French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908 1992) is probably best known for his Quartet for the End of Time, premiered in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. However, Messiaen was a remarkably complex, intelligent person with a sometimes tragic domestic life who composed a wide range of music. This book explores the enormous web of influences in the early part of Messiaen's long life. The first section of the book provides an intellectual biography of Messiaen's early life in order to make his (difficult) music more accessible to the general listener. The second section offers an analysis of and thematic commentaries on Messiaen's pivotal work for two pianos, Visions of Amen, composed in 1943. Schloesser's analysis includes timing indications corresponding to a downloadable performance of the work by accomplished pianists Stphane Lemelin and Hyesook Kim.

Ryszard Kapuscinski's last book, The Soccer War -a revelation of the contemporary experience of war -- prompted John le Carre to call the author "the conjurer extraordinary of modern reportage." Now, in Imperium, Kapuscinski gives us a work of equal emotional force and evocative power: a personal, brilliantly detailed exploration of the almost unfathomably complex Soviet empire in our time. He begins with his own childhood memories of the postwar Soviet occupation of Pinsk, in what was then Poland's eastern frontier ("something dreadful and incomprehensible...in this world that I enter at seven years of age"), and takes us up to 1967, when, as a journalist just starting out, he traveled across a snow-covered and desolate Siberia, and through the Soviet Union's seven southern and Central Asian republics, territories whose individual histories, cultures, and religions he found thriving even within the "stiff, rigorous corset of Soviet power." Between 1989 and 1991, Kapuscinski made a series of extended journeys through the disintegrating Soviet empire, and his account of these forms the heart of the book. Bypassing official institutions and itineraries, he traversed the Soviet territory alone, from the border of Poland to the site of the most infamous gulags in far-eastern Siberia (where "nature pals it up with the executioner"), from above the Arctic Circle to the edge of Afghanistan, visiting dozens of cities and towns and outposts, traveling more than 40,000 miles, venturing into the individual lives of men, women, and children in order to Understand the collapsing but still various larger life of the empire. Bringing the book to a close is a collection of notes which, Kapuscinski writes, "arose in the margins of my journeys" -- reflections on the state of the ex-USSR and on his experience of having watched its fate unfold "on the screen of a television set...as well as on the screen of the country's ordinary, daily reality, which surrounded me during my travels." It is this "schizophrenic perception in two different dimensions" that enabled Kapuscinski to discover and illuminate the most telling features of a society in dire turmoil. Imperium is a remarkable work from one of the most original and sharply perceptive interpreters of our world -- galvanizing narrative deeply informed by Kapuscinski's limitless curiosity and his passion for truth, and suffused with his vivid sense of the overwhelming importance of history as it is lived, and of our constantly shifting places within it.

Contains all of the stories of the first two Thieves' World anthologies (Thieves' World and Tales of the Vulgar Unicorn), with additional material. Return to the Olden Days of Sanctuary! Sanctuary, a seedy, backwater town governed by evil forces, powerful magic, and political intrigue See how Thieves' World all began! Classic stories by: Robert Lynn Asprin Lynn Abbey Poul Anderson Marion Zimmer Bradley John Brunner David Drake Philip Jose Farmer Joe Haldeman Janet Morris Andrew J. Offutt A. E.van Vogt At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

On the basis of a careful analysis of Olivier Messiaen's work, this book argues for a renewal of our thinking about religious music. Addressing his notion of a "hyper-religious" music of sounds and colors, it aims to show that Messiaen has broken new ground. His reinvention of religious music makes us again aware of the fact that religious music, if taken in its proper radical sense, belongs to the foremost of musical adventures. The work of Olivier Messiaen is well known for its inclusion of religious themes and gestures. These alone, however, do not seem enough to account for the religious status of the work. Arguing for a "breakthrough toward the beyond" on the basis of the synaesthetic experience of music, Messiaen invites a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers. How to account for a religious breakthrough that is produced by a work of art? Starting from an analysis of his 1960s oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, this book arranges a moderated dialogue between Messiaen and the music theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the phenomenology of revelation of Jean-Luc Marion, the rethinking of religion and technics in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, and the Augustinian ruminations of Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-François Lyotard. Ultimately, this confrontation underscores the challenging yet deeply affirmative nature of Messiaen's music.

Rory Stewart recounts the experiences he had walking across Afghanistan in 2002, describing how the country and its people have been impacted by the Taliban and the American military's involvement in the region.

By challenging many of the assumptions, misguided presuppositions and even legends that have surrounded the legacy and reception of Franz Kafka's work during the 20th century, Howard Caygill provides us with a radical new way of reading Kafka. Kafka: In the Light of the Accident advances a unique philosophical interpretation via the pivotal theme of the accident, understood both philosophically and in a broader cultural context, that includes the philosophical and sociological basis of accident insurance and the understanding of the concepts of chance and necessity. Caygill reveals how Kafka's reception was governed by a series of accidents - from the order of Max Brod's posthumous publication of the novels and the correction of 'misprints', to many other posthumous editorial strategies. The focus on the accident casts light on the role of media in Kafka's work, particularly visual media and above all photography. By stressing the role of contingency in his authorship, Caygill also fundamentally questions the 20th century view of Kafka's work as 'kafkaesque'. Instead of a narration of domination, Kafka: In the Light of the Accident argues that Kafka's work is best read as a narration of defiance, one which affirms (often comically) the role of error and contingency in historical struggle. Kafka's defiance is situated within early 20th century radical culture, with particular emphasis lent to the roles of radical Judaism, the European socialist and feminist movements, and the subaltern histories of the United States and China.

Although philosophy today has abandoned its former fascination with transcendent invisibles, it has left largely unexamined historical articulations of the divide between 'the visible' and 'the invisible.' Vision's Invisibles argues that such a self-examination is necessary for the sensitization of philosophical sight, as well as for engagements with visuality in other domains. To this end, it investigates a range of challenging understandings of visuality in its relation to invisibles, as articulated in the texts of key historical thinkers—Heraclitus, Plato, and Descartes—and of twentieth-century philosophers, including Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Derrida, and Heidegger.