From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Umberto Eco offers a dazzling tour of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange to make sense of the world. Uncovering layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, Eco offers with wit and clarity such instances as Columbus's voyage to the New World, the fictions that grew around the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar, and the linguistic endeavors to recreate the language of Babel, to show how serendipities can evolve out of mistakes. With erudition, anecdotes, and scholarly rigor, this new collection of essays is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas.

    It's a strange language, a little like English. Without it, how would our intrepid journalists be able to describe a world in which innocent bystanders look on in horror, where tots in peril are saved by have-a-go heroes, and where troubled stars lash out in foul-mouthed tirades?Robert Hutton has been working around native journalese speakers for two decades, living as one of them and learning their ways, and now he has made their secrets available to the public for the first time. When he first began collecting examples online, he provoked a 'Twitter storm', and was 'left reeling' by the 'scores' of examples that 'flooded in'. He realized that phrases which started as shorthand to help readers have become a dialect that is often meaningless or vacuous to non-journalese speakers.In a courageous attempt both to wean journalists off their journalese habit, and provide elucidation for the rest of us, Romps, Tots and Boffins catalogues the highs and lows of this strange language, celebrating the best examples ('test-tube baby', 'mad cow disease'), marvelling at the quirky ('boffins', 'frogmen') and condemning the worst ('rant', 'snub', 'sirs'). It's a 'must-read' 'page-turner' that may 'cause a stir', 'fuel controversy', or even 'spark' 'tough new rules' in newsrooms.Shortlisted for the Political Humour Book of the Year at the PaddyPower Political Book Awards 2014 "great joy from Robert Hutton's Romps, Tots and Boffins. Never has the weird language of headlines been so wittily defined."--Libby Purves, 'books of the year', The Times"Robert Hutton...has set himself up as the Dr Johnson of this strange, widely read, hardly spoken, language."--Matthew Engel, Financial Times"I'm loving a little book just out by my fellow political journalist Rob Hutton. It's called Romps, Tots and Boffins: The Strange Language of News but is so much more than a hilarious compendium of the ghastly cliché to which our trade is prone. "--Matthew Parris, The Times"An essential guide to finding out what you are reading about. Some people may dismiss this as a 'loo book' but, actually, it's so much more."--Ann Treneman, The Times"A right romp"--Paul Dietrich, The Metro"A fascinating code-breaker of the cliches, inanities and banalities which fill our newspapers. Or, if you prefer, 'News Secrets Revealed Leaving Bosses Shamefaced'. I'm not sure I dare write another word."--Nick Robinson"Finally, I understand what my fellow journalists are writing about."--Simon Hoggart"Long journey to Lib Dem Conference enlivened by Robert Hutton's journalese book, Romps, Tots + Boffins - hilarious, wonderful, + very true - a mini classic"--Andrew Sparrow, Guardian Politics blogger"Very funny new book by Robert Hutton - "Romps, Tots + Boffins: the strange language of news" - a must-read page-turner"--Iain Martin, former editor of the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday"For readers, it promises to explain what journalists really mean. And for journalists, it also provides a guide to some of the hackneyed, arcane and clichéd phrases that are probably best avoided."--Axegrinder, Press Gazette"an amusing dictionary of arcane hack-speak"--Michael Deacon, The Telegraph"The world of journalism was rocked to its foundations last night as a top newsman claimed to have discovered the secret of 'journalese'." --John Rentoul, The Independent

    Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling's essays examine the promise—and limits—of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naïve liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social sciences, and asserting in their stead the irreducible complexity of human motivation and the tragic inevitability of tragedy. Only the imagination, Trilling argues, can give us access and insight into these realms and only the imagination can ground a reflective and considered, rather than programmatic and dogmatic, liberalism.Writing with acute intelligence about classics like Huckleberry Finn and the novels of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also on such varied matters as the Kinsey Report and money in the American imagination, Trilling presents a model of the critic as both part of and apart from his society, a defender of the reflective life that, in our ever more rationalized world, seems ever more necessary—and ever more remote.

    But music could not be explainedwithout addressing language, and could not be accounted for withoutunderstanding the evolution of the human body and mind. Thus Mithenarrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: anexploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of ourspecies. Music is the language of emotion, common wisdom tells

    Thompson’s bestselling Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style.Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers” is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful ‘60s and ‘70s.

    These books use excerpts from the major texts to explain essential topics, such as Jacques Lacan's core ideas about enjoyment, which re-created our concept of psychoanalysis.Lacan’s motto of the ethics of psychoanalysis involves a profound paradox. Traditionally, psychoanalysis was expected to allow the patient to overcome the obstacles which prevented access to "normal" sexual enjoyment; today, however, we are bombarded by different versions of the injunction "Enjoy!" Psychoanalysis is the only discourse in which you are allowed not to enjoy.Slavoj Žižek’s passionate defense of Lacan reasserts Lacan’s ethical urgency. For Lacan, psychoanalysis is a procedure of reading and each chapter reads a passage from Lacan as a tool to interpret another text from philosophy, art or popular ideology.

    In his new book, Elder is out to slay entrenched and enmeshed special interest groups, government agencies with the capacity to meddle in Americans' lives and businesses, lawmakers who continue a pattern of outrageous overtaxation, and those who would hamstring this country with good intentions.Showdown demonstrates how the nation would be better, stronger and safer with less gvernment intervention and how individuals would not only cope but thrive without the so-called safety net. Showdown is a call to arms for a truly free society. Elder discusses:- What a Republican-led government means for progress- Where a responsible government would put its citizens' tax dollars- Why racial and sex discrimination are non-issues in the 21st century.Larry Elders straight talk and common-sense solutions spare no one and will inspire his passionate and growing audience.

    A New York Times Notable Book of the Year in Hyperion hardcover.

    Honest, open, and heartfelt, Reagan’s letters reveal a man who felt most comfortable and natural with pen in hand, and a man who reached out to friend and foe alike throughout his life. Reagan: A Life in Letters is as important as it is astonishing and moving.

    Various competing schools of sociology have attempted to fit observations of social phenomena into different conceptual systems. Introducing Sociology traces the origins of these systems from Enlightenment thought and the pioneering work of Auguste Comte to subsequent developments in Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. The rapid expansion of sociology in 20th-century America and Britain, the post-World War II dominance of Talcott Parsons, the Chicago School and the rise of Structuralism are brilliantly outlined in a clear, graphic form. The book also examines the array of concepts and methods of research that have been applied to the study of society by the key analysts. This book is essential reading for students of the subject and for anyone interested in understanding the functioning of society.

    Where the fathers imbibed the doctrine of Confucius and learned the classics and revolted against them, these young people have been battered by many forces of the new times. They have been taught something of science, something of Christianity, something of atheism, something of free love, something of communism, something of Western philosophy, something of modern militarism, something, in fact, of everything. In the midst of the sturdy medievalism of the masses of their countrymen the young intellectuals have been taught the most extreme of every culture. Intellectually they have been forced to the same great omissions that China has made physically. They have skipped, figuratively speaking, from the period of the unimproved country road to the aero plane era. The omission was too great. The mind could not compensate for it. The spirit was lost in the conflict. The first result, therefore, of the hiatus was undoubtedly to produce a class of young Chinese, both men and women, but chiefly men, who frankly did not know how to live in their own country or in the age in which their country still was. They were for the most part educated abroad, where they forgot the realities of their own race. It was easy enough for various revolutionary leaders to persuade these alienated minds that China's so-called backwardness was due primarily to political and material interference by foreign powers. The world was made the scapegoat for Chinas medievalism. Instead of realizing that China was in her own way making her own steps, slowly, it is true, and somewhatponderously, toward modernity, it was easy hue and cry to say that if it had not been for foreigners she would have been already on an equality, in material terms, with other nations. The result of this was a fresh revolution of a sort. China practically rid herself of her two great grievances outside of Japan, extraterritoriality and the tariff. No great visible change appeared as a consequence. It became apparent that what had been weaknesses were still weaknesses, and that these were inherent in the ideology of the people. It was found, for instance, that when a revolutionary leader became secure and entrenched he became conservative and as corrupt, too often, as an old style official. The same has been true in other histories. There were too many honest and intelligent young minds in China not to observe and accept the truth, that the outside world had very little to do with Chinas condition, and what she had to do with it could have been prevented if China had been earlier less sluggish and her leaders less blind and selfish. Then followed a period of despair and frenzy and increased idealistic worship of the West. The evident prosperity of foreign countries was felt to be a direct fruit of Western scientific development.

    Numbers and the Making of Us is a sweeping account of how numbers radically enhanced our species' cognitive capabilities and sparked a revolution in human culture. Caleb Everett brings new insights in psychology, anthropology, primatology, linguistics, and other disciplines to bear in explaining the myriad human behaviors and modes of thought numbers have made possible, from enabling us to conceptualize time in new ways to facilitating the development of writing, agriculture, and other advances of civilization.Number concepts are a human invention--a tool, much like the wheel, developed and refined over millennia. Numbers allow us to grasp quantities precisely, but they are not innate. Recent research confirms that most specific quantities are not perceived in the absence of a number system. In fact, without the use of numbers, we cannot precisely grasp quantities greater than three; our minds can only estimate beyond this surprisingly minuscule limit.Everett examines the various types of numbers that have developed in different societies, showing how most number systems derived from anatomical factors such as the number of fingers on each hand. He details fascinating work with indigenous Amazonians who demonstrate that, unlike language, numbers are not a universal human endowment. Yet without numbers, the world as we know it would not exist.

    First published in 1957, it mapped out a new methodology in cultural studies based around interdisciplinarity and a concern with how texts-in this case, mass publications-are stitched into the patterns of lived experience. Mixing personal memoir with social history and cultural critique, The Uses of Literacy anticipates recent interest in modes of cultural analysis that refuse to hide the author behind the mask of objective social scientific technique. In its method and in its rich accumulation of the detail of working-class life, this volume remains useful and absorbing.Hoggart's analysis achieves much of its power through a careful delineation of the complexities of working-class attitudes and its sensitivity to the physical and environmental facts of working-class life. The people he portrays are neither the sentimentalized victims of a culture of deference nor neo-fascist hooligans. Hoggart sees beyond habits to what habits stand for and sees through statements to what the statements really mean. He thus detects the differing pressures of emotion behind idiomatic phrases and ritualistic observances.Through close observation and an emotional empathy deriving, in part, from his own working-class background, Hoggart defines a fairly homogeneous and representative group of working-class people. Against this background may be seen how the various appeals of mass publications and other artifacts of popular culture connect with traditional and commonly accepted attitudes, how they are altering those attitudes, and how they are meeting resistance. Hoggart argues that the appeals made by mass publicists-more insistent, effective, and pervasive than in the past-are moving toward the creation of an undifferentiated mass culture and that the remnants of an authentic urban culture are being destroyed.In his introduction to this new edition, Andrew Goodwin, professor of broadcast communications arts at San Francisco State University, defines Hoggart's place among contending schools of English cultural criticism and points out the prescience of his analysis for developments in England over the past thirty years. He notes as well the fruitful links to be made between Hoggart's method and findings and aspects of popular culture in the United States.

    This book provides a brief yet comprehensive introduction to the field. It explores how sociolinguistics is linked to other disciplines such as history, politics and gender studies.

    This fully revised textbook is a new edition of Ronald Wardhaugh's popular and accessible An Introduction to Sociolinguistics.Provides an accessible, comprehensive introduction to sociolinguistics that reflects new developments in the field.Fully revised, with 130 new and updated references to bring the book completely up-to-date.Includes suggested readings, discussion sections, and exercises.Features increased emphasis on issues of identity, solidarity, and powerDiscusses topics such as language dialects, pidgins and creoles, codes, bilingualism, speech communities, variation, words and culture, ethnographies, solidarity and politeness, talk and action, gender, disadvantage, and planning.Designed for introductory and post-introductory students, and ideal for courses including introduction to sociolinguistics, aspects of sociolinguistics, and language and society.