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Days of Reading (Penguin Great Ideas)
Par Marcel Proust. 2008
In these inspiring essays about why we read, Proust explores all the pleasures and trials that we take from books,…
as well as explaining the beauty of Ruskin and his work, and the joys of losing yourself in literature as a child. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.Democracy in America: And Two Essays on America
Par Alexis Tocqueville. 2003
One of the most influential political texts ever written on America, and an indispensable authority on the nature of democracy…
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through eastern America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation's evolving politics. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing its egalitarian ideals reflected the spirit of the age. This edition, the only one that contains all Tocqueville's writings on America, includes the rarely translated 'Two Weeks in the Wilderness', an evocative account of Tocqueville's travels among the Iroquois and Chippeway, and 'Excursion to Lake Oneida'. Translated by Gerald Bevan with an Introduction and Notes by Isaac KramnickDo You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors
Par Neil Corcoran. 2002
In 2016, Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American…
song tradition’. This collection of essays by leading poets and critics – with a new foreword by Will Self – examines Dylan’s poetic genius, as well as his astounding cultural influence over the decades.‘From Orpheus to Faiz, song and poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition’ Salman Rushdie‘The most significant Western popular artist in any form or medium of the past sixty years’ Will Self‘For fifty and some years he has bent, coaxed, teased and persuaded words into lyric and narrative shapes that are at once extraordinary and inevitable’ Andrew Motion‘His haunting music and lyrics have always seemed, in the deepest sense, literary’ Joyce Carol Oates‘There is something inevitable about Bob Dylan… A storyteller pulling out all the stops – metaphor, allegory, repetition, precise detail… His virtue is in his style, his attitude, his disposition to the world’ Simon ArmitageDistant Voices
Par John Pilger. 1990
Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist and film-maker, John Pilger has looked behind the 'official' versions of events to…
report the real stories of our time.The centrepiece of this new, expanded edition of his bestselling Distant Voices is Pilger's reporting from East Timor, which he entered secretly in 1993 and where a third of the population has died as a result of Indonesia's genocidal policies. This edition also contains more new material as well as all the original essays - from the myth-making of the Gulf War to the surreal pleasures of Disneyland. Breaking through the consensual silence, Pilger pays tribute to those dissenting voices we are seldom permitted to hear.Deviant Love (Penguin Great Loves)
Par Sigmund Freud. 1931
Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychoanalysis, remade our view of the human mind by exploring the unconscious forces that…
drive us. This collection of his groundbreaking writings on the psychology of love examines the nature of desire, transgression, fantasy and erotic taboo. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be transported to different places and introduced to love’s endlessly fascinating possibilities and varied forms: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love…Dialogues and Letters
Par Seneca. 2005
A major writer and a leading figure in the public life of Rome, Seneca (c. 4BC-AD 65) ranks among the…
most eloquent and influential masters of Latin prose. This selection explores his thoughts on philosophy and the trials of life. In the Consolation to Helvia he strives to offer solace to his mother, following his exile in AD 41, while On the Shortness of Life and On Tranquillity of Mind are lucid and compelling explorations of Stoic thought. Witty and self-critical, the Letters - written to his young friend Lucilius - explore Seneca's struggle to acquire philosophical wisdom. A fascinating insight into one of the greatest minds of Ancient Rome, these works inspired writers and thinkers including Montaigne, Rousseau, and Bacon, and continue to intrigue and enlighten.The Decay of Lying: And Other Essays
Par Oscar Wilde. 2003
In 'The Decay of Lying' Oscar Wilde uses his decadent ideology in an attempt to reverse and therefore reject his…
audiences' 'normal' conceptualizations of nature, art and morality. Wilde's views of life and art are illustrated through the use of Platonic dialogue where the character Vivian takes on the persona of Wilde. Wilde's goal is to subvert the norm by reversing its values. Wilde suggests to us that society is wrong, not him. Calling on diverse examples - from Ancient Greek sculpture to contemporary paintings - Oscar Wilde's brilliant essay creates a witty, paradoxical world in which the only Art worth loving is that built on complete untruths.'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life'The two works brought together here, 'The Decay of Lying' and 'The…
Critic as Artist', are Oscar Wilde's wittiest and most profound writings on aesthetics, in which he proposes that criticism is the highest form of creation and that lying, the telling of a beautiful untruth, is the ultimate aim of art.One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.Culture and Anarchy and Other Selected Prose
Par Matthew Arnold. 1970
'One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the…
world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class' Poet, education reformer, social theorist and passionate critic of Victorian England, Matthew Arnold condemned an industrial society in 'bondage to machinery' and argued instead that the wonder and joy of culture - in particular the 'sweetness and light' of classical civilization - were essential to human life. The other pieces here, on literary criticism, schools, France, journalism and democracy, form a powerful call to arms from a writer who believed that the English needed to be taught not what to think, but how to think. Edited with an introduction by P. J. Keating.The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain
Par Ian Jack. 2009
In this selection from over twenty years of reporting and writing, Ian Jack sets out to deal with contemporary Britain…
- from national disasters to football matches to obesity - but is always drawn back in time, vexed by the question of what came first. In 'Women and Children First', watching the film Titanic leads into an investigation into the legend of Wallace Henry Hartley, the famous band leader of the doomed liner, while 'The 12.10 to Leeds', a magnificent report on the Hatfield rail crash, begins its hunt for clues in the eighteenth century in the search for those responsible. Further afield, he finds vestiges of a vanished Britain in the Indian subcontinent, meeting characters like maverick English missionary and linguist William Carey, credited with importing India's first steam engine.Full of the style, knowledge and intimacy that makes his work so special, this collection is the perfect introduction to the work of one of the country's finest writers.The Confessions
Par Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1953
Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)…
argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his Confessions he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of Émile. Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, The Confessions is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others.A Confession and Other Religious Writings
Par Leo Tolstoy. 1880
Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional…
honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of literary immortality; he had a wife, a large estate and numerous children; he was 'a happy man' and in good health - yet life had lost its meaning. In this poignant confessional fragment, he records a period of his life when he began to turn away from fiction and aesthetics, and to search instead for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth'.Comrades: A Lifetime of Friendships
Par Rosita Boland. 2021
'I was fascinated, moved and entertained by every page. This is the kind of book the world needs right now'…
DONAL RYAN_______________'My dictionary's first two definitions of 'comrade' are:A close companion.An intimate associate or friend.The third one is:A fellow soldier.My friends have been all those things to me.'In this stunning essay collection, award-winning journalist Rosita Boland explores the many friendships that have shaped her life. Surprising and beautiful, she writes about the imaginary friends of early childhood, books that have provided companionship and joy, kindred spirits met while travelling, the friend she hoped might become something more, and also the friendships that become lost over time.Life-affirming, affecting and wise, Comrades is a powerful exploration of what it is to live, to connect, and to be human in this world._______________'An absorbing journey along life's tracks and trails.' THE SUNDAY TIMES IRELAND'A moving, beautiful and deeply felt meditation on friendship, loyalty and connectedness in a disconnected world' HILARY FANNINConversations with Goethe
Par Johann Peter Eckermann. 2022
A perceptive introduction to the mind of one of German's greatest writers, in a new translation for the first time…
in 150 years'The best German book there is' Nietzsche By the turn of the nineteenth century, the poet, novelist and thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of the most famous people in the world. In 1823 he became friend and mentor to the young writer Johann Eckermann, who, for the last nine years of Goethe's life, recorded their wide-ranging conversations on art, literature, science and philosophy. This rich portrait of Germany's literary elder statesman, now in its first new translation for over 150 years, gives a fascinating glimpse into a great mind as well as 'many insights and invaluable lessons about life.'Translated by Allan Blunden with an Introduction by Ritchie RobertsonConversations of Socrates
Par Xenophon. 1990
After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist…
and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's to survive, and while it offers a very personal interpretation of Socratic thought, it also reveals much about the man and his philosophical views. In 'Socrates' Defence' Xenophon defends his mentor against charges of arrogance made at his trial, while the 'Memoirs of Socrates' also starts with an impassioned plea for the rehabilitation of a wronged reputation. Along with 'The Estate-Manager', a practical economic treatise, and 'The Dinner-Party', a sparkling exploration of love, Xenophon's dialogues offer fascinating insights into the Socratic world and into the intellectual atmosphere and daily life of ancient Greece.The Complete Essays
Par Michel Montaigne. 2003
Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as…
a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech.In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays', inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.With its extensive introduction and notes, M.A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times.Michel de Montaigne (1533-1586) studied law and spent a number of years working as a counsellor before devoting his life to reading, writing and reflection. If you enjoyed The Complete Essays, you might like Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, also available in Penguin Classics.'Screech's fine version ... must surely serve as the definitive English Montaigne'A.C. Grayling, Financial Times'A superb edition'Nicholas Wollaston, ObserverConsolation in the Face of Death
Par Samuel Johnson. 2009
In his moving essay, Samuel Johnson offers wise words on confronting grief at the loss of a loved one. The…
other pieces here, ranging from art to marriage to morality, demonstrate the brilliance, perception and wit that made Johnson the leading man of letters of his day, and one of the finest essayists in the English language.Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.City of God
Par Saint Augustine. 1984
City of God is an enduringly significant work in the history of Christian thought, by one of its central figuresWritten…
as an eloquent defence of the faith at a time when the Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse, this great theological and philosophical work by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, examines the ancient pagan religions of Rome, the arguments of the Greek philosophers and the revelations of the Bible. Pointing the way forward to a citizenship that transcends worldly politics and will last for eternity, City of God is one of the most influential documents in the development of Christianity.Translated with Notes by Henry Bettenson with an Introduction by G. R. EvansRead stories inspired by the four Underground lines that run around and through areas of London - part of a…
series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. Family, passion and fashion come together in four tales: The Circle Line: From Lucy Wadham, the bestselling author of The Secret Life of France, an autobiographical tale of bohemians, punk, the King's Road in the 1970s and family.The Metropolitan Line: Richard Mabey, one of Britain's leading nature writers, looks in A Good Parcel of English Soil at the relationship between city and country, and how this brings out the power of natureThe East London Line: London is a centre of cutting-edge fashion - here, the creators of 'the best fashion mag out there', Fantastic Man, tell the story of London style through the history of the button-down shirt.The Waterloo & City Line: Leanne Shapton, author of Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris and Swimming Studies, creates an authorly and artistic response to travel, work and being a passenger.The Cockroach and I
Par Saranya Subramanian. 2020
RUNNER-UP OF THE 2020 BODLEY HEAD / FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE'It's an exhausting, futile battle, really. Every night, the same…
smug cockroach squeezes herself out of my bathroom drain's grilled lid, scuttles into the toilet and shower area, and waltzes around like she owns the place.'The Cockroach and I is an astonishingly vivid, funny, trenchant portrait of life in Bombay in 2020 during the pandemic. It is alive to the nameless and the numberless of the city, alive to history, and alive to the special strangeness of a year of living surrounded by death and uncertainty.Here are innumerable human beings pushed inside their homes while insects and animals roam freely, each playing their roles.