This world of total human experience is the world that is (or at least ought to be) reflected and molded by the arts, above all by the art of literature. "What is the function of literature," Mr. Huxley asks, "what its psychology, what the nature of literary language? And how do its function, psychology and language differ from those of science? What in the past has been the relationship between literature and science? What is it now? What might it be in the future? And what would it be profitable, artistically speaking, for a twentieth-century man of letters to do about twentieth-century science?"Ours is the Age of Science; but from a study of the best contemporary literature one would find it difficult to infer this most obvious of facts. Contemporary poetry, drama and fiction contain remarkably few references to contemporary science—few references even to the metaphysical and ethical problems which contemporary science has raised. That this state of affairs should somehow be remedied is the theme of every recent discussion of "the Two Cultures." unfortunately most of these discussions have been carried on in abstract terms and with almost no citations of case histories, no references to the concrete problems of literary and scientific writing, no illustrative examples. Mr. Huxley has approached the subject in a different way. He deals with specific questions in the fields of immediate experience, of conceptualization, of philosophical interpretation and of verbal expression; and he illustrates these wide-ranging themes with copious quotations, drawn from a great variety of sources. He analyzes the nature of literary language and contrasts its many-meaninged richness with the simplified and jargonized language of science. He shows how the poets of earlier centuries made use of the scientific knowledge available to them. He gives examples of the ways in which modern science has modified and added to the traditional raw materials of literature. And he concludes with a speculative discussion of the ways in which future men of letters may work up the raw materials of brand new fact and revolutionary hypothesis provided by science, transfiguring them into a new kind of literature, capable of expression and at the same time coordinating and giving significance to the totality of an ever-widening human experience.

    Beginning in India, his examination takes him from the realities of Bollywood stardom, to the history of Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence politics. In Kashmir, he reports on the brutal massacre of thirty-five Sikhs, and its intriguing local aftermath. And in Tibet, he exquisitely parses the situation whereby the atheist Chinese government has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can be packaged and sold to tourists. Temptations of the West is essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region of the world.

    PRESENTED BY KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTS AND NARRATED BY CHARLTON HESTON. A 2-AUDIOTAPE CASSETTE AUDIOBOOK. APPROX. 3 HOURS TIME.

    

    A pulse-pounding tale of first contact gone horribly wrong. Ender’s Game opens in the last desperate days of Earth’s war against the implacable insectoid aliens. We are told early on that the Battle School is training generals for the Third Formic War — the war that will end the war; will save the Earth; will finally defeat the Buggers. This is the story of the First Formic Wars, back when humans thought they were alone in the galaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies. Then a ship’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.Earth Unaware — When mining ship El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. But the ship has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems…not important.Earth Afire — Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. That is, until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame. And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could organize in time to meet the threat. Earth Awakens — Politics slowed the response on Earth, and on Luna, corporate power struggles seemed more urgent than distant deaths. It's up to Mazer Rackham's squad in China, who have developed a method to destroy the alien landers one by one; and Lem Jukes and his crew on the Moon, who may have the key to destroying the Formic mother ship in orbit. Books by Orson Scott Card The Ender UniverseEnder Quintet#1 Ender’s Game#2 Ender in Exile#3 Speaker for the Dead#4 Xenodice#5 Children of the Mind Ender’s Shadow Quintet #1 Ender’s Shadow#2 Shadow of the Hegemon#3 Shadow Puppets#4 Shadow of the Giant#5 Shadows in Flight The Second Formic War (With Aaron Johnston) #1 The SwarmOther Books in the Ender UniverseChildren of the Fleet A War of Gifts (novella) First Meetings (novella)Other SeriesHomecomingThe MithermagesThe Tales of Alvin MakerAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Springing with amazing vigour from the soil behind the house, this space has been central to Monty's life; ever since he dug the very first border, he has obsessively written about it. The Ivington Diaries is a personal collection of Monty's jottings from the past fifteen years. Generously illustrated with his very own photographs, and beautifully packaged, this book promises to be one of the most delightful garden books ever published.

    But recent technological advances have made the question both practical and urgent. A brilliantly imaginative group of physicists at Oxford University have risen to the challenge. This is their story. At long last, there is a sensible way to think about quantum mechanics. The new view abolishes the need to believe in randomness, long-range spooky forces, or conscious observers with mysterious powers to collapse cats into a state of life or death. But the new understanding comes at a price: we must accept that we live in a multiverse wherein countless versions of reality unfold side-by-side. The philosophical and personal consequences of this are awe-inspiring.The new interpretation has allowed imaginative physicists to conceive of wonderful new technologies: measuring devices that effectively share information between worlds and computers that can borrow the power of other worlds to perform calculations. Step by step, the problems initially associated with the original many-worlds formulation have been addressed and answered so that a clear but startling new picture has emerged.Just as Copenhagen was the centre of quantum discussion a lifetime ago, so Oxford has been the epicenter of the modern debate, with such figures as Roger Penrose and Anton Zeilinger fighting for single-world views, and David Deutsch, Lev Vaidman and a host of others for many-worlds.An independent physicist living in Oxford, Bruce has had a ringside seat to the debate. In his capable hands, we understand why the initially fantastic sounding many-worlds view is not only a useful way to look at things, but logically compelling. Parallel worlds are as real as the distant galaxies detected by the Hubble Space Telescope, even though the evidence for their existence may consist only of a few photons.

    Dominoes, New Edition: Level 3: 1,000-Word Vocabulary

    According to Wikipedia: "Jack London (12 January, 1876 – 22 November, 1916) was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild and other books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing."

    Posted to newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written on August 10th, 1994 by Ken MacLeod on behalf of Iain M. Banks.Available from www.vavatch.co.uk as A Few Notes on the Culture or from the (defunct) "culture data repository" as A Few Notes on the Culture (Part 1) A Few Notes on the Culture (Part 2)

    GIFT BOX SET OF 4 BOOKS TITLED: THE PUPPET MASTERS - ISBN 0345330145, WALDO&MAGIC - ISBN 0345330153, DOUBLE STAR - ISBN 0345330137 AND THE DOOR INTO SUMMER - ISBN 0345330129

    But though he’s started a new life, with a woman he loves, he’s still tormented by questions from his past.He returns to Angeles City where he once worked as the papasan watching over his bargirls. On the surface he’s there to sell his stake in a bar on the notorious Fields Avenue. In reality he’s come back to find Isabel—one of his old dancers, and the only person who can answer his questions, and quiet his demons. Because death is seldom an ending, and always haunts those left behind.THE PULL OF GRAVITY is an 82,000 word novel. PRAISE FOR BRETT BATTLES' PREVIOUS NOVELS:“The best word I can use to describe his writing is addictive.”—James Rollins, author of the Sigma Force series“Battles has a true gift…”—Crimespree magazine“...gripping, and always engaging...”—Tucson Citizen“Battles is a master storyteller.”—Sheldon Siegel, author of PERFECT ALIBIABOUT THE AUTHOR:Brett Battles is the Barry Award winning author of eight novels—including THE CLEANER, THE SILENCED, LITTLE GIRL GONE, SICK, and his first novel for younger readers, HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE—one novella, BECOMING QUINN, and several short stories. He is one of the founding members of Killer Year, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime. More info available at www.brettbattles.com.

    The record of the journey is the latter half of his The Maine Woods, which is perhaps the finest idyl of the forest ever written. It is particularly charming in its blending of meditative and poetic fancies with the minute description of the voyager’s experiences. The chief attraction that inspired Thoreau to make the trip was the primitiveness of the region. Here was a vast tract of almost virgin woodland, peopled only with a few loggers and pioneer farmers, Indians, and wild animals. No one could have been better fitted than Thoreau to enjoy such a region and to transmit his enjoyment of it to others.

    thought-provoking and meditative, Lingis's work is above all touching, and offers a refreshingly idiosyncratic antidote to the idle talk that so often passes for philosophical writing." --Radical Philosophy..". striking for the clarity and singularity of its styles and voices as well as for the compelling measure of genuine philosophic originality which it contributes to questions of community and (its) communication." --Research in PhenomenologyArticulating the author's journeys and personal experiences in the idiom of contemporary continental thought, Alphonso Lingis launches a devastating critique, pointing up the myopia of Western rationalism. Here Lingis raises issues of undeniable urgency.

    Orwell gives an anecdotal account of his experiences in a french public hospital which triggers a contemplation of hospital literature in the context of 19th-century medicine.