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Book DescriptionHow were the Greeks of the sixth century BC able to invent philosophy and tragedy? Richard Seaford argues that a large part of the answer can be found in another momentous development, the invention and rapid spread of coinage. By transforming social relations, monetization contributed to the concepts of the universe as an impersonal system (fundamental to Presocratic philosophy) and of the individual alienated from his own kin and from the gods, as found in tragedy.

Book DescriptionTranslated with an Introduction by David McDuff.

Book DescriptionDirty Snow, widely acknowledged as one of Simenon's finest books, is a study of the criminal mind comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. It tells the story of Frank, a pimp, a petty thief, and collaborator in occupied France. Through the long and unrelenting cold and darkness of a long winter Frank pursues all the possibilites of perdition until at last there is nowhere left to go. Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." Simenon maps a no man?s land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction?and redemption, perhaps, as well?by forces beyond its control.

Book DescriptionUnabridged audiobook in MP3 format.Download DescriptionThe episode with which this chapter is concerned is one that has often occurred on the out-post line of civilisation, and which is peculiarly frequent in the history of a people whosewidespread Empire is fringed with savage tribes. A small band of soldiers or settlers, armed with the resources of science, and strengthened by the cohesion of mutual trust, are assailed in some isolated post, by thousands of warlike and merciless enemies. Usually the courage and equipment of the garrison enable them to hold out until a relieving force arrives, as at Rorke's Drift, Fort Chitral, Chakdara or Gulistan. But sometimes the defenders are overwhelmed, and, as at Saraghari or Khartoum, none are left to tell the tale.

Amazon.comMorgan Leafy had high hopes when he first headed out to the small African nation of Kinjanja to serve as Her British Majesty's representative. But once there, Leafy's dreams of professional advancement and personal happiness soon fade: this sonof an airport catering manager finds himself overtaken on the career ladder by other, newer recruits to the diplomatic corps who come from the right family and attended the right schools. What's worse, the girl of his dreams has just become engaged to someone younger, thinner, and better connected. And if all this weren't enough to make a career civil servant miserable, Leafy is also being blackmailed by a representative of one of Kinjanja's many political parties who has presented him with a puzzling task: get to know the Scottish medical doctor at a local university. Author William Boyd has written about Africa before, most notably in his bestselling novel Brazzaville Beach . In A Good Man in Africa , Boyd spins a...

Book Description In simple, mesmerizing prose, Hermann Hesse tells of a journey both geographic and spiritual. H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul Klee, Mozart, and Albertus Magnus. The participants traverse both space and time, encountering Noah’s Ark in Zurich and Don Quixote at Bremgarten. The pilgrims’ ultimate destination is the East, the “Home of the Light,” where they expect to find spiritual renewal. Yet the harmony that ruled at the outset of the trip soon degenerates into open conflict. Each traveler finds the rest of the group intolerable and heads off in his own direction, with H.H. bitterly blaming the others for the failure of the journey. It is only long after the trip, while poring over records in the League archives, that H.H. discovers his own role in the dissolution of the group, and the ominous significance of the journey itself.

Book DescriptionEdited with an Introduction by Larzer Ziff.

Book Description1918. Mencken, American newspaperman, editor and critic known for his excellence in framing insults aimed at anyone. Contents: The Feminine Mind; The War Between the Sexes; Marriage; Woman Suffrage; and The New Age. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.Download DescriptionTurn, for example, to the field in which the two sexes come most constantly into conflict, and in which, as a result, their habits of mind are most clearly contrasted--to the field, to wit,of monogamous marriage. Surely no long argument is needed to demonstrate the superior competence and effectiveness of women here, and therewith their greater self-possession, their saner weighing of considerations, their higher power of resisting emotional suggestion.

Book DescriptionIn Greek mythology, Hyperboreans were a tribe who lived far to Greece's north. Contained in what has come down to us of Greek literary tradition are texts that identify the Hyperboreans with the Celts, or Hyperborean lands with Celtic ones. This groundbreaking book studies the texts that make or imply this identification, and provides reasons why some ancient Greek authors identified a mythical people with an actual one. Timothy P. Bridgman demonstrates not only that these authors mythologize history, but that they used the traditional Greek parallel mythical world to interpret history throughout ancient Greek culture, thought and literature.