Скачать книгу (размер 728 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 144) Аннотация: Thomas Aquinas, an Italian Catholic priest in the early thirteeth century, is considered to be one of the great Christian thinkers who had, and who still has, a profound influence on Western thought. He was a controversial figure who was exposed and engaged in conflict. This Very Short Introduction looks at Aquinas in a historical context, and explores the Church and culture into which Aquinas…
Скачать книгу (размер 769 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 152) Аннотация: Deserts make up a third of the planet's land surface, but if you picture a desert, what comes to mind? A wasteland? A drought? A place devoid of all life forms? Deserts are remarkable places. Typified by drought and extremes of temperature, they can be harsh and hostile; but many deserts are also spectacularly beautiful, and on occasion teem with life. Nick Middleton explores how each desert is…
Скачать книгу (размер 891 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 176) Аннотация: Japan is arguably today's most successful industrial economy, combining almost unprecedented affluence with social stability and apparent harmony. Japanese goods and cultural products are consumed all over the world, ranging from animated movies and computer games all the way through to cars, semiconductors, and management techniques. In many ways, Japan is an icon of the modern world, and yet it…
Скачать книгу (размер 850 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 168) Аннотация: They called it the Reagan revolution, Ronald Reagan noted in his Farewell Address. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense. Nearly two decades after that 1989 speech, debate continues to rage over just how revolutionary those Reagan years were. The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction identifies…
Скачать книгу (размер 809 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 160) Аннотация: «Beneath the surface of the apparently untutored and deceptively frank Abraham Lincoln ran private tunnels of self-taught study, a restless philosophical curiosity, and a profound grasp of the fundamentals of democracy. Now, in Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, the award-winning Lincoln authority Allen C. Guelzo offers a penetrating look into the mind of one of our greatest presidents. If…
Скачать книгу (размер 891 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 176) Аннотация: The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. At its peak, more than a third of the world's population had lived under communist power. What is communism? Where did the idea come from and what attracted people to it? What is the future for communism? This Very Short Introduction considers these questions and more in the search to explore and understand…
Скачать книгу (размер 646 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 128) Аннотация: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. This slogan, attributed to Voltaire, is frequently quoted by defenders of free speech. Yet it is rare to find anyone prepared to defend all expression in every circumstance, especially if the views expressed incite violence. So where do the limits lie? What is the real value of free speech? Here, Nigel Warburton…
Скачать книгу (размер 809 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 160) Аннотация: This Very Short Introduction offers a clear, accessible, and concise account of the apocryphal gospels — exploring their origins, their discovery, and discussing how the various texts have been interpreted both by the Church and beyond. Looking at texts from the Gospels from Nag Hammadi to the Dialogues with the Risen Saviour, Paul Foster shows how the apocryphal gospels reflect the diversity…
Скачать книгу (размер 1 625 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 320) Аннотация: Respectable people... What bastards! Unjustly deported to Devil's Island following Louis-Napoleon's coup-d'etat in December 1851, Florent Quenu escapes and returns to Paris. He finds the city changed beyond recognition. The old Marche des Innocents has been knocked down as part of Haussmann's grand programme of urban reconstruction to make way for Les Halles, the spectacular new food markets.…
Скачать книгу (размер 809 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 160) Аннотация: It was not so much his great height that marked him... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's…
Скачать книгу (размер 2 686 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 528) Аннотация: As the Pargiters, a middle-class English family, move from the oppressive confines of the Victorian home of the 1880s to the 'present day' of the 1930s, they are weighed down by the pressures of war, the social strictures of patriarchy, capitalism and Empire, and the rise of Fascism. Engaging with a painful struggle between utopian hopefulness and crippled with despair, the novel is a savage…
Скачать книгу (размер 1 217 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 240) Аннотация: Inspired by Voltaire's two-year stay in England (1726-8), this is one of the key works of the Enlightment. Exactly contemporary with Gulliver's Travels and The Beggar's Opera, Voltaire's controversial pronouncements on politics, philosophy, religion, and literature have place the Letters among the great Augustan satires. Voltaire wrote most of the book in English, in which he was fluent and…
Скачать книгу (размер 1 707 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 336) Аннотация: Henry Jones, an unprepossessing London insurance clerk, knows that his uncle has disinherited him. The old man's will, made out at the last minute in favour of Henry's charming cousin Isabel Brodrick, lies neatly folded in a well-thumbed volume of sermons in his book-room; Henry saw him put it there before he died. Unfortunately nobody else knows where the will is, and Henry stands to lose…
Скачать книгу (размер 2 523 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 496) Аннотация: French naturalist Dr Aronnax embarks on an expedition to hunt down a sea monster, only to discover instead the Nautilus, a self-contained world built by its enigmatic captain. Together Nemo and Aronnax explore the underwater marvels, undergo a transcendent experience amongst the ruins of Atlantis, and plant a black flag at the South Pole. But Nemo's mission is one of revenge — and his methods…
Скачать книгу (размер 2 523 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 496) Аннотация: The bitter tragedy of human life — horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581), Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic to rival the Iliad and the Aeneid. Unlike his predecessors, he took his subject not from myth but from history: the Christian capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The…
Скачать книгу (размер 1 544 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 304) Аннотация: No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity. In these dialogues and essays the Stoic philosopher Seneca outlines his thoughts on how to live in a troubled world. Tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote exercises in practical philosophy that draw upon contemporary Roman life and illuminate the intellectual concerns of the day. They also have much to say to…
Скачать книгу (размер 1 952 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 384) Аннотация: Philip Sidney and his sister Mary translated the biblical psalms into some of the greatest lyric poems of the English Renaissance. This is the first complete edition for over forty years, providing the Psalms in an authoritative modernized text, with glosses and notes and an introduction setting the Psalms in their literary and cultural context.
Скачать книгу (размер 1 054 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 208) Аннотация: Once upon a time there were just the gods; mortal beings did not yet exist. We are used to thinking of myths as stories, and modern myths as made up and fictitious. For the ancient Greeks, however, a myth was a story that unveiled reality, and for Plato, myth-maker as well as myth-teller, a myth could tell us something important about ourselves and our world. The ultimate purpose of Plato's myths…
Скачать книгу (размер 2 197 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 432) Аннотация: Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Elfride is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Cornwall based on St Juliot, where Hardy began the book during the first days of his courtship of his first wife Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two men: the boyish…
Скачать книгу (размер 2 360 Kb , формат fb2, страниц 464) Аннотация: Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul? Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but he is rebuffed, and trapped in a loveless marriage. He falls in love with his unconventional cousin Sue Bridehead, and their refusal to marry when free to do so confirms their rejection of and by the world around them. The…