Essays Modern

These essays on the learned book in Early Modern Europe investigate the transmission of knowledge and the operation of the book market from the point of view of its major participants: authors, editors, publishers, readers and bibliographers.

Linked by the events of Bernard Knox's remarkable life, the twenty-five chapters of "Essays Ancient and Modern" cover subjects ranging from Hesiod, Homer, and Thucydides to Auden, Forster, and the Spanish Civil War. With a masterful eye for the telling detail, Knox continually reminds us that we share the present with antiquity's living past. A soldier in Italy finds a battered book in the rubble of a bombed-out firehouse-- and opens it to read Virgil's denunciation of war. An illiterate Greek bard composes a garbled Homeric song to celebrate the recent heroism of local partisans. A traveler heading north from modern Athens must choose between the Sacred Way-- or the NATO Road.

Nowadays number of competitive and recruitment examinations test the writing ability of the aspirants by including a descriptive English section in the exam. The Descriptive English section covers essay and passage writing to evaluate the effective writing skills of the aspirants. The present book contains ample number of modern essays which are or may be asked in a number of competitive & recruitment examinations. The present book on Modern Essays has been divided into ten sections namely Current Affairs, Society & Social Issues, Economy & Infrastructure, Education, Science & Technology, Great Personalities, Constructive Writing: General Topics, Environment, Ecology & Climate, Famous Proverbs & Sayings and Miscellaneous. The Current Affairs section covers Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), Make in India: Mission to Glory, Ebola, Kailash Satyarthi, etc whereas the Society & Social Issues contains Social Evils, Curse of Dowry System, Female Foeticide, Drug Abuse, Generation Gap, Corruption in India, Population Explosion, Poverty in India, etc. The Economy & Infrastructure section covers Agriculture in India, An Indian Farmer, Mineral Wealth of India, Banking in India, Economic Reforms, Indian Economy, Globalisation, etc whereas the Education section covers Right to Education (RTE), Vocational Education, Sex Education in School, etc. The Science & Technology section has been divided into Internet Boon, India: A Software Super Power, Blossoming of Social Media, Health Advancements, A Flat on Moon, Cloning, etc. whereas the Great Personalities section covers Ashoka the Great, Nelson Mandela, Sir CV Raman, Kalpana Chawla, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, MS Dhoni, Milkha Singh, Mary Kom, etc. The Constructive Writing section has been divided into Independence Day, My Childhood Memories, My Favorite Games, On the Top of the World, The Role of Indian Cinema, My Favourite Author, etc whereas the Environment, Ecology & Climate covers Forests of India, Wildlife of India, The Fury of Floods, Climate Change, Green Revolution, Tiger Conservation, Earthquake: A Natural Calamity, etc. The Famous Proverbs & Sayings section covers A Thing of Beauty if a Joy Forever, All that Glitters is Not Gold, Boys Prefer Sports, Girls Prefer Clothes, Look Before You Leap, Sweet are the Uses of Adversity, Small is Beautiful, etc whereas the Miscellaneous section covers Indian Railways: In Need of Revival, Meditation: The Ultimate Nirvana, Online Shopping, Delhi Metro, Photography, Information Media, Right to Information (RTI), etc. As the book contains ample number of sample essays of varied variety, it for sure will prove to be beneficial for essay writing for school students and for different competitive examinations.

"Originally published 1977 by Basil Blackwell Oxford in Great Britain and by Wesleyan University Press in the United States."

Perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed translations of the Greek tragedies and Herodotus's History, as well as his edition of Hobbes's Thucydides, David Grene has also had a major impact as a teacher and interpreter of texts both ancient and modern. In this book, distinguished colleagues and former students explore the imaginative force of literature and history in articulating and illuminating the human condition. Ranging as widely as Grene's own interests in Greek and Roman antiquity, in drama, poetry, and the novel, in the art of translation, and in English history, these essays include discussions of the Odyssey and Ulysses, the Metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius, Mallarmé's English and T. S. Eliot's religion, and the mutually antipathetic minds of Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson. The introduction by Todd Breyfogle sketches for the first time the contours of Grene's own thought. Classicists, political theorists, intellectual historians, philosophers, and students of literature will all find much of value in the individual essays here and in the juxtaposition of their themes. Contributors: Saul Bellow, Seth Benardete, Todd Breyfogle, Amirthanayagam P. David, Wendy Doniger, Mary Douglas, Joseph N. Frank, Victor Gourevitch, Nicholas Grene, W. R. Johnson, Brendan Kennelly, Edwin McClellan, Françoise Meltzer, Stephanie Nelson, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Ostwald, Robert B. Pippin, James Redfield, Sandra F. Siegel, Norma Thompson, and David Tracy

What do modern academic economists do? What currently is mainstream economics? What is neoclassical economics? And how about heterodox economics? How do the central concerns of modern economists, whatever their associations or allegiances, relate to those traditionally taken up in the discipline? And how did economics arrive at its current state? These and various cognate questions and concerns are systematically pursued in this new book by Tony Lawson. The result is a collection of previously published and new papers distinguished in providing the only comprehensive and coherent account of these issues currently available. The financial crisis has not only revealed weaknesses of the capitalist economy but also highlighted just how limited and impoverished is modern academic economics. Despite the failings of the latter being more widely acknowledged now than ever, there is still an enormous amount of confusion about their source and true nature. In this collection, Tony Lawson also identifies the causes of the discipline’s failings and outlines a transformative solution to its deficiencies. Amongst other things, Lawson advocates for the adoption of a more historical and philosophical orientation to the study of economics, one that deemphasizes the current focus on mathematical modelling while maintaining a high level of analytical rigour. In so doing Lawson argues for a return to long term systematic and sustained projects, in the manner pursued by the likes of Marx, Veblen, Hayek and Keynes, concerned first and foremost with advancing our understanding of social reality. Overall, this forceful and persuasive collection represents a major intervention in the on-going debates about the nature, state and future direction of economics.

Skeptical Music collects the essays on poetry that have made David Bromwich one of the most widely admired critics now writing. Both readers familiar with modern poetry and newcomers to poets like Marianne Moore and Hart Crane will relish this collection for its elegance and power of discernment. Each essay stakes a definitive claim for the modernist style and its intent to capture an audience beyond the present moment. The two general essays that frame Skeptical Music make Bromwich's aesthetic commitments clear. In "An Art without Importance," published here for the first time, Bromwich underscores the trust between author and reader that gives language its subtlety and depth, and makes the written word adequate to the reality that poetry captures. For Bromwich, understanding the work of a poet is like getting to know a person; it is a kind of reading that involves a mutual attraction of temperaments. The controversial final essay, "How Moral Is Taste?," explores the points at which aesthetic and moral considerations uneasily converge. In this timely essay, Bromwich argues that the wish for excitement that poetry draws upon is at once primitive and irreducible. Skeptical Music most notably offers incomparable readings of individual poets. An essay on the complex relationship between Hart Crane and T. S. Eliot shows how the delicate shifts of tone and shading in their work register both affinity and resistance. A revealing look at W. H. Auden traces the process by which the voice of a generation changed from prophet to domestic ironist. Whether discussing heroism in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, considering self-reflection in the poems of Elizabeth Bishop, or exploring the battle between the self and its images in the work of John Ashbery, Skeptical Music will make readers think again about what poetry is, and even more important, why it still matters.

Imagining Culture, first published in 1996, discusses literature as a whole rather than a partisan interest in those who are in or out of favour, and how that literature relates to other arts as well as to philosophical, historical, and cultural contexts. This title will be of interest to students of literature and cultural studies.