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The Great Philosophers: Socrates (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Anthony Gottlieb'If you put me to death,' Socrates warned his Athenian judges, 'you will not easily find anyone to take my place.' So indeed it would prove, a single cup of hemlock robbing the western philosophical tradition of the man with best claims to be its founding father.Yet Socrates' influence was not so easily to be done away with. His words lovingly recorded by his devoted disciple Plato, his doctrines reached a posterity which has, through twenty-seven centuries now, taken him as its teacher.The marriage of idealism and scepticism in his though; his sense of education as self-discovery; his view of philosophy as preparation for life: these have been the stuff of western thought at its best. So completely did Socrates embody these values, he was prepared to die in their defence...
The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein
by George Gamow"This book is Gamow at his best, which means the very best in science for the layman." -- Library JournalWidely recognized as one of the 20th century's foremost physicists, George Gamow was also an unusually capable popularizer of science. His talents are vividly revealed in this exciting and penetrating explanation of how the central laws of physical science evolved -- from Pythagoras' discovery of frequency ratios in the 6th century B.C. to today's research on elementary particles.Unlike many books on physics which focus entirely on fact and theory with little or no historic detail, the present work incorporates fascinating personal and biographical data about the great physicists of past and present. Thus Dr. Gamow discusses on an equal basis the trail of Galileo and the basic laws of mechanics which he discovered, or gives his personal recollections about Niels Bohr along with detailed discussion of Bohr's atomic model. You'll also find revealing glimpses of Newton, Huygens, Heisenberg, Pauli, Einstein, and many other immortals of science.Each chapter is centered around a single great figure, or at most two, with other physicists of the era and their contributions forming a background. Major topics include the dawn of physics, the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, Newtonian physics, heat as energy, electricity, the relativistic revolution, quantum theory, and the atomic nucleus and elementary particles.As Dr. Gamow points out in the Preface, the aim of this book is to give the reader the feeling of what physics is, and what kind of people physicists are. This delightfully informal approach, combined with the book's clear, easy-to-follow explanations, will especially appeal to young readers but will stimulate and entertain science enthusiasts of all ages. 1961 edition."The whole thing is a tour de force covering all the important landmarks." -- Guardian
A Gull on the Roof: Tales from a Cornish Flower Farm (Minack Chronicles #5)
by Derek TangyeThe first title in the Minack Chronicles, which tell the story of how Derek and his wife Jeannie left behind their London home to establish a flower farm on the coast of Cornwall. From inauspicious beginnings, this book includes tales of the couple's first animals, including Monty the ginger cat, and takes us through trials and tribulations until the arrival of a gull on the roof provides the first augury of better times to come.
Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance
by Thomas BrooksAssurance brings joy to worship and strength to witness. Thomas Brooks clearly explains the nature of assurance and how it can be experienced.
Horace Walpole (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts #9)
by Wilmarth Sheldon LewisAn illuminating biographical study of the eighteenth-century English man of letters and patron of the artsHorace Walpole (1717–1797) was a collector, printer, novelist, arbiter of taste, and renowned writer of letters. In this book, eminent scholar Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis provides an unprecedented look at the life and work of one of England’s greatest men of letters. Lewis sheds light on Walpole’s relationships with his family and friends, his politics, his writings and printmaking activities, and his correspondence. Featuring portraits of Walpole, his relatives, and friends; images of Walpole's sketches and manuscripts; pages from books printed at Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Press; and views and plans of Strawberry Hill, the house, its rooms and furnishings, and its grounds, and accompanied by Lewis’s extensive annotations, this book provides an invaluable history of an extraordinary man.
Katharine of Aragon: The Story of a Spanish Princess and an English Queen (A Novel of the Tudors)
by Jean PlaidyFor the first time in paperback--all three of Jean Plaidy'sKatharine of Aragonnovels in one volume. Legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy begins her tales of Henry VIII's queens with the story of his first wife, the Spanish princess Katharine of Aragon. As a teenager, Katharine leaves her beloved Spain, land of olive groves and soaring cathedrals, for the drab, rainy island of England. There she is married to the king's eldest son, Arthur, a sickly boy who dies six months after the wedding. Katharine is left a widow who was never truly a wife, lonely in a strange land, with a very bleak future. Her only hope of escape is to marry the king's second son, Prince Henry, now heir to the throne. Tall, athletic, handsome, a lover of poetry and music, Henry is all that Katharine could want in a husband. But their first son dies and, after many more pregnancies, only one child survives, a daughter. Disappointed by his lack of an heir, Henry's eye wanders, and he becomes enamored of another woman--a country nobleman's daughter named Anne Boleyn. When Henry begins searching for ways to put aside his loyal first wife, Katharine must fight to remain Queen of England and to keep the husband she once loved so dearly.
LIFE ALI: A Life in Pictures
by The Editors of LifeFor Muhammad Ali, the high drama that he generated within the boxing ring with his athletic prowess was more than matched by the drama that he generated outside of it, and it was stated by many that as the 20th century closed, he was the best known and the most beloved figure in the world. He was also the rare athlete of his day who was photographed equally inside and outside of the ring, and always, the images were striking and compelling.Now, in an all-new special edition, LIFE celebrates the legendary athlete and cultural icon in Ali: A Life in Pictures, featuring dozens of photographs from acclaimed photographers including Gordon Parks, Harry Benson, Marvin Lichtner, James Drake, The Bettman Archive and many more. Many of these images have come to be as synonymous with Ali as his best quotes, and many of these images have not been seen for years.All of the photos are accompanied by essays and commentary that take readers through four distinct stages of Ali's life - "Clay," "Ali," "Legend," and "The Greatest," and all together, Ali: A Life in Pictures is the ultimate commemorative keepsake that celebrates an icon in both words and photographs.
Lust for Life: The Story of Vincent Van Gogh
by Irving StoneThe Classic Biographical Novel of Vincent Van Gogh by the Master Storyteller of Our Times Since its initial publication in 1934, Irving Stone's Lust for Life has been a critical success, a multimillion-copy bestseller, and the basis for an Academy Award-winning movie. The most famous of all of Stone's novels, it is the story of Vincent Van Gogh-brilliant painter, passionate lover, and alleged madman. Here is his tempestuous story: his dramatic life, his fevered loves for both the highest-born women and the lowest of prostitutes, and his paintings-for which he was damned before being proclaimed a genius. The novel takes us from his desperate days in a northern coal mine to his dazzling years in the south of France, where he knew the most brilliant artists (and the most depraved whores). Finally, it shows us Van Gogh driven mad, tragic and triumphant at once. No other novel of a great man's life has so fascinated the American public for generations.
The Making of the President, 1960
by Theodore H. WhiteThe greatest political story ever told—the epic clash between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, as captured in Theodore White's dramatic and groundbreaking chronicle<P><P> The Making of the President 1960 is the book that revolutionized—even created—modern political journalism. Granted intimate access to all parties involved, Theodore White crafted an almost mythic story of the battle that pitted Senator John F. Kennedy against Vice-President Richard M. Nixon—from the decisive primary battles to the history-making televised debates, the first of their kind. Magnificently detailed and exquisitely paced, The Making of the President 1960 imbues the nation's presidential election process with both grittiness and grandeur, and established a benchmark against which all new campaign reporters would measure their work. <P><P> Pulitzer Prize Winner
The Making of the President 1960
by Theodore H. WhiteA Harper Perennial Political Classic, The Making of the President 1960 is the groundbreaking national bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 presidential campaign and the election of John F. Kennedy. With this narrative history of American politics in action, Theodore White revolutionized the way presidential campaigns are reported. Now back in print, freshly repackaged, and with a new foreword written by Robert Dallek, The Making of the President 1960 remains the most influential publication about the election of John F. Kennedy.
Mark Twain and the River
by Sterling NorthTom Sawyer is among the best-known, most-loved characters in American fiction. As everyone remembers, he and Huck Finn camped on an island, got lost in a cave, and visited an old graveyard at midnight. These adventures were based upon the author's real boyhood experiences along the Mississippi River. Trace Mark Twain's life from 1835, when his birth was heralded by Halley's Comet, to 1910, when the comet returned upon his death, in this fascinating biography by Newbery Honor author Sterling North. .
Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb
by François-René de ChateaubriandThe most enjoyable, glamorous and gripping of all 19th-century autobiographies - a tumultuous account of France hit by wave after wave of revolutionsMemoirs from Beyond the Tomb is the greatest and most influential of all French autobiographies - an extraordinary, highly entertaining account of a uniquely adventurous and frenzied life. Chateaubriand gives a superb narrative of the major events of his life - which spanned the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Era and the uneasy period that led up to the Revolution of 1830.
My Friend Annie (Janet Sandison Novels, #4)
by Jane DuncanPretty Annie Black was Jean's idea of an ideal child: why couldn't awkward young Janet be like her? Which all went to show the gulf of misunderstanding which yawned so ominously between Janet and Jean, once housekeeper to Janet's father and later, alas, her stepmother. Childhood with Jean, and her malevolent presence in the background of Janet's later life form the main theme of the fourth of Jane Duncan's novels about her Friends. To go from highland Reachfar to lowland Cairnton was almost like entering a foreign land for Janet. Many unhappy years were lightened only by holidays at Reachfar, when the commonsense and humour of Tom and George and the true values of the whole family there helped her to rise above the alien atmosphere of Cairnton. Among the quite incomprehensible inhabitants of her new hometown was Annie. Janet was still at school when she realised what pretty Annie's profession was, and their paths were afterwards to cross in various parts of the world on some significant occasions.
Nikolai Gogol
by Vladimir NabokovNikolai Gogol was the most idiosyncratic of the great Russian novelists of the 19th century and lived a tragically short life which was as chaotic as the lives of the characters he created. This biography begins with Gogol's death and ends with his birth, an inverted structure typical of both Gogol and Nabokov. The biographer proceeds to establish the relationship between Gogol and his novels, especially with regard to "nose-consciousness", a peculiar feature of Russian life and letters, which finds its apotheosis in Gogol's own life and prose. There are more expressions and proverbs concerning the nose in Russian than in any other language in the world. Nabokov's style in this biography is comic, but as always leads to serious issues—in this case, an appreciation of the distinctive "sense of the physical" inherent in Gogol's work. Nabokov describes how Gogol's life and literature mingled, and explains the structure and style of Gogol's prose in terms of the novelist's life.
Nobody Knows My Name: Notes Of A Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name In The Street / The Devil Finds Work (Vintage International #1)
by James BaldwinFrom one of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of the twentieth century comes a collection of "passionate, probing, controversial" essays (The Atlantic) on topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society.Told with Baldwin's characteristically unflinching honesty, this &“splendid book&” (The New York Times) offers illuminating, deeply felt essays along with personal accounts of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and other writers. &“James Baldwin is a skillful writer, a man of fine intelligence and a true companion in the desire to make life human. To take a cue from his title, we had better learn his name.&” —The New York Times
Once and for All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz
by Craig Morgan Teicher Delmore Schwartz John AshberyThe publication of this book restores a missing chapter in the history of twentieth-century American literature With his New Directions debut in 1938, the twenty-five-year-old Delmore Schwartz was hailed as a genius and among the most promising writers of his generation. Yet he died in relative obscurity in 1966, wracked by mental illness and substance abuse. Sadly, his literary legacy has been overshadowed by the story of his tragic life. Among poets, Schwartz was a prototype for the confessional movement made famous by his slightly younger friends Robert Lowell and John Berryman. While his stories and novellas about Jewish American experience laid the groundwork for novels by Saul Bellow (whose Humboldt's Gift is based on Schwartz's life) and Philip Roth. Much of Schwartz's writing has been out of print for decades. This volume aims to restore Schwartz to his proper place in the canon of American literature and give new readers access to the breadth of his achievement. Included are selections from the in-print stories and poems, as well as excerpts from his long unavailable epic poem Genesis, a never-completed book-length work on T. S. Eliot, and unpublished poems from his archives.
An Only Child and My Father's Son: An Only Child and My Father's Son
by Frank O'ConnorFrank O'Connor's acclaimed autobiography, now in one volumeWhen Frank O'Connor was born, his parents--Minnie O'Connor, a former maid raised in an orphanage, and Michael O'Donovan, a veteran of the Boer War and the drummer in a local brass-and-reed band--lived above a sweet-and-tobacco shop in Cork, Ireland. The young family soon moved, however, to a two-room cottage at the top of Blarney Street, a lane that originates, as O'Connor so vividly describes it, "near the river-bank, in sordidness, and ascends the hill to something like squalor." From this unlikely beginning, a poor boy born Michael Francis Xavier O'Donovan set out on the remarkable journey that transformed him into Frank O'Connor, one of Ireland's greatest writers.An Only Child, the first installment of O'Connor's wonderfully evocative autobiography, captures the joy and pain of his early years: joy in the colorful people and places of Cork and in his devoted relationship with his mother, pain in the family's impoverished situation and in his father's melancholy moods and drunken outbursts. Fifteen years old when he joins the Irish Republican Army in the fight for independence, O'Connor finds himself on the losing side of the ensuing civil war and is imprisoned by the government of the new nation. My Father's Son begins with his release from an internment camp and follows him to Dublin and the world-renowned Abbey Theatre, where he meets W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, and other members of the Irish Literary Revival, and takes the first steps toward becoming one of the twentieth century's most beloved authors.As richly detailed and eloquent as the best of his short fiction, Frank O'Connor's autobiography is an entertaining portrait of a fascinating time and place, and the inspiring account of a young artist finding his voice.
Philosophers: Their Lives and Works (DK History Changers)
by DKFrom Confucius and Plato to Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky, this book brings together more than 100 illustrated biographies of the world's great philosophers.Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured philosopher, the biographies trace the ideas, friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired the great thinkers and influenced their work, providing revealing insights into what drove them to question the meaning of life and come up with new ways of understanding the world and the history of ideas.Lavishly illustrated with photographs and paintings of philosophers, their homes, friends, studies, and their personal belongings, together with pages from original manuscripts, first editions, and correspondence, this book introduces the key ideas, themes, and working methods of each featured individual, setting their ideas within a wider historical and cultural context. Charting the development of ideas across the centuries in both the East and West, from ancient Chinese philosophy to the work of contemporary thinkers, Philosophers provides a compelling glimpse into the personal lives, loves, and influences of the great philosophers as they probed into life's big ideas.
A Philosopher's Pilgrimage (Routledge Revivals)
by Alban G. WidgeryFirst Published in 1961 A Philosopher's Pilgrimage is a plain-spoken autobiography of Alban G. Widgery. This is the record of the life of a philosopher who never allowed concern with ideas to distract him from the richness of experiences. He was a student, colleague and friend of some of the leading personalities of the last half century. Having lived in England, Scotland, Germany, France, India, Hawaii, and the United States, he formed definite impressions of their peoples. In India, on the personal staff of H.H. Sayaji Rao III, he greatly influenced him in his pioneer achievements. Associated with Hindus, Buddhists, Parsis, Muslims, and Jews, he came to appreciate essentials of their faiths. He critically considered the teachings of such thinkers as Nietzsche, Tolstoy, and Shaw. With a clarity of exposition and with humour he presents a philosophy of life worthy of serious consideration. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.
The Political Philosophy of Jawaharlal Nehru (Routledge Revivals)
by M.N. DasFirst published in 1961, The Political Philosophy of Jawaharlal Nehru is an attempt to coordinate Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideas which, in essence, reflect his political philosophy. Nehru distinguished himself as a philosopher-politician, thinking somewhat as a philosopher while working as a politician, steering his political ideas between idealism and realism. In an eventful life, his had been the many-sided role of a revolutionary and a nationalist, a democrat and a socialist, an internationalist and a pacifist, a head of the government and, above all, a lone individual and thinker. Nehru preserved his individuality through all external influences, including those of Gandhi and Marx, and it is this which remains the keynote of his thought. It has been the aim of the author to present in an objective way the ideas of the man in the light of his own words as available from a wide range of material. This book will be of interest to students of history, political science, and philosophy.
Profiles in Courage
by John Fitzgerald Kennedy"This is a book about that most admirable of human virtues--courage... and these are the stories of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators and the grace with which they endured them--the risks to their careers, the unpopularity of their courses, the defamation of their characters, and sometimes, but sadly only sometimes, the vindication of their reputations and their principles." <P><P> During 1954-1955, John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, chose eight of his historical colleagues to profile for their acts of astounding integrity in the face of overwhelming opposition. These heroes include John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, and Robert A. Taft. <P><P> Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, Profiles in Courage resounds with timeless lessons on the most cherished of virtues and is a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit.
Promise at Dawn
by Romain GaryA romantic, thrilling memoir that has become a French classic. Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary (1914-80), a classic of modern French literature, has all the earmarks of a richly romantic novel. It is all the more thrilling, therefore, to read it and know that this is not fiction but a real-life story. As a young child, Romain Gary's mother told him that a day would come when he would have to challenge and conquer the evil demons of submission and defeat. After all, he was to be a French military hero, ambassador, noted writer, and ladies' man . . . . Thus anticipating battle, by the time of his death he had won the Cross of the Liberation, the Croix de Guerre, the Legion of Honor, the Prix Goncourt (the last rather a comedown, as his mother had mentioned the Nobel Prize); and he had been the French consul-general in Los Angeles. Promise at Dawn begins as the story of a mother's sacrifice. Alone and poor she fights fiercely to give her son the very best. Gary chronicles his childhood with her in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riveria. And he recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in World War II. But above all he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his very life, their secret and private planet, their wonderland "born out of a mother's murmur into a child's ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love."
Report to Greco
by Nikos KazantzakisDisarmingly personal and intensely philosophical, Report to Greco is a fictionalized account of Greek philosopher and writer Nikos Kazantzakis’s own life, a sort of intellectual autobiography that leads readers through his wide-ranging observations on everything from the Hegelian dialectic to the nature of human existence, all framed as a report to the Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco. The assuredness of Kazantzakis’s prose and the nimbleness of his thinking as he grapples with life’s essential questions—who are we, and how should we be in the world?—will inspire awe and more than a little reflection from readers seeking to answer these questions for themselves.
Residence Georgian Plantation
by Frances Anne KembleFanny Kemble was one of the leading lights of the English theater in the nineteenth century. During a triumphant tour of America, she met and married a wealthy Philadelphian, Pierce Butler, part of whose fortune derived from his family's vast cotton and rice plantation on the Sea Islands of Georgia. After their marriage, she spent several months (December 1838 to April 1839) living on the plantation. Profoundly shocked by what she saw, she recorded her observations of plantation life in a series of journal entries written as letters to a friend. But she never sent the letters, and it was not until the Civil War was on and Fanny was divorced from her husband and living in England, were they published. She is a reporter par excellence and records in vivid detail not just her own reactions, but the day-to-day operations of the estate as a business enterprise, the lives of the several "classes" of Negro slaves and their white masters, and the plantation's landscape of swamps and woods, canals and rivers, stately houses and decrepit hovels. Her account is filled with drama: duels, deaths, jealousies, and episodes of humor and tenderness which lighten the gloom but also accentuate the sadness of a world of toil and misery.
The Road Past Mandalay (W&N Military)
by John MastersThe second part of the bestselling novelist's dramatic autobiography about his time in the Gurkhas during the second world warThis is the second part of John Masters' autobiography: how he fought with his Gurkha regiment during World War II until his promotion to command one of the Chindit columns behind enemy lines in Burma. Written by a bestselling novelist at the height of his powers, it is an exceptionally moving story that culminates in him having to personally shoot a number of wounded British soldiers who cannot be evacuated before their position is overrun by the Japanese. It is an uncomfortable reminder that Churchill's obsession with 'special forces' squandered thousands of Allied lives in operations that owed more to public relations than strategic calculation. This military and moral odyssey is one of the greatest of World War II frontline memoirs.