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A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Dover Philosophical Classics)
by George BerkeleyIf a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound? It does not, according to George Berkeley. Originally published in 1710, this landmark of Western philosophy introduced a revolutionary concept: immaterialism, which asserts that to be is to perceive or be perceived. An Irish clergyman who spent his entire philosophical career as a churchman, Berkeley linked his investigations to his religious interests. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge opens with an assault on Locke’s theory of abstract ideas and proceeds with arguments that sensible qualities exist only when perceived as ideas. Physical objects, he claims, are no more than collections of qualities, and these sensible objects, too, are merely ideas. Berkeley relates his position to the achievements of eighteenth-century science, and proclaims the compatibility of immaterialism with traditional religion.The fullest expression of Berkeley’s doctrine of immaterialism, this classic work influenced British philosophers from David Hume to Bertrand Russell and the other logical positivists. It is essential reading for all students of philosophy.
Citizens without a City: Destruction and Despair after the L'Aquila Earthquake
by Jan-Jonathan BockIn 2009, after seismic tremors struck the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, survivors were subjected to a "second earthquake"—invasive media attention and a relief effort that left them in a state of suspended citizenship as they were forcibly resettled and had to envision a new future.In Citizens without a City, Jan-Jonathan Bock reveals how a disproportionate government response exacerbated survivors' sense of crisis, divided the local population, and induced new types of political action. Italy's disenfranchising emergency reaction relocated citizens to camps and sites across a ruined townscape, without a plan for restoration or return. Through grassroots politics, arts and culture, commemoration rituals, architectural projects, and legal avenues, local people now sought to shape their hometown's recovery. Bock combines an analysis of the catastrophe's impact with insights into post-disaster civic life, urban heritage, the politics of mourning, and community fragmentation.A fascinating read for anyone interested in urban culture, disaster, and politics, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors battled to retain a sense of purpose and community after the L'Aquila earthquake.
Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought)
by Sarah ScottA new collection of essays highlighting the wide range of Buber's thought, career, and activism. Best known for I and Thou, which laid out his distinction between dialogic and monologic relations, Martin Buber (1878–1965) was also an anthologist, translator, and author of some seven hundred books and papers. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form, edited by Sarah Scott, is a collection of nine essays that explore his thought and career.Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form shakes up the legend of Buber by decentering the importance of the I-Thou dialogue in order to highlight Buber as a thinker preoccupied by the image of relationship as a guide to spiritual, social, and political change. The result is a different Buber than has hitherto been portrayed, one that is characterized primarily by aesthetics and politics rather than by epistemology or theology. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form will serve as a guide to the entirety of Buber's thinking, career, and activism, placing his work in context and showing both the evolution of his thought and the extent to which he remained driven by a persistent set of concerns.
Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond
by Theodore Levin Valentina SüzükeiTheodore Levin takes readers on a journey through the rich sonic world of inner Asia, where the elemental energies of wind, water, and echo; the ubiquitous presence of birds and animals; and the legendary feats of heroes have inspired a remarkable art and technology of sound-making among nomadic pastoralists. As performers from Tuva and other parts of inner Asia have responded to the growing worldwide popularity of their music, Levin follows them to the West, detailing their efforts to nourish global connections while preserving the power and poignancy of their music traditions.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century
by Jane RhodesMary Ann Shadd Cary was a courageous and outspoken nineteenth-century African American who used the press and public speaking to fight slavery and oppression in the United States and Canada. Part of the small free black elite who used their education and limited freedoms to fight for the end of slavery and racial oppression, Shadd Cary is best known as the first African American woman to publish and edit a newspaper in North America. But her importance does not stop there. She was an active participant in many of the social and political movements that influenced nineteenth century abolition, black emigration and nationalism, women's rights, and temperance. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century explores her remarkable life and offers a window on the free black experience, emergent black nationalisms, African American gender ideologies, and the formation of a black public sphere. This new edition contains a new epilogue and new photographs.
Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth about Exercise and Health
by Gina KolataThe bestselling science reporter for The New York Times tells us what works and what doesn't when we work outUltimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About Exercise and Health is Gina Kolata's compelling journey into the world of American physical fitness over the past thirty years. It is a funny, eye-opening, brow-sweating investigation into the fads, fictions, and science of fitness training.From the early days of jogging, championed by Jim Fixx— who later died of a heart attack—to weight lifting, cycling, aerobics, and Spinning, Kolata questions such popular notions as the "fat-burning zone" and "spot reducing," the effects of food on performance, how much exercise helps build fitness, and the difference between exercise to help the heart and exercise to change the body. She explains the science of physical fitness and the objective evidence behind commonly accepted prescriptions. Along the way she profiles researchers and mavericks who have challenged conventional wisdom, marketed their inventions, and sometimes bucked criticism only to back down from their original claims.Ultimate Fitness spotlights the machines and machinations of the fitness industry, and cuts through the marketing and hype not only to assess what is healthy, but also to understand what our obsession with staying healthy says about American culture today.
Enchantment: A Novel
by Daphne MerkinA bold, provocative "pioneering novel" (Los Angeles Times) about family, womanhood, and growing upSet on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Enchantment is narrated by Hannah Lehmann, the wry survivor of a troubled childhood. Hannah's perceptions of her Orthodox German Jewish heritage—her five brothers and sisters, the complicated power of families, the madness of money, the obsessive workings of memory itself—are as disquieting in their sharpness as they are lucid in their irony. The world, she finds, is a treacherous place where love is closely knit with pain, but even the limitations of her own point of view are not lost on Hannah. She is all too aware that her perspective is fixed in the vise of her childhood: “My mother,” she says, “is the source of my unease in the world and thus the only person who can make me feel at home in the world.”This is a novel about what people say when they are talking to themselves; what families look like when they are not observed by others. Provocative, hawkishly observed, and devastating in its reliability, Daphne Merkin's Enchantment is a searing and unforgettable exploration of family and self.
Chocolates for Breakfast: A Novel
by Pamela Moore“A gem of adolescent disaffection featuring a Holden Caulfield-like heroine.” — Vogue.com“Once I started reading it, I didn’t want to stop. . . . If your all-time favorite books include works of young-adult fiction (like Catcher), I strongly urge you to take a look." — USA Today/Pop CandyA riveting coming-of-age story, Chocolates for Breakfast became an international sensation upon its initial publication in 1956, and still stands out as a shocking and moving account of the way teenagers collide, often disastrously, against love and sex for the first time. This edition includes an introduction by author Emma Straub.Courtney Farrell is a disaffected, sexually precocious fifteen-year-old. She splits her time between Manhattan, where her father works in publishing, and Los Angeles, where her mother is a still-beautiful Hollywood actress. After a boarding-school crush on a female teacher ends badly, Courtney sets out to learn everything fast. Her first drink is a very dry martini, and her first kiss the beginning of a full-blown love affair with an older man.
The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings (The Essential Peirce)
by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel" . . . a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces. . . . all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books"The Monist essays are included in the first volume of the compact and welcome Essential Peirce; they are by Peirce's standards quite accessible and splendid in their cosmic scope and assertiveness." —London Review of BooksA convenient two-volume reader's edition makes accessible to students and scholars the most important philosophical papers of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce. This first volume presents twenty-five key texts from the first quarter century of his writing, with a clear introduction and informative headnotes. Volume 2 will highlight the development of Peirce's system of signs and his mature pragmatism.
The Regret Histories: Poems
by Joshua PoteatThis powerful and provocative new installment of poetry is a recipient of the 2014 National Poetry Series Prize, as chosen by Campbell McGrath.The National Poetry Series’s long tradition of promoting exceptional poetry from lesser-known poets delivers another outstanding collection of poetry by Joshua Poteat.Through an investigation of the haunted spaces where history collides with the modern southern American landscape, The Regret Histories explores themes of ruin and nostalgia, our relationship to a collective past, and the extraordinary indifference of time to memory.For thirty years, the National Poetry Series has discovered many new and emerging voices and has been instrumental in launching the careers of poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Marie Howe, and Sherod Santos.
"A Third Reich, as I See It": Politics, Society, and Private Life in the Diaries of Nazi Germany, 1933–1939
by Janosch SteuwerWith the beginning of the National Socialist dictatorship, Germany not only experienced a deep political turning point but the private life of Germans also changed fundamentally. The Nazi regime had far-reaching ideas about how the individual should think and act.In "A Third Reich, as I See It" Janosch Steuwer examines the private diaries of ordinary Germans written between 1933 and 1939 and shows how average citizens reacted to the challenges of National Socialism. Some felt the urge and desire to adapt to the political circumstances. Others felt compelled to do so. They all contributed to the realization of the vision of a homogeneous, conflict-free, and "racially pure" society.In a detailed manner and with a convincing sense of the bigger picture, Steuwer shows how the tense efforts of people to fit in, and at the same time to preserve existing opinions and self-conceptions, led to a close intertwining of the private and the political."A Third Reich, as I See It" offers a surprisingly new look at how the ideological visions of National Socialism found their way into the everyday reality of Germans.
Medieval Instrumental Dances
by Timothy J. McGeeIn Europe the tradition of secular dance has continued unbroken until the present. In the late Middle Ages it was an important and frequent event—for the nobility a gracious way to entertain guests, for the peasantry a welcome relaxation from the toils of the day. Now back in print, this collection presents compositions that are known or suspected to be instrumental dances from before ca. 1420. The 47 pieces vary in length and style and come from French, Italian, English, and Czech sources. Timothy McGee relates medieval dances to the descriptions found in literary, theoretical, and archival sources and to the depictions in the iconography of the Middle Ages. In a section on instrumental performance practices, he provides information about ornamenting the dances and improvising in a historically appropriate style. This comprehensive edition brings together in one volume a repertory that has been scattered over many years and countries.
Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum
by Umi Vaughan Carlos AldamaBatá identifies both the two-headed, hourglass-shaped drum of the Yoruba people and the culture and style of drumming, singing, and dancing associated with it. This book recounts the life story of Carlos Aldama, one of the masters of the batá drum, and through that story traces the history of batá culture as it traveled from Africa to Cuba and then to the United States. For the enslaved Yoruba, batá rhythms helped sustain the religious and cultural practices of a people that had been torn from its roots. Aldama, as guardian of Afro-Cuban music and as a Santería priest, maintains the link with this tradition forged through his mentor Jesus Pérez (Oba Ilu), who was himself the connection to the preserved oral heritage of the older generation. By sharing his stories, Aldama and his student Umi Vaughan bring to light the techniques and principles of batá in all its aspects and document the tensions of maintaining a tradition between generations and worlds, old and new. The book includes rare photographs and access to downloadable audio tracks.
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Martin HeideggerSince its original publication in 1929, Martin Heidegger's provocative book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has attracted much attention both as an important contribution to twentieth-century Kant scholarship and as a pivotal work in Heidegger's own development after Being and Time. This fifth, enlarged edition includes marginal notations made by Heidegger in his personal copy of the book and four new appendices—Heidegger's postpublication notes on the book, his review of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Heidegger's response to reviews by rudolf Odebrecht and Cassirer, and an essay "On the History of the Philosophical Chair since 1866." The work is significant not only for its illuminating assessment of Kant's thought but also for its elaboration of themes first broached in Being and Time, especially the problem of how Heidegger proposed to enact his destruction of the metaphysical tradition and the role that his reading of Kant would play therein.
Levinas and the Trauma of Responsibility: The Ethical Significance of Time (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Cynthia D. CoeLevinas's account of responsibility challenges dominant notions of time, autonomy, and subjectivity according to Cynthia D. Coe. Employing the concept of trauma in Levinas's late writings, Coe draws together his understanding of time and his claim that responsibility is an obligation to the other that cannot be anticipated or warded off. Tracing the broad significance of these ideas, Coe shows how Levinas revises our notions of moral agency, knowledge, and embodiment. Her focus on time brings a new interpretive lens to Levinas's work and reflects on a wider discussion of the fragmentation of human experience as an ethical subject. Coe's understanding of trauma and time offers a new appreciation of how Levinas can inform debates about gender, race, mortality, and animality.
The Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary Subjects
by Edmund WilsonThe Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary Subjects contains some of Edmund Wilson's most significant and brilliant writings on topics and authors ranging from Pushkin, A. E. Housman, Flaubert, Henry James, Marxism, poetry and more.
Hotel Living: A Novel
by Ioannis PapposRecalling both the excess of The Wolf of Wall Street, and the drifting narrator of A Single Man, Ioannis Pappos’s debut novel is a portrait of privilege, aspiration, and international finance during the wayward course of the American economy between 9/11 and the 2008 Financial collapse, and is filled with surprisingly tender observations about identity, loneliness, and human connection.“I’m homeless, but in First Class.”Stathis Rakis abandoned his small Greek village for a more worldly life, first in San Francisco, where the Dot Com Bubble had already burst, and then in Paris, France, where he is pursuing an MBA at an elite business school. After falling helplessly in love with a liberal New England journalist with a good conscience, who comes to campus with some scores to settle, Stathis moves to the United States to begin as a consultant for a company called Command. He spends the very few hours of the day that aren’t consumed by work draining the minibar, battling insomnia, and binging on more than room service. Luxury is a given, happiness is not.As the economy recovers and a new bubble expands in a post-9/11 world, Stathis drifts upward, baring witness to the criminal decadence that will become the 2008 financial crisis, as well as his new habits of indulgence—drugs, sex, and insider trading. In a world of insiders--from corporate suits to Hollywood celebutantes—Stathis remains the outsider: too foreign to be one of them, too cynical to turn back.
Ms. Hempel Chronicles: A Novel
by Sarah Shun-lien BynumMs. Hempel Chronicles is a "deeply affecting" (Los Angeles Times) novel of a devoted young teacher finding her wayMs. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new—new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class?Sarah Shun-lien Bynum finds characters at their most vulnerable, then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. From this most innovative of young writers comes another journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up.
Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society
by Mario Vargas LlosaWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREA provocative essay collection that finds the Nobel laureate taking on the decline of intellectual lifeIn the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation—penned by none other than Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics at work today. Taking his cues from T. S. Eliot—whose essay "Notes Toward a Definition of Culture" is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished—Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary gadfly, the Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa, here vividly translated by John King, provides a tough but essential critique of our time and culture.
Cambrian Ocean World: Ancient Sea Life of North America (Life of the Past)
by John FosterThis volume, aimed at the general reader, presents life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth's history. During this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. Although life had been around for more than 2 million millennia, Cambrian rocks preserve the record of the first appearance of complex animals with eyes, protective skeletons, antennae, and complex ecologies. Grazing, predation, and multi-tiered ecosystems with animals living in, on, or above the sea floor became common. The cascade of interaction led to an ever-increasing diversification of animal body types. By the end of the period, the ancestors of sponges, corals, jellyfish, worms, mollusks, brachiopods, arthropods, echinoderms, and vertebrates were all in place. The evidence of this Cambrian "explosion" is preserved in rocks all over the world, including North America, where the seemingly strange animals of the period are preserved in exquisite detail in deposits such as the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Cambrian Ocean World tells the story of what is, for us, the most important period in our planet's long history.
A Theory of Musical Narrative (Musical Meaning and Interpretation)
by Byron AlménByron Almén proposes an original synthesis of approaches to musical narrative from literary criticism, semiotics, historiography, musicology, and music theory, resulting in a significant critical reorientation of the field. This volume includes an extensive survey of traditional approaches to musical narrative illustrated by a wide variety of musical examples that highlight the range and applicability of the theoretical apparatus. Almén provides a careful delineation of the essential elements and preconditions of musical narrative organization, an eclectic analytical model applicable to a wide range of musical styles and repertoires, a classification scheme of narrative types and subtypes reflecting conceptually distinct narrative strategies, a wide array of interpretive categories, and a sensitivity to the dependence of narrative interpretation on the cultural milieu of the work, its various audiences, and the analyst. A Theory of Musical Narrative provides both an excellent introduction to an increasingly important conceptual domain and a complex reassessment of its possibilities and characteristics.
Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Martin HeideggerDuns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning is a key text for the origins of Martin Heidegger's concept of "facticity." Originally submitted as a postdoctoral thesis in 1915, it focuses on the 13th-century philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus. Heidegger first analyzes Scotus's doctrine of categories, then offers a meticulous explanation of the Grammatica Speculativa, a work of medieval grammar now known to be authored by the Modist grammarian Thomas of Erfurt. Taken together, these investigations represent an early foray into Heidegger's lifelong philosophical concerns, "the question of being in the guise of the problem of categories and the question of language in the guise of the doctrine of meaning."This new and unique translation of one of Heidegger's earliest works offers an important look at his early thinking before the question of being became his central concern and will appeal to readers exploring Heidegger's philosophical development, medieval philosophy, phenomenological interpretations of the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of language.
The Other Side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border
by Juan Pablo VillalobosAward-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos explores illegal immigration with this emotionally raw and timely nonfiction book about ten Central American teens and their journeys to the United States.You can't really tell what time it is when you're in the freezer. Every year, thousands of migrant children and teens cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The journey is treacherous and sometimes deadly, but worth the risk for migrants who are escaping gang violence and poverty in their home countries. And for those refugees who do succeed? They face an immigration process that is as winding and multi-tiered as the journey that brought them here. In this book, award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos strings together the diverse experiences of eleven real migrant teenagers, offering readers a beginning road map to issues facing the region. These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survival—including two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry waters—offer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.–Central American refugee crisis.In turns optimistic and heartbreaking, The Other Side balances the boundless hope at the center of immigration with the weight of its risks and repercussions. Here is a necessary read for young people on both sides of the issue.
Hearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Jill GordonHearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece represents the first wide-ranging philosophical study of the role of sound and hearing in the ancient Greek world. Because our modern western culture is a particularly visual one, we can overlook the significance of the auditory which was so central to the Greeks. The fifteen chapters of this edited volume explore "hearing" as being philosophically significant across numerous texts and figures in ancient Greek philosophy. Through close analysis of the philosophy of such figures as Homer, Heraclitus, Pythagoreans, Sophocles, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hearing, Sound, and Auditory in Ancient Greece presents new and unique research from philosophers and classicists that aims to redirect us to the ways in which sound, hearing, listening, voice, and even silence shaped and reflected the worldview of ancient Greece.
Problems in Lexicography: A Critical/Historical Edition (Well House Bks.)
by Michael AdamsProblems in Lexicography is an essential, classic work of practical lexicography (the practice of writing dictionaries) and meta-lexicography. Originally published over sixty years ago, it was based on the proceedings of the Indiana University Conference on Lexicography, held November 11–12, 1960. It set a standard that still holds today, three generations later. This critical and historical edition, brilliantly researched and presented by Michael Adams, explores the enduring legacy of this classic work and promises to extend its life further into the twenty-first century. Problems in Lexicography: A Critical / Historical Edition amply demonstrates that this unique work is a book of historical significance and a worthy prologue to lexicography's present.