Tag "literature"
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
“The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.” Want to fix something, anything? Get hold of this book. Rather than a shop or repair
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Book Review: Niall Ferguson’s Civilization – Six Ways the West Beat the Rest
In much the same way Marxists internationalists held on to the belief that the workers’ revolution would sweep the world before it, today’s neoconservatives are convinced theirs is the only way forward. In this, neocons are but the most recent
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Piketty’s Capital: A Problem Analysed In-Depth but not Solved
When a book on economics cites Honoré de Balzac and Jane Austen to provide evidence, one cannot fail to take note. It sure beats the rather uninspiring conclusion that R > G and this means trouble. The rate of return
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In Search of Lost Time
“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.” A novel in seven volumes with a total page count of well over 4,000, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) is reportedly the
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If This Is Man / The Truce
“A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.” A Jewish chemist from Turin, Primo Levi was picked up
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The Pursuit of Love
“Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives.” A Bright Young Thing from the roaring twenties, Nancy Mitford perhaps best epitomises the
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The Good Soldier Švejk
“And somewhere from the dim ages of history the truth dawned upon Europe that the morrow would obliterate the plans of today.” Why read Catch-22 when the original on which Joseph Heller fashioned his memorable work is readily available? Catch-22
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Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Highly controversial when first published in 1963, Eichmann in Jerusalem draws the picture of a man reduced to
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Moby-Dick or, The Whale
“For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” The Great American Novel par excellence, Moby-Dick was a commercial failure and had gone out-of-print by the time its
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The Compleat Angler
“Oh the brave Fisher’s life, It is the best of any, ‘Tis full of pleasure, void of strife, And ’tis belov’d of many: Other joys Are but toys; Only this Lawful is, For our skill Breeds no ill, But content
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