beautiful revolution desperately shakespeare

books:

Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions

3 reviews
John Gray

Granta UK, 2004

Not for the Faint of Heart
When I was younger I used to argue with others that belief in God was irrational and nothing more than superstition. I eventually realized that this was very upsetting to many people and stopped. Unknown to me, my own faith at the time was what John Gray calls liberal humanism, a belief that science and reason can lead to human progress. Over many years I have gradually became less sure of this. ...

Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens

9 reviews
Sofka Zinovieff

Granta UK, 2005

Spot On!!
Brilliant!! I was raised in America of Greek parents. I too went to live in Athens as an adult. This book is well written and spot on. Captures the Greek psyche, way of life and ethos. Truthful depiction of life in Athens and its populace. An unbiased, concise history of modern Greece. Tackles all the historical and modern issues relevant to an understanding of today's Greece and its people. ...

The Year of the Jouncer (Smoking Diaries Volume 2)
Simon Gray

Granta UK, 2006

Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim

8 reviews
Ziauddin Sardar

Granta UK, 2005

A very welcome book!
At long last, a book that presents the Islam of the optimistic, socially compassionate critical thinker! I'd always known that Islam was not the malicious, vengeful, monolithic bloc that it is often seen to be in the West, but I now know much more about what it IS like, at least through Sardar's eyes -- he illustrates its rich diversity of thought and practice, past and present, and teases out ...

Payback

4 reviews
Gert Ledig

Granta UK, 2003

"O war! Thou son of hell
whom angry heavens do make their minister, thrown in the frozen bosoms of our part hot coals of vengeance." These words from Shakespeare's King Henry VI, Part II sum up with unfortunate precision the hell that descends from the angry heavens described in Gert Ledig's recently `rediscovered' story of a horrific WWII daylight bombing raid on Germany in his book "Payback". In fact the title ...

Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM

2 reviews

Granta UK, 2007

Editions of Contemporary Music: Gorgeous Graphics and Diverse Insights into ECM, Great Jazz Label
It has been 35 years since Manfred Eicher's brilliant ECM label released Gary Burton's and Chick Corea's wonderful collaboration Crystal Silence. It is 38 years since the label was first launched. . Since then, ECM has created and released so vast and extraordinary a collection of music - path breaking improvisational music, often jazz that does not swing -- that adventurous jazz lovers have ...

Killing Rage

20 reviews
Eamon Collins, Mick McGovern

Granta UK, 1998

"The Troubles" -- A View From the Inside
Book Review: "KILLING RAGE" By Eamon Collins Reviewed By Ralph Couey "Killing Rage" vividly recounts the compelling personal journey of Eamon Collins through the violent morass of Northern Ireland politics; the evolution from committed Republican, to terrorist, to an activist for peace. For most Americans, the dominant impression of the war in Northern Ireland would be a confused ...

The Baby in the Mirror: A Child's World from Birth to Three
Charles Fernyhough

Granta UK, 2008

For Charles Fernyhough, the birth of his daughter Athena was an opportunity to view the psychological development and growth of a child first hand. Integrating scientific research with careful observation and questioning, this unique study investigates what it is like to be a newborn baby, an infant on the threshold of language, and a toddler testing out autonomy. Using Athena as a case study, Fernyhough vividly describes the huge amount of ...

The New Turkey: The Quiet Revolution on the Edge of Europe

1 review
Chris Morris

Granta UK, 2006

A good political and social overview
For serious travelers to Turkey, this is an excellent history of, and commentary on past and present Turkey. As Americans, when we travel abroad, we know so little of the history, social life, politics, and culture of the countries we visit. This book prepares the serious traveler to know the background of Turkey. Although the history can be arduous reading at times, the background to current day ...

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

4 reviews
Anna Funder

Granta UK, 2004

Stories of life in the GDR, the real-life Orwellian state
When author George Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984 he wrote of the contemporary and future 'proletarian' dictatorships. The German Democratic Republic, more than any other state before or since, came the nearest to a state of perfected and complete absolute control over its citizens' lives. The author of Stasiland, Anna Funder, has done a suberb job of revivifying this state in her readers' ...

Beslan: The Tragedy of School No. 1

1 review
Timothy Phillips

Granta UK, 2008

Three and a half stars at best
This book is an interesting read about what happened at the siege of Beslan's school No. 1 but in the end I found it lacking. The book is broken into chapters, but they are not exactly in chronological order. The first chapter will address a part of the Siege while the next will go into the background of Chechnya or Russia and maybe tell the author's own adventures while over there and what ...

Take Me Home: Parkinson's, My Father, Myself
Jonathan Taylor

Granta UK, 2008

When Jonathan Taylor was eight his father began to act strangely. One day he suddenly couldn't remember his own daughter’s name, and he then began to shake, to drive badly, and to forget who and where he was. Increasingly Jonathan’s father would utter "help, help, help” repeatedly, even if no one was in the room. Doctors diagnosed Parkinson's disease and dementia, and for the next 13 years Jonathan and his family cared for his ...

Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life: A Radical Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy

4 reviews
Fintan O'Toole

Granta UK, 2003

Breathing fresh life into Shakespeare
Although this is a reprint of his 1990 volume originally titled "No More Heroes," O'Toole's introduction to Shakespeare and his great tragedies is yet one of the most helpful retakes on why we need to return to the original plots (in both senses) of the author. O'Toole arms teachers, individual readers, and potential directors with insights that will restore excitement to the experience of ...

Money to Burn

2 reviews
Ricardo Piglia

Granta UK, 2004

Still Looking for a Really Good Translation
Make no mistake about it. This is a so-so translation of a truly fine work by Ricardo Piglia. Only those who are able to read the original in Spanish will appreciate my otherwise questionable rating of five stars. In the first place, this is NOT a novel. It is a book written along the lines of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," an account of an actual crime using the perspective of motive and ...

Desert Divers

3 reviews
Sven Lindqvist

Granta UK, 2002

Like The Desert Air
One hundred terse chapters in not many more pages. Lindqvist has packed a memoir together as challenging as the desert itself. It presents in much the same manner as its companion piece, 'Exterminate All The Brutes,'in a pace rather like air stirring from the baked sand soon after the sun has set. It's a deceptive pace,as it has been slowly generated from a sustained meditation on the literature ...

It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science

11 reviews

Granta UK, 2003

'It Must Be Beautiful" is truly BEAUTIFUL
This book is written so that anyone with a general science background can understand the importance of the work and discoveries of these great minds. It demonstrates how their work has played a strategic roll in the historical events of our time and how it may affect the very future of mankind. Besides analyzing the studies and writtings of these scientists, the book also gives us a very good ...

Rowing to Alaska: And Other True Stories

2 reviews
Wayne McLennan

Granta UK, 2005

Making Waves
During those inbetween times when I am unable to travel myself (woe is me), then I travel on a vehicle of words - and oh, how satisfactory is this one! McLennan is new to writing, or so he claims at the opening of this book, but I struggle to believe it. He tells of moving to Estonia with his Dutch wife (she surely has courage to marry such a wanderlusting man), a writer, and when he struggles ...

The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina

3 reviews
Uki Goni

Granta UK, 2003

The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina
A very interesting book. A subject by which I have always been fascinated.

Bench Press

2 reviews
Sven Lindqvist

Granta UK, 2003

Body, Mind and Spirit
What do an aging 50-year-old writer and a skinhead body builder have in common? This is an intriguing little book, written part as memoir and part as history of working out, weights and bodybuilding, and little bit of dreams. Sven, who is our 50- year-old writer, meets the skinhead in the sauna; they end up talking, as people will at the gym, and a man who only swam laps started working out. Yet ...

The Smoking Diaries: The Year of the Jouncer

1 review
Simon Gray

Granta UK, 2008

For the Funny, Cranky and Mean-Spirited Smoker
This book was a huge bestseller in England and spawned a couple of sequels. The author, Simon Gray, is a well-known British playwright (of course, he's unheard of in the United States). Gray is very witty and his diaries constitute the perfect companion for anyone growing old but not only unwilling to go gently into that good night but instead thoroughly willing to give the good night a boffing ...

search for books
beautiful, desperately, revolution, shakespeare, shakespearean

Impressum / about us