This book offers diverse and original perspectives on South Asia’s imperial military history. Unlike prevailing studies, the chapters in the volume emphasize both the vital role of culture in framing imperial military practice and the multiple cultural effects of colonial military service and engagements. The volume spans from the early East India Company period through to the Second World War and India’s independence, exploring themes such as the military in the field and at leisure, as w...

Rebels and Regimes presents a global view of the nature of violent resistance throughout the nineteenth century. The volume’s breadth and scope reveal commonalities and differences among regimes and insurgents in their different contexts, offering a view that the participants themselves never had. The collection is composed of ten essays, each focused on a specific conflict or period of colonial overreach: imperialist efforts against Caribbean maroons, the Peninsular War, the Seco...

In 1969, the world-renowned author Ayn Rand gave a series of informal lectures on the art of nonfiction to a select group of friends and associates. These edited transcripts take the listener step by step through the writing process, providing insightful observations and invaluable techniques along the way.Rand discusses the psychological aspects of writing and the different roles played by the conscious and subconscious mind. She explains how to select a subject and theme, how to ...

In 1958, Ayn Rand, legendary author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, gave an informal course to friends and acquaintances on the art of reading and writing fiction. Now the edited transcripts of these sessions are available to readers and aspiring writers.Ayn Rand discusses how a writer combines abstract ideas with concrete action and description to achieve a unity of theme, plot, characterization, and style, the four essential elements of fiction. She explains why "You cann...

Published together for the first time are three of Ayn Rand’s compelling stage plays. The courtroom drama Night of January 16th, a 1935 Broadway success famous for leaving the verdict to the audience, is presented here in its definitive, final revised text—a superb dramatization of Rand’s vision of human strengths and weaknesses. Also included are two of Rand’s unproduced plays: Think Twice, a clever philosophical murder mystery, and Ideal, a bitter indictment of people’s willingness to be...

“Ideas are the greatest and most crucially practical power on earth.”—Ayn RandOne of the most controversial figures on the intellectual scene, Ayn Rand was the proponent of a moral philosophy of rational self-interest that stands in sharp opposition to the ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice. Her unique philosophy, Objectivism, has gained a worldwide following. The fundamentals of this morality are vibrantly set forth here by this spokesman for a new class of intellectual. For th...

The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world’s collapse. This is the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constitutes a major philosophic revolution. In her series of essays, she presents her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.This collection of twenty-six essays includes twenty by Ayn Rand as we...

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart—to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs ...

The Fountainhead studies the conflict between artistic genius and social convention, a theme Ayn Rand later developed into the idealistic philosophy knows as Objectivism.Rand's hero is Howard Roark, a brilliant young architect who won't compromise his integrity, especially in the unconventional buildings he designs. Roark is engaged in ideological warfare with a society that despises him, an architectural community that doesn't understand him, and a woman who loves him but...

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey of five thousand people conducted by...

A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life—mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstoreThe Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumb...

Audie Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2014Explore the power of the underdog in Malcolm Gladwell's dazzling examination of success, motivation, and the role of adversity in shaping our lives, from the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia.Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have...