Author: P. Alessandra Maccioni Ruju File Type: pdf If you want a novel, read history, wrote Guizot, the historian who rose to high political power under the July Monarchy. He might have been speaking about the life of his Italian collaborator and friend Guglielmo Libri, whose exploits from a subject matter of which the author of many a picaresque novel could only dream. Revolution, theft, lofty ideals, passionate friendship, madness or the intrigues of aristocratic academics the life of Guglielmo Libri provides ample examples of all of these themes. A Florentine count, Libri moved freely in Italian, French and English academic circles and gallant Society. His talents were remarked upon by the greatest minds of the age, and he was able to apply them in the simultaneous pursuit of several successful careers those of mathematician, journalist, advisor to the French government and authority on the history of science. Libris lasting fame, however, is primarily based on his theft of huge quantities of books and manuscripts. From an early age, Libri studied the sources of Italian scientific history in manuscripts and early printed books, and became a renowned collector and connoisseur. This interest was to be his undoing. In the 1840s, charged with compiling accurate catalogues of the French provincial libraries, he augmented his own extensive library with purloined volumes of great antiquity and value. Libris guilt was concusively proven only after his death in 1869. Several attempts have been made at writing Libris biography, mainly by scholars troubled by the depredations of which their hero was guilty. This biography is the first in which an attempt has been made to do justice to all aspects of Libris Promethian life. It presents the reader with vivid impressions of the life of the intellectual elite of Italy, France and England during the first half of the nineteenth century and beyond.

Author: Michael Moorcock File Type: epub Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, or Pyat, that charming but despicable mythomaniac who first appeared in Byzantium Endures, is back in this second book of the Pyat quartet. Having fled Bolshevik Russia in late 1919, Pyats progress is a series of leaps from crisis to crisis, as he begins affairs with a baroness and a Greek prostitute while undertaking schemes to build flying machines in Europe and the United States. His devotion to flamboyantly racist, particularly anti-Semitic doctrineslike his devotion to cocaineremains unabated, and he both sings the praises of Mussolini and lectures across America for the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, his best-kept secret is the fact that he is Jewish. As the novel ends, Pyat is in Hollywoodhis new Byzantiumhobnobbing with movie stars and dreaming of making films like those of his hero, D.W. Griffith. This authoritative edition brings this book back into print after 30 years and boasts a new introduction by Alan Wall.**ReviewThis is a rich, ambitious and erudite book. . . . If one purpose of fiction is to lead us into different worlds and, as Virginia Woolf says, to make of them some kind of whole, then Michael Moorcock succeeds brilliantly. Carolyn Slaughter, GuardianThe Laughter of Carthage and its companion volumes will be seen . . . as an imaginative record of our own time rather than as a simple reconstruction of that which has gone. Peter Ackroyd, Sunday TimesMichael Moorcock is an absolute wizard of a storyteller. . . . It is marvelous to meet a novelist who has the energy for the epic. It is not simply a case of energy, Mr. Moorcock is also a storyteller, an old-fashioned button-holing, 19th-century storyteller. Stanley Reynolds, PunchAbout the Author Michael Moorcock is an award-winning author of more than 80 works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Cornelius Quartet, Doctor Who, and Elric The Stealer of Souls. He has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, and British Science Fiction awards and is a Grandmaster of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. His nonfiction has appeared in Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Bastrop, Texas. Alan Wall is a novelist, a short story writer, a poet, an essayist, and a professor of writing and literature at the University of Chester. His novels include Bless the Thief, China, The Lightning Cage, The School of Night, and Sylvies Riddle.

Author: Herbert Norris File Type: pdf Exuberantly written reference presents a kaleidoscopic panorama of clothing styles worn in period covering the last years of George III to latter part of Victorias reign. Charming descriptions and illustrations of such authentic outfits as a French court dress (1818), Garibaldi shirt (1861), and evening dress (1865). 200 black-and-white, 27 colorillustrations.

Author: Stephen Mumford File Type: pdf Mumford outlines a major new theory of natural laws. His book begins with the question of whether there are any genuinely law-like phenomena in nature. The discussion addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians such as whether the laws of nature are necessary or contingent and whether a property can be identified independently of its causal role. Mumford outlines a major new theory of natural laws. His book begins with the question of whether there are any genuinely law-like phenomena in nature. The discussion addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians such as whether the laws of nature are necessary or contingent and whether a property can be identified independently of its causal role.ReviewIts boldness and thoroughness, combined with its readability, make this a book that anybody concerned with the metaphysics of laws will wish to read. They will be informed and stimulated by it.- The Australasian Journal of PhilosophyMumfords book is an important contribution to metaphysics. If you disagree with [Mumford], you are bound to have a lot of serious work to do. This is metaphysics at its best. - Brian Ellis, La Trobe University, AustraliaAn important and original contribution to the growing literature in defence of powers. The British Journal for the Philosophy of ScienceAbout the AuthorStephen Mumford is Reader in Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Dispositions (1998) and various papers in metaphysics. He is editor of Russell on Metaphysics (2003) and Powers by the late George Molnar (2003).