For the first time, an edition of Lewis’s classic fantasy fiction packaged specifically for adults. Complementing the look of the author’s non-fiction books, and anticipating the forthcoming Narnia feature films, this edition contains an exclusive “P.S.” section about the history of the book, plus a sample chapter from its sequel.

Containing chapters on emergencies and villa and apartment rental, this Hungarian phrase book also has an enlarged shopping section covering markets and services, and additional useful everyday phrases. It includes chapters on hotels, camping and caravann

Wealthy widow Norah O’Neill wonders if she will ever marry again. When her son decides to close the family’s failing toy factory, the manager, a decent man who dances the quickstep beautifully, becomes unemployed. Suddenly, Norah sees her chan

At the end of a dinner party, the remaining guests drink wine and tell stories of their first love. For one of them, it will be a dark journey into his past, reawakening unbearable memories of his obsession with the beautiful Zinaida; and the cruelty and

In the small town of Pierce Junction adultery is the popular pastime and pillow talk the common currency. Martin knows the women he hasn’t yet seduced hold his attention for the longest, and Winifred, married to his own wife’s lover, stirs him

The illicit relationship between Peter Abelard, a medieval philosopher, and his young pupil Heloise is one of history’s most legendary and tragic love affairs. From reckless ecstasy to public scandal and cruel separation, their eloquent and intimate

Ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside from the Black Death and tell stories to pass the time. From the unfaithful wife who unwittingly eats her lover’s heart to the sly peasant plotting to seduce a whole nunnery, these are tales of lu

As Baptista travels home to marry her parents’ old neighbour, she encounters her lost lover. They elope together, but tragedy strikes unexpectedly on their wedding day and she returns to her parents to do her duty. Will her other, brief love remain

From the fall of Troy to the deadly Harpies, Aeneas’ epic voyage is filled with tragedy, destruction and omens of danger. As he recounts his adventures to Dido, who gives him sanctuary, they fall in love. But the Gods intervene and Aeneas realizes t

Yvette is an innocent rector’s daughter. When she meets a handsome gipsy she feels him watching her, acutely aware of her virginity. Half drawn to him and half afraid, it is only when her life is endangered that she finally feels true love.
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Pozdnyshev and his wife have a turbulent relationship. When her beauty blossoms after the birth of their children, men begin to flock around her, and he becomes increasingly jealous. Convinced his wife is betraying him with a young musician, his overpower

Alone in his room in a dirty Berlin pension, Ganin reminisces about Mary, his first love. He fantasizes that a fellow lodger’s wife, due to arrive the next day, is his long-lost sweetheart and plots how they will run away together, leaving everythin

Henry is naive and has never experienced love. When he meets golden-haired Edna in a train carriage, however, his world changes forever. But the intensity of their feelings threatens their innocence, and Edna knows she is too young to leave her childhood

Casanova was the most notorious lover in history. From seducing a nun in an elaborate boudoir, watched by her lover, to frolicking in a bath with a beautiful girl and an eccentric old lady to trick her of her jewels, his memoir describes his amorous encou

Stendhal believed love comes in different forms: from passion and lust to vanity, the love of possessive desire. In this collection, he muses on falling in love, how to cope with jealousy, and whether infatuation can ever be overcome. He also provides a s

Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychoanalysis, remade our view of the human mind by exploring the unconscious forces that drive us. This collection of his groundbreaking writings on the psychology of love examines the nature of desire, transgression

Cécile leads a hedonistic, frivolous life with her father and his young mistresses. On holiday in the South of France, she is seduced by the sun, the sand and her first lover. But when her father decides to remarry, their carefree existence becomes c

When Gurov sees the lady with the little dog on a windswept promenade, he knows he must have her. But she is different from his other flings - he cannot forget her ...Chekhov's stories are of lost love, love at the wrong time and love that can never be. U

The Weimar era was a politically turbulent, economically uncertain but culturally dazzling age, which began with the end of the First World War in 1918 and ended abruptly when the National-Socialists came to power. The documentary photographs in this book take the reader on an extraordinary journey through time, as it was in Berlin during the 1920s that the age of the visual mass media began. In addition to recording the great events of the age, journalists began to take a keener interest in people's daily lives, capturing them in superb photo essays. This new approach found expression in the high circulation illustrated magazines of the Weimar Republic, which helped fore the bond between photographs and the press reports that has shaped modern journalism. THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC showcases the society of the 1920s in all its kaleidoscopic variety. The work of photojournalists is further brought to lie by the voices of contempoary people -- through extract from diaries, songs, memoirs and political speeches. Each chapter is introduced by a commentary that sets the historical scene. No other city was as typical of the Weimar Republic as its political and cultural center: Berlin. Teh journalistic focus of the age is therfore also the focus of this book, which devotes a whole chapter to Berliners and a portrait of their city. Together with the photojournalists of the 1920s and 1930s, the reader can stroll through Berlin's streets from its boulevards to its red-light districts. In the richly illustrated glossary the reader will find biographical sketches of the people who each left their individual mark on the Weimar epoch. This book is an extremely valuable reference work on the history of the Weimar era.

Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck going back generations, so he is not too surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre. Nor is he very surprised when he is told that his daily labour at the camp is to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, and report anything that he finds in that hole. The warden claims that it is character building, but this is a lie and Stanley must dig up the truth. In this wonderfully inventive, compelling novel that is both serious and funny, Louis Sachar has created a masterpiece that will leave all readers amazed and delighted by the author's narrative flair and brilliantly handled plot.

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing, but unsuitable John Willoughby, she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, al

Penchées sur leur miroir, nos sociétés occidentales se voient vieillir et se détournent avec effroi. L'allongement de l'espérance de vie serait-il le dernier cadeau empoisonné que nous aurait fait le XXe siècle ? Faire face à son propre vieillissement et à celui de ses proches demeure un sujet tabou. A ce silence paralysant, des professionnels du vieillissement, gériatres, économistes, sociologues, ici réunis, opposent pourtant des constats positifs radicalement nouveaux. Vivre plus longtemps et en bonne santé est une chance sans précédent. La vieillesse n'est pas une maladie. La longévité pour tous est un programme politique et social, dans lequel la personne, à tout âge, doit être prise en compte en tant qu'adulte, comme un acteur autonome de sa propre trajectoire de vie. Renverser des représentations mentales obsolètes, apporter les éclairages nécessaires à une prise de conscience individuelle et collective de cette nouvelle donne - avec les engagements législatifs et budgétaires qu'elle comporte -, telles sont les ambitions de ce livre.

La commémoration du centenaire de la loi de séparation des Églises et de l'État du 9 décembre 1905 ne peut pas rester franco-française et tournée vers le passé. Elle doit au contraire se situer à la hauteur de l'enjeu, permettre de percevoir de nouveaux horizons et de relancer la marche en avant de la laïcité. La véritable liberté de religion et la véritable liberté de l'agnosticisme et de l'athéisme ont sans doute, aujourd'hui, les mêmes adversaires. La laïcité constitue-t-elle une chance pour le XXIe siècle ? Sans doute, mais à condition qu'elle se nourrisse d'un dialogue, d'une confrontation, au sens positif du terme, entre ses différentes formes. Cet ouvrage propose de confronter le modèle français à la diversité des pratiques dans le monde (Brésil, Canada, États-Unis, Italie, Royaume-Uni, Turquie, Union européenne...). Certaines surprendront peut-être le lecteur. Toutes, nous semble-t-il, donnent une belle matière à la réflexion.

Depuis le milieu des années 1980, dans de nombreux pays d'Europe, des mouvements politiques caractérisés comme populistes, nationaux-populistes ou populistes de droite radicale se sont imposés sur la scène politique, portés par la crise de confiance à l'égard des institutions et des élites gouvernantes. Ces nouveaux partis, tous fortement personnalisés, exploitent les sentiments " anti-politiques " des citoyens et traduisent dans leur discours démagogique le rejet de l'immigration, le sentiment d'insécurité, l'hostilité à l'Europe et à la globalisation. Dans ces mobilisations constituant à la fois une menace et un défi pour les démocraties libérales, l'appel au peuple va de pair avec la défense de l'identité nationale supposée menacée. S'agit-il d'une simple résurgence de l'extrême droite ? D'un retour de la démagogie nationaliste ? De l'apparition d'une nouvelle droite extrême ou radicale ? Ou bien de l'émergence d'un nouveau type de contestation de la démocratie représentative ?

The National Book League was a precursor to the current Booktrust, and was set up in 1924 by the Society of Bookmen in order to promote reading, particularly among the young. To that end, the NBL issued Reader's Guides on a variety of subjects, each written by an author with expertise in that field and containing an annotated bibliography of recommended titles on the subject. First published in 1955, this guide by British actor Alec Clunes, father of Martin, includes a bibliography not only of British theatre in general, but also histories of individual theatres in Britain, biographies of theatrical figures and books on acting technique.

A beautiful paperback edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, book two in the classic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. Four adventurous siblings – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie – step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter and enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change . . . and a great sacrifice. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second book in C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series, which has been drawing readers of all ages into a magical land with unforgettable characters for over sixty years. This is a stand-alone read, but if you would like to explore more of the Narnian realm, pick up The Horse and His Boy, the third book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Since 1989 Romania has gone from communist isolation under the megalomaniac Nicolae Ceauescu to being a key player in America's war against terrorism. Because of this strategic location it has become a front-line state for nervous Western governments keen to secure oil routes from the Middle East. It joined NATO in 2004 and is due to enter the European Union in 2007-08 despite its economy being unprepared to meet the competition challenges from established members. Tom Gallagher analyses how the country is seeking to recover from a disastrous period in its history while many of the key legacies of dictatorship remain. Having lynched the discredited Ceauescu in 1989, former acolytes have spent the past fifteen years trying to retain a monopoly of control behind the facade of a Western-style democracy. They combined their political ambitions with acquiring the control of vast amounts of private property denied to them by Ceauescu. Political institutions were given a facelift, as in the case of the intelligence services which became a crucial power-base for the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD). The state continued to be used to serve narrow private interests. Replacing the communist dynasty of the Ceauescus, there is now an oligarchy drawn from the PSD and its satellites in the bureaucracy, major industries, and the intelligence world which grew wealthy through insider privatisation and the looting of the country's banks. Romania is now at a crucial turning-point. In 2004 the mobilisation of civil society contributed to the narrow victory of Traian B sescu in presidential elections. It is unclear whether he can win control over the key levers of state necessary to stem the corruption and abuse of power which have blighted Romania's hopes of breaking free from its communist-era legacy. The PSD is now led by Mircea Geoana, the son of a general in Ceauescu's Securitate. He has recruited a string of Western politicians to block pressure for meaningful change from Brussels and to ensure that accession to the EU occurs without serious reform.

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary

Describes and gives an analysis of the extent to which the European Community intervenes in the automobile industry through legal measures. It gives an introduction to the automobile industry and the EC treaty, and examines the Community measures that hav

When Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes, he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy world of criminality and violence. Accompanying Holmes to an ill-omened house in south London, Watson is startled to

Dr Watson once again opens his portfolio to reveal eight strange cases solved by the keen intellect of the master detective. They range from murder and kidnapping to theft and treachery. Motives for the crimes may be vengeance, greed or jealousy - or what

This anthology of stories featuring the character of Sherlock Holmes follows on from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories which ended with Holmes at Reichenbach Falls.

The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously and it

A piercing scream, shattering the evening calm, brings Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh hurrying from his literary party to the nearby Steen Psychiatric Clinic, where he discovers the body of a woman sprawled on the basement floor, a chisel thrust through he

Joan Scott's work has influenced several generations of historians and helped make the topic of gender central to the way in which the discipline is taught and studied today. At root a new way of conceptualizing capitalist societies, Scott's theories suggest that gender is better understood as a social construct than as a biological fact. Scott’s original contribution to the debate, however, stems in her use of the critical thinking skill of analysis to understand how the arguments of earlier generations of historians were built in order to fully grasp both their structure and the assumptions that underpinned them. From there, Scott was able to use problem-solving to resolve the issues that emerged from her analysis, asking productive questions focused on better ways to build a model capable of explaining the historical phenomenon of gender difference. Scott answered these questions by introducing models created by deconstructionist scholars – notably Jacques Derrida, who challenged the idea that any term or concept has a stable or dependable meaning rooted in material reality. She was able, in consequence, to refute that idea that gender inequality is the natural (hence justifiable) consequence of biological sexual differences, and issue a fundamental challenge to the capitalist system itself.

Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics is a dense masterpiece of sustained argumentative reasoning. It earned its place as one of the most important and influential books in Western philosophy by virtue of its uncompromisingly direct arguments about the nature of God, the universe, free will, and human morals. Though it remains one of the densest and most challenging texts in the entire canon of Western philosophy, Ethics is also famous for Spinoza’s unique approach to ordering and constructing its arguments. As its full title – Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order – suggests, Spinoza decided to use the rigorous format of mathematical-style propositions to lay out his arguments, just as the Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid had used geometrical propositions to lay out the basic rules of geometry. In choosing such a systematic method, Spinoza’s masterwork shows the crucial aspects of good reasoning skills being employed at the highest level. The key use of reasoning is the production of an argument that is well-organised, supports its conclusions and proceeds logically towards its end. Just as a mathematician might demonstrate a geometrical proof, Spinoza sought to lay out a comprehensive philosophy for human existence – an attempt that has influenced generations of philosophers since.

The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant is as daunting as he is influential: widely considered to be not only one of the most challenging thinkers of all time, but also one of the most important. His Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason takes on two of his central preoccupations – the reasoning powers of the human mind, and religion – and applies the full force of his reasoning abilities to consider the relationship between them. In critical thinking, reasoning is all about constructing arguments: arguments that are persuasive, systematic, comprehensive, and well-evidenced. And any examination involves stripping reasoning back to its barest essentials and attempting to get at the nature of the world by asking what we can know about God and morality from the power of our minds alone. Beginning from the axiom that God is, by definition, unknowable, Kant reasons that it is humans who bear the responsibility of creating the Kingdom of God. This, he suggests, we can do by acting morally in the world we experience – with a morality that can be shaped by reason alone. Dense and challenging, but closely and persuasively reasoned, Kant’s case for human responsibility shows reasoning skills at their most impressive.

John Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises of Government is a key text in the history of political theory – one whose influence remains marked on modern politics, the American Constitution and beyond. Two Treatises is more than a seminal work on the nature and legitimacy of government. It is also a masterclass in two key critical thinking skills: evaluation and reasoning. Evaluation is all about judging and assessing arguments – asking how relevant, adequate and convincing they are. And, at its heart, the first of Locke’s two treatises is pure evaluation: a long and incisive dissection of a treatise on the arguments in Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha. Filmer’s book had defended the doctrine that kings were absolute rulers whose legitimacy came directly from God (the so-called “divine right of kings”), basing his arguments on Biblical explanations and evidence. Locke carefully rebutted Filmer’s arguments, on their own terms, by reference to both the Bible and to recorded history. Finding Filmer’s evidence either to be insufficient or unacceptable, Locke concluded that his argument for patriarchy was weak to the point of invalidity. In the second of Locke’s treatises, the author goes on to construct his own argument concerning the sources of legitimate power, and the nature of that power. Carefully building his own argument from a logical consideration of man in “the state of nature”, Locke creates a convincing argument that civilised society should be based on natural human rights and the social contract.

Franz Boas’s 1940 Race, Language and Culture is a monumentally important text in the history of its discipline, collecting the articles and essays that helped make Boas known as the ‘father of American anthropology.’ An encapsulation of a career dedicated to fighting against the false theories of so-called ‘scientific racism’ that abounded in the first half of the 20th-century, Race, Language and Culture is one of the most historically significant texts in its field – and central to its arguments and impact are Boas’s formidable interpretative skills. It could be said, indeed, that Race, Language and Culture is all about the centrality of interpretation in questioning our assumptions about the world. In critical thinking, interpretation is the ability to clarify and posit definitions for the terms and ideas that make up an argument. Boas’s work demonstrates the importance of another vital element: context. For Boas, who argued passionately for ‘cultural relativism,’ it was vital to interpret individual cultures by their own standards and context – not by ours. Only through comparing and contrasting the two can we reach, he suggested, a better understanding of humankind. Though our own questions might be smaller, it is always worth considering the crucial element Boas brought to interpretation: how does context change definition?

Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History not only offers a summary of thinking developed throughout a long and highly influential career–it is also an intervention in international relations theory by one of the most famous statesmen of the twentieth century. Kissinger initially trained as a university professor before becoming Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon in 1973 – a position in which he both won the Nobel Peace Prize and was accused of war crimes by protesters against American military actions in Vietnam. While a controversial figure, Kissinger is widely agreed to have a unique level of practical and theoretical expertise in politics and international relations – and World Order is the culmination of a lifetime’s experience of work in those fields. The product of a master of the critical thinking skill of interpretation, World Order takes on the challenge of defining the worldviews at play in global politics today. Clarifying precisely what is meant by the different notions of ‘order’ imagined by nations across the world, as Kissinger does, highlights the challenges of world politics, and sharpens the focus on efforts to make surmounting these divisions possible. While Kissinger’s own reputation will likely remain equivocal, there is no doubting the interpretative skills he displays in this engaging and illuminating text.

C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is a perfect example of one of the most effective aspects of critical thinking skills: the use of reasoning to build a strong, logical argument. ¶Lewis originally wrote the book as a series of radio talks given from 1942-1944, at the height of World War II. The talks were designed to lay out the most basic tenets of Christianity for listeners, and to use these to make a logical argument for Christian belief and Christian ethics. While Lewis was not an academically-trained theologian or philosopher (specializing instead in literature), his own experience of converting from atheism to Christianity, along with his wide reading and incisive questioning, power a charming but persuasive argument for his own beliefs. ¶Whether or not one agrees with Lewis’s arguments or shares his faith, Mere Christianity exemplifies one of the most useful aspects of good reasoning: accessibility. When using reasoning to construct a convincing argument, it is crucial that your audience follow you, and Lewis was a master at constructing well-organised arguments that are immediately understandable to readers. The beautifully written Mere Christianity is a masterclass in cogently walking an audience through an elegant and well thought-through piece of reasoning.

The essay for which The Sacred Wood is primarily remembered is one of the most famous pieces of criticism in English: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” helped to re-orientate arguments about the study of literature and its production by redefining the nature of tradition and the artist's relation to it.At a time when the word “traditional” had become a way of damning with faint praise by reference to the past, Eliot reinterpreted the term to mean something entirely different. It is not, he argues, something just “handed down,” but, instead, a prize to be obtained “by great labour,” not least in the making of a huge effort of understanding how the past fits together. Seen thus, Eliot suggests, a literary and artistic tradition “has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order” – and it is not just past, but present as well. For Eliot, “art never improves,” but only changes, and each part of the tradition is constantly being reinterpreted in light of what is added to the whole. The role of the poet, in Eliot's view, is to subjugate their own personality, and become “a receptacle,” in which “numberless feelings, phrases, images… can unite to form a new compound.” Redefining the issue of poets' relations to the past in this new way is a fine example of creative thinking, and Eliot’s ability to connect existing concepts in new ways was what gave weight to the argument that he advanced: that poets cannot succeed without understanding that they are taking their place on a continuum that stretches back to all their predecessors, and incorporate the ideas, strengths and failings of the entire body of work that those poets represented.

David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical classic that displays a powerful mastery of the critical thinking skills of reasoning and evaluation. Hume’s subject, the question of the existence and possible nature of God, was, and still is, a persistent topic of philosophical and theological debate. What makes Hume’s text a classic of reasoning, though, is less what he says, than how he says it. As he noted in his preface to the book, the question of ‘natural religion’ was unanswerable: so ‘obscure and uncertain’ that ‘human reason can reach no fixed determination with regard to it.’ Hume chose, as a result, to cast his thoughts on the topic in the form of a dialogue – allowing different points of view to be reasoned out, evaluated and answered by different characters. Considering and judging different or opposing points of view, as Hume’s characters do, is an important part of reasoning, and is vital to building strong persuasive arguments. Even if, as Hume suggests, there can be no final answer to what a god might be like, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion shows high-level reasoning and evaluation at their best.

In 1844, Flora Tristan embarked on a tour of France to campaign for workers' and women's rights. In 1891, her grandson set sail for Tahiti, determined to escape civilisation and seek out inspiration to paint his primitive masterpieces. Flora died before h

A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. While Spivak's main aim is to consider ways in which "subalterns" – her term for the indigenous dispossessed in colonial societies – were able to achieve agency, this paper concentrates specifically on describing the ways in which western scholars inadvertently reproduce hegemonic structures in their work. Spivak is herself a scholar, and she remains acutely aware of the difficulty and dangers of presuming to "speak" for the subalterns she writes about. As such, her work can be seen as predominantly a delicate exercise in the critical thinking skill of interpretation; she looks in detail at issues of meaning, specifically at the real meaning of the available evidence, and her paper is an attempt not only to highlight problems of definition, but to clarify them. What makes this one of the key works of interpretation in the Macat library is, of course, the underlying significance of this work. Interpretation, in this case, is a matter of the difference between allowing subalterns to speak for themselves, and of imposing a mode of "speaking" on them that – however well-intentioned – can be as damaging in the postcolonial world as the agency-stifling political structures of the colonial world itself. By clearing away the detritus of scholarly attempts at interpretation, Spivak takes a stand against a specifically intellectual form of oppression and marginalization.

To the dismay of many commentators – who had hoped the world was evolving into a more tolerant and multicultural community of nations united under the umbrellas of supranational movements like the European Union – the nationalism that was such a potent force in the history of the 20th-century has made a comeback in recent years. Now, more than ever, it seems important to understand what it is, how it works, and why it is so attractive to so many people. A fine place to start any such exploration is with Ernest Gellner's seminal Nations and Nationalism, a ground-breaking study that was the first to flesh out the counter-intuitive – but enormously influential – thesis that modern nationalism has little if anything in common with old-fashioned patriotism or loyalty to one's homeland. Gellner's intensely creative thesis is that the nationalism we know today is actually the product of the 19th-century industrial revolution, which radically reshaped ancient communities, encouraging emigration to cities at the same time as it improved literacy rates and introduced mass education. Gellner connected these three elements in an entirely new way, contrasting developments to the structures of pre-industrial agrarian economies to show why the new nationalism could not have been born in such communities. He was also successful in generating a typology of nationalisms in an attempt to explain why some forms flourished while others fizzled out. His remarkable ability to produce novel explanations for existing evidence marks out Nations and Nationalism as one of the most radical, stimulating – and enduringly influential – works of its day.

The Gift exploits Mauss’s high-level analytical and interpretative skills to produce a brilliant investigation of the forms, meanings, and structures of gift-giving across a range of societies. Mauss, along with many others, had noted that in a wide range of societies – especially those without monetary exchange or legal structures – gift-giving and receiving was carried out according to strict customs and unwritten laws. What he sought to do in The Gift was to analyse the structures that governed how and when gifts were given, received, and reciprocated in order to grasp what implicit and unspoken reasons governed these structures. He also wanted to apply his interpretative skills to asking what such exchanges meant, in order to explore the implications his analysis might have for modern, western cultures. In Mauss’s investigations, it became clear that gift-giving is, in many cultures, a crucial structural force, binding people together in a web of reciprocal commitments generated by the laws of gifting. Indeed, he concluded, gifts can be seen as the ‘glue’ of society..

David Hume’s 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a modern philosophical classic that helped reshape epistemology – the philosophy of knowledge. It is also a classic of the critical thinking skills of analysis and reasoning. Analysis is all about understanding how arguments work and fit together. Having strong analytical skills helps to break down arguments, pull out the evidence on which they rely, and understand the kinds of implicit assumptions and reasons on which they work. Reasoning, meanwhile, means building and presenting arguments, forming well-structured, evidenced, and organised cases for a particular point of view. Hume applied his analytical skills to arguments about how humans know and understand the world, and how our minds work. At base, he was trying to analyse human reason itself – to show the workings and limitations of the human mind, and show the origins of our beliefs. Hume went on to apply his reasoning skills, creating an enduring argument about the nature of human knowledge. The result was one of the most striking and famous works in the history of philosophy.

The Anti-Politics Machine (1990) examines how international development projects are conceived, researched, and put into practice. It also looks at what these projects actually achieve. Ferguson criticizes the idea of externally-directed ‘development’ and argues that the process doesn’t take proper account of the daily realities of the communities it is intended to benefit. Instead, they often prioritize technical solutions for addressing poverty and ignoring its social and political dimensions, so the structures that these projects put in place often have unintended consequences. Ferguson suggests that until the process becomes more reflective, development projects will continue to fail.

Meet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in myste

Few historians can claim to have undertaken historical analysis on as grand a scale as Geoffrey Parker in his 2013 work Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It is a doorstop of a book that surveys the ‘general crisis of the 17th century,’ shows that it was experienced practically throughout the world, and was not merely a European phenomenon, and links it to the impact of climate change in the form of the advent of a cold period known as the ‘Little Ice Age.’ Parker’s triumph is made possible by the deployment of formidable critical thinking skills – reasoning, to construct an engaging overall argument from very disparate material, and analysis, to re-examine and understand the plethora of complex secondary sources on which his book is built. In critical thinking, analysis is all about understanding the features and structures of argument: how given reasons lead to conclusions, and what kinds of implicit reasons and assumptions are being used. Historical analysis applies the same skills to the fabric of history, asking how given chains of events occur, how different reasons and factors interact, and so on. Parker, though, takes things further than most in his quest to understand the meaning of a century’s-worth of turbulence spread across the whole globe. Beginning by breaking down the evidence for significant climatic cooling in the 17th-century (due to decreased solar activity), he moves on to detailed study of the effects the cooling had on societies and regimes across the world. From this detailed spadework, he constructs a persuasive argument that accounts for the different ways in which the effects of climate change played out across the century – an argument with profound implications for a future likely to see serious climate change of its own.

Hannah Arendt’s 1958 The Human Condition was an impassioned philosophical reconsideration of the goals of being human. In its arguments about the kind of lives we should lead and the political engagement we should strive for, Arendt’s interpretative skills come to the fore, in a brilliant display of what high-level interpretation can achieve for critical thinking. Good interpretative thinkers are characterised by their ability to clarify meanings, question accepted definitions and posit good, clear definitions that allow their other critical thinking skills to take arguments deeper and further than most. In many ways, The Human Condition is all about definitions. Arendt’s aim is to lay out an argument for political engagement and active participation in society as the highest goals of human life; and to this end she sets about defining a hierarchy of ways of living a “vita activa,” or active life. The book sets about distinguishing between our different activities under the categories of “labor”, “work”, and “action” – each of which Arendt carefully redefines as a different level of active engagement with the world. Following her clear and careful laying out of each word’s meaning, it becomes hard to deny her argument for the life of “action” as the highest human goal.

American scholar Jared Diamond deploys his powers of interpretation to great effect in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which seeks to understand the meaning behind the available evidence describing societies that have survived and those that have withered and died. Why, for example, did the Norsemen of Scandinavia who colonized Greenland in the early tenth century not survive, while the inhabitants of Highland New Guinea did? With the evidence to hand, Diamond notes that a society’s collapse tends to be preceded by a severe reduction in population and considerable decreases in political, economic and social complexity. Delving even deeper, Diamond isolates five major factors determine the success or failure of human societies in all periods of history: environmental degradation, which occurs when an ecosystem deteriorates as its resources are exhausted; climate change (natural or man-made); hostile neighbors; weakened trading partners; and access or otherwise to the resources that enable the society to adapt its challenges. The breadth of Diamond’s research provides the springboard from which to reach these definitions, but it inevitably also introduces complications; how can evidence produced by specialists in so many different disciplines be compared? Diamond’s ability to understand the meaning of the evidence at hand – and his readiness to seek and supply clarifications of meaning where necessary – underpin his achievement, and comprise a textbook example of how interpretative skills can provide a framework for strong critical thinking.

In an old mansion in Cennethisar, a former fishing village near Istanbul, an old widow Fatma awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, first arrived t

The German sociologist Max Weber is considered to be one of the founding fathers of sociology, and ranks among the most influential writers of the 20th-century. His most famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, is a masterpiece of sociological analysis whose power is based on the construction of a rigorous, and intricately interlinked, piece of argumentation. Weber’s object was to examine the relationship between the development of capitalism and the different religious ideologies of Europe. While many other scholars focused on the material and instrumental causes of capitalism’s emergence, Weber sought to demonstrate that different religious beliefs in fact played a significant role. In order to do this, he employed his analytical skills to understand the relationship between capitalism and religious ideology, carefully considering how far Protestant and secular capitalist ethics overlapped, and to what extent they mirrored each other. One crucial element of Weber’s work was his consideration the degree to which cultural values acted as implicit or hidden reasons reinforcing capitalist ethics and behavior – an investigation that he based on teasing out the ‘arguments’ that underpin capitalism. Incisive and insightful, Weber’s analysis continues to resonate with scholars today.

Elizabeth Anscombe’s 1958 essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” is a cutting intervention in modern philosophy that shows the full power of good evaluative and analytical critical thinking skills. Though only 16 pages long, Anscombe’s paper set out to do nothing less than reform the entire field of modern moral philosophy – something that could only be done by carefully examining the existing arguments of the giants of the field. To do this, she deployed the central skills of evaluation and analysis. In critical thinking, analysis helps understand the sequence and features of arguments: it asks what reasons these arguments produce, what implicit reasons and assumptions they rely on, what conclusions they arrive at. Evaluation involves judging whether or not the arguments are strong enough to sustain their conclusions: it asks how acceptable, adequate, and relevant the reasons given are, and whether or not the conclusions drawn from them are really valid. In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe dispassionately turns these skills on figures that have dominated moral philosophy since the 18th-century, revealing the underlying assumptions of their work, their weaknesses and strengths, and showing that in many ways the supposed differences between their arguments are actually negligible. A brilliantly incisive piece, “Modern Moral Philosophy” radically affected its field, remaining required – and controversial – reading today.

Perhaps you once asked yourself, ‘What exactly is Hamlet trying to tell me? Why must he mince his words, muse in lyricism and, in short, whack about the shrub?’ No doubt such troubling questions would have been swiftly resolved were the Prince

Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. When she agrees to defend Garry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, it is one more opportunity to triumph in her career as a criminal lawyer. But just four weeks later, Miss Aldridge is found d

La criminologie est la science qui étudie les caractéristiques et les causes du phénomène criminel. Elle permet de construire un savoir rigoureux sur le crime et sur tout ce qui s’y rapporte. Dans cet ouvrage, le lecteur trouvera des réponses aux questions : Que savons-nous sur la dynamique de l'action criminelle ? Sur le milieu criminel ? Sur les délinquants et leur style de vie ? Sur l'efficacité des moyens de lutte contre le crime ? En d’autres termes, cet ouvrage d’initiation expose les notions principales et fait le bilan des connaissances les plus actuelles de cette discipline.Cette cinquième édition mise à jour propose de nouveaux développements : premièrement, sur la pensée stratégique en criminologie, notamment sur la dynamique des relations entre le délinquant, la victime et les acteurs du contrôle social ; deuxièmement, des chiffres récents sur l'évolution de la criminalité ; troisièmement, un état des connaissances actuelles sur l'efficacité des moyens de lutte contre le crime.

This deftly written single volume reference will tell you everything you need to know about American History. From Abington to Zimmerman, from Jamestown to Enron, this concise accessible volume spans American history from its beginnings through to 2002. Its 1,500 entries include articles on every presidential election through to 2000, on every presidential administration through to Clinton's, on the U.S. Supreme Court and its landmark cases and on all the key events and concepts that have shaped American History.

An elegant and witty writer, poet laureate from 1668, Dryden was one of the main dramatists, critics and poets of his age.

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nation's enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War. "My Bondage and My Freedom" is Douglass' masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race in chains. This classic is revisited with a new introduction and annotations by celebrated Douglass scholar David W. Blight. Blight situates the book within the politics of the 1850s and illuminates how "My Bondage" represents Douglass as a mature, confident, powerful writer who crafted some of the most unforgettable metaphors of slavery and freedom – indeed of basic human universal aspirations for freedom – anywhere in the English language.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a compelling, moving story exploring injustice and mob hysteria by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Nobel Prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez blends the natural with supernatural in Of Love and Other Demons - a novel which explores community, superstition and collective hysteria.

On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a newspaper columnist in Colombia decides to give himself 'a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent'. But on seeing this beautiful girl he falls deeply under her spell. His love for his 'Delgadina' causes him to recall all the women he has paid to perform acts of love. And so the columnist realises he must chronicle the life of his heart, to offer it freely to the world. . .

The General in his Labyrinth is the compelling tale of Sim�n Bol�var, a hero who has been forgotten and whose power is fading, retracing his steps down the Magdalena River by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.

"Right from the start I picked her for a thief, although that day she didn't take anything...I knew she'd be back", the narrator/bookseller of "Severina" recalls in this novel's opening pages. Imagine a dark-haired book thief as alluring as she is dangerous. Imagine the mesmerized bookseller secretly tracking the volumes she steals, hoping for insight into her character, her motives, her love life. In Rodrigo Rey Rosa's hands, this tale of obsessive love is told with almost breathless precision and economy. The bookstore owner is soon entangled in Severina's mystery: seductive and peripatetic, of uncertain nationality, she steals books to actually read them and to share with her purported grandfather, Senor Blanco. In this unsettling exploration of the alienating and simultaneously liberating power of love, the bookseller's monotonous existence is rocked by the enigmatic Severina. As in a dream, the disoriented man finds that the thin border between rational and irrational is no longer reliable. "Severina" confirms Rey Rosa's privileged place in contemporary world literature.

As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man lying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their arrogant, manically violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?

Why are words so important to Jews? Novelist Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger roam the gamut of Jewish history to explain the integral relationship of Jews and words. Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism's most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips. These words, they argue, comprise the chain connecting Abraham with the Jews of every subsequent generation. Framing the discussion within such topics as continuity, women, timelessness, and individualism, Oz and Oz-Salzberger deftly engage Jewish personalities across the ages, from the unnamed, possibly-female author of the "Song of Songs" through obscure Talmudists to contemporary writers. They suggest that Jewish continuity, even Jewish uniqueness, depends not on central places, monuments, heroic personalities, or rituals, but rather on written words and an ongoing conversation between the generations. Full of learning, lyricism, and humour, "Jews and Words" offers an extraordinary tour of the words at the heart of Jewish culture and extends a hand to the reader, any reader, to join the dialogue.

In Carlos Rojas' imaginative novel, the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered by Francoist rebels in August 1936, finds himself in an inferno that somehow resembles Breughel's Tower of Babel. He sits alone in a small theatre in this private hell, viewing scenes from his own life performed over and over and over. Unexpectedly, two doppelgangers appear, one a middle-aged Lorca, the other an irascible octogenarian self, and the poet faces a nightmarish confusion of alternative identities and destinies. Carlos Rojas uses a fantastic premise – Garcia Lorca in hell – to reexamine the poet's life and speculate on alternatives to his tragic end. Rojas creates with a surrealist's eye and a moral philosopher's mind. He conjures a profoundly original world, and in so doing earns a place among such international peers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Philip Roth, J. M. Coetzee, and Jose Saramago.

Originally published in 1947, this book contains the text of the 1947 Leslie Stephen Lecture, delivered by Vita Sackville-West's ex-husband Harold Nicolson on the fate of Tennyson's two brothers Frederick and Charles. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Tennyson's life and family.

Originally published in 1952, this book contains the text of a lecture delivered at the University of Cambridge that year by prominent Classical historian Arnold Jones on the Athenian audience to the orations of Demosthenes. Demosthenes famously castigated his fellow Athenians at many points in his career, and Jones examines the evidence provided by Demosthenes and his fellow orators for clues as to the real disposition of their listeners and how they could have been persuaded by the politicians of the day. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in ancient history or ancient oratory.

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Sir Cedric Hardwicke at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in drama and English literature.

Originally published in 1939, this book presents the content of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for that year, which was delivered by the renowned literary critic John Dover Wilson at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the critical reception of Wordsworth.

Originally published in 1929, this book contains the text of D. S. Robertson's inaugural lecture upon taking up the Regius Professorship of Greek in the University of Cambridge on 6 May of that year, and will be of value to anyone with an interest in the state of Classics, particularly the study of Greek, in interwar Britain.

Originally published in 1944, this book presents the content of Zachary Nugent Brooke's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Professor of Medieval History at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in medieval history and European history.

Originally published in 1943, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Max Beerbohm at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group.

Originally published in 1946, this volume contains the text of an inaugural lecture delivered by Basil Willey on his accession to the King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature in the University of Cambridge. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Arthur Quiller-Couch, known to his friends as 'Q'.

First published in 1939, this book presents R. C. Trevelyan's English metrical translation of Euripides' Medea. The aim of the text was to reproduce the form, phrasing and movement of the original for the benefit of readers without knowledge of Greek. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English translations of ancient Greek drama and the works of Euripides.

Originally published in 1937, this volume contains the text of the Rede Lecture for that year, delivered by Vita Sackville-West's ex-husband Harold Nicolson. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of British diplomacy and British nationalism.

Sir George Rostrevor Hamilton (1888–1967) was an English literary critic and acclaimed war poet of WWI. Originally published in 1944, this collection of his poetry includes conventional poetic forms as well as more modern styles, with themes including antiquity, England and WWII. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in twentieth-century British poetry.

Originally published in 1947, this book contains the text of James Turner's poem 'The Hollow Vale'. The poem describes a mystical journey taken by the author towards the hollow vale of the title. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English poetry or the works of Turner.

Originally published in 1917, this book presents the content of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Charles Whibley at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in perspectives on Swift and his writings.

Originally published in 1929, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by John Buchan at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in historical scholarship and historiography.

Originally published in 1918, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the Royal Navy and military history.

First published in 1939, this book presents R. C. Trevelyan's English metrical translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. The aim of the text was to reproduce the form, phrasing and movement of the original for the benefit of readers without knowledge of Greek. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English translations of ancient Greek drama and the works of Aeschylus.

Originally published in 1875, this book contains the Latin text of the speeches delivered by the public orator at an honorary degree ceremony for the University of Cambridge on June 16, 1874. The sixteen honorees included George Bentham, Sir Alexander Cockburn and George Salmon, and each was commended to the Chancellor of the University in a personalized speech on their achievements. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century political, scientific and artistic achievement or the history of Cambridge University.

Originally published in 1938, this book presents the content of Sir Harold Walter Bailey's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Chair of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in linguistics and the history of Sanskrit.

Originally published in 1937, this volume contains the text of an inaugural lecture delivered by celebrated medieval historian C. W. Previté-Orton upon his accession to the Professorship of Medieval History in the University of Cambridge. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in medieval historiography and the study of medieval Europe.

Originally published in 1946, this book presents the content of Eliza Marian Butler's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Schröder Professor of German at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in German poetry and literary criticism.

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the content of E. R. Vincent's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Professor of Italian at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Italian literature, Romanticism and literary criticism.

First published in 1946, and originally delivered in 1944 as a lecture to students of Bedford College, London, who had been evacuated to Cambridge, this book provides 'a historical sketch of the intermingling of the peoples in the making of the American Nation'. Benians examines what role played by race in the history of America, a country not based on racial foundations but upon the liberal notion of freedom. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the impact of race on the development of the United States.

Originally published in 1909, this book presents the content of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for that year, which was delivered by William Paton Ker at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Tennyson, English poetry and literary criticism.

The National Book League was a precursor to the current Booktrust, and was set up in 1924 by the Society of Bookmen in order to promote reading, particularly among the young. To that end, the NBL issued Reader's Guides on a variety of subjects, each written by an author with expertise in that field and containing an annotated bibliography of recommended titles on the subject. This bibliography by H. Stanley Hyland, Senior Library Clerk in the House of Commons Library, first published in 1951, is in three sections: Section One lists books on the history of the monarchy, as well as on court procedure and information on the royal palaces. Section Two deals mostly with the history of Parliament in the various jurisdictions of the British Isles, and Section Three concerns the meeting of the monarchy and Parliament throughout history.