Plague and Pleasure is a lively popular history that introduces a new hypothesis about the impetus behind the cultural change in Renaissance Italy. The Renaissance coincided with a period of chronic, constantly recurring plague, unremitting warfare and pervasive insecurity. Consequently, people felt a need for mental escape to alternative, idealized realities, distant in time or space from the unendurable present but made vivid to the imagination through literature, art, and spectacle.
As a pandemic swept across fourteenth-century Europe, the Decameron offered the ill and grieving a symphony of life and love. For Florentines, the world seemed to be coming to an end. In 1348 the first wave of the Black Death swept across the Italian city, reducing its population from more than 100,000 to less than 40,000. The disease would eventually kill at least half of the population of Europe. Amid the devastation, Giovanni BoccaccioÕs Decameron was born. One of the masterpieces of world literature, the Decameron has captivated centuries of readers with its vivid tales of love, loyalty, betrayal, and sex. Despite the death that overwhelmed Florence, BoccaccioÕs collection of novelle was, in Guido RuggieroÕs words, a Òsymphony of life.Ó Love and Sex in the Time of Plague guides twenty-first-century readers back to BoccaccioÕs world to recapture how his work sounded to fourteenth-century ears. Through insightful discussions of the DecameronÕs cherished stories and deep portraits of Florentine culture, Ruggiero explores love and sexual relations in a society undergoing convulsive change. In the century before the plague arrived, Florence had become one of the richest and most powerful cities in Europe. With the medieval nobility in decline, a new polity was emerging, driven by Il PopoloÑthe people, fractious and enterprising. BoccaccioÕs stories had a special resonance in this age of upheaval, as Florentines sought new notions of truth and virtue to meet both the despair and the possibility of the moment.
Reyes is a man possessed. Bound by the demon of pain, he is forbidden to know pleasure. Yet he craves a mortal woman, Danika Ford, more than breath and will do anything to claim her—even defy the gods. Danika is on the run. For months she's eluded the Lords of the Underworld, immortal warriors who won't rest until she and her family have been destroyed. But her dreams are haunted by Reyes, the warrior whose searing touch she can't forget. Yet a future together could mean death to all they both hold dear…. And be sure to check out the latest book in the irresistibly seductive Lords of the Underworld series, The Darkest Torment, featuring the fierce warrior Baden who will stop at nothing to claim the exquisite human with the power to soothe the beast inside him…
Author and illustrator Edward Carey presents a paean to connection at a time of isolation: a year of daily lockdown drawings posted on social media from his home in Texas. 'This book contains magic' A.L. Kennedy In March 2020, as lockdowns were imposed around the world, author and illustrator Edward Carey published a sketch on social media with a plan to keep posting a drawing a day from his family home in Austin, Texas, until life returned to normal. One hundred and fifty pencil stubs later, he was still drawing. Carey's hand moved with world events, chronicling pandemic and politics. It reached into the past, taking inspiration from history, and escaped grim reality through flights of vivid imagination and studies of the natural world. The drawings became a way of charting time, of moving forward, and maintaining connection at a time of isolation. This remarkable collection of words and drawings from the acclaimed author of Little and The Swallowed Man charts a tumultuous year in pencil, finding beauty amid the horror of extraordinary times.
As a pandemic swept across fourteenth-century Europe, the Decameron offered the ill and grieving a symphony of life and love. For Florentines, the world seemed to be coming to an end. In 1348 the first wave of the Black Death swept across the Italian city, reducing its population from more than 100,000 to less than 40,000. The disease would eventually kill at least half of the population of Europe. Amid the devastation, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron was born. One of the masterpieces of world literature, the Decameron has captivated centuries of readers with its vivid tales of love, loyalty, betrayal, and sex. Despite the death that overwhelmed Florence, Boccaccio’s collection of novelle was, in Guido Ruggiero’s words, a “symphony of life.” Love and Sex in the Time of Plague guides twenty-first-century readers back to Boccaccio’s world to recapture how his work sounded to fourteenth-century ears. Through insightful discussions of the Decameron’s cherished stories and deep portraits of Florentine culture, Ruggiero explores love and sexual relations in a society undergoing convulsive change. In the century before the plague arrived, Florence had become one of the richest and most powerful cities in Europe. With the medieval nobility in decline, a new polity was emerging, driven by Il Popolo—the people, fractious and enterprising. Boccaccio’s stories had a special resonance in this age of upheaval, as Florentines sought new notions of truth and virtue to meet both the despair and the possibility of the moment.
"A sensitive, intelligent book." —Sander L. Gilman, Professor of Humane Studies, Cornell University How is AIDS treated in the contemporary plays of Larry Kramer and William Hoffman? How important is the Black Death to a reader of Boccaccio's Decameron? How have the historical and current outbreaks of contagious disease affected the creation of literature, and how has this literature in turn shaped our response to disease? Original and moving, To Blight with Plague addresses these and other central questions raised by literary works whose main themes revolve around contagious, epidemic disease and its social and psychological consequences.
THE DEADLIEST DISEASE IN HISTORY . . . A lethal pathogen appears on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Dr. Samantha Bower of the Centers for Disease Control is handed the case and asked to investigate its origins and containment. A MYSTERIOUS FIGURE THAT IS NOT WHO HE APPEARS TO BE . . . Samantha discovers a lethal pathogen unlike any she has encountered in her lifetime. Extremely contagious with a mortality rate higher than any disease ever recorded, it is an extinction level event. A man with an intimate knowledge of the microorganism offers her help. But Samantha Bower begins to suspect he is not who he says he is. HUMANITY HANGS ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF . . . Samantha begins to realize there are forces at work that she can't understand. Pressures are being applied from outside sources and not all of them wish for a vaccine. But Samantha is sure of one thing: if a vaccine isn't developed, humanity may soon be an endangered species. . . ABOUT THE AUTHORVictor Methos is the bestselling author of THE WHITE ANGEL MURDER, the #1 mystery book in the United States and United Kingdom for over eight weeks. He is a former prosecutor specializing in violent crime and is currently a criminal defense attorney in the United States. He is on a quest to climb the "Seven Summits," the seven highest peaks on earth, and attain his certificate as a deep-sea submersible pilot. He can be reached through his blog at www.methosreview.blogspot.com
This short book captures Maria Szubert's reminiscences of the Second World War and life under communism in Poland. It offers a revealing snapshot of the terror and some of the hardships she endured during the war and the privations she suffered under communism, which held Poland in its grip until 1989. The book undoubtedly reflects the author's deep humanity and her compassion towards the Nazi invaders when fortune turned them from masters into slaves. Equally poignant is her forbearance in the face of Poland's subsequent subjugation by the communist Soviet Union.
