With death looming, Jacques Derrida, the world's most famous philosopher--known as the father of deconstructionism--sat down with journalist Jean Birnbaum of the French daily Le Monde. They revisited his life's work and his impending death in a long, surprisingly accessible, and moving final interview. Sometimes called obscure and branded abstruse by his critics, the Derrida found in this book is open and engaging, reflecting on a long career challenging important tenets of European philosophy from Plato to Marx. The contemporary meaning of Derrida's work is also examined, including a discussion of his many political activities. But, as Derrida says, To philosophize is to learn to die; as such, this philosophical discussion turns to the realities of his imminent death--including life with a fatal cancer. In the end, this interview remains a touching final look at a long and distinguished career. Jacques Derrida was director of studies at the ecole des Hautes etudes en Sciences Sociales and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Among the most recent of his many books translated into English are Eyes of the University, Negotiations, Who's Afraid of Philosophy?, and Rogues: Two Essays on Reason.

The Creative Mind is a philosophical work written by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Originally published in 1934, the book explores the nature of creativity and the creative process. Bergson argues that creativity is not simply a matter of individual genius, but is a fundamental aspect of life itself. He suggests that creativity arises from a tension between the past and the present, and that it is the result of a continual process of invention and adaptation.Bergson draws on a wide range of examples, from the arts to the sciences, to illustrate his ideas about creativity. He discusses the role of intuition and imagination in the creative process, and explores the relationship between creativity and the unconscious mind. He also considers the social and cultural factors that can either encourage or inhibit creativity.Throughout the book, Bergson emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment, and of being open to new experiences and ideas. He argues that creativity is not something that can be taught or learned, but is instead a natural expression of the human spirit.Overall, The Creative Mind is a thought-provoking and insightful exploration of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the nature of creativity, and in the ways in which we can cultivate it in ourselves and others.This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Already the subject of considerable pre-publication discussion, this magisterial work by one of the nation's leading neuroscientists presents a radically new view of the function of the brain and nervous system. Its central idea is that the nervous system in each individual operates as a selective system resembling natural selection in evolution, but operating by different mechanisms. By providing a fundamental neural basis for categorization of the things of this world it unifies perception, action, and learning. The theory also completely revises our view of memory, which it considers to be a dynamic process of recategorization rather than a replicative store of attributes. This has deep implications for the interpretation of various psychological states from attention to dreaming. Neural Darwinism ranges over many disciplines, focusing on key problems in developmental and evolutionary biology, anatomy, physiology, ethology, and psychology. This book should therefore prove indispensable to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in these fields, to students of medicine, and to those in the social sciences concerned with the relation of behavior to biology. Beyond that, this far-ranging theory of brain function is bound to stimulate renewed discussions of such philosophical issues as the mind-body problem, the origins of knowledge, and the perceptual basis of language.

In 2003 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences celebrated the diamond (75th) anniversary of the Academy Awards. What began as an organizational banquet for several-hundred industry insiders has grown to an unequaled international spectacle viewed by more than one billion people. This book is an entirely new version of Emanuel Levy¿s critically acclaimed ¿Oscar Fever.¿ It is both history & appreciation, chockablock with inside stories & little-known facts. All statistics & tables have been updated & completely new information has been added on all 432 nominated films. Even more comprehensive than before, ¿All about Oscar¿ makes us look at the Academy Awards with a fresh vision. Illustrations.

A comprehensive exploration into the many facets of time. Examines through text and photograph the concepts of measurement and use of timekeeping instruments in astronomy, physics, engineering, geology and biology.

Fantasy: Collection of tales exploring Earth's past.

The highest purpose of storytelling is to shift the perception of what's possible in the universe. The writing process is not mysterious. It is not uncontrollable. You just think it is. This book can help. David Gerrold, award-winning screenwriter and novelist, gives advice for would-be science fiction and fantasy writers, covering such topics as setting, plot, character, and dialogue, as well as the mechanics of grammar, tense, sentence structure, and paragraph transition... and why the heck you're writing at all.

If the world were all inside of one building, there would be no concept of "outside". Silverberg explores a time worn idea of Science Fiction in his own unique way and makes it fresh again.

"I "I have to confess, right up front here, that you will not find a great deal in the way of poetic vision in these stories, or singing prose, or deep insight into character. Nor are these stories that will tell you much that is new to you about the human condition. These are stories in what is now pretty much a lost tradition in science fiction, the simple and unselfconsciously fast-paced adventure story of the pulp-magazine era. They are stories from the dawn of my career, which began in the closing years of that era, and are straightforward tales of action, in the main, that were written partly for fun and partly for money." -Robert Silverberg, from the Introduction

"Youth", a science fiction novelette by Isaac Asimov, first appeared in 1952 and is one of the rare Asimov stories with alien characters.Slim is a boy whose astronomer father is visiting the country estate of an important industrialist. The industrialist's son, Red, has found two strange animals, and he enlists Slim in a plan to turn the animals into a circus act. The astronomer, meanwhile, tells the industrialist that he has been in contact with space aliens who want to open up their world to interstellar trade. Their world needs help, the astronomer says; for ever since the atomic wars that destroyed their old civilization, their world has been regressing. Unless something is done, their culture may face total collapse.

"How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying conflicts over culture? This book brings unparalleled clarity to the contemporary debate over this question. Maintaining that cultures are themselves torn by conflicts about their own boundaries, Seyla Benhabib challenges the assumption shared by many theorists and activists that cultures are clearly defined wholes. She argues that much debate--including that of "strong" multiculturalism, which sees cultures as distinct pieces of a mosaic--is dominated by this faulty belief, one with grave consequences for how we think injustices among groups should be redressed and human diversity achieved. Benhabib masterfully presents an alternative approach, developing an understanding of cultures as continually creating, re-creating, and renegotiating the imagined boundaries between "us" and "them." Drawing on contemporary cultural politics from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, Benhabib develops a double-track model of deliberative democracy that permits maximum cultural contestation within the official public sphere as well as in and through social movements and the institutions of civil society. Agreeing with political liberals that constitutional and legal universalism should be preserved at the level of polity, she nonetheless contends that such a model is necessary to resolve multicultural conflicts. Analyzing in detail the transformation of citizenship practices in European Union countries, Benhabib concludes that flexible citizenship, certain kinds of legal pluralism and models of institutional powersharing are quite compatible with deliberative democracy, as long as they are in accord with egalitarian reciprocity, voluntary self-ascription, and freedom of exit and association. The Claims of Culture offers invaluable insight to all those, whether students or scholars, lawyers or policymakers, who strive to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of cultural politics in the twenty-first century"--

Stories involving a variety of monstrous and inconspicuous, fantastic and apparently normal mutations explore the possible consequences of variously caused genetic changes in living creatures

How do you justify genocide? Kennedy had a job to do. It was as simple as that. He was paid to do a job, and he did it. His job was to convince the Earth's population that a hapless race of sapient creatures living peacefully on a distant planet must be destroyed as a menace to the Earth.

A novelization of the second full-length Babylon 5 television film, this story explores the depths of cyberspace, where a squad of Starfuries makes a discovery that could affect the destiny of the civilized universe. Have they found the threshold to a new age - or a gateway to hell?

V.5. (248 p.): The latest collection for Peter David devotees starts off with a crisis Countdown that takes the gray Hulk from one fight to another against the Abomination, the Fantastic Four, and a Madman who can't decide if he's Bruce Banner's biggest fan or worst enemy! Then, it's a reunion with Doctor Strange and Namor the Sub-Mariner when the Hulk joins his fellow founding Defenders against an invasion from a universe even stranger than they are! Plus: the fate of Betty Brant Banner! Also featuring Mister Hyde and the mutants of Freedom Force!

Shows how transnational corporations use lobby groups to shape EU policy. New updated edition

From a man too simple for the devil to fool, to a college student taking an honors class in temptation, here are tales of black magic and demonic enchantment--stories of those who heed Satan's siren song and those ready to match wits with this most cunning of opponents. So get ready for some red-hot reading about the age-old battle between humans and their ever-present foe as you settle in for a devilish good time in Isaac Asimov's Devils. Arthur C. Clarke; Brian Cleeve; Ray Russell; Leo Tolstoy; Winston K. Marks; Cornell Woolrich; Frederic Brown; Robert Bloch; Robert F. Young; Stephen Vincent Benet; Rick Hautala; Philip Jose Farmer; Charles Beaumont; Jerome Bixby; Bruce Elliot; Theodore R. Cogswell; Theodore Sturgeon

It first surfaced in the gripes of GIs during World War II and was captured early on by the typewriter of a young Norman Mailer. Within a generation it had become a basic notion of our everyday moral life, replacing older reproaches like lout and heel with a single inclusive category––a staple of country outlaw songs, Neil Simon plays, and Woody Allen movies. Feminists made it their stock rebuke for male insensitivity, the est movement used it for those who didn’t “get it,” and Dirty Harry applied it evenhandedly to both his officious superiors and the punks he manhandled. The asshole has become a focus of collective fascination for us, just as the phony was for Holden Caulfield and the cad was for Anthony Trollope. From Donald Trump to Ann Coulter, from Mel Gibson to Anthony Weiner, from the reality TV prima donnas to the internet trolls and flamers, assholism has become the characteristic form of modern incivility, which implicitly expresses our deepest values about class, relationships, authenticity, and fairness. We have conflicting attitudes about the A-word––when a presidential candidate unwittingly uttered it on a live mic in 2000, it confirmed to some that he was a man of the people and to others that he was a boor. But considering how much the word does for us, and to us, it hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves––at least until now.

Visionary storyteller, Jodorowsky, returns to the epic universe he created, revealing for the first time, the earliest origins of the Metabarons. On a small planet lost in the midst of a galaxy, a war rages between the rival clans of lawless pirates, the Castaka, and the Amakura. During a ferocious battle, Queen Castaka is kidnapped and raped by King Amakura. From this brutal inception will be born Dayal, the first ancestor of Metabarons.