The Double Vision

The Double Vision originated in lectures delivered at Emmanuel College in the University of Toronto, the texts of which were revised and augmented.

**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST ART BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY ARTNEWS** The first and definitive biography of the celebrated collectors Dominique and John de Menil, who became one of the greatest cultural forces of the twentieth century through groundbreaking exhibits of art, artistic scholarship, the creation of innovative galleries and museums, and work with civil rights. Dominique and John de Menil created an oasis of culture in their Philip Johnson-designed house with everyone from Marlene Dietrich and René Magritte to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. In Houston, they built the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, the Cy Twombly Gallery, and underwrote the Contemporary Arts Museum. Now, with unprecedented access to family archives, William Middleton has written a sweeping biography of this unique couple. From their ancestors in Normandy and Alsace, to their own early years in France, and their travels in South America before settling in Houston. We see them introduced to the artists in Europe and America whose works they would collect, and we see how, by the 1960s, their collection had grown to include 17,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, rare books, and decorative objects. And here is, as well, a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the art world of the twentieth century and the enormous influence the de Menils wielded through what they collected and built and through the causes they believed in.

In 1993 the Liberals came to power on a traditional party platform of social spending and strong federalism. Yet under the pressures of office, they moved to slash spending and to cede power to the provinces. The Liberals led the fight against Quebec separatism, confident of an easy victory. Yet the separatists lost by a razor-thin margin in a shocking referendum that brought Canada to the brink of dissolution. Here is the inside story of the Jean Chretien government: the high drama, the low gossip, the secret deals and blunders, as men and women jockeyed for power while the nation faced momentous challenges--restoring its fiscal stability and preserving its very existence. Told by two of Canada's most respected journalists, Double Vision is a compelling inside account of a party in search of its soul...and a country in search of its future.

From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls A powerfully thought-provoking portrait of modern warfare from one of the modern masters of war fiction 'Barker is one of our most significant contemporary novelists' Daily Telegraph 'The characters grab hold at the beginning and never loosen their grip. Barker holds us by the sheer beauty of her writing' Financial Times 'Barker has a quite extraordinary ability to combine complexity and clarity and to make both seem parts of the same whole' Sunday Times Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself. Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times.

Hamlet tells Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. In Double Vision, philosopher and literary critic Tzachi Zamir argues that there are more things in Hamlet than are dreamt of--or at least conceded--by most philosophers. Making an original and persuasive case for the philosophical value of literature, Zamir suggests that certain important philosophical insights can be gained only through literature. But such insights cannot be reached if literature is deployed merely as an aesthetic sugaring of a conceptual pill. Philosophical knowledge is not opposed to, but is consonant with, the literariness of literature. By focusing on the experience of reading literature as literature and not philosophy, Zamir sets a theoretical framework for a philosophically oriented literary criticism that will appeal both to philosophers and literary critics. Double Vision is concerned with the philosophical understanding induced by the aesthetic experience of literature. Literary works can function as credible philosophical arguments--not ones in which claims are conclusively demonstrated, but in which claims are made plausible. Such claims, Zamir argues, are embedded within an experiential structure that is itself a crucial dimension of knowing. Developing an account of literature's relation to knowledge, morality, and rhetoric, and advancing philosophical-literary readings of Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and King Lear, Zamir shows how his approach can open up familiar texts in surprising and rewarding ways.

Almost two decades ago a car accident thrust Rina Morrell’s life into darkness.

In the second book of the action-packed Double Vision series, ordinary twelve-year-old Linc Baker must go undercover in Washington, DC, to stop a CIA mole from assassinating the president. With an unforgettably funny voice, high-stakes espionage, and real American spy history dating back to the Revolutionary War, this is the latest adventure in the Double Vision series that ALA Booklist says "fans of Alex Rider and 39 Clues will love." After the government receives a threat on the president's life from someone named Dagger, supersecret spy agency Pandora wants Linc to go to Washington, DC, to protect the first daughter, Amy, and find the dangerous double of George Washington's legendary coat, rumored to make its wearer invincible. Unfortunately for Linc, his by-the-book agent nemesis, Ben Green, is already on the case and making him look bad. With Amy's help, Linc will have to dig deep into the history of America's first spies—the Culper Ring—to beat Ben at his own game and stop Dagger before it's too late.

Does one ever escape from the family? How much do we understand about our own past? How do we come to be who we are? Walter Abish, the internationally acclaimed author of "How German Is It, examines these questions through the prism of his own experience, and confronts and encapsulates the historic upheavals of the mid-twentieth century in this brilliant, deceptively simple, and quietly wrenching account of his two journeys. The first begins in Vienna, where Abish was born in the 1930s in the Jewish, but not-too-Jewish, household of a prosperous perfumer. Then it ricochets around the world as his parents flee first to France (his mother had to sneak alone across the Italian border), then to war-torn Shanghai under Japanese occupation, just ahead of Mao's army, then to Israel. Incapable of understanding his family's desperate situation, Abish as a boy creates his own private world, filtering out precarious and terrifying realities. Abish describes fantastic events in the coolest tones. In precise, haunting detail, he records the perceptions of a child who registers and remembers what he will only later understand. He writes of the day in the park when a stranger suddenly screams "Jews out!" and he and his frail grandmother run for the exit in a panic as the other children and grandmothers stand and watch; the day his father is released by the Gestapo because a man in the room owes him money that he has never tried to collect and says, "Let Abish go--he's okay"; of the time his father speaks to him about inheriting his perfume business, as they stand on the deck of a ship bound for China. The first journey recounts the flight; the second journey chronicles the return: Abish writes about how, in the 1980s, he went on a tour to Germany to launch the translation of his award-winning novel "How German Is It--a book he wrote without ever having set foot there, deliberately, because he wished to elicit the idea of Germanness in what was "a fantasy of Germany." This tour of what to him is an unfamiliar society includes a side trip to Vienna, where he glimpses the life he might have experienced and has the horrifying feeling that he never left. "Double Vision is a book that cuts to the quick. With unflinching candor, humor, and affection, Abish re-creates the way it feels to be a child and to look at your parents and wonder who they are. To be an adult and catch them in every corner of your personality. To look back on the world of your youth and realize both what you noticed and what you missed. It is a stunning achievement.