Risultati letto da "Charlton Griffin" in Tutte le categorie

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens' novel depicts Pip's development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'.

Ferdinand Lot (1866-1952) was one of the great historians of his generation, and the transition from Roman to Medieval civilization was a process that fascinated him most of his life. Rather than placing the emphasis for Rome’s fall on purely political or military reasons, Lot put forth multiple explanations for the birth of the Middle Ages which embrace not only politics and war, but linguistic, geographic, cultural, social and economic factors.

The spirit of Christmas has never been captured better than by Charles Dickens' masterpiece about Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit and all those wonderful spirits, especially the ghost of Jacob Marley. It can be fairly stated that Dickens was so successful with A Christmas Carol, that his characters have become more well known than the title itself.

The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover his wife's infidelity. Enraged, he kills her. Full of pain and grief, the vizier continues on to the court of his brother, the king. But, once arrived at his brother's palace, the vizier soon discovers the king's wife is also involved in an even more flagrant infidelity.

First published in 1864, this is a comprehensive history of the Holy Roman Empire by James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, a British academic, jurist, historian, and politician.

Mention the name of Friedrich Nietzsche almost anywhere and you are apt to receive a strong emotional response, either negatively or positively. Few persons will say they have no opinion. And for good reason. Employing some of the most withering attacks and scathing criticism conceivable against, among other things, Christianity, education, government, Wagner, and the judicial systems of his day, Nietzsche was a one-man wrecking ball of European society in the latter half of the 19th century.

Acclaimed as "the first citizen of Athens", Pericles was one of the greatest statesmen ancient Greece ever produced. During the Golden Age of Athens, in the much admired 5th century B.C., Pericles epitomized the influential politician. But he was also a brilliant orator and military leader brought up in the competitive environment of Greek democracy.

The weaver Silas Marner is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in an unnamed city in Northern England in the early 19th century. He is falsely accused of stealing the congregation's funds, leaves the city in disgrace, and accumulates a small fortune in another town…only to lose it to theft. But he soon adopts an orphan child quite by accident. The exchange of one treasure for another is the heart of the story.

Tom Jones is a splendid Hogarthian panorama of 18th century English life and morals, encompassing both city and country, and comprising some of the greatest comic characters in British literature. First published in 1749, it was an instant success and has gone on to become a classic of its genre. Quite simply, there has never been anything like it.

First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a penchant for deductive reasoning and a highly educated use of forensic skills. Indeed, Doyle created the first fictional private detective who used what we now recognize as modern scientific investigative techniques.

We enter directly into the intrigues between the Greeks and Persians. Darius, infuriated with Athens because of her support for the liberation of the Ionian Greeks, initiates the first invasion of Greece, which ends with the Athenian victory at Marathon. When Xerxes ascends the Persian throne a few years later, the war is resumed on a vastly greater scale. In some of the most wonderful prose of all time, Herodotus describes the events ending in the naval battle of Salamis and the clash of armies at Plataea.

The Persian Wars is part history, part geography, part anthropology...and completely entertaining. It possesses a charm that is legendary. However, over and above this, Herodotus has succeeded for all time in brilliantly expressing the conflict between the ideal of the free man defending his liberty within a state based on the rule of law, and that of the despot who bases his rule on brute force and whose subjects are considered slaves.

Although theologians are apt to explain away these teachings in various ways, the Vedantists believe Christ meant what he said. Listen to this remarkable recording and discover how Vedanta goes to the very heart of Christ's teaching.Vedanta came to the West in the late 19th century, not to supplant any religion, but to bring a more tangible spirituality to those who seek it. Its goal has never been to proselytize, but to help man realize the divinity within him.

Volume Two opens in March, 1862 with Lee back in Richmond after a lengthy absence. He was shocked by the chaos and panic evident in the Confederate capital. McClellan had assembled a superbly equipped army of over 100,000 soldiers which Virginians feared might invade at any time. In May, McClellan began to move his huge Army of the Potomac up the peninsula and so close to Richmond that church steeples were within his view. The situation seemed hopeless.

Julius Caesar wrote his exciting Commentaries during some of the most grueling campaigns ever undertaken by a Roman army. The Gallic Wars and The Civil Wars constitute the greatest series of military dispatches ever written. As literature, they are representative of the finest expressions of Latin prose in its "golden" age, a benchmark of elegant style and masculine brevity imitated by young schoolboys for centuries.

Dante's Divine Comedy is considered to be not only the most important epic poem in Italian literature, but also one of the greatest poems ever written. It consists of 100 cantos, and (after an introductory canto) they are divided into three sections. Each section is 33 cantos in length, and they describe how Dante and a guide travel through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Volume Four begins in March, 1865 with Lee's starving soldiers facing annihilation at the hands of Grant's enormous army. Surrounded, with all avenues of escape cut off, Lee honorably surrendered the remnants of his valiant Army of Northern Virginia at Appamattox on April 9. Having done his military duty to his people, Lee next asked himself, "What is now my duty?" Declining handsome financial rewards for the use of his name in commercial ventures, Lee decided to share the misery of the people of Virginia and the South.

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.

From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing is like stepping into a delightful 18th-century painting accompanied by the music of Mozart. Every day is warm and sunny, with puffy white clouds, twittering birds, gorgeous flowers, and charming gardens. Sorrow and despair are never to be seen, while amusing characters pass in and out of the chapters. It is a charming world of beauty and adventure, which Eichendorff has created for us. First published in 1826, this is one of the most famous and perennially popular novels to come out of Germany. It is a romantic novella whose main themes are love and voyage.

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 best works of fiction ever written and a magnificent product of the Spanish golden age of literature. And merely from a grammatical standpoint alone, Cervantes' influence on the Spanish language has been so great that his work is often called " la lengua de Cervantes".