Search results for ""author simon""

Toward a Meaningful Life is a spiritual road map for living based on the teachings of one of the foremost religious leaders of our time: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Head of the Lubavitcher movement for forty-four years and recognized throughout the world simply as “the Rebbe,” Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in June 1994, was a sage and a visionary of the highest order.Toward a Meaningful Life gives people of all backgrounds fresh perspectives on every aspect of their lives—from birth to death, youth to old age; marriage, love, intimacy, and family; the persistent issues of career, health, pain, and suffering; and education, faith, science, and government. We learn to bridge the divisions between accelerated technology and decelerated morality, between unprecedented worldwide unity and unparalleled personal disunity. Although the Rebbe’s teachings are firmly anchored in more than three thousand years of scholarship, the urgent relevance of these old-age truths to contemporary life has never been more manifest. At the threshold of a new world where matter and spirit converge, the Rebbe proposes spiritual principles that unite people as opposed to the materialism that divides them. In doing so, he continues to lead us toward personal and universal redemption, toward a meaningful life, and toward God.

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City of Small Blessings won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2010. A film project based on the novel has been chosen to be part of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival's Cinefondation Atelier.A Singaporean retires, migrates and then returns. But, he slowly finds, there is no simple return to a place called home. Once a well-known public figure who contributed tothe country, he is now on the fringe of the city he barely recognizes.A letter comes from the government and he begins a journey. In the present, he must find a way to face the new men of authority. He must confront old sacrifices and struggles. He regrets. He discovers.Layered and nuanced, City of Small Blessings uses a complex lens to expose the tragedies and blessings of Singapore.

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After war defeat in 1945, Japan underwent historic political, economic and social transformations resulting in the country’s rebirth as an economic powerhouse and exemplar of liberal democracy in East Asia. This handbook expands and enriches our understanding of this tumultuous contemporary era in Japan’s modern history. Chapters in the volume ask novel theoretical questions and present fresh empirical perspectives on the era. How, for example, has the postwar era been chronologized to date and how might we rethink or enhance such interpretations? What can we learn by rethinking established moments and phases like the Allied Occupation, the period of high-speed economic growth, the 1970s, the Bubble Economy, and the “lost decades” of Heisei Japan (1989-2019)? What new issues might we introduce to subvert accepted understandings of the postwar era and its various sub-eras? Moreover, how might Japan’s internal postwar be expanded by rethinking the era through novel historical frameworks and regional imaginaries such as East Asian history, Cold War history, environmental history and transnational history? Contributors attempt to transcend temporal, geographical, intellectual and other boundaries inherent in our current understandings of Japan’s postwar experience to provide a compelling compilation of perspectives. Showcasing the work of historians and leading scholars from other disciplines, chapters cover thematic areas including the origins of the postwar era, postwar politics, society and popular culture, transnational and international interactions, and historical memory. The volume’s extensive chronological coverage, combined with the innovative perspectives of the contributors, make it essential reading for both researchers and learners interested in the multifaceted dynamics of Japan’s fascinating contemporary era.

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This richly illustrated exploration of the most remarkable London theatres features witty and engaging texts by actor Simon Callow, whose knowledge of the city's dramatic venues is intimate and wide-ranging. One of the most prominent photographers of the past 50 years, Derry Moore, captures the theatres from every angle, whether it's a velvet box seat at the Novello, the view from the Theatre Royal, Haymarket's proscenium, or the grand entrance of the foyer in the Apollo Victoria. Exquisite close-ups of architectural elements-such as flamboyant Rococo Baroque friezes, William Edward Trent's Art Deco mermaids, painted marble pilasters, and elaborately framed mirrors-highlight often unnoticed features and present each theatre's unique character. From the West End to the South Bank, Westminster to Hackney, the theatres profiled here come to life in ways we rarely see, when the seats are empty and the stages silent.

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Simon Goddard's electric ride through Bowie's greatest decade reaches the halfway mark with this fifth instalment. Wickedly funny and shockingly tragic, Bowie Odyssey 74 is the story of one man trying to find his soul in a world that's gone to the devil.

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