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  Nevertheless - Machiavelli Pascal

  Carlo Ginzburg

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  Nevertheless comprises essays on Machiavelli and on Pascal. The ambivalent connection between the two parts is embodied by the comma (,) in the subtitle: Machiavelli, Pascal. Is this comma a conjunction or a disjunction? 
   
   
   
  In fact, both. Ginzburg approaches Machiavelli's work from the perspective of casuistry, or case-based ethical reasoning. For as Machiavelli indicated through his repeated use of the adverb nondimanco ("nevertheless"), there is an exception to every rule. Such a perspective may seem to echo the traditional image of Machiavelli as a cynical, "Machiavellian" thinker. But a close analysis of Machiavelli the reader, as well as of the ways in which some of Machiavelli's most perceptive readers read his work, throws a different light on Machiavelli the writer. The same hermeneutic strategy inspires the essays on the Provinciales, Pascal's ferocious attack against Jesuitical casuistry. 
   
   
   
  Casuistry vs anti-casuistry; Machiavelli's secular attitude towards religion vs Pascal's deep religiosity. We are confronted, apparently, with two completely different worlds. But Pascal read Machiavelli, and reflected deeply upon his work. A belated, contemporary echo of this reading can unveil the complex relationship between Machiavelli and Pascal—their divergences as well as their unexpected convergences.

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  The Teachings Of The Maharishi...

  Sripad Jaganantha Das

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  In 1992 Sripad Jagannatha Das was asked if he would do an exclusive interview with the Maharishi in Switzerland. The author readily agreed as the reclusive spiritual master almost never met the press and was embarking on an ambitious mass meditation program to purify vast areas of the United States. After a great deal of negotiation, the two finally got together on Christmas Eve and had a prolonged, stirring conversation that is documented here. In addition, the Maharishi was joined by the late world-class magician Doug Henning. Put together with a chronological, historical narration by Das, here is your chance to go one on one with one of the greatest spiritual minds of our time. 
   
  Here too is the story of The Beatles circa 1968, as they trekked to a remote, mysterious, and beautiful part of India known as Rishikesh or the valley of the saints. For thousands of years, this riverside valley has been a magnet for advanced yogis, mystics, and seekers of truth. In 1968, it was the absolute zenith of all of this and the pop world as well. It was here the Beatles wrote dozens of now-iconic songs while meditating at the feet of the lauded spiritual master. Along with many of the world's most celebrated people, the group once again led the way as innovators in not only music but innate spirituality as well.   
  Fifty years later, we remember the group's bold trek and artistic accomplishment in this inspirational audio biography from Beatles author and historian Geoffrey Giuliano. The Maharishi, the Beatles, and friends tell their own stories in this one-of-a-kind celebration of a magical time gone by. 
   
  Finally, here are several enlightening lectures by Maharishi all of which are surcharged with the sublime transcendental knowledge with are the masters perpetual stock in trade.

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  I Dream with Open Eyes - A Memoir

  George Prochnik

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  Whatever the ideological slant of our information feeds, nowadays we all share a sense of binge-watching the apocalypse. Facing so much uncertainty, we need a language for thinking about the unknown not simply as a threat but also as a space of fertile possibility. George Prochnik has chosen to reflect on these urgent themes through the lens of a personal narrative: an account of his own family's decision to leave the United States. 
   
   
   
  I Dream with Open Eyes begins with an exploration of Prochnik's ancestral past: the pilgrimage of his mother's family, who were among the first English settlers in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel migration unfolds as Prochnik, along with his wife and their son, makes the decision to uproot their lives in New York to move to England. 
   
   
   
  A deep critique of this current moment, Prochnik takes the words of nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, "I dream with open eyes, and my eyes see," as an inspiration to ask how, as a society, we might use art and literature to refract and expand our vision of the future, while simultaneously generating a new focus on present realities.

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  Thucydides - A Very Short...

  Jennifer T. Roberts

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  In 432 BCE the powerful city-state of Sparta on the peninsula of the Peloponnesus in southwestern Greece declared war on Athens, head of a mighty naval coalition. The war would last until Sparta finally brought Athens to its knees in 404. The Athenian aristocrat Thucydides, suspecting the magnitude of the conflict that was unfolding before his eyes, at once undertook to record its history, exploring the causes and course of the war in the context of his great interest: human nature. An introduction to Thucydides's thought and background, this book examines Thucydides's account of the war in the context both of the international situation in the classical Greek world and of the intellectual traditions of the fifth century BCE, exploring the historian's connection to prose writers like Herodotus as well as poets like Homer and the tragedians, and investigating the complex dynamics of the war that changed the Greek world forever.

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  Air Raids Over Japan during...

  Editors Charles River

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  The Americans would turn the war in the Pacific around in the middle of 1942, but in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, the country was in desperate need of a morale boost, and it would come in the form of the Doolittle Raid. In part to show that the Japanese were not invincible, and in part to reassure the American public that the nation would not lose the war, the Doolittle Raid included both Army and Navy units that launched 16 land-based medium bombers from an aircraft carrier, a feat that was the first of its kind but also one involving a great deal of risk. Getting the bombers and carriers in place to execute the mission involved much strategic planning and cooperation within the American military, and had it failed, it could have dealt a serious blow to the Americans’ Pacific presence due to the nation’s limited resources in that theater. 
  The first serious air raids over Japan came in November 1944, after the Americans had captured the Marianas Islands, and through February 1945, American bombers concentrated on military targets at the fringes of the city, particularly air defenses. However, the air raids of March 1945, and particularly on the night of March 9, were a different story altogether. In what is generally referred to as strategic or area bombing, waves of bombers flew low over Tokyo for over two and a half hours, dropping incendiary bombs with the intention of producing a massive firestorm. The American raids intended to produce fires that would kill soldiers and civilians, as well as the munitions factories and apartment buildings of those who worked in them. 325 B-29s headed toward Tokyo, and nearly 300 of them dropped bombs on it. Additional raids, this time largely on the north and west, came in April, and in May, raids hit Ginza and the south. Altogether, American bombers flew more than 4,000 missions over Tokyo before surrender.

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  Living and Dying with Marcel Proust

  Christopher Prendergast

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  Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime's reading of, reflection on, and love for Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. 
   
   
   
  One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, Proust's In Search of Lost Time describes a unique journey, combining elements drawn from the timeless narratives of great expectations and lost illusions. In this lively and entertaining book, Christopher Prendergast traces that journey as it unfolds on an arc defined by the polarities in his title: living and dying. 
   
   
   
  At once a careful contemplation Proust's masterwork and an exploration of the rich sensory and impressionistic tapestry of a lived world, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust addresses such disparate Proustian obsessions as insomnia, food, digestion, color, addiction, memory, breath and breathing, breasts, snobbism, music, and humor. 
   
   
   
  Entertaining and erudite, Prendergast's book will surely become the companion for all listeners either about to reembark on Proust's three-million-word journey or setting out for the first time.

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