British education is regarded as being in a state of meltdown. Throughout the system, from nursery classes to degree courses, the relationship between teacher and pupil has been undermined, and the idea that children should be taught a body of rules at all, whether in maths or grammar, is now taboo in many schools. Systematic instruction has given way to approximations and guesswork, resulting in a rising tide of illiteracy. This text aims to present the inside story of a social debacle. The collapse of education is not viewed in isolation; according to the author, at the heart of the problem lies cultural and moral relativism, the doctrine that no values can be judged to be any better or worse than any others. She regards the primary effect of this, particularly in the last 20 years, to be the collapse of the authority of institutions. Sounding a warning, she offers a blueprint to restore authority and meaning to society.

The first full-scale biography of John Hay since 1934: From secretary to Abraham Lincoln to secretary of state for Theodore Roosevelt, Hay was an essential American figure for more than half a century. John Taliaferro’s brilliant biography captures the extraordinary life of Hay, one of the most amazing figures in American history, and restores him to his rightful place. Private secretary to Lincoln and secretary of state to Theodore Roosevelt, Hay was both witness and author of many of the most significant chapters in American history—from the birth of the Republican Party, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, to the prelude to World War I. As an ambassador and statesman, he guided many of the country’s major diplomatic initiatives at the turn of the twentieth century: the Open Door with China, the creation of the Panama Canal, and the establishment of America as a world leader. Hay’s friends are a who’s who of the era: Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, Henry Adams, Henry James, and virtually every president, sovereign, author, artist, power broker, and robber baron of the Gilded Age. His peers esteemed him as “a perfectly cut stone” and “the greatest prime minister this republic has ever known.” But for all his poise and polish, he had his secrets. His marriage to one of the wealthiest women in the country did not prevent him from pursuing the Madame X of Washington society, whose other secret suitor was Hay’s best friend, Henry Adams. All the Great Prizes, the first authoritative biography of Hay in eighty years, renders a rich and fascinating portrait of this brilliant American and his many worlds.

Shortlisted for the 2012 COSTA Novel AwardBilly's Mum is dead. He knows - because he reads about it in magazines - that people die every day in ways that are more random and tragic and stupid than hers, but for nineteen-year-old Billy and his little brother, Oscar, their mother's death in a bungled street robbery is the most random and tragic and stupid thing that could possibly have happened to them.Now Billy must be both mother and father to Oscar, and despite what his well-meaning aunt, the PTA mothers, the social services and Oscar's own prodigal father all think, he knows he is more than up to the job, thank you very much.The boys' new world, where bedtimes are arbitrary, tidiness is optional and healthy home-cooked meals pile up uneaten in the freezer, is built out of chaos and fierce love, but it's also a world that teeters perilously on its axis. And as Billy's obsession with his mother's missing killer grows, he risks losing sight of the one thing that really matters...Funny, bittersweet and unforgettable, Life! Death! Prizes! is a story of grief, resilience and brotherly love.

This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. Such prizes and the competitions they crown are almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and power--and their consequences for society and culture at large--have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. In a wide-ranging overview of this phenomenon, James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige. Observing that cultural prizes in their modern form originate at the turn of the twentieth century with the institutional convergence of art and competitive spectator sports, English argues that they have in recent decades undergone an important shift--a more genuine and far-reaching globalization than what has occurred in the economy of material goods. Focusing on the cultural prize in its contemporary form, his book addresses itself broadly to the economic dimensions of culture, to the rules or logic of exchange in the market for what has come to be called "cultural capital." In the wild proliferation of prizes, English finds a key to transformations in the cultural field as a whole. And in the specific workings of prizes, their elaborate mechanics of nomination and election, presentation and acceptance, sponsorship, publicity, and scandal, he uncovers evidence of the new arrangements and relationships that have refigured that field.

The million copy, Booker Prize finalist, besteller “To describe this novel as spine-tingling in its indescribable poetic effect would be to trivialize its profoundly tragic theme. Say then that it is heart-stunning.”—The New York Times It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of the twentieth century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, The White Hotel is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate.

This carefully crafted ebook: “The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll With All the Original Illustrations + The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Table of Contents: Novels: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There Sylvie and Bruno Sylvie and Bruno Concluded Stories: A Tangled Tale Bruno’s Revenge and Other Stories What the Tortoise Said to Achilles Poems: Early Verse Puzzles from Wonderland Prologues to Plays Rhyme? And Reason? College Rhymes and Notes by an Oxford Chiel Acrostics, Inscriptions and Other Verses Three Sunsets and Other Poems The Hunting of the Snark The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll is a biography written by Carroll's nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, and published in 1898. It accidentally started the entire image of Lewis Carroll as a pedophile by deliberately suppressing all the evidence for his sometimes unconventional relationships with women, explaining that some of those women had been little girls… The Victorians had no concept of our modern idea of pedophilia. In fact, a man who loved pre-pubescent girls was considered especially saintly and innocent, and this was why Collingwood over-emphasized this aspect of his uncle's character so much. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1870–1937) was an English clergyman and headmaster. He wrote two books about his uncle, Lewis Carroll.

Returning to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey for inspiration, this book uses these epics as a medium through which we might think imaginatively about key issues in contemporary medicine and medical education. These issues include doctors as heroes, and the legacy of heroic medicine in an age of clinical teamwork, collaboration and a more feminine medicine. The authors challenge ingrained habits in medical education, such as the way we characteristically “train” medical students to communicate with patients and colleagues; the reduction of compassion to the “skill” of empathy; the rote recital of the medical history as a “song”; and the new vogue for “resilience” as response to increasing levels of stress and burnout in the profession. A Homeric lens also shows new ways of thinking about translation of medical lingo into patients’ understanding, the relatively high levels of anger and error shown in clinical interactions, and modern phenomena such as “whistleblowing” in the face of unacceptable error or misbehaviour. While exhaustion and burnout are becoming more common in medicine, the authors ask if a more lyrical, rather than epic and tragic stance, might benefit medical work. Drawing on a wealth of experience in the field, the book promotes a new kind of medicine and medical education fit for the 21st century, but envisages these through the ancient lens of Homer’s two epics. In the heroic glory elaborated in the Iliad and the themes of homecoming and hospitality set out in the Odyssey, Homer provides a narrative arc that is a blueprint of modern medicine’s development from a heroic endeavour to a contemporary collaborative provision of hospitality, where the hospital remains true to its name and doctors engage in work of care rather than “fighting” disease with the hospital as battleground.

Puffin Classics: the definitive collection of timeless stories, for every child. It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then . . . On an ordinary summer's afternoon, Alice tumbles down a hole and an extraordinary adventure begins. In a strange world with even stranger characters, she meets a grinning cat and a rabbit with a pocket watch, joins a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and plays croquet with the Queen! Lost in this fantasy land, Alice finds herself growing more and more curious by the minute... Inspiring artists from Taylor Swift to Salvador Dalí, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has earned its place as one of the greatest classics of all time. 'It really is this Bible for the imagination' - BBC

【西洋英文經典有聲系列】旨在打造一個在閱讀經典名著的同時，還能親耳聆聽道地英文讀音的友善環境。讓讀者在欣賞大師的精彩文章之餘，還能一舉兩得，以耳朵來品嘗不同於單純文字的滋味。如果您的英文已達中級以上程度，與其讀些簡化的名著改寫版本，不如精讀原汁原味的原典吧，這才是貨真價實的文藝賞析。 《愛麗絲夢遊仙境》（Alice in Wonderland）是由英國作家查爾斯．路德維希．道奇森（Charles Lutwidge Dodgson）以筆名路易斯．卡羅（Lewis Carroll）創作的童話。這原本是作者本人隨興為友人的三個女兒所講的故事，後來他又增補了一些新情節與多首詩，終於完成了此書。 故事以一個名叫愛麗絲的小女孩為主角，她在夢中追逐一隻兔子而掉進一個充滿奇珍異獸的幻境。這部奇幻的童話突破了傳統兒童文學道德化說教的刻板公式，至今已經被翻譯成百餘種語言，並多次被拍成電影，成為最具影響力的童話故事之一。

Чтение оригинальных произведений – простой и действенный способ погрузиться в языковую среду и совершенствоваться в иностранном языке. Серия «Бестселлер на все времена» – это возможность улучшить свой английский, читая лучшие произведения англоязычных авторов, любимые миллионами читателей. Для лучшего понимания текста в книгу включены краткий словарь и комментарии, поясняющие языковые и лингвострановедческие вопросы, исторические и культурные реалии описываемой эпохи.В эту книгу для чтения включены две истории – «Алиса в Стране чудес» и «Алиса в Зазеркалье». Захватывающие рассказы о невероятных приключениях Алисы полны каламбуров и шуток, основанных на игре слов, а потому читать их в оригинале особенно приятно и полезно для совершенствования английского.Книга предназначена для тех, кто изучает английский язык на продолжающем или продвинутом уровне и стремится к его совершенствованию.