Mostrando resultados por narrador "Robert Blumenfeld" en Todas las categorías

Figures of Earth, subtitled "A Comedy of Appearances", follows the vicissitudes of Dom Manuel the Redeemer from his lowly swineherd origins through his unlikely elevation to the Count of Poictesme, and beyond. Published in 1921, it was the second volume of “The Biography of Manuel”, Cabell’s great work about an imaginary land that also managed to skewer the world of his upbringing as a Southern Gentleman of Virginia, and nearly everything else, besides!

"Aquitaine is mine. It will never belong to anyone else."

With these words, 15-year-old Eleanor seals her fate. Aquitaine is under the French king’s safekeeping, and Eleanor, the Duke of Aquitaine’s eldest daughter, knows she must wed Prince Louis in order to insure the future of her beloved duchy. Fiercely independent, filled with untapped desire, the woman who would be queen must provide Louis VII, her monkish husband, with heirs. But it is young Henry of Anjou who catches Eleanor’s eye - and sets fire to her heart.

Could the killing of Germanicus Julius Caesar - the grandson of Mark Antony, adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, father of Caligula, and grandfather of Nero - while the Roman Empire was still in its infancy have been the root cause of the empire's collapse more than four centuries later? This brilliant investigation of Germanicus Caesar’s death and its aftermath is both a compelling history and first-class murder mystery with a plot twist Agatha Christie would envy.

Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books.

When Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, leaving New York City in the midst of the AIDS crisis, he was 43 years old, couldn’t speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the new anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. When he left 15 years later to take a teaching position in the U.S., he was fluent enough to broadcast on French radio and TV, and in his work as a journalist, he’d made the acquaintance of everyone from Yves Saint Laurent to Catherine Deneuve to Michel Foucault.

Renowned through four award-winning stories for his gritty and revelatory visions of the Caribbean, Bob Shacochis returns to occupied Haiti in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul before sweeping across time and continents to unravel tangled knots of romance, espionage, and vengeance. In riveting prose, Shacochis builds a complex and disturbing story about the coming of age of America in a pre-9/11 world.

From her starring roles as a skeptical child in the perennial classic Miracle on 34thStreet and a troubled adolescent in Rebel Without a Cause to mature roles in Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story, actress Natalie Wood transfixed the world with her hypnotic brown eyes. Yet behind the beautiful façade lurked a fragile, sparkling, generous, funny woman traumatized by her childhood and beset by personal demons.

This Very Short Introduction provides both the believer and non-believer with a balanced survey of the central questions of theology. David Ford's approach draws us in to considering the principles underlying religious belief, including the centrality of salvation to most major religions; the concept of God in ancient, modern, and postmodern contexts; the challenge posed to theology by prayer and worship; and the issue of sin and evil. He also probes the nature of experience, knowledge, and wisdom in theology, and discusses what is involved in interpreting theological texts.

James Branch Cabell's career was short-lived - his works fit neatly within the 1920s literary escapist culture and then quickly declined in popularity as the author veered away from the fantasy niche. In his heyday, Cabell garnered praise from several of his contemporaries such as H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. Lewis even acknowledged Cabell's successful Jurgen in his 1930 Nobel Prize address.

With lips slightly parted and eyes fixed on a point in the distance, a breathtaking marble portrait of Costanza Piccolomini appears alive. Carved by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1636 - 37 for his own pleasure, the portrait of Costanza is one of his most captivating works, but until now little has been known about its subject. For centuries Costanza was identified only as Bernini's mistress, who later incited his rage by betraying him for his brother. Author Sarah McPhee corrects and expands this story in her remarkable biography of a sculpture and its subject.

On June 3, 1769, the planet Venus briefly passed across the face of the sun in a cosmic alignment that occurs twice per century. Anticipation of the rare celestial event sparked a worldwide competition among aspiring global superpowers, each sending their own scientific expeditions to far-flung destinations to time the planet’s trek.

A renowned journalist shows us France as never before seen, and the view will chill and electrify anyone who loves - or loves to hate - the country that not only defined culture but gave us the word itself. The traditional leader in the arts, letters, cuisine, and fashion, France embodies universally admired ideals of political expression and personal freedom. But France's heritage, combined with its glorious history, has also created delusions of grandeur - the Gaullist conviction that France will always be an "exception".

In Resistance, Tec draws on first hand accounts, interviews, and other sources to reveal the full range of tactics employed to resist the Nazi regime in Poland. She tells of those who escaped to hide and fight as partisans in the forests, and considers the crucial role played by women who acted as couriers, carrying messages and supplies between the ghetto and the outside world. Tec also discusses resistance in concentration camps, vividly recounting the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp uprising on October 7, 1944.

This groundbreaking book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work; that migrants who sell sex are passive victims; and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín argues that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' disempowers them.

The story of Oscar Wilde's landmark 1882 American tour explains how this quotable literary eminence became famous for being famous. On January 3, 1882, Oscar Wilde, a 27-year-old "genius" - at least by his own reckoning - arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man had made such a spectacle of himself in London with his eccentric fashion sense, acerbic wit, and extravagant passion for art and home design that Gilbert & Sullivan wrote an operetta lampooning him.

This invaluable collection of Avram Davidson's resonant, witty short stories describes some incidents in the career of many-times-Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy, loyal subject of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania, located in a 19th-century Europe whose political landscape will be, after a little reflection, familiar to most fantasy listeners. Enquire with Doctor Eszterhazy into curious matters: the lurley, the old woman who lived with a bear, gingerbread men, dancing goats, and more.

Sure, everyone gets sick sometimes, but do you realize that plenty of those folks also die slow, unpleasant deaths from diseases that stumped even the experts at top-notch (still privately run) hospitals? That's right: There are plenty of illnesses that even physicians have never heard about. Nodding Disease, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, and Cutaneous Horn (yes, you grow a horn) are all featured here in pithy, energetic entries. You won't have to worry about socialized medicine if you have this book....

"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." Napoleon's words seem eerily prescient today, as the shock waves from China's awakening reverberate across the globe. In China Shakes the World, James Kynge, traces these tremors from Beijing to Europe to the Midwest as China's ravenous hunger for jobs, raw materials, energy, and food - and its export of goods, workers, and investments - drastically reshape world trade and politics.

Beijing presents a clear and gathering threat to Washington, but not for the reasons you think. China's challenge to the West stems from its transformative brand of capitalism and an entirely different conception of the international community.

More Americans have been killed by well-meaning liberal policies than by all the wars of the last century combined. J. R. Dunn not only analyzes the unintended consequences of liberal policies, but argues that these consequences have resulted in millions of fatalities in the United States and around the world.