A polyphonic multilayered book. It describes Haida oral literature; it tells the story of the Haida people of the Pacific Northwest; and how their works were retold by a US anthropologist in his 1900-1901 fieldwork. At one and the same time an excavation of a colonial encounter, a literary study and an anthropological literary detective story. The Haida stories are magical., disturbing and weird. Impossible to classify and difficult to put down.
The Haida world is a misty archipelago a hundred stormy miles off the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska. For more than a thousand years before the Europeans came, a great culture flourished on these islands. In 1900 and 1901 the linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last traditional Haida-speaking storytellers, poets, and historians. Robert Bringhurst worked for many years with these manuscripts, and in this text he brings them to life in the English language.
The last decades of the Qing dynasty are popularly understood as a slide into chaos under the control of an aging reactionary dowager. This book retells the story of how a young concubine launched a palace coup to make herself the real ruler of China. She resisted the foreign penetration of China and inaugurated real reforms. Her life (1835-1908) is filled with rebellions, wars and nasty palace intrigue. The book's vast sweep contains a wealth of details and evocative descriptions of court life. An informative narrative that shifts our understanding of the last days of the Qing.
Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age.
At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor's numerous concubines and sexual partners. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who…
History of science books are rarely as interesting as this one. In a vivid style that carries themes across half page long sentences, it tells stories of the development of Prussian blue and cyanide; the life and work of the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, Karl Schwarzschild and the physics revolution of early 20th century; and the work of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. The last story of a lemon tree is a disappointing let down. But the first four are fantastic; they inform and entertain, and they should be read befitting their style, despite their hard science core, in a state of dreamlike reverie.
When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.
Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schroedinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.
At breakneck pace and with wondrous detail, Benjamin Labatut uses the…
A thick description of the wider context and deeper significance of the January 6th assault on the US Capitol. Told in a engaging style the book situates the event in the economic insecurity and political polarization of contemporary USA.It describes a crisis of legitimation, the flaws in US democratic governance, and the rise of conspiracy theories and the politics of outrage.
