O Brave New Words

Native American loanwords are a crucial, though little acknowledged, part of the English language. This book shows how the more than one-thousand current loanwords were adopted and demonstrates how the changing relationships between Indians and European settlers can be traced in the rate of loanword borrowing and the kinds of words adopted. Appalachian: from the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, from the Muskogean name of the Apalachee tribe of Florida Moose: Eastern Abenaki mos; Papoose: Narragansett papoos, child; Squash: Narragansett askutasquash; Texas: from a Caddo word, meaning "friends" or "allies."

Fifteen specially commissioned essays from distinguished authors explore the place of the writer, past and present, the value of critical thinking, and the power of the written word. Their work articulates 'brave new words' at the heart of battles against limitations on fundamental rights of citizenship, the closure of national borders, fake news, and an increasing reluctance to engage with critical democratic debate. Contributors include Eva Hoffman, Romesh Gunesekera, Githa Hariharan, James Kelman, Tabish Khair, Kei Miller, Blake Morrison, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Hsiao-Hung Pai, Olumide Popoola, Shivanee Ramlochan, Bina Shah, Raja Shehadeh and Marina Warner.

Brief Candles (1930), Aldous Huxley's fifth collection of short fiction, consists of the following four short stories: "Chawdron" "The Rest Cure" "The Claxtons" "After the Fireworks" Brief Candles takes its title from a line in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, from Macbeth's famous soliloquy: "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

This classic novel of a perfectly engineered society is “one of the most prophetic dystopian works of the twentieth century” (The Wall Street Journal). Half a millennium from now, in the World State, the watchword is that every one belongs to every one else. No matter what class of human you are bred to be—from the intellectual Alphas to the Epsilons who provide the manual labor—you are a part of the efficient, well-oiled whole. You are nourished, secure, and blissfully serene thanks to the freely distributed drug called soma. And while sex is strongly encouraged, the old way of procreation is forbidden, eliminating even the pains of childbirth. But when a man and woman journey beyond these confines to where the “savages” reside, and bring back two outsiders, the cracks begin to show. Named as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library, Brave New World is one of the first truly dystopian novels. Influenced by the historic events of Huxley’s era yet as relevant today as ever, it is a remarkable depiction of the conflict between progress and the human spirit. “Chilling. . . . That he gave us the dark side of genetic engineering in 1932 is amazing.” —Providence Journal-Bulletin “It is a frightening experience, indeed, to discover how much of his satirical prediction of a distant future became reality in so short a time.” —The New York Times Book Review

The pandemic unleashed a strange half-world - not the comfortably familiar one we all knew and loved, but one in which we had to tread carefully and remain vigilant. Subsequently, it became a game of risk management that created tensions between the political desire to return to some form of normality and the need to protect lives. Inevitably, this conflict of interests led to confusion, confrontation and, sadly, deaths. Despite some catastrophic misjudgements at the governmental level, we ourselves must also shoulder some of the blame. Social media added fuel to the fire for those who chose to challenge the official guidance as an infringement on their personal freedoms and rights and preferred to interpret events as evidence of institutional conspiracies. Amid this mayhem, our planet was suffering. It was estimated that one million of our eight million species on Earth are threatened with extinction – some within decades. A report by WWF and the Zoological Society of London revealed that animal populations globally had plunged by 68% in more than twenty thousand populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish in the last fifty years.

Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs. You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills. Discover the brave new world of Aldous Huxley's classic novel, written in 1932, which prophesied a society which expects maximum pleasure and accepts complete surveillance - no matter what the cost.

While it is common knowledge that Abraham Lincoln’s writings were influenced by the King James Bible, until now no full-length study has shown the precise ways in which the Gettysburg Address uses its specific language. This revealing investigation provides a new way to think about the speech and its author.

When Aldous Huxley wrote his famous novel Brave New World, he did so with the sincere belief that the dystopian world he created was a true possibility given the direction of the social, political and economic world order. Written almost thirty years later, Brave New World Revisited is a re-evaluation of his predictions based on the changes he had witnessed in the meantime. In this twelve-part essay, Huxley argues that society is moving toward his dystopian vision even faster than he had originally assumed, and provides his own suggestions on how to bring an end to this decadent decline. Brave New World Revisited condemns symptoms of modern life such as overpopulation, propaganda and extreme government control while providing a staunch defence of individualism. Despite being published over fifty years ago, the problems identified in Brave New World Revisited are still startlingly relevant, lending a chilling creditability to Aldous Huxley’s unsettling predictions. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.