In 1994 Cuba, Usnavy begins to question his loyalty to the Cuban government as his family falls apart amidst rising poverty and he learns a family secret behind his one prize: a Tiffany lamp given to him by his mother.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine in "the best horror novel of the new century" (Stephen King). Also a major motion picture! Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation—sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site ... and the terrifying presence that lurks there. "The Ruins does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches.” —Entertainment Weekly “Smith’s nail-biting tension is a pleasure all its own.... This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart.” —New York Post “A story so scary you may never want to go on vacation, or dig around in your garden, again.” —USA Today
"In 'The Ruins Lesson,' the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet-critic Susan Stewart explores the West's fascination with ruins in literature, visual art, and architecture, covering a vast chronological and geographical range from the ancient Egyptians to T. S. Eliot. In the multiplication of images of ruins, artists, and writers she surveys, Stewart shows how these thinkers struggled to recover lessons out of the fragility or our cultural remains. She tries to understand the appeal in the West of ruins and ruination, particularly Roman ruins, in the work and thought of Goethe, Piranesi, Blake, and Wordsworth, whom she returns to throughout the book. Her sweeping, deeply felt study encompasses the founding legends of broken covenants and original sin; Christian transformations of the classical past; the myths and rituals of human fertility; images of ruins in Renaissance allegory, eighteenth-century melancholy, and nineteenth-century cataloguing; and new gardens that eventually emerged from ancient sites of disaster"--
"The Ruins" is a work by Constantin-François Volney, a French philosopher and historian. The full title of the book is "The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature." It was first published in 1791. In "The Ruins," Volney explores the historical and philosophical implications of the rise and fall of empires. The work delves into the causes of societal decay and the cyclical nature of civilizations. Volney draws on his observations during travels in the Middle East, including visits to ancient ruins, to support his reflections on the fate of empires. The book is considered a significant work of Enlightenment thinking and has influenced discussions on history, politics, and philosophy. Volney's reflections on the patterns of human societies have contributed to the understanding of the rise and decline of civilizations. For readers interested in Enlightenment philosophy, the history of ideas, and reflections on the fate of empires, "The Ruins" by C. F. Volney provides a thought-provoking exploration of these themes.