The Burning Mirror

This publication would not have been what it is without the help of many institutions and people, which I acknowledge most gratefully. I thank the Central Library and Documentation Center, Iran, and its director, Mr. Iraji Afshar, for permission to publish photo graphs of that part of ms. 392 of the Shrine Library, Meshhed, containing Diocles' treatise. I also thank the authorities of the Shrine Library, and especially Mr. Ahmad GolchTn-Ma'anT, for their cooperation in providing photographs of the manuscript. Mr. GolchTn Ma'anT also sent me, most generously, a copy of his catalogue of the astronomical and mathematical manuscripts of the Shrine Library. I am grateful to the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and the Universiteits-Bibliotheek, Leid'en, for providing me with microfilms of manuscripts I wished to consult, and to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, for granting me access to its manuscripts. The text pages in Arabic script and the Index of Technical Terms were set by a computer-assisted phototypesetting system, using computer programs developed at the University of Washington and a high-speed image-generation phototypesetting device. A continuous stream of text on punched cards was fed through the Katib formatting program, which broke up the text into lines and pages and arranged the section numbers and apparatus on each page. Output from Katib was fed through the compositor program Hattat to create a magnetic tape for use on the VideoComp phototypesetter.

The Burning Mirror is a collection of short stories that mixes the steamy and the spiritual, the subtle, the baroque and the brutal.

Light is an elusive and paradoxical force. It cannot be 'seen', but neither is it a pure abstraction. The Burning Mirror critically examines the dazzling impact of light's much-neglected ambivalences on photographic histories, theories and practices. The burning mirror with which Luce Irigaray critiques Plato's simile of the cave is invoked to direct this blinding light squarely onto photography. The photographic practices of solarisation, lens flare, overexposure and the blinding light of the flash are examined, as well as analyses of photographs by Maurice Tabard, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Catherine Yass, Tokihiro Sato and Danielle Thompson. This is a new, multifaceted mode of photographic critique.

Gavin Guile is missing, leaving Kip and his allies to face the White King's horde in the fourth novel of the NYT bestselling Lightbringer series by Brent Week's. When does an empire fall? The Seven Satrapies have collapsed into four-and those are falling before the White King's armies. Gavin Guile, ex-emperor, ex-Prism, ex-galley slave, formerly the one man who might have averted war, is now lost, broken, and trapped in a prison crafted by his own hands to hold a great magical genius. But Gavin has no magic at all. Worse, in this prison, Gavin may not be alone. Kip Guile will make a last, desperate attempt to stop the White King's growing horde. Karris White attempts to knit together an empire falling apart, helped only by her murderous and possibly treasonous father-in-law Andross Guile. Meanwhile, Teia's new talents will find a darker use-and the cost might be too much to bear. Together, they will fight to prevent a tainted empire from becoming something even worse. Devour this blockbuster epic fantasy series that had Peter V. Brett saying, "Brent Weeks is so good, it's starting to tick me off!"

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A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! A New York Times Notable Book For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India. In this National Book Award Longlist honoree and “gripping thriller with compassionate social commentary” (USA Today), Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely—an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor—has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear. Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a breakneck pace on complex themes that read here as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams in a country spinning toward extremism. An extraordinary debut.