaps even more compelling and meaningful today than when it was written nearly two centuries ago. From the bits and pieces of dead bodies, and the power of electricity, the brilliant Victor Frankenstein fashions a new form of lifeonly to discover, too late, the irreparable damage he has caused.
[via]
More editions of Frankenstein:
- Frankenstein: ISBN 140272666X (1-4027-2666-X)
  Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
via
Frankenstein
by Mary . Shelley

ISBN 1562548980 (1-56254-898-0)
Softcover, Saddleback Pub

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein'
Book summary:
The epic battle between man and monster reaches its greatest pitch in the famous story of Frankenstein. In trying to create life the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor himself to the very brink. How he tries to destroy his creation as it destroys everything Victor loves is a powerful story of love friendship and horror. Grades: 4 - 12. Level(s): Intermediate Middle School High School. Author: Mary Shelly. Binding: Paperback. Publishing Date: Jan 2005. Number of Pages: 61. Language: English. [via]
More editions of Frankenstein:
- Frankenstein: ISBN 1562548980 (1-56254-898-0)
  Softcover, Saddleback Pub
via
Frankenstein (Original 1818 Text)
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 1551113082 (1-55111-308-2)
Softcover, Broadview Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein (Original 1818 Text)'
Book summary:
Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]
More editions of Frankenstein (Original 1818 Text):
- Frankenstein (Original 1818 Text): ISBN 1551110385 (1-55111-038-5)
  Softcover, Broadview Pr
- Frankenstein (Original 1818 Text): ISBN 1551113082 (1-55111-308-2)
  Softcover, Broadview Pr
via
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (Clear Print)
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 1406821683 (1-4068-2168-3)
Softcover, Echo Library

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (Clear Print)'
Book summary:
This clear print title is set in Tiresias 13pt font for easy reading [via]
More editions of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (Clear Print):
- Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (Clear Print): ISBN 1406821683 (1-4068-2168-3)
  Softcover, Echo Library
Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Lynd Ward

ISBN 1850790701 (1-85079-070-1)
Hardcover, New Orchard Editions

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus'
More editions of Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus:
- Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: ISBN 0914061070 (0-914061-07-0)
  Softcover, Orchises Pr
- Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: ISBN 1850790701 (1-85079-070-1)
  Hardcover, New Orchard Editions
via
Introduction to Modernity
by Henri Lefebvre, John Moore

ISBN 1859840566 (1-85984-056-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes September 1959-May 1961'
Book summary:
Appearing for the first time in an English translation, Introduction to Modernity is one of Henri Lefebvre's greatest works. Published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of the movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. it is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin's death - an analysis in which the contours of our own 'postmodernity' appear with startling clarity. Lefebvre's lectures have become legendary, and something of his charismatic presence and delivery is captured in this book, which he intended 'to be understood in the mind's ear ...and not simply to be read'. With its mercurial shifts of tone, now intensely poetic, now conversational, it not only explores modernity, it exemplifies it. Equally experimental in conception is the book's remarkable structure, twelve 'preludes' through which a range of recurrent themes are interwoven in free-form counterpoint: irony is a critical tool, utopianism, nature and culture, the Stalinization of Marxism, the alienation of everyday life, the cybernetic society ...What gradually emerges is not only a series of original concepts about humanity and culture, but an extraordinary invocation of the complexity of social contradictions. Yet the fragmented structure of the book is not left to float free. Its shifting and eclectic melodies and leitmotifs have a solid ground bass: the wish to rehabilitate the Marxist dialectic as a method for understanding and transforming the modern world. This programme is at the heart of the book, and gives it its underlying coherence, making Introduction to Modernity not only essential reading for all students of European cultural history, but also a key text for Marxism in the post-Communist world of the late twentieth century. [via]
More editions of Introduction to Modernity:
- Introduction to Modernity: ISBN 185984961X (1-85984-961-X)
  Hardcover, Routledge
- Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes September 1959-May 1961: ISBN 1859840566 (1-85984-056-6)
  Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
via
LA Chambre Claire
by Roland Barthes

ISBN 207020541X (2-07-020541-X)
Softcover, Midwest European Pub

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Chambre Claire'
Book summary:
Suite de petits essais de Roland Barthes sur la photographie. [via]
More editions of LA Chambre Claire:
- LA Chambre Claire: ISBN 207020541X (2-07-020541-X)
  Softcover, Midwest European Pub
via
Mary Wollstonecraft Frankenstein
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 0939766752 (0-939766-75-2)
Softcover, Marvel Enterprises

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Wollstonecraft Frankenstein'
Book summary:
graphic novel [via]
More editions of Mary Wollstonecraft Frankenstein:
- Mary Wollstonecraft Frankenstein: ISBN 0939766752 (0-939766-75-2)
  Softcover, Marvel Enterprises
via
Modern Social Imaginaries
by Charles Taylor

ISBN 0822332930 (0-8223-3293-0)
Softcover, Duke Univ Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Modern Social Imaginaries'
Book summary:
One of the most influential philosophers in the English-speaking world, Charles Taylor is internationally renowned for his contributions to political and moral theory, particularly to debates about identity formation, multiculturalism, secularism, and modernity. In Modern Social Imaginaries, Taylor continues his recent reflections on the theme of multiple modernities. To account for the differences among modernities, Taylor sets out his idea of the social imaginary, a broad understanding of the way a given people imagine their collective social life.
Retelling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the development of a distinct social imaginary. Animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual benefit of equal participants, the Western social imaginary is characterized by three key cultural formsthe economy, the public sphere, and self-governance. Taylors account of these cultural formations provides a fresh perspective on how to read the specifics of Western modernity: how we came to imagine society primarily as an economy for exchanging goods and services to promote mutual prosperity, how we began to imagine the public sphere as a metaphorical place for deliberation and discussion among strangers on issues of mutual concern, and how we invented the idea of a self-governing people capable of secular founding acts without recourse to transcendent principles. Accessible in length and style, Modern Social Imaginaries offers a clear and concise framework for understanding the structure of modern life in the West and the different forms modernity has taken around the world.
[via]
More editions of Modern Social Imaginaries:
- Modern Social Imaginaries: ISBN 0822332930 (0-8223-3293-0)
  Softcover, Duke Univ Pr
Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age
by Anthony Giddens

ISBN 0745609325 (0-7456-0932-5)
Softcover, Polity Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age'
Book summary:
Modernity differs from all preceding forms of social order because of its dynamism, its deep undercutting of traditional habits and customs, and its global impact. It also radicallly alters the general nature of daily life and the most personal aspects of human activity. In fact, one of the most distinctive features of modernity is the increasing interconnection between globalizing influences and personal dispositions. The author analyzes the nature of this interconnection and provides a conceptual vocabulary for it, in the process providing a major rethinking of the nature of modernity and a reworking of basic premises of sociological analysis.

Building on the ideas set out in the authors The Consequences of Modernity
, this book focuses on the self and the emergence of new mechanisms of self-identity that are shaped byyet also shapethe institutions of modernity. The author argues that the self is not a passive entity, determined by external influences. Rather, in forging their self-identities, no matter how local their contexts of action, individuals contribute to and directly promote social influences that are global in their consequences and implications.

The author sketches the contours of the he calls high modernitythe world of our dayand considers its ramifications for the self and self-identity. In this context, he analyzes the meaning to the self of such concepts as trust, fate, risk, and security and goes on the examine the sequestration of experience, the process by which high modernity separates day-to-day social life from a variety of experiences and broad issues of morality. The author demonstrates how personal meaninglessnessthe feeling that life has nothing worthwhile to offerbecomes a fundamental psychic problem in circumstances of high modernity. The book concludes with a discussion of life politics, a politics of selfactualization operating on both the individual and collective levels.

[via]
More editions of Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age:
via
Modernity and the Holocaust
by Zygmunt Bauman

ISBN 0745609309 (0-7456-0930-9)
Softcover, Polity Press

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Modernity and the Holocaust'
Book summary:
Attempting to provide a sociological explanation of the Holocaust, the main theme of this work is the demonstration that the Holocaust has to be understood as deeply involved with the nature of modernity - neither a single event nor a simple outpouring of barbarism. The author discusses what sociology can teach us about the Holocaust, but more particularly concentrates upon the lesson which the Holocaust has for sociology. There are two ways, he points out, in which the significance of the Holocaust can be side-stepped in our understanding of modernity. One way is to present the Holocaust as something which happened to the Jews, as an event in Jewish history. A second way is to regard the Holocaust as representing loathsome aspects of social life which the progress of modernity will increasingly overcome. Neither of these views stand up to scrutiny, according to the author. [via]
More editions of Modernity and the Holocaust:
via
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
by Arjun Appadurai

ISBN 0816627932 (0-8166-2793-2)
Softcover, Univ of Minnesota Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization'
Book summary:
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization [via]
More editions of Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization:
- Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization: ISBN 0816627924 (0-8166-2792-4)
  Hardcover, Univ of Minnesota Pr
- Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization: ISBN 0816627932 (0-8166-2793-2)
  Softcover, Univ of Minnesota Pr
via
The Mortal Immortal
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

ISBN 1892391015 (1-892391-01-5)
Softcover, Tachyon Pubns

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mortal Immortal'
Book summary:
This collection contains all five of Mary Shelley's supernatural stories, and will hopefully shed much needed light on an author often credited with writing the first science fiction novel. Here you will find the secrets of eternal youth, souls that exchange bodies, and ancient Englishmen and Romans newly thawed out of ice. In addition to several stories by Mary Shelley, this volume also features a brand new story by renowned science fiction author Michael Bishop. This work serves as a narrative introduction for this collection. Mary Shelley's considerable reputation rests squarely on the shoulders of her one great novel - Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, published anonymously in 1818 and revised under her own byline in 1831. Her powerful tale of blasphemous creation is perhaps more familiar to modern readers through its many film adaptations as it is from the book itself. From Boris Karloff's electrifying performance as Frankenstein to Kenneth Branaugh's latest directorial rendering, the story has received numerous interpretations which have renewed interest in the book time and time again. However, Shelley's other works have not fared as well as Frankenstein. She wrote just a handful of novels, of which only The Last Man (1826) has remained sporadically in print, due to its great length and slow, ornate and often tedious use of language. A precursor to such disaster novels as George R. Stewart's Earth Abides and Richard Jeffries' After London, The Last Man follows its protagonist Lionel Verney through a distant future world which has been depopulated by plague. The shorter works of Mary Shelley have remained even more obscure. During her lifetime, she published just over two-dozen stories, only three of which were of interest to readers of science fiction and fantasy. In addition to these three supernaturally-themed stories, two additional stories were published after Shelley's death. "Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman," was printed in a volume of reminisces by a magazine editor who had commissioned the story thirty years earlier. "Valerius: The Reanimated Roman," a story in a similar vein to "Roger Dodsworth," remained unpublished until 1976, when both stories were discovered by Charles E. Robinson, a Shelley scholar and professor of English at the University of Delaware. [via]
More editions of The Mortal Immortal:
- The Mortal Immortal: ISBN 1892391015 (1-892391-01-5)
  Softcover, Tachyon Pubns
via
Notes from the Underground
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hugh Aplin

ISBN 1843911264 (1-84391-126-4)
Softcover, Hesperus Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes from the Underground'
Book summary:
Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well - let it get worse! I have been going on like that for a long time - twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!) [via]
More editions of Notes from the Underground:
- Notes from the Underground: ISBN 1421806231 (1-4218-0623-1)
  Hardcover, 1st World Library
- Notes from the Underground: ISBN 1843911264 (1-84391-126-4)
  Softcover, Hesperus Pr
via
Notes from Underground
by Richard Pevear, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Larissa Volokhonsky

ISBN 1400041910 (1-4000-4191-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes from Underground'
Book summary:
Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation is the only translation that counts. They are the only translators who succeed in making Dostoevsky accessible to a 21st century audience, thanks to their ruthless attention to detail at the expense of alterations which can dilute Dostoevsky's unique and flowing style of writing. The great appeal this book retains even today is in part due to Pevear and Volokhonsky, as well as to Dostoevsky himself. Furthermore, Richard Pevear's substantial introduction is essential reading. It explains the purpose of the book and the historical significance of its ideas. Dostoevsky was writing at a time when Russia had reason to be optimistic, but the warning signs in his fiction perhaps leave us clues as to why Russia still has social problems today - and why, less than 40 years after Dostoevsky's death, Russia embraced Communism and destroyed the society in which Dostoevsky had lived [via]
More editions of Notes from Underground:
- Notes from Underground: ISBN 1857152719 (1-85715-271-9)
  Hardcover, Everyman's Library Ltd
- Notes from Underground: ISBN 1400041910 (1-4000-4191-0)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
via
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

ISBN 1420926896 (1-4209-2689-6)
Softcover, Digireads.Com

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes from Underground'
Book summary:
Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND is a psychological study of the deepest darkest skeletons in the closet of the human mind. The first novel from Dostoevsky's mature "second period" works, divided in two parts, presents an unnamed protagonist, a twisted angry student, and his worldview. It is one proud man's cry for help and perverse rejection of the world around him. [via]
More editions of Notes from Underground:
- Notes from Underground: ISBN 1592246303 (1-59224-630-3)
  Hardcover, Wildside Pr
- Notes from Underground: ISBN 1420926896 (1-4209-2689-6)
  Softcover, Digireads.Com
via
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures
by Jurgen Habermas, Frederick Lawrence

ISBN 0262581027 (0-262-58102-7)
Softcover, Mit Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures'
Book summary:
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across, national cultural boundaries. Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French poststructuralism.Tracing the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity, Habermas's strategy is to return to those historical "crossroads" at which Hegel and the Young Hegelians, Nietzsche and Heidegger made the fateful decisions that led to this outcome. His aim is to identify and clearly mark out a road indicated but not taken: the determinate negation of subject-centered reason through the concept of communicative rationality. As The Theory of Communicative Action served to place this concept within the history of social theory, these lectures locate it within the history of philosophy. Habermas examines the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity from Hegel through the present and tests his own ideas about the appropriate form of a postmodern discourse through dialogs with a broad range of past and present critics and theorists.The lectures on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Cornelius Castoriadis are of particular note since they are the first fruits of the recent cross-fertilization between French and German thought. Habermas's dialogue with Foucault - begun in person as the first of these lectures were delivered in Paris in 1983 culminates here in two appreciative yet intensely argumentative lectures. His discussion of the literary-theoretical reception of Derrida in America - launched at Cornell in 1984 - issues here in a long excursus on the genre distinction between philosophy and literature. The lectures were reworked for the final time in seminars at Boston College and first published in Germany in the fall of 1985.Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.
[via]
More editions of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures:
- The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures: ISBN 0262081636 (0-262-08163-6)
  Hardcover, MIT Press
- The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures: ISBN 0262581027 (0-262-58102-7)
  Softcover, Mit Pr
Reactionary Modernism
by Jeffrey Herf

ISBN 0521338336 (0-521-33833-6)
Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Reactionary Modernism'
Book summary:
In a unique application of critical theory to the study of the role of ideology in politics, Jeffrey Herf explores the paradox inherent in the German fascists' rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment while fully embracing modern technology. He documents evidence of a cultural tradition he calls 'reactionary modernism' found in the writings of German engineers and of the major intellectuals of the. Weimar right: Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. The book shows how German nationalism and later National Socialism created what Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, called the 'steel-like romanticism of the twentieth century'. By associating technology with the Germans, rather than the Jews, with beautiful form rather than the formlessness of the market, and with a strong state rather than a predominance of economic values and institutions, these right-wing intellectuals reconciled Germany's strength with its romantic soul and national identity. [via]
More editions of Reactionary Modernism:
- Reactionary Modernism: ISBN 0521265665 (0-521-26566-5)
  Hardcover, Cambridge Univ Pr
- Reactionary Modernism: ISBN 0521338336 (0-521-33833-6)
  Softcover, Cambridge Univ Pr
A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present
by Fredric Jameson

ISBN 1859844502 (1-85984-450-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present'
More editions of A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present:
- A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present: ISBN 1859846742 (1-85984-674-2)
  Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
- A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present: ISBN 1859844502 (1-85984-450-2)
  Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
via
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
by Charles Taylor

ISBN 0521429498 (0-521-42949-8)
Softcover, Cambridge University Press

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'Sources of the Self : The Making of the Modern Identity'
Book summary:
In this extensive inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor demonstrates just how rich and precious those resources are. The modern turn to subjectivity, with its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, has led--it seems to many--to mere subjectivism at the mildest and to sheer nihilism at the worst. Many critics believe that the modern order has no moral backbone and has proved corrosive to all that might foster human good. Taylor rejects this view. He argues that, properly understood, our modern notion of the self provides a framework that more than compensates for the abandonment of substantive notions of rationality. The major insight of Sources of the Self is that modern subjectivity, in all its epistemological, aesthetic, and political ramifications, has its roots in ideas of human good. After first arguing that contemporary philosophers have ignored how self and good connect, the author defines the modern identity by describing its genesis. His effort to uncover and map our moral sources leads to novel interpretations of most of the figures and movements in the modern tradition. Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value which has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth. In telling the story of a revolution whose proponents have been Augustine, Montaigne, Luther, and a host of others, Taylor's goal is in part to make sure we do not lose sight of their goal and endanger all that has been achieved. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defense of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics. [via]
More editions of Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity:
via
We Have Never Been Modern
by Bruno Latour, Catherine Porter

ISBN 0674948394 (0-674-94839-4)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr

Find This Book

› Find signed collectible books: 'We Have Never Been Modern'
Book summary:
With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith.
What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour's analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming--and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture--and so, between our culture and others, past and present.
Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape. We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.
[via]
More editions of We Have Never Been Modern:
- We Have Never Been Modern: ISBN 0674948386 (0-674-94838-6)
  Hardcover, Harvard University Press
- We Have Never Been Modern: ISBN 0674948394 (0-674-94839-4)
  Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr