Language History

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE An “elegantly argued and exuberantly narrated” (The New York Times Book Review) look at the building of social movements—from the 1600s to the present—and how current technology is undermining them “A bravura work...

Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled further than forty miles from his home in Kvnigsberg. How appropriate it is then that in his philosophy he should deny that all knowledge was derived from experience. He insisted that all experience must conform to knowledge. According to Kant, space and time are subjective; along with various "categories," they help us to see the phenomena of the world, though never its true reality.

Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even "the pretenses of psychology." Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. The branch of philosophy to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism.

يرسم هذا الكتابُ النابضُ بالحيويَّة، والرائعُ في سردياته وتحليلاته المُتقَنة والموثَّقة، المراحلَ التي جرى عبر تواليها المُثير تشكيلُ صُعود العالَم الحديث. ويروي كيف تزامَنَ ذلك وترابطَ بِنيويّاً مع ظهور الدَّساتير المكتوبة وانتشارها، وتوالي الحروب الموسَّعة والهجينة، وصراع القوى الكبرى على امتداد قارَّات العالَم الحديث، عبر القرون الثلاثة الماضية الحافلة بالأحداث. ويلمس القارئُ بين فقراته كيف يتضافر الأسلوبُ البياني للمؤلِّفة بسردياته المُحكمة، مع الرُّسوم الرائعة المُضافة إليه، ليجعل منه عملاً تاريخيّاً ممتعاً، تتفاعل فيه نُخبة مُبهرة من الحروب التأسيسيَّة الفاصلة والقادة الأقوياء والمُشرِّعين ذوي البصيرة والثُّوار المُخلِصين لقضايا أوطانهم وشعوبهم؛ فيعيد سردَ قصَّةِ نشوءِ الحُكم الدُّستوري، وتطوُّر الأفكار حول معنى الحداثة وما تحمِله من جَوهر

All effective debaters, whether they know it or not, employ Aristotle's 3 basic principles of effective argument that form the spine of Rhetoric. In Poetics, Aristotle draws a dramatic distinction between poetry and history. This collection also includes Aristotle's body of work that has come to be identified as Logic.

In our ever-more-polarized society, there's at least one thing we still agree on: The world is overrun with misinformation, faulty logic, and the gullible followers who buy into it all. Of course, we're not among them - are we? Scientist David Robert Grimes is on a mission to expose the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that drive our discourse on a dizzying array of topics - from vaccination to abortion, 9/11 conspiracy theories to dictatorial doublespeak, astrology to alternative medicine, and wrongful convictions to racism.

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past...

What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to...

With far-reaching implications, this urgent treatise promises to revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human in the digital age. We used to say "seeing is believing"; now googling is believing. With 24/7 access to nearly all of the world's information at our fingertips, we no...

How can political campaigns fight back against disinformation? A decade after The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, which Politico called "Moneyball for politics," journalist Sasha Issenberg returns to the cutting edge of political innovation to reveal how campaigns are...

It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly—to everything associated with the words “human,”...

Get ready for a one-of-a-kind audio experience: discover Rome through intimate, guided audio walking tours of the city's most historic and enchanting quarters. There are four guided tours for you to listen to as you walk through Rome, plus essential Italian words and phrases that every traveler wants to know.

"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite." —New York Times Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace...

Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in spare, luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear.

Here is the remarkable story of how this humble language took vigorous root in Eastern European shtetls and in the Jewish quarters of cities across Europe; how it achieved a rich literary flowering between the wars in Europe and America; how it was rejected by emancipated Jews; and how it fell victim to the Holocaust. And also how, in yet another twist of destiny, Yiddish today is becoming the darling of academia. Yiddish is a history as story; a tale of flesh-and-blood people with manic humor.

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word. “Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah...

يطرح هذا الكتاب أسئلةً أساسيةً حول طبيعة الموسيقى بوصفها ممارسةً بشريةً، فالعالم يمتلئ بأنواع مختلفة من الموسيقى: الشعبية، والكلاسيكية، والجاز، والروك، والبوب، والكثير غيرها. بيد أن الكتاب يركز على أبعادها الاجتماعية والثقافية، مستكشفاً تطورها عبر الحقب، وموضحاً تأثير التكنولوجيا فيها، ودورها في سياقات العمل الاجتماعي والسياسي. ويناقش الكتاب أيضاً وضع الموسيقى في زمن العولمة؛ من دورها في إنهاء الاستعمار إلى أهميتها بوصفها وسيلةً للتواصل بين الثقافات.

في هذا الكتاب، يستعرِض إيلايجا والد نوعاً موسيقياً هو في صميم الثقافة الأمريكية. ويتتبَّع جذورَ هذه الموسيقى في الحقول ومعسكرات العمل والأناشيد الدينية، ويُظهِر التحوُّلاتِ التي شهدتها على يدِ فنانين محترفين مثل وليام سي هاندي، الذي جعل موسيقى البلوز فناً شعبياً قبل قرنٍ مضى. ثم يتابع والد تطورَ هذه الموسيقى من ما رايني وبيسي سميث إلى بوب ديلان وجيمي هندريكس، ويوضِّح تأثير التسجيلات الريفية، ويستكشف دورَ البلـوز في تطوُّر موسيقى الكانتري وموسيقى الجاز، ويلقي نظرةً على اتجاهاتِ الإيقاع والبلوز التي راجت في أربعينيات القرن العشرين وخمسينياته. وأخيراً، ينتقل والد إلى الحاضر، ويتطرَّق إلى تأثيراتِ البلوز على الشِّعر الأمريكي وعلاقة هذا النوع الموسيقي بالأساليبِ الحديثة مثل الراب.

The practice and politics of the unfettered female voice--reclaiming your power through voice, song, and opera-inspired exercises. For centuries, opera has used women’s voices to convey male stories. Within an art form dominated by men, the female voice is a means to an end: controlled...

Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction narrative.” In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb...