Verleger: 8
A.G. Macdonell
An amusing thriller by A.G. Macdonell, one of six mysteries he wrote under the pseudonym Neil Gordon. Macdonell is best known for the gently satirical novel England, Their England, which appeared the same year as The Shakespeare Murders and enjoyed a great success, which probably led to his abandoning the mystery genre. In The Shakespeare Murders, the treasure was to be found in an English country house, and it was worth one million pounds, but what was the treasure, was it jewels or something else? Various parties were searching; American gangsters among them, and all had to unravel the clues to be found in the works of Shakespeare. Murder followed murder as the ruthless search continued... Macdonell uses his usual skill, well-dosed with ingenious twists, and a fast moving story-line, to keep the reader riveted to the book.
The Shakespearean Tide. Studies in the Dynamics of Human Time
Jacek Mydla
Książka przybliża czytelnikowi problematykę czasu jako tkanki utworu dramatycznego na przykładzie wybranych sztuk Williama Szekspira, tych, w których czas pełni szczególnie istotną funkcję. Przedmiotem rozważań były sztuki o bardzo różnym charakterze, od komedii romantycznej poprzez dramat historyczny i tragedię po późne „romanse”. Każdy z rozdziałów był próbą syntetyzującego wniknięcia w tekst sztuki, który traktowano jako fundament świata literacko wykreowanego, z nastawieniem na ukazanie doniosłego znaczenia czasu, nie tylko jako elementu budującego konkretną czasoprzestrzeń („kalendarz” świata przedstawionego), lecz także jako swoiście ulotnego bytu, nieuchwytnego a jednak warunkującego dynamikę ludzkiej egzystencji (postawy, decyzje, plany, intrygi, itd.). Szczególną uwagę poświęcono tzw. przekleństwu narodzin, tj. osobliwej postawie życiowej zwróconej przeciwko czasowi organicznemu i retoryce ją wyrażającej. Przekleństwo narodzin, jak to sugeruje autor książki, jest charakterystyczne dla tragicznej wizji ludzkiej egzystencji. Okazuje się, iż w swej późnej twórczości Szekspir usiłuje przezwyciężyć ciążące na wielkich tragediach przekonanie o bezsensowności („próżności”) prokreacji i wypracowuje dynamiczną retorykę dramaturgiczną umożliwiającą wyrażenie afirmacji biologicznej strony życia, w tym szczególnie związków między członkami rodziny jako przejawów owej „biologii”, które w tragediach wydają się skażone. Książka pozwala czytelnikowi na zetknięcie się z pulsującym życiem, ale również dramaturgią specyficznie ludzkiego istnienia, tekstem literackim. Namacalny staje się kunszt, z jakim dramaturg wydobywa na jaw to, co istotne w niestałym świecie ludzkich postaw i dążeń, które zawsze i w sposób zasadniczy odniesione zostają do czasu. Skupienie analiz wokół zagadnienia czasu staje się zatem okazją do ponownego przemyślenia – bez groźby osunięcia się w drętwy filozoficzny dyskurs – zasadniczych dla człowieka, „egzystencjalnych”, problemów i dylematów.
Hulbert Footner
This story is something vital, but very tragic. The main character decides to travel from New York to northwestern Canada to see her mother, who sent her to New York twenty years ago. She falls in love with a local catcher, and then an evil fur trader tries to intervene.
Herbert George Wells
The Shape of Things to Come is one of the great classics of science fiction. Originally written in 1929, this masterly work of science fiction has already confirmed H G Wells status as a remarkable soothsayer, and provides glimpses of what is perhaps yet to come. The book is written as a sort of historical account. It tells of how a world state could be considered an answer to Earths problems. After a large plague wipes out much of humanity, a dictatorship takes over, taking away all religion and uniting the world. If someone opposes the dictatorship, they are given a choice to commit suicide in an environment of their choice. However, the dictatorship is later overthrown and the world state dissolves. Spanning the years from 1929 to 2105, it describes future generations and predicts the advent of wars, advancing technology and sweeping cultural changes.
Zane Grey
The Shepherd of Guadaloupe is not a traditional Western: the story begins in 1919 and there are no gunslingers, rustlers, Indians, or stagecoaches. Cliff Forest returns from the war to find that his parents home has been taken over by the brutal Lundeen, whose own lovely daughter is terrified of him. To break the feud, save his parents, and win the woman who loves him, Cliff will have to defeat death itself. Virginia knows of the injustice done to his family by her father and decides to fight with Cliff to restore the property and to win his heart. This is a poignant love story of a man who only dares to dream of such a woman as Virginia because he knows he is about to die; and the passion of a woman who encourages him and tries her best in every way possible to see he does not die.
Max Brand
Ernest Pontifex, son of a clergyman, leads a life of disarray. Ernest struggles with orthodoxy, lives in the slums, is thrown into prison, and eventually marries Ellen. Saved by the discovery that Ellen is already married, Ernest received an inheritance, and is able to devote his life to literature, finally winning self-respect and success. One of many recommended Westerns by this prolific author. Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 - May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand. Experience the West as only Max Brand could write it!
The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet
George Bernard Shaw
“The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet” is a play by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright who became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Shaw claimed that "this little play is really a religious tract in dramatic form", the plot being less important than the debate about morality and divinity that occurs between the characters. He was using the folksy language and quirky insights of his principal character to explore his version of the Nietzschean concept that modern morality must move "beyond good and evil". Shaw took the view that God is a process of continual self-overcoming: "if I could conceive a god as deliberately creating something less than himself, I should class him as a cad. If he were simply satisfied with himself, I should class him as a lazy coxcomb. My god must continually strive to surpass himself." When he heard that Leo Tolstoy had shown an interest in the ideas expressed in the play, he wrote a letter to him explaining his views further.
Łukasz Pigoński
When the emperor Valentinian III murdered the general Flavius Aetius, it has been observed that he had 'cut his right hand with his left', and the story of the fall of the 'last Roman' has been put in the greater context of the subsequent dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West. However, a similar deed committed by the emperor Leo in the East in 471, when he ordered the killing of the general Aspar, certainly did not gain such a legendary status. The underappreciated story of the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire in the turmoil of the fifth century is however no less dramatic, and the role that powerful military leaders played in those events was certainly paramount. This publication aims to reconstruct the involvement of the Eastern Roman military elite in various matters of the state on the wider background of political history marked by the reigns of the emperors Theodosius II (408-450), Marcian (450-457), and Leo I (457-474). On its pages, the author presents the history of the numerous wars in which the Empire found itself entangled in during that uneasy time, as well as the periods of conflict and cooperation between the generals and the emperors. The focus is not only on the military elite as a group, but also on outstanding individuals, such as generals Plintha, Flavius Zeno, Aspar or Zeno-Tarasikodissa, the aforementioned emperors and their civilian advisors. The result is a comprehensive study and a novel interpretation of the nearly seven decades of turmoil that, contrary to what happened in the West, curiously did not result in the collapse of the Eastern Roman state; perhaps, as the author argues, in no small part due to those military leaders, who were serving and protecting it.