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› Find signed collectible books: '300: The Art of the Film'
An emperor amasses an army of hundreds of thousands, drawn from two continents, to invade a third continent and conquer a tiny, divided nation. Only a few hundred warriors stand against them. Yet the tiny nation is saved. It sounds like the plot of a preposterous fantasy novel. It is historical fact. In 481-480 B.C., King Xerxes of Persia raised forces in Asia and Africa and invaded Greece with an army so huge that it "drank rivers dry." Then they entered the mountain pass of Thermopylae and encountered 300 determined soldiers from Sparta....
Writer-artist Frank Miller and colorist Lynn Varley retell the battle of Thermopylae in the exciting and moving graphic novel 300. They focus on King Leonidas, the young foot soldier Stelios, and the storyteller Dilios to highlight the Spartans' awe-inspiring toughness and valor. Miller and Varley's art is terrific, as always; the combat scenes are especially powerful. And Miller's writing is his best in years. Read it.
Do not, however, read 300 expecting a strictly accurate history. The Phocians did not "scatter," as Miller describes. His Spartans are mildly homophobic, which is goofy in such a gay society. Miller doesn't say how many Greeks remained for the climactic battle--you'd think 300 Spartans and maybe a dozen others, when there were between 700 and 1,100 Greeks. Herodotus's Histories does not identify the traitor Ephialtes as ugly and hunchbacked, or even as Spartan. 300 establishes a believable connection between Ephialtes's affliction and behavior, but his monstrous appearance, King Xerxes's effeminacy, and the Persians' inexplicable pierced-GenX-African looks make for an eyebrow-raising choice of villain imagery. Nonetheless, 300 is a brilliant dramatization.
For the full story of the failed invasion, read Herodotus's Histories or, for a concise, graphic-novel retelling, Larry Gonick's great Cartoon History of the Universe: Volumes 1-7, From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great. For a lighthearted look at post-invasion Athens and a very young Alexander the Great, check out William Messner-Loebs and Sam Kieth's witty and gorgeous graphic novels, Epicurus the Sage Vol. I and Vol. II. --Cynthia Ward [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anabasis'
Stranded deep in enemy territory, the Spartan general Clearchus and the other Greek senior officers were subsequently killed or captured by treachery on the part of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Xenophon, one of three remaining leaders elected by the soldiers, played an instrumental role in encouraging the Greek army of 10,000 to march north across foodless deserts and snow-filled mountain passes towards the Black Sea and the comparative security of its Greek shoreline cities. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Knights'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arabian Nights'
In this superbly illustrated volume you will find dozens of wonderful stories of genies and jinns (those fantastic spirits that, according to Muslim folklore, inhabit the earth in various forms and exercise supernatural power), of magic carpets, Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, and the beautiful Scheherazade. There are classics such as 'Sinbad the Sailor', 'Aladdin' and 'The Seven Viziers', traditional stories that have given boundless pleasure down through the ages, which you too can now experience.
The wondrous illustrations are by the master Victorian artist engraver Thomas Dalziel, whose unique talent is displayed at its very best here.
This book to treasure is a rich mine of adventure to fire the imagination, a treasury of one thousand and one nights that you will want to return to again and again.
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(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
These stories (and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories), told by the Princess Shahrazad under the threat of death if she ceases to amuse, first reached the West around 1700. They fired in the European imagination an appetite for the mysterious and exotic which has never left it. Collected over centuries from India, Persia, and Arabia, and ranging from vivacious erotica, animal fables, and adventure fantasies to pointed Sufi tales, the stories of The Arabian Nights provided the daily entertainment of the medieval Islamic world at the height of its glory.
The present new translation by Husain Haddawy is of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and is considered to be the most authentic. This early version is without the embellishments and additions that appear in later Indian and Egyptian manuscripts, on which all previous English translations were based. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Nights'
For nearly a century, Scribner has exemplified the very best in publishing by pairing classic texts with the illustrative giants of the time, such as N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. With the same commitment to the high standards established by the series' founders, Atheneum Books for Young Readers is expanding the Scribner Illustrated Classics line over the next several years to include such modern-day classics as Jack London's The Call of the Wild and White Fang, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, and The Stories of O. Henry, to be illustrated by some of the finest artists of our generation, including Wendell Minor, Ed Young, and Trina Schart Hyman. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arabian Nights'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights'
Full of mischief and valor, ribaldry and romance, The Arabian Nights is a work that has enthralled readers for centuries. The text presented here is that of the 1932 Modern Library edition for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the "most famous and representative" of the stories from the multivolume translation of Richard F. Burton.
The origins of The Arabian Nights are obscure. About a thousand years ago a vast number of stories in Arabic from various countries began to be brought together; only much later was the collection called The Arabian Nights or the Thousand and One Nights. All the stories are told by Shahrazad (Scheherazade), who entertains her husband, King Shahryar, whose custom it was to execute his wives after a single night. Shahrazad begins a story each night but withholds the ending until the following night, thus postponing her execution.
This selection includes many of the stories that are universally known though seldom read in this authentic form:
"Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, " "Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman, " and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." These, and the tales that accompany them, make delightful reading, demonstrating, as the Modern Library noted in 1932, that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights'
Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.
This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, have entered into the popular imagination, demonstrating that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night'
Full of mischief and valor, ribaldry and romance, The Arabian Nights is a work that has enthralled readers for centuries. The text presented here is that of the 1932 Modern Library edition for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the "most famous and representative" of the stories from the multivolume translation of Richard F. Burton.
The origins of The Arabian Nights are obscure. About a thousand years ago a vast number of stories in Arabic from various countries began to be brought together; only much later was the collection called The Arabian Nights or the Thousand and One Nights. All the stories are told by Shahrazad (Scheherazade), who entertains her husband, King Shahryar, whose custom it was to execute his wives after a single night. Shahrazad begins a story each night but withholds the ending until the following night, thus postponing her execution.
This selection includes many of the stories that are universally known though seldom read in this authentic form:
"Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp," "Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman," and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." These, and the tales that accompany them, make delightful reading, demonstrating, as the Modern Library noted in 1932, that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Best Selections from the Arabian Nights Entertainments'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of The Thousand Nights And One Night'
In the late 1920s, the art publisher H. Piazza produced a twelve-volume version of The 1001 Nights that was one of the most beautiful ever made. It included splendid illustrations by Mohammed Racim and wonderful miniatures by painter Leon Carre. Today, Assouline is publishing an abridged version of this masterpiece, which includes the most famous and most enchanting of the tales--from the story of King Shahryar, to Sinbad the sailor, to Ali Baba and the forty thieves, and Aladdin and the magic lamp--all told by the beautiful and sensual Shahrazad. This wonderful book is one of the classics that will stand next to the most handsome books in your library. For The 1001 Nights is a cultural testimony of the past, the source of myths and beliefs of the East. A collection of extraordinary stories from India and Persia passed down orally and told at night in public squares, this unique work is on a par with Homer's Odyssey. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas'
[P]rovides an important segment of world literature that has been virtually inaccessible.Choice [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Come, Fill the Cup: The Rubaiyat or Omar Khayyam'
Edward FitzGerald's great free translation of the quatrains by the Persian poet, Omar Khayyám, contains many of the most quoted and beloved lines of English poetry. 2009 will mark the 150th anniversary of this passionate and ironic poem, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Come, Fill the Cup ~ The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám contains the 1st and 4th editions of the poem, commentary and notes by Fitzgerald, and remarks by notable critics of his era. Included also are variations of lines from the 2nd and 3rd editions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Creation'
In 445 B.C., Cyrus Spitama, the grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, is the Persian ambassador to the city of Athens. He has a rather caustic appreciation of his situation: "I am blind. But I am not deaf. Because of the incompleteness of my misfortune, I was obliged yesterday to listen for nearly six hours to a self-styled historian whose account of what the Athenians like to call 'the Persian Wars' was nonsense of a sort that were I less old and more privileged, I would have risen to my seat at the Odeon and scandalized all Athens by answering him." Having thus dismissed Herodotus, Cyrus then dictates his life story to his nephew, Democritus, with similar disdain for the Greeks--whom we in the modern world have come to view as the progenitors of civilization, but whom Cyrus considers to be bad-smelling rabble.
Of course, Cyrus Spitama speaks with a very modern, ironic voice supplied to him by Gore Vidal--and the political intrigues in which Cyrus finds himself immersed are likewise familiar territory for fans of Vidal's historical fiction. But the narrator's delightfully wicked observations are the icing on a narrative of truly epic scope--out of his desire to understand the origins of the world, Cyrus undertakes journeys to India, where he encounters disciples of the Buddha, and China, where he engages Confucius in philosophical conversation while the great sage fishes by the riverside. Creation offers insights into classical history laced with scintillating wit and narrative brio. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Essential Rumi'
No translator could do greater justice to the gorgeous simplicity of Rumi's poetry than Coleman Barks has done here. These exquisite renderings of the 13th-century Persian mystic's words into American free verse capture all the "inner searching, the delicacy, and simple groundedness" that characterize Rumi's poetry while remaining faithful to the images, tone, and spiritual message of the originals. Barks's introductions to each of the 27 sections (described as "playful palimpsests spread over Rumi's imagination," and "meant to confuse scholars who would divide Rumi's poetry into the accepted categories") are themselves wonderful achievements of a poetic imagination; searching explanations of unfamiliar concepts and funny stories provide colorful background and frame the selections as no dry historical exegesis could.
While Barks's stamp on this collection is clear, it in no way interferes with the poems themselves; Rumi's voice leaps off these pages with an ecstatic energy that leaves readers breathless. There are poems of love, rage, sadness, pleading, and longing; passionate outbursts about the torture of longing for his beloved and the sweet pleasure that comes from their union; amusing stories of sexual exploits or human weakness; and quiet truths about the beauty and variety of human emotion. More than anything, Rumi makes plain the unbridled joy that comes from living life fully, urging us always to put aside our fears and take the risk to do so. As he says: "The way of love is not / a subtle argument. / The door there is devastation. / Birds make great sky-circles / of their freedom. / How do they learn it? / They fall, and falling, / they're given wings." --Uma Kukathas [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Expedition of Cyrus'
The Expedition of Cyrus tells the story of the epic march of the Ten Thousand, an army recruited at the end of the fifth century BC by a young Persian prince, Cyrus, who rose in revolt agains his brother, the King of Persia. After Cyrus' death, the army is left stranded in the desert of Mespotamia, a thousand miles from home. Their long march, across mountains and plateaus to the sight of "The sea! The sea!," and back to the fringes of the Greek world, is the most excititng adventure story to survive from the ancient world.
This new translation of Xenophon's most famous work offers a gripping narrative and a unique insight into the character of a Greek army struggling to survive in an alien world.
[via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gates of Fire'
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.
Thus reads an ancient stone at Thermopylae in northern Greece, the site of one of the world's greatest battles for freedom. Here, in 480 B.C., on a narrow mountain pass above the crystalline Aegean, 300 Spartan knights and their allies faced the massive forces of Xerxes, King of Persia. From the start, there was no question but that the Spartans would perish. In Gates of Fire, however, Steven Pressfield makes their courageous defense--and eventual extinction--unbearably suspenseful.
In the tradition of Mary Renault, this historical novel unfolds in flashback. Xeo, the sole Spartan survivor of Thermopylae, has been captured by the Persians, and Xerxes himself presses his young captive to reveal how his tiny cohort kept more than 100,000 Persians at bay for a week. Xeo, however, begins at the beginning, when his childhood home in northern Greece was overrun and he escaped to Sparta. There he is drafted into the elite Spartan guard and rigorously schooled in the art of war--an education brutal enough to destroy half the students, but (oddly enough) not without humor: "The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes became, or at least that's how it seems," Xeo recalls. His companions in arms are Alexandros, a gentle boy who turns out to be the most courageous of all, and Rooster, an angry, half-Messenian youth.
Pressfield's descriptions of war are breathtaking in their immediacy. They are also meticulously assembled out of physical detail and crisp, uncluttered metaphor:
The forerank of the enemy collapsed immediately as the first shock hit it; the body-length shields seemed to implode rearward, their anchoring spikes rooted slinging from the earth like tent pins in a gale. The forerank archers were literally bowled off their feet, their wall-like shields caving in upon them like fortress redoubts under the assault of the ram.... The valor of the individual Medes was beyond question, but their light hacking blades were harmless as toys; against the massed wall of Spartan armor, they might as well have been defending themselves with reeds or fennel stalks.Alas, even this human barrier was bound to collapse, as we knew all along it would. "War is work, not mystery," Xeo laments. But Pressfield's epic seems to make the opposite argument: courage on this scale is not merely inspiring but ultimately mysterious. --Marianne Painter [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Books of the Western World'
The Iliad (Ancient Greek ?????, Ilias) is, together with the Odyssey, one of two ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, a supposedly blind Ionian poet. The epics are considered by most modern scholars to be the oldest literature in the Greek language. The Iliad concerns events during the tenth and final year in the siege of the city of Ilion, or Troy, by the Greeks. The Odyssey (Greek: ????????, Odusseia)is commonly dated circa 800 to 600 BC. The poem is, in part, a sequel to Homer's Iliad and mainly concerns the events that befall the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses) in his long journeys after the fall of Troy and when he at last returns to his native land of Ithaca. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Herodotus: The Histories New Translation, Selections, Backgrounds, Commentaries'
This Norton Critical Edition offers an introduction to Herodotus for students approaching the history of Western Civilization or classical Greece for the first time. It features a new translation and selection of Herodotuss The Histories by Walter Blanco, supplemented by critical works chosen by Jennifer Roberts.
Walter Blanco's translation manages both to remain true to the spirit and letter of the original Greek and to be readily understandable to American students.More editions of Herodotus: The Histories New Translation, Selections, Backgrounds, Commentaries:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Herodotus: The Histories'
During the fifth century BC, a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city-states united to repel a mighty Persian army. While the story of this heroic drama forms the main theme of Herodotus' narrative, the author's curiosity fleshes out the text with digressions, folk tales and stories. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Herodotus: The Persian War'
Selections from Herodotus' History which follow the events of the great war between the Greeks and the Persians. The translated extracts include Herodotus' descriptions of the preparations for war and of the great land- and sea-battles which took place. Linking commentaries explain Greek and Persian strategies and battle manoeuvres. Background information on the ships and on the soldiers fighting in the war is also given. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Historiae'
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was an Ionian traveler and storyteller who lived in the 5th century BC 484 BC-ca. 425 BC . He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a collection of 'inquiries' about the places and peoples he encountered during his wide-ranging travels around the Mediterranean littoral and into Mesopotamia. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Histories'
Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining. Why did Pheidippides run the 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.195 kilometres) from Marathon to Athens? And what did he do when he got there? Was the Battle of Salamis fought between sausage-sellers? Which is the oldest language in the world? Why did Leonidas and his 300 Spartans spend the morning before the battle of Thermopylae combing their hair? Why did every Babylonian woman have to sit in the Temple of Aphrodite until a man threw a coin into her lap, and how long was she likely to sit there? And what is the best way to kill a crocodile? This wide-ranging history provides the answers to all these fascinating questions as well as providing many fascinating insights into the Ancient World. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Histories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History: Herodotus'
Herodotus of Halicarnassus was born about 484 B.C. and died some 60 years later. He traveled over much of the known ancient world, making trips to places such as southern Italy, lower Egypt, and the Caucasus. His great History, the first major prose work in world literature, is an account of his world at the time of the Persian Wars. The book, here ably translated by University of Chicago scholar David Grene, earned Herodotus the epithet "The Father of History" in ancient times. He distinguishes between the things seen with his own eyes and those of which he had only heard. But he was often too credulous of things told to him by his peers along the way, for which reason his younger contemporary Thucydides called him "The Father of Lies." Renowned in his own time for his humanity and wide-ranging curiosity, Herodotus shows an insatiable appetite for both useful information and a good yarn, and The History is a starting point for any student of the past. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'History of the Persian Empire'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Search of Zarathustra: Across Iran and Central Asia to Find the World's First Prophet'
Long before the first Hebrew temple, before the birth of Christ or the mission of Muhammad, there lived in Persia a prophet to whom we owe the ideas of a single god, the cosmic struggle between good and evil, and the Apocalypse. His name was Zarathustra, and his teachings eventually held sway from the Indus to the Nile and spread as far as Britain.
Following Zarathustras elusive trail back through time and across the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish worlds, Paul Kriwaczek uncovers his legacy at a wedding ceremony in present-day Central Asia, in the Cathar heresy of medieval France, and among the mystery cults of the Roman empire. He explores pre-Muslim Iran and Central Asia, ultimately bringing us face to face with the prophet himself, a teacher whose radical humility shocked and challenged his age, and whose teachings have had an enduring effect on Western thought. The result is a tour de force of travel and historical inquiry by an adventurer in the classic tradition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Mil Y Una Noches'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Little Book of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'March Up Country'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Opera Omnia Expedito Cyri'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Persian Expedition'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West'
History. Tom Holland's brilliant new book describes the very first "clash of empires" between East and West. As he did in the critically praised Rubicon, he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own. There is no other popular history that takes in the entire sweep of the Persian Wars, and no other classical historian, academic or popular, who combines scholarly rigor with novelistic depth and a worldly irony in quite the fashion that Tom Holland does. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Persian Wars'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Persian Wars'
Translated by George Rawlinson, Introduction by Francis R.B. Godolphin [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam: Three Translations of the Rubaiyat'
Though few translations have had as much impact as Edward Fitzgerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, anyone who wishes to truly appreciate Omar Khayyám needs to read more than one translation. This volume contains Edward Fitzgerald's classic translation with all its variations, Justin McCarthy's elegant and mystical literal translation and Richard Le Gallienne's sharp and poetic version. For the first time the reader can appreciate the range of Omar Khayyám and his interpreters in a single volume. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Road to Oxiana'
In 1933 the delightfully eccentric Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana -the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, it not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures.
In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. When Paul Fussell "rediscovered" The Road to Oxiana in his recent book Abroad, he whetted the appetite of a whole new generation of readers. In his new introduction, written especially for this volume, Fussell writes: "Reading the book is like stumbling into a modern museum of literary kinds presided over by a benign if eccentric curator. Here armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs and notices, official forms, letters, diary entries, essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical and archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays and disasters), and--the triumph of the book--at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions and musical scoring." [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'
Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies; The Flower than once has blown for ever dies. -XXVI Though it's difficult to imagine, these 12th-century stanzas-oft quoted and frequently looked to for inspiration by those seeking to live life to the fullest-did not come to the public's attention until Edward FitzGerald published them in English in 1859... and even then they were ignored until the painter Dante Rossetti discovered a remaindered copy two years later and excitedly spread news of it around his intellectual and artistic circles. Not a direct translation, these liberal interpretations make Khayyám's verse accessible to readers in the English language. Several editions of FitzGerald's work are included in this volume, allowing the reader multiple approaches to their wisdom and beauty. Persian astronomer and poet OMAR KHAYYÁM (1048-1131) also authored works on music and mathematics. British poet and translator EDWARD FITZGERALD (1809-1883) also wrote Polonius: A Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances (1852) and translated from the Spanish Six Dramas of Pedro Caulderon (1853). [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Critical Edition'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'
Philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, Khayyam as a poet possesses a singular originality. His poetry is richly charged with evocative power and offers a view of life characteristic of his stormy times, with striking relevance to the present day. This translation by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs is beautifully and lavishly illustrated in colour with numerous examples of Persian miniature painting. It also contains a valuable introduction and several appendices, including an essay on Persian painting. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 1899'
This volume contains an English rendering in quatrains of the first, second and fifth editions of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, together with notes indicating the minor variants found in the third and fourth editions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 1899'
Edward Fitzgerald, whom the world has already learned, in spite of his own efforts to remain wathin the shadow of anonymity, to look upon as one of the rarest poets of the century, was born at Bredfield, in Suffolk, on the 31st of March, 1809. He was the third son of John Purcell, of Kilkenny, in Ireland, who, marrying Miss Mary Frances Fitzgerald, daughter of John Fitzgerald, of Williamstown, County Waterford, added that distinguished name to his own patronymic; and the future Omar was thus doubly of Irish extraction. (Both the families of Purcell and Fitzgerald claim descent from Norman warriors of the eleventh century.) This circumstance is thought to have had some influence in attracting him to the study of Persian poetry Iran and Erin being almost convertible terms in the early days of modern ethnology. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Other Persian Poems'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Bird Parliament'
In Edward Fitzgerald's much-loved translation, "The Rubaiyat", the best selling poem of all time, with Attar's charming "The Bird Parliament". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Samarcanda'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Samarkand'
Accused of mocking the inviolate codes of Islam, the Persian poet and sage Omar Khayyam fortuitously finds sympathy with the very man who is to judge his alleged crimes. Recognising genuis, the judge decides to spare him and gives him instead a small, blank book, encouraging him to confine his thoughts to it alone. Thus beginds the seamless blend of fact and fiction that is Samarkand. Vividly re-creating the history of the manuscript of the Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayyam, Amin Maalouf spans continents and centuries with breathtaking vision: the dusky exoticism of 11th-century Persia, with its poetesses and assassins; the same country's struggles nine hundred years later, seen through the eyes of an American academic obsessed with finding the original manuscript; and the fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, whose tragedy led to the Rubaiyaat's final resting place - all are brought to life with keen assurance by this gifted and award-winning writer. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shahnameh: The Persian Book Of Kings'
Among the great works of world literature, perhaps one of the least familiar to English readers is the Shahnameh: ThePersian Book of Kings, the national epic of Persia. This prodigious narrative, composed by the poet Ferdowsi between the years 980 and 1010, tells the story of pre- Islamic Iran, beginning in the mythic time of Creation and continuing forward to the Arab invasion in the seventh century.
As a window on the world, Shahnameh belongs in the company of such literary masterpieces as Dantes Divine Comedy, the plays of Shakespeare, the epics of Homer classics whose reach and range bring whole cultures into view. In its pages are unforgettable moments of national triumph and failure, human courage and cruelty, blissful love and bitter grief.
In tracing the roots of Iran, Shahnameh initially draws on the depths of legend and then carries its story into historical times, when ancient Persia was swept into an expanding Islamic empire. Now Dick Davis, the greatest modern translator of Persian poetry, has revisited that poem, turning the finest stories of Ferdowsis original into an elegant combination of prose and verse. For the first time in English, in the most complete form possible, readers can experience Shahnameh in the same way that Iranian storytellers have lovingly conveyed it in Persian for the past thousand years. [via]
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The fables and legends of "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", taken from the "Arabian Nights". In these two tales filled with mystery, intrigue and excitement, Aladdin and Ali Baba each make magical discoveries. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales from the Arabian Nights'
The beautiful Scheherazade's royal husband threatens to kill her, so each night she diverts him by weaving wonderful tales of fantastic adventure, leaving each story unfinished so that he spares her life to hear the ending the next night. This is the background to the Arabian Nights. In this selection made by that master of folklore and fairy-tale Andrew Lang, the reader meets Aladdin with his wonderful lamp, the Enchanted Horse, the Princess Badoura, Sinbad the Sailor, and the great Caliph of Bagdad, Haroun-al-Raschid. [via]
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Beautiful princesses, genies who emerge from bottles, and talking birds in 26 magical tales: "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," "Sindbad the Sailor," "Noureddin and the Fair Persian," "Merchant of Bagdad," and more. 66 illustrations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales from the Arabian Nights Selected from the Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Thousand Nights and One Night'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Xenophon: Anabasis'
Xenophon (ca. 430 to ca. 354 BCE) was a wealthy Athenian and friend of Socrates. He left Athens in 401 and joined an expedition including ten thousand Greeks led by the Persian governor Cyrus against the Persian king. After the defeat of Cyrus, it fell to Xenophon to lead the Greeks from the gates of Babylon back to the coast through inhospitable lands. Later he wrote the famous vivid account of this 'March Up-Country' (Anabasis); but meanwhile he entered service under the Spartans against the Persian king, married happily, and joined the staff of the Spartan king, Agesilaus. But Athens was at war with Sparta in 394 and so exiled Xenophon. The Spartans gave him an estate near Elis where he lived for years writing and hunting and educating his sons. Reconciled to Sparta, Athens restored Xenophon to honour but he preferred to retire to Corinth.
Xenophon's
We also have his Hiero, a dialogue on government; Agesilaus, in praise of that king; Constitution of Lacedaemon (on the Spartan system); Ways and Means (on the finances of Athens); Manual for a Cavalry Commander; a good manual of Horsemanship; and a lively Hunting with Hounds. The Constitution of the Athenians, though clearly not by Xenophon, is an interesting document on politics at Athens. These eight books are collected in the last of the seven volumes of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Xenophon.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anabasis: LA Retirada De Los Diez Mil'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Historias'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Los Nueve Libros De La Historia'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Rubaiyyat'
Desde la primera aparición en el Occidente de Las Rubaiyat en 1859, estas cuartetas, escritas entre los siglos XI y XII, han conocido un éxito y una difusión poco habituales para obras de tal naturaleza. Aquí queda para el lector esta joya de la literatura universal tomada de la versión francesa de Franz Toussaint en atención a sus valores de claridad , sencillez y elegancia. [via]
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