The Siren and Selected Writings

Download The Siren and Selected Writings PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvill Secker
ISBN 13 : 9781846555947
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (559 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Siren and Selected Writings by : Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Download or read book The Siren and Selected Writings written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and published by Harvill Secker. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although best known as author of a singular masterpiece, "The Leopard", the Prince of Lampedusa left a rich and varied oeuvre that repays a careful reading. This title collects some of the best and most representative of his works.

Siren Songs

Download Siren Songs PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472105977
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (59 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Siren Songs by : Lillian Eileen Doherty

Download or read book Siren Songs written by Lillian Eileen Doherty and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A feminist critique of the Odyssey

Music of the Sirens

Download Music of the Sirens PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253112071
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Music of the Sirens by : Linda Austern

Download or read book Music of the Sirens written by Linda Austern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-21 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether referred to as mermaid, usalka, mami wata, or by some other name, and whether considered an imaginary being or merely a person with extraordinary abilities, the siren is the remarkable creature that has inspired music and its representations from ancient Greece to present-day Africa and Latin America. This book, co-edited by a historical musicologist and an ethnomusicologist, brings together leading scholars and some talented newcomers in classics, music, media studies, literature, and cultural studies to consider the siren and her multifaceted relationships to music across human time and geography.

The Sirens of Mars

Download The Sirens of Mars PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 1101904828
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Sirens of Mars by : Sarah Stewart Johnson

Download or read book The Sirens of Mars written by Sarah Stewart Johnson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sarah Stewart Johnson interweaves her own coming-of-age story as a planetary scientist with a vivid history of the exploration of Mars in this celebration of human curiosity, passion, and perseverance.”—Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams WINNER OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA AWARD FOR SCIENCE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Times (UK) • Library Journal “Lovely . . . Johnson’s prose swirls with lyrical wonder, as varied and multihued as the apricot deserts, butterscotch skies and blue sunsets of Mars.”—Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum—on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own. Johnson’s fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth’s most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey—as a female scientist and a mother—with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings. Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos.

The Professor and the Siren

Download The Professor and the Siren PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590177428
Total Pages : 105 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Professor and the Siren by : Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Download or read book The Professor and the Siren written by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original In the last two years of his life, the Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote not only the internationally celebrated novel The Leopard but also three shorter pieces of fiction, brought together here in a new translation. “The Professor and the Siren,” like The Leopard, meditates on the past and the passage of time, and also on the relationship between erotic love and learning. Professor La Ciura is one of the world’s most distinguished Hellenists; his knowledge, however, came at the cost of a loss that has haunted him for his entire life. This Lampedusa’s final masterpiece, is accompanied here by the parable “Joy and the Law” and “The Blind Kittens,” a story originally conceived as the first chapter of a followup to The Leopard.

Songs from the Deep

Download Songs from the Deep PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Margaret K. McElderry Books
ISBN 13 : 1534438092
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (344 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Songs from the Deep by : Kelly Powell

Download or read book Songs from the Deep written by Kelly Powell and published by Margaret K. McElderry Books. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A girl searches for a killer on an island where deadly sirens lurk just beneath the waves in this “twisty, atmospheric story that grips readers like a siren song” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). The sea holds many secrets. Moira Alexander has always been fascinated by the deadly sirens who lurk along the shores of her island town. Even though their haunting songs can lure anyone to a swift and watery grave, she gets as close to them as she can, playing her violin on the edge of the enchanted sea. When a young boy is found dead on the beach, the islanders assume that he’s one of the sirens’ victims. Moira isn’t so sure. Certain that someone has framed the boy’s death as a siren attack, Moira convinces her childhood friend, the lighthouse keeper Jude Osric, to help her find the real killer, rekindling their friendship in the process. With townspeople itching to hunt the sirens down, and their own secrets threatening to unravel their fragile new alliance, Moira and Jude must race against time to stop the killer before it’s too late—for humans and sirens alike.

Siren Song

Download Siren Song PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136527745
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (365 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Siren Song by : Carl J. Bauer

Download or read book Siren Song written by Carl J. Bauer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing scarcity, conflict, and environmental damage are critical features of the global water crisis. As governments, international organizations, NGOs, and corporations have tried to respond, Chilean water law has seemed an attractive alternative to older legislative and regulatory approaches. Boldly introduced in 1981, the Chilean model is the worlds leading example of a free market approach to water law, water rights, and water resource management. Despite more than a decade of international debate, however, a comprehensive, balanced account of the Chilean experience has been unavailable. Siren Song is an interdisciplinary analysis combining law, political economy, and geography. Carl Bauer places the Chilean model of water law in international context by reviewing the contemporary debate about water economics and policy reform. He follows with an account of the Chilean experience, drawing on primary and secondary sources in Spanish and English, including interviews with key people in Chile. He presents the debate about reforming the law after Chile‘s 1990 return to democratic government, as well as emerging views about how water markets have worked in practice. The resulting book provides insights about law, economics, and public policy within Chile and lessons for the countries around the world that are wrestling with the challenges of water policy reform.

The Professor Is In

Download The Professor Is In PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0553419420
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (534 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Professor Is In by : Karen Kelsky

Download or read book The Professor Is In written by Karen Kelsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

Sirens & Muses

Download Sirens & Muses PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0593496450
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (934 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sirens & Muses by : Antonia Angress

Download or read book Sirens & Muses written by Antonia Angress and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school and on the streets of New York in this “gripping, provocative, and supremely entertaining” (BuzzFeed) debut “Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire . . . a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.”—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour, PopSugar, Debutiful It’s 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance. When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether. With a canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own their future.

The Siren and the Sage

Download The Siren and the Sage PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1725208458
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (252 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Siren and the Sage by : Steven Shankman

Download or read book The Siren and the Sage written by Steven Shankman and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2003-09-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultures of ancient China and ancient Greece have exerted immeasurable influence on later civilizations. The texts and cultural values of classical China spread throughout East Asia and became the foundation of learning in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Greek learning and culture receive credit for many of the intellectual paradigms of the West. Probably the one which is most distinctly Western is the tradition of logical proof and the related assumption that, as Aristotle put it in 'Metaphysics' 980, 'we all desire to know.' In contrast, the Chinese tradition, as exemplified by Laozi's 'Dao de jing,' cautions that through our desire to know we may forfeit wisdom, thus engendering a split between knowledge and wisdom. 'The Siren and the Sage' is a comparative study of what some of the most influential writers of ancient China and ancient Greece thought it meant to know and whether they distinguished knowledge from wisdom. It surveys selected works of poetry, history and philosophy from roughly the eighth through the second centuries BCE, focusing on the 'Odyssey,' the ancient Chinese 'Classic of Poetry,' Thucydides' 'History of the Peloponnesian War,' Sima Qian's 'Records of the Historian,' Plato's 'Symposium,' Laozi's 'Dao de jing' and the writings of Zhuangzi. The intention, through such juxtaposition, is to introduce foundational texts of each tradition, texts which continue to influence most of the world's peoples. It is intriguing to ask what awareness, if any, these distinctive cultures had of each other. A considerable body of scholarship comparing ancient Greece and ancient China now exists. Scholars are presenting evidence that the two cultures may actually have been aware of each other's presence, even though that awareness was presumably indirect, perhaps mediated by the nomadic peoples of Central Asia. While not directly contributing evidence, the authors argue that comparing the cultures of Greece and China will continue to be an irresistible and important scholarly debate. The book offers a provocative study which is accessible to students and general readers and at the same time contributes to the debate.

The Sirens Sang of Murder

Download The Sirens Sang of Murder PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Dell
ISBN 13 : 0440207452
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Sirens Sang of Murder by : Sarah Caudwell

Download or read book The Sirens Sang of Murder written by Sarah Caudwell and published by Dell. This book was released on 1990-09-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lawyer’s lucrative case has deadly consequences in the third installment of the Hilary Tamar mysteries that began with Thus Was Adonis Murdered “Sarah Caudwell is one of my very favorite mystery writers.”—A. J. Finn, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window Young barrister Michael Cantrip has skipped off to the Channel Islands to take on a tax-law case that’s worth a fortune—if Cantrip’s tax-planning cronies can locate the missing heir. But Cantrip has waded in way over his head. Strange things are happening on these mysterious, isolated isles. Something is going bump in the night—and bumping off members of the legal team, one by one. Soon Cantrip is messaging the gang at the home office for help. And it’s up to amateur investigator Hilary Tamar, Oxford don turned supersleuth, to get Cantrip back to the safety of his chambers—alive! Don’t miss any of Sarah Caudwell’s riveting Hilary Tamar mysteries: THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED • THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES • THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER • THE SIBYL IN HER GRAVE

Siren Songs

Download Siren Songs PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400866715
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Siren Songs by : Mary Ann Smart

Download or read book Siren Songs written by Mary Ann Smart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-25 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been argued that opera is all about sex. Siren Songs is the first collection of articles devoted to exploring the impact of this sexual obsession, and of the power relations that come with it, on the music, words, and staging of opera. Here a distinguished and diverse group of musicologists, literary critics, and feminist scholars address a wide range of fascinating topics--from Salome's striptease to hysteria to jazz and gender--in Italian, English, German, and French operas from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The authors combine readings of specific scenes with efforts to situate these musical moments within richly and precisely observed historical contexts. Challenging both formalist categories of musical analysis and the rhetoric that traditionally pits a male composer against the female characters he creates, many of the articles work toward inventing a language for the study of gender and opera. The collection opens with Mary Ann Smart's introduction, which provides an engaging reflection on the state of gender topics in operatic criticism and musicology. It then moves on to a foundational essay on the complex relationships between opera and history by the renowned philosopher and novelist Catherine Clément, a pioneer of feminist opera criticism. Other articles examine the evolution of the "trouser role" as it evolved in the lesbian subculture of fin-de-siècle Paris, the phenomenon of opera seria's "absent mother" as a manifestation of attitudes to the family under absolutism, the invention of a "hystericized voice" in Verdi's Don Carlos, and a collaborative discussion of the staging problems posed by the gender politics of Mozart's operas. The contributors are Wye Jamison Allanboork, Joseph Auner, Katherine Bergeron, Philip Brett, Peter Brooks, Catherine Clement, Martha Feldman, Heather Hadlock, Mary Hunter, Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, M.D., Lawrence Kramer, Roger Parker, Mary Ann Smart, and Gretchen Wheelock.

Siren City

Download Siren City PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 081355392X
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (135 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Siren City by : Robert Miklitsch

Download or read book Siren City written by Robert Miklitsch and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed for its dramatic expressionist visuals, film noir is one of the most prominent genres in Hollywood cinema. Yet, despite the "boom" in sound studies, the role of sonic effects and source music in classic American noir has not received the attention it deserves. Siren City engagingly illustrates how sound tracks in 1940s film noir are often just as compelling as the genre's vaunted graphics. Focusing on a wide range of celebrated and less well known films and offering an introductory discussion of film sound, Robert Miklitsch mobilizes the notion of audiovisuality to investigate period sound technologies such as the radio and jukebox, phonograph and Dictaphone, popular American music such as "hot" black jazz, and "big numbers" featuring iconic performers such as Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, and Rita Hayworth. Siren City resonates with the sounds and source music of classic American noir-gunshots and sirens, swing riffs and canaries. Along with the proverbial private eye and femme fatale, these audiovisuals are central to the noir aesthetic and one important reason the genre reverberates with audiences around the world.

Letters from London and Europe

Download Letters from London and Europe PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Alma Books
ISBN 13 : 9781846881374
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (813 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Letters from London and Europe by : Gioacchino Tomasi Lampedusa

Download or read book Letters from London and Europe written by Gioacchino Tomasi Lampedusa and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Leopard, published posthumously in 1958, was one of the most important works of fiction to appear in the Italian language in the twentieth century. Between 1925 and 1930, its author, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, wrote a number of letters to his cousins Casimiro and Lucio Piccolo in which he describes his travels around Europe (London, Paris, Zurich, Berlin). The letters, here published in English for the first time, display much of Lampedusa's distinctive style present in his later work: not only the razor-sharp introspection, but also a wicked sense of humour, playful in its description of the comédie humaine.

Olympic Affair

Download Olympic Affair PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor Trade Publications
ISBN 13 : 1589796993
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (897 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Olympic Affair by : Terry Frei

Download or read book Olympic Affair written by Terry Frei and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 2012-12-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though not a member of the National Socialist Party, Leni Riefenstahl was the filmmaker darling of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. First a successful dancer and actress in Germany, she became more notorious when she produced and directed Victory of Faith and Triumph of the Will, the chilling documentaries about Nazi Party Congresses at Nuremberg. Glenn Morris was an All-American farm boy from tiny Simla, Colorado, as well as a former college football star and student body president at the school now known as Colorado State University. At the 1936 Olympics, he won the decathlon, earning him the label “the world’s greatest athlete.” Among the American heroes at the Berlin Games, he was considered second only to Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. Riefenstahl and Morris: An unlikely couple? Perhaps, but in her 1987 memoirs, the German filmmaker belatedly confirmed she had an affair with the American athlete during the filming of Olympia, Riefenstahl’s documentary about the Berlin Games. In fact, she portrayed it as much more than a dalliance, saying that she had dreamed of marrying Morris and that he broke her heart. Morris, who went on to Hollywood, the National Football League, and military service, spoke sparingly of the relationship, but mused late in life that he “should have stayed in Germany with Leni.” In Olympic Affair, author Terry Frei turns to historical fiction in a novel researched in much the same fashion as his widely praised works of nonfiction, including Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming and Third Down and a War to Go. Using deduction, imagination and narrative skill to augment documented fact (as well as debunk myths parroted for many years), Frei tells the story of their ill-fated affair . . . and beyond. Read the first chapter of Olympic Affair here.

The Professor and the Siren

Download The Professor and the Siren PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590177193
Total Pages : 105 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Professor and the Siren by : Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Download or read book The Professor and the Siren written by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original In the last two years of his life, the Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote not only the internationally celebrated novel The Leopard but also three shorter pieces of fiction, brought together here in a new translation. “The Professor and the Siren,” like The Leopard, meditates on the past and the passage of time, and also on the relationship between erotic love and learning. Professor La Ciura is one of the world’s most distinguished Hellenists; his knowledge, however, came at the cost of a loss that has haunted him for his entire life. This Lampedusa’s final masterpiece, is accompanied here by the parable “Joy and the Law” and “The Blind Kittens,” a story originally conceived as the first chapter of a followup to The Leopard.

The Number and the Siren

Download The Number and the Siren PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0983216924
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (832 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Number and the Siren by : Quentin Meillassoux

Download or read book The Number and the Siren written by Quentin Meillassoux and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-04-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, and eternity through a concentrated study of Mallarmé's poem “Un Coup de Dés.” A meticulous literary study, a detective story à la Edgar Allan Poe, a treasure-hunt worthy of an adventure novel—such is the register in which can be deciphered the hidden secrets of a poem like no other. Quentin Meillassoux, author of After Finitude, continues his philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, infinity, and eternity through a concentrated study of Mallarmé's poem “Un Coup de Dés,” patiently deciphering its enigmatic meaning on the basis of a dazzlingly simple and lucid insight with regard to Mallarmé's “unique Number.” The decisive point of the investigation proposed by Meillassoux comes with a discovery, unsettling and yet as simple as a child's game. The Number that “can be no other” can only be revealed to us via a secret code, hidden in the “Coup de dés” like a key that finally unlocks every one of its poetic devices. Thus is also unveiled the meaning of that siren, emerging for a lightning-flash amongst the debris of the shipwreck: as the living heart of a drama that is still unfolding. With this bold new interpretation of Mallarmé's work, Meillassoux offers brilliant insights into modernity, poetics, secularism, and religion, and opens a new chapter in his philosophy of radical contingency. The volume contains the entire text of the “Coup de dés” and three other poems, with new English translations.