Language and Litterature

BARACK OBAMA FOR BEGINNERS: AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE is the most concise and reliable short biography available on the 44th President of the United States — from his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, education at Columbia and Harvard, work as a community organizer, writer, teacher, lawyer, and politician in Illinois, to his historic campaign for President. BARACK OBAMA FOR BEGINNERS keeps the focus on

Poetry is one of those subjects almost impossible to define as it can be so many things at once. It can be: kids whispering limericks on the playground; secret languages used by revolutionaries and spies; or the written strength of oppressed people. Poetry is how millions of people across time have used language to try to better understand love, hate, war, religion, oppression, joy, sorrow, sex, a

There is no greater symbol of the American presidency than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln himself, his personality, the sources of his dedication and his idealism, remain very much a mystery. The sudden rise to world stature of a hard-travelling lawyer from the frontier, with no prominent family or social connections to back him, was a wonder of the age.Well over a thousand books about Lincoln have been

Philosopher, psychoanalyst, politician, propagandist, prophet...although difficult to categorize, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and one of our most powerful writers on race and revolution. The book opens with a biography, following Fanon from his birthplace of Martinique through combat in World War II and education in France, to his heroic in

Popular Disinformation author, Russ Kick, is known for his quirky, ingenious and surprisingly useful collections. He's done it again. This is the most comprehensive, not to mention the first, anthology of death poetry ever published in the English language and is ultimately life affirming. DEATH POEMS is an unprecedented, vast survey of death in poetry that cuts across time, world cultures and lan

Charles Bukowski, novelist, short-story writer, poet, journalist and cult figure of the dissident and rebellious, was born in Germany in 1920 and died in the USA in 1994. During his life he was hailed as "laureate of American lowlife" by Time Magazine and literary critic, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker, wrote: "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promi

A concise, accessible introduction to the great linguist who shaped the study of language for the 20th century, SAUSSURE FOR BEGINNERS puts the challenging ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) into clear and illuminating terms, focusing on the unifying principles of his teachings and showing how his thoughts on linguistics migrated to anthropology.Ferdinand de Saussure's work is so powerful

If you haven't read Toni Morrison, TONI MORRISON FOR BEGINNERS will introduce you to her novels - plot descriptions, subtexts, reviews and Morrison's comments on her work. However, if you have read - or attempted to read - Toni Morrison, you may need this book even more. Many people consider Morrison's novels difficult to read. Most of her readers have at least one book on their shelves that they

Before you read any further, take a few moments to note all of the devices that are powered by electricity within a 10-foot radius of your body. The number will astonish you. Imagine how this number grows exponentially as you broaden the circle beyond the room, throughout the building, around the block and out across the world. It is hard to imagine that one man - Nikola Tesla - was responsible fo

As the most famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, escaped slave, Harriet Tubman, earned the nickname “Moses of her People” for leading scores of men, women and children from bondage to freedom in the North. During the Civil War, she worked as a nurse for wounded soldiers, a caretaker of refugee slaves and a spy and scout for Union forces. Late in life she was active in the fight for wome

The works of James Joyce are part of the literary canon worldwide - and the need to have his works broken out into palatable pieces, even for the most avid of fans, is known the world over as well. In JOYCE FOR BEGINNERS, W. Terrence Gordon does just that. With the assistance of Lynsey Hutchinson's humorous illustrations throughout, Gordon successfully captures bits and pieces of Joyce's works and

The memoirs of a Tibetan freedom fighter who fought in the resistance against the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950s, centered on his moral progression under the influence of the Dalai Lama from vengeful violence to compassion and forgiveness. The active resistance to the Chinese invasion of Tibet coalesced into a guerrilla army of freedom fighters, the Chushi Gangdruk. In the 1950s, China´

Jennifer Howd had been building a mindfulness practice for a few years before taking on the challenge of her first nine-day silent meditation retreat. In this debut memoir, she chronicles the humorous--and often harrowing--adventures of the dueling inner voices that emerge in the silence: one intent on focusing on the seemingly negative aspects of her experiences, and the other on helpin

P. D. Ouspensky's classic work In Search of the Miraculous was the first to disseminate the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff, the mysterious master of esoteric thought in the early twentieth century who still commands a following today. Gurdjieff's mystique has long eclipsed Ouspensky, once described by Gurdjieff as "nice to drink vodka with, but a weak man." Yet Ouspensky was a brilliant, accomplished ph

"With detailed notes from the world's leading center for Shakespeare studies"--Cover.

An inspiring new selection of poems exploring faith and the divine, featuring poets from across the world, from antiquity to the present, compiled by renowned poet and author of Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar A Penguin Classic Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration, and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. Thi

Lévi links the Old and New Testaments by comparing the qabalistic imagery and concepts inherent in both "The Prophecy of Ezekiel" and "The Apocalypse of St. John." Includes Lévi's illuminating commentary on Ezekiel.

This is the story of a joiurney. It is the eagerly anticipated and altogether startling culmination of Shirley MacLaine’s extraordinary – and ultimately rewarding – road through life. The riveting odyssey began when a pair of handwrittwn anonymous letters imploring Shirley to make a difficult pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain. For her, the Camino was both an intense spiri

Half raucous adventure and half inspirational memoir, Rude Awakenings documents an unusual pilgrimage. Two very different men--life-loving naturalist Nick Scott and austere Buddhist monk Ajahn Sucitto--together spend six months retracing the Buddha's footsteps through India. Told alternately by Sucitto and Scott in their distinctive voices, this story blends self-effacing humor, philosophical expl

This is the first full-length biography of British historian Frances Yates, author of such acclaimed works as Giordano Bruno and The Hermetic Tradition and The Art of Memory, one of the most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century. Jones's book explores Yates' remarkable life and career and her interest in the mysterious figure of Giordano Bruno and the influence of the Hermetic trad