Venice & Antiquity


Book Description

Inscriptions, medals, and travelers' accounts, on more learned humanist and antiquarian writings, and, most importantly, on the art of the period, Brown explores Venice's evolving sense of the past. She begins with the late middle ages, when Venice sought to invent a dignified civic past by means of object, image, and text. Moving on to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, she discusses the collecting and recording of antiquities and the incorporation of Roman forms.




The Mirror of the Blessed Virgin Mary


Book Description

In the first treatise St. Bonaventure lucidly explains the Angelical Salutation and sets forth in marvelous praises the excellence of the Most Blessed Mother of God. For this reason he calls his work a Mirror, because in it the graces, gifts, and and virtues of the Blessed Virgin are reflected as images in a resplendent mirror. The following work, entitled the Psalter of Our Lady, St. Bonaventure composed on the plan of the Psalter of David. There are in it one hundred and fifty psalms, the initial verses of each corresponding to the psalms of David, but the verses following are adapted to the Blessed Virgin in a most beautiful manner.




At the Roots of Italian Identity


Book Description

This book investigates the relationship between the ideas of nation and race among the nationalist intelligentsia of the Italian Risorgimento and argues that ideas of race played a considerable role in defining Italian national identity. The author argues that the racialization of the Italians dates back to the early Napoleonic age and that naturalistic racialism—or race-thinking based on the taxonomies of the natural history of man—emerged well before the traditionally presumed date of the late 1860s and the advent of positivist anthropology. The book draws upon a wide number of sources including the work of Vincenzo Cuoco, Giuseppe Micali, Adriano Balbi, Alessanro Manzoni, Giandomenico Romagnosi, Cesare Balbo, Vincenzo Gioberti, and Carlo Cattaneo. Themes explored include links to antiquity on the Italian peninsula, archaeology, and race-thinking.




Ships on Maps


Book Description

Renaissance map-makers produced ever more accurate descriptions of geography, which were also beautiful works of art. They filled the oceans Europeans were exploring with ships and to describe the real ships which were the newest and best products of technology. Above all the ships were there to show the European conquest of the seas of the world.




Scanderbeide


Book Description

The first historical heroic epic authored by a woman, Scanderbeide recounts the exploits of fifteenth-century Albanian warrior-prince George Scanderbeg and his war of resistance against the Ottoman sultanate. Filled with scenes of intense and suspenseful battles contrasted with romantic episodes, Scanderbeide combines the action and fantasy characteristic of the genre with analysis of its characters’ motivations. In selecting a military campaign as her material and epic poetry as her medium, Margherita Sarrocchi (1560?–1617) not only engages in the masculine subjects of political conflict and warfare but also tackles a genre that was, until that point, the sole purview of men. First published posthumously in 1623, Scanderbeide reemerges here in an adroit English prose translation that maintains the suspense of the original text and gives ample context to its rich cultural implications.




The New Freedom


Book Description

Cultural Writing. Political Science. This edition of THE NEW FREEDOM: CORPORATE CAPITALISM reproduces the entire text of Fredy Perlman's first book, self-published in 1961 in an edition of 91. The text of this edition is based on copy 7, currently in the posession of the Library of Congress. "Where there's freedom of speech and freedom of the press, there cannot be 'dangerous ideas.' There can be imaginative and unimaginative, original and trite ideas, but no 'dangerous' ones. The advocacy of public sabotage, misery and oppression for the sake of private aggrandisement and power is dangerous, but it is not an idea. In a democratic society, the man who advocates personal gain at public expense would be greeted as a lunatic, since he expresses, not reasoned conclusions, but an irrational will to dominate over and enslave other men..."--from the text.




America's National Game


Book Description

This book is in great demand by baseball enthusiasts. Having been connected with every department of the game from player to magnate, Mr. Spalding has contributed a very important work to the game's history. As the invincible pitcher of the Boston Club, previous to the formation of the National League, his book of so many pages is an interesting record of events dating from the beginning of the great American pastime. It is not exactly a history of the game, but deals largely with incidents during the author's career, who was a player in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and helped organize the National League in 1876. One chapter, devoted to sundry topics, gives an account of the sale of the immortal "King Kelly," the original "$10,000 beauty," by Chicago to the Boston Club in the late 1880s. Other Chapters are devoted to the literature of the game, quoting several instances of the baseball paragrapher's art and also specimens of the distinct poetry of the pastime, of which "Casey at the Bat" is probably the most widely known. The Cincinnati Red Stockings Mr. Spalding gives credit as being the pioneer professional organization. It was not, however, until 1871 that professional baseball playing, as recognized today, was instituted. Mr. Spalding shows how cricket could not do for Americans. He says it is suitable for the British temperament, but not for the Yankee hustling spirit. He also tells how he worked into the game through a one-handed catch when a small boy. To lovers of baseball, whose name is legion, and whose number increases yearly, this book comprises in itself a whole library of useful information.




Fresh from the Farm 6pk


Book Description




The Sex-Starved Marriage


Book Description

'Not tonight, darling, I've got a headache...' An estimated one in three couples suffer from problems associated with one partner having a higher libido than the other. Marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis has written THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE to help couples come to terms with this problem. Weiner Davis shows you how to address pyschological factors like depression, poor body image and communication problems that affect sexual desire. With separate chapters for the spouse that's ready for action and the spouse that's ready for sleep, THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE will help you re-spark your passion and stop you fighting about sex. Weiner Davis is renowned for her straight-talking style and here she puts it to great use to let you know you're not alone in having marital sex problems. Bitterness or complacency about ho-hum sex can ruin a marriage, breaking the emotional tie of good sex.




The Mirror of the Blessed Virgin Mary


Book Description

The Mirror of the Blessed Virgin Mary explains the glories of Mary. The Psalter of Our Lady are 150 'psalms' of praise written by Saint Bonaventure. There is no doubt, as St. Jerome remarks, that whatever is worthily said of Our Blessed Mother redounds wholly to the praise and glory of God. Therefore, for the honour and glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and ardently desiring to produce a work which will tend to the praise of His most glorious Mother, I have judged it fitting to take for the subject-matter of my treatise the most sweet Salutation of this Blessed Mother. But I acknowledge my utter insufficiency for such an undertaking. First, because of the sublimity of the subject; secondly, because of the slenderness of my knowledge; thirdly, because of the aridity of my speech, and, finally, because of the unworthiness of my life, and the supreme glory and praiseworthiness of the person whose praises I wish to sing. For who is there who would not deem that subject incomprehensible of which St. Jerome does not hesitate to speak as follows: "That which nature possesseth not, which custom useth not, which eclipseth reason, which the mind of man is unable to compass which maketh the heavens tremble, and striketh dumb the earth, which amazeth every inhabitant of Heaven, all this was divinely announced by Gabriel to Mary, and was fulfilled in Christ." Therefore I confess myself unworthy to speak of such and so great a heroine. Again I say, how could my slender knowledge and my dull mind suffice to conceive praises worthy of Mary, when the illuminated mind of an Anselm faileth in presence of the task? For he saith: "My tongue faileth, Lady, for my mind is insufficient. Lady, all that is within me burns that I may render thee thanks for thy so great benefits. But I am unable to conceive worthy praise, and am ashamed to put forth that which is unworthy." St. Augustine, addressing Mary, says: uWhat shall I, so poor in talent, say of thee, when whatever I may say of thee is less praise than thy dignity deserves?" Again, how can my untrained tongue, my arid powers of interpretation not fail in the praises of Mary, when Augustine, that most eloquent of men, says: "What shall we, so little, so feeble, say in praise of Mary, when, if all our members were turned into tongues, no one of us would suffice to praise her?" Again, if praise in the mouth of a sinner is unbecoming (Eccli. XV, 9), how shall I, a miserable sinner, a man of most unworthy life-how shall I dare to proclaim the praises of Mary, when I hear Jerome, a man of such great worth, hesitate? For he saith: HI fear and tremble, all the while that I long to fulfil your expectations, lest I should prove to be an unworthy panegyrist. For there is in me neither sanctity nor eloquence, worthily to praise the Blessed and glorious Virgin." And again: "Why should I add to the sea a small cup of water? Why a stone to a mountain? And as l\1ary has already been so adequately praised by the tongues of men and angels, what can our puny efforts, and especially my own, add to these?" Finally, St. Jerome, speaking of Mary, says: "If I am to speak the truth, whatever can be expressed in human words is less than the praise given by Heaven; for Mary has been excellently preached and praised by divine and angelic heralds, foretold by prophets, fore-shadowed by patriarchs, in types and figures, set forth and described by Evangelists,worthily and officially saluted by Angels."