" In Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life, Robert Spaethling presents "Mozart in all the rawness of his driving energies" (Spectator), preserved in the "zany, often angry effervescence" of his writing (Observer). Where other translators have ignored Mozart's atrocious spelling and tempered his foul language, "Robert Spaethling's new translations are lively and racy, and do justice to Mozart's restlessly inventive mind" (Daily Mail). Carefully selected and meticulously annotated, this collection of letters "should be on the shelves of every music lover" (BBC Music Magazine).

    These plays have attracted focus and reflection from Aristotle, Freud, Nietzsche, and others who Professor Vandiver observes early in the course: "It is a notable paradox that Greek tragedy, a dramatic form that flourished for less than a full century, a dramatic form that began in a particular religious festival of a particular god some 2,500 years ago, remains vibrant, alive, and productive today. "It seems that there is something about tragedy that lifts it out of its particular circumstances and beyond its particular gods, social issues, and political concerns to give a kind of universality that is, in the last analysis, very surprising." The great tragedies shed light on the extraordinary time, place, and people that produced them. And they may help us-as perhaps they helped their original audiences-to grasp a fuller sense of both the terror and wonder that life presents. A Rounded View of a Grand Art Form Professor Vandiver has designed these lectures to give you a full overview of Greek tragedy, both in its original setting and as a lasting contribution to the artistic exploration of the human condition. There are three main points to the course: First: The Plays in Their Context. You learn to see Greek tragedy as a genre in its cultural context. Why did this powerful art form flower in the Athens of Pericles and the Peloponnesian War? What is tragedy's deeper historical background? Did it grow out of rituals honoring the god Dionysus, as is so often said? What role did it play in Athenian civic and religious life? How was it related to earlier performance traditions such as bardic recitation? How did Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides each make unique contributions to tragedy's expressive power? Second: The Plays on the Stage. Too often, the surviving tragedies are seen purely as texts to be read, rather than as scripts to be played. Hence the second aim of Dr. Vandiver's course is to teach what scholarship can reveal about the performance of tragedy, including its physical and ritual settings, actors and acting methods, conventions of staging and stagecraft, and even how productions were financed. Third: The Plays in Rich Detail. Third, you explore with Professor Vandiver a broad group of tragedies in close detail. In particular, you will ask how individual tragedies use traditional myths (often tales from the Trojan War), and what Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides intended to accomplish by changing or adding to the basic story. You examine what certain tragedies imply about the world of 5th-century Athens, and the importance, in turn, of the cultural background for explaining those tragedies. Surveying Key Scholars and Critics While Professor Vandiver frequently refers to modern critical approaches and theories to help illuminate the tragedies, she has chosen not to adopt any one theory as a framework for the lectures. Accordingly, you will find that she carefully and fairly discusses a number of views of tragedy, including those of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Freud, the Cambridge Ritualists, and even Aristophanes, who included the tragic stage in his wide-ranging satires of Athenian institutions, mores, and personalities. Three for the Ages Perhaps one of the most intriguing opportunities this course offers, even if you are a seasoned lover of literature and the classics, is the chance to compare and contrast the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Aeschylus (525-455 B.C.) Lectures 5 through 9 focus on Aeschylus, the eldest of the three. The plays and themes discussed include The Oresteia (a trilogy about the accursed House of Atreus in the aftermath of the Trojan War, it includes Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides), as well as the earlier plays Persians, Suppliant Maidens, and Seven Against Thebes. Sophocles (496-406 B.C.) Lectures 11 through 14 and 22 are devoted to Sophocles. He is well known for creating heroes such as Oedipus, Ajax, and Philoctetes, who are characterized by intense isolation. In his Poetics, Aristotle credits Sophocles with introducing the third actor (not counting the chorus) and the use of scenery. Euripides (484-406 B.C.) Lectures 15 through 21 concentrate on Euripides. The most overtly political and least traditional of the three, he wrote plays featuring an especially vivid array of strong, disturbing female characters, including Medea and Phaedra. Two other plays with female protagonists, Hecuba and Trojan Women, paint harrowing portraits of the horrors of war and were written while Athens was locked in a deadly struggle with Sparta and her allies. The course moves toward a finish by examining the revivals of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides put on in the Hellenistic theater, and then briefly discusses Roman adaptations and later "revivals" of Greek tragedy, from the Renaissance to modern times. It closes with Professor Vandiver's reflections on how the characteristic themes and tone of the Athenian tragic stage continue to inspire audiences and artists in a variety of media today.

    Mandarin is the official spoken language in Mainland China and Taiwan. It is also widely spoken in Singapore and Malaysia, and it is one of the five official languages of the UN. Mandarin is used in Chinese schools, colleges, universities, and in the media. Learn Mandarin Chinese today with Pimsleur.Comprehensive Mandarin Chinese I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus a Culture Booklet. Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. In the first 10 lessons, you’ll cover the basics: saying hello, asking for or giving information, scheduling a meal or a meeting, asking for or giving basic directions, and much more.  You’ll be able to handle minimum courtesy requirements, understand much of what you hear, and be understood at a beginning level, but with near-native pronunciation skills.In the next 10 lessons, you’ll build on what you’ve learned. Expand your menu, increase your scheduling abilities from general to specific, start to deal with currency and exchanging money, refine your conversations and add over a hundred new vocabulary items.  You’ll understand more of what you hear, and be able to participate with speech that is smoother and more confident.In the final 10 lessons, you’ll be speaking and understanding at an intermediate level. More directions are given in the target language, which moves your learning to a whole new plane.  Lessons include shopping, visiting friends, going to a restaurant, plans for the evening, car trips, and talking about family.  One hour of recorded Cultural Notes are included at the end of Unit 30. These notes are designed to provide you with some insight into Chinese culture. A Notes Booklet is also included in PDF format.

    Physical and emotional privation, familial violence, racial enmity, and recurrent death are the features of this collection of poetry, set amid the landscape of the South.

    Harper and Anthony Walton present the definitive collection of black verse in the United States--200 years of vision, struggle, power, beauty, and triumph from 52 outstanding poets.From the neoclassical stylings of slave-born Phillis Wheatley to the wistful lyricism of Paul Lawrence Dunbar . . . the rigorous wisdom of Gwendolyn Brooks...the chiseled modernism of Robert Hayden...the extraordinary prosody of Sterling A. Brown...the breathtaking, expansive narratives of Rita Dove...the plaintive rhapsodies of an imprisoned Elderidge Knight . . . The postmodern artistry of Yusef Komunyaka.  Here, too, is a landmark exploration of lesser-known artists whose efforts birthed the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movements--and changed forever our national literature and the course of America itself.Meticulously researched, thoughtfully structured, The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry is a collection of inestimable value to students, educators, and all those interested in the ever-evolving tradition that is American poetry.

    Christ-Centered Therapy thoroughly integrates psychology and practical theology. A book written by experts from both fields, it utilizes the contributions of science in an uncompromisingly biblical framework. Here at last is a powerful resource to help you—pastor, counselor, or spiritual advisor—understand the complex problems of people and address them with the wisdom of God’s Word and the power of his Spirit.Insightful and practical, Christ-Centered Therapy unites the wisdom and expertise of pastoral theologian and best-selling author Dr. Neil Anderson and professional Christian counselors Dr. Terry and Julianne Zuehlke. The first part of the book equips you with an understanding of the different issues involved in integrating theology and psychology. The second part helps you turn theory into practical application. You’ll also find appendixes that offer personal testimonies, provide professional forms, discuss the role of psychiatry in managed care, and present the Steps to Freedom in Christ.

    Lincoln then turns his attention to the period when myth was recuperated as a privileged type of narrative, a process he locates in the political and cultural ferment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, he connects renewed enthusiasm for myth to the nexus of Romanticism, nationalism, and Aryan triumphalism, particularly the quest for a language and set of stories on which nation-states could be founded.In the final section of this wide-ranging book, Lincoln advocates a fresh approach to the study of myth, providing varied case studies to support his view of myth—and scholarship on myth—as ideology in narrative form.

    In so doing, it touches on a number of important issues, including whether there can be a universal 'gay identity' and whether or not strategies developed for increasing gay and lesbian visibility in western countries are appropriate to the social situation in Japan

    Sheila Jeffreys demonstrates how prostitution has been globalized through an examination of:the growth of pornography and its new global reachthe boom in adult shops, strip clubs and escort agenciesmilitary prostitution and sexual violence in warmarriage and the mail order bride industrythe rise in sex tourism and trafficking in women. She argues that through these practices women's subordination has been outsourced and that states that legalise this industry are acting as pimps, enabling male buyers in countries in which women's equality threatens male dominance, to buy access to the bodies of women from poor countries who are paid for their sexual subservience.This major and provocative contribution is essential reading for all with an interest in feminist, gender and critical globalisation issues as well as students and scholars of international political economy.

    Graphic illustrations are used to explain what happens within each person in a relationship, and realistic dialogues provide specific examples of how to create changes and solve problems.

    Loss of faith in the objectivity of ethics has encouraged a sense of hopelessness. The notion that no ideal is better than any other, that a humane commitment has no rational advantage over Nietzsche’s contempt for ordinary people, has been accused of leaving our civilization without self-confidence or a purpose. James R. Flynn rejects attempts to salvage ethical objectivity as futile and counterproductive. Instead, he uses philosophical analysis to demonstrate the relevance of logic and evidence to moral debate. He then uses modern social science to refute racists, Social Darwinists, Nietzsche, and the meritocracy thesis of The Bell Curve. Flynn concludes that the great post-Enlightenment project—justice for all races and classes, the reduction of inequality, and the abolition of privilege—retains its moral dignity and relevance.

    Boyds Mills Press publishes a wide range of high-quality fiction and nonfiction picture books, chapter books, novels, and nonfiction

    His emphasis is on the work involved in the critical evaluation of a given portion of text. His explanations of critical principles are illustrated with carefully selected examples of the textual phenomena discussed-in Hebrew, with English translations. The book concludes with unique appendices on several kinds of essential but hard-to-find information.

    McElvaine has broken ranks with his fellow historians and answered the call made by E.O. Wilson in Consilience, that humanistic scholars must begin to draw upon the natural sciences in order to fully understand the human condition. Bridging the gap between evolutionary biology and cultural history, McElvaine has created what he calls a biohistory. He begins with the assertion, by no means accepted by most historians, that history must begin with an understanding of the evolutionary heritage we carried out of the Stone Age, and that the time before writing, usually dismissed by historians as prehistory, saw the development of forces that have shaped the entire course of human history.

    Cognitive psychologists, curriculum specialists, teacher educators, and researchers have developed a two-dimensional framework, focusing on knowledge and cognitive processes. In combination, these two define what students are expected tolearn in school. Like no other text, it explores curriculums from three unique perspectives-cognitive psychologists (learning emphasis), curriculum specialists and teacher educators (C&I emphasis), and measurement and assessment experts (assessment emphasis). This "revisited" framework allows you to connect learning in all areas of curriculum. Educators, or others interested in Educational Psychology or Educational Methods for grades K-12.

    Ancient Pathways, Hidden Pursuits brings together the best of Georg Luck's many papers and articles on Graeco-Roman life and thought in the realm of religious beliefs, occult practices, psychology, and morals. The collection complements Luck's Arcana Mundi, an introduction to magic and the occult in antiquity, which has been published in several languages.The present volume includes the author's thoughts on Greek and Roman religions, early Christianity, Greek and Roman psychology and morals, and magic and the occult. Luck's main findings explore generally neglected areas of ancient civilization, locating magic and philosophy with religion as vehicles for moral and psychological guidance. Throughout this study, one finds meaning in "superstitious" and conflicting patterns of behavior and learns much about the nature of the human soul. This collection will serve as a valuable reference for those interested in the driving motivations of ancient man."The topics of the individual articles in this volume are very central and of great humanistic appeal, and they indeed form a thematic unity concerning man and religion in Greek and Roman society." --Ludwig Koenen, Herbert C. Youtie Distinguished University Professor of Papyrology, University of MichiganGeorg Luck is Professor of Classics, emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University.