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A Cultural History. For almost a thousand years, Rome held sway as the spiritual and artistic centre of the world. Hughes vividly recreates the ancient Rome of Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula, Cicero, Martial and Virgil. With the artistic blossoming of the Renaissance, he casts his unwavering critical eye over the great works of Raphael, Michelangelo and Brunelleschi, shedding new light on the Old Masters. In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Rome's cultural predominance was assured, artists and tourists from all over Europe converged on the city. Hughes brilliantly analyses the defining works of Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rubens and Bernini.

Hughes' Rome is a vibrant, contradictory, spectacular and secretive place, a monument both to human glory and human error. In equal parts loving, iconoclastic, enraged and wise, peopled with colourful figures and rich in unexpected details, ROME is an exhilarating journey through the story of one of the world's most glorious cities.

The son of a midwestern farmer, William Stoner comes to the University of Missouri in 1910 to study agriculture. Stoner tells of love and conflict, passion and responsibility against the backdrop of academic life in the early 20th century.

What happens when you die? According to one prominent physicist, you will be instantaneously resurrected - despite trillions upon trillions of years having passed - in the dying days of the Universe. Stretching before you will be a subjective eternity of existence; the never-ending days of being dead... This is just one of the strange but wonderful scientific ideas - each from the mind of one of the world's most daring and imaginative scientists - in Marcus Chown's superbly readable new book. Learn how the big bang may have been spawned by a collision between 'island universes'; how a single remarkable number contains the answer to every question we could ever ask; how the most widely accepted theory of the Universe's origin implies that Elvis never died; and how a computer program a mere four lines long could be generating the stars, the galaxies and the tip of your nose. Chown fearlessly adresses the big questions on the nature of the universe, the nature of reality, and the place of life in the universe. He argues that, ultimately, science at the leading edge is about the down-to-earth things that matter to all of us. Where did the Universe come from? Where did we come from? What the hell are we doing here?

'The most outrageously funny book about sex written' Guardian Portnoy's Complaint tells the tale of young Jewish lawyer Alexander Portnoy and his scandalous sexual confessions to his psychiatrist. As narrated by Portnoy, he takes the reader on a journey through his childhood to adolescence to present day while articulating his sexual desire, frustration and neurosis in shockingly candid ways. Hysterically funny and daringly intimate, Portnoy's Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication and elevated Roth to an international literary celebrity.

'Science has never had an advocate quite like David Deutsch ... A computational physicist on a par with his touchstones Alan Turing and Richard Feynman, and a philosopher in the line of his greatest hero, Karl Popper. His arguments are so clear that to read him is to experience the thrill of the highest level of discourse available on this planet and to understand it' Peter Forbes, Independent

In our search for truth, how far have we advanced? This uniquely human quest for good explanations has driven amazing improvements in everything from scientific understanding and technology to politics, moral values and human welfare. But will progress end, either in catastrophe or completion - or will it continue infinitely?

In this profound and seminal book, David Deutsch explores the furthest reaches of our current understanding, taking in the Infinity Hotel, supernovae and the nature of optimism, to instill in all of us a wonder at what we have achieved - and the fact that this is only the beginning of humanity's infinite possibility.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce's Dubliners and the symbolism of Ulysses, and is essential to the understanding of the later work. This novel is a highly autobiographical account of the adolescence of Stephen Dedalus, who reappears in Ulysses, and who comes to realize that before he can become a true artist, he must rid himself of the stultifying effects of the religion, politics and essential bigotry of his background in late 19th century Ireland. Written with a light touch, this is perhaps the most accessible of Joyce's works.

One of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, Arnaldo Momigliano (19081987) is known for his path-breaking studies of ancient Greek and Roman history. The encyclopedic knowledge of the ancient world that Momigliano brought to his work, however, enabled him to make connections between ancient history and the subsequent study of that history. His sweeping vision stretched from antiquity to the present day.

In Momigliano and Antiquarianism, Peter N. Miller brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to provide the first serious study of Momigliano's history of historical scholarship. At its core, this collection is devoted to one of Momigliano's most celebrated subjects, the history of antiquarianism, and one of his most audacious claims, that the decay of early modern antiquarianism actually gave birth to the modern cultural sciences history, sociology, anthropology, art history, archaeology, and history of religion. Filling a gap in the scholarship, this erudite collection will prove fascinating to teachers and students of classics, history, and the human sciences.

The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, when not forgotten altogether. But there was a time in America, during the 1970s, when bombings by domestic underground groups were a daily occurrence. The FBI combated these and other groups as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government.

In Days of Rage, Bryan Burrough re-creates an atmosphere that seems almost unbelievable just forty years later, conjuring a time of native-born radicals, most of them “nice middle-class kids,” smuggling bombs into skyscrapers and detonating them inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, at a Boston courthouse and a Wall Street restaurant packed with lunchtime diners. The FBI’s fevered response included the formation of a secret task force called Squad 47, dedicated to hunting the groups down and rolling them up. But Squad 47 itself broke many laws in its attempts to bring the revolutionaries to justice, and its efforts ultimately ended in fiasco.

Drawing on revelatory interviews with members of the underground and the FBI who speak about their experiences for the first time, Days of Rage is a mesmerizing book that takes us into the hearts and minds of homegrown terrorists and federal agents alike and weaves their stories into a spellbinding secret history of the 1970s.

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Introduction and Notes by E.B. Greenwood, University of Kent. Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels, of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life's many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief.

In Going Solo, the world's favourite storyteller, Roald Dahl, tells of life as a fighter pilot in Africa.'They did not think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton, and they were astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body lying in the sand nearby.' In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, flying a Hurricane as Greece fell to the Germans, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction. 'Very nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror' Evening Standard 'A non-stop demonstration of expert raconteurship' The New York Times Book Review. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

Een in Europa wonende Amerikaanse psychiater trouwt met een van zijn patienten, wier schizofrenie hij weet te genezen, hetgeen echter tot zijn eigen ondergang leidt.

A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter, Dolores Haze, destroys the lives of those around him.

With an Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Michael Irwin, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Kent, Canterbury.

The young Thomas Hardy, working as an architect, but fired with literary ambition, tried for years to get into print. He finally succeeded with Desperate Remedies, a 'sensation novel' in the mode of Wilkie Collins. Here was a racy specimen of the genre, replete with sudden death, dark mysteries, intriguing clues, fire and storm, flight and pursuit.

Anyone who enjoys The Woman in White is likely to enjoy Desperate Remedies. But that is only half the story. Hardy contrived also, in this unlikely context, to give a first airing to various of the ideas and technical experiments which were to characterise his later fiction. The result is an exhilaratingly uneven work: at any point in the narrative some brilliant passage of description or metaphor may burst out like a firework. Desperate Remedies can be relished both for what it is and for what it promises.

One of the most moving accounts of being a boy ever written, My Childhood is a both wonderful and harrowing memoir - and one of the great works of Russian literature. A new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

'Who could read the programme for the excursion without longing to make one of the party?'

So Mark Twain acclaims his voyage from New York City to Europe and the Holy Land in June 1867. His adventures produced The Innocents Abroad, a book so funny and provocative it made him an international star for the rest of his life. He was making his first responses to the Old World - to Paris, Milan, Florence, Venice, Pompeii, Constantinople, Sebastopol, Balaklava, Damascus, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem.For the first time he was seeing the great paintings and sculptures of the 'Old Masters'. He responded with wonder and amazement, but also with exasperation, irritation, disbelief. Above all he displayed the great energy of his humour, more explosive for us now than for his beguiled contemporaries.

On a sunny day in June, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is getting ready for a party and exulting in the vibrant swell of London. As Clarissa's preparations take her from the golden morning to the glittering evening, she muses on the choices she made as a young woman, the romances that have enriched her life, and the passage of time. In another part of London, war hero Septimus Smith is suffering from shell shock - what we would now term PTSD - and is haunted by the death of his friend. He finds himself teetering on the brink of madness, unable to leave his wounds behind. Over the course of a single day, the lives of Clarissa and Septimus will interweave and finally converge as the party reaches its climax.

With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front. The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized -- is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.

Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch...

Powerful and political, with unforgettable characters and timeless themes, The World According to Garp is John Irving's breakout novel. The precursor of Irving's later protest novels, it is the story of Jenny, an unmarried nurse who becomes a single mom and a feminist leader, beloved but polarizing--and of her son, Garp, less beloved, but no less polarizing.

From the tragicomic tone of its first sentence to its mordantly funny last line -- "we are all terminal cases" -- The World According to Garp maintains a breakneck pace. The subject of sexual hatred and violence -- of intolerance of sexual minorities, and sexual differences -- runs through the book, as relevant now as ever. Available in more than forty countries -- with more than ten million copies in print -- Garp is a comedy with forebodings of doom.

Die besten Stücke aus Violetta Simons Paar-Kolumne äEr sagt, sie sagtä auf www.SZ.de. Die Kolumnen illustrieren handfest und witzig-ironisch die Tücken der partnerschaftlichen Kommunikation als Beziehungsdrama in Dialogform.

A wild ride inside the glowing head of Dennis Rodman--the NBA's greatest rebounder and America's most outspoken and outrageous athlete.
When "Sports Illustrated put the man they call "America's most provocative athlete" on their cover, they sold more copies than any other issue they had sold in a decade (except the swimsuit issue). Why? Because Dennis Rodman, superstar basketball player who joined the Chicago Bulls for the 1996 season, has more in common with Mick Jagger than with his new teammate Michael Jordan. With his body-covering tattoos and ever-changing fluorescent hair, Rodman's sideline antics and celebrated benchings have captivated sports fans as much as his record-breaking on-court performances and earned him a reputation as a rebel with the same penchant for shocking behavior as his on-again off-again squeeze, Madonna. In "Bad As I Wanna Be he'll share his surprising and candid opinions on everything from fame, money, and race relations, to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll--and he'll talk about his life, from going to prison for stealing watches to his daughter, the light of his life.
At a time when most celebrities and professional athletes try to control their public personas like politicians and refrain from expressing their true beliefs, Dennis Rodman is a refreshingly unique, uncompromising individual who both transcends his world and refuses to conform to it. "Bad As I Wanna Be is as candid, intriguing, and unforgettable as he is.

Dodgers is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger.

It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys—including East's hothead younger brother—to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he's never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, ultimately forcing him to grapple with his place in the world and decide what kind of man he wants to become.
 
Written in stark and unforgettable prose and featuring an array of surprising and memorable characters rendered with empathy and wit, Dodgers heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.

Richard Brautigan was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. He came of age during the Haight-Ashbury period and has been called “the last of the Beats.” His early books became required reading for the hip generation, and on its publication Trout Fishing in America became an international bestseller. An indescribable romp, the novel is best summed up in one word: mayonnaise.

This new edition includes an introduction by the poet Billy Collins, who first encountered Brautigan's work as a student in California.

Covering the decisive moment of the Bolshevik revolution, "Ten Days" revealed the author to be among the first Americans to grasp the true significance of the Revolution and to make the U.S. public aware of it. The book remains acclaimed today. It is published in many countries and in a multitude of languages. This edition, a facsimile of the original 1919 printing was prepared by John Howard Lawson, the late noted film writer who himself made history as, member of the famed "Hollywood Ten." His introduction corrects distortions of Reed and his time presented in other edited versions. Included also are biographical sketches of the main participant, contemporary photographs, a map of Petrograd showing where events took place, prefaces by Lenin and his wife Krupskaya, editorial notes and an index.