Employing examples of world literature from ancient times to the present, he provides a conceptual framework for the examination of literature. In four brilliant essays on historical, ethical, archetypical, and rhetorical criticism, he applies "scientific" method in an effort to change the character of criticism from the casual to the causal, from the random and intuitive to the systematic.Harold Bloom contributes a fascinating and highly personal preface that examines Frye's mode of criticism and thought (as opposed to Frye's criticism itself) as being indispensable in the modern literary world.

    Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.

    " —Naomi Klein"[Mark Kingwell] illuminates on almost every page. " —Los Angeles Times"Kingwell's musings on angling inevitably lead to in-depth essays on the inherent nature of and reasoning for various aspects of fishing, such as casting, killing, patience, and outdoorsmanship. . . . [Catch and Release is] filled with a sense of joy and awe. " —Publishers WeeklyTaking seriously the idea that baseball is a study in failure—a very successful batter manages a hit only three of every ten attempts—Harper's Magazine contributing editor Mark Kingwell explores ways in which the game teaches us lessons on fragility, contingency, and community.Weaving elements of memoir, philosophical reflection, sports writing, and humour, the book serves as an unofficial follow-up to Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life, which won over readers by offering an intelligent but accessible look into the deep waters of angling.Never pretentious, always entertaining, Fail Better is set to be the homerun non-fiction title of the spring.Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books, including the national bestsellers Better Living (1998), The World We Want (2000), Concrete Reveries (2008), and Glenn Gould (2009). In addition to many scholarly articles, his writing has appeared in more than forty mainstream magazines and newspapers. His most recent books are the essay collections Unruly Voices (2012) and Measure Yourself Against the Earth (2015).

    Heinlein was sixty-six, at the height of his literary career; J. Neil Schulman was twenty and hadn't yet started his first novel. Because he was looking for a way to meet his idol, Schulman wangled an assignment from the New York Daily News--at the time the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S.--to interview Heinlein for its Sunday Book Supplement. The resulting taped interview lasted three-and-a-half hours. This turned out to be the longest interview Heinlein ever granted, and the only one in which he talked freely and extensively about his personal philosophy and ideology. "The Robert Heinlein Interview" contains Heinlein you won't find anywhere else--even in Heinlein's own "Expanded Universe." If you wnat to know what Heinlein had to say about UFO's, life after death, epistemology, or libertarianism, this interview is the only source available. Also included in this collection are articles, reviews, and letters that J. Neil Schulman wrote about Heinlein, including the original article written for The Daily News, about which the Heinleins wrote Schulman that it was, "The best article--in style, content, and accuracy--of the many, many written about him over the years." This book is must-reading for any serious student of Heinlein, or any reader seeking to know him better.

    The chapters may be read independently of one another. But when read in order, they tell a more or less continuous story. We begin with some reflections about the legacy of Socrates and then go on to the existence of God, which is perhaps the most basic philosophical question of all because our answer to it influences how we will answer all the others. This leads naturally to a discussion of death and the soul, and then to more modern ideas about the nature of persons. The later chapters are about whether it is possible for us to have objective knowledge in either science or ethics. James Rachels, from the Preface Problems from Philosophy and The Truth About the World: Basic Readings in Philosophy are at once James Rachels' newest contributions to philosophy and his last. In these two books, Rachels found a culminating expression for his love of philosophy.

    Organized thematically and with substantial introductions, this is a book for the activist, the student, the too-angry and the not-angry-enough.You'll find:"Dyke Manifesto" by the Lesbian Avengers"Mini-Manual of Individualist Anarchism" by Emile Armand"Intercourse" by Andrea Dworkin"Manifesto of the Erased" by Crystal ZaragozaThe "Ax Tampax Poem Feministo" from the Bloodsisters Project"Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway"TRASHGiRRRRLLLZZZ" by Elizabeth Broeder"The Manifesto of Apocalyptic Witchcraft" by Peter GreyThe manifesto, feminist scholar Breanne Fahs notes, is always "on unsteady ground," raging and wanting, desiring and disdaining, promoting solidarity or individual pain, all at once. As she notes, we need manifestos in all their urgent rawness and their insistence that we have to act now, that we must face this, that the bleeding edge of rage and defiance is where new ideas are born.

    The government’s ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times.Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard, while the stories told about them have been distorted by broad brush dread and political expediency. This fierce and poignant collection changes that. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is a breathtaking mosaic of first-hand testimonials from the frontlines. Some of the testimonies are several pages long, eloquent narratives that could stand alone as short stories; others are only a few sentences, poetic and aphoristic. Together, they cohere into an unforgettable chronicle that is not only a testament to the power of storytelling but to the strength of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.

    Her best friend paused before saying, “Well, you do say “f***” a lot.” Welcome to the interesting quagmire Lucinda Holdforth finds herself in. She believes that manners are essential to civilization. Yet according to the knife-and-fork snobs, or exclusive bores, her modern-day attitude might not scream manners. And in this age of global warming and warfare, aren’t manners frivolous? Do manners really matter? Yes! she passionately exclaims. Citing everyone from Tocqueville to Proust to Borat, Holdforth shows how manners, —which many of us might think are inconsequential, —are actually the cornerstone of civilization. Incredibly smart, the book illustrates how the philosophies of the greatest thinkers are relevant to our very modern lives.

    Despite making up less than 1% of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarised 'debate', which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system, and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalised people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.

    How do we get out of it?The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care--childcare, healthcare, elder care--to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our everyday lives, making it the organising principle in every dimension and at every scale of life. We are all dependent on each other, and only by nurturing these interdependencies can we cultivate a world in which each and every one of us can not only live but thrive.The Care Manifesto demands that we must put care at the heart of the state and the economy. A caring government must promote collective joy, not the satisfaction of individual desire. This means the transformation of how we organise work through co-operatives, localism and nationalisation. It proposes the expansion of our understanding of kinship for a more 'promiscuous care'. It calls for caring places through the reclamation of public space, to make a more convivial city. It sets out an agenda for the environment, most urgent of all, putting care at the centre of our relationship to the natural world.

    These queer thinkers, writers, and artists are committed to undermining a stunted conception of “equality.” In this powerful book, they challenge mainstream gay and lesbian struggles for inclusion in elitist and inhumane institutions. More than a critique, Against Equality seeks to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility!

    Today the general wealth of social life finds itself confronted by mutations in the mechanisms of control, from the proliferation of capitalist logistics through governance by credit and management of pedagogy. Working from and within the social poesis of life in the undercommons Moten and Harney develop and expand an array of concepts: study, debt, surround, planning, and the shipped. On the fugitive path of an historical and global blackness, the essays in this volume unsettle and invite the reader to the self-organised ensembles of social life that are launched every day and every night amid the general antagonism of the undercommons.

    Is it the covers? Is it because the audience and authors are largely comprised of women? Or is it something else? Perhaps the bad reputation of romance has to do with surprising dictionary definitions, women, window taxes, the poor, the cost of a ream of paper in the nineteenth century, the rise of the love match marriage, the social status quo, the industrial revolution, and the ongoing tension between high and low art. Discover the origins of the stigma against popular romance novels, those who read it and those who wrote it. It has nothing to do with the covers. These books were scorned because they were dangerous.

    More than 250 color photos.

    The end result of this conversation, Dark hopes, will be a better understanding that there is a reality more important, more lasting, and more infinite than the cultures to which we belong, the reality of the kingdom of God.