The Rustle of Language is a collection of forty-five essays, written between 1967 and 1980, on language, literature, and teaching—the pleasure of the text—in an authoritative translation by Richard Howard.
"For students interested in historiography, Michelet is one of the earliest truly successful literary readings of an historical text. . . . For all of us who are interested in this field it is a classic."--Lionel Gossman, author of Between History and Literature
The star of the television show "Dog in the City" presents his advice on dog training, emphasizing the importance of knowing a dog's unique personality and focusing on positive commands.
A lyrical and affecting family drama which challenges readers to re-examine their perception of nature A striking blend of realism and contemporary myth-making, this unforgettable novel tells the story of marine biologist Leo Kemp. Having lost his teaching position thanks to outspoken views, Leo decides to go on one last field trip with his students. The outing becomes disastrous when the weather turns and Leo is thrown overboard. The evocative description of Leo's journey explores what can happen beyond our perceived knowledge of science. James MacManus's The Language of the Sea tests the bounds of reality with his cunning narrative set within the beautiful community of Cape Cod.
In this emotionally gripping, genre-defying novella from Sarah Pinborough, a woman sits at her father's bedside, watching the clock tick away the last hours of his life. Her brothers and sisters--she is the middle child of five--have all turned up over the past week to pay their last respects. Each is traumatized in his or her own way, and the bonds that unite them to each other are fragile--as fragile perhaps as the old man's health. With her siblings all gone, back to their self-obsessed lives, she is now alone with the faltering wreck of her father's cancer-ridden body. It is always at times like this when it--the dark and nameless, the impossible, presence that lingers along the fringes of the dark fields beyond the house--comes calling. As the clock ticks away in the darkness, she can only wait for it to find her, a reunion she both dreads and aches for...
'A peculiarly fascinating story.' The Guardian's Polly Toynbee Above ground the countryside stretches quietly, majestically beneath the changing skies. Peaceful and untroubled, far from the wars and woes of man, nature moves through her timeless cycles. But look closer. For in the secret world beneath the grasses lies an empire in turmoil. A revered leader had died and, as the enemy prepares its armies for war, rebellion is whispered through the undergrowth. There in the kingdom of the ants the old order crumbles and the new prepares for its explosive birth. No single insect, from magnificent war leader to defiant rebel, from wise elder statesman to upstart contender, from beloved Queen to emerging young champion, is impervious to the revolutionary changes within the hierarchy, or the gathering threat from a terrible foe. Man may be ignorant of the cataclysmic battles unfolding beneath his vision, but he should take note. His struggles are not so very different....
The essays in this volume were written during the years that its author's first four books were published in France. They chart the course of Barthe's criticism from the vocabularies of existentialism and Marxism (reflections on the social situation of literature and writer's responsibility before History) to a psychoanalysis of substances (after Bachelard) and a psychoanalytical anthropology (which evidently brought Barthes to his present terms of understanding with Levi-Strauss and Lacan).
"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.