Senator S. I. Hayakawa discusses the role of language in human life, the many functions of language, and how language—sometimes without our knowing—shapes our thinking in this engaging and highly respected book. Provocative and erudite, it examines the relationship between language and racial and religious prejudice; the nature and dangers of advertising from a linguistic point of view; and, in an additional chapter called “The Empty Eye,” the content, form, and hidden message of television, from situation comedies to news coverage to political advertising.

    Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. Translated by Lewis Galantière.

    In such a scenario, it makes sense to focus on the most identifiable and urgent problems, right? Actually, it doesn't. In his classic essay "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the man who helped bring Albert Einstein to the United States, describes a great paradox of scientific research. The search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs. In short, no quantum mechanics, no computer chips.This brief book includes Flexner's timeless 1939 essay alongside a new companion essay by Robbert Dijkgraaf, the Institute's current director, in which he shows that Flexner's defense of the value of "the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge" may be even more relevant today than it was in the early twentieth century. Dijkgraaf describes how basic research has led to major transformations in the past century and explains why it is an essential precondition of innovation and the first step in social and cultural change. He makes the case that society can achieve deeper understanding and practical progress today and tomorrow only by truly valuing and substantially funding the curiosity-driven "pursuit of useless knowledge" in both the sciences and the humanities.

    Now in its twentieth edition, this treasured guide is an essential volume for every dog owner and owner-to-be.Comprehensive and thoughtfully organized, The Complete Dog Book features all 153 breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club, the official breed standards, breed histories, and photographs. Also included are the twelve most recently recognized breeds: Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Black Russian Terrier, German Pinscher, Glen of Imaal Terrier, Havanese, Löwchen, Neapolitan Mastiff, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Parson Russell Terrier, Polish Lowland Sheepdog, Spinone Italiano, and Toy Fox Terrier. Along with AKC registration procedures and current forms, The Complete Dog Book includes sections on• choosing the dog that’s right for you• training• nutrition• grooming• responsible breeding• canine first-aid• joining a dog club• Canine Good Citizen® program• every AKC sport: Agility, Conformation, Coonhound, Earthdog, Field Trials, Herding, Hunt Tests, Junior Showmanship, Lure Coursing, Obedience, Rally, and TrackingConcluding with an extensive glossary of terms and line drawings, The Complete Dog Book is a reference that dog aficionados will turn to again and again.

    Through his evocative writings, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, he has introduced countless readers to the wonders of caves and the adventure of caving. Here are Casteret's firsthand accounts of adventure and archaeological discovery in the caves of the Pyrenees, on the border of France and Spain. Ten Years Under the Earth ranges from "The Story of a Raindrop" (concerning the slow growth of cave features) to "An Ice World below Ground: The Grotte Casteret," from "The Phantom Hands of Gargas" (about ritual mutilation practiced by ancient man) to "The Deepest Abyss in France, the Gouffre Martel." Here is a wealth of firsthand archeological and caving lore, for the beginner as well as for the experienced caver and caving enthusiast. This volume contains the essential parts of two successive books by Norbert Casteret: Dix Ans Sous Terre, which was honored by the French Academy, and Au Fond des Gouffres.

    Working as a teller in a London bank, he thirsted for adventure. After pooling his savings with a friend, he quit his job and went to sea on a 31 foot yawl. After a brief sail down the Portuguese coast they crossed the Atlantic and spent a pleasant season among the Caribbean islands until their money gave out. At that point they found work on a coconut plantation. When a hurricane destroyed their labors, they went back to sea once more. Puleston's subsequent adventures included a shipwreck off Cape Hatteras, a grim voyage down from Newfoundland on the schooner 'Marit', knocking ice off her decks to keep her from sinking, and an excursion diving for a treasure galleon on Silver Shoals.Puleston was then asked to join the Fahnstock brothers on 'Director' and sailed her through the Panama Canal to the strange Galapagos and the enchanted isles of the Marquesas and Tahiti. Meandering though the Western Pacific, taken captive by cannibals in the New Hebrides and suffering malarial fevers from the jungles of New Guinea, this bluewater vagabond experienced one adventure after another. He finally landed in Peking just as it was falling to the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War."Travel abroad was far more of an adventure," Puleston writes of that time in his foreword. "Conrad Hilton was probably still in diapers, the Kentucky chicken colonel had not yet reached that exalted rank, and Pan American had yet to span the oceans." Blue Water Vagabond draws the reader into this now-vanished world.

    The book also offered glimpses of what had gone before, and eventually, after her husband's death, Lady Fortescue wrote the story of her whole life - and in particular of her meeting and marriage with Sir John Fortescue. This is that nostalgic re-creation of another era, of her excitement as an actress before World War I, of her meeting with the man she was to marry, and of their first home together in Windsor Castle during the reign of King George V and Queen Mary.

    L. Coombes, to the front rank of proletarian writers. Coombes was born in England, but he lived for decades in the Vale of Neath in south Wales, and as the economic problems of the 1930s deepened, he turned to writing as a way to spread the word about the plight of miners and their communities to a wider world. Presenting the daily lives of miners in documentary fashion, with special attention to the damaging lockouts of 1921 and 1926, These Poor Hands retains the power to astonish readers with its description of the ways that unfettered capitalism can lay waste to human potential.

    - Dorothy Draper After being out of print for more than sixty years, Decorating Is Fun! is finally being reissued with its original illustrations. Amazingly, the book which was originally published in 1939 on the eve of World War II, is still practical, amusing, and inspirational. Draper's earnest enthusiasm feels fresh and contemporary. She believed that though there were troubles in the world, one's home should be a refuge, a cheerful place for entertaining one's friends and a colourful and comfortable shelter from the storm. Decorating Is Fun! is also a serious book about decorating that does not take itself too seriously.

    It was published 25 years after Graphic Methods for Presenting facts.

    

    " --Publishers Weekly..". much more than the fascinating story of plant life... It is also a book about the resilience of life itself, the mystery and power of the unseen energy appearing in the visible world in a marvelous variety of forms." --Audubon Naturalist News"Here is Mr. Peattie at his superb best.... [H]e makes the story of botany and its pursuit as fascinating to the reader as it is to him, and the reading of it a delight." --Hartford Times"[Peattie] belongs with Gilbert White, Thoreau, John Burroughs, W. H. Hudson, Richard Jeffries, and John Muir." --Mark van DorenFirst published in 1939, this beautifully imaginative book is about botany much in the same sense that Walden is about a pond. Part natural history, part biography, and part philosophical reflection, Flowering Earth is written in a warm, lyrical style that made poet-scientist Donald Culross Peattie one of America's best-known naturalist writers.

    

    

    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

    What makes this classic work so popular is Alder's simple and unintimidating presentation of the various forms of personal initiation. According to Alder, we each hold the key to Ancient Wisdom if we open ourselves to recognize the universal knowledge that resides within. This book is a guide to the conscious realization of the wholeness of life as we evolve throughout a lifetime.

    

    

    Beginning with a duck-hunting trip in Minnesota, Florence writes a lively and detailed account of their trip down the Mississippi flyway, through the White River bottom swamps in Arkansas, and around the Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in the marshlands of Louisiana.

    

    Pecora, as Chief Counsel of the Senate launched investigation, shined a vivid light on the shocking practices that permeated Wall Street to the highest echelons of power. This book contains the judgements, the personal impressions, and the conclusions of the man whose personality dominated the proceedings. The mighty J. P. Morgan was forced to admit he and many of his partners hadn’t paid any income taxes in the previous two years and his reputation was tarnished. Pecora’s exposé of the practices of National City Bank (now Citibank) made banner headlines and caused the bank’s president to resign. Ferdinand Pecora writes about the investigation in the same straight-forward way he conducted it. Four of the New Deal's major reforms came as a direct consequence of Wall Street Under Oath. It is a book of enduring importance. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the 2008 “Great Recession” was actually worse than the Great Depression, making Pecora's insights more relevant than ever before.

    His method is one of comparison. He describes in turn the Oxford of Medieval Renaissance, Reformation, Classical, Nineteenth Century, and Modern Times, and after each section he gives an account of what remains today of the buildings of the period. The book is thus both a history and a guide to the University. But it is also something more. Mr Hobhouse is an individual and critical writer and his dissatisfaction with the hurrying, scientifically and material-minded Oxford of today is always apparent.Side by side with the text is the finest selection of pictures over 130 in number, which has yet illustrated a book on Oxford. They have been taken, on one hand, from such old sources as Loggan’s ‘Oxonia Illustrata’ (1675), from Rowlandson’s inimitable sketches and from Ackerman’s ‘History of the University of Oxford’; and on the other, from the best modern photographs, most of them specially taken. The whole book, with its maps and colour plates, provides an admirable introduction to Oxford for the undergraduate or visitor, while the ordinary reader will find in it a wonderfully complete – and provocative – account of the best-known university in the world.”