The Brontesaurus

Did Charlotte Brontë take opium? Did the Reverend Brontë carry a loaded pistol? What, precisely, does ‘wuthering’ mean? Distinguished literary critic John Sutherland takes an idiosyncratic look at the world of the Brontës, from the bumps on Charlotte’s head to the nefarious origins of Mr Rochester’s fortune, by way of astral telephony, letter-writing dogs, an exploding peat bog, and much, much more. Also features ‘Jane Eyre abbreviated’ by John Crace, author of the Guardian’s ‘Digested Reads’ column – read Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece in five minutes!

"Tuning is the secret lens through which the history of music falls into focus," says Kyle Gann. Yet in Western circles, no other musical issue is so ignored, so taken for granted, so shoved into the corners of musical discourse. A classroom essential and an invaluable reference, The Arithmetic of Listening offers beginners the grounding in music theory necessary to find their own way into microtonality and the places it may take them. Moving from ancient Greece to the present, Kyle Gann delves into the infinite tunings available to any musician who feels straitjacketed by obedience to standardized Western European tuning. He introduces the concept of the harmonic series and demonstrates its relationship to equal-tempered and well-tempered tuning. He also explores recent experimental tuning models that exploit smaller intervals between pitches to create new sounds and harmonies. Systematic and accessible, The Arithmetic of Listening provides a much-needed primer for the wide range of tuning systems that have informed Western music. Audio examples demonstrating the musical ideas in The Arithmetic of Listening can be found at: https://www.kylegann.com/Arithmetic.html

Famous literary figures are given dinosaur-inspired pseudonyms and prehistoric biographies as a way of introducing young readers to classic literature in a fun and inviting new way in Jurassic Classics The Prehistoric Masters of Literature Volume 2. The book features an assortment of author biographies, each with a prehistoric twist. Mark Twainceratops, Charles Dickensodocus, and Jane Austenlovenator get dino histories, with a clever parody of one of their classic works included. Accurate biographies of the real-life authors are included, as well. Endearing illustrations and humorous dinosaur mashups provide young readers with a foundation for art history, as well as inspiring them to learn more.

This book is an investigation of the biases, contradictions, errors, ambiguities, gaps, and historical contexts in biographies of controversial British women who published during the long nineteenth century, many of them left unchecked and perpetuated from publication to publication. Fourteen scholars analyze the agenda, problems, and strengths of biographical material, highlighting the flaws, deficiencies, and influences that have distorted the portraits of women such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Sydney Owenson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Lady Florence Dixie, George Eliot, and Edith Simcox. Through exposing distortions, this fascinating study demonstrates that biographies are often more about the biographer than they are about the biographee and that they are products of the time in which they are written.

A famed and feared interviewer, Karan Thapar is known for his astute, probing questions and his persistence in getting clear answers. In this selection of tightly focused and penetrating interviews Thapar and the people he interviews examine hot-button issues of our times: India's economic health, relations with China, independence of the judiciary, being Muslim in today's India, how the nation fares 75 years after independence. Together, these interviews provide a comprehensive view of how India regards itself and its place in the world. Naseeruddin Shah / Arundhati Roy / Farooq Abdullah / Faizan Mustafa / Harish Salve / Najeeb Jung / S.Y. Quraishi / Pronab Sen / Raghuram Rajan / Naushad Forbes / Romila Thapar / Ramachandra Guha / Palanivel Thiaga Rajan / Swapan Dasgupta / Avtar Singh Bhasin / Kanti Bajpai / Shashi Tharoor / Indra Nooyi / Mahua Moitra / Madan B. Lokur / A.P. Shah / Dushyant Dave