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Spqr book5/29/2023 ![]() From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 cenearly a thousand years later - when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire, S.P.Q.R. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even two thousand years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty. ![]() Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. A sweeping, revisionist history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists. ![]()
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![]() ![]() But, he adds, “who would have thought that we would be incomplete without some molybdenum inside us, or vanadium, manganese, tin, and copper?” Bryson employs the example of an “obliging Benedict Cumberbatch,” of medium height and build and good health, to venture that the real cost of a human is “a very precise $151,578.46,” a figure that turns out to wiggle and wobble as we layer on additional costs. Not so, he writes: We’re made up of 59 elements, including carbon and oxygen. ![]() Early on, he pokes at the old bromide that the human body is an assemblage of a few dollars’ worth of assorted chemicals and minerals. The author does some on-the-ground digging, talking to scientists and physicians, while plowing through libraries of literature to get at the story of how our bodies work. ![]() The intrepid explorer and popular travel writer journeys inward-literally-to explore our mortal coil.Ī narrative by Bryson ( The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain, 2016, etc.) rarely involves the unfolding of a grand thesis instead, it’s a congeries of anecdotes, skillfully strung, always a pleasure to read but seldom earthshakingly significant. ![]()
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Wonder valley book5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Pochoda lets no one off easy, and, at times, she gets a little carried away sketching out the idiosyncrasies of her setting. ![]() Each element in the story has texture, from the weather to the architecture to the people inhabiting it. There’s heartbreak and disappointment to spare in Wonder Valley, and every character is rendered with empathy. Its subtle brilliance is just that - subtle. ![]() The ending is magnificently unexpected, almost ingenious, and the surprise factor sneaks up on you. Yet uniquely, revelations arrive without announcement pivotal moments quietly creep into paragraphs. Early on, it’s clear that, as with many books that share Wonder Valley’s structure, vignettes will overlap and mysteries will eventually be pieced together. Pochoda’s sharpness as a writer comes through in her patience. ![]()
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Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() In June 2010, Jon illustrated City Dog, Country Frog, written by Mo Willems. Jon has also been awarded the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, a Sydney Taylor Award, a National Parenting Book Award, and he was a Book Sense book of the Year finalist. Zen Shorts was named a Caldecott Honor Book and spent 41 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Muth’s work has received much critical acclaim. ![]() After the birth of his first son, Jon J Muth felt the need to do a different kind of work that explored his relationship with “this new little being.” Over the next decade, Muth wrote and illustrated many inspiring picture books, including the “Zen” series, and Caroline Kennedy’s poetry anthologies. Jon studied stone sculpture in Japan paintings, prints and drawings in Austria, Germany, and England. ![]() He had his first one-man exhibit of paintings and drawings when he was eighteen. His mother was an art teacher and she took him to museums all over the US. Jon J Muth‘s highly acclaimed picture books are beloved around the world and have been translated into more than ten languages. ![]()
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Piper kerman memoir5/28/2023 ![]() She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with tokens of generosity, hard truths and simple acts of acceptance. From her first strip search to her final release, she learns to navigate this strange world with its arbitrary rules and codes, its unpredictable, even dangerous relationships. But when she least expects it, her reckless past catches up with her convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at an infamous women's prison in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424. With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. From her first strip search to her final release, she learns to navigate t. ![]() ![]() ![]()
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![]() ![]() The methodology employed herein will be two-fold: first, the traditional lens of a historical analysis of each prayer book will be used. However, this essay seeks to demonstrate the extreme continuity and congruity between the two Eucharistic prayers-despite Cranmer’s knack for vague and abstract language. ![]() The prayer books of 15 have been widely and deeply studied much ink has been spilt arguing over the books chief differences. ![]() Amidst political and religious strife, reform and rebellion, Cranmer helped produce two Prayer Books during the reign of King Edward VI. The creation of the Book of Common Prayer owes much of its existence to Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was its primary architect. Anglicanism is creedal in nature, it is a biblical tradition in the Christ faith and is best expressed in the worshipping life of the church: the liturgy. ![]()
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Evil spirits dostoevsky5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() Nikolay repeatedly talks of his ability to govern his actions. This is a commentary by Dostoevsky on the evils of not atheism in itself, but rather of humanity shouldering too much of its own destiny, and the crippling consequences of believing such ideology. It could be argued that he may not have committed such heinous crimes had he been faced with the religious fear of retribution from an unhappy God. Nikolay rationalizes his horrible deeds by asserting that he was in charge of his actions and, therefore, he was not working on impulses, but rather he was deliberately fulfilling his own wishes and desires. Nikolay Stavrogin embodies some of the flawed necessities of a revolutionary according to Dostoevsky: pride and over estimation. ![]() Demon Immorality: A Quick Look At Nikolay Stavroginįyodor Dostoevsky suggests that human arrogance is the main cause for immorality and most, if not all, of human evils. ![]()
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Emma donoghue books5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Could you elaborate on that?ĮD: Well, the books I enjoy are often written with a huge, kind of epic sweep. Ireland, history, and I quite often take a historical incident and sort of flesh it out using fiction-again, not always.įM: What makes “The Wonder” different from your other books?ĮD: I’ve never written a full-length historical novel set in Ireland, and I have to say, I so enjoyed this opportunity to get back to my home culture and really delve into its damp roots, you know?įM: You said in an interview with Scott Simon of NPR that you prefer to set your stories in a myopic or claustrophobic setting. ![]() I would say gender shows up in all of my books, but they’re not all totally focused on women protagonists. A lot of my works have lesbian themes, but not all of my books. In the books I’ve published since my kids came along 12 years ago, I’ve written quite a lot about motherhood, but before the kids came along, not at all. I mean, there are a few things that show up, you know, like threads in the cloth, I suppose. As fans lined the sidewalk outside, Fifteen Minutes sat down with the writer to get to know more about Donoghue and her new book “The Wonder.”įM: Is there a common theme that runs through all of your works?ĮD: No, no. ![]() Critically acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue, best known for the novel and subsequent movie “Room,” spoke at Brattle Theater on Friday night. ![]()
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Honor by umrigar5/28/2023 ![]() “When you return,” he said, “please come and use the key to remove your belongings.” My dad, on the other hand, had made our neighbors put their jewelry in his locker themselves and then given them the key to it. There were many sad stories of families returning home after the riots ended and finding that those whom they’d trusted with their assets had swindled them. ![]() What I learned much later from the Muslim family who lived next door to us was that they had earlier brought all their jewelry to Dad for safekeeping before they fled the neighborhood for a few weeks. We were Parsis, a small, prosperous, and educated religious minority in India the joke was that there were so few of us, nobody saw us as any kind of threat. I immediately worried about my family’s well-being, but he brushed aside my fretting. ![]() But I can still hear the bewilderment in my father’s voice as he later recounted the incident during our weekly phone chat. It had been set on fire by a mob of angry Hindus who had heard that a Muslim family lived on the ground floor.īy this time, I was living in faraway America, safe from the paroxysm of insanity and violence that gripped Bombay-the erstwhile most tolerant and cosmopolitan of Indian cities-during that terrible period. ![]() In 1993, my middle-aged father stood on our balcony and watched helplessly as the apartment building across the street burned. ![]()
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In Bed with the Earl by Christi Caldwell5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() When Verity’s investigation leads the pair to meet, their sexual tension is palpable, but more impressive is the heartwarming emotional connection that grows between them. As desperate, determined Verity struggles to hold her own within the male-dominated newspaper office, Malcolm navigates the London underworld and slowly realizes the truth of his identity. Caldwell wastes no time establishing her vivid, distinctly stratified vision of Victorian London, pulling readers in to the world of her formidable protagonists. Twenty years later, Malcolm has no memory of his lofty origins, having grown up among a society of street fighters and scavengers in London’s sewers. Malcolm North, the Earl of Maxwell, was kidnapped as a child and has not been seen since. ![]() Thirty-year-old newspaper reporter Verity Lovelace searches for a long-missing earl in order to secure a scandalous story and ensure her spot at the paper and the income that supports her, her sister, and their childhood nursemaid. The exceptional first Lost Lords of London Victorian era romance by Caldwell (the Heart of a Scandal series) circles an intriguing central mystery. ![]() |