The first edition of this extremely popular two volume Greek text has been successfully adopted in many high schools and colleges; the organization and approach used by the authors, make it an equally effective tool for those who would enjoy learning the language on their own.

    Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have rightly been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry both in the United States and abroad. Anxiously focused on national economic growth, we increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable and empathetic citizens. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. Drawing on the stories of troubling--and hopeful--educational developments from around the world, Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.

    Laslett's standard edition of Two Treatises. First published in 1960, and based on an analysis of the whole body of Locke's publications, writings, and papers. The Introduction and text have been revised to incorporate references to recent scholarship since the second edition and the bibliography has been updated.

    SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT is one of the most important alliterative poems of Medieval literature

    But for some reason they choose to ignore those guidelines and churn out turgid, pompous, and obscure prose. Distinguished sociologist Howard S. Becker, true to his calling, looks for an explanation for this bizarre behavior not in the psyches of his colleagues but in the structure of his profession. In this highly personal and inspirational volume he considers academic writing as a social activity.Both the means and the reasons for writing a thesis or article or book are socially structured by the organization of graduate study, the requirements for publication, and the conditions for promotion, and the pressures arising from these situations create the writing style so often lampooned and lamented. Drawing on his thirty-five years' experience as a researcher, writer, and teacher, Becker exposes the foibles of the academic profession to the light of sociological analysis and gentle humor. He also offers eminently useful suggestions for ways to make social scientists better and more productive writers. Among the topics discussed are how to overcome the paralyzing fears of chaos and ridicule that lead to writer's block; how to rewrite and revise, again and again; how to adopt a persona compatible with lucid prose; how to deal with that academic bugaboo, "the literature." There is also a chapter by Pamela Richards on the personal and professional risks involved in scholarly writing.In recounting his own trials and errors Becker offers his readers not a model to be slavishly imitated but an example to inspire. Throughout, his focus is on the elusive work habits that contribute to good writing, not the more easily learned rules of grammar and punctuation. Although his examples are drawn from sociological literature, his conclusions apply to all fields of social science, and indeed to all areas of scholarly endeavor. The message is clear: you don't have to write like a social scientist to be one.

    . . Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on paraphilosophical modes of discourse. The sections on Céline, for example, are indispensable reading for those interested in this writer and place him within a context that is both illuminating and of general interest." -Paul de Man

    The book draws a fascinating picture of the deep links between the cultures across the Mediterranean and explores the ways in which these civilizations continue to be influential to this day. Beginning with the emergence of the earliest Egyptian civilization around 3500 BC, Charles Freeman follows the history of the Mediterranean over a span of four millennia to AD 600, beyond the fall of the Roman empire in the West to the emergence of the Byzantine empire in the East. The author examines the art, architecture, philosophy, literature, and religious practices of each culture, set against its social, political, and economic background. Especially striking are the readable and stimulating profiles of key individuals throughout the ancient world, covering persons like Homer, Horace, the Pharaoh Akhenaten, and Alexander the Great. The second edition incorporates new chapters on the ancient Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East, as well as extended coverage of Egypt. Egypt, Greece and Rome is a superb introduction for anyone seeking a better understanding of the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean and their legacy to the West.

    The book, which is profusely illustrated, contains chapters on all aspects of the history, culture, values & achievements of Athenian life. Teachers & students of Reading Greek now have a full & instant guide to the cultural & historical topics in which the course is so diverse & rich. The book is essential for all users of Reading Greek.

    But the works of numerous other great and prolific poets–Alkaios, Meleager, and Simonides, to name a few–are rarely translated into English , and are largely unknown to modern readers. In Pure Pagan, award-winning translator Burton Raffel brings these and many other wise and witty ancient Greek writers to an English-speaking audience for the first time, in full poetic flower. Their humorous and philosophical ruminations create a vivid portrait of everyday life in ancient Greece –and they are phenomenally lovely as well.In short, sharp bursts of song, these two-thousand-year-old poems speak about the timeless matters of everyday life:Wine (Wine is the medicine / To call for, the best medicine / To drink deep, deep)History (Not us: no. / It began with our fathers, / I’ve heard). Movers and shakers (If a man shakes loose stones / To make a wall with / Stones may fall on his head / Instead)Old age (Old age is a debt we like to be owed / Not one we like to collect)Frankness (Speak / As you please / And hear what can never / Please). There are also wonderful epigrams (Take what you have while you have it: you’ll lose it soon enough. / A single summer turns a kid into a shaggy goat) and epitaphs (Here I lie, beneath this stone, the famous woman who untied her belt for only one man).The entrancing beauty, humor, and piercing clarity of these poems will draw readers into the Greeks’ journeys to foreign lands, their bacchanalian parties and ferocious battles, as well as into the more intimate settings of their kitchens and bedrooms. The poetry of Pure Pagan reveals the ancient Greeks’ dreams, their sense of humor, sorrows, triumphs, and their most deeply held values, fleshing out our understanding of and appreciation for this fascinating civilization and its artistic legacy.

    This new poetic translation seeks to capture the nuances of meaning and the whole spirit of this poetry. It is not merely a selection but covers all the surviving poems and intelligible fragments, apart from the works of Pindar and Bacchylides, and includes a number of pieces not previously translated. The introduction gives a brief account of the poets, and explanatory notes on the texts can be found at the end.

    Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien’s work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953.Also included in this volume is the lecture English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien’s approach to the whole genre.The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of The Hobbit, with a unique ‘academic’ lecture on his invention (calling it A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

    Like many of Lukacs's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and Husserl.The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukacs's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism.

    J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic caricatures. Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete history of Western philosophy, one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement -- and one that gives full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who went before and to those who came after him. The result of Copleston's prodigious labors is a history of philosophy that is unlikely ever to be surpassed. Thought magazine summed up the general agreement among scholars and students alike when it reviewed Copleston's A History of Philosophy as "broad-minded and objective, comprehensive and scholarly, unified and well proportioned... We cannot recommend [it] too highly."

    His dream was at times characterized as a benevolent interest in the brotherhood of man, sometimes as a brute interest in the exercise of power. Green, a Cambridge-trained classicist who is also a novelist, portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Green describes his Alexander as "not only the most brilliant (and ambitious) field commander in history, but also supremely indifferent to all those administrative excellences and idealistic yearnings foisted upon him by later generations, especially those who found the conqueror, tout court, a little hard upon their liberal sensibilities."This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. After he was named hegemon of the Hellenic League, many philosophers came to congratulate Alexander, but one was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic, an ascetic who lived in a clay tub. Piqued and curious, Alexander himself visited the philosopher, who, when asked if there was anything Alexander could do for him, made the famous reply, "Don't stand between me and the sun." Alexander's courtiers jeered, but Alexander silenced them: "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." This remark was as unexpected in Alexander as it would be in a modern leader.For the general reader, the book, redolent with gritty details and fully aware of Alexander's darker side, offers a gripping tale of Alexander's career. Full backnotes, fourteen maps, and chronological and genealogical tables serve readers with more specialized interests.

    It is not about terrorism, the holocaust, or understanding death. They are the framework for this heartwarming story about a never-a-serious-thought high school senior and his best friend, a Deaf-blind, legless old man, who teaches him how to capture and hold, The Pristine American Dream. Pristine, "Characteristics of the earliest period or condition: original: still pure: uncorrupted: unspoiled [Pristine beauty]." Webster's New World Dictionary. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we, as a people, stopped living and dreaming The Pristine American Dream as our Founding Fathers knew it. Like colors fading from a handkerchief long forgotten on a cedar post, the Dream has faded from our thoughts and aspirations. The change has been imperceptible, yet over time all of the brilliance has faded to the dull, uninspiring and common. The Pristine American Dream has taken on a different hue. To some, the American Dream has become a passionate search for easy wealth by hitting it big in the lottery, sweepstakes, a big lawsuit, or receiving an inheritance. To others it is landing a professional sports contract, or achieving prominence in politics, business or popularity without any thought to inherent rights. As important as these achievements may be to some people, The Pristine American Dream is much better. This story showcases The Pristine American Dream, which is those inalienable or inherent rights guaranteed to each American by virtue of their birth, and the diligence, hard work and determination required to obtain and enjoy the privileges of life. Simply put, inherent rights are the rights to be and to do good. Everything that is good is right, an inherent right. Nobody ever has the right to do bad; they only have the power to choose it. Many people see goodness as the result of religious dedication instead of the catalyst that fires the furnace of happiness. No matter what circumstances' individuals, families, communities or nations find themselves in, they always enjoy more peace of mind and happiness when they maintain their inherent rights. Privileges are the sweet things of life for which one must work to receive. This is a fiction story. The setting is Declo, Idaho during the years of 1966 and 1967. All the characters are fiction, but like many great fiction characters they may resemble living or dead individuals whose lives have impacted that of the author. Most family names are indigenous to the Declo community, yet there should not be any inference made that any of the characters are living or have ever lived. There are, however, certain authenthic individuals who make cameo appearances to add color to its historical setting.