Disenchanted Wanderer is the first comprehensive English-language study in over half a century of the life and ideas of Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831–1891), one of the most important thinkers in nineteenth-century Russia on political, social, and religious matters. Glenn Cronin gives the reader a broad overview of Leontiev's life and varied career as novelist, army doctor, diplomat, journalist, censor, and, late in life, ordained monk. Reviewing Leontiev's creative work and his writing on aesthetics and literary criticism—notable figures such as Belinsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy appear—Cronin goes on to examine Leontiev's sociopolitical writing and his theory of the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations, placing his thought in the context of his contemporaries and predecessors including Hegel, Herzen, and Nietzsche, as well as Danilevsky, Pobedonostsev, and other major figures in Slavophile and Russian nationalist circles. Cronin also examines Leontiev's religious views, including his ascetic brand of Orthodoxy, informed by his experiences of the monastic communities of Mount Athos and OptinaPustyn, and his late attraction to Roman Catholicism under the influence of the theologian Vladimir Solovyev. Disenchanted Wanderer concludes with a review of Leontiev's prophetic vision for the twentieth century and his conviction that, after a period of wars, socialism would triumph under the banner of a new Constantine the Great. Cronin considers how far this vision foretold the rise to power of Joseph Stalin, an aspect of Leontiev's legacy that previously had not received the attention it merits. Elevating Leontiev to his proper place in the Russian literary pantheon, Cronin demonstrates that the man was not, as is often maintained, an amoralist and a political reactionary but rather a deeply moral thinker and a radical conservative.

Disenchanted Wanderer is the first comprehensive English-language study in over half a century of the life and ideas of Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831–1891), one of the most important thinkers in nineteenth-century Russia on political, social, and religious matters. Glenn Cronin gives the reader a broad overview of Leontiev's life and varied career as novelist, army doctor, diplomat, journalist, censor, and, late in life, ordained monk. Reviewing Leontiev's creative work and his writing on aesthetics and literary criticism—notable figures such as Belinsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy appear—Cronin goes on to examine Leontiev's sociopolitical writing and his theory of the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations, placing his thought in the context of his contemporaries and predecessors including Hegel, Herzen, and Nietzsche, as well as Danilevsky, Pobedonostsev, and other major figures in Slavophile and Russian nationalist circles. Cronin also examines Leontiev's religious views, including his ascetic brand of Orthodoxy, informed by his experiences of the monastic communities of Mount Athos and OptinaPustyn, and his late attraction to Roman Catholicism under the influence of the theologian Vladimir Solovyev. Disenchanted Wanderer concludes with a review of Leontiev's prophetic vision for the twentieth century and his conviction that, after a period of wars, socialism would triumph under the banner of a new Constantine the Great. Cronin considers how far this vision foretold the rise to power of Joseph Stalin, an aspect of Leontiev's legacy that previously had not received the attention it merits. Elevating Leontiev to his proper place in the Russian literary pantheon, Cronin demonstrates that the man was not, as is often maintained, an amoralist and a political reactionary but rather a deeply moral thinker and a radical conservative.

A bold, provocative reckoning with our current political delusions and dysfunctions. Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the world. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, his cold political vision continues to see through any number of human political and ethical vanities. In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the world of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors, and disappointments. The collapse of the USSR ushered in an era of near apoplectic triumphalism in the West: a genuine belief that a rational, liberal, well-managed future now awaited humankind and that tyranny, nationalism, and unreason lay in the past. Since then, so many terrible events have occurred and so many poisonous ideas have flourished, and yet our liberal certainties treat them as aberrations that will somehow dissolve. Hobbes would not be so confident. Filled with fascinating and challenging observations, The New Leviathans is a powerful meditation on historical and current folly. As a species we always seem to be struggling to face the reality of base and delusive human instincts. Might a more self-aware, realistic, and disabused ethics help us?

Many generations ago was destroyed the arctic stronghold of Drauglir. Five hundred years later, rumours spread of the evil demigod’s second coming, with terrible consequences for the world of Lindormyn. In the remote northern town of Nordwas a ramshackle group is assembled by the ambitious warrior Nibulus, under the guidance of a mage-priest, to set off on the long and perilous journey back to Melhus to ensure that Drauglir is properly despatched this time round. This quest includes two foreign mercenaries, three bickering priests, a young esquire . . . and, last but not least, Bolldhe the unsociable ‘wanderer’. Their eventful progress through a desolate terrain embroils them regularly with a wide array of races, creatures, giants and sorcerers – and with terrifying adventures which will affect each of them differently.

She hates her family. He's hiding behind his teenage sex life. They form a band as an escape. On tour, can they start over....or will all secrets come out on the open road? Carla Bucchio never cared about things like boyfriends and SATs. If she did, maybe life at 20 would be more exciting than developing photos on Long Island. When she chooses the guitar over a social life, it only makes sense because no one talks to her anyway. Music may be Pete Albrecht's life but what good is his talent if he has no one to share it with? When he's not getting bitched about coffee at work, he's getting nagged about college by his girlfriend. What would they say if they really knew about him? At the outset of the new millennium where boy bands and backup dancers have saturated pop culture, the two college dropouts start a rock band. Despite his girlfriend's manipulations and her mother's drunken disapproval, they form a secret connection through the music. Before heading out on their cross-country tour, tragedy turns the world upside down forcing them to decide if the band is just a teenage dream or their gateway to freedom...and to each other? Slanted and Disenchanted is the provocative first book in Lisa Czarina Michaud's coming-of-age Disenchanted series. Told with wry humor with nostalgic 90's undertones, it's High Fidelity meets Moxie that explores sexual tension in friendships, the confusion of adulting, the love and chaos of family....and the soundtracks that get us through it all. Readers of Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, Girl by Blake Nelson, and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan will fall for Slanted and Disenchanted! Jump on tour today!

This is the first book exclusively devoted to the Civil War writings of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, arguably the most important poets of the war. The essays brought together in this volume add significantly to recent critical appreciation of the skill and sophistication of these poets; growing recognition of the complexity of their views of the war; and heightened appreciation for the anxieties they harbored about its aftermath. Both in the ways they come together and seem mutually influenced, and in the ways they disagree, Whitman and Melville grapple with the casualties, complications, and anxieties of the war while highlighting its irresolution. This collection makes clear that rather than simply and straightforwardly memorializing the events of the war, the poetry of Whitman and Melville weighs carefully all sorts of vexing questions and considerations, even as it engages a cultural politics that is never pat. Contributors: Kyle Barton, Peter Bellis, Adam Bradford, Jonathan A. Cook, Ian Faith, Ed Folsom, Timothy Marr, Cody Marrs, Christopher Ohge, Vanessa Steinroetter, Sarah L. Thwaites, Brian Yothers

A deftly crafted biography of the author of Siddhartha, whose critique of consumer culture continues to inspire millions of readers. Against the horrors of Nazi dictatorship and widespread disillusionment with the forces of mass culture and consumerism, Hermann Hesse’s stories inspired nonconformity and a yearning for universal values. Few today would doubt Hesse’s artistry or his importance to millions of devoted readers. But just who was the author of Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian? Gunnar Decker weaves together previously unavailable sources to offer a unique interpretation of the life and work of Hermann Hesse. Drawing on recently discovered correspondence between Hesse and his psychoanalyst Josef Lang, Decker shows how Hesse reversed the traditional roles of therapist and client, and rethinks the relationship between Hesse’s novels and Jungian psychoanalysis. He also explores Hesse’s correspondence with Stefan Zweig—recently unearthed—to find the source of Hesse’s profound sense of alienation from his contemporaries. Decker’s biography brings to life this icon of spiritual searching and disenchantment who galvanized the counterculture in the 1960s and feels newly relevant today.

Painting the Novel: Pictorial Discourse in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction focuses on the interrelationship between eighteenth-century theories of the novel and the art of painting – a subject which has not yet been undertaken in a book-length study. This volume argues that throughout the century novelists from Daniel Defoe to Ann Radcliffe referred to the visual arts, recalling specific names or artworks, but also artistic styles and conventions, in an attempt to define the generic constitution of their fictions. In this, the novelists took part in the discussion of the sister arts, not only by pointing to the affinities between them but also, more importantly, by recognising their potential to inform one another; in other words, they expressed a conviction that the theory of a new genre can be successfully rendered through meta-pictorial analogies. By tracing the uses of painting in eighteenth-century novelistic discourse, this book sheds new light on the history of the so-called "rise of the novel".