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  Rude Talk in Athens - Ancient...

  Mark Haskell Smith

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  "Rude Talk in Athens is brave, brilliant, and incredibly funny. There are loads of very specific characters, including Mark himself. It's the Mark Haskell Smith version of hanging out with Stanley Tucci and Anthony Bourdain, but in present day and ancient Greece. I agree with everything he says about comedy and have never read anything like it." ―Barry Sonnenfeld, Film Director and author of Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker
  
  In ancient Athens, thousands would attend theatre festivals that turned writing into a fierce battle for fame, money, and laughably large trophies. While the tragedies earned artistic respect, it was the comedies―the raunchy jokes, vulgar innuendo, outrageous invention, and barbed political commentary―that captured the imagination of the city.
  The writers of these comedic plays feuded openly, insulting one another from the stage, each production more inventive and outlandish than the last, as they tried to win first prize. Of these writers, only the work of Aristophanes has survived and it’s only through his plays that we know about his peers: Cratinus, the great lush; Eupolis, the copycat; and Ariphrades, the sexual deviant. It might have been the golden age of Democracy, but for comic playwrights, it was the age of Rude Talk.
  Watching a production of an Aristophanes play in 2019 CE and seeing the audience laugh uproariously at every joke, Mark Haskell Smith began to wonder: what does it tell us about society and humanity that these ancient punchlines still land? When insults and jokes made thousands of years ago continue to be both offensive and still make us laugh?
  Through conversations with historians, politicians, and other writers, the always witty and effusive Smith embarks on a personal mission (bordering on obsession) exploring the life of one of these unknown writers, and how comedy challenged the patriarchy, the military, and the powers that be, both then and now. A comic writer himself and author of many books and screenplays, Smith also looks back at his own career, his love for the uniquely dynamic city of Athens, and what it means for a writer to leave a legacy.

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  The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI

  Charles A. Coulombe

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  A concise account of one of the most epic developments in the modern Catholic church—the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.   Pope Benedict XVI’s precedent-shattering announcement that he would renounce the Papacy—the first Pope to do so in 600 years—touched off a firestorm of speculation and commentary throughout the world’s media and the blogosphere. But much of this ocean of opinion is just plain wrong, because of the complex nature of the Papacy and the Church.   Written by a renowned Papal historian, journalist, and lecturer—who also sits on the board of the Queen of Angels Foundation and serves as a delegate for the International Monarchist League—The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI gives you solid, inside information to make up your own mind on one of the most epic developments ever to shake the modern world, a radical change in course for the planet’s largest religion.

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  Fortune Favors the Bold - A...

  Theodore Modis

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  In the early twentieth century, a teenage Greek girl in Constantinople loses both her parents and, together with her younger sister, gets thrown into a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. She ends up in a refugee camp in northern Greece. With determination she creates a life in her new country, becoming a teacher in a small mountain town near Greece’s northwestern borders with Albania and Yugoslavia. She meets and marries a young lawyer from a historic and tragic Macedonian family.
  
  
  
  Her story extends through a century of war and peace and is peppered with likable characters, horrific events, and a love story. Among the protagonists are two strong women, a charming and indomitable man, and a smart but sickly kid. Now and again her drive, perseverance, and common sense will save the day and reward her with happiness, which nevertheless will come and go like interludes of sunshine in otherwise endlessly stormy weather.
  
  
  
  The reader will also get candid and authentic glimpses on poorly known historical conflicts such as the Balkan Wars, the world’s greatest ethnic cleansing, the occupation loan that the Nazis exacted from Greece, the Greek Civil War, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and the dispute over the use of the name Macedonia.

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  Mrs Dalloway and To the...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Presented here are two of the most important books of the early 20th Century by one of the most original and groundbreaking writers of her era, the feminist literary pioneer Virginia Woolf.  First, the 1925 sensation "Mrs. Dalloway," the breakthrough novel that solidified Woolf's reputation as a fresh, new voice of her generation. Written in a new style - soon dubbed "stream-of-consciousness" - the book details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a British socialite in post-First World War England. Originally written as "The Hours," Woolf's novel was based on two earlier short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and "The Prime Minister." The book takes place in a single day and follows the eponymous lead character as she prepares for and hosts a party. Looping backwards and forwards in time, the reader is given a glimpse inside the mind of Mrs. Dalloway - and some of her party guests - as they goes about their day. Received with rapturous reviews upon its debut, Mrs. Dalloway was included on Time Magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels ever written.  Also included in this volume is "To the Lighthouse," which was published in 1927, just two years after Mrs. Dalloway was released. To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf's experimental and brilliant third novel and concerns the annual visits by the Ramsay family to their summer home in the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. Once again employing her unique, stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf creates a fascinating and complex novel where the point of view of the narration switches between the various Ramsay family members and their guests. This semi-autobiographical book was hailed in its time as a breakthrough work of genius by critics, has gone on to become one of the most beloved and carefully studied books of all time and has been named by both Modern Library and Time Magazine as as one of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th century.

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  Colleagues in Genius - Out of My...

  Albert Einstein, W. Heisenberg,...

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  These three works by Nobel Prize–winning physicists offer an enlightening window into the scientific minds that changed the twentieth century. With their discoveries and formulations, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Werner Heisenberg ushered the world into the Nuclear Age. As colleagues, they often corresponded, sharing insights and championing each other’s work. In the three volumes collected here, they discuss their thoughts about life, science, politics, and how they approached their revolutionary work.  Out of My Later Years by Albert Einstein: Perhaps the most celebrated scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein was also a philosopher and outspoken humanitarian. Collected here are some of his most insightful essays, articles, letters, and speeches written between 1934 and 1950. Accessible and fascinating, these works reflect the broad sweep of Einstein’s intellectual concerns, from scientific inquiry to Jewish identity; and from global politics to the great minds he knew and admired.  Scientific Autobiography by Max Planck: The founder of quantum theory, Max Planck revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic behavior. Born in Germany in 1858, he lived a long and eventful life at the center of both scientific advancement and global events. From the childhood epiphany that inspired him to pursue a life in science, to the great discoveries he made amidst terrifying political turmoil, Planck tells his story in this illuminating autobiography.  Nuclear Physics by W. Heisenberg: Werner Heisenberg is famous for developing the uncertainty principle, which bears his name, and for his pioneering work in quantum mechanics. In Nuclear Physics, he offers an accessible introduction to the subject based on his own lectures. Beginning with a short history of atomic physics, he delves into the nature of nuclear forces and reactions, the tools of nuclear physics, and its world-changing technical and practical applications.  

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  Good and Evil Memories

  Gerardo D'Orrico

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  This book is the first handbook about being contemporary and personal diary written by me. The calm of well-being, of inventions. The three-dimensional aspects of concrete and human objects, for a research in individual thought. A work that frees from stylistic commitments, mistakes are everyone`s, the present must be represented but, without the fear of having made a bigger mistake than the previously accepted silence. By choosing a speech, it promises a definitive daily solution to rhetorical-historical art.  
  It describes my experiences, imaginatively the memories of a good in the land of evil. Diary written in a simple way, a textual form to fill even an absence of complete information about the right to good, which characterizes an insensitivity in public and journalistic publications. A phenotype inclusive of modern material, Christian and Arabic objectivity. It wants to represent a door to the future, a new party. The period of the eighteen letters contained reaches from August 2005 to March 2007.

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