Author: Edward Freeman File Type: epub We, conquered by William, have liberated the Conquerors land. So reads the memorial to the British war dead at Bayeaux, Normandy. Commemorating those who gave their lives to free France in 1944, it also serves to remind us of an earlier conflict. For the English, the Norman conquest remains deeply embedded in the national psyche. As the last contested military invasion to have succeeded in conquering this proud island nation, the date of 1066 is the one every citizen can remember. For them, William will forever be the Conqueror, the last invader to beat them in an open fight. For others, notably the French, he is the Bastard, a reference not only to his lineage. Williams conquest of the island arguably made him the most important figure in shaping the course of English history, but modern caricatures of this vitally important medieval figure are largely based on ignorance. William is a fascinating and complex figure, in many ways the quintessential warrior king of this period. Inheriting the Duchy of Normandy while still an infant and forced to fight for his domain almost ceaselessly during his early years, William went on to conquer and rule England, five times larger and three times wealthier. In doing so, he demonstrated sophisticated political and diplomatic skill, military prowess and administrative acumen. Although he lived by the sword, he was a devout man who had only one wife, to whom he remained faithful. However, peering back nearly 1,000 years to understand William does not just require a suspension of 21st century values and prejudices, because the evidence itself is far from complete. The historical record includes chronicles and documents, most notably the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the famous Domesday Book and the Bayeux tapestry, leaving scholars to attempt the meticulous and painstaking process of piecing together the narrative of his life and determining what William and the Normans might actually have been like. At the same time, those scholars are the first to admit the limitations of these abilities, since the few people who could write in medieval England and Normandy often had important agendas and prejudices of their own, or they were recording events decades after they occurred. **About the Author Dante Alighieri (c.1265 1321) is the author of The Divine Comedy, a masterpiece of world literature.
Author: Kenji Miyazawa
File Type: pdf
The poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) was an early twentieth-century Japanese modernist who today is known worldwide for his poetry and stories as well as his devotion to Buddhism. Miyazawa Kenji Selections collects a wide range of his poetry and provides an excellent introduction to his life and work. Miyazawa was a teacher of agriculture by profession and largely unknown as a poet until after his death. Since then his work has increasingly attracted a devoted following, especially among ecologists, Buddhists, and the literary avant-garde. This volume includes poems translated by Gary Snyder, who was the first to translate a substantial body of Miyazawas work into English. Hiroaki Satos own superb translations, many never before published, demonstrate his deep familiarity with Miyazawas poetry. His remarkable introduction considers the poets significance and suggests ways for contemporary readers to approach his work. It further places developments in Japanese poetry into a global context during the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition the book features a Foreword by the poet Geoffrey OBrien and essays by Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael OBrien.
Author: Kieran Durkin
File Type: pdf
This book argues that Fromm is a vital and largely overlooked contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history, and one who offers a refreshingly reconfigured form of humanism that is capable of reintegrating explicitly humanist analytical categories and schemas back into social theoretical (and scientific) considerations. **
Author: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
File Type: epub
A deeply enlightening book on how to be persuasive from an inspiring philosopher who teaches one of the most popular open online coursesOur personal and political worlds are rife with arguments and disagreements, some of them petty and vitriolic. The inability to compromise and understand the other side is widespread today. What can we do to change this? In Think Again philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong draws on a long tradition of logic to show why we should stop focusing on winning arguments and instead argue in a more constructive way.
Author: Blake Bailey
File Type: epub
Amazon.com ReviewCheever A Life, the author of Cheever is rich with detail and chronicles the mournful arc of a lifetime struggling with a core duplicity that ached throughout his writing life--despite a 41-year marriage, Cheever was a closeted bisexual who simmered with self-loathing. Bailey covers the authors childhood, his time in the army, his life as a writer and his literary rivals (Salinger, in particular, seemed to irritate him), his alcoholism (he would struggle against taking that first scoop of gin from the pantry every morning while he was writing), and his struggle to play the role of suburban family man. The book is peppered with literary cameos Updike, Bellow, and Roth are there, along with his Iowa Writers Workshop students T.C. Boyle, Ron Hansen, and Allan Gurganus. (While at Iowa Cheever made it a weekly ritual to watch Monday Night Football and eat homemade pasta with fellow instructor John Irving.) Bailey also edited two Library of America editions of Cheevers --Brad Thomas ParsonsFrom Publishers WeeklyRebellious Yankee son of a father who fell victim to the Depression and a doo-gooder-turned-businesswoman mother, father to three competitive children he rode mercilessly but adored, chronicler par excellence of the 1950s American suburban scene while deploring all forms of conformity John Cheever (19121982) was a mass of contradictions. In this overlong but always entertaining biography, composed with a novelists eye, Bailey, biographer of Richard Yates and editor of two volumes of Cheevers work for Library of America (also due in March), was given access to unpublished portions of Cheevers famous journals and to family members and friends. Baileys book is fine in descriptions of Cheevers reactions to other writers, such as his adored Bellow and detested Salinger. Bailey is also sensitive in describing the prickly dynamic of Cheevers domestic life, lived through a haze of alcoholism and under the shadow of extramarital heterosexual and homosexual relationships. This Ovid in Ossining, who published 121 stories in the New Yorker as well as several bestselling novels, has probably yet to find a definitive position in American letters among academicians. This thoroughly researched and heartfelt biography may help redress that situation. 24 pages of photos. (Mar. 12) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Author: Yeonmi Park
File Type: epub
Yeonmi Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape. Parks family was loving and close-knit, but life in North Korea was brutal, practically medieval. Park would regularly go without food and was made to believe that, Kim Jong Il, the countrys dictator, could read her mind. After her father was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for trading on the black-market, a risk he took in order to provide for his wife and two young daughters, Yeonmi and her family were branded as criminals and forced to the cruel margins of North Korean society. With thirteen-year-old Park suffering from a botched appendectomy and weighing a mere sixty pounds, she and her mother were smuggled across the border into China. I wasnt dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea. I didnt even know what it meant to be free. All I knew was that if my family stayed behind, we would probably diefrom starvation, from disease, from the inhuman conditions of a prison labor camp. The hunger had become unbearable I was willing to risk my life for the promise of a bowl of rice. But there was more to our journey than our own survival. My mother and I were searching for my older sister, Eunmi, who had left for China a few days earlier and had not been heard from since. Park knew the journey would be difficult, but could not have imagined the extent of the hardship to come. Those years in China cost Park her childhood, and nearly her life. By the time she and her mother made their way to South Korea two years later, her father was dead and her sister was still missing. Before now, only her mother knew what really happened between the time they crossed the Yalu river into China and when they followed the stars through the frigid Gobi Desert to freedom. As she writes, I convinced myself that a lot of what I had experienced never happened. I taught myself to forget the rest. In In Order to Live, Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Koreaand to freedom. Still in her early twenties, Yeonmi Park has lived through experiences that few people of any age will ever knowand most people would never recover from. Park confronts her past with a startling resilience, refusing to be defeated or defined by the circumstances of her former life in North Korea and China. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Parks testimony is rare, edifying, and terribly important, and the story she tells in In Order to Live is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. Her voice is riveting and dignified. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable. **Review Clear-eyed and devastating Observer One of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard - and one of the most inspiring ... A book to make you newly thankful for the freedom you have never been forced to fight for. The Bookseller An eloquent, wrenchingly honest work that vividly represents the plight of many North Koreans Kirkus About the Author Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist who was born in North Korea.
Author: Martin Hose
File Type: pdf
A Companion to Greek Literature presents a comprehensive introduction to the wide range of texts and literary forms produced in the Greek language over the course of a millennium beginning from the 6th century BCE up to the early years of the Byzantine Empire. Features contributions from a wide range of established experts and emerging scholars of Greek literature Offers comprehensive coverage of the many genres and literary forms produced by the ancient Greeksincluding epic and lyric poetry, oratory, historiography, biography, philosophy, the novel, and technical literature Includes readings that address the production and transmission of ancient Greek texts, historic reception, individual authors, and much more Explores the subject of ancient Greek literature in innovative ways
Author: Lisa Fay Coutley
File Type: pdf
Lisa Fay Coutleys lyrical debut collection, Errata, investigates the delicate balance between parent and child, love and loss, hope and grief. Erratas narrator reflects on struggles and fears that span generations in compositions that are at once musical and bleak. Coutleys narrative journey is often a dark one, exploring not only the loss of loved ones but also the potential to lose ones very self. The collection unravels the lingering consequences of abuse and addiction, yet threads of hope and determination weave a finely wrought path through the dark side of human relationships, illuminating the power of the will to survive. Coutleys sharp yet tender collection will both haunt readers and move them to reflect, to remember, and most of all, to persevere.