A million copy seller, Henry Hazlitt's classic primer is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the "Austrian School," which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Many current economic commentators across the political... Views: 184
From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian, a fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy
In the acclaimed "Blood Rites," Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.
Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports.
Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, "Dancing in the Streets" concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future. Views: 183
The Chainbearer; or The Littlepage Manuscripts is a novel by the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper first published in 1845. The Chainbearer is the second book in a trilogy starting with Satanstoe and ending with The Redskins.The novel focuses mainly on issues of land ownership and the displacement of American Indians as the United States moves Westward. Themes Critical to the trilogy of these novels, is the sense of expansion through the measuring and acquisition of land by civilization.The title The Chainbearer represents "the man who carries the chains in measuring the land, the man who helps civilization to grow from the wilderness, but who at the same time continues the chain of evil, increases the potentiality for corruption."The central position of the "Chainbearer" allows Cooper to deal with the cultural lack of understanding Native Americans had of European concepts of land ownership. This in turn allows Cooper to critique ownership in general. Also, Cooper, like in many of his novels, focuses on the growing corruption of individuals in "civilization" as it expands. This Cooper attributes "an inherent principle in the corrupt nature of man to misuse all his privileges. . . . If history proves anything, it proves this." Two characters, in particular, represent this growing corruption of civilization, Andries Mordaunt, the chainbearer, and Aaron, known as "Thousandacres". The men represent different types of the civilization, Mordaunt as the usurper of old civilization and Thousandacres representing an older society which the new "civilization" means to usurp. Eventually this new civilization decides to embrace force in order to lay full claim on the land. This displacement of Native Americans by the ever expansionist Americans repeatedly becomes an issue for Cooper throughout the trilogy of novels. In so doing, Cooper presents a very strong critique of Americans and America. James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 15, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. He lived most of his life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William on property that he owned. Cooper was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and, in his later years, contributed generously to it.He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society, but was expelled for misbehavior.Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U.S. Navy as a Midshipman, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. The novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about counterespionage set during the Revolutionary War and published in 1821.He also wrote numerous sea stories, and his best-known works are five historical novels of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians, Cooper\'s works on the early U.S. Navy have been well received, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece. Views: 180
The Prince repeated his statement: Man's greatest wisdom consists in getting along without women. He intended to go on but was interrupted. There was a slight stir of the heavy window curtains. Through their parting was seen below, as in a frame, the intense azure of the Mediterranean. A dull roar reached the dining-room. It seemed to come from the side of the house facing the Alps. It was a faint vibration, deadened by the walls, the curtains, and the carpets, distant, like the working of some underground monster; but there rose above the sound of revolving steel and the puffing of steam a clamor of human beings, a sudden burst of shouts and whistling. Views: 178
The acclaimed author of "A People's History of the United States" (more than 200,000 copies sold) presents an honest and piercing look at American political ideology."A shotgun blast of revisionism that aims to shatter all the comfortable myths of American political discourse." "--Los Angeles Times" Views: 176
A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.
She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time. Views: 176
High intrigue in South America, with the future of democracy on the continent at stake! Views: 175
Courageous, insightful and candid thoughts on malady and mortality from one of our most celebrated writers.
During the US book tour for his memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens collapsed in his New York hotel room to excoriating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of deeply moving Vanity Fair pieces, he was being deported 'from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.' Until his death in 2011 he underwent the brutal gamut of modern cancer treatment, enduring catastrophic levels of suffering and eventually losing his voice.
Mortality is the most meditative piece of writing Hitchens has ever produced; at once an unsparingly honest account of the ravages of his disease, an examination of cancer bathroom etiquette, and the coda to a lifetime of fierce debate and peerless prose. In this eloquent confrontation of mortality, Hitchens returns a human face to a disease that has become a contemporary cipher of suffering. Views: 171
Joy Ride is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Mark Meadows is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Mark Meadows then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. Views: 167
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was one of the greatest exemplars of the revolutionary 1960s, a man whose heroic adventures were essential to the success of the Cuban Revolution and whose legend fired the imaginations of a whole generation. In 1965, amid worldwide conjecture, Guevara left Cuba, where he was a minister in Fidel Castro's postrevolutionary government, and traveled incognito to the heart of Africa. People's hero Patrice Lumumba had recently been assassinated, and Guevara was to put his theories of guerrilla warfare to use helping the oppressed people of the Congo throw off the yoke of colonial imperialism. The first task was to assist the young Laurent Kabila in his struggle against Mobutu and Tshombe, the two key figures in the newly independent nation. For the first time, The African Dream collects Guevara's unabridged journals of the expedition. They are the record of the bitter failure of a political and ideological dream, and a telling complement to the subsequent rise of Kabila and his recent demise. Most of all, the diaries afford the reader a very personal insight into the thoughts and emotions of Che Guevara, the twentieth century's great revolutionary martyr. Views: 163
When an angry, unemployed chemist unleashes a bio-terrorist attack against women and children, the president of the United States asks Donovan Creed to get involved. It's just one more thing on Creed's plate. Views: 142
