Mila Haugova has written a moving book about the farewell of loved ones and the slipping away of one's own life. The starting point is a double loss: her mother dies and her lover goes his own way. During her dead mother's childhood and distant past, the loved ones have faced a hoped-for future. Now only a reduced daily life remains, shot through with ever present memories. Haugova overlays the departed, and now recalculated, images of childhood and days spent with her lover. Is it possibl...

Ivana Milankov belongs to the first generation of poets from Central and Eastern Europe to be influenced by American anti-establishment poetry, including the Beat poets. Her own work, as a result, captures and rails against Serbia's rich historical and religious history. Hers is also an untiring effort to reach beyond the confines of the world towards mystical revelation, to communicate the incommunicable.Translated by Zorica Petrovic & James Sutherland-Smith.Ivana ...

Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted philosophical novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory.“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sen...

2nd edition of our popular Manadarin course - improved! Remember trying to learn a language at school? Remember trying to get your head around conjugating verbs? Past tense, present tense, present participle, imperfect subjunctive? Yes, that's right, it was all mind numbing. Language is not about perfect grammar. Language is about communication. This edition includes a comprehensive phrasebook.This ebook edition teaches Pinyin Mandarin.Contents include..THE OLD WAY

"Impishly witty and ingeniously irreverent" essays on topics from cell phones to librarians, by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum ( The Atlantic Monthly).A cosmopolitan curmudgeon the Los Angeles Times called "the Andy Rooney of academia"—known for both nonfiction and novels that have become blockbuster New York Times bestsellers—Umberto Eco takes readers on "a delightful romp through the absurdi...

To untangle the knot of interlocking meanings of these painted words, logophile and mythologist Phil Cousineau begins each fascinating word entry with his own brief definition. He then fills it in with a tint of etymology and a smattering of quotes that show how the word is used, ending with a list of companion words. The words themselves range from commonplace — like biscuit, a twice-baked cake for Roman soldiers — to loanwords including chaparral, from the Basque shepherds who came to th...

Who knew that the great country of Canada is named for a mistake? How about "bedswerver," the best Elizabethan insult to hurl at a cheating boyfriend? By exploring the delightful back stories of the 250 words in Wordcatcher, readers are lured by language and entangled in etymologies. Author Phil Cousineau takes us on a tour into the obscure territory of word origins with great erudition and endearing curiosity. The English poet W. H. Auden was once asked to teach a poetry class, and when 2...

This essay collection by the revered public intellectual displays his " profound erudition, lively wit, and passion for ideas of all shapes and sizes" ( Booklist).In these fourteen essays, Umberto Eco examines many of the ideas that have inspired his provocative and illuminating fiction. From the title essay—a disquisition of the notion that every country needs an enemy—he takes readers on an exploration of lost islands, mythical realms, a...

Ace the MAT and prepare for the next phase in your education!McGraw-Hill's MAT Miller Analogies Test, Second Edition, gives you the names and terms you need to know to solve Miller Analogies. It provides lists, definitions, and descriptions of the names and terms in fields such as literature, art, music, mathematics, and the natural and social sciences.Author Kathy Zahler has written extensively on SAT analogy questions and takes an approach to the...

To truly understand modern day advertising techniques, we need to learn the history of advertising. It truly is an art form and has been perfected over the centuries. Take a look at the very early days of advertising to see how it started.

This is a brief illustrated primer on Greek Portrait paintings. The discussion revolves around portraits found in ancient burial sites.

Hypochondria, insomnia, restlessness, and yearning are the lame muses of these brief pages. I would have liked to call them Extravaganzas . . . because many of them wander about in a strange outside that has no inside, like drifting splinters. . . . Alien to any orbit, I have the impression they navigate in familiar spaces whose geometry nevertheless remains a mystery; let’s say domestic thickets: the interstitial zones of our daily having to be, or bumps on the surface of existence . . . ...