Barthes: A Very Short Introduction

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Barthes: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Jonathan Culler

Review
`Review from other book by this author It is impossible to imagine a clearer treatment of the subject, or one that is, within the given limits of length, more comprehensive. Culler has always been remarkable for his expository skills, and here he has found exactly the right method and tone for his purposes.' Sir Frank Kermode

Product Description
Roland Barthes was the leading figure of French Structuralism, the theoretical movement of the 1960s which revolutionized the study of literature and culture, as well as history and psychoanalysis. But Barthes was a man who disliked orthodoxies. His shifting positions and theoretical interests make him hard to grasp and assess. This book surveys Barthes' work in clear, accessible prose, highlighting what is most interesting and important in his work today. In particular, the book describes the many projects, which Barthes explored and which helped to change the way we think about a range of cultural phenomena--from literature, fashion, wrestling, and advertising to notions of the self, of history, and of nature.

About the Author

Jonathan Culler is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University and a leading figure in the world of literary theory. Praised by Frank Kermode for his 'remarkable expository skills', his publications include seminal works on deconstruction and semiology as well as studies of individual authors. HisVSI Literary Theory is the series bestseller with sales of 40,000 copies to date.

Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues

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Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues: The Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, and Statesman
by Kenneth Dorter

Product Description
In this innovative analysis, Plato's four eleatic dialogues are treated as a continuous argument. In Kenneth Dorter's view, Plato reconsiders the theory of forms propounded in his earlier dialogues and through an examination of the theory's limitations reaffirms and proves it essential. Contradicted are both those philosophers who argue that Plato espoused his theory of forms uncritically and those who argue that Plato in some sense rejected the theory and moved toward the categorical analysis developed byAristotle. Dorter's reexamination of Plato's insights implies an important new direction for modern philosophical inquiry.

From the Inside Flap
"By restoring metaphysics to its rightful place, Dorter does Platonic scholarship a much-needed service."--Rosamond Kent Sprague, author of Plato's Philosopher King

From the Back Cover
"By restoring metaphysics to its rightful place, Dorter does Platonic scholarship a much-needed service." (Rosamond Kent Sprague, author of Plato's Philosopher King)

About the Author
Kenneth Dorter is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Shadow of the Silk Road

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Shadow of the Silk Road
by Colin Thubron

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his latest absorbing travel epic, Thubron (In Siberia; Mirror to Damascus) follows the course—or at least the general drift—of the ancient network of trade routes that connected central China with the Mediterranean Coast, traversing along the way several former Soviet republics, war-torn Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. The author travels third-class all the way, in crowded, stifling railroad cars and rattle-trap buses and cars, staying at crummy inns or farmers' houses, subject to shakedowns by border guards and constant harassment—even quarantine—by health officials hunting the SARS virus. Physically, these often monotonously arid, hilly regions of Central Asia tend to go by in a swirl of dun-colored landscapes studded with Buddha shrines in varying states of repair or ruin, but Thubron's poetic eye still teases out gorgeous subtleties in the panorama. Certain themes also color his offbeat encounters with locals—most of them want to get the hell out of Central Asia—but again he susses out the infinite variety of ordinary misery. The conduit by which an entire continent exchanged its commodities, cultures and peoples—Thubron finds traces of Roman legionaries and mummies of Celtic tribesmen in western China—the Silk Road becomes for him an evocative metaphor for the mingling of experiences and influences that is the essence of travel. (July 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Colin Thubron has spent a lifetime exploring Asia, and he displays his significant regional knowledge and experience in Shadow of the Silk Road. Universally acknowledged as one of our best living travel writers, Thubron brings to this book the astute perception for which he is known and the beautiful prose style he has honed for more than 40 years; what is even more impressive, however, is the incredible sense of enthusiasm he brings both to his journey and to his writing. As Jonathan Yardley wrote in the Washington Post, "Colin Thubron [is an] intrepid, resourceful and immensely talented writer who has made a career out of going to out of the way places and then writing brilliantly about them." Shadow of the Silk Road is Thubron at his best.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From AudioFile
Jonathan Keeble gives a superb reading of this captivating account of a 7,000-mile, eight-month journey from Xian, China, to Antioch, Turkey, along the ancient silk route. Traveling by foot, camel, taxi, truck, train, and cart, Thubron sleeps in yurts, mud huts, vermin-infested inns, and six-bunk train compartments as he traces the routeÕs history and encounters its present. Speaking Mandarin, Russian, and English, he talks with a colorful array of locals belonging to many countries, tribes, clans, and religious groups. Keeble captures the conversations vividly and paces the reading so that listeners hear every exhausted step, rail at each bribe-hungry petty bureaucrat, and thrill to the magnificence of the scenery. An amazing adventure, expertly told. R.E.K.Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
The Silk Road was an ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean Sea, extending 7,000 miles and linking the Celestial Empire with the Roman one. Marco Polo followed the route on his journey to Cathay. Thurbron, the author of 15 other books, chronicles his trip along the legendary road from China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran, and into Kurdish Turkey. He vividly describes the people he meets, the restaurants he eats in, the hotels in which he stays, and the beauty of the mountains, rivers, deserts, and trees. He talks to policemen, traders, farmers, camel drivers, and a band of pilgrims kneeling in the dunes to pray; he takes pleasure in remembering "food palaces worked by waitresses in crimson and gold-frogged uniforms who were giggling and careless" and an old woman asleep by a holy spring, her head resting on the gnarled trunk of a tree. An illuminating account of a breathtaking journey. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Providence Journal
"Splendid…Sumptuously detailed, elegantly written and riveting...Thubron misses nothing."

New York magazine
"A fantastically descriptive writer, Thubron digs through the history of Central Asia...Perfect for vicarious travelers."

Lorraine Adams, New York Times Book Review
"Moving in a way that’s rare in travel literature...Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can’t."

Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"[Thubron is] intrepid, resourceful . . . and immensely talented . . . a splendid book."

Boston Globe
"A sublime travel writer…[Thubron captures] the...lives of ordinary people with lyricism, compassion, and wit."

San Francisco Chronicle
"Thubron has done it all, with sparkling grace . . . He is a brilliant brooder, artful in his melancholy."

Michael Kenney, Boston Globe
"[An] elegant account of a rough two years’ trek.:

Harper's Magazine
"An exhausting journey and a marvelous book."

Timothy Farrington, New York Sun
"Fascinating…Mr. Thubron approaches other’s beliefs with curiosity and respect…[He writes with a seductive facility."

Sunday Oregonian
"An interesting portrait of lands and people not well known or appreciated."

Product Description

Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel.

The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval.

One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

About the Author

An award-winning novelist and travel writer, Colin Thubron's books include Among the Russians, In Siberia, and the New York Times bestseller Shadow of the Silk Road. He lives in London.

How Poets See the World

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How Poets See the World: The Art of Description in Contemporary Poetry by Willard Spiegelman

Review

"Spiegelman's masterly study of the persistence of the descriptive impulse in contemporary poetrydemonstrates how resourcefully poets of various stripes engage themselves and the reader in inventive acts of looking at the visible world. Spiegelman has served his poets, and the art of poetry, well."-Frank J. Kearful, Partial Answers
"How Poets See the World yields fresh insights on every page, touching upon the history of taste, or the sources of styles. As a guide to the work of poets whose difficulty Spiegelman never glosses over, it is indispensable."--Rachel Hadas, Rutgers University
"Masterly.... Spiegelman demonstrates again and again how a superlatively educated, cultivated, sympathetic, earnest, even passionate reader...goes about the joyful business of reading every scripture in the spirit in which it was written.... That How Poets See the World can balance these two imperative, to see by means of and to see the true nature of, is its large and substantial achievement."--Twentieth-Century Literature
"Many critics have explored the relationship between landscape and language, but Spiegelman goes farthest in analyzing the disposition of parts of speech and syntactic arrangements, the sentences that create the effect of description. This attention to language leads Spiegelman to some superb close reading. He understands that poetry is first and foremost an art form, with language as its medium, figuration its inevitable activity.... Reading him, we are observers of an honest, intense encounter with some major contemporary writers. Every poet must wish for such attentiveness, such willingness to learn from the poems themselves how they want to be read."--Bonnie Costello, Literary Imagination
"An important contribution to the literature on what W. J. T Mitchell calls 'picture theory,' that is, the nexus of word and image. Via shrewd analysis on an eclectic range of poetsSpiegelman sometimes seduces but more often startles his reader into an awareness of the vital role description plays in contemporary American poetry.... Spiegelman, whose prose is as eloquent as it is insightful, demonstrates with ample grace that description does indeed make a profound difference when it comes to interpreting a poem.... Essential."--Choice
"This most distinguished and illuminating book on the importance of poetic description is as timely as it is exemplary for what criticism should be. The author brings to bear his profound knowledge of the depths of descriptiveness, as first explored by English romantic poetry, on an acutely chosen group of contemporary poets. A compelling interchapter considers the importance of ekphrasis in the poetry of our time. This beautifully written study is as free of academic jargon as it is knowledgeable of theoretical issues, and fully sensitive to cultural as well as personal formations of poetic perspectives. But its ultimate concern is with the intellectual power and, particularly, the moral mandates of the fundamental aesthetic domain in which poetry is what it is."--John Hollander
"Willard Spiegelman is one of the few literary critics who understands not only how poets see but also how they think, feel, breathe--how they inhabit the world by inhabiting language. He writes with the elegance of the poets he admires most, and How Poets See the World is his best book yet."--James Longenbach, University of Rochester
"Willard Spiegelman's new book is a marvel of speculative energy. Poetry's descriptive task--finding the words that address both the world's textures and the poet's own sensibility, or what this critic calls the 'inconstant constancy' of things--is examined with a provocative eye for the subtle and profound differences among individual poets. For one, syntax is a style; for another, landscape replaces sexuality. Spiegelman provides fresh and compelling readings for a wide range of contemporary poets, and brings to this book a rare moral acumen, genuine sympathies, and a steady grasp of the emotional underpinnings and overtones of a poet's ambitions or of a poem's structure and effect. How Poets See the World is an eye-opening adventure, and sure to become a classic text."--J. D. McClatchy
"Contemporary criticism is abuzz with 'thing theory,' but only Willard Spiegelman has shown us how contemporary poets develop a language of things, at once particular and metaphoric, always faithful to sensation as a source of imagination's renewal. In this brilliant study Spiegelman explains one of the dominant rhetorical modes of our skeptical time and shows how daily attention to the visible world becomes a source of poetic power."--Bonnie Costello, Boston University


Product Description
Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work.
Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do poets see the world? How do they look at it? What do they look for? Is description an end in itself, or a means of expressing desire? Ezra Pound demanded that a poem should represent the external world as objectively and directly as possible, and William Butler Yeats, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), said that he and his generation were rebelling against, inter alia, "irrelevant descriptions of nature" in the work of their predecessors. The poets in this book, however, who are distinct in many ways from one another, all observe the external world of nature or the reflected world of art, and make relevant poems out of their observations.
This study deals with the crisp, elegant work of Charles Tomlinson, the swirling baroque poetry of Amy Clampitt, the metaphysical meditations of Charles Wright from a position in his backyard, the weather reports and landscapes of John Ashbery, and the "new way of looking" that Jorie Graham proposes to explore in her increasingly fragmented poems. All of these poets, plus others (Gary Snyder, Theodore Weiss, Irving Feldman, Richard Howard) who are dealt with more briefly, attend to what Wallace Stevens, in a memorable phrase, calls "the way things look each day." The ordinariness of daily reality is the beginning of the poets' own idiosyncratic, indeed unique, visions and styles.

The Religion of the Etruscans

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The Religion of the Etruscans by Nancy Thomson de Grummond (Editor), Erika Simon (Editor)

Review
I cannot praise this book sufficiently. . . . The authors are first-rate scholars in the field; they provide up-to-date information, support, and analysis of the topic. The book offers a great deal of new data and new interpretation in an accessible, clear manner. (Helen Nagy, Professor of Art, University of Puget Sound )

Product Description

"I cannot praise this book sufficiently.... The authors are first-rate scholars in the field; they provide up-to-date information, support, and analysis of the topic. The book offers a great deal of new data and new interpretation in an accessible, clear manner."

—Helen Nagy, Professor of Art, University of Puget Sound

Devotion to religion was the distinguishing characteristic of the Etruscan people, the most powerful civilization of Italy in the Archaic period. From a very early date, Etruscan religion spread its influence into Roman society, especially with the practice of divination. The Etruscan priest Spurinna, to give a well-known example, warned Caesar to beware the Ides of March. Yet despite the importance of religion in Etruscan life, there are relatively few modern comprehensive studies of Etruscan religion, and none in English. This volume seeks to fill that deficiency by bringing together essays by leading scholars that collectively provide a state-of-the-art overview of religion in ancient Etruria.

The eight essays in this book cover all of the most important topics in Etruscan religion, including the Etruscan pantheon and the roles of the gods, the roles of priests and divinatory practices, votive rituals, liturgical literature, sacred spaces and temples, and burial and the afterlife. In addition to the essays, the book contains valuable supporting materials, including the first English translation of an Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar (which guided priests in making divinations), Greek and Latin sources about Etruscan religion (in the original language and English translation), and a glossary. Nearly 150 black and white photographs and drawings illustrate surviving Etruscan artifacts and inscriptions, as well as temple floor plans and reconstructions.

About the Author
NANCY THOMSON DE GRUMMOND is M. Lynette Thompson Professor of Classics at Florida State University.

ERIKA SIMON is Professor Emerita of Classical Archaeology at Würzburg University.

A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography

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A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography by John Marincola (Editor)

Review
"All that you ever needed to know about Greek and Roman historians and current academic study thereon." Journal of Classics Teaching “Major work on a major genre … with no rival in English (or any other language) … .An indispensable guide to the subject. Essential.” Choice

Product Description
This two-volume Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography reflects the new directions and interpretations that have arisen in the field of ancient historiography in the past few decades.

• Comprises a series of cutting edge articles written by recognised scholars
  
• Presents broad, chronological treatments of important issues in the writing of history and antiquity
  
• These are complemented by chapters on individual genres and sub-genres from the fifth century B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E.
  
• Provides a series of interpretative readings on the individual historians
  
• Contains essays on the neighbouring genres of tragedy, biography, and epic, among others, and their relationship to history

Book Description
A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography reflects the new directions and interpretations that have arisen in the field of classical historiography in the past few decades. In a series of cutting-edge articles by authoritative scholars, these volumes communicate the results of recent research, and demonstrate the diversity of approaches towards the past in studies of the ancient world. This two-volume Companion includes five sections. The first presents broad, diachronic treatments of important issues in the writing of history in antiquity. In the second section, the major genres and sub-genres of classical historiography are covered in individual articles. The third section presents readings of individual historians and works, while the fourth section looks at those genres - biography, epic and fiction - on the borders of historiography. The final part explores the transition into late Antiquity.

From the Back Cover
A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography reflects the new directions and interpretations that have arisen in the field of classical historiography in the past few decades. In a series of cutting-edge articles by authoritative scholars, these volumes communicate the results of recent research, and demonstrate the diversity of approaches towards the past in studies of the ancient world.

This two-volume Companion includes five sections. The first presents broad, diachronic treatments of important issues in the writing of history in antiquity. In the second section, the major genres and sub-genres of classical historiography are covered in individual articles. The third section presents readings of individual historians and works, while the fourth section looks at those genres – biography, epic and fiction – on the borders of historiography. The final part explores the transition into late Antiquity.

About the Author
John Marincola is Professor of Classics at Florida State University. He is the author of Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (1997), Greek Historians (2001) and, with Michael A. Flower, Herodotus: Histories Book IX (2002). He is currently at work on a book on Hellenistic historiography.

Politics, Philosophy, Terror

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Politics, Philosophy, Terror
Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt by Dana Villa

Review
Villa explores the tensions between [Hannah] Arendt's disdain for those who fail to think and her distrust of the contemplative retreat from the world. . . . [A] lucid and illuminating book. . . .
(John Plotz Lingua Franca )

In this splendid collection Villa focuses on Arendt's analysis of totalitarian evil and its relationship to the philosophical tradition.
(Choice )

Review
Dana Villa ... has received international recognition for his Arendt and Heidegger--the finest work in any language concerning the philosophical indebtedness of Arendt to Heidegger. The analyses in this current book are always informative, insightful, and thought-provoking. The writing is forceful and lucid. The book eminently succeeds in showing why Arendt is one of the outstanding political theorists of the twentieth century.
(Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research )

Review
In this splendid collection Villa focuses on Arendt's analysis of totalitarian evil and its relationship to the philosophical tradition.

Product Description

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.

Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.

Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century.

Download Description
Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.

From the Back Cover

"Dana Villa ... has received international recognition for his Arendt and Heidegger--the finest work in any language concerning the philosophical indebtedness of Arendt to Heidegger. The analyses in this current book are always informative, insightful, and thought-provoking. The writing is forceful and lucid. The book eminently succeeds in showing why Arendt is one of the outstanding political theorists of the twentieth century."--Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research

"In the time-honored tradition of political theorizing, Politics, Philosophy, Terror cuts through a tangle of current disputations in order to clarify and assess particular and pertinent aspects of Hannah Arendt's thinking. Villa's book is also fluidly, even elegantly, written."--Mary G. Dietz, University of Minnesota