Essays Books
Verso Books Taking A Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time
For nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick's essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, Taking a Long Look illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick's work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what binds us to the larger world.In these essays, Gornick explores the lives and literature of Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Herman Melville; the cultural impact of Silent Spring and Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the characters you might only find in a New York barber shop or midtown bus terminal. Even more, All That Is Given brings back into print her incendiary essays, first published in the Village Voice, championing the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s.Alternately crackling with urgency or lucid with insight, the essays in Taking a Long Look demonstrate one of America's most beloved critics at her best.
£9.49
Oxford University Press Thomas Browne
Book SynopsisThis volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, the edition demonstrates the breadth of the author of some of the most brilliant and delirious prose in English Literature. Lauded by writers ranging from Coleridge to Virginia Woolf, from Borges to W.G. Sebald, Browne''s distinct style and the musicality of his phrasing have long been seen as a pinnacle of early modern prose. However, it is Browne''s range of subject matter that makes him truly distinct. His writings include the hauntingly meditative Urn-Burial, and the elaborate The Garden of Cyrus, a work that borders on a madness of infinite pattern. Religio Medici, probably Browne''s most famous work, is at once autobiography, intricate religious-scientific paradox, and a monument of tolerance in the era of the English civil war. This volume also includes his Pseudodoxia EpTrade ReviewKilleen's edition is a heartily welcome single-volume Browne that gives us a generous vista of this most expansive writer. Its very generous annotations, in particular, will help introduce new readers and clarify his complex subtleties for specialists. * Claire Preston, Queen Mary University of London *Kevin Killeen's superb one-volume edition of Thomas Browne's major works provides students, scholars, and instructors with clear, lightly modernized texts and generous supporting glosses that enable and enrich access to the author's original voice, ideas, and learning without ever overwhelming or overburdening the reader. Killeen's literary and biographical introductions amply prepare us for the complex interplay between forms and genres exhibited throughout Browne's writings, and for the remarkable conjunction of natural philosophy, religion, antiquarianism, and classical scholarship represented by the author himself. * Matthew Woodcock, University of East Anglia *Kevin Killeen offers a generous selection of freshly edited texts richly contextualized in their bibliographical and cultural context. Teachers and scholars of Browne will welcome this much needed one-volume edition of this important seventeenth-century savant. * Brent Nelson, University of Saskatchewan *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of illustrations Introduction Notes on Text and Annotation Religio Medici (1643) Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) Hydriotaphia or Urn-Burial (1658) The Garden of Cyrus (1658) Certain Miscellany Tracts (1683) Letter to a Friend (1690) Christian Morals (1716) Notes
£24.32
Harvard University Press Lives of Eminent Philosophers Volume I
Book SynopsisDiogenes Laertius compiled his compendium on the lives and doctrines of the ancient philosophers from hundreds of sources. It ranges over three centuries, from Thales to Epicurus, portraying forty-five important figures, and is enriched by numerous quotations.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Pro Caelio. De Provinciis Consularibus. Pro Balbo
Book SynopsisWe know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.
£23.70
Harvard University Press History of Animals Volume I
Book SynopsisNearly all the works Aristotle (384–322 BC) prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as practical; logical; physical; metaphysical; on art; other; fragments.
£23.70
Loeb Julian Volume I Orations 15
Book SynopsisThe surviving works of the Roman Emperor Julian “the Apostate” (AD 331 or 332–363) include eight Orations; Misopogon (Beard-hater), assailing the morals of the people of Antioch; more than eighty Letters; and fragments of Against the Galileans, written mainly to show that the Old Testament lacks evidence for the idea of Christianity.
£23.70
Dedalus Ltd Parisian Sketches
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£8.99
Oxford University Press Romes Mediterranean Empire Books 4145 and the
Book Synopsis''I will do as the Senate decrees.''These words from one of Rome''s opponents encapsulate the authority Rome achieved by its subjugation of the Mediterranean. The Third Macedonian War, recounted in this volume, ended the kingdom created by Philip II and Alexander the Great and was a crucial step in Rome''s eventual dominance. For Livy, the story is also a fascinating moral study of the vices and virtues that hampered and promoted Rome''s efforts in the conflict. He presents the war not so much as a battle against Perseus, Alexander''s last and unworthy successor, than as a struggle within the Roman national character. Only traditional moral strength, embodied in Lucius Aemilius Paullus, the general who ultimately defeats Perseus, ensures the Roman victory.This edition also includes the Periochae, later summaries of Livy''s entire original 142-book history of Rome from its founding to the age of Augustus (of which only 35 books survive).The complete Livy in English, available in five volumes from Oxford World''s Classics. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£13.29
Harvard University Press Satires. Epistles. Art of Poetry
Book SynopsisThe poetry of Horace is richly varied, its focus moving between public and private concerns, urban and rural settings, Stoic and Epicurean thought. In the Satires Horace mocks himself as well as the world. His verse epistles include the Art of Poetry, in which he famously expounds his literary theory.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Discourses Books 12
Book SynopsisEpictetus was a crippled Greek slave of Phrygia during Nero’s reign who heard lectures by the Stoic Musonius before he was freed. He is the author of Discourses and a smaller Enceiridion, a handbook that encapsulates the doctrines of the larger work.
£23.70
Oxford University Press Inc The Strange Career of Jim Crow
Book SynopsisStrange Career offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws and American race relations. This book presented evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1880s. It''s publication in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court ordered schools be desegregated, helped counter arguments that the ruling would destoy a centuries-old way of life. The commemorative edition includes a special afterword by William S. McFeely, former Woodward student and winner of both the 1982 Pulitzer Prize and 1992 Lincoln Prize. As William McFeely describes in the new afterword, ''the slim volume''s social consequence far outstripped its importance to academia. The book became part of a revolution...The Civil Rights Movement had changed Woodward''s South and his slim, quietly insistent book...had contributed to that change.''Table of ContentsIntroductionI.: Old Regimes and Reconstructions II.: Forgotten Alternatives III.: Capitulation to Racism IV.: The Man on the Cliff V.: The Declining Years of Jim Crow VI.: The Career Becomes Stranger Afterword by William s. McFeely
£11.69
Harvard University Press History of the Wars Volume V
Book SynopsisHistory of the Wars by Procopius (late fifth century to after AD 558) consists largely of sixth-century military history, with much information about peoples, places, and special events. Powerful description complements careful narration. Procopius is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Roman History Volume III Books 3640 Trans. Cary
Book SynopsisDio Cassius (Cassius Dio), ca. AD 150–235, was born in Bithynia. Dio’s work is a vital source for the last years of the Roman republic and the first four Roman emperors.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Library of History Volume V
Book SynopsisLibrary of History is in three parts: mythical history to the Trojan War; history to Alexander’s death (323 BC); history to 54 BC. Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive complete, the rest in fragments.
£23.70
Anthem Press Ethics Law and the Business of Being Human
Book SynopsisA philosophical and legal inquiry into the sort of creatures we are, and so how to live well and behave well, and an indictment of the failure of the Academy to address these foundational questions.
£80.00
LittlePuss Press Worthy of the Event An Essay
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£14.39
Oxford University Press The Aeneid
Book SynopsisThe supreme Roman epic and the greatest poem in Latin, the Aeneid has inspired many of the great European poets including Dante and Milton. The Trojan hero Aeneas, after surviving the sack of Troy, makes his way to the West, urged on by benevolent deities and following a destiny laid down by Jupiter, but harassed and impeded by the goddess Juno. He wins his way to Italy despite many trials, of which the greatest is the tragic outcome of his love affair with Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Italy Aeneas visits the world of the dead, and is forced to wage a fearful war with the indigenous Italian tribes before he can found his city and open the history of Rome. The Aeneid survives as a poem not only of Roman imperialism but also of the whole world of human passion, duty and suffering. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£10.44
Renard Press Ltd A Letter to a Young Poet
Book SynopsisSo long as you and you and you, venerable and ancient representatives of Sappho, Shakespeare and Shelley, are aged precisely twenty-three and propose to spend the next fifty years of your lives in writing poetry, I refuse to think that the art is dead.'Penned in response to a letter about her novel The Waves from a young poet, John Lehmann, A Letter to a Young Poet answers a request for Woolf to set down her views on modern poetry. Written with observational humour and empathy, the letter leaves the reader laughing in recognition of the errors depicted, with the words And for heaven's sake, publish nothing before you are thirty' ringing in their ears.
£6.79
Penguin Books Ltd Maxims and Reflections
Book SynopsisThroughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills Goethe was probably the last true Renaissance Man'. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar's court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.Table of ContentsMaxims and ReflectionsPrefaceIntroductionFurther ReadingA Note on the TextFROM ELECTIVE AFFINITIES (1809)From Ottilie's DiaryFROM ART AND ANTIQUITYVol. I, issue 3: Naïvety and Humour (1818)Vol. II, issue 3: Matters of Serious Moment (1820)Vol. III, issue 1: Own and Adopted Ideas in Proverbial Formulation (1821)Vol. IV, issue 2: Own and Assimilated Material (1823)Vol. V, issue 1: Individual Points (1824)Vol. V, issue 2: Individual Points (1825)Vol. V, issue 3: Individual Points (1826)Vol. VI, issue 1: [untitled] (1827)FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON MORPHOLOGYVol. I, issue 4: [untitled] (1822)FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON THE NATURAL SCIENCESVol. II, issue 1: Old Ideas, Almost out of Date (1823)FROM WILHELM MEISTER'S JOURNEYMAN YEARS (1829)Thoughs about Art, Ethics and Nature in the Spirit of the TravellersFrom Makarie's ArchivePOSTHUMOUSOn Literature and LifeOn Art and Art History: Aphorisms for the Attention of Friends and OpponentsOn Nature and Natural ScienceSketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete JottingsAddenda from the Posthumous PapersNotes
£10.44
Harvard University Press Categories. On Interpretation. Prior Analytics
Book SynopsisNearly all the works Aristotle (384–322 BC) prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as practical; logical; physical; metaphysical; on art; other; fragments.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Moralia VIII
Book SynopsisPlutarch (ca. AD 45120) wrote on many subjects. His extant works other than the Parallel Lives are varied, about sixty in number, and known as the Moralia (Moral Essays). They reflect his philosophy about living a good life, and provide a treasury of information concerning Greco-Roman society, traditions, ideals, ethics, and religion.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Moralia IX
Book SynopsisPlutarch (ca. AD 45–120) wrote on many subjects. His extant works other than the Parallel Lives are varied, about sixty in number, and known as the Moralia (Moral Essays). They reflect his philosophy about living a good life, and provide a treasury of information concerning Greco-Roman society, traditions, ideals, ethics, and religion.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Ennead IV
Book SynopsisPlotinus was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them sometime between AD 301 and 305 in six sets of nine treatises each (Enneads), with a biography of his master in which he also explains his editorial principles.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Declamations Volume I
Book SynopsisSeneca the Elder collected ten books devoted to controversiae (some only preserved in excerpt) and at least one (surviving) of suasoriae.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Jewish Antiquities Volume VI
Book SynopsisThe major works by Josephus are History of the Jewish War, from 170 BC to his own time, and Jewish Antiquities, from creation to AD 66. Also by him are an autobiographical Life and a treatise Against Apion.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Laws Volume I
Book SynopsisThe great Athenian philosopher Plato was born in 427 BC and lived to be eighty. Acknowledged masterpieces among his works are the Symposium, which explores love in its many aspects, from physical desire to pursuit of the beautiful and the good, and the Republic, which concerns righteousness and also treats education, gender, society, and slavery.
£23.70
Oxford University Press A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary Oxford Worlds
Book SynopsisVoltaire's Pocket Philosophical Dictionary is a major work of the European Enlightenment. It consists of a series of short essays, arranged alphabetically, whose unifying thread is an attack on religious and political intolerance. Highly entertaining, its concern with intolerance and its consequences is still relevant today.Trade Reviewa marvellously Swiftian look at the bleakness of existence. * Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian *In John Fletcher's wonderfully luminous translation, the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif is like a breath of fresh air... Nicholas Cronk's discreet, helpful introduction and notes direct us to Voltaire's main concern: religion. * David Coward, Times Literary Supplement *
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Campo Santo
Book SynopsisCampo Santo is a collection of essays by W. G. SebaldWhen W.G. Sebald died tragically in 2001 a unique voice was silenced. Campo Santo is a collection of the pieces he left behind - none of them previously published in book form - which provide a powerful insight into the themes that came to dominate his life. Four pieces pay tribute to Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present. Sebald also examines the works of writers such as Kafka, Nabokov, and Günter Grass, showing both how literature can provide restitution for the injustices of the world and how such literature came to have so great an influence on him. Campo Santo is a fitting memorial to W.G. Sebald, who himself studied the shifting nature of memory and time with such sensitivity.''A precious addition to the canon'' Independent''Will come to be seen as indispensable to an understanding of his work'' Sunday Times''Full of a
£9.49
Alma Books Ltd A Literary Tour of Italy
Book SynopsisAn acclaimed author of novels and short stories, Tim Parks - who was described in a recent review as "one of the best living writers of English" - has delighted audiences around the world with his finely observed writings on all aspects of Italian life and customs. This volume contains a selection of his best essays on the literature of his adopted country. From Boccaccio and Machiavelli through to Moravia and Tabucchi, from the Stil Novo to Divisionism, across centuries of history and intellectual movements, these essays will give English readers, and lovers of the Bel Paese and its culture, the lay of the literary land of Italy.Trade ReviewThere are many ways of touring the land that Italians, following Dante, call il bel paese, and Parks is as perceptive a guide as could be wished. * TLS * Erudite and well-written * Financial Times * He remains the best interpreter of Italian ways in English * Sunday Herald * It is an immensely learned, elegantly written rehearsal of the significance of 23 Italian writers, from Dante in the 13th century to Antonio Tabucchi in our own, and as such it amounts I think to an assessment of the Italian sensibility as a whole. Nobody is better qualified than Tim Parks to guide us through such an experience... He can be as entertaining as he is scholarly, and he is evidently profoundly concerned with the relationship everywhere between art and life. * The Spectator * Tim Parks's new volume of essays goes where it is inaccessible to the casual tourist, deep into the literature * The Independent *
£11.69
MIT Press Advice for a Young Investigator A Bradford Book
Book SynopsisAn anecdotal guide for the perplexed new investigator as well as a refreshing resource for the old pro, covering everything from valuable personality traits for an investigator to social factors conducive to scientific work.Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a mythic figure in science. Hailed as the father of modern anatomy and neurobiology, he was largely responsible for the modern conception of the brain. His groundbreaking works were New Ideas on the Structure of the Nervous System and Histology of the Nervous System in Man and Vertebrates. In addition to leaving a legacy of unparalleled scientific research, Cajal sought to educate the novice scientist about how science was done and how he thought it should be done. This recently rediscovered classic, first published in 1897, is an anecdotal guide for the perplexed new investigator as well as a refreshing resource for the old pro.Cajal was a pragmatist, aware of the pitfalls of being too idealistic
£20.00
Dover Publications Inc. The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
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£11.24
Harvard University Press Ennead VI.15
Book SynopsisPlotinus (204/5–270 CE) was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them sometime between 301 and 305 CE in six sets of nine treatises each (Enneads), with a biography of his master in which he also explains his editorial principles.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Punica Volume I
Book SynopsisSilius Italicus composed an epic Punica in 17 books on the Second Punic War. His poem relies largely on Livy’s prose for facts. It also echoes poets, especially Virgil, and employs techniques traditional in Latin epic.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Athenian Constitution. Eudemian Ethics. Virtues
Book SynopsisNearly all the works Aristotle (384–322 BC) prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as practical; logical; physical; metaphysical; on art; other; fragments.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Natural History Volume VIII
Book SynopsisPliny the Elder produced in his Natural History a vast compendium of Roman knowledge. Topics included are the mathematics and metrology of the universe; world geography and ethnography; human anthropology and physiology; zoology; botany, agriculture, and horticulture; medicine; minerals, fine arts, and gemstones.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Library of History Volume III
Book SynopsisLibrary of History is in three parts: mythical history to the Trojan War; history to Alexander’s death (323 BC); history to 54 BC. Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive complete, the rest in fragments.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Oppian. Colluthus. Tryphiodorus
Book SynopsisIn Fishing, Oppian discusses fish and gives angling instructions. The Chase, on hunting, may be the work of a Syrian imitator. Colluthus and Tryphiodorus (properly Triphiodorus), epic poets of Egypt, wrote in the second half of the fifth century AD.
£23.70
Harvard University Press Enquiry into Plants Volume I
Book SynopsisEnquiry into Plants and De Causis Plantarum by Theophrastus (ca. 370ca. 285 BC) are a counterpart to Aristotle's zoological work and the most important botanical work of antiquity now extant. In the former Theophrastus classifies and describes. His On Odours and Weather Signs are minor treatises.
£23.70
Harvard University Press 19351938
Book SynopsisRadical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie--such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third in a four-volume set, offers twenty-seven brilliant pieces, nineteen of which have never before been translated.Trade ReviewThis latest volume of Harvard's majestic annotated edition of the essays and fragments includes reflections on Brecht, Kafka and the collector Eduard Fuchs, an early version of the famous analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (here more accurately translated as "technological reproducibility") and the equally exhilarating inquiry into the nature of narrative, "The Storyteller." You feel smarter just holding this book in your hand. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post *Over the past few years, Harvard's systematic presentation of the work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a revelation...This third of four planned volumes...offers two major texts that are new to English...as well as a fascinating re-translation of one of the cornerstones of Benjamin's reputation, here rendered as the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility"...This is another splendid volume that will leave aficionados on campus and off awaiting the final installment. * Publishers Weekly *While the Harvard Series does include Benjamin's epochal contributions to Marxist theory and literary criticism, it also does English-language readers a great service by emphasizing his more accessible writings: fanciful personal essays, journalistic articles, and book reviews. These pieces are, at times, giddily delightful; at other moments, they offer lightning-quick, piercing insights. * Publishers Weekly *Benjamin attracts such metaphorical fancies, symbols of a life's work at once supernaturally precise and rigorously mysterious. His own favoured symbol for the scattered unity of his writing was that of the constellation: a stellar array of apparently unrelated points rendered into magical coherence by the powers of thought and intuition. This third volume in Harvard's essential selection from his huge corpus offers something like a deep-space photograph of Benjamin's enigmatic universe: a book as fascinating for scholars as it is enrapturing for any reader as yet unseduced by this most sensitive and audacious of writers...Benjamin's autobiographical masterpiece ['A Berlin Childhood Around 1900'] might alone justify this sedulously edited and beautifully translated volume. But here, too, alongside an outline of The Arcades Project and an early version of the 'Work of Art [in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]' essay, are his thoughts on a wondrous variety of subjects--Kafka, Brecht, painting and photography, carnivals, the problem of translation--as well as a host of supposedly 'minor' writings (fragments, letters, diary entries) which often turn out to be among his most beautiful or thought-provoking...It is no exaggeration to say that Benjamin's writing changes lives, lights up unknown landscapes of art and politics, even at this historical remove. If his thought lives on...it does so in the sense that Baudelaire's 19th century survived for Benjamin in the 20th: less a reminder of the past than a signpost to the future. There is no more incisive or elegant guide to that territory. -- Brian Dillon * Irish Times *The quintessential Benjamin gesture of Volume 3 is the 1936 selection of letters by a wide assortment of figures from the German Romantic era, together with his brief, meticulously sympathetic commentaries, contained in German Men and Women...It is the story primarily of friendships amidst the passages and misfortunes of time, and of ideas as the substance of friendship: Their exchange becomes the fabric that connects one individual to another, and binds each to their precarious, uncertain lives. -- Howard Hampton * Village Voice *Howard Eiland's translation [of "Berlin Childhood around 1900"] in Harvard University Press's Selected Writings, Volume 3 is incomparable. -- Charles Mudede * The Stranger *Table of ContentsParis Old and New, 1935 Brecht's Threepenny Novel Johann Jakob Bachofen Conversation above the Corso: Recollections of Carnival-Time in Nice Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on the Essay "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century" Problems in the Sociology of Language: An Overview The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression Rastelli's Story Art In a Technological Age, 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version A Different Utopian Will The Significance of Beautiful Semblance The Signatures of the Age Theory of Distraction The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov German Men and Women: A Sequence of Letters Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography Translation-For and Against The Knowledge That the First Material on Which the Mimetic Faculty Tested Itself Dialectics and History, 1937 Addendum to the Brecht Commentary: The Threepenny Opera Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian Fruits of Exile, 1938 (Part 1) Theological-Political Fragment A German Institute for Independent Research Review of Brod's Franz Kafka Letter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka The Land Where the Proletariat May Not Be Mentioned: The Premiere of Eight One-Act Plays by Brecht Diary Entries, 1938 Berlin Childhood around 1900 A Note on the Texts Chronology, 1935-1938 Index Illustrations The Galerie Vivienne, Paris, 1907 Walter Benjamin at the Bibliotheque Nationale, 1937 Honore Daumier, La Crinoline en temps de neige The Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge, Berlin, early twentieth century The Victory Column on Konigsplatz, Berlin, early twentieth century The goldfish pond in the Tiergarten, Berlin, early twentieth century Berlin's Tiergarten in winter, early twentieth century Market hall on Magdeburger Platz, 1899 Interior of a typical middle-class German home, late nineteenth century Courtyard on Fischerstrasse in Old Berlin, early twentieth century Walter Benjamin and his brother Georg, ca. 1902
£26.06
HarperCollins Publishers Pops Fatherhood in Pieces
Book SynopsisMichael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Manhood for Amateurs and Moonglow, returns with a collection of heartfelt, humorous and insightful essays on the meaning of fatherhood.You are born into a family and those are your people, and they know you and they love you and if you are lucky they even, on occasion, manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enoughWhat are you allowed to talk about with your children? When to step in with advice, when to let them make their own mistakes? It's more complicated than you think. Somehow you muddle through.In this heartfelt, humorous and wise book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon attempts to weigh in on difficult conversations with his children, on everything from texting girls to death. But it is when he hangs back that he catches them transforming into their own people. What emerges is a father's deep respect for his children's passions and for their bravery in the face of conformity.Whether you know the joy and struggles of being a father, or were shaped by one, you will find a home in these stunning essays.Trade ReviewPraise for Pops: ‘Pops is not about what we should be teaching our children but the ways in which our children teach us. That, contrary to the edict of his would-be mentor in the opening chapter, they can also provide the writer with a book’s worth of material is, one imagines, merely a bonus’ Guardian ‘Chabon’s book feels like a late-night talk with a friend about how much we love our kids and how hopeful we are that we’re better dads than we fear’ Judd Apatow, New York Times ‘Fashion also takes centre stage in the essay ‘Little Man’, in which Chabon describes taking his clothes-obsessed 13-year-old son Abe to Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. It’s both a fascinating take on its subject and brilliantly written, but what’s more, the care Chabon takes with his subject – that where Abe’s heart lies, not Chabon’s own – ensures it’s steeped in parental love without ever being gushing. Read the book for this gem of a piece alone. It’s that good’ Independent ‘Brillaintly written’ Evening Standard ‘Packs a big emotional punch … a brilliantly evocative piece of reportage, funny and engaging ’ Big Issue Praise for Michael Chabon: ‘Chabon is one of contemporary literature’s most gifted prose stylists’ New York Times ‘Poignant, affecting, witty, wrenching, a terrific writer’ Washington Post ‘Chabon is a language magician, turning everything into something else just for the delight of playing tricks with words…Chabon's ornate prose makes (Raymond) Chandler's fruity observations of the world look quite plain…he writes like a dream’ Guardian ‘The natural exuberance and extravagance of Chabon’s writing is matched by dazzling wit’ Sunday Telegraph ‘His talent is indisputable…Chabon’s novels are warm, witty, a little whimsical, always beautifully written…he is that rare and precious beast: a literary writer with crossover appeal…’ GQ ‘He is the most wonderful vaudeville performer’ Philip Hensher, in the Spectator ‘Books of the Year’
£8.54
Verso Books The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life
Book SynopsisThe texts in this volume represent Kristin Ross's attempt to think the question of the everyday across a range of discourses, practices and knowledges, from philosophy to history, from the visual arts to popular fiction, all the way to the forms taken by collective political action in the territorial struggles of today. If everyday life is, as many have come to believe, the ideal vantage point for an analysis of the social, it is also the crucial first step in its transformation.The volume opens with a return to Henri Lefebvre's powerful attempt to think the everyday as both residue and resource, as the site of profound alienation and-by the same token-the site where all emancipatory initiatives and desires begin. The second section focuses on our attempts to represent our lived reality to ourselves in cultural forms, from painting and literature and film to an analysis of the contemporary transformations of the sub-genre most embedded in the deep superficiality of everyday life: detective fiction. The final section turns to present-day ecological occupations in the wake of the zad at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, and locates the everyday as a site for rich oppositional resources and immanent social creativity.Trade ReviewIn these remarkably lucid essays, real critics, rebellious farmers, artisans, and diverse character-types are summoned to remind us of moments of conformist immobility, disavowals of colonialism, violence and class difference; but also, of how French cultural history offers paths toward public beauty, collectivity, ecological ways of living. Ross has an uncanny ability to zero in on what matters in the forms of the Paris Commune and beyond, letting participants speak without the usual virtue-signaling. -- Karen Pinkus, Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell UniversityThis volume recalls why Kristin Ross's work is a necessary point of entry into the infinite insurrection of everyday life envisaged by Karl Marx and Henri Lefebvre, Arthur Rimbaud and Jacques Ranciere, variously enacted from the Commune to May 68, and that animates the rural radicalism of today's Zad. Anyone interested in altering the questions of our day towards a new everyday life will find here an abundant reservoir to think and do anew. -- Manu Goswami, New York University
£17.99
Twisted Spoon Press Narcotics: Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote,
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£16.62
Canongate Books Things That Are: Encounters with Plants, Stars
Book SynopsisThis is a book about the universe which begins with swimming salmon and ends with the starry sky. From the tiniest Earth dwellers to far-flung celestial bodies - considering everything from the similarity of gods to donkeys, to exploding stars and exploding sea cucumbers - Amy Leach rekindles our communion with the world. This stunning debut will leave you with a deeper understanding of the universe and a greater sense of the magic that surrounds us.Trade ReviewThis book is a thing of wonder. Amy Leach has found delight in the details of the world, and taken exuberant pleasure in putting that delight into the most unexpected words. Each paragraph carries phrases to underline and read aloud; each page offers another way of seeing the world anew. A sheer delight -- Jon McGregorNo amount of viewings of Planet Earth will prepare you for Leach's vision or her style, her tumultuous, incantatory rejoicing in the astonishing multiplicity of the Earth... Buy this book for everyone you know -- Olivia Laing * * Observer * *Like a descendant of Lewis Carroll and Emily Dickinson, Amy Leach brings new meaning to the world without us, and within. A reader entering this book to learn more about the universe will exit knowing much more about her own self. At once large and intimate, [Things That Are] introduces one of the most exciting and original writers in America -- Yiyun Li, author of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl and The VagrantsThings That Are is a joy. Every sentence is a surprise, bursting open like little pop-rocks -- Brian EnoThe 26 pieces here are short, pithy, and packed with information delivered in poetic but precise language. It is rich fare. Don't read too much in one sitting. These are the gold flakes you scatter on the rice dish of your everyday reading -- Julian Gough * * Guardian * *It's impossible not to be charmed by the way she finds the magical in the prosaic - but never loses sight of the science * * Metro * *Leach teases the written word like an elastic band, stretching time and belief and meaning... it's impossible to feel indifferent to her hymn-like prose that is reminiscent of a young Jeanette Winterson... you can't help but feel you've plunged down the rabbit hole with her in this unique book * * Stylist * *This slim book from the American essayist Amy Leach is a rarity * * Financial Times * *[Leach] conjur[es] onomatopoeia . . . in the contagious kind of way that should renew anyone's love of language . . . Leach manages to assert that desire is what makes all living things both alive and in peril -- JON McGREGOR * * Guardian * *Leach's prose tumbles and cascades, sweeping the reader along * * We Love This Book * *
£10.44
David Zwirner Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty
Book SynopsisPhoebe Hoban’s definitive biography of the renowned American painter Alice Neel tells the unforgettable story of an artist whose life spanned the twentieth century, from women’s suffrage through the Depression, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and feminism. Throughout her life and work, Neel constantly challenged convention, ultimately gaining an enduring place in the canon. Alice Neel’s stated goal was to “capture the zeitgeist.” Born into a proper Victorian family at the turn of the twentieth century, Neel reached voting age during suffrage. A quintessential bohemian, she was one of the first artists participating in the Easel Project of the Works Progress Administration, documenting the challenges of life during the Depression. An avowed humanist, Neel chose to paint the world around her, sticking to figurative work even during the peak of abstract expressionism. Neel never ceased pushing the envelope, creating a unique chronicle of her time. Neel was fiercely democratic in selecting her subjects, who represent an extraordinarily diverse population—from such legendary figures as Joe Gould to her Spanish Harlem neighbors in the 1940s, the art critic Meyer Shapiro, Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, Andy Warhol, and major figures of the labor, civil rights and feminist movements—producing an indelible portrait of twentieth-century America. By dictating her own terms, Neel was able to transcend such personal tragedy as the death of her infant daughter, Santillana, a nervous breakdown and suicide attempts, and the separation from her second child, Isabetta. After spending much of her career in relative obscurity, Neel finally received a major museum retrospective in 1974, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York. In this first paperback edition of the authoritative biography of Alice Neel, which serves also as a cultural history of twentieth-century New York, the author Phoebe Hoban documents the tumultuous life of the artist in vivid detail, creating a portrait of the artist as incisive as Neel’s relentlessly honest paintings. With a new introduction by Hoban that explores Neel’s enduring relevance, this biography is essential to understanding and appreciating the life and work of one of America’s foremost artists.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Studio Still Life; Childhood's Canvas; Designing Women; En Plein Air; Limbo; Tropical Soul; (You Can Go) Home Again; Futility of Effort; The Bell Jar; Resurrection; Next Stop, Geenwich Village; The Easel Project; A Man's Man for All That; Moving On; Jose and Spanish Harlem; More Truth; Enter Sam; Painting in Oblivion; Domestic Dramas; Monsters and Victims; In the Middle of the Road; Romancero Guajiro; Pull My Daisy (From Flower to Power; Their Balls Are Just Higher Up; Vindication; Bowing Out; Last Look; Coda; Epilogue; Notes; Acknowledgements; Index
£21.25
Abrams The Displaced
Book SynopsisTrade Review“… “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives” seeks to give voice to the experience of being forced to leave one place and seek a home elsewhere, and challenge the political identity given to refugees by virtue of being unwanted.” * Bay Area News Group *“With tens of millions of people fleeing persecution and conflict today as refugees, according to the United Nations, these voices and stories are more timely than ever.” * NBC News online *“There is no single refugee story, and as the editor of The Displaced, a collection of refugee writers exploring and reflecting on their experiences, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives these stories room to breath and unfurl.” * The Millions *
£10.44
Transit Books Lecture
Book Synopsis[Cappello''s] excellent new book-length essay, Lecture... at once defends the lecture and calls for holistic and creative improvements to the form.—The AtlanticIn twenty-first century America, there is so much that holds or demands our attention without requiring it. Imagine the lecture as a radical opening.Mary Cappello''s Lecture is a song for the forgotten art of the lecture. Brimming with energy and erudition, it is an attempt to restore the lecture''s capacity to wander, question, and excite. Cappello draws on examples from Virginia Woolf to Mary Ruefle, Ralph Waldo Emerson to James Baldwin, blending rigorous cultural criticism with personal history to explore the lecture in its many formsfrom the aphorism to the noteand give new life to knowledge's dramatic form.
£11.39
Granta Books The Empathy Exams: Essays
Book SynopsisThe subjects of this stylish and audacious collection of essays range from an assault in Nicaragua to a Morgellons meeting; from Frida Kahlo's plaster casts to a gangland tour of LA. Jamison is interested in how we tell stories about injury and pain, and the limits that circumstances, bodies and identity put on the act of describing.
£9.49
Exact Change,U.S. Galaxie 500: Temperature's Rising: An Oral and
Book SynopsisA fascinating oral history of one of American indie rock's most enduring and influential acts Slow, deliberate and deceptively simple, the music of Boston-based band Galaxie 500 was wonderfully at odds with the prevailing underground sounds of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Formed in 1987, the band split up in 1991 after releasing three acclaimed albums—Today, On Fire and This Is Our Music—as well as a Peel Sessions recording. The primary contributors to this long-unavailable history of the band are the three band members—bassist/vocalist Naomi Yang, drummer Damon Krukowski and guitarist/vocalist Dean Wareham—but dozens of people were interviewed in all, including fellow musicians, record business folks, music critics and scenesters. Galaxie 500: Temperature's Rising provides a complex, sometimes contentious account of the band's rise to indie stardom and their acrimonious breakup. It also includes dozens of rare and never-before-seen photographs, as well as posters and other ephemera from the personal collection of Naomi Yang, who provides a running commentary to the images. This is the definitive book about Galaxie 500 and a crucial chapter in the story of indie rock.
£22.50
