Author: Charles Perrault File Type: pdf A pumpkin is transformed into a coach. Bluebeards young wife unlocks the door of the forbidden room. Children lost in the forest find shelter, but the house belongs to an ogre. These and many other scenes from the stories of Charles Perrault reach deep into the imagination and are never forgotten. Now, in this scintillating new translation, the fairy tales of Perrault--stories that are known and loved around the world--are available in a beautiful gift edition. This superb translation by Christopher Betts exactly captures the tone and flavor of Perraults world, and the delightful spirit of the originals. In addition to the classic prose tales--including The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Little Red Riding-Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and Hop o my Thumb--this new translation adds Perraults tales in verse a long poem on the subject of Patient Griselda the notorious Donkey-Skin, often expunged from nineteenth-century collections and the comic Three Silly Wishes. Betts introduction deftly illuminates why in Perraults hands these humble fairly tales have such great imaginative power, showing how they transmute into vivid fantasies the hidden fears and conflicts by which children are affected--fears of abandonment, conflicts with siblings and parents--and resolve so satisfactorily the problems experienced by children during the process of growing up. The volume also includes appendices on related tales and selected variants, a bibliography, chronology, and notes. With twenty-six stunning illustrations by Gustave Dori, an attractive ribbon marker, and colorful end papers, this wonderful collection of Perraults fairy tales will make a delightful gift for children of any age.

Author: David Bates File Type: pdf With the rise of cognitive science and the revolution in neuroscience, it is now commonplace to assume that the study of a human persona thinking, feeling, acting subjectis ultimately the study of the human brain. In both Europe and the United States, massive state-funded research is focused on mapping the brain in all its remarkable complexity. The metaphors employed are largely technological A wiring diagram of synaptic connectivity will lead to a better understanding of human behavior and perhaps insights into the breakdown of human personhood with diseases of the brain such as Alzheimers. Alongside this technologized discourse of the brain as locus of human subjectivity we find another perspective, one that emphasizes its essential plasticityin both the developmental sense and as a response to traumas such as strokes, tumors, or gunshot wounds. This collection of essays brings together a diverse range of scholars to investigate how the neural subject of the twenty-first century came to be. Taking approaches both historical and theoretical, they probe the possibilities and limits of neuroscientific understandings of human experience. Topics include landmark studies in the history of neuroscience, the relationship between neural and technological pathologies, and analyses of contemporary concepts of plasticity and pathology in cognitive neuroscience. Central to the volume is a critical examination of the relationship between pathology and plasticity. Because pathology is often the occasion for neural reorganization and adaptation, it exists not in opposition to the brains normal operation but instead as something intimately connected to our ways of being and understanding. **

Author: Jason Kersten File Type: mobi Read Jason Kerstens posts on the Penguin Blog. br The true story of a brilliant counterfeiter who made millions, outwitted the Secret Service, and was finally undone when he went in search of the one thing his forged money couldnt buy him family.em br Art Williams spent his boyhood in a comfortable middle-class existence in 1970s Chicago, but his idyll was shattered when, in short order, his father abandoned the family, his bipolar mother lost her wits, and Williams found himself living in one of Chicagos worst housing projects. He took to crime almost immediately, starting with petty theft before graduating to robbing drug dealers. Eventually a man nicknamed DaVinci taught him the centuries-old art of counterfeiting. After a stint in jail, Williams emerged to discover that the Treasury Department had issued the most secure hundred-dollar bill ever created the 1996 New Note. Williams spent months trying to defeat various security features before arriving at a bill so perfect that even law enforcement had difficulty distinguishing it from the real thing. Williams went on to print millions in counterfeit bills, selling them to criminal organizations and using them to fund cross-country spending sprees. Still unsatisfied, he went off in search of his long-lost father, setting in motion a chain of betrayals that would be his undoing.br In The Art of Making Money, journalist Jason Kersten details how Williams painstakingly defeated the anti-forging features of the New Note, how Williams and his partner-in-crime wife converted fake bills into legitimate tender at shopping malls all over America, and how they stayed one step ahead of the Secret Service until trusting the wrong person brought them all down. A compulsively readable story of how having it all is never enough, The Art of Making Money is a stirring portrait of the rise and inevitable fall of a modern-day criminal mastermind.br em Watch a Video hr hr hr hr From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. A young smalltime crook with a meticulous eye for artistic detail and an addiction to the thrill of crime crafts millions in high-quality phony bills in KerstenOs account of counterfeiter Art Williams Jr. Born in 1972 and abandoned by his father to poverty, the gritty gangs of Chicago and a mentally ill mother, Williams slid into an underworld of theft and violence before a bohemian money crafter introduced him to counterfeiting. With swagger, ingenuity and a devoted wife, Williams produced millions of dollarsO worth of uncannily accurate bills for 14 years, till the Secret Service caught up with him. As Kersten narrates this story, he ably weaves the minuscule details of currency security with colorful portraits of underworld characters like a Chinese mob leader known as the Horse and tales of giddy shopping sprees fueled by sex, fake bills, even mischievous masquerades as priests. Illustrating Williams not only as a delinquent genius but a sensitive young man seeking paternal love and aesthetic validation, Kersten (who first told WilliamsOs story in Rolling Stone) configures a rollicking and captivating look into a compelling criminal mind. (June 11) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. ReviewJason Kersten delves into the arcane world of a master counterfeiter with a fine eye for detail and novelists grasp of character. A story about fathers and sons, filled with crime-fueled slamming trips, drug pirates, and obsessive desire, I couldnt put it down. After reading this true tale of money and crime, Ill never be able to look at a C- note the same way again.-Julia Flynn Siler, author of the New York Times bestseller, The House of Mondavi The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty

Author: Martyn Lyons File Type: pdf This book investigates the history of writing as a cultural practice in a variety of contexts and periods. It analyses the rituals and practices determining intimate or ordinary writing as well as bureaucratic and religious writing. From the inscribed images of pre-literate societies, to the democratization of writing in the modern era, access to writing technology and its public and private uses are examined. In ten studies, presented by leading historians of scribal culture from seven countries, the book investigates the uses of writing in non-alphabetical as well as alphabetical script, in societies ranging from Native America and ancient Korea to modern Europe. The authors emphasise the material characteristics of writing, and in so doing they pose questions about the definition of writing itself. Drawing on expertise in various disciplines, they give an up-to-date account of the current state of knowledge in a field at the forefront of Book History. **