Download or read book Torture Garden written by Octave Mirbeau and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One evening some friends were gathered at the home of one of our most celebrated writers. Having dined sumptuously, they were discussing murder—apropos of what, I no longer remember probably apropos of nothing. Only men were present: moralists, poets, philosophers and doctors—thus everyone could speak freely, according to his whim, his hobby or his idiosyncrasies, without fear of suddenly seeing that expression of horror and fear which the least startling idea traces upon the horrified face of a notary. I—say notary, much as I might have said lawyer or porter, not disdainfully, of course, but in order to define the average French mind. With a calmness of spirit as perfect as though he were expressing an opinion upon the merits of the cigar he was smoking, a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences said: “Really—I honestly believe that murder is the greatest human preoccupation, and that all our acts stem from it... “ We awaited the pronouncement of an involved theory, but he remained silent. “Absolutely!” said a Darwinian scientist, “and, my friend, you are voicing one of those eternal truths such as the legendary Monsieur de La Palisse discovered every day: since murder is the very bedrock of our social institutions, and consequently the most imperious necessity of civilized life. If it no longer existed, there would be no governments of any kind, by virtue of the admirable fact that crime in general and murder in particular are not only their excuse, but their only reason for being. We should then live in complete anarchy, which is inconceivable. So, instead of seeking to eliminate murder, it is imperative that it be cultivated with intelligence and perseverance. I know no better culture medium than law.” Someone protested. “Here, here!” asked the savant, “aren't we alone, and speaking frankly?” “Please!” said the host, “let us profit thoroughly by the only occasion when we are free to express our personal ideas, for both I, in my books, and you in your turn, may present only lies to the public.” The scientist settled himself once more among the cushions of his armchair, stretched his legs, which were numb from being crossed too long and, his head thrown back, his arms hanging and his stomach soothed by good digestion, puffed smoke−rings at the ceiling: “Besides,” he continued, “murder is largely self−propagating. Actually, it is not the result of this or that passion, nor is it a pathological form of degeneracy. It is a vital instinct which is in us all—which is in all organized beings and dominates them, just as the genetic instinct. And most of the time it is especially true that these two instincts fuse so well, and are so totally interchangeable, that in some way or other they form a single and identical instinct, so that we no longer may tell which of the two urges us to give life, and which to take it—which is murder, and which love. I have been the confidant of an honorable assassin who killed women, not to rob them, but to ravish them. His trick was to manage things so that his sexual climax coincided exactly with the death−spasm of the woman: 'At those moments,' he told me, 'I imagined I was a God, creating a world!”

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought written by Christopher John Murray and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2004 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work covers not only philosophy, but also all the other major disciplines, including literary theory, sociology, linguistics, political thought, theology, and more. The 240 analytical entries examine individuals such as Bergson, Durkheim, Mauss, Sartre, Beauvoir, Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Kristeva, and Derrida; specific disciplines such as the arts, anthropology, historiography, psychology, and sociology; key beliefs and methodologies such as Catholicism, deconstruction, feminism, Marxism, and phenomenology; themes and concepts such as freedom, language, media, and sexuality; and istorical, political, social, and intellectual context. --From publisher's decription.

Download or read book The Modern Procession written by Francis Alÿs and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the morning of Sunday, June 23, 2002, 100 participants gathered at The Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan, along with a 12-person Peruvian brass band, and a horse, dogs, and numerous palanquins, atop which sat replicas of three masterpieces from the museum's collection--Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Duchamp's ready-made "Bicycle Wheel" and a Giacometti--and a living representative of contemporary art, Kiki Smith. Three hours later they ended their procession at the museum's new temporary home, in Queens. Along the way, which ran from 11 West 53 Street, over the Queensboro Bridge, and up Queens Boulevard, the procession absorbed 100 additional participants, and enacted a very public spectacle--part saint's day procession and part secular celebration--of the museum's historic move to MoMA QNS.

Download or read book Invasion of the Sea written by Jules Verne and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-12 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First English edition of a classic Verne novel. Jules Verne, celebrated French author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days, wrote over 60 novels collected in the popular series "Voyages Extraordinaires." A handful of these have never been translated into English, including Invasion of the Sea, written in 1904 when large-scale canal digging was very much a part of the political, economic, and military strategy of the world's imperial powers. Instead of linking two seas, as existing canals (the Suez and the Panama) did, Verne proposed a canal that would create a sea in the heart of the Sahara Desert. The story raises a host of concerns — environmental, cultural, and political. The proposed sea threatens the nomadic way of life of those Islamic tribes living on the site, and they declare war. The ensuing struggle is finally resolved only by a cataclysmic natural event. This Wesleyan edition features notes, appendices and an introduction by Verne scholar Arthur B. Evans, as well as reproductions of the illustrations from the original French edition.

Download or read book Italy s Balkan Strategies 19th 20th Century written by Vojislav G. Pavlović and published by Balkanološki institut SANU. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Experience of Modernism written by John R. Gold and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1997 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using in-depth interviews with architects active between 1928-1953, Gold provides a sympathetic understanding of the Modern Movement's architectural role in reshaping British metropolitan cities in the post-war period.

Download or read book History of Zionism 1600 1918 written by Nahum Sokolow and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Iran written by John Henry Lorentz and published by Historical Dictionaries of Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East. This book was released on 2007 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an overview of specific events, movements, people, political and social groups, places, trends, and chronology. Allows for considerable exploration of a number of historical and contemporary topics and issues. The modern period, defined as 1800-present, is covered extensively.

Download or read book Ex foliations written by Terry Harpold and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Terry Harpold offers a sophisticated consideration of technologies of reading in the digital age.

Download or read book Max s Sandwich Book written by Max Halley and published by Bonnier Publishing Ltd.. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AS SEEN ON SUNDAY BRUNCH "GENIUS ... CHANGED THE WAY I'M GOING TO EAT FROM NOW ON ... THESE SANDWICHES ARE EPIC!" THE HAIRY BIKERS Max's Sandwich Book is the ultimate guide to creating perfection between two slices of bread. Max Halley owns Britain's most amazing sandwich shop. After working in some of the country's best restaurants, he realised that the sandwich, humanity's greatest invention, was due a renaissance. So Max decided to open his own place and reinvent the sandwich forever. Inside this book you will find: · Award-winning creations from his shop · Inspired variations on classic sandwiches · Brilliant, delicious ways to use your leftovers · Sandwiches for breakfast · Sandwiches for dinner · Sandwiches for dessert · And more than 100 recipes for making your own ingenious creations at home. Ham, Egg & Chips never tasted so good. Max is the owner of Max's Sandwich Shop in Crouch End, winner of the Observer Food Monthly Award for Best Cheap Eat in 2015. "Amazing" Russell Norman, author of Polpo "Max is a sensation!" Meera Sodha "The Ham, Egg & Chips is the best sandwich I've ever eaten in my life" Simon Rimmer, Sunday Brunch "Very, very good" Evening Standard

Download or read book Histories of Nations written by Peter Furtado and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback, this global bestseller is an engaging and informative read on the history of a diverse array of countries. Global histories tend to be written from the limited viewpoint of a single author and a single perspective, which results in an inevitable bias. In this book, however, twenty-eight different writers and scholars from around the world contribute, giving engaging, often passionate accounts of their own nation’s history. The countries featured in Histories of Nations have been selected to represent every continent and type of state: large and small; mature democracies and religious autocracies; states that have existed for thousands of years and those born as recently as the twentieth century. Each of these countries has a different relationship with history. In the United States, for example, the myth of the nation’s “historylessness” remains strong, but in China history is seen to play a crucial role in legitimizing three thousand years of imperial authority. “History wars” over the content of textbooks rage in countries as diverse as Australia, Russia, and Japan. Some countries, such as Iran or Egypt, are blessed—or cursed—with a glorious ancient history that the present cannot equal; others, such as Germany, must find ways of approaching and reconciling the pain of the recent past. Original, thought-provoking, and handy in its new paperback format, Histories of Nations is a crucial primer for the Global Age.

Download or read book At Home in the World written by Janet O'Shea and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-21 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling story of a beautiful and versatile South Indian dance form

Download or read book The Practice of Modernism written by John R. Gold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-06-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making extensive use of information gained from hours of in-depth interviews with architects, this new book examines the complex relationship between vision and subsequent practice in the saga of post-war urban reconstruction.

Download or read book Architecture of the Everyday written by Deborah Berke and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ordinary. Banal. Quotidian. These words are rarely used to praise architecture, but in fact they represent the interest of a growing number of architects looking to the everyday to escape the ever-quickening cycles of consumption and fashion that have reduced architecture to a series of stylistic fads. Architecture of the Everyday makes a plea for an architecture that is emphatically un-monumental, anti-heroic, and unconcerned with formal extravagance. Edited by Deborah Berke and Steven Harris, this collection of writings, photo-essays, and projects describes an architecture that draws strength from its simplicity, use of common materials, and relationship to other fields of study. Topics range from a website that explores the politics of domesticity, to a transformation of the sidewalk in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, to a discussion of the work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Contributors include Margaret Crawford, Peggy Deamer, Deborah Fausch, Ben Gianni and Mark Robbins, Joan Ockman, Ernest Pascucci, Alan Plattus, and Mary-Ann Ray. Deborah Berke and Steven Harris are currently associate professors of architecture at Yale University, and have their own practices in New York City.

Download or read book Jules Verne written by William Butcher and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2007-04-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highly readable narrative of a writing phenomenon. The world's most translated best-selling writer.

Download or read book Consuming Youth written by Robert Latham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the novels of Anne Rice to The Lost Boys, from The Terminator to cyberpunk science fiction, vampires and cyborgs have become strikingly visible figures within American popular culture, especially youth culture. In Consuming Youth, Rob Latham explains why, showing how fiction, film, and other media deploy these ambiguous monsters to embody and work through the implications of a capitalist system in which youth both consume and are consumed. Inspired by Marx's use of the cyborg vampire as a metaphor for the objectification of physical labor in the factory, Latham shows how contemporary images of vampires and cyborgs illuminate the contradictory processes of empowerment and exploitation that characterize the youth-consumer system. While the vampire is a voracious consumer driven by a hunger for perpetual youth, the cyborg has incorporated the machineries of consumption into its own flesh. Powerful fusions of technology and desire, these paired images symbolize the forms of labor and leisure that American society has staked out for contemporary youth. A startling look at youth in our time, Consuming Youth will interest anyone concerned with film, television, and popular culture.

Download or read book Journey Through the Impossible written by Jules Verne and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first complete edition and the first English translation of a surprising work by a popular French novelist whose work continues to delight readers to this day.