In this spiritual sequel to his influential Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks examines the dangerously alluring power of storytelling.“There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can defeat it.” So begins the scholar and literary critic Peter Brooks’s reckoning with today’s flourishing cult of story.Forty years after publishing his seminal work Reading for the Plot, his important contribution...

Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way.Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters ...

In this enthralling re-creation of American novelist Henry James' famous ten-month trip around the United States, lauded critic Peter Brooks brings to life both the literary giant and America in its Gilded Age.In 1904, after two decades of living and travelling abroad, Henry James returned to the United States to discover a world drastically different from the one he had left behind. Suddenly, the future of the world seemed to be in his native land, which he had on...

From eminent critic Peter Brooks, an exploration of the modern preoccupation with identity"We know that it matters crucially to be able to say who we are, why we are here, and where we are going," Peter Brooks writes in Enigmas of Identity. Many of us are also uncomfortably aware that we cannot provide a convincing account of our identity to others or even ourselves. Despite or because of that failure, we keep searching for identity, making it up, trying t...

Realist Vision explores the claim to represent the world as it is.” Peter Brooks takes a new look at the realist tradition and its intense interest in the visual. Discussing major English and French novels and paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Brooks provides a lively and perceptive view of the realist project.Centering each chapter on a single novel or group of paintings, Brooks examines the invention” of realism beginning with Balzac and Dick...

Napoleon, twenty years dead, rises like a phoenix over the politics of France and the destinies of three lovers.Against the historical backdrop of the French expedition in 1840 to retrieve Napoleon's body from Saint Helena, two men and a woman find themselves engulfed in long-dormant and dangerous political passions.Philippe de Rohan-Chabot, an aristocratic young diplomat, is charged with bringing the body from the island prison where Napoleon died to a glor...

Dive into a cinematic and gaming exploration of the climate crisis with eco-feminist insights from Paola Merrill, Jonna Jinton, Leena Henningsen, and others. Uncover connections between biking, the industrial revolution, and Tesla's green innovations. This artistically expressed guide, rooted in liberal arts, provides a step-by-step understanding of climate change for a broad audience and offers crucial support for students. Delve into history, learn to decrease your carbon footprint, and ...

A book on the experience of reading Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine which recounts the process of Peter Brooks's own discovery of Balzac. A personal account of coming to terms with Balzac: moving from more classical and restrained authors to the highly-coloured melodramatic novels of the Human Comedy, which give us the dynamics of a new and challenging world on the threshold of modernity. This volume shows readers how to read, and to love reading, Balzac, and how ...

'the social kaleidoscope was shifting' The Guermantes Way, the third volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, provides a transition from the realm of adolescence into the adult social world of Belle Epoque Paris. Its pages buzz with worldly conversations, with bravado and posturing, infatuation, scandal, prejudice, and intrigue. To the fore is Proust's ear for spoken language and how it provides a stage for human foibles as well as inventiveness ...

From a distinguished literary historian, a look at Gustave Flaubert and his correspondence with George Sand during France's "terrible year" -- summer 1870 through spring 1871From the summer of 1870 through the spring of 1871, France suffered a humiliating defeat in its war against Prussia and witnessed bloody class warfare that culminated in the crushing of the Paris Commune. In Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris, Peter Brooks examines why Flaubert thought his...

Adopting Service Governance provides a useful umbrella for a number of frameworks including ITIL®, TOGAF®, COBIT®, ITSM, BSM, Business Analysis, Programme Management, Management of Value, Management of Portfolios and Management of Risk by establishing the top-down governance of an organisation through services. This publication shows how the IT service metaphor enables governance. It shows how ITIL, as a fundamental framework, supports service governance. It also includes references to MoR...

The publication embeds ITIL best-practice advice with scenarios derived from practical experience, to illustrate approaches and negotiate possible pitfalls to help deliver successful service management projects. It is a management guide to practical adoption of ITIL principles, complementary to the core publications. Containing practical guidance for internal and external consultants, this book covers all the important techniques you need to collaborate with stakeholders in setting and del...