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The showman: Inside the invasion that shook the world and made a leader of volodymyr zelensky
Par Simon Shuster. 2024
Acclaimed journalist Simon Shuster gives us the first inside account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of…
President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team, who granted him unprecedented access. Time correspondent Simon Shuster chronicles the life and wartime leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky from the dressing rooms of his variety show in Ukraine to the muddy trenches of his war with Russia. Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, The Showman tells an intimate and eye-opening story of the President's evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience, revealing how he managed to rally the world's democracies behind his cause. The book's early chapters offer the first detailed account of Zelensky's life in a nuclear bunker in the opening weeks of the invasion and the circumstances of his wife's escape to safety with their children. Later, as the Russians retreat from Kyiv, we see Zelensky and his team emerge from the bunker and lead Ukraine in a series of crucial victories. The result is a riveting, up-close picture of the invasion as experienced by its number one target and improbable hero. Clear-eyed about the President's early failures as a peacemaker and his willingness to silence political dissent, the book offers a complex picture of a man struggling to break what he sees as a historical cycle of oppression that began generations before he was born. Even as the war drags on, Zelensky lays out his vision for its future course and, through his actions, demonstrates his strategy for countering the Russians and keeping the West on his side. The Showman, as a work of eyewitness journalism, provides an essential perspective on the war defining our age. As a study in leadership and human resolve, its appeal is timeless and universal. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobookOutspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan
Par Sima Samar. 2024
The impassioned memoir of Afghanistan's Sima Samar: medical doctor, public official, founder of schools and hospitals, thorn in the side…
of the Taliban, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and lifelong advocate for girls and women."I have three strikes against me. I’m a woman, I speak out for women, and I’m Hazara, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan."Dr. Sima Samar has been fighting for equality and justice for most of her life. Born into a polygamous family, she learned early that girls had inferior status, and she had to agree to an arranged marriage if she wanted to go to university. By the time she was in medical school, she had a son, Ali, and had become a revolutionary. After her husband was disappeared by the pro-Russian regime, she escaped. With her son and medical degree, she took off into the rural areas—by horseback, by donkey, even on foot—to treat people who had never had medical help before.Sima Samar's wide-ranging experiences both in her home country and on the world stage have given her inside access to the dishonesty, the collusion, the corruption, the self-serving leaders, and the hijacking of religion. And as a former Vice President, she knows all the players in this chess game called Afghanistan. With stories that are at times poignant, at times terrifying, inspiring as well as disheartening, Sima provides an unparalleled view of Afghanistan’s past and its present. Despite being in grave personal danger for many years, she has worked tirelessly for the dream she is convinced is an achievable one: justice and full human rights for all the citizens of her country.John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada's 17th Prime Minister
Par Steve Paikin. 2022
In this masterful and engaging biography, acclaimed journalist Steve Paikin brings to life John Turner (1929-2020), one of the most…
glamorous and successful politicians in Canadian history. Born in England, raised in BC, Turner was a champion sprinter and a Rhodes scholar who captured the national imagination as escort for Princess Margaret on her 1959 Canadian tour. Elected to Parliament in 1962, he served in Prime Minister Lester Pearson's cabinet and as Pierre Trudeau's attorney general, minister of justice, and finance minister. In 1984, he won a hotly-contested Liberal leadership contest and served a brief four months as Canada's seventeenth prime minister before falling to Brian Mulroney in a Progressive Conservative landslide. In this surprisingly candid and personal book, Paikin draws on unprecedented access to Turner's personal and public papers to show how he struggled to meet the towering expectations that came with his abundant gifts, and keep his faith in Canadian democracy despite the challenges of his own careerThe Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada
Par John Ibbitson. 2023
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLEROne of Canada’s foremost authors and journalists, offers a gripping account of the contest between John Diefenbaker and…
Lester Pearson, two prime ministers who fought each other relentlessly, but who between them created today’s Canada. John Diefenbaker has been unfairly treated by history. Although he wrestled with personal demons, his governments launched major reforms in public health care, law reform and immigration. On his watch, First Nations on reserve obtained the right to vote and the federal government began to open up the North. He established Canada as a leader in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and took the first steps in making Canada a leader in the fight against nuclear proliferation. And Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights laid the groundwork for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He set in motion many of the achievements credited to his successor, Lester B. Pearson.Pearson, in turn, gave coherence to Diefenbaker’s piecemeal reforms. He also pushed Parliament to adopt a new, and now much-loved, Canadian flag against Diefenbaker’s fierce opposition. Pearson understood that if Canada were to be taken seriously as a nation, it must develop a stronger sense of self. Pearson was superbly prepared for the role of prime minister: decades of experience at External Affairs, respected by leaders from Washington to Delhi to Beijing, the only Canadian to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Diefenbaker was the better politician, though. If Pearson walked with ease in the halls of power, Diefenbaker connected with the farmers and small-town merchants and others left outside the inner circles. Diefenbaker was one of the great orators of Canadian political life; Pearson spoke with a slight lisp. Diefenbaker was the first to get his name in the papers, as a crusading attorney: Diefenbaker for the Defence, champion of the little man. But he struggled as a politician, losing five elections before making it into the House of Commons, and becoming as estranged from the party elites as he was from the Liberals, until his ascension to the Progressive Conservative leadership in 1956 through a freakish political accident. As a young university professor, Pearson caught the attention of the powerful men who were shaping Canada’s first true department of foreign affairs, rising to prominence as the helpful fixer, the man both sides trusted, the embodiment of a new country that had earned its place through war in the counsels of the great powers: ambassador, undersecretary, minister, peacemaker. Everyone knew he was destined to be prime minister. But in 1957, destiny took a detour.Then they faced each other, Diefenbaker v Pearson, across the House of Commons, leaders of their parties, each determined to wrest and hold power, in a decade-long contest that would shake and shape the country. Here is a tale of two men, children of Victoria, who led Canada into the atomic age: each the product of his past, each more like the other than either would ever admit, fighting each other relentlessly while together forging the Canada we live in today. To understand our times, we must first understand theirs.A history of the world in twelve shipwrecks
Par David Gibbins. 2024
The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII's the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin's doomed HMS Terror. The…
SS Gairsoppa, destroyed by a Nazi U-boat in the Atlantic during World War II. Since we first set sail on the open sea, ships and their wrecks have been an inevitable part of human history. Archaeologists have made spectacular discoveries excavating these sunken ships, their protective underwater cocoon keeping evidence of past civilizations preserved. World renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins ties together the stories of some of the most significant shipwrecks in time to form a single overarching narrative of world history. A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks is not just the story of those ships, the people who sailed on them, and the cargo and treasure they carried, but also the story of the spread of people, religion, and ideas around the world; it is a story of colonialism, migration, and the indominable human spirit that continues today. Drawing on decades of experience, Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past that tell a new story about the world and its underwater secretsETHICS: Cross-disciplinary Strategies (Designing Environments)
Par Alessandra Battisti, Serena Baiani. 2024
This book outlines, within the Italian national framework, the current and potential paths oriented towards a new concept of Architectural…
Heritage, through actions referring to Innovation and Experimentation and Protection and Transformation of the Architectural Heritage. The development of the themes is articulated in two sessions dealing with the aspects related to the analysis and mapping of Architectural Heritage to face the context of the current Climate Crisis and the development of projects and experimentations oriented to the Green and Digital Transition. The evolution of the concept of Heritage, as conceived by the United Nations 2030 Agenda and in the Green Deal and New European Bauhaus, aimed at constructing an inclusive and universally recognised definition to support supranational objectives of sustainable human development, gives rise to innovative strategies, methodologies and technologies that—in a direction of mitigation, contrast and adaptation to climate change—allow for the safeguard, renewed management and a hope for valorisation of Heritage on a national scale. In this direction, the understanding of Architectural Heritage as a 'non-renewable resource' determines the need to activate design experimentation laboratories oriented towards regeneration, articulated and complex, which require, in order to respond to the challenges posed by our era, a sensitive and dialogic multidisciplinary vision of a holistic type. In fact, on the one hand, it is necessary to redefine the usability and management methods of built heritage through the adoption of digital, mobility, energy, ecological, social, green and blue infrastructures; on the other hand, it is necessary to introduce new qualitative and quantitative parameters and performance indicators, adequate to verify the validity of the implemented strategies in a perspective of adaptation to climate change, able to clarify contents, processes and tools to contrast future risks. The pursuit of these objectives refers to the innovation of training paths, professionalising procedures, administrative regulations, and public policies that involve citizens and the private partnership towards a different project qualification and empowerment of stakeholders, inhabitants, professionals, and clients. The Technological Project makes it possible to activate different interventions aimed at acting, in an integrated manner, on assets, context and communities, according to an approach that reinterprets them on a common score, as proposed by the European Next Generation programme in three priority aspects: digitalisation and innovation, environmental transition, increased resilience and social sustainability of national economies. In this scenario, the interventions aimed at outlining sustainable development actions will have to place these concepts at the centre in a harmonious vision that starts from the recognition and enhancement of the Architectural Heritage, recognising it as a fundamental asset of the territories.Churchill's American Network: Winston Churchill and the Forging of the Special Relationship
Par Cita Stelzer. 2024
A revelatory portrait showing how the famed British statesman created a network of American colleagues and friends who helped push…
our foreign policy in Britain&’s favor during World War IIWinston Churchill was the consummate networker. Using newly discovered documents and archives, Churchill&’s American Network reveals how the famed British politician found a network of American men and women who would push American foreign policy in Britain&’s direction during World War II—while at the same time producing lucrative speaking fees to support his lavish lifestyle. Stelzer has gathered contemporary local newspaper reports of Churchill&’s lecture tours in many American cities, as well as interactions with leaders of local American communities—what he said in public, what he said at private meetings, how he comported himself. Readers observe Churchill as he is escorted by an armed Scotland Yard detective, aided by local police when Indian nationalists threaten to assassinate him, while he travels in deluxe private rail cars provided by wealthy members of his network; and as he recovers from a near-death automobile crash—with the help of liquor prescribed by a friendly doctor with no use for Prohibition. The links in Churchill&’s network include some of fascinating American figures: the millionaire financier Bernard Baruch; the railroad magnate, Averell Harriman, who became an FDR-Churchill go-between; media moguls William Randolph Hearst (and wife and mistress); Robert R. McCormick—who attacked Churchill&’s policies but enjoyed his company—and Charles Luce, who made him TIME&’s Man of the Year and later Man of the Century; and bit players such as Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, and David Niven. It is no accident that Churchill was able to put these links together into an important network that served to his, and Britain&’s, advantage. He worked at it relentlessly, remaining in close contact with his American friends by letter, signed copies of his many books, and by attending to their needs when they were in Britain. Many of these colleagues were invited to dinners at Chartwell and, later, Downing Street. Perhaps most importantly, Churchill&’s network of American allies had Franklin Roosevelt&’s ear while the president was deciding how to overcome opposition in congress to helping Britain take on the threat from Germany.The Lenin Scenario
Par Tariq Ali. 2024
The revolutionary world leader&’s extraordinary life, published for the centenary of Lenin&’s deathCommissioned by Oliver Stone in 2015 to commemorate…
the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali&’s captivating screenplay of the life and times of Vladimir Lenin puts flesh on the bones of the historical record and gets its pulse racing. From the author of The Dilemmas of Lenin, the drama captures the enigma of its central character. Ali shows Lenin in his rush from Switzerland to Petrograd by train to grasp his moment in history and the force of his personality on the tumult he found there. He made a revolution and remade a nation. Interwoven with the politics is an exploration of Lenin&’s personal life, especially his love for Inessa Armand.In the introduction, Ali argues that, despite the difficulties, a serious cinematic assessment of Lenin is still needed. Unfortunately, two very different attempts to film one failed. This first draft provides the basis for something on a grander scale at some stage in the future.Praise for The Dilemmas of Lenin &‘Aims to rescue Lenin from both liberal caricature and Soviet hag- iography by recovering the realism and dynamism of his political thought&’ David Sessions, Nation&‘An incredibly powerful, panoramic, and insightful study of the central revolutionary figure of the twentieth century&’ Paul LeBlanc, author of Lenin and the Revolutionary PartyAre You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making?: Letters of Love and Lust from the White House
Par Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler. 2024
A delightful collection of love letters by American presidents to their wives—and lovers—revealing an intimate and deeply personal side of…
our leaders.Our presidents loom so large in history that we often forget they are human. Are You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making? is a collection of handwritten love letters that offers a surprising and intimate portrait of the men who occupied the White House. From George Washington to Barack Obama, these are not the presidents we see in history books. Instead, when they courted the women they wanted to marry, or seduced women outside of their marriage, they often showed a side the public did not see—playful, passionate, tender, consumed by desire. Some of the letters are incredibly romantic—and surprisingly so. It took Richard Nixon years to convince Pat Ryan to marry him: &“Someday let me see you again? In September? Maybe?&” Others will make you blush. Staid-looking Woodrow Wilson, about to return home from a trip, warned his wife of ten years: &“Do you think you can stand the unnumerable kisses and the passionate embraces you will receive? Are you prepared for the storm of lovemaking with which you will be assailed?&” In letters to one of his mistresses, Warren G. Harding referred to his penis as &“Jerry&”—letters which would later be used to blackmail him. All the letters show the writer at his most vulnerable. We see letters of sorrow written about the death of a child or during a time of separation while the president was away on the battlefield. This beautiful book is a captivating collection of love stories revealing a human side of the men we still honor today.Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
Par Allen C. Guelzo. 2024
An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln&’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still…
relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize"It is altogether fitting and proper that, with this meditation on democracy and its most subtle defender, Allen Guelzo again demonstrates that he is today&’s most profound interpreter of this nation&’s history and significance." —George F. WillAbraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln&’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.Allen C. Guelzo, one of America&’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president&’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln&’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln&’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.Infrastructures of Religion and Power: Archaeologies of Landscape, Ritual, and Semiotics
Par Edward Swenson. 2024
This book explores the central role of religion in place-making and infrastructural projects in ancient polities. It presents a trilectic…
approach to archaeological study of religious landscapes that combines Indigenous philosophies with the spatial and semiotic thinking of Lefebvre, Peirce, and proponents of assemblage theories. Case studies from ancient Angkor and the Andes reveal how rituals of place-making activated processes of territorialization and semiosis fundamental to the experience of political worlds that shaped power relations in past societies. The perspectives developed in the book permit a reconstruction of how landscapes were variably conceived, perceived, and lived in the spirit of Henri Lefebvre, and how these registers may have aligned or clashed. In the end, the examination of built environments, infrastructures, and rituals staged within specialized buildings demonstrates how archaeologists can better infer past ontologies, cosmologies, ideologies of time and place, and historically specific political struggles. The study will appeal to students and researchers interested in ritual, infrastructures, landscape, archaeological theory, political institutions, semiotics, human geography, and the civilizations of the ancient Andes and Angkor.Lincoln's Legacy: Ethics and Politics
Par William Miller, Mark E. Neely Jr., Phillip S. Paludan, Mark Summers. 2007
The four new essays in Lincoln's Legacy describe major ethical problems that the sixteenth president navigated what can be learned…
from how he did so. The distinguished and award-winning Lincoln scholars William Miller, Mark E. Neely Jr., Phillip Shaw Paludan, and Mark Summers describe Lincoln’s attitudes and actions during encounters with questions of politics, law, constitutionalism, patronage, and democracy. The remarkably focused essays include an assessment of Lincoln's virtues in the presidency, the first study on Lincoln and patronage in more than a decade, a challenge to the cliché of Lincoln the democrat, and a study of habeas corpus, Lincoln, and state courts. On the eve of the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth, Lincoln’s Legacy highlights his enduring importance in contemporary conversations about law, politics, and democracy.Ralph Johnson Bunche: Public Intellectual and Nobel Peace Laureate
Par Lorenzo DuBois Baber, John Hope Franklin, Charles P. Henry, Jonathan Scott Holloway, Ben Keppel, Beverly Lindsay, Princeton Lyman, Edwin Smith, Hanes Walton Jr.. 2007
Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-71) was one of the twentieth century’s foremost diplomats and intellectuals. In the…
wake of centennial celebrations of his birth, leading scholars and diplomats assess Bunche’s historical importance and enduring impact on higher education, public policy, and international politics. Their essays reveal not only the breadth of Bunche’s influence, such as his United Nations work to broker peace during times of civil war in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but also the depth of his intellectual perspectives on race, civil rights, higher education, and international law. Probing his publications, speeches, and public policy initiatives, the volume offers telling insights into the critical roles of universities, public intellectuals, and diplomats in working together to find solutions to domestic and international problems through public and scholarly engagement. In this way, the volume highlights the very connections that Bunche exhibited as an academic, intellectual, and diplomat. Contributors include Lorenzo DuBois Baber, John Hope Franklin, Jonathan Scott Holloway, Charles P. Henry, Ben Keppel, Beverly Lindsay, Princeton Lyman, Edwin Smith, and Hanes Walton Jr.Forbes Burnham: The Life and Times of the Comrade Leader (Critical Caribbean Studies)
Par Linden F. Lewis. 2024
It is virtually impossible to understand the history of modern Guyana without understanding the role played by Forbes Burnham. As premier…
of British Guiana, he led the country to independence in 1966 and spent two decades as its head of state until his death in 1985. An intensely charismatic politician, Burnham helped steer a new course for the former colony, but he was also a quintessential strongman leader, venerated by some of his citizens yet feared and despised by others. Forbes Burnham: The Life and Times of the Comrade Leader is the first political biography of this complex and influential figure. It charts how the political party he founded, the People’s National Congress, combined nationalist rhetoric, socialist policies, and Pan-Africanist philosophies. It also explores how, in a country already deeply divided between the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants, Burnham consolidated political power by intensifying ethnic polarizations. Drawing from historical archives as well as new interviews with the people who knew Burnham best, sociologist Linden F. Lewis examines how his dictatorial tendencies coexisted with his progressive convictions. Forbes Burnham is a compelling study of the nature of postcolonial leadership and its pitfalls.Kenneyism: Jason Kenney's Pursuit of Power
Par Jeremy Appel. 2024
The harsh moralistic worldview of Jason Kenney has spurred right-wing populism to the mainstream in Canadian politics, but he unleashed…
forces he couldn’t control.From Jason Kenney’s days as an anti-abortion activist at the University of San Francisco, and through his years as a Canadian Taxpayers Federation lobbyist, Reform MP, top cabinet minister in the Harper government, and Alberta premier, he has been single-mindedly driven to bring his harsh moralistic worldview into the mainstream. Kenney took on the old guard of Canada’s liberal consensus and won, playing a key role in shifting the country’s political discussion to the right. But the very right-wing populist forces Kenney cultivated would come back to haunt him.Jeremy Appel has observed Alberta politics and reported on various aspects of Kenney’s agenda since 2017, when Kenney made his way across the province in his big blue pickup truck to rile up aggrieved conservatives. Kenneyism examines Kenney's political beliefs, his rise through federal political ranks, and his ultimate resignation from the leadership of the United Conservative Party.Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities
Par James Cuno. 2009
The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found.…
In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of humankind, not of the countries that lay exclusive claim to them. Now in Whose Culture?, Cuno assembles preeminent museum directors, curators, and scholars to explain for themselves what's at stake in this struggle--and why the museums' critics couldn't be more wrong. Source countries and archaeologists favor tough cultural property laws restricting the export of antiquities, have fought for the return of artifacts from museums worldwide, and claim the acquisition of undocumented antiquities encourages looting of archaeological sites. In Whose Culture?, leading figures from universities and museums in the United States and Britain argue that modern nation-states have at best a dubious connection with the ancient cultures they claim to represent, and that archaeology has been misused by nationalistic identity politics. They explain why exhibition is essential to responsible acquisitions, why our shared art heritage trumps nationalist agendas, why restrictive cultural property laws put antiquities at risk from unstable governments--and more. Defending the principles of art as the legacy of all humankind and museums as instruments of inquiry and tolerance, Whose Culture? brings reasoned argument to an issue that for too long has been distorted by politics and emotionalism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sir John Boardman, Michael F. Brown, Derek Gillman, Neil MacGregor, John Henry Merryman, Philippe de Montebello, David I. Owen, and James C. Y. Watt.Josephine Roche (1886–1976) was a progressive activist, New Deal policymaker, and businesswoman. As a pro-labor and feminist member of Franklin…
D. Roosevelt's administration, she shaped the founding legislation of the U.S. welfare state and generated the national conversation about health-care policy that Americans are still having today. In this gripping biography, Robyn Muncy offers Roche’s persistent progressivism as evidence for surprising continuities among the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society.Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselves. Once in office, Roche developed a national health plan that was stymied by World War II but enacted piecemeal during the postwar period, culminating in Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. By then, Roche directed the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, an initiative aimed at bolstering the labor movement, advancing managed health care, and reorganizing medicine to facilitate national health insurance, one of Roche’s unrealized dreams.In Relentless Reformer, Muncy uses Roche’s dramatic life story—from her stint as Denver’s first policewoman in 1912 to her fight against a murderous labor union official in 1972—as a unique vantage point from which to examine the challenges that women have faced in public life and to reassess the meaning and trajectory of progressive reform.Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World
Par Michael Scott. 2014
A comprehensive narrative history of the ancient world's center, from its founding to its modern rediscoveryThe oracle and sanctuary of…
the Greek god Apollo at Delphi were known as the "omphalos"—the "center" or "navel"—of the ancient world for more than 1,000 years. Individuals, city leaders, and kings came from all over the Mediterranean and beyond to consult Delphi's oracular priestess; to set up monuments to the gods; and to take part in competitions.In this richly illustrated account, Michael Scott covers the history and nature of Delphi, from the literary and archaeological evidence surrounding the site, to its rise as a center of worship, to the constant appeal of the oracle despite her cryptic prophecies. He describes how Delphi became a contested sacred site for Greeks and Romans and a storehouse for the treasures of rival city-states and foreign kings. He also examines the eventual decline of the site and how its meaning and importance have continued to be reshaped.A unique window into the center of the ancient world, Delphi will appeal to general readers, tourists, students, and specialists.The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece
Par Claude Calame. 1999
The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece offers the first comprehensive inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power…
that permeated daily Greek life. Avoiding Foucault's philosophical paradigm of dominance/submission, Claude Calame uses an anthropological and linguistic approach to re-create indigenous categories of erotic love. He maintains that Eros, the joyful companion of Aphrodite, was a divine figure around which poets constructed a physiology of desire that functioned in specific ways within a network of social relations. Calame begins by showing how poetry and iconography gave a rich variety of expression to the concept of Eros, then delivers a history of the deity's roles within social and political institutions, and concludes with a discussion of an Eros-centered metaphysics. Calame's treatment of archaic and classical Greek institutions reveals Eros at work in initiation rites and celebrations, educational practices, the Dionysiac theater of tragedy and comedy, and in real and imagined spatial settings. For men, Eros functioned particularly in the symposium and the gymnasium, places where men and boys interacted and where future citizens were educated. The household was the setting where girls, brides, and adult wives learned their erotic roles--as such it provides the context for understanding female rites of passage and the problematics of sexuality in conjugal relations. Through analyses of both Greek language and practices, Calame offers a fresh, subtle reading of relations between individuals as well as a quick-paced and fascinating overview of Eros in Greek society at large.Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman
Par Jeremy Adelman. 2013
The life and times of one of the most provocative thinkers of the twentieth centuryWorldly Philosopher chronicles the times and…
writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change. This is the first major account of Hirschman’s remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman’s riveting narrative traces how Hirschman’s personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his enduring legacy is one of hope, open-mindedness, and practical idealism.