Библиотека книг - Страница 20916
Description
The Prince is a book that was controversial before it had even been sent to the printer. Written in vernacular Italian instead of Latin, dedicated to a member of one of the most powerful Italian families of the day, and only printed after Machiavelli’s death, this treatise on how to tyrannize effectively was considered shocking even by his contemporaries. The discussion of its morality that continues to this day gives us the modern-day word Machiavellian.
The book is organized into several sections, each one giving direction on the ruthless rule of principalities that Machiavelli based on both reading and personal experience. Despite its controversial nature, The Prince is often cited as one of the first examples of modern philosophical thought, and the “advice” contained within is still quoted as relevant today.
Description
Like many of Hardy’s novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge is set in the fictional county of Wessex in the mid 1800s. It begins with Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, drunk on rum, auctioning off his wife and baby daughter at a village fair. The next day, overcome with remorse, Henchard resolves to turn his life around. When we meet Henchard eighteen years later, temperance and hard work have made him wealthy and respectable. However, he cannot escape his past. His secret guilt, his pride, and his impulsive temper all serve to sabotage his good name.
The Mayor of Casterbridge was published in 1886, first as a magazine serial and then later that year as a book. It is perhaps most noteworthy for the psychological portrait of Michael Henchard, a tragic character who remains sympathetic while simultaneously being deeply flawed. Typical of other Hardy novels, it also vividly depicts life in the rural countryside at that time.
Description
During the unloading of an Insular and Continental Steam Navigation Company ship arrived from Rouen, the Bullfinch, a cask falls, splits, and reveals its unexpected contents. As the dockworkers try to work out what to do, Mr. Léon Felix arrives and claims the cask as his own. His actions set into motion a complicated trail for the detectives of London’s Scotland Yard and Paris’s Sûreté to follow to the end.
Freeman Wills Crofts was one of many authors writing crime fiction in Britain in the 1920s and 30s, and was a contemporary and acquaintance of both Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler. The Cask, his first novel, was written during leave from his job as a railway engineer, but its reception was good enough to set Crofts on the course of a further thirty crime novels over his career as an author.
