No one has given the polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) the all-round examination he so richly deserves—until now. Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson portrays a man who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and never sought fame. As a physicist, Young challenged the theories of Isaac Newton and proved that light is a wave. As a physician, he showed how the ey…
Th e following book on Bob Dylan’s songs does not directly concern Bob Dylan a.k.a Robert Zimmerman, either the actual person or the musical-cultural celebrity. Nor does it claim to make claims about what Bob Dylan intended in or when composing any one of his songs. Instead, I mostly refer to Bob Dylan’s work and certain biographically relevant events in terms of a fi gur…
The prose poem, in Poland, is an entity that is –as Le?mian would have it –“incompletely-incarnated,” supposedly described in dictionaries, at times even ephemerally resurrected in some title but, in general, leading a clandestine exis-tence, turned rather towards the past, brooding over its former lives? In any case, there were never very many of them in …
The present study of the Lives of the Poets is designed to show that Johnson’s value judgements about literature lead to ethical literary crit-icism that pertains to human problems affecting our daily life and world crises. In his Dictionary, Johnson defines ethics as “the doctrine of morality; a system of morality.”1 While morality and…
Over de eerste eeuwen van het christendom in het noorden van de Lage Landen valt weinig met zekerheid te zeggen. De schoolboekjes van vroeger wilden de mensen nog wel doen geloven dat met de komst van missionarissen als Willibrord en Bonifatius de verspreiding van het christendom op Nederlandse bodem een beklonken zaak was. Maar historici vermoeden inmiddels dat …
n December 26, 1882 (the seventeenth of November on the Lunar Calendar, the 8th year of Guangxu Emperor), Qian Junfu was born in the Qian lineage’s old residence in Eastern Street, Renhe County, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Qian’ lineage can be traced back to King Qian Liu of the Kingdom of Wuyue (852–932), of whom Qian Junfu was …
By studying the lives, careers and actions of individuals or groups in a given his-torical period, we can draw conclusions on the causes, courses and consequences of historical events, which will in turn help us to attain a clearer image of a past soci-ety, its customs and its perception of reality. Such an approach makes history more “human,” as well as more understandable and interesting.…
From the author of the national best seller Chaos comes an outstanding biography of one of the most dazzling and flamboyant scientists of the 20th century that "not only paints a highly attractive portrait of Feynman but also . . . makes for a stimulating adventure in the annals of science." (The New York Times).
This biography explores the life and career of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, which is also the story of thirty years that transformed physics and forever changed our understanding of matter and the universe: nuclear physics and elementary particle physics were born, nuclear fission was discovered, the Manhattan Project was developed, the atomic bombs were dropped, and the era of “big sc…
With his well-known idiosyncrasies and aphoristic style, Friedrich Nietzsche is always bracing and provocative, and temptingly easy to dip into. Michael Tanner's introduction to the philosopher's life and work examines the numerous ambiguities inherent in his writings and explodes many of the misconceptions that have grown in the hundred years since Nietzsche wrote "do not, above all, confound …