He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. This is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

    A small people inhabiting a country poor in resources and divided into hundreds of quarreling states created one of the most remarkable civilizations. Comprehensive and balanced, A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture is a new and shorter version of the authors' highly successful Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History (OUP, 1998). Four leading authorities on the classical world offer a lively and up-to-date account of Greek civilization and history in all its complexity and variety, covering the entire period from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Era, and integrating the most recent research in archaeology, comparative anthropology, and social history. They show how the early Greeks borrowed from their neighbors but eventually developed a distinctive culture all their own, one that was marked by astonishing creativity, versatility, and resilience. The authors go on to trace the complex and surprising evolution of Greek civilization to its eventual dissolution as it merged with a variety of other cultures. Using physical evidence from archaeology, the written testimony of literary texts and inscriptions, and anthropological models based on comparative studies, this compact volume provides an account of the Greek world that is thoughtful and sophisticated yet accessible to students and general readers with little or no knowledge of Greece.Ideal for courses in Greek Civilization and Ancient Greece, A Brief History of Ancient Greece offers:- A more streamlined treatment of political and military history than Ancient Greece- Emphasis on social and domestic life, art and architecture, literature, and philosophy- Expanded coverage of women and family life, religion, and athletics- A new section on male homosexuality in ancient Greece- A revised art program featuring more than 100 illustrations and 17 original maps- Numerous document boxes that include primary source material

    Besides discussions of Austen's novels and letters, there are essays on religion, politics, class consciousness, publishing practices, domestic economy, style in the novels and the significance of her juvenile works. A chronology provides biographical information, and assessments of the history of Austen criticism highlight the most interesting recent studies in a vast field of critical diversity.

    Yet although no other individual has attracted so much speculation across the centuries, Alexander himself remains an enigma. Curtius' History offers a great deal of information unobtainable from other sources of the time. A compelling narrative of a turbulent era, the work recounts events on a heroic scale, detailing court intrigue, stirring speeches and brutal battles--among them, those of Macedonia's great war with Persia, which was to culminate in Alexander's final triumph over King Darius and the defeat of an ancient and mighty empire. It also provides by far the most plausible and haunting portrait of Alexander we possess: a brilliantly realized image of a man ruined by constant good fortune in his youth.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    Volume 1 was published in 1776, going thru six printings; 2-3 in 1781; 4-6 in 1788-89. It was a major literary achievement of the 18th century, adopted as a model for the methodologies of historians.The books cover the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius, from 180 to 1590. They take as their material the behavior & decisions that led to the eventual fall of the Empire in East & West, offering explanations.Gibbon is called the 1st modern historian of ancient Rome. By virtue of its mostly objective approach & accurate use of reference material, his work was adopted as a model for the methodologies of 19-20th century historians. His pessimism & detached irony was common to the historical genre of his era. Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life (1772-89) to this one work. His Memoirs of My Life & Writings is devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually became his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn.Gibbon offers an explanation for why the Roman Empire fell, a task difficult because of few comprehensive written sources, tho he wasn't the only historian to tackle the subject. Most of his ideas are taken from what few relevant records were available: those of Roman moralists of the 4-5th centuries. According to Gibbon, the Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions because of lost of civic virtue. They'd become weak, outsourcing defence to barbarian mercenaries, who became so numerous & ingrained that they took over. Romans had become effeminate, incapable of tough military lifestyles. In addition, Christianity created belief that a better life existed after death, fostering indifference to the present, sapping patriotism. Its comparative pacifism tended to hamper martial spirit. Lastly, like other Enlightenment thinkers, he held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious, dark age. It wasn't until his age of reason that history could progress.

    In these timeless and witty essays George Orwell explores the English love of reading about a good murder in the papers (and lament the passing of the heyday of the 'perfect' murder involving class, sex and poisoning), as well as unfolding his trenchant views on everything from boys' weeklies and naughty seaside postcards to being arrested in East End.

    It contains: -Introduction -Latin text with same/facing page -Vocabulary notes -Grammatical commentary -Full vocabulary -Historical commentary -Index of place names and persons The Res Gestae reveals as much about Augustus and his accomplishments through what it omits as what it contains. This edition allows students rare access to non-literary historical Latin, to the "queen" of Latin inscriptions: the accomplishments of the emperor Augustus, as he sought to have them presented.

    This witty, wry, and unique new book rectifies that wrong. Part detective story, part history lesson, part exposé, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature’s what-ifs and never-weres.In compulsively readable fashion, Stuart Kelly reveals details about tantalizing vanished works by the famous, the acclaimed, and the influential, from the time of cave drawings to the late twentieth century. Here are the true stories behind stories, poems, and plays that now exist only in imagination:·Aristophanes’ Heracles, the Stage Manager was one of the playwright’s several spoofs that disappeared. ·Love’s Labours Won may have been a sequel to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost–or was it just an alternative title for The Taming of the Shrew?·Jane Austen’s incomplete novel Sanditon, was a critique of hypochondriacs and cures started when the author was fatally ill.·Nikolai Gogol burned the second half of Dead Souls after a religious conversion convinced him that literature was paganism.·Some of the thousand pages of William Burroughs’s original Naked Lunch were stolen and sold on the street by Algerian street boys.·Sylvia Plath’s widower, Ted Hughes, claimed that the 130 pages of her second novel, perhaps based on their marriage, were lost after her death.Whether destroyed (Socrates’ versions of Aesop’s Fables), misplaced (Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine was pinched from his publisher’s car), interrupted by the author’s death (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston), or simply never begun (Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, America, a second volume of his memoirs), these missing links create a history of literature for a parallel world. Civilized and satirical, erudite yet accessible, The Book of Lost Books is itself a find.

    In The Anna Karenina Fix, Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question “How should you live your life?” or at least be less miserable. This is a charming and fiercely intelligent book, a love letter to Russian literature.

    First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil’s whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II—calling it “her method of facing the war”—and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff’s account of the Iliad brings out Homer’s novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters’ choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey’s scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.

    Instead of regarding Egyptian mythology and legend as unique, "classic" and inviolate, as did many Egyptologists, Spence saw Egyptian religious thought as part of world mythology, rooted in primitive conceptions common to mankind as a whole and related to those of many other cultures. In supporting this thesis, Spence offers an immensely erudite in-depth survey of the broad spectrum of Egyptian gods and goddesses, cults, and beliefs, as well as a concise review of Egyptian history, manners, customs, and archaeology.Animism, totemism, fetishism, creation myths, and other aspects of early religious beliefs are explored in an introductory chapter. The author then goes on to discuss the Egyptian priesthood, mysteries and temples, the cult of Osiris; Ra the Sun-God, Anubis, Horus, Thoth, and numerous other deities; the Book of the Dead, the birth of Hatshepsut, sacred trees, alchemy, the festival of Bast, Egyptian art, magic, and amulets, legends; and a host of other topics.Enhanced with over 50 photographs and illustrations, this book belongs in the library of any student of ancient Egypt or of early man's attempts, through mythology and legend, to give order, meaning, and purpose to his world.

    In addition to these new conundrums, Professor Sutherland revisits some previous puzzles with the help of readers who offer their own ingenious solutions and who set fresh puzzles for exploration. Victorian drug habits, railway systems, sanitation and dentistry are only a few of the details that shed light on the motives and circumstances of some of literature's most famous characters. Elizabeth Bennet, Betsey Trotwood, Count Dracula, Anna Karenina, Alice and many more come under the spotlight in John Sutherland's highly entertaining collection. Bringing good humor and good sense back to literary criticism, Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? offers scintillating forensic exercises that are as compelling as the plots they dissect.

    Ancient interpretation of myth is represented here in selections from the allegorists Heraclitus, Cornutus and Fulgentius, the rationalists Palaephatus and Diodorus of Sicily, and the philosophers and historians Plato, Herodotus and Thucydides. Appendices treat evidence from inscriptions, papyri and Linear B tablets and include a thematic index, a mythological dictionary, and genealogies. A thoughtful Introduction supports students working with the primary sources and the other resources offered here; an extensive note to instructors offers suggestions on how to incorporate this book into their courses.

    59 BC-AD 17) dedicated most of his life to writing some 142 volumes of history, the first five of which comprise The Early History of Rome. With stylistic brilliance, he chronicles nearly 400 years of history, from the founding of Rome (traditionally dated to 757 BC) to the Gallic invasion in 386 BC - an era which witnessed the reign of seven kings, the establishment of the Republic, civil strife and brutal conflict. Bringing compelling characters to life, and re-presenting familiar tales - including the tragedy of Coriolanus and the story of Romulus and Remus - The Early History is a truly epic work, and a passionate warning that Rome should learn from its history.

    R. R. Tolkien's masterpieces generously repay close attention and study. In this thoroughly entertaining and perceptive volume, winner of the prestigious Mythopoeic Society Scholarship Award, Professor Kocher examines the sources that Tolkien drew upon in fashioning Middle-earth and its inhabitants—and provides valuable insights into the author's aims and methods. Ranging from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings to The Silmarillion and beyond, Master of Middle-earth opens the door to a deeper and richer appreciation of Tolkien's magnificent achievement. Inside you will discover• Why Aragorn is the most misunderstood character in The Lord of the Rings . . . and its true hero.• The origin of Sauron—and the nature of evil in Tolkien's universe. • The opposing forces of destiny and free will in Frodo's quest.• The Cosmology of Middle-earth—is it our world at an earlier time, or does it exist in a fantastic Elsewhere?• How Tolkien's ideas of morality, religion, and social order underlie every aspect of his life's work.Plus a fascinating look at such lesser-known works of Tolkien's as "Leaf by Niggle," "Smith of Wootton Major," and many others!