This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition (1928) text of Orlando: A Biography, with an introduction and explanatory annotations by Madelyn Detloff, accompanied by illustrations from earlier editions. Provocative reviews from Woolf's contemporaries and various written materials that place Orlando within a changing epoch. Seven critical essays on the novel's major themes: gender, sexuality, class, feminism, and performance. A chronology of Woolf's life and a selected bibliography.

For thousands of years, the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta has been famed as the ultimate warrior society. The flowing crimson capes and bronze shields of Spartan warriors remain the enduring image of masculine bravery, austerity, and toughness; King Leonidas's 300 soldiers at Thermopylae the quintessential example of courageous self-sacrifice in battle. But who were the Spartans, really-and how did they rise from a humble village in the Peloponnese to become the dominant military power of ancient Greece? In this landmark new history, renowned Sparta expert Andrew Bayliss delivers a strikingly clarifying, relentlessly complex portrait of a culture and people long shrouded in myth. Sifting masterfully through historical records and modern archaeological evidence, Bayliss traces the shifting alliances and volatile conflicts Spartans faced during the city-state's evolution from a minor hamlet in the Peloponnese to the foremost power of ancient Greece. In vivid detail, Bayliss brings to life the excruciating training, rigid dietary habits, and extreme discipline that molded the warriors of history's most renowned military power. He also lays bare lesser-known aspects of Spartan society that complicate its egalitarian reputation, including complex gender dynamics, stark wealth inequality, and its brutal exploitation of slave labor. With incisive analysis, Bayliss illuminates how the Spartans' ruthless might, unparalleled military ambition, and singular exclusivity fueled their seemingly unstoppable rise-and how those same factors became their undoing. Enthralling and informative in equal measure, Sparta will stand for decades as the definitive history of one of antiquity's most legendary civilizations-from its meteoric rise to its surprising downfall.

A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter's love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Belcourt pirouettes through the short story form in his signature staccato voice, imagining a range of characters from all walks of native life. He is an expert in celebrating the ways Indigenous peoples make total conquest impossible.

Each volume includes all the necessary materials for the comprehensive study of a work of art: An illustration section showing the complete work of art, details, preliminary studies, and iconographic sources; An introductory essay by the editor; Documents and literary sources; Critical essays from the art-historical literature.

This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world. The thrust of this tradition construes Judaism as an opposition, a danger often from within, to be criticized, attacked, and eliminated. The intersections of these ideas with the world of power-the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, the Spanish Inquisition, the German Holocaust-are well known. The ways of thought underlying these tragedies can be found at the very foundation of Western history.

Some people bounce back in response to setbacks; others break. We often think that these responses are hardwired but this is not the case. William B. Irvine combines key lessons from the ancient Stoics with modern psychological techniques to develop a simple strategy for dealing with life's unpleasant surprises. These include minor setbacks like being caught in a traffic jam or having a flight cancelled, as well as major setbacks, like those experienced by Stephen Hawking or Bethany Hamilton. By using the updated Stoic strategy, life's setbacks can be transformed into opportunities to become calmer, tougher and more resilient. The Stoic Challenge is a practical guide to using centuries-old wisdom to help us cope better with the stresses of modern living.

Mama's Last Hug is a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals, beginning with Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. Her story and others like it-from dogs "adopting" the injuries of their companions, to rats helping fellow rats in distress, to elephants revisiting the bones of their loved ones-show that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy. Frans de Waal opens our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected.

Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)

Set during Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. At its heart is orphaned maid Hirut, who finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. What follows is a heartrending and unputdownable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.

The text is that of the 1813 first edition, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. This edition also includes: biographical portraits of Austen by members of her family and, new to the fourth edition, those by Jon Spence (Becoming Jane Austen) and Paula Byrne (The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things). Also included are fifteen critical essays, twelve of them new to the fourth edition, reflecting the finest current scholarship. Contributors include Janet Todd, Jim Collins, Andrew Elfenbein, Felicia Bonaparte and Tiffany Potter, amongst others. "Writers on Austen"-a new section of brief comments by Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden and others. A Chronology and revised and expanded Selected Bibliography.

With a rare blend of scientific insight and writing as graceful as the theories it so deftly explains, The Elegant Universe remains the unrivaled account of the modern search for the deepest laws of nature: "a standard that will be hard to beat" (George Johnson, New York Times Book Review). In this new 25th anniversary edition, renowned physicist and author Brian Greene-"the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today" (Washington Post)-updates his classic work with a new preface and epilogue summarizing the significant theoretical and experimental developments over the past quarter-century. From established science, including relativity and quantum mechanics, to the cutting edge of thinking on black holes, string theory, and quantum gravity, The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated thoroughly accessible and entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to comprehending how the universe works.

Praise for the Aubrey/Maturin Series and Patrick O'Brian "The best historical novels ever written." -Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review "I love these books.... [They offer] the same sense of lived experience as Hilary Mantel.... They will sweep you away and return you delighted, increased and stunned. If the phrase 'Napoleonic war fiction' fills you with anticipation, then you don't need me to convince you to read [Patrick] O'Brian. But for the rest of you.... [P]lease, just trust me." -Nicola Griffith, NPR "A few books work their way... onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence-witness The Lord of the Rings, or Patrick O'Brian's sea stories." -Ursula K. Le Guin "Like John LeCarré, [O'Brian] has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from 'serious' fiction. O'Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have." -Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Patrick O'Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader... savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity." -Eudora Welty "O'Brian's eloquent admirers include not merely distinguished critics and reviewers but... thousands upon thousands of fervent readers who thank the gods for him.... [H]is work accomplishes nobly the three grand purposes of art: to entertain, to edify, and to awe." -Stephen Becker, Paris Review "For escapist reading, I especially like the sea novels of Patrick O'Brian." -Bill Bryson "O'Brian's narrative... provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises-comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity." -A. S. Byatt "I prefer the Aubrey-Maturin series to all others.... Every book is packed to absolute straining with erudition, wit, history, and thunderous action." -Joe Hill "All of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian [is on my shelves]." -Mindy Kaling, New York Times

Because brainwashing affects both the world and our observation of the world, we often cannot recognise it while it's happening-unless we know where to look. In The Instability of Truth, Rebecca Lemov exposes the myriad ways our minds can be controlled against our will, exploring the history of brainwashing techniques from those employed against POWs in North Korea to the "soft" brainwashing of social media doomscrolling and behaviour-shaping. Lemov reveals that anyone can fall victim to mind control, especially in our increasingly data-driven world and identifies invasive forms of emotional engineering that exploit trauma and addiction to create coercion and persuasion in everyday life. Offering lessons learned from mind-control episodes past and present, Lemov equips us for the increasing challenges we face from social media, AI and an unprecedented, global form of surveillance capitalism.

Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: its chips are powering the generative-AI revolution and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a diner in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company's leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure. In The Nvidia Way, acclaimed tech writer Tae Kim draws on more than a hundred interviews-including Jensen (as he is known) and his co-founders, the two original venture capital investors, early former employees, and current senior executives-to show how Nvidia played the longest of long games, repeatedly creating new markets and out-manoeuvring competitors. Kim offers revelations at every step. A rare view into Nvidia's distinct culture and Jensen's management principles, The Nvidia Way is a book for our moment as well as an instant classic of business history, with enduring lessons for entrepreneurs and managers alike.

Praise for Richard Powers The Overstory Winner of the Pulitzer Prize ¿ #1 New York Times Bestseller "It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it...It changed how I see things and that's always, for me, a mark of a book worth reading." - Barack Obama "Monumental...accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt...[A] gigantic fable of genuine truths." - Barbara Kingsolver "This ambitious novel soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction...[R]emarkable." - Ron Charles, Washington Post Bewilderment An Oprah's Book Club Selection ¿ An Instant New York Times Bestseller "Extraordinary...Powers's insightful, often poetic prose draws us at once more deeply toward the infinitude of the imagination and more vigorously toward the urgencies of the real and familiar stakes rattling our persons and our planet." - Tracy K. Smith, New York Times Book Review, cover review "A heartrending tale of loss...Powers continues to raise bold questions about the state of our world and the cumulative effects of our mistakes." - Heller McAlpin, NPR "Nothing short of transportive...Powers expertly grapples with existential questions, interspersing beatific rays of hope throughout the story like sunbeams." - Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek

The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world-and one of the most difficult to amend. At what cost? In this landmark, lavishly illustrated book, Harvard professor of history and law Jill Lepore argues that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. Challenging both originalism and the Supreme Court's monopoly on constitutional interpretation, Lepore argues that the framers never intended for the Constitution to be kept, like a butterfly, under glass but instead expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, improving the machinery of government. In a radical account, Lepore offers a sweeping, lyrical and democratic constitutional history, telling the stories of generations of Americans who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights, hoping to mend America by amending its constitution.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state-separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace. Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family's history, Claire Messud animates her characters' rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is "a tour de force...one of those rare novels that a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters" (Yiyun Li).

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*Contraband * - Smuggling and the Birth of the American Century / 25.99€ / ebook

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