Free Download | Re Joyce | Anthony Burgess

One of Burgess's main theses is that Joyce meant this book for everyone and that readers shouldn't be scared away by academics and others who would set the book above out heads, high in the ivory tower. Yet, there are definitely parts where he presents Joyce's characters (whom he calls "the humble men of Dublin"), in supercilious language, which risks defeating his point. Why potentially further obscure Ulysses and Finnegans Wake in a book meant to make them more approachable? That said, the book is well written and lucid for the most part. A fan of Joyce should enjoy it. I cannot gush as unequivocally about the book as some other reviewers have, because I am not sure how successful he has been at his goal of bringing Joyce to a new audience that has never previously read him due to intimidation. I think I am too familiar with Joyce to be able to tell how helpful ReJoyce would be for the first-timer. From what they've written, I think the other reviewers may be too familiar also.

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Free Download | Ulysses | James Joyce

OT UlyssesOA 1922 (1918 pre-print in The Little Review) EN 1927 novel form of modern era The novel Ulysses is due to its innovative narrative technique, its complex structure and its exemplary treatment time to the important works of literature of the 20th Century. Ulysses is the modern equivalent of Homer's Odyssey, a parody seen Catalogue R Homeric figures, in which the heroic is petty bourgeois. 

The novel is, among others, Ireland, from the Bible, from the Middle Ages, from the confrontation with the world religions and the history of the English language. Origin: Joyce Ulysses was originally planned as a further short "story" of the Dublin Collection, 1914-1921 but the story grew to 800 pages, which appeared in 1918 in The Little Review.

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Free Download | Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare | Jonathan Bate

“One man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.”In this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard’s own immortal list of a man’s seven ages in As You Like It, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare’s life and connects them to his world and work as never before.Here is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a schoolboy, a position he portrayed in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which a clever, cheeky lad named William learns Latin grammar; as a lover, married at eighteen to an older woman already pregnant, perhaps presaging Bassanio, who in The Merchant of Venice won a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Here, too, is Shakespeare as a soldier, writing Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, with a nod to his own monarch Elizabeth I’s passionate addresses; as a justice, revealing his possible legal training in his precise use of the law in plays from Hamlet to Macbeth; and as a pantaloon, an early retiree because of, Bate postulates, either illness or a scandal.

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Free Download | Moral Time| Donald Black

"Donald Black has devoted his brilliant career to developing a pure sociology that is independent of psychological, biological, or any other type of individual influences. Moral Time, a stunning theoretical and empirical synthesis of all forms of conflict, culminates his efforts. It is an instant sociological classic."--Allan V. Horwitz, Board of Governors Professor of Sociology, Dean for the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Rutgers University Conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable, but people generally dislike it and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible. So why do clashes of right and wrong occur? And why are some more serious than others? In Moral Time, sociologist Donald Black presents a new theory of conflict that provides answers to these and many other questions. The heart of the theory is a completely new concept of social time. Black claims that the root cause of conflict is the movement of social time, including relational, vertical, and cultural time--changes in intimacy, inequality, and diversity. The theory of moral time reveals the causes of conflict in all human relationships, from marital and other close relationships to those between strangers, ethnic groups, and entire societies. Moreover, the theory explains the origins and clash of right and wrong not only in modern societies but across the world and across history, from conflict concerning sexual behavior such as rape, adultery, and homosexuality, to bad manners and dislike in everyday life, theft and other crime, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, witchcraft accusations, warfare, heresy, obscenity, creativity, and insanity. Black concludes by explaining the evolution of conflict and morality across human history, from the tribal to the modern age. He also provides surprising insights into the postmodern emergence of the right to happiness and the expanding rights of humans and non-humans across the world. Moral Time offers an incisive, powerful, and radically new understanding of human conflict--a fundamental and inescapable feature of social life.

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Free Download | Pilgrimage | Jonathan Sumption

In a fascinating work of history, Jonathan Sumption brings alive the traditions of pilgrimage prevalent in Europe from the beginning of Christianity to the end of the fifteenth century. Vividly describing such major destinations as Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Canterbury, he examines both major figures - popes, kings, queens, scholars, villains - and the common people of their day. With great sympathy he evokes their achievements and failures, and addresses the question of what motivated such extraordinary quests.

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Free Download | The Russian Revolution | Sheila Fitzpatrick

The Russian Revolution had a decisive impact on the history of the twentieth century. Now, following the collapse of the Soviet regime and the opening of its archives, it is possible to step back and see the full picture of this event for the first time. Impeccable in its scholarship and objectivity, this superb volume tells the gripping story of a Marxist revolution that was intended to transform the world, but instead visited enormous suffering on the Russian people, and, like the French Revolution before it, ended up devouring its own children. The author offers insightful descriptions of the February and October Revolutions of 1917, the Civil War, the interlude of NEP, Stalin's "revolution from above," the various Five-Year Plans, and the Great Purges--all treated as discrete episodes in a twenty-year process of revolution. The book incorporates data from archives that were previously inaccessible not only to Western but also to Soviet historians, as well as drawing on important recent Russian publications such as the memoirs of one of the great survivors of Soviet politics, Vyacheslav Molotov. In the Select Bibliography, the author highlights the most important of the recent scholarly works, directing readers to the burgeoning Western scholarship on the Russian Revolution in the last ten to fifteen years.Shelia Fitzpatrick is an internationally known expert on Soviet history. This lively and readable Third Edition uses newly available Soviet archival material and the latest Russian and Western research to provide an authoritative, compact account of one of the key events of modern history.

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Free Download |Hundred Years War Vol 3: v. 3 | Jonathan Sumption

In the last decade of his reign Edward III, a senile, pathetic symbol of England's past conquests, was condemned to see them overrun by the armies of his enemies. When he died, in 1377, he was succeeded by a vulnerable child, who was destined to grow into a neurotic and unstable adult presiding over a divided nation.

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Free Download | The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon Against Kutuzov (Campaign Chronicles) | Alexander Mikaberidze

On 7 September 1812, at Borodino, 75 miles west of Moscow, the armies of the Russian and French empires clashed in one of the climactic battles of the Napoleonic Wars. This horrific - and controversial - contest has fascinated historians ever since. The survival of the Russian army after Borodino was a key factor in Napoleon's eventual defeat and the utter destruction of the French army of 1812. In this thought-provoking new study, Napoleonic historian Alexander Mikaberidze reconsiders the 1812 campaign and retells the terrible story of the Borodino battle as it was seen from the Russian point of view. His original and painstakingly researched investigation of this critical episode in Napoleon's invasion of Russia provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the battle and a broader understanding of the underlying reasons for the eventual Russian triumph.

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Free Download | Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4) | Stephen King

Frank Muller, the recognized virtuoso of audiobook narration (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption), takes on Stephen King's Goliath tale of sorcerers, time travelers, and sci-fi love. Totaling more than 27 hours and spanning 18 cassettes, Wizard and Glass requires the listener to love Muller's Hannibal Lecter-like voice--either that or suffer in audio hell for the equivalent of three full working days. 

While some might find his breathy staccatos irritating at best, others will find his voice the perfect accompaniment to King's creepy characters and nightmarish plots.

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Free Download | The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1) | Stephen King

King writes both a new introduction and foreword to this revised edition, and the ever-patient, ever-loyal "constant reader" is rewarded with secrets to the series's inception. That a "magic" ream of green paper and a Robert Browning poem, came together to reveal to King his "ka" is no real surprise (this is King after all), but who would have thought that the squinty-eyed trio of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach would set the author on his true path to the Tower? While King credits Tolkien for inspiring the "quest and magic" that pervades the series, it was Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that helped create the epic proportions and "almost absurdly majestic western backdrop" of Roland's world.

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Free Download | Dead Man's Puzzle: A Puzzle Lady Mystery | Parnell Hall

Sherry is off on her honeymoon when Chief Harper comes to Cora Felton, asking her to solve a crossword puzzle found on the body of Old Man Overmeyer. Small problem. Cora is the Milli Vanilli of cruciverbalists. Her niece, Sherry, writes the crossword puzzle column for her. Cora pokes into Overmeyer’s death, hoping to prove he died of natural causes. 

She learns the cranky hermit was the sole surviving member of a forty-year-old stock pooling agreement, and before she can say “capital gain,” the town is full of heirs. Complicating things is Sherry’s ex-husband, Dennis, who is playing detective in the hopes of impressing his ex-wife. With Sherry out of town, her restraining order against him is moot, and he is taking full advantage of the fact. Parnell Hall delivers another stellar, puzzle-packed entry in this entertaining series.

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Free Download | What Is a Palestinian State Worth? | Sari Nusseibeh

Can a devout Jew be a devout Jew and drop the belief in the rebuilding of the Temple? Can a devout Muslim be a devout Muslim and drop the belief in the sacredness of the Rock? Can one right (the right of return) be given up for another (the right to live in peace)? Can one claim Palestinian identity and still retain Israeli citizenship? What is a Palestinian state worth? For over sixty years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been subjected to many solutions and offered many answers by diverse parties. Yet, answers are only as good as the questions that beget them. It is with this simple, but powerful idea, the idea of asking the basic questions anew, that the renowned Palestinian philosopher and activist Sari Nusseibeh begins his book. What Is a Palestinian State Worth? poses questions about the history, meaning, future, and resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Deeply informed by political philosophy and based on decades of personal involvement with politics and social activism, Nusseibeh’s moderate voice—global in its outlook, yet truly grounded in his native city of Jerusalem—points us toward a future which, as George Lamming once put it, is colonized by our acts in this moment, but which must always remain open.

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Free Download | To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells | Linda O. McMurry

In the generation that followed Frederick Douglass, no African American was more prominent, or more outspoken, than Ida B. Wells. Seriously considered as a rival to W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington for race leadership, Wells' career began amidst controversy when she sued a Tennessee railroad company for ousting her from a first class car, a legal battle which launched her lifelong commitment to journalism and activism. In the 1890s, Wells focused her eloquence on the horrors of lynching, exposing it as a widespread form of racial terrorism. Backing strong words with strong actions, she lectured in the States and abroad, arranged legal representation for black prisoners, hired investigators, founded anti-lynching leagues, sought recourse from Congress, and more. Wells was an equally forceful advocate for women's rights, but parted ways with feminist allies who would subordinate racial justice to their cause. Using diary entries, letters, and published writings, McMurry illuminates Wells's fiery personality, and the uncompromising approach that sometimes lost her friendships even as it won great victories. To Keep the Waters Troubled is an unforgettable account of a remarkable woman and the and the times she helped to change.

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