Download or read book The Early History of Greed written by Richard Newhauser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-20 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of avarice as the deadliest vice in western Europe has been said to begin in earnest only with the rise of capitalism or, earlier, the rise of a money economy. In this first full-length study of the early history of greed, Richard Newhauser shows that avaritia, the sin of greed for possessions, has a much longer history, and is more important for an understanding of the Middle Ages, than has previously been allowed. His examination of theological and literary texts composed between the first century CE and the tenth century reveals new significance in the portrayal of various kinds of greed, to the extent that by the early Middle Ages avarice was available to head the list of vices for authors engaged in the task of converting others from pagan materialism to Christian spirituality.
Download or read book Beyond the Dreams of Avarice written by Nancy H. Yeide and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ferguson tells the human story behind the evolution of money, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest Wall Street upheavals. The author shows that finance is, in fact, the foundation of human progress.
Download or read book Avarice The Avaricious written by Al-Jahiz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-05 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a translation, accurate and readable, of one of the wittiest pieces of medieval Arabic prose — Abu ‘Uthman al-Jahiz’s Avarice and the Avaricious. In the opinion of most Arab literary critics, Abu ‘Uthman al-Jahiz is one of the finest writers of Arabic of all time, described as the "sultan of style" and the very symbol of literary ability. He was a native of the city of Basra in southern Iraq, then the commercial and intellectual centre of the recently established Abbasid caliphate and the crucible where Islamic culture crystallised and assumed its form. Jahiz is characterised by wit, satire, irony and a wide-ranging erudition pinned to sharp observation of character. His language is agile and vigorous, lucid and precise. It is formally literary but inspired by the rhythms of ordinary speech. Digression and anecdote are commonplace as he passes seamlessly from the serious to the entertaining (and back again) for the improvement and pleasure of his readers. Hypocrisy and pretension are his targets. Reason, good sense, and a wholly uncynical good humour — the very salt of mirth — are his weapons. These qualities can all be found in the present work; one of his best-known books and, as the title suggests, an expose of the vice of miserliness among his contemporaries.
Download or read book Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France written by Jonathan Patterson and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did people talk so much about avarice in late Renaissance France, nearly a century before Moliere's famous comedy, L'Avare? As wars and economic crises ravaged France on the threshold of modernity, avarice was said to be flourishing as never before. Yet by the late sixteenth century, a number of French writers would argue that in some contexts, avaricious behaviour was not straightforwardly sinful or harmful. Considerations of social rank, gender, object pursued, time, and circumstance led some to question age-old beliefs. Traditionally reviled groups (rapacious usurers, greedy lawyers, miserly fathers, covetous women) might still exhibit unmistakable signs of avarice -- but perhaps not invariably, in an age of shifting social, economic and intellectual values. Across a large, diverse corpus of French texts, Jonathan Patterson shows how a range of flexible genres nourished by humanism tended to offset traditional condemnation of avarice and avares with innovative, mitigating perspectives, arising from subjective experience. In such writings, an avaricious disposition could be re-described as something less vicious, excusable, or even expedient. In this word history of avarice, close readings of well-known authors (Marguerite de Navarre, Ronsard, Montaigne), and of their lesser-known contemporaries are connected to broader socio-economic developments of the late French Renaissance (c.1540-1615). The final chapter situates key themes in relation to Moliere's L'Avare. As such, Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France newly illuminates debates about avarice within broader cultural preoccupations surrounding gender, enrichment and status in early modern France.
Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.
Download or read book Avarice written by Pete Brassett and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An exceptionally good crime thriller, loved the Scottish setting" Gary Miller When a body is found in a remote Scottish glen, DI Munro comes out of retirement to investigate The Police chief wants everything wrapped up before the upcoming regatta, but the locals are remarkably unforthcoming with helpful information. Sassy and quick, London detective sergeant Charlotte West is roped in by DI Munro to help solve what is now a murder case. It is good police work that will unravel the truth behind the crime, but not without ruffling a few feathers first. Will the killer escape the sharp-witted detectives' grasp? If you enjoy a whodunnit with a twist, this atmospheric novel is for you Set in the coastal town of Inverkip in the north-west of Scotland, AVARICE is a straightforward murder mystery with more twists and turns than Spaghetti Junction. No blood, no gore, no serial killers! But it's a cracker. AVARICE is the second book by Pete Brassett to feature DI Munro and DS West, the detectives that first appeared in SHE. It's not a sequel and can be read as a standalone. However, those who have read SHE will have a head start on the characters' profiles. The third book, ENMITY, is also now available. Look out for Pete Brassett's many other titles on Kindle, including The Girl From Kilkenny, Prayer for the Dying and Kiss The Girls.
Download or read book Ambition A History written by William Casey King and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is “ambitious” a compliment? It depends: “[A] masterpiece of intellectual and cultural history.”—David Brion Davis, author of Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World From rags to riches, log house to White House, enslaved to liberator, ghetto to CEO, ambition fuels the American Dream. Yet at the time of the nation's founding, ambition was viewed as a dangerous vice, everything from “a canker on the soul” to the impetus for original sin. This engaging book explores ambition’s surprising transformation, tracing attitudes from classical antiquity to early modern Europe to the New World and America’s founding. From this broad historical perspective, William Casey King deepens our understanding of the American mythos and offers a striking reinterpretation of the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. Through an innovative array of sources and authors—Aquinas, Dante, Machiavelli, the Geneva Bible, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and many others—King demonstrates that a transformed view of ambition became possible the moment Europe realized that Columbus had discovered not a new route but a new world. In addition the author argues that reconstituting ambition as a virtue was a necessary precondition of the American republic. The book suggests that even in the twenty-first century, ambition has never fully lost its ties to vice and continues to exhibit a dual nature—positive or negative depending upon the ends, the means, and the individual involved.
Download or read book A History of Gold and Money 1450 to 1920 written by Pierre Vilar and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of human history, the motive force behind war, conquest, social conflict and world exploration has been the drive to acquire gold. From the ancient world of Croesus to the wealthy dynasties of Renaissance Italy, from the earliest European explorations into Africa, America, and Asia to the gold rushes of the nineteenth century and the banking crises that lay beyond them, Pierre Vilar depicts the awesome power of avarice to structure the world in which we live. The insidious power of gold and money is the subject of this enlightening and entertaining history. The age of exploration brought an influx of treasure into Western Europe, prompting disputes between theologians and early economists over the causes of inflation in the sixteenth century. In time, American silver distorted metropolitan Spanish society beyond recognition. Vilar goes on to examine the roots of the modern banking and financial systems in institutions founded in Holland, England and France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And in the nineteenth century, the gold rushes of Australia, California and South Africa generated new modifications in the international monetary system. Vilar concludes the story of these developments with a discussion of the crisis of the 1920s that, in the wake of the world credit crash of 2008, is more pertinent than ever. A History of Gold and Money provides a unique work of synthesis on the role of money in modern economic history.
Download or read book Avarice a History written by Stanton Arthur Coblentz and published by Washington, Public Affairs Press. This book was released on 1965 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Very Recent History written by Choire Sicha and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very Recent History by Choire Sicha is an idiosyncratic and elegant narrative that follows a handful of young men in New York City as they navigate the ruins of money and power—in search of love and connection. After the Wall Street crash of 2008, the richest man in town is the mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season’s fashions, even as the country’s economy turns inside out. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and out of love, and trying to navigate the strange world they traffic in: the Internet, complex financial markets, credit cards, pop stars, micro-plane cheese graters, and sex apps. A true-life fable of money, sex, and politics, Choire Sicha’s Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City turns our focus to a year in the life of a great city.
Download or read book Pride and Avarice written by Nicholas Coleridge and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed by The New Yorker as "wickedly enjoyable," Nicholas Coleridge's newest novel is a sharp comedy of manners about two powerful men engaged in a bitter rivalry. Their feud rages from the boardroom to the bedroom as old money takes on the new Gazing from his magnificent Chawbury Manor, Miles Straker has it all. But when noveau riche Ross Clegg buys and builds on the land adjoining his country estate, ruining his perfect view, Miles is irate. Even worse, Ross is quickly taken up by the country gentry, who admire his success and his down-to-earth manners. But Miles is a dangerous enemy and he vows to take the Clegg empire apart piece by piece. A rich read full of wit, Pride and Avarice is sure to be Coleridge's biggest selling book to date.
Download or read book The Devil s Riches written by Jared Poley and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A seeming constant in the history of capitalism, greed has nonetheless undergone considerable transformations over the last five hundred years. This multilayered account offers a fresh take on an old topic, arguing that greed was experienced as a moral phenomenon and deployed to make sense of an unjust world. Focusing specifically on the interrelated themes of religion, economics, and health—each of which sought to study and channel the power of financial desire—Jared Poley shows how evolving ideas about greed became formative elements of the modern experience.
Download or read book Origin Story written by David Christian and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This New York Times bestseller "elegantly weaves evidence and insights . . . into a single, accessible historical narrative" (Bill Gates) and presents a captivating history of the universe -- from the Big Bang to dinosaurs to mass globalization and beyond. Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day -- and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History," the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. In Origin Story, Christian takes readers on a wild ride through the entire 13.8 billion years we've come to know as "history." By focusing on defining events (thresholds), major trends, and profound questions about our origins, Christian exposes the hidden threads that tie everything together -- from the creation of the planet to the advent of agriculture, nuclear war, and beyond. With stunning insights into the origin of the universe, the beginning of life, the emergence of humans, and what the future might bring, Origin Story boldly reframes our place in the cosmos.
Download or read book A Concise History of Revolution written by Mehran Kamrava and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From rebellion to revolution -- Social movements and revolution -- Revolutionary states -- Revolutionary polities.
Download or read book A Source Book for Medi val History written by Oliver J. Thatcher and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Source Book for Mediæval History is a scholarly piece by Oliver J. Thatcher. It covers all major historical events and leaders from the Germania of Tacitus in the 1st century to the decrees of the Hanseatic League in the 13th century.
Download or read book A People s History of the United States written by Howard Zinn and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2003-02-04 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools -- with its emphasis on great men in high places -- to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles -- the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality -- were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history. Revised, updated, and featuring a new after, word by the author, this special twentieth anniversary edition continues Zinn's important contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.
