In this philosophical fantasy, naive Candide sees and suffers such misfortune that he ultimately rejects the philosophy of his tutor Doctor Pangloss, who claims that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." Candide and his companions--Pangloss, his beloved Cunegonde, and his servant Cacambo--display an instinct for survival that provides them hope in an otherwise somber setting. When they all retire together to a simple life on a...

History of philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. This long-awaited sequel takes the story through the century and a half when a string of extraordinary thinkers including Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Rousseau remade Western philosophy in the wake of religious upheaval and the rise of Galilean science. What does the new science mean for our understanding of ourselves and of God? How should one deal with religious diversity?...

"Dan Jones and Marina Amaral tell the epic, harrowing, and world-changing story--in narrative form with colorized images--of global conflict from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the obliteration of Hiroshima by the first atom bomb. [The book] embraces not only the total conflagrations of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 and the tensions, ideologies, and economic forces that set them in motion, but also the revolutions in Russia; civil...

"Sexual Politics laid the foundation for subsequent feminist scholarship by showing how cultural discourse reflects a systematized subjugation and exploitation of women. Millett demonstrates in detail how patriarchy's attitudes and systems penetrate literature, philosophy, psychology, and politics. Her incendiary work rocked the foundations of the literary canon by castigating time-honored classics - from D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover to...

"Nothing goes wrong quite so dramatically as a disastrous military expedition."-from the Introduction ARROGANT ARMIES Spanning more than two hundred years of martial adventurism, aggression, and outright blundering, Arrogant Armies chronicles the profoundly misguided and utterly calamitous military expeditions of the great empire builders and overconfident expeditionary forces. From colonial America to South Africa, from Mesopotamia to Khartoum,...

When Jane Sutcliffe sets out to write a book about William Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, in her own words, she runs into a problem: Will's words keep popping up all over the place! What's an author to do? After all, Will is responsible for such familiar phrases as "what's done is done" and "too much of a good thing." He even helped turn "household words" into household words. But, Jane embraces her dilemma, writing about Shakespeare, his plays,...

No one skewers the popular movements of American culture like Tom Wolfe. In 1975, he turned his satirical pen to the pretensions of the contemporary art world, a world of social climbing, elitist posturing, and ingeniously absurd self-justifying theorizing. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. In the process he debunks the great American...

For most people, climbing a ladder to clear the gutters is a challenge. Jack Williams and his colleagues in the specialist signals unit supporting the SAS in Northern Ireland had to climb towers and maintain vital communications - often in full view and under fire from terrorists. This is the gripping insider story of the tension, fear and comradeship of these specialists, who needed more than just a head for heights. Written in a racy popular style...

El 23 de mayo de 1808 la población de Valencia se alza contra la ocupación del ejército de Napoleón. Se inicia entonces un período de enfrentamiento bélico contra un poder extranjero e invasor. Sin embargo, ésta no es una guerra al uso, convencional. En el trasfondo de esta rebelión se vislumbra el ahínco de todo un pueblo por desprenderse de sus propias lacras, la lucha contra todo aquello que impedía la construcción de una nación avanzada....

Este volumen responde a un título tan amplio y sugerente como 'Historia contemporánea de América' con un análisis exhaustivo de la evolución histórica del continente americano, desde la época de las independencias nacionales hasta finales del siglo XX, en el que se incluyen tanto las características comunes como las específicas de los dos hemisferios continentales. Los autores, por razones metodológicas y con intenciones didácticas, han...