Critical Times

Critical Times PDF

Author: Derwent May

Publisher: HarperCollins (UK)

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 648

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A comprehensive and entertaining history of theTimes Literary Supplement,this text is not only a "biography" of an institution, but it is a reflection of the changes in British literature and culture throughout the 20th century. From its first tenuous year in 1902 to its modern-day incarnation, theTimes Literary Supplementhas been home to an astonishing assemblage of outstanding writers. This work also reveals for the first time the identities of the journal's anonymous reviewers since 1902—a tradition which lasted until 1974. Derwent May, formerly of the TLS himself, also examines the ethos and aims of the paper's editors, management, and staff; and the controversies, quarrels, and relations between writers and critics.

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley PDF

Author: Jake Poller

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2021-08-12

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1789144280

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“An outstanding book.”—James Sexton “A welcome and necessary update of the life of one of the twentieth century's most provocative intellectuals.”—Dana Sawyer A rich and lucid account of Aldous Huxley’s life and work. Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient thinkers. This new biography is a rich and lucid account that charts the different phases of Huxley’s career: from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s—who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD—to the New Age prophet of Island. While Huxley is still best known as the author of Brave New World, Jake Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception, and Island—Huxley’s blueprint for a utopian society—that have had the most cultural impact.

The Magician

The Magician PDF

Author: Colm Toibin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 1476785104

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek ​From one of today’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War that is “a feat of literary sorcery in its own right” (Oprah Daily). The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. In this “exquisitely sensitive” (The Wall Street Journal) novel, Tóibín has crafted “a complex but empathetic portrayal of a writer in a lifelong battle against his innermost desires, his family, and the tumultuous times they endure” (Time), and “you’ll find yourself savoring every page” (Vogue).

How Russia Learned to Talk

How Russia Learned to Talk PDF

Author: Stephen Lovell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-02-27

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0192575007

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Russia in the late nineteenth century may have been an autocracy, but it was far from silent. In the 1860s, new venues for public speech sprang up: local and municipal assemblies, the courtroom, and universities and learned societies. Theatre became more lively and vernacular, while the Orthodox Church exhorted its priests to become better preachers. Although the tsarist government attempted to restrain Russia's emerging orators, the empire was entering an era of vigorous modern politics. All the while, the spoken word was amplified by the written: the new institutions of the 1860s brought with them the adoption of stenography. Russian political culture reached a new peak of intensity with the 1905 revolution and the creation of a parliament, the State Duma, whose debates were printed in the major newspapers. Sometimes considered a failure as a legislative body, the Duma was a formidable school of modern political rhetoric. It was followed by the cacophonous freedom of 1917, when Aleksandr Kerensky, dubbed Russia's 'persuader-in-chief', emerged as Russia's leading orator only to see his charisma wane. The Bolsheviks could boast charismatic orators of their own, but after the October Revolution they also turned public speaking into a core ritual of Soviet 'democracy'. The Party's own gatherings remained vigorous (if also sometimes vicious) throughout the 1920s; and here again, the stenographer was in attendance to disseminate proceedings to a public of newspaper readers or Party functionaries. How Russia Learned to Talk offers an entirely new perspective on Russian political culture, showing that the era from Alexander II's Great Reforms to early Stalinism can usefully be seen as a single 'stenographic age'. All Russia's rulers, whether tsars or Bolsheviks, were grappling with the challenges and opportunities of mass politics and modern communications. In the process, they gave a new lease of life to the age-old rhetorical technique of oratory.

Index Cards

Index Cards PDF

Author: Moyra Davey

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780811229517

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An essential selection of Moyra Davey's sly, surprising, and brilliant essays

Changing the Subject

Changing the Subject PDF

Author: Raymond Geuss

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0674545729

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“A history of philosophy in twelve thinkers...The whole performance combines polyglot philological rigor with supple intellectual sympathy, and it is all presented...in a spirit of fun...This bracing and approachable book [shows] that there is life in philosophy yet.” —Times Literary Supplement “Exceptionally engaging...Geuss has a remarkable knack for putting even familiar thinkers in a new light.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews “Geuss is something like the consummate teacher, his analyses navigable and crystal, his guidance on point.” —Doug Phillips, Key Reporter Raymond Geuss explores the ideas of twelve philosophers who broke dramatically with prevailing wisdom, from Socrates and Plato in the ancient world to Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Adorno. The result is a striking account of some of the most innovative thinkers in Western history and an indirect manifesto for how to pursue philosophy today. Geuss cautions that philosophers’ attempts to break from convention do not necessarily make the world a better place. Montaigne’s ideas may have been benign, but the fate of those of Hobbes, Hegel, and Nietzsche has been more varied. Yet in the act of provoking people to think differently, philosophers remind us that we are not fated to live within the systems of thought we inherit.

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1)

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1) PDF

Author: Chips Channon

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2021-03-04

Total Pages: 1032

ISBN-13: 147356719X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Sunday Times bestselling edition of Chips Channon's remarkable diaries. Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, or the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson during the abdication crisis, or the mood in the House of Commons in the lead up to the Munich crisis, his sense of drama and his eye for the telling detail are unmatched. These are diaries that bring a whole epoch vividly to life. A heavily abridged and censored edition of the diaries was published in 1967. Only now, sixty years after Chips's death, can an extensive text be shared. ________________________________ 'Chips perfectly embodied the qualities vital to the task: a capacious ear for gossip, a neat turn of phrase, a waspish desire to tell all, and easy access to the highest social circles across Europe.[...] Blending Woosterish antics with a Lady Bracknellesque capacity for acid comment. Replete with fascinating insights.' Jesse Norman, Financial Times

Sevastopol

Sevastopol PDF

Author: Emilio Fraia

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 69

ISBN-13: 0811230929

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Three subtly connected stories converge in this chimerical debut, showcasing a powerful new Brazilian voice Three subtly connected stories converge in this chimerical debut, each burrowing into a turning point in a person’s life: a young woman gives a melancholy account of her obsession with climbing Mount Everest; a Peruvian-Brazilian vanishes into the forest after staying in a musty, semi-abandoned inn in the haunted depths of the Brazilian countryside; a young playwright embarks on the production of a play about the city of Sevastopol and a Russian painter portraying Crimean War soldiers. Inspired by Tolstoy’s The Sevastopol Sketches, Emilio Fraia masterfully weaves together these stories of yearning and loss, obsession and madness, failure and the desire to persist, in a restrained manner reminiscent of Anton Chekhov, Roberto Bolano, and Rachel Cusk.