Download or read book The Praise of Folly written by Desiderius Erasmus and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Banvard s Folly written by Paul Collins and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical record crowns success. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated. Paul Collins' Banvard's Folly is a different kind of book. Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck--or perhaps some combination of them all--leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells. Collins brings them back to glorious life. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as "The Three Mile Painting") made him the richest and most famous artist of his day. . . before he decided to go head to head with P. T. Barnum. René Blondot was a distinguished French physicist whose celebrated discovery of a new form of radiation, called the N-Ray, went terribly awry. At the tender age of seventeen, William Henry Ireland signed "William Shakespeare" to a book and launched a short but meteoric career as a forger of undiscovered works by the Bard -- until he pushed his luck too far. John Symmes, a hero of the War of 1812, nearly succeeded in convincing Congress to fund an expedition to the North Pole, where he intended to prove his theory that the earth was hollow and ripe for exploitation; his quixotic quest counted Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe among its greatest admirers. Collins' love for what he calls the "forgotten ephemera of genius" give his portraits of these figures and the other nine men and women in Banvard's Folly sympathetic depth and poignant relevance. Their effect is not to make us sneer or p0revel in schadenfreude; here are no cautionary tales. Rather, here are brief introductions-acts of excavation and reclamation-to people whom history may have forgotten, but whom now we cannot.
Download or read book The English Folly written by Gwyn Headley and published by Historic England. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously. Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.
Download or read book The Folly written by Ivan Vladislavic and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vacant patch of South African veld next to the comfortable, complacent Malgas household has been taken over by a mysterious, eccentric figure with "a plan." Fashioning his tools out of recycled garbage, the stranger enlists Malgas's help in clearing the land and planning his mansion. Slowly but inevitably, the stranger's charm and the novel's richly inventive language draws Malgas into "the plan" and he sees, feels and moves into the new building. Then, just as remorselessly, all that seemed solid begins to melt back into air.
Download or read book Follies in America written by Kerry Dean Carso and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.
Download or read book Empire of the Beetle written by Andrew Nikiforuk and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2011-07-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of improbable bark beetle outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico. Often appearing in masses larger than schools of killer whales, the beetles engineered one of the world's greatest forest die-offs since the deforestation of Europe by peasants between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The beetle didn't act alone. Misguided science, out-of-control logging, bad public policy, and a hundred years of fire suppression created a volatile geography that released the world's oldest forest manager from all natural constraints. Like most human empires, the beetles exploded wildly and then crashed, leaving in their wake grieving landowners, humbled scientists, hungry animals, and altered watersheds. Although climate change triggered this complex event, human arrogance assuredly set the table. With little warning, an ancient insect pointedly exposed the frailty of seemingly stable manmade landscapes. Drawing on first-hand accounts from entomologists, botanists, foresters, and rural residents, award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, investigates this unprecedented beetle plague, its startling implications, and the lessons it holds.
Download or read book The Stone of Folly written by Monica-Maria Stapelberg and published by Crux Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2024-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stone of Folly explores the concept of 'madness' - what we would refer to as mental illness in modern terms - viewed from a wide range of historic and societal perspectives. In centuries past, the insane, in confinement or in the care of family, were very poorly treated. Institutionalised patients were kept in squalid conditions, many of them chained-up for years. Multiple distasteful and shocking treatments, regarded as reprehensible in modern times, were advocated and carried-out by leading physicians to prevent insanity and cure the mind. Therapeutic measures included bloodlettings, emetics, purges, and 'coolings of the head'. Blistering of the skull with powerful blistering agents, advocated by eminent physicians, was widely used as late as the nineteenth century to heal those of unsound mind. Intimidation, fear, and terror were often advised by renowned specialists in the treatment of madness and throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries clinicians searched for suitable methods of inducing the correct degree of fear in their treatments. In addition, various pervasive, often maiming and irreversible surgical procedures were performed to prevent or cure insanity. To the modern reader this book provides an ethically and socially confronting historical record, comprising compelling and at times distressing facts. The Stone of Folly serves as a historical exposition of the 'growing pains' within early mental health care and the subsequent slowly emerging discipline of psychiatry.
Download or read book The Disaster Artist written by Greg Sestero and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a humorous ode to cinematic hubris, discussing the story of the mysteriously wealthy misfit, Tommy Wiseau, the producer, director, and star of the "The Room," which later became an international cult film despite making no money at the box office.
Download or read book The Magus Book 1 written by Francis Barrett and published by Book Tree. This book was released on 1999-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has proved to be the most sought after set of books on magic and alchemy ever published. Powerful work and considered so dangerous that for many years, rare copies could only be found in certain libraries, locked away from the general public and from those who would use (or misuse) its power. Original set first published in 1801. by author who spent many years of study before releasing them. Includes rare illustrations from original sources. Covers natural magic, amulets and charms, potions, precious stones, candles, alchemy, the philosophers stone, transmutation, the four elements, numbers, and the planets.
Download or read book Extracting the Stone of Madness Poems 1962 1972 written by Alejandra Pizarnik and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length collection in English by one of Latin America’s most significant twentieth-century poets. Revered by the likes of Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolano, Alejandra Pizarnik is still a hidden treasure in the U.S. Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972 comprises all of her middle to late work, as well as a selection of posthumously published verse. Obsessed with themes of solitude, childhood, madness and death, Pizarnik explored the shifting valences of the self and the border between speech and silence. In her own words, she was drawn to "the suffering of Baudelaire, the suicide of Nerval, the premature silence of Rimbaud, the mysterious and fleeting presence of Lautréamont,” as well as to the “unparalleled intensity” of Artaud’s “physical and moral suffering.”
Download or read book Talley s Folly written by Lanford Wilson and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 1979 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: The scene is the ornate, deserted Victorian boathouse on the Talley place in Lebanon, Missouri; the time 1944. Matt Friedman, an accountant from St. Louis, has arrived to plead his love to Sally Talley, the susceptible, but uncertain dau
Download or read book Outerbridge Reach written by Robert Stone and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1998 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of two men and the powerful, unforgettable woman they both love - and for whom they are both ready, in their very different ways, to stake everything.
Download or read book Hieronymus Bosch Painter and Draughtsman written by Matthijs Ilsink and published by Mercatorfonds. This book was released on 2016-05-15 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled by members of the Bosch Research and Conservation Project and published on the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch's death, this is the definitivenew catalogue of all of Bosch's extant paintings and drawings. His mastery and genius have been redefined as a result of six years of research on the iconography, techniques, pedigree, and conservation history of his paintings and on his life. This stunning volume includes all new photography, as well as up-to-date research on the individual works. For the first time, the incredible creativity of this late medieval artist, expressed in countless details, is reproduced and discussed in this book. Special attention is being paid to Bosch as an image maker, a skilled draughtsman, and a brutal painter, changing the game of painting around 1500 by his innovative way of working."
Download or read book Dutch Art written by Sheila D. Muller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated feast for the eye and intellect Dutch Art explores developments in art, art history, art criticism, and cultural history of the Netherlands from the artists' workshops for the Utrecht Dom in 1475 to the latest movements of the 1990s. it is lavishly illustrated with 147 black-and-white photographs and 16 pages in full color. More than 100 internationally recognized scholars, museum professionals, artists, and art critics contributed signed essays to this monumental work, including historians, sociologists, and literary historians.
Download or read book The English Folly written by Gwyn Headley and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously. Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.
Download or read book Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly written by Agatha Christie and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a favour to an old friend, Hercule Poirot finds himself at a summer fete in Devon, taking part not in a Treasure Hunt, but a Murder Hunt, in this never-before-published novella version of Dead Man’s Folly. Now released for the first time as an eBook exclusive publication.
Download or read book Bosch written by María Pilar Silva Maroto and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at the work of Jheronimus Bosch, published to coincide with the 5th centenary of the artist's death and in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museo del Prado
