How we build our invisible librariesErich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left his physical library behind when he fled to Istanbul to escape the Nazis, he was forced to rely on the invisible library of his mind. Each of us has such a library—if not as extensive as Auerbach’s—even if we are unaware of it. In this erudite and provocative book, William M...

For the last 2,500 years literature has been attacked, booed, and condemned, often for the wrong reasons and occasionally for very good ones. The Hatred of Literature examines the evolving idea of literature as seen through the eyes of its adversaries: philosophers, theologians, scientists, pedagogues, and even leaders of modern liberal democracies. From Plato to C. P. Snow to Nicolas Sarkozy, literature’s haters have questioned the value of literature—its truthfulness, virtue, an...

T. S. Eliot was raised in the Unitarian faith of his family in St. Louis but drifted away from their beliefs while studying philosophy, mysticism, and anthropology at Harvard. During a year in Paris, he became involved with a group of Catholic writers and subsequently went through a gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity.Many studies of Eliot's writings have mentioned his religious beliefs, but most have failed to give the topic due weight, and many have misunderstood or misrep...

In the eerie depths of the high seas, where shadows dance and secrets lurk, William Clark Russell's "The Phantom Death and Other Stories" beckons you into a realm of maritime mystery and suspense. Join a cast of enigmatic sailors, haunted by the specter of death and the unknown. From the chilling tale of a phantom ship to the haunting echoes of a lost love, these stories will grip your imagination and leave you questioning the boundaries between reality and the supernatural. Prepare to emb...

This collection offers more audio drama, comedy, biography, and documentary from veteran award-winning radio dramatist Joe Bevilacqua (a.k.a. Joe Bev). Together with his wife, Lorie Kellogg, Bevilacqua has amassed thousands of hours of audio entertainment through his Waterlogg Productions and Blackstone Audio.Each half hour is beautifully produced with an original cast of professional actors, sound effects, and music.Volume three includes"We Take You Now to Grover's...

F.Scott Fitzgerald - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 02. O.Henry - The Gift of the Magi 03. Mark Twain - On The Decay of the Art of Lying 04. Sun Tzu - The Art of War 05. E.A. Poe - The Raven 06. Kahlil Gibran - The Madman 07. W.W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw 08. Anonymous - Aladdin 09. The Founding Fathers - The Declaration of Independence 10. Plato - The Apology of Socrates 11. Lord Alfred Tennyson - Charge of the Light Brigade 12. T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land 13. William Dean How...

Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyHow to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy?This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly ...

An utterly original exploration of the timeless human virtues and how they apply to the way we live now, from a bold and dynamic French writer.In this graceful, incisive book, writer-philosopher André Comte-Sponville reexamines the classic human virtues to help us under-stand "what we should do, who we should be, and how we should live." In the process, he gives us an entirely new perspective on the value, the relevance, and even the charm of the Western ethical tradition.Dra...

A brilliant brief account of romanticism and its influence from one of the most important philosophers and intellectual historians of the twentieth centuryIn The Roots of Romanticism, one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers dissects and assesses a movement that changed the course of history. Brilliant, fresh, immediate, and eloquent, these celebrated Mellon Lectures are a bravura intellectual performance. Isaiah Berlin surveys the many...

Genius. With hints of madness and mystery, moral license and visionary force, the word suggests an almost otherworldly power: the power to create, to divine the secrets of the universe, even to destroy. Yet the notion of genius has been diluted in recent times. Today, rock stars, football coaches, and entrepreneurs are labeled 'geniuses,' and the word is applied so widely that it has obscured the sense of special election and superhuman authority that long accompanied it.A...

`Anyone who wants to gain a quick idea of how before me everything was topsy-turvy should make a start with this work. That which is called idol on the title-page is quite simply that which was called truth hitherto. Twilight of the Idols - in plain words: the old truth is coming to an end...' Nietzsche intended Twilight of the Idols to serve as a short introduction to his philosophy, and as a result it is the most synoptic of all his books. Continuing in the spirit of it...

This new edition features the previously unpublished delivery text of Berlin's inaugural lecture as a professor at Oxford, which derives from this volume and stands as the briefest and most pithy version of his famous essay "Two Concepts of Liberty.?Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which the great intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the period he made his own. Written for a series of ...