For the last 2,500 years literature has been attacked, booed, and condemned, often for the wrong reasons and occasionally for very good ones. The Hatred of Literature examines the evolving idea of literature as seen through the eyes of its adversaries: philosophers, theologians, scientists, pedagogues, and even leaders of modern liberal democracies. From Plato to C. P. Snow to Nicolas Sarkozy, literature’s haters have questioned the value of literature—its truthfulness, virtue, an...

How we build our invisible librariesErich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left his physical library behind when he fled to Istanbul to escape the Nazis, he was forced to rely on the invisible library of his mind. Each of us has such a library—if not as extensive as Auerbach’s—even if we are unaware of it. In this erudite and provocative book, William M...

F.Scott Fitzgerald - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 02. O.Henry - The Gift of the Magi 03. Mark Twain - On The Decay of the Art of Lying 04. Sun Tzu - The Art of War 05. E.A. Poe - The Raven 06. Kahlil Gibran - The Madman 07. W.W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw 08. Anonymous - Aladdin 09. The Founding Fathers - The Declaration of Independence 10. Plato - The Apology of Socrates 11. Lord Alfred Tennyson - Charge of the Light Brigade 12. T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land 13. William Dean How...

What Makes the Rich Richer and the Poor Poorer? Through this question, this book deals with the effect of capitalist competition on the social classes.

T. S. Eliot was raised in the Unitarian faith of his family in St. Louis but drifted away from their beliefs while studying philosophy, mysticism, and anthropology at Harvard. During a year in Paris, he became involved with a group of Catholic writers and subsequently went through a gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity.Many studies of Eliot's writings have mentioned his religious beliefs, but most have failed to give the topic due weight, and many have misunderstood or misrep...

This collection offers more audio drama, comedy, biography, and documentary from veteran award-winning radio dramatist Joe Bevilacqua (a.k.a. Joe Bev). Together with his wife, Lorie Kellogg, Bevilacqua has amassed thousands of hours of audio entertainment through his Waterlogg Productions and Blackstone Audio.Each half hour is beautifully produced with an original cast of professional actors, sound effects, and music.Volume three includes"We Take You Now to Grover's...

In the eerie depths of the high seas, where shadows dance and secrets lurk, William Clark Russell's "The Phantom Death and Other Stories" beckons you into a realm of maritime mystery and suspense. Join a cast of enigmatic sailors, haunted by the specter of death and the unknown. From the chilling tale of a phantom ship to the haunting echoes of a lost love, these stories will grip your imagination and leave you questioning the boundaries between reality and the supernatural. Prepare to emb...

A wide-ranging collection of essays on the importance and meaning of literature by "one of the most influential thinkers of our time" ( Los Angeles Times).In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over the course of his long and celebrated career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understand the chemistry of [his] passion" for the word. From musings on Ptolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's...

Anarchism has been both a vision of a peaceful, cooperative society—and an ideology of revolutionary terror. Since the term itself—anarchism—is a negation, there is a great deal of disagreement on what the positive alternative would look like. The black flag comes in many colors.The Anarchist Handbook is an opportunity for all these many varied voices to speak for themselves, from across the decades. These were human beings who saw things differently from their fellow men...

A panoramic history of rules in the Western worldRules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don’t, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Weste...

The #1 New York Times–bestselling political humorist reads Adam Smith's classic economic treatise—so you don't have to.Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long. The original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes—including the blockbuster sixty-seven-page "Digression concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver during th...

The renowned French philosopher's "ode to love's power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain" ( Publishers Weekly).In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud's famous line "love needs reinventing," In Praise of Love is the celebrated...