Search results for ""Author Honoré de Balzac""

"A marvel of brash opinion, contemporary society, politics, and memoir.” –Bookforum Honoré de Balzac's Treatise on Modern Stimulants is a meditation on five stimulants—tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol and tobacco—by an author very conscious of the fact that his gargantuan output of work was driven by an excessive intake (his bouts of writing typically required 10 to 15 cups of coffee a day) that would ultimately shorten his life. First published in French in 1839 as an appendix to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, this Treatise was at once Balzac's effort at addressing what he perceived to be an oversight in that cornerstone of gastronomic literature; a chapter toward his never-completed body of analytic studies (alongside such essays as Treatise on Elegant Living) that were to form an overarching "pathology of social life"; and a meditation on the impact of pleasure and excess on the body and the role they play in shaping society. Balzac here describes his "terrible and cruel method" for brewing a coffee that can help the artist and author find inspiration; explains why tobacco can be credited with having brought peace to Germany; and describes his first experience of alcoholic intoxication (which required seventeen bottles of wine and two cigars). Beyond its braggadocio and whimsy, though, this treatise ultimately speaks to Balzac's obsession with death and decline, and attempts to confront in capsule form the broader implications of dissipating one's vital forces. This edition includes illustrations to an earlier French edition by Pierre Alechinsky.

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Publicado en 1839 como apéndice de la Fisiología del gusto del ilustre gastrónomo Brillat-Savarin, este "Tratado de los excitantes modernos" es un delicioso ensayo sobre el alcohol, el azúcar, el té, el café y el tabaco. El gran escritor francés Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) dirige su aguda e irónica mirada a estas cinco sustancias para incidir en su estudio analítico de la sociedad del XIX y mostrarse, en palabras del autor de esta nueva traducción, Julio Baquero Cruz, como el héroe de la modernidad que era y nunca dejará de ser.

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Encuadernación: Rústica con solapasColección: Historia y presente,4Han tenido que pasar casi dos siglos para que podamos leer en castellano esta obra del todo actual. Ahora que la prensa habla de la muerte de la prensa ?tal como la conocemos? pocos libros son más oportunos en su salida a la calle que este de Balzac, uno de esos tan famosos del que muchos hablan sin haberlo leído.Con la Monografía de la prensa parisina , Balzac nos ofrece un retrato de la época en el que refleja las pasiones, la mediocridad, los intereses de una profesión que ya entonces había definido su estructura y sus características. Por eso esta obra resulta hoy tan actual, es más, su actualidad es realmente sorprendente. La Monografía es, pues, un retrato agridulce de la profesión periodística del momento, en el que la audacia y la perspicacia de su pluma nos permiten esbozar una sonrisa mientras nos acercamos al corazón del periodismo francés entonces imperante para conocer a los hombres de la Prensa

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'This brilliant but devastatingly sad novel moved me so much, I began it again the moment I got to the end' Rose Tremain Monsieur Grandet is a very rich man whose chief care is his gold. He runs his household with exacting miserly attention and his wife and daughter suffer a Spartan existence. On the evening of his daughter Eugénie's twenty third birthday his foppish nephew Charles suddenly arrives from Paris. Eugénie has never known passion. Now, in an instant, she falls in love and her life is changed forever. Monsieur Grandet will not countenance his daughter's marriage to her penniless cousin and Eugénie's determination to follow her heart leads her into direct conflict with her father.

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