Risultati letto da "Charlton Griffin" in Tutte le categorie

Animal Farm is an allegorical satire of the events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell described the book as a satirical tale against Stalin and went on to say that it was the first book in which he tried “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”. All of the leading figures involved in this period are parodied as various animals.

Only four years after publishing his fable Animal Farm, a biting satire of Joseph Stalin’s horrific regime of terror, George Orwell turned his attention to the future. But his next book was to be no satire, no fable. What emerged from Orwell’s pen in 1949 was the most grimly dystopian novel ever written: 1984.

Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.

First published in 1719 in London, the first edition of Robinson Crusoe gave credit to the work's fictional protagonist, Robinson Crusoe, as its actual author instead of Daniel Defoe. This led many readers to believe Robinson Crusoe was a real person and the book a true account.

If you want to understand the daily life and psychology of the late Middle Ages, Ronald Ecker’s classic translation of The Canterbury Tales provides one of the very best means of doing so. Within its audio is to be found a broad range of society - high and low, male and female, rich and poor - who express their innermost beliefs and extravagant fantasies in a series of stories they tell as they make their way to Canterbury Cathedral.

Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece. Beginning in the second century A.D. at the apex of the Pax Romana, Gibbon traces the arc of decline and complete destruction through the centuries across Europe and the Mediterranean. It is a thrilling and cautionary tale of splendor and ruin, of faith and hubris, and of civilization and barbarism. Follow along as Christianity overcomes paganism... before itself coming under intense pressure from Islam.

Considered his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne's story of Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, conceived through an adulterous affair with a Puritan pastor in 17th century Boston. From start to finish, the book explores the themes of law, guilt, and sin. Since its appearance in 1850, this magnificent book has been a perennial favorite among young and old, though it was extremely controversial when it was first published.

When Gone with the Wind appeared in 1936, it became on overnight sensation. Nothing like it in American literature had ever been seen. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most celebrated films of all time. It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into 27 languages. Gone with the Wind is both an historical novel and an examination of the bewildering changes that swept Georgia in the 1860s.

Dickens never employed greater skill or more consummate craftsmanship on any other of his works than he did on A Tale of Two Cities, his magnificent historical novel set during the turbulent era marking the end of Louis XVI's reign. His passionate portrayal of the lives of two groups, one English, one French, caught up in the net of revolutionary intrigue and cruelty, has never been equalled. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy.

The Goths are the most enigmatic of all the ancient German tribes. Their name today is still widely in use for a variety of cultural and artistic movements. But unlike other famous German tribes whose names are still descriptive of nations they founded - the Franks, the Lombards, the Angles, the Saxons and the Alemanni - the Goths simply disappeared. The subject of Henry Bradley's splendid short history is tracing the rise, the migrations, and the impact of the Goths on European history along with their spectacular fall.

Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, was one of the most remarkable men of the 18th century. Born the son of strict disciplinarian Frederick William I in 1712, he was a most precocious and obstinate young man, and until he actually became king, he never exhibited any signs of becoming a military genius. But the young king displayed an amazing aptitude for military life and plunged into war with Austria over the long-disputed province of Silesia.

Book 1 begins in the dim prehistory of Latium and describes the society that emerged there in the centuries leading up to the establishment of the first Roman king. This penetrating look at emerging Latin culture takes us into the strange world of their religion; their family structure; and their legal system, trade, alliances, and relationships with neighboring tribes and kingdoms. It brilliantly sets the stage for what is to come in the following volumes.

By the middle of the second century BC, the city of Rome was spiraling toward bankruptcy and moral decay. The generation which had defeated Hannibal and brought the Mediterranean under Roman control had now passed away, even as gold poured in. Hardly a Roman name of any note appears for half a century. The noble Roman has disappeared. The once feared Roman army has become a mere shadow of its former self, and the public have come to accustom themselves to news of shattering defeats.

Wuthering Heights is a ghost story with the atmosphere of ancient tragedy. An epic poem in prose, it is widely considered to be one of the greatest English novels. The book was published in 1848 and did not meet with approval at first because of its bleak descriptions of physical and mental cruelty. Essentially, it is a tale of revenge set in the North Yorkshire moorlands.

Book three of Mommsen's history covers the 118 years from 264 to 146 BC, the period in which Rome became the undisputed master of the Mediterranean Basin. How did this happen, and why? Carthage was instrumental in this transformation. With the defeat and expulsion of Pyrrhus in 275 BC, Rome had moved to consolidate its hold over the Italian peninsula, a position it had acquired in a century of almost continuous warfare with Italian tribes.

Don Quixote is widely considered to be the first modern novel. As a classic of Western literature, it is regarded by scholars worldwide to be one of the finest works of fiction ever written, and a magnificent product of the Spanish Golden Age of literature. Cervantes’ influence on the Spanish language has been so great that his work is often called “la lengua de Cervantes.” The work was written in two separate volumes, both of which are contained in this production. It introduces the character of Don Quixote de la Mancha, a hero who carries his enthusiasm and self-deception to unintentional and comic ends.

Louis XIV, known as the Grand Monarch, or the Sun King, was a sovereign of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years is the longest recorded of any monarch in European history. In the age of absolutism, Louis XIV's France was the leader in the growing centralization of power.

Goethe was probably the greatest universal genius who ever lived. Although known primarily as a poet, playright, and novelist, he was also known for his work in anatomy, botany, color, art criticism, and jurisprudence. Many people are deterred from attempting to read anything by Goethe because of his extremely penetrating intelligence and dense prose. But his travel diary, Italian Journey, is by far easier to digest than anything else by him.

Cyril Robinson's magnificent history continues with volume two in this four-part series. We now follow the fortunes of two great royal dynasties: Tudor and Stuart. Great names from England's past tumble out one after the other. Henry VIII takes the English out of the Catholic fold. His daughter, Elizabeth, defeats the Spanish Armada of 1588. The arrogance of Charles I leads him to the scaffold. Civil War and Puritanism follow, led by the intrepid Oliver Cromwell.

In volume three of Cyril Robinson's famous history of England, we now enter a crucial phase in which political and economic power both change hands. Parliament now dominates the nation's political discourse, and, led by its brilliant Whig leader, Robert Walpole, this party maintains itself in power for a century. It is a stagnant century of corrupt politics and even more corrupt government magistrates and bureaucrats. But it is also the century that will usher in the greatest change humankind has ever seen.