Download or read book Sophie s World written by Jostein Gaarder and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Download or read book The Mayor of Casterbridge written by Thomas Hardy and published by Thorndike Press. This book was released on 1886 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Hardy's most powerful novels, "The Mayor of Casterbridge" opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard--having gained power and success as the mayor--finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. "The Mayor of Casterbridge" is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin. This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative 1912 Wessex edition, as well as Hardy's map of Wessex.

Download or read book The Vagabond in Literature written by Arthur Compton-Rickett and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bibliographical notes": pages 206-[207] Foreword.--Introduction: The vagabond element in modern literature--I. William Hazlitt.--II. Thomas De Quincey.--III. George Borrow.--IV. Henry D. Thoreau.--V. Robert Louis Stevenson.--VI. Richard Jefferies.--VII. Walt Whitman.

Download or read book The English Novel written by George Saintsbury and published by Atlantic Publishers & Dist. This book was released on 1998 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book Is A Standard And Comprehensive Study Of The English Novel. It Would Be Found Highly Useful By The Students, Researchers And Teachers Of English Literature.

Download or read book Livre Des Sans foyer written by Edith Wharton and published by NEw York, C. Scribner. This book was released on 1916 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the course of fund-raising for civilian victims of World War I, Edith Wharton assembled this monumental benefit volume by drawing upon her connections to the era's leading authors and artists. The unique compilation forms a 'Who's Who' of early 20th century culture, featuring poetry, stories, illustrations, music and other contributions from scores of luminaries. ... Much of the text is presented in both English and French. Includes an Introduction by former U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt."--

Download or read book From Puritanism to Postmodernism written by Richard Ruland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.

Download or read book Aspiration written by Agnes Callard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Becoming someone is a learning process; and what we learn is the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn. Agents transform themselves in the process of, for example, becoming parents, embarking on careers, or acquiring a passion for music or politics. How can such activity be rational, if the reason for engaging in the relevant pursuit is only available to the person one will become? How is it psychologically possible to feel the attraction of a form of concern that is not yet one's own? How can the work done to arrive at the finish line be ascribed to one who doesn't (really) know what one is doing, or why one is doing it? In Aspiration, Agnes Callard asserts that these questions belong to the theory of aspiration. Aspirants are motivated by proleptic reasons, acknowledged defective versions of the reasons they expect to eventually grasp. The psychology of such a transformation is marked by intrinsic conflict between their old point of view on value and the one they are trying to acquire. They cannot adjudicate this conflict by deliberating or choosing or deciding-rather, they resolve it by working to see the world in a new way. This work has a teleological structure: by modeling oneself on the person he or she is trying to be, the aspirant brings that person into being. Because it is open to us to engage in an activity of self-creation, we are responsible for having become the kinds of people we are.

Download or read book Double Jeopardy written by Virginia B. Morris and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murder fascinates readers, and when a woman murders, that fascination is compounded. The paradox of mother, lover, or wife as killer fills us with shock. A woman's violence is unexpected, unacceptable. Yet killing an abusive man can make her a cultural heroine. In Double Jeopardy, Virginia Morris examines the complex roots of contemporary attitudes toward women who kill by providing a new perspective on violent women in Victorian literature. British novelists from Dickens to Hardy, in their characterizations, contradicted the traditional Western assumption that women criminals were "unnatural." The strongest evidence of their view is that the novelists make the women's victims deserve their violent death. Yet the women characters who commit murder are punished because their sympathetic Victorian creators had internalized the cultural biases that expected women to be passive and subservient. Fictional women, like their real-life counterparts, were doubly guilty: in defying the law, they also defied their gender role. Because they were "unwomanly," they were thought worse than male criminals—more vicious and more incorrigible. At the same time, they often got special treatment from the police and the courts simply because they were women. These contradictory attitudes reveal the critical significance of gender in defining criminal behavior and in fixing punishments. Morris provides literary and historical background for the novelists' ideas about women killers and traces the evolving notion that abused or misused women were capable of using justifiable—if unforgivable—violence. She argues that the criminal women in Victorian literature epitomize the ambivalent position of women generally and the particular vulnerability of a deviant minority. Her book is a valuable resource for readers concerned with criminology, literature, and feminist studies.

Download or read book Inventing the Future written by Nick Srnicek and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new manifesto offers a “clear and compelling vision of a postcapitalist society” and shows how left-wing politics can be rebuilt for the 21st century (Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism) Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite. Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms. This new edition includes a new chapter where they respond to their various critics.

Download or read book A History of Appalachia written by Richard B. Drake and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Drake has skillfully woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole. Touching upon folk traditions, health care, the environment, higher education, the role of blacks and women, and much more, Drake offers a compelling social history of a unique American region. The Appalachian region, extending from Alabama in the South up to the Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania, has historically been characterized by its largely rural populations, rich natural resources that have fueled industry in other parts of the country, and the strong and wild, undeveloped land. The rugged geography of the region allowed Native American societies, especially the Cherokee, to flourish. Early white settlers tended to favor a self-sufficient approach to farming, contrary to the land grabbing and plantation building going on elsewhere in the South. The growth of a market economy and competition from other agricultural areas of the country sparked an economic decline of the region's rural population at least as early as 1830. The Civil War and the sometimes hostile legislation of Reconstruction made life even more difficult for rural Appalachians. Recent history of the region is marked by the corporate exploitation of resources. Regional oil, gas, and coal had attracted some industry even before the Civil War, but the postwar years saw an immense expansion of American industry, nearly all of which relied heavily on Appalachian fossil fuels, particularly coal. What was initially a boon to the region eventually brought financial disaster to many mountain people as unsafe working conditions and strip mining ravaged the land and its inhabitants. A History of Appalachia also examines pockets of urbanization in Appalachia. Chemical, textile, and other industries have encouraged the development of urban areas. At the same time, radio, television, and the internet provide residents direct links to cultures from all over the world. The author looks at the process of urbanization as it belies commonly held notions about the region's rural character.

Download or read book Property written by Valerie Martin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE • Set in 1828 on a Louisiana sugar plantation, this novel from the bestselling author of Mary Reilly presents a “fresh, unsentimental look at what slave-owning does to (and for) one's interior life.... The writing—so prised and clean limbed—is a marvel" (Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved). Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress. Exploring the permutations of Manon’s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.

Download or read book The Letters of Virginia Woolf written by Virginia Woolf and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Tess of the D Urbervilles Study Guide written by Thomas Hardy and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-25 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The novel is set in impoverished rural England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated peasants. ... He notices Tess too late to dance with her, as he is already late for his promised return to his brothers.

Download or read book Bed in Summer written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published by . This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an illustrated poem about a little girl having to be in bed during daylight hours.

Download or read book The Emperor of All Maladies written by Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Download or read book Literature of the Low Countries written by Reinder P. Meijer and published by Ardent Media. This book was released on 1971 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: