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books tagged “Theory”
books tagged “Theory”
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The Adventures of Don Quixoteby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 0374519439 (0-374-51943-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Don Quixote'Book summary:The adventures of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza continue as he carries on his quest for chivalry and romance. Part 2. (Nine 90-minute cassettes) [via]
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African Religions and Philosophyby John S. MbitiISBN 0385037139 (0-385-03713-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Against Love: A Polemicby Laura KipnisISBN 0375719326 (0-375-71932-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Against Love: A Polemic'Book summary:Less against love than against the cultural constraints that leads us to create wrong-headed ideas of love, this is book is the perfect antidote to any lingering social guilt about being happily single. Against Love: A Polemic will both shock and irritate, especially when you find yourself nodding your head in agreement while laughing at another broken taboo. Laura Kipnis (author of Bound and Gagged, Ecstasy Unlimited) clearly enjoyed writing this; she lets her wit run rampage over classic married situations and human emotions with results that include comparing adulterers to freedom fighters (using sharpened spoons to tunnel out from under love's barbed wire fences) and referring to tearful confessions of cheating as "funny little couple rituals." These make it fun, but the iconoclastic beauty is in her questions. How did good relationships come to be considered work instead of play? Why, unlike most of history and many other modern cultures, do Americans assume love and marriage go hand-in-hand? What lead to infidelity committed by public figures becoming a source of outrage? Kipnis doesn't have answers. Although urging us to have more compassion for our own desires, she expects her readers are smart enough to supply their own in response to her ideas. That attitude itself is a treat--if you're prepared to keep up through a complex whirlwind of Freud, Marx, Gingrich, Wollstonecraft, and several generations of pop culture. Jill Lightner [via]
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Animal Liberationby Peter SingerISBN 0380713330 (0-380-71333-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Basic Works of Aristotleby Aristotle, Richard McKeon, C.D.C. ReeveISBN 0375757996 (0-375-75799-6)
Softcover, Princeton Review
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Basic Works of Aristotle'Book summary:NA [via]
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Beyond Cultureby Edward T. HallISBN 0385124740 (0-385-12474-0)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beyond Culture'Book summary:Edward T. Hall opens up new dimensions of understanding and perception of human experience by helping us rethink our values in constructive ways. [via]
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Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspectiveby Arthur C. DantoISBN 0374523916 (0-374-52391-6)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Moralsby Friedrich Wilhelm NietzscheISBN 0385092105 (0-385-09210-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals'Book summary:Skillful, sophisticated translations of two of Nietzsche's essential works about the conflict between the moral and aesthetic approaches to life, the impact of Christianity on human values, the meaning of science, the contrast between the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits, and other themes central to his thinking. [via]
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Book of the Courtierby Baldesar CastiglioneISBN 0385094213 (0-385-09421-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Book of the Courtier'Book summary:This text is a historical record of conversational leisure at a Renaissance Italian court, a manual of instruction for aspiring courtiers and a handbook. From it spring the behaviour manuals which continue to reveal the ways of "arriviste", from social climber to young business executive. [via]
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Break, Blow, Burnby Camille PagliaISBN 0375725393 (0-375-72539-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Break, Blow, Burn'Book summary:Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the Worlds Best Poems is destined to become a landmark. In it, Americas premier intellectual provocateur explores and celebrates a series of great poems of the Western tradition, including some surprising discoveries of her own. She brings new energy and insight to our understanding of poems we already know, such as masterpieces by Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley, Dickinson, Lowell, and Plath. She leads us to appreciate the artistry of writers with whom we may not be familiar, such as Chuck Wachtel and Wanda Coleman. And she hails the songwriter Joni Mitchell as a major contemporary poet.
Daring, erudite, entertaining, and infused throughout with Paglias inimitable style and passion, this beautifully written bookand the dazzling mind behind itwill entice readers to begin or renew a passionate engagement with poetry. [via]-
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Futureby Neil PostmanISBN 0375701273 (0-375-70127-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future'Book summary:The problem with the world today, says Neil Postman, is that we've become so caught up in hurtling towards the future that we've lost our societal "narrative," a humane cultural tradition that creates "a sense of purpose and continuity"--in other words, something to believe in. "In order to have an agreeable encounter with the twenty-first century," he asserts, "we will have to take into it some good ideas. And in order to do that, we need to look back to take stock of the good ideas available to us." He finds rich source material in the Enlightenment, the salad days for philosophers such as Goethe, Voltaire, Diderot, Paine, and Jefferson, "the beginnings of much that is worthwhile about the modern world." Yet Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century is a call for cultural progress, not regression: "I am not suggesting that we become the eighteenth century," Postman notes, "only that we use it for what it is worth and all it is worth."
Chief among the values Postman cites is the development of the intellect; it plays a part in many of his recommendations, from the cultivation of a healthy skepticism towards overhyped technology to sweeping educational reforms that include replacing grammar instruction with logic and rhetoric and introducing courses on comparative religion and the history of science. He also lashes out at postmodernists who start with the premise that language "is a major factor in producing our perceptions, judgments, knowledge, and institutions" and conclude that language is therefore tenuously connected to reality at best. Enlightenment thinkers knew that language molded perception, he notes, but they also believed that "it is possible to use language to say things about the world that are true" and "to communicate ideas to oneself and to others." Postman is excessively curmudgeonly at times, as in his reference to philosopher Jean Baudrillard as "a Frenchman, of all things," or his remarks on the ancient Athenians: "I know they are the classic example of Dead White Males, but we should probably listen to them anyway." But for anybody with a stake in the culture wars, or who wants to apply the lessons of philosophy to the modern world, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century will make for provocative reading. [via]
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The Captive Mindby Czeslaw MiloszISBN 0374957339 (0-374-95733-9)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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Catapultby Jim PaulISBN 0380718405 (0-380-71840-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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City of Godby St. AugustineISBN 0385029101 (0-385-02910-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'City of God'Book summary:Augustine's City of God, a monumental work of religious lore, philosophy, and history, was written as a kind of literary tombstone for Roman culture. After the sack of Rome, Augustine wrote this book to anatomize the corruption of Romans' pursuit of earthly pleasures: "grasping for praise, open-handed with their money; honest in the pursuit of wealth, they wanted to hoard glory." Augustine contrasts his condemnation of Rome with an exaltation of Christian culture. The glory that Rome failed to attain will only be realized by citizens of the City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem foreseen in Revelation. Because City of God was written for men of classical learning--custodians of the culture Augustine sought to condemn--it is thick with Ciceronian circumlocutions, and makes many stark contrasts between "Your Virgil" and "Our Scriptures." Even if Augustine's prose strikes modern ears as a bit bombastic, and if his polarized Christian/pagan world is more binary than the one we live in today, his arguments against utopianism and his defense of the richness of Christian culture remain useful and strong. City of God is, as its final words proclaim itself to be, "a giant of a book." --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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Common Sense and Other Writingsby Thomas Paine, Gordon S. WoodISBN 0375760113 (0-375-76011-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Deterring Democracyby Noam ChomskyISBN 0374523495 (0-374-52349-5)
Softcover, Hill & Wang Pub
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Development As Freedomby Amartya SenISBN 0375406190 (0-375-40619-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Development As Freedom'Book summary:Development as Freedom is a general exposition of the economic ideas and analyses of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. This brilliant and indispensable treatise compellingly analyzes the nature of contemporary economic development from the perspective of human freedom. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of economic life and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. It is a good to be enjoyed by the world's entire population. Drawing on moral and political philosophy and technical economic analysis, this work gives the nonspecialist reader powerful access to Sen's paradigm-altering vision and vividly shows how he, in the words of the Nobel Prize committee, has both "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems" and "opened up new fields of study for subsequent generations of researchers."
To a world divided between those who fear the ruthlessness of the free market under prevailing conditions of global capitalism and those who fear the terror of authoritarian states that stifle indi-
vidual liberty as well as initiative, Development as Freedom presents a necessary intellectual and moral framework of analysis and scrutiny. By rigorously addressing one of the largest questions of all--"What is the relation between our economic wealth and our ability to live as we would like?"--Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom. He also confronts the human dilemma that "despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority--of people." This is a landmark work that shows how in individual human freedom--the exclusive possession, Sen shows, of no particular nation, region or historical, intellectual or religious tradition--lies the capacity for political participation, economic development and social progress. [via]More editions of Development As Freedom:
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Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo: Including the Starry Messengerby Galileo Galilei, Stillman DrakeISBN 0385092393 (0-385-09239-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo: Including the Starry Messenger'Book summary:Directing his polemics against the pedantry of his time, Galileo, as his own popularizer, addressed his writings to contemporary laymen. His support of Copernican cosmology, against the Church's strong opposition, his development of a telescope, and his unorthodox opinions as a philosopher of science were the central concerns of his career and the subjects of four of his most important writings. Drake's introductory essay place them in their biographical and historical context. [via]
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Don Quixoteby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 037575699X (0-375-75699-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don Quixote'Book summary:Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they wend their way across sixteenth-century Spain. Milan Kundera calls Cervantes the founder of the Modern Era and Lionel Trilling observes that it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the acclaimed Tobias Smollett translation; as Salman Rushdie declares, To my mind, this is the only English rendering of the Quixote that reads like a great novel, a novel of immense daring, much wildness and many colours. It releases Don Quixote from the grey academic prison of many more recent translations, unleashing him upon the English language in all his brilliant, foolish glory . This edition also contains new endnotes. [via]More editions of Don Quixote:
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Don Quixote of the Manchaby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Walter Crane, Judge Parry, Edward Abbott ParryISBN 037540659X (0-375-40659-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don Quixote of the Mancha'Book summary:The story of the Spanish knight whose devotion to tales of chivalry leads him and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, into a series of bizarre adventures blends fantasy, comedy, and drama in a way that has gripped the world's imagination for centuries. This edition has been abridged and adapted for children, and enhanced by the delightful illustrations of Walter Crane. [via]
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Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: Why Kids Love the Books They Doby Alison LurieISBN 0380714027 (0-380-71402-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Draculaby Bram Stoker, Peter StraubISBN 0375756701 (0-375-75670-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dracula'Book summary:Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stokers Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897, the most astute praise came from the author's mother, who wrote her son: 'It is splendid. No book since Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror.'
A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker's hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.
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Draculaby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram StokerISBN 0385095805 (0-385-09580-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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The Edge City: Life on the New Frontierby Joel GarreauISBN 0385262493 (0-385-26249-3)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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Encounters & Reflections: Art in the Historical Presentby Arthur C. DantoISBN 0374523274 (0-374-52327-4)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The End of Gay: (and the Death of Heterosexuality)by Bert ArcherISBN 0385257481 (0-385-25748-1)
Hardcover, Doubleday Canada
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Fate of the Earthby Jonathan SchellISBN 0380613255 (0-380-61325-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovaryby Louise J. KaplanISBN 0385262345 (0-385-26234-5)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary'Book summary:Distinguished psychoanalyst and author Louise Kaplan scrutinizes the world of sexual perversions and exposes the misconceptions behind them in her masterful study, Female Perversions. Her effort earned the book a nomination for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Kaplan's general thesis is that perversions are as much a function of gender role identity as they are of sexuality. Her thesis also maintains that the predominantly male medical profession has created and perpetuated many of the myths of perverse female sexual behavior. The book outlines various types of perverse behavior--fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism--and then analyzes each type outside of society's traditional perspective. As she expounds on her theory, Kaplan invokes Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. She sees many parallels between the plight of Emma Bovary and the perception of female perversions in society today. Kaplan writes lucidly, offering an enlightening insight into the provocative and complex issue of female erotic expression to a range of readers. [via]
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Female Perversions: The Temptations of Madame Bovaryby Louise J. KaplanISBN 0385262337 (0-385-26233-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terroristsby Binyamin NetanyahuISBN 0374524971 (0-374-52497-1)
Softcover, Noonday Pr
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Fingerprints of the Godsby Graham HancockISBN 038525475X (0-385-25475-X)
Hardcover, Bantam Books of Canada Ltd
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For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violenceby Alice Miller, Hildegarde Hannum, Hunter HannumISBN 0374518599 (0-374-51859-9)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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- For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence: ISBN 0374522693 (0-374-52269-3)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux - For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence: ISBN 0374528438 (0-374-52843-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux - For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence: ISBN 0374518599 (0-374-51859-9)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence: ISBN 0374522693 (0-374-52269-3)
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Frankensteinby Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyISBN 0375753419 (0-375-75341-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› 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]
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The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected Worldby Lawrence LessigISBN 0375726446 (0-375-72644-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World'Book summary:If The Future of Ideas is bleak, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Author Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and keen observer of emerging technologies, makes a strong case that large corporations are staging an innovation-stifling power grab while we watch idly. The changes in copyright and other forms of intellectual property protection demanded by the media and software industries have the potential to choke off publicly held material, which Lessig sees as a kind of intellectual commons. He eloquently and persuasively decries this lopsided control of ideas and suggests practical solutions that consider the rights of both creators and consumers, while acknowledging the serious impact of new technologies on old ways of doing business. His proposals would let existing companies make money without using the tremendous advantages of incumbency to eliminate new killer apps before they can threaten the status quo. Readers who want a fair intellectual marketplace would do well to absorb the lessons in The Future of Ideas. --Rob Lightner [via]
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Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitmentby Barbara EhrenreichISBN 0385176155 (0-385-17615-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment'Book summary:An explanation of recent sexual culture and the loosening of marriage bonds over the past 20 years. [via]
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The Hidden Dimensionby Edward Twitchell HallISBN 0385084765 (0-385-08476-5)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hidden Dimension'Book summary:The Hidden Dimension [Paperback] by Hall, Edward T. [via]
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The Historiesby Herodotus, George Rawlinson, Rosalind ThomasISBN 0375400613 (0-375-40061-3)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Histories'Book summary:Since the release of the film version of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, there has been renewed interest in the Histories of Herodotus--the book the dying patient treasures so much.
The writings of Herodotus are the ground zero of Western history. He lived during the fifth century B.C.E, and his Histories chronicle the events of the Persian Wars, which were within living memory when he wrote. He was the first writer to examine real, rather than mythical history, and although his work lacks the rigor of later histories, it has a breathtaking scope. Herodotus is a wonderful storyteller, and in recalling the wars with Persian invaders, he ranges across the ancient world, mixing politics with natural history and anthropology. These are traveler's tales, and a great deal of their appeal to a modern audience lies in the way Herodotus describes the cultures that influence his story. The societies of Scythians, Arabs, and Egyptians are depicted in detail, from their political structures to their dining habits. Herodotus created a sense of history for his people, and he gives us a picture of a distant past that reminds us of the vast continuum of civilization. [via]
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Holy Terrorby Jim Siegelman, Flo ConwayISBN 0385176708 (0-385-17670-8)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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House of Leavesby Mark Z. DanielewskiISBN 0375703764 (0-375-70376-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'House of Leaves'Book summary:Had The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of a film, and had it been written by, say, Nabokov at his most playful, revised by Stephen King at his most cerebral, and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde, the result might have been something like House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel has a lot going on: notably the discovery of a pseudoacademic monograph called The Navidson Record, written by a blind man named Zampanò, about a nonexistent documentary film--which itself is about a photojournalist who finds a house that has supernatural, surreal qualities. (The inner dimensions, for example, are measurably larger than the outer ones.) In addition to this Russian-doll layering of narrators, Danielewski packs in poems, scientific lists, collages, Polaroids, appendices of fake correspondence and "various quotes," single lines of prose placed any which way on the page, crossed-out passages, and so on.
Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era, presumably there's nobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction. So apart from its narrative high jinks, what does House of Leaves have to offer? According to Johnny Truant, the tattoo-shop apprentice who discovers Zampanò's work, once you read The Navidson Record,
For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.
We'll have to take his word for it, however. As it's presented here, the description of the spooky film isn't continuous enough to have much scare power. Instead, we're pulled back into Johnny Truant's world through his footnotes, which he uses to discharge everything in his head, including the discovery of the manuscript, his encounters with people who knew Zampanò, and his own battles with drugs, sex, ennui, and a vague evil force. If The Navidson Record is a mad professor lecturing on the supernatural with rational-seeming conviction, Truant's footnotes are the manic student in the back of the auditorium, wigged out and furiously scribbling whoa-dude notes about life.Despite his flaws, Truant is an appealingly earnest amateur editor--finding translators, tracking down sources, pointing out incongruities. Danielewski takes an academic's--or ex-academic's--glee in footnotes (the similarity to David Foster Wallace is almost too obvious to mention), as well as other bogus ivory-tower trappings such as interviews with celebrity scholars like Camille Paglia and Harold Bloom. And he stuffs highbrow and pop-culture references (and parodies) into the novel with the enthusiasm of an anarchist filling a pipe bomb with bits of junk metal. House of Leaves may not be the prettiest or most coherent collection, but if you're trying to blow stuff up, who cares? --John Ponyicsanyi [via]
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- House of Leaves: ISBN 0375420525 (0-375-42052-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - House of Leaves: ISBN 0375407324 (0-375-40732-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc - House of Leaves : A Novel: ISBN 0375410341 (0-375-41034-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group - House of Leaves: ISBN 0375703764 (0-375-70376-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- House of Leaves: ISBN 0375420525 (0-375-42052-5)
Human Use of Human Beingsby Norbert WienerISBN 0380506823 (0-380-50682-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrityby Richard SchickelISBN 0385123361 (0-385-12336-1)
Hardcover, Bookthrift Co
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An Introduction to English Poetryby James FentonISBN 0374528896 (0-374-52889-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Jane Eyreby Charlotte Brontë, Diane JohnsonISBN 0375757600 (0-375-75760-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jane Eyre'Book summary:Initially published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre erupted onto the English literary scene, immediately winning the devotion of many of the world's most renowned writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, who declared it a work "of great genius." Passionate, dramatic, and surprisingly modern, Jane Eyre endures as one of the world's most beloved novels. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Diane Johnson, the National Book Award-nominated author of many novels, including Le Mariage and Le Divorce.
The timeless story of Jane Eyre has arrived on Broadway as a spectacular new musical from an all-star production team, consisting of John Caird (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby), who adapted and staged (with Scott Schwartz); composer Paul Gordon; designer John Napier (Cats, Les Misérables, Sunset Boulevard); costume designer Andreane Neofitou (Les Misérables, Miss Saigon); and lighting designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, six-time winners of the Tonytm Award.
Jane Eyre: The Musical, live at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre
www.JaneEyreonBroadway.com
Original cast album available from Sony Classical [via]More editions of Jane Eyre:
The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jeffersonby Thomas Jefferson, William Peden, Adrienne KochISBN 0375752188 (0-375-75218-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Lucy's Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestorby James Shreeve, Donald JohansonISBN 0380712342 (0-380-71234-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lucy's Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor'Book summary:A fascinating tale of adventure and discovery unfolds with this account of Donald Johanson's famous fossil find--the earliest hominid skeleton. Johanson takes readers to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania on the dusty archaelogical dig, and to the heart of the controversy surrounding his tremendous find. [via]
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Made in America: The Arts in Modern Civilizationby John Atlee KouwenhovenISBN 0374946264 (0-374-94626-4)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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The Marriage of Sense and Soul : Integrating Science and Religionby Ken WilberISBN 0375500545 (0-375-50054-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Marx for Beginnersby RiusISBN 0375714618 (0-375-71461-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Marx for Beginners'Book summary:A cartoon book about Marx? Are you sure it's Karl, not Groucho? How can you summarize the work of Karl Marx in cartoons? It took Rius to do it. He's put it all in: the origins of Marxist philosophy, history, economics; of capital, labor, the class struggle, socialism. And there's a biography of "Charlie" Marx besides.
Like the companion volumes in the series, Marx for Beginners is accurate, understandable, and very, very funny. [via]More editions of Marx for Beginners:
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The Mass Psychology of Fascismby Wilhelm ReichISBN 0374508844 (0-374-50884-4)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mass Psychology of Fascism'Book summary:In this classic study, Reich provides insight into the phenomenon of fascism, which continues to ravage the international community in ways great and small.[via]
Drawing on his medical expereinces with men and women of various classes, races, nations, and religious beliefs, Reich refutes the still generally held notion that fascism is a specific characteristic of certain nationalities or a political party ideology that is imposed on innocent people by means of force or political manneuvers. "Fascism on only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man's character. It is the basic emotional civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life."Wilhelm Reich
Responsibility for the elimination of fascism thus results with the masses of average people who might otherwise support and champion it.More editions of The Mass Psychology of Fascism:
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The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in Americaby Louis MenandISBN 0374528497 (0-374-52849-7)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America'Book summary:If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war times. Together, "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world."
Despite this potentially forbidding theme, The Metaphysical Club is not a dry tome for academics. Instead, it is a quadruple biography, a wonderfully told story of ideas that advances by turning these thinkers into characters and bringing them to life. Menand links them through the Metaphysical Club, a conversational club formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. It lasted but a few months, and references to it appear only in Peirce's writings (its real significance seems rather limited), though Holmes and James were both members. (Dewey was much younger than these three, and more an heir than a contemporary.) It is difficult to describe in a sentence or two what they accomplished, though Menand takes a stab at it: "They helped put an end to the idea that the universe is an idea, that beyond the mundane business of making our way as best we can in a world shot through with contingency, there exists some order, invisible to us, whose logic we transgress at our peril." Academic freedom and cultural pluralism are just two of their legacies, and they are linchpins of democracy in a nonideological age, says Menand.
A book like this is necessarily idiosyncratic, yet at the same time this one is sweeping. It presents an accessible survey of intellectual life from roughly the end of the Civil War to the start of the cold war. Dozens of figures receive fascinating thumbnail sketches, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin to Jane Addams and Eugene Debs. The result is a grand portrait of an age that will appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the history of philosophy and ideas. --John Miller [via]
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Milleniumby Felipe Ferrandez-ArmestoISBN 0385255454 (0-385-25545-4)
Hardcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
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Milleniumby Fernandez-ArmestoISBN 0385256124 (0-385-25612-4)
Softcover, Bantam Books of Canada Ltd
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The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essaysby Lionel Trilling, Leon WieseltierISBN 0374527997 (0-374-52799-7)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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Music, the Brain & Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imaginationby Robert JourdainISBN 038078209X (0-380-78209-X)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Music, the Brain & Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination'Book summary:What is music? How and why does it affect us? What is the nature of musical genius? Author/composer Robert Jourdain explores these and other questions, from the essential nature of sound through composition, performance, and, finally, the nature of ecstasy. His prose is eminently readable, offering a very accessible account of a difficult subject to the general reader as well as to the musical sophisticate. This is a fascinating and intriguing book, written by someone who clearly knows his subject. [via]
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The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Toward Mankind ; Translated by Arthur Wills ; With a Pref. by T. S. Eliot.by Simone WeilISBN 0374983321 (0-374-98332-1)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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Now I Lay Me Down to Eat: Notes and Footnotes on the Lost Art of Livingby Bernard RudofskyISBN 0385157169 (0-385-15716-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Plagues and Peoplesby William H. McNeillISBN 0385121229 (0-385-12122-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Plagues and Peoples'Book summary:This study describes the dramatic impact of infectious diseases on the rise and fall of civilizations. Plague demoralized the Athenian Army during war, and ravaged the Roman Empire. In the 16th century smallpox was the decisive agent that allowed Cortez with only 600 men to conquer the Aztec Empire, whose subjects numbered millions. As recently as 1918-19, an epidemic of influenza claimed 21 million victims and seemed to threaten civilization itself. Diseases such as syphilis, cholera, smallpox and malaria have been devastating to humanity for centuries. This book, through an impressive accumulation of evidence, demonstrates the central role of pestilence in human affairs and the extent to which it has changed the course of history. [via]
Power, Politics and Culture : Edited and with an Introduction by Gauri Viswanathanby Edward W. Said, Gauri ViswanathanISBN 0375421076 (0-375-42107-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Prelude to Foundationby Isaac AsimovISBN 0385233132 (0-385-23313-2)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prelude to Foundation'Book summary:It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.
Hari Seldon has come to Trantor to deliver his paper on psychohistory, his remarkable theory of prediction. Little does the young Outworld mathematician know that he has already sealed his fate and the fate of humanity. For Hari possesses the prophetic power that makes him the most wanted man in the Empire... the man who holds the key to the future - an apocalyptic power to be know forever after as the Foundation.
From the Paperback edition. [via] 
Primer of Freudian Psychologyby Calvin S. HallISBN 0374933863 (0-374-93386-3)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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The Raw and the Cookedby Claude Levi-StraussISBN 0374949530 (0-374-94953-0)
Hardcover, Octagon Books
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The Second Shiftby Anne Machung, Anne HochschildISBN 0380711575 (0-380-71157-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Second Shift'Book summary:In this landmark study, sociologist Arlie Hochschild takes us into the homes of two-career parents to observe what really goes on at the end of the "work day." Overwhelmingly, she discovers, it's the working mother who takes on the second shift. Hochschild finds that men share housework equally with their wives in only twenty percent of dual-career families. While many women accept this inequity in order to keep peace, they tend to suffer from chronic exhaustion, low sex drive, and more frequent illness as a result. The ultimate cost is the forfeited health and happiness of both partners, and often the survival of the marriage itself. [via]
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Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a Triumphby Thomas E. LawrenceISBN 0385070152 (0-385-07015-2)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a Triumph'Book summary:This is the exciting and highly literate story of the real Lawrence of Arabia, as written by Lawrence himself, who helped unify Arab factions against the occupying Turkish army, circa World War I. Lawrence has a novelist's eye for detail, a poet's command of the language, an adventurer's heart, a soldier's great story, and his memory and intellect are at least as good as all those. Lawrence describes the famous guerrilla raids, and train bombings you know from the movie, but also tells of the Arab people and politics with great penetration. Moreover, he is witty, always aware of the ethical tightrope that the English walked in the Middle East and always willing to include himself in his own withering insight. [via]
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Social and Political Philosophy Readings from Platoby Ronald SantoniISBN 0385012381 (0-385-01238-1)
Softcover, Doubleday
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Social and Political Philosophy Readings from Plato'Book summary:An anthology of basic statements by the most influential social and political philosophers of Western civilization. Includes Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Marx and Engels, Hitler, Gandhi, and others. [via]
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Sophie's Worldby Jostein Gaarder, Paulette MollerISBN 0374530718 (0-374-53071-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sophie's World'Book summary:Wanting to understand the most fundamental questions of the universe isn't the province of ivory-tower intellectuals alone, as this book's enormous popularity has demonstrated. A young girl, Sophie, becomes embroiled in a discussion of philosophy with a faceless correspondent. At the same time, she must unravel a mystery involving another young girl, Hilde, by using everything she's learning. The truth is far more complicated than she could ever have imagined. [via]
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Speak, Memoryby Vladimir Nabokov, Brian BoydISBN 0375405534 (0-375-40553-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Speak, Memory'Book summary:Even if you already own Nabokov's earthy, otherworldly account of his astounding life, you must buy this 1999 edition. And if you've never read Speak, Memory, you must do so at once. This volume is essential because it includes the unpublished last chapter, a pseudo-review comparing Speak, Memory with another, nonexistent memoir called When Lilacs Last. (That title refers to Whitman's poem on Lincoln's assassination and to the lilacs of Nabokov's childhood home) Chapter 16 is a key to what the imaginary reviewer accurately calls a "unique freak as autobiographies go," revealing its novel-like nature and unifying themes and images (chess, puzzles, spirals, jewels, rainbows, exile, the stained-glass shadow patterns that the future casts on the present). Maybe Nabokov thought he gave too much away, and one sees the formal superiority of ending the book with chapter 15. But the added essay is a gem that dazzles and illuminates.
You have to consult biographies like Brian Boyd's for the full, remarkable facts of Nabokov's life. A millionaire at 17 (his sister danced in Diaghilev gowns with Fabergé gems at the Winter Palace), repeatedly exiled, forced to bust out of one chrysalis after another into new lives, the writer retained only the infinite wealth of his memory and art. This book is a mosaic shaped by a mind so metaphorical that, as a babe, Nabokov perceived letters as colors, the alphabet as a rainbow.
The loss of his father is at Speak, Memory's core. This memoir is worth owning for a single paragraph alone, about the sight of Nabokov senior being tossed aloft by grateful peasants he'd been generous to--a dozen or so with locked arms flinging him up in a hip-hip-hooray ritual.
There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawled in midair.... Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up ... and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.
Nabokov recaptures the paradise of his youth, and acquits himself of the coldness of which some accuse him. He plays literary games, but he plays for keeps. --Tim Appelo [via]More editions of Speak, Memory:
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Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Manby Susan FaludiISBN 0380720450 (0-380-72045-0)
Softcover, Perennial
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man'Book summary:Susan Faludi, author of the feminist bestseller Backlash, has done it again with an exhaustive report on the betrayals felt by working men throughout the United States. American men are angry and discontented, she argues in Stiffed, because their sense of what it is to be a man has been destroyed by everything from corporate downsizing and the shrinking military of the post cold war era to the increase in local sports teams leaving town. Whether she's interviewing the teenage male members of Southern California's infamous Spur Posse (who collected "points" for every female they had sex with), Cleveland football fans shaken by the departure of the Browns football team, militia movement activists, or Sylvester Stallone, Faludi seems stuck on the idea that American men today are man-boys, unable to completely grow up because they never received the nurturing they needed, and now constantly disappointed by life. Yet while many of the men Faludi interviews have real problems--bad luck and sad, troubled lives--somehow Stiffed still seems a bit whiny. Faludi's "travels through a postwar male realm" are a fascinating slice of male American life "under siege" at the end of the 20th century, even if she does finally leave us like the men she talked to--still wondering just what went wrong. --Linda Killian [via]
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Symposium and Phaedrusby Plato, Tom Griffith, R. B. RutherfordISBN 0375411747 (0-375-41174-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Symposium and Phaedrus'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
It has been said that, after the Bible, Plato's dialogues are the most influential books in Western culture. And of the dialogues, the Symposium is the most delightful and accessible, requiring no special knowledge of ancient Greek philosophy or customs. Dramatizing a party in fifth-century B.C. Athens, the deceptively unassuming Symposium introduces--in the guise of convivial after-dinner conversation--profound ideas about the nature of love. In Phaedrus, here published together with the Symposium, Plato discusses the place of eloquence in expounding truth. In both dialogues, Socrates plays the leading role, by turns teasing, arguing, analyzing, joking, inspiring, and cajoling his followers into understanding ideas that have remained central to Western thought through the centuries. [via]More editions of Symposium and Phaedrus:
Techniques of Fiction Writingby Leon Z. SurmelianISBN 0385063911 (0-385-06391-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilizationby Stuart IsacoffISBN 0375703306 (0-375-70330-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Temperament : The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddleby Stuart M. IsacoffISBN 0375403558 (0-375-40355-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Trickster Makes This Worldby Lewis HydeISBN 0374958033 (0-374-95803-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary Subjectsby Edmund WilsonISBN 0374513228 (0-374-51322-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Twelfth Planetby Zecharia SitchinISBN 038039362X (0-380-39362-X)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Twelfth Planet'Book summary:Zecharia Sitchen's The 12th Planet is the starting point on a quest that spans six books and 20 years worth of ancient aliens, genetic manipulation, and scrutiny of linguistic minutiae. If we trust Sitchen's translation abilities, we must be prepared for the imminent return of an alien race who created us some 3,600 years ago. The 12th Planet is perhaps the best written of Sitchin's Earth Chronicles series; full of example after example of ancient Sumerian passages, astronomical observations, archaeological finds, and technological coincidences supporting his theories. The price we pay for all this evidence is a bit of a dry read at times, but the ideas Sitchin proposes are more than scintillating enough to make up for the overtly scholastic tone of his text. --Brian Patterson [via]
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Two Classics of the French Revolution: Reflections on the Revolution in France/the Rights of Manby Edmund Burke, Thomas PaineISBN 0385265778 (0-385-26577-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Ulyssesby James JoyceISBN 0375507949 (0-375-50794-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulysses'Book summary:Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus [via]
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Under Western Eyes: Library Editionby Joseph ConradISBN 037575735X (0-375-75735-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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Walden; Or, Life in the Woodsby Henry David ThoreauISBN 0385095031 (0-385-09503-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000by Martin AmisISBN 0375727167 (0-375-72716-7)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000'Book summary:In Martin Amis's War Against Cliché, a selection of critical essays and reviews published between 1971 and 2000, he establishes himself as one of the fiercest critics and commentators on the literature and culture of the late 20th century. (He has already established himself as one of the most controversial and original novelists writing in English with novels such as Money and Time's Arrow.) In his foreword to the book Amis ruefully admits that his earlier reviews reveal a rather humorless attitude towards the "Literature and Society" debate of the time. Yet this only adds to the fascination of the collection, as Amis gradually finds his critical voice in the 1980s, confirming his passionate belief that "all writing is a campaign against cliché."
In the subsequent sections of the book, this war leads to some wonderfully cutting and amusing responses to whatever crosses his path, from books on chess and nuclear proliferation to Cervantes' Don Quixote and the novels of his hero Vladimir Nabokov. Praise for his literary heroes is often fulsome: J.G. Ballard's High-Rise "is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers in the mind and chronically disquiets it." But his literary wrath is also devastating in its incisiveness: Thomas Harris's Hannibal is dismissed as "a novel of such profound and virtuoso vulgarity," while John Fowles is attacked because "he sweetens the pill: but the pill was saccharine all along." Often frank in its reappraisals (Amis concedes to being too hard on Ballard's Crash when reviewing the film many years later), some of the best writing is reserved for his journalism on sex manuals, chess, and his beloved football. The War Against Cliché will provoke strong reactions, but that only seems to confirm, rather than deny, the value of Amis's writing. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Mythby Robert GravesISBN 0374504938 (0-374-50493-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth'Book summary:Robert Graves, the late British poet and novelist, was also known for his studies of the mythological and psychological sources of poetry. With The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Graves was able to combine many of his passions into one work. While the book is so poetically written that many of the passages amount to prose poems, it is also frequently plot driven enough to feel like a novel, and it is rich with scholarly insight into the deep wells of poetry. Especially fascinating is the chapter in which Graves explores the ancient and ongoing practice of poets' invoking the muse. Graves details the practice in both the Eastern and Western literary traditions, and shows specific similarities and differences among Greek, British, and Irish tales and myths about the muse. Graves has much to offer students of history and myth, but poetry lovers will also be fascinated with The White Goddess. [via]
More editions of The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth:
- The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374289328 (0-374-28932-8)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux - The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374932395 (0-374-93239-5)
Hardcover, Octagon Books - The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374504938 (0-374-50493-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374289328 (0-374-28932-8)
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Women and Madnessby Phyllis CheslerISBN 0385026714 (0-385-02671-4)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women and Madness'Book summary:Chesler persuasively argues that sex-role stereotypes are at the heart of much of what we call mental illness and examines the progress (or lack of it) in correcting these attitudes. 16 pages of photos. [via]
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![[???]: World of Music/Grade 3](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0382070461.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "[???]: World of Music/Grade 3")
World of Music/Grade 3ISBN 0382070461 (0-382-07046-1)
Hardcover, Silver Burdett Ginn Religion
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The Writer and the World: Essaysby V.S. Naipaul, Pankaj MishraISBN 0375707301 (0-375-70730-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Writer and the World: Essays'Book summary:V.S. Naipaul is a creature of paradox. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his essay collection, The Writer and the World. These essays, selected and introduced by Pankaj Mishra, range from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. In them, our man travels the world, from his native Trinidad to his ancestral India to America and beyond, always looking with clear eyes at what's right there in front of him. In doing so, he's given us a distinctly Naipaulean journalism: he writes about countries as though they were people. "The politics of a country," he says, "can only be an extension of its idea of human relationships." His writing is, as a result, simultaneously petty and grand. Here, he writes of Belize City:
In the late afternoons Negroes in jackets and ties--famous throughout Central America for their immunity to disease--walk behind the hearses to the cemetery just outside the town, waving white handkerchiefs... It is like a ceremony of bewildered farewell at the limit of the world. But they are only keeping off the mosquitoes and sand flies.
Here is a writer who turns the specific to the universal, seemingly without effort. If Naipaul has a reputation as a grouch, it's only because he never lets go of the specific in favor of the universal. The two always coexist. The pieces contained here--mostly heretofore out of print--are short in length, catholic in interest, and in all a fine introduction to our most cosmopolitan postcolonial writer. --Claire Dederer [via]More editions of The Writer and the World: Essays:
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