St Petersburg Dialogues

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Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 9780773509825
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis St Petersburg Dialogues by : Joseph Marie comte de Maistre

Download or read book St Petersburg Dialogues written by Joseph Marie comte de Maistre and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1993 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect at the end of the twentieth century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture, ... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Maistre foretold. In the Dialogues Maistre addressed a number of topics which are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" -- one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas.

Cellular Dialogues in the Holobiont

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Author :
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 1000090485
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Cellular Dialogues in the Holobiont by : Thomas C. G. Bosch

Download or read book Cellular Dialogues in the Holobiont written by Thomas C. G. Bosch and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-08-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the growing knowledge of the huge range of protist-, animal-, and plant-bacterial interactions, whether in shared ecosystems or intimate symbioses, is fundamentally altering our understanding of biology. The establishment and maintenance of these interactions and their contributions to the health and survival of all partners relies on continuous cell-to-cell communication between them. This dialogue may be concerned with all aspects of the biology of both partners. The book includes chapters devoted to exploring, explaining, and exposing these dialogues across a broad spectrum of plant and animal eukaryotes to a broad field of biologists. Key Features Explores the nature of the interactions between eukaryotic hosts and their microbial symbionts Examines the links between prostist, animal, and plant evolution and microbial communities Reviews specific taxa and the microbial diversity associated with these taxa Illustrates the role microbes play in the physiology and etiology of several model species Includes chapters by an international team of leading scholars

Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment

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Publisher : American Philosophical Society
ISBN 13 : 9780871699350
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment by : Joseph Mali

Download or read book Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment written by Joseph Mali and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 2003 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the essays in this collection make plain, Isaiah Berlin invented neither the term "Counter-Enlightenment" nor the concept. However, more than any other figure since the eighteenth century, Berlin appropriated the term, made it the heart of his own political thought, and imbued his interpretations of particular thinkers with its meanings and significance. His diverse treatment of writers at the margins of the Enlightenment, who themselves reflected upon what they took to be its central currents, were at once historical and philosophical. Berlin sought to show that our patterns of culture, manufactured by ourselves, must be explained differently from the ways in which we seek to fathom laws of nature. Many of the essays in this volume were prepared for the International Seminar in memory of Sir Isaiah Berlin, held at the School of History in Tel Aviv University during the academic year 1999-2000.

Sacrifice Imagined

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441194452
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Sacrifice Imagined by : Douglas Hedley

Download or read book Sacrifice Imagined written by Douglas Hedley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-09-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice Imagined is an original exploration of the idea of sacrifice by one of the world's preeminent philosophers of religion. Despisers of religion have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice as an index of the irrational and wicked in religious practice. Nor does its secularised form seem much more appealing. One need only think of the appalling cult of sacrifice in numerous totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Yet sacrifice remains a part of our cultural and intellectual 'imaginary'. Hedley proposes good reasons to think that issues of global conflict and the ecological crisis highlight the continuing relevance of the topic of sacrifice for contemporary culture. The subject of sacrifice has been decisively influenced by two books: Girard's The Violence and the Sacred and Burkert's Homo Necans. Both of these are theories of sacrifice as violence. Hedley's book challenges both of these highly influential theories and presents a theory of sacrifice as renunciation of the will. His guiding influences in this are the much misunderstood Joseph de Maistre and the Cambridge Platonists.

Writing Resistance

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Publisher : UCL Press
ISBN 13 : 1787359913
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (873 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing Resistance by : Sarah J. Young

Download or read book Writing Resistance written by Sarah J. Young and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1884, the first of 68 prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St Petersburg. The regime of indeterminate sentences in isolation caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, over half of whom died. But the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates’ living conditions. The memoirs many survivors wrote enshrined their story in revolutionary mythology, and acted as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy’s loss of moral authority. Writing Resistance features three of these memoirs, all translated into English for the first time. They show the process of transforming the regime as a collaborative endeavour that resulted in flourishing allotments, workshops and intellectual culture – and in the inmates running many of the prison’s everyday functions. Sarah J. Young’s introductory essay analyses the Shlissel´burg memoirs’ construction of a collective narrative of resilience, resistance and renewal. It uses distant reading techniques to explore the communal values they inscribe, their adoption of a powerful group identity, and emphasis on overcoming the physical and psychological barriers of the prison. The first extended study of Shlissel´burg’s revolutionary inmates in English, Writing Resistance uncovers an episode in the history of political imprisonment that bears comparison with the inmates of Robben Island in South Africa’s apartheid regime and the Maze Prison in Belfast during the Troubles. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the Russian revolution, carceral history, penal practice and behaviours, and prison and life writing.

From Pragmatics to Dialogue

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Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027263744
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis From Pragmatics to Dialogue by : Edda Weigand

Download or read book From Pragmatics to Dialogue written by Edda Weigand and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume aims at building bridges from pragmatics to dialogue and overcoming the gap between two ‘circles’ which have cut themselves off from each other in recent decades even if both addressed the same object, ‘language use’. Pragmatics means the study of natural language use. There is however no clear answer as to what language use means. We are instead confronted with multiple and diverse models in an uncircumscribed field of language use. When trying to transform such a puzzle of pieces into a meaningful picture we are confronted with the complexity of language use which does not mean ‘language’ put to ‘use’ but represents the unity of a complex whole and calls for a total change in methodology towards a holistic theory. Human beings as dialogic individuals use language as dialogue which allows them to tackle the vicissitudes of their lives. Dialogue and its methodology of action and reaction can be traced back to human nature and provides the key to the unstructured field of pragmatics. The contributions to this volume share this common ground and address various perspectives in different types of action game.

Fall of Giants

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101543558
Total Pages : 1010 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Fall of Giants by : Ken Follett

Download or read book Fall of Giants written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .

Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence

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Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0773569774
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence by : Richard A. Lebrun

Download or read book Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence written by Richard A. Lebrun and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001-10-08 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph de Maistre (1753B1821) was an extraordinarily gifted and insightful commentator on foundational developments that have shaped our modern world. His reaction to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, though hostile, was remarkably open and included innovative and still-valuable theorizing about such human phenomena as violence and unreason. The political and theoretical issues he addressed continue to challenge us today. In Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence leading Maistre scholars offer interpretations of his thought and make available in English recent French scholarship on his life and work. They provide a portrait of Maistre as a significant thinker in numerous fields, upsetting the image of him as a backward-looking "reactionary," a reinterpretation furthered by contemporary interest in Counter-Enlightenment thought in general. Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence is a valuable resource, providing not only a cross-section of current Maistre scholarship but also notes and biographical suggestions for further study. Contributors include Owen Bradley (University of Tennessee), Jean-Louis Darcel (Université de Savoie), Jean Dinezet (former OECD director-general), Graeme Garrard (University of Wales), Richard A. Lebrun, Vera Miltchyna (Writer's Union, Moscow), Jean-Yves Pranchère (independent scholar), W. Jay Reedy (Bryant College), and Benjamin Thurston (D.Phil. candidate, Oxford).

Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon

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Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0773567186
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon by : Joseph de Maistre

Download or read book Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon written by Joseph de Maistre and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1998-04-08 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although often neglected, An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon is crucial to understand the epistemological basis for Maistre's critique of modern science as well as his criticisms of other aspects of Enlightenment thought. Given Maistre's stature in the history of conservative thought, his critique of Bacon remains significant for what it tells us about Maistre's own thought, what it reveals about attitudes toward science in his time, and what it contributes to issues that are still debated today. The work also showcases Maistre's polemical skills and his powerful prose style. Richard Lebrun's annotated translation includes Maistre's complete text, an extensive introduction that places the work in context and provides a critical exposition and assessment of Maistre's criticisms of Bacon, biographical notes on persons cited or mentioned by Maistre, and a bibliography. Differences between Maistre's manuscript and the printed text, first published fifteen years after the author's death, are noted, and Maistre's numerous citations have been identified, verified, and translated, making this the only authoritative and fully accurate edition of the work in either French or English.

Conversations with Joseph Brodsky

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743236394
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis Conversations with Joseph Brodsky by : Solomon Volkov

Download or read book Conversations with Joseph Brodsky written by Solomon Volkov and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-01-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brodsky describes his post-Russian life in New York and reveals for the first time his active participation in one of the cold war's most noted cultural confrontations - the famous defection of the Bolshoi Ballet star Alexander Godunov. In this and all his tales recounted here, we meet a Brodsky his readers have not heard before, both contentious and gracious, breaking all the rules, never succumbing to the straitjacketing of literary or political cliques in New York or anywhere else. In these raw Russian conversations, superbly translated by Marian Schwartz, is the journey of a poet-hero around the world and through this century's most troubling and sensational times.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547527543
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (475 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by : Julian Jaynes

Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

The House of Special Purpose

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Publisher : Doubleday Canada
ISBN 13 : 0385668686
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (856 download)

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Book Synopsis The House of Special Purpose by : John Boyne

Download or read book The House of Special Purpose written by John Boyne and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, The House of Special Purpose illuminates an empire at the end of its reign. Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenev is haunted by his past—a past of death, suffering and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England with his beloved wife Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to St. Petersburg in the early 20th century, to the Winter Palace of the Tsar. A time of change, threat and bloody revolution. And as Georgy overturns the most painful stone of all, we uncover the story of the house of special purpose.

Elegy for Kosovo

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Publisher : Skyhorse
ISBN 13 : 1628722398
Total Pages : 67 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (287 download)

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Book Synopsis Elegy for Kosovo by : Ismail Kadare

Download or read book Elegy for Kosovo written by Ismail Kadare and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2011-12-03 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: June 28, 1389: Six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for the repression of the Albanian majority in Kosovo, there took place, on the Field of the Blackbirds, a battle shrouded in legend. A coalition of Serbs, Albanian Catholics, Bosnians, and Romanians confronted and were defeated by the invading Ottoman army of the Sultan Murad. This battle established the Muslim foothold in Europe and became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars that the world witnessed with horror at the end of the past century. In this eloquent and timely reflection on war, memory, and the destiny of two peoples, Ismail Kadare explores in fiction the legend and the consequences of that defeat. Elegy for Kosovo is a heartfelt yet clear-eyed lament for a land riven by hatreds as old as the Homeric epics and as young as the latest news broadcast.

Assassination, Politics, and Miracles

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Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 9780773524576
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (245 download)

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Book Synopsis Assassination, Politics, and Miracles by : David Skuy

Download or read book Assassination, Politics, and Miracles written by David Skuy and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2003 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation An in-depth examination of the event that precipitated the complete domination of Restoration politics by the Royalists and ultimately convinced millions of French citizens to support Louis XVIII and the Bourbon monarchy. On 13 February 1820 the Duke of Berry, the only Bourbon prince capable of siring an heir, was assassinated. Seven months later the Duchess of Berry gave birth to a boy, the Duke of Bordeaux, and the Bourbon lineage was saved. The boy was immediately nicknamed "the miracle child." The Duke's assassination and the birth of his son gave rise to the Royalist Reaction of 1820, a ten-month period that forever altered France's political landscape. This remarkable story provides the backdrop for David Skuy's analysis of the Royalist Reaction and its place in the history of the French Restoration. Skuy argues that the Royalist Reaction was the product of two divergent forces: historical echoes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire and the psychological consequences of the assassination, and the miracle child. Skuy discusses Restoration political theory and the development of modern political parties. He follows the strategems of anti-royalist extremists plotting to overthrow the Bourbon regime, and details the complexities and intrigues that characterized the royal court and parliament. Skuy reveals how the assassination and the birth of the miracle child triggered a popular Royalist Reaction that changed millions of French citizens from passive observers into ardent royalists.

The Faraway Nearby

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101622776
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Faraway Nearby by : Rebecca Solnit

Download or read book The Faraway Nearby written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell's Roses Apricots. Her mother's disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit's raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein—that helped her navigate her difficult passge. Solnit takes us into the lives of others—an arctic cannibal, the young Che Guevara among the leprosy afflicted, a blues musician, an Icelandic artist and her labyrinth—to understand warmth and coldness, kindness and imagination, decay and transformation, making art and making self. This captivating, exquisitely written exploration of the forces that connect us and the way we tell our stories is a tour de force of association, a marvelous Russian doll of a book that is a fitting companion to Solnit's much-loved A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

The Master of Petersburg

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1524705535
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis The Master of Petersburg by : J. M. Coetzee

Download or read book The Master of Petersburg written by J. M. Coetzee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. In the fall of 1869 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, lately a resident of Germany, is summoned back to St. Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, Pavel. Half crazed with grief, stricken by epileptic seizures, and erotically obsessed with his stepson's landlady, Dostoevsky is nevertheless intent on unraveling the enigma of Pavel's life. Was the boy a suicide or a murder victim? Did he love his stepfather or despise him? Was he a disciple of the revolutionary Nechaev, who even now is somewhere in St. Petersburg pursuing a dream of apocalyptic violence? As he follows his stepson's ghost—and becomes enmeshed in the same demonic conspiracies that claimed the boy—Dostoevsky emerges as a figure of unfathomable contradictions: naive and calculating, compassionate and cruel, pious and unspeakably perverse.

All about the Beat

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 144062965X
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis All about the Beat by : John McWhorter

Download or read book All about the Beat written by John McWhorter and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-06-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling commentator, hailed for his frank and fearless arguments on race, imparts a scathing look at the hypocrisy of hip-hop—and why its popularity proves that black America must overhaul its politics. One of the most outspoken voices in America’s cultural dialogues, John McWhorter can always be counted on to provide provocative viewpoints steeped in scholarly savvy. Now he turns his formidable intellect to the topic of hip-hop music and culture, smashing the claims that hip-hop is politically valuable because it delivers the only “real” portrayal of black society. In this measured, impassioned work, McWhorter delves into the rhythms of hip-hop, analyzing its content and celebrating its artistry and craftsmanship. But at the same time he points out that hip-hop is, at its core, simply music, and takes issue with those who celebrate hip-hop as the beginning of a new civil rights program and inflate the lyrics with a kind of radical chic. In a power vacuum, this often offensive and destructive music has become a leading voice of black America, and McWhorter stridently calls for a renewed sense of purpose and pride in black communities. Joining the ranks of Russell Simmons and others who have called for a deeper investigation of hip-hop’s role in black culture, McWhorter’s All About the Beat is a spectacular polemic that takes the debate in a seismically new direction.