A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. One of Library Journal 's Best Books of 2020. One of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life I sometimes think I was born reading . . . I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me. Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader is Vivian Gornick’s celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading—and re-reading—as life progresses. Gornick finds herself in contradictory characters within D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers , assesses womanhood in Colette’s The Vagabond and The Shackle , and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover . She revisits Great War novels by J. L. Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity of Elizabeth Bowen’s prose, and soaks in Natalia Ginzburg, “a writer whose work has often made me love life more.” After adopting two cats, whose erratic behavior she finds vexing, she discovers Doris Lessing’s Particularly Cats . Guided by Gornick’s trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature’s power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker who “still read[s] to feel the power of Life with a capital L.”

Arnold's Problems contains mathematical problems brought up by Vladimir Arnold in his famous seminar at Moscow State University over several decades. In addition, there are problems published in his numerous papers and books. The invariable peculiarity of these problems was that Arnold did not consider mathematics a game with deductive reasoning and symbols, but a part of natural science (especially of physics), i.e. an experimental science. Many of these problems are still at the frontier of research today and are still open, and even those that are mainly solved keep stimulating new research, appearing every year in journals all over the world. The second part of the book is a collection of commentaries, mostly by Arnold's former students, on the current progress in the problems' solutions (featuring a bibliography inspired by them). This book will be of great interest to researchers and graduate students in mathematics and mathematical physics.

In October 1942, Vladimir Peniakoff-nicknamed Popski-formed his own elite fighting force in the North African desert. Over the next year, this "private army" carried out a series of daring and truly spectacular raids behind German lines: they freed prisoners, destroyed installations, and spread alarm. An enthralling first-person account, filled with danger and thrills.

This hilarious novel follows the continuing adventures of the simple peasant Ivan Chonkin, who has been arrested as a traitor to the motherland after spending World War II happily tending a garden. Lacking evidence against him, the bumbling bureaucrats base their case on a rumor in his home village that he is the illegitimate son of a prince. the comic case of mistaken identity escalates as they accuse this unlikely prince of working in league with Hitler to restore the monarchy.

This fiftieth anniversary edition of W. Gunther Plaut's classic volume on the beginnings of the Jewish Reform Movement is updated with a new introduction by Howard A. Berman. The Rise of Reform Judaism covers the first one hundred years of the movement, from the time of the eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment leader Moses Mendelssohn to the conclusion of the Augsburg synod in 1871.In these pages the founders who established liberal Judaism speak for themselves through their journals and pamphlets, books and sermons, petitions and resolutions, and public arguments and disputations. Each selection includes Plaut's brief introduction and sketch of the reformer. Important topics within Judaism are addressed in these writings: philosophy and theology, religious practice, synagogue services, and personal life, as well as controversies on the permissibility of organ music, the introduction of the sermon, the nature of circumcision, the observance of the Sabbath, the rights of women, and the authenticity of the Bible.

Whether set in the urban decay and horror of the world we know, in Lovecrafts Arkham, in Pugmires own Sesqua Valley, or in places and locales somewhere in between the mundane and decadent world of Pugmires visions, this collection of 14 Lovecraftian tales selected by the author seek to evoke similar strains (albeit in a bit more melancholic melody) of cosmic dread, terror and isolation as contained in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. This collection includes the following stories: Beyond the Realm of Dream, Graffito Flow, The Hour of Their Appetite, Cool Mist, Dust to Dust, Necronomicon, Gates Closed by Darkness, The Baleful God, Drink the Moon, The Thing in the Glen, The Audient Void, The Hungry Place, A Piece of Stone and The Totem Pole. This is the authors first trade paperback collection, and the stories have been revised by the author for this publication. Cover and 15 interior illustrations by Stanley C. Sargent, inspired by the art of the Maya and Moche (pre-Incan) civilizations.

Wallace Berman (1926-1976) was the quintessential artist of the Californian counterculture, connecting the disparate artistic, literary, music and film scenes of Los Angeles and San Francisco with his pioneering mail-art magazine Semina . Published between 1955 and 1964 in editions ranging from 150 to 350 copies, and hand-printed on a tabletop at Berman's house, Semina was sent through the mail to his friends, to the contributors and to those he admired. Among its many contributors were Charles Brittin, Jean Cocteau, Walter Hopps, Cameron, Michael McClure, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners, Robert Duncan and Berman himself. With its loose-leaf poetry, collages and photography, the magazine has become a defining document of its period (particularly since the 2006 traveling exhibition Semina Culture ) and now sells for thousands of dollars. This volume allows itsentire contents to be seen for the first time, reproducing every component of every issue of the magazine in full color. Published in collaboration with the Berman family and Berman's gallerist Michael Kohn, it also includes commentary and essays by friends, admirers and family in a laid-in pamphlet.

This history of theories and theorists of economic growth elucidates the economic theory, economic history, and public policy observations of the renowned scholar W. W. Rostow. Looking at the economic growth theories of the classic economists up to 1870, Rostow compares Hume and Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, and J.S. Mill and Karl Marx. He then examines the period 1870-1939 and its economic theorists, including Schumpeter, Colin Clark, Kuznets, and Harrod, and surveys the three forms of growth analysis in the postwar era: formal models, statistical morphology, and development theories. This authoritative overview also includes an agenda of unresolved problems in growth analysis and a description of the five major tasks statesmen will confront over the next several generations.

"Dilorenzo and Block have rendered an invaluable service to scholars and students interested in Public Choice, Austrian Economics and Liberalism. Their critical analysis of Public Choice from the Austrian perspective is timely and relevant to clarify important misconceptions about both schools of thought that although in some aspects are complementary in many others offer a significantly different and even opposite approach. This is a most welcome book that was very necessary and fills an important vacuum in the literature." - Jesús Huerta de Soto"I congratulate DiLorenzo and Block for writing this important and courageous book chastising Public Choice. Austro-Libertarianism and Public Choice are to some degree complements; both veer in the direction of support for private property, fee enterprise and capitalism, and against government involvement in the economy. But they are also substitutes, in that the former is a consistent underpinning of the free marketplace, where the latter is not." - Han-Hermann Hoppe

This is a selection of essays written during the first decade of the twenty-first century, by a figure widely acknowledged as the conscience of European liberalism. In Walter Laqueur's lifetime, there have been more acutely dangerous situations, such as the coming of a world war or the seemingly unstoppable march to victory of totalitarian regimes, than in any other previous epoch. Such immediate dangers may not exist at the present time. But long-term trends are equally or even more threatening, as we now see in the ability of small groups of people, unprecedented in history, to inflict enormous damage. This is the underlying essence of Laqueur's thinking, as expressed in this new volume. As Laqueur observes, one learns from long experience that the worst does not always happen, and if it does, probably not in one's lifetime. Ideas and intellectual fashions emerging from the groves of academe, particularly in America can seem wrongheaded and often out of touch with the real world. This growing isolation causes growing bitterness, alienation, and a feeling of impotence on the part of intellectuals, which turns into greater radicalization and farfetched thinking. Laqueur fortunately does not fall into this trap. The articles and essays selected for this volume deal with a variety of topics. They do not entirely reflect Laqueur's interests, which during this period were more in the cultural field than in politics. However, politics intrude irrespective of the author's predilections. Laqueur deals with unpleasant truths in concrete geopolitical settings, but poignantly takes his stand with the men and women who strive to overcome self-censorship in the search for accurate judgment.

Memoirs of a Physicist in the Atomic Age Elsasser, Walter M.

In this book, O’Flaherty applies structural methods to trace the development of an Indian approach to navigating the conflict between spiritual aspirations and human desires by examining several Hindu myths featuring the god Shiva. In the myths that she analyses Shiva encounters and confronts two themes that are seemingly contradictory, especially to those from other cultures: asceticism and eroticism. O'Flaherty makes a point of clearly delineating the contradiction as she explains Shiva, generally considered to be "the great ascetic," is simultaneously "the god of the phallus." O'Flaherty identifies numerous myths about Shiva that engage with myriad themes and ideas, including different sexual orientations demonstrated by Shiva and his Vedic antecedents, Shiva's role as the sexual creator in opposition to Bhrama's role as the Creator of the Universe, the importance of Shiva’s off-spring, Shiva testing the sages for their chastity and teaching them that spiritual meditation is the only way to overcome sexual desire, and the probable dangers that are caused due to extreme chastity. There are even references to ancient medical procedures that can be compared to the modern-day practice of surrogacy, as in one myth when Shiva's seed is dropped into the Ganges River, and impregnates the wives of seven sages who were bathing in it at the time. O'Flaherty also examines different sexual forms of Shiva in various myths as both androgynous and intersexual. This orientation is commonly known as Shiva's Ardhanadheshwara avatar, which is often depicted as possessing physical characteristics that are half-male and half-female. Throughout the book, she examines interlinking aspects portrayed in several myths related to Shiva with a particular focus on the balance she sees between asceticism and eroticism in his identity and actions.