Universe of Stone - A Biography of Chartres Cathedral
Chartres Cathedral, south of Paris, is revered as one of the most beautiful and profound works of art in the Western canon. But what did it mean to those who constructed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries-and why was it built at such immense height and with such glorious play of light, in the soaring manner we now call Gothic?In this eminently fascinating work, author Philip Ball makes sense of the visual and emotional power of Chartres and brilliantly explores how its construction-and the creation of other Gothic cathedrals-represented a profound and dramatic shift in the way medieval thinkers perceived their relationship with their world.
A prolific writer of short stories, character sketches, dramas, and novels, Ivan Turgenev responded to the social issues of the time. The author wrote in 19th century Russia, and has been said to work with the competing ideologies of a humanistic aesthetic and a rising materialistic social paradigm. His profound influence on English and American writers has led him to be called the novelist's novelist.
Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism
On December 5, 2004, the still-developing blogosphere took one of its biggest steps toward mainstream credibility, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary S. Becker and renowned jurist and legal scholar Richard A. Posner announced the formation of the Becker-Posner Blog.
In no time, the blog had established a wide readership and reputation as a reliable source of lively, thought-provoking commentary on current events, its pithy and profound weekly essays highlighting the value of economic reasoning when applied to unexpected topics.
24 lectures, 30 minutes per lecture, 580 Mb total Modern science, representative democracy, and a wave of wars were caused by a revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800. Shaking the minds of the continent like few things before or since, this revolution challenged previous ways of understanding reality and sparked what Professor Alan Charles Kors calls "perhaps the most profound transformation of European, if not human, life."
Set in a drug-and-alcohol addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, this epic comedy by the author of The Girl with Curious Hair snowballs farce, drug abuse, heartbreak, advertising, tennis, philosophy, math, slapstick humor, and profound drama in a story that is never less than edge-of-your-seat compelling.
