Almost everyone has wondered at some time or another why morality requires what it appears to require and how, if at all, it speaks to us. In "Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality, " David Wiggins surveys the answers most commonly proposed for such questions-gathering insights from Hume, Kant, the utilitarians and the post-utilitaritarian thinkers of the twentieth century. The view of morality he then proposes draws not only on Hume but on other sources as diverse as Aristotl...

Spanning almost seven centuries, this anthology encapsulates the foundation and consolidation of literature written in English, culminating in some of the finest works produced in English in the high Middle Ages. New edition of this widely-used anthology of Old and Middle English literatureNow extended to include newly-edited versions of Old English Wonders of the East, of Poema Morale, extracts from Julian of Norwich and Margery KempeFull translations are offered for the Old and earlier Midd...

What is art history? Why, how, and where did it originate, and how have its methods changed over time? The history of art has been written and rewritten since classical antiquity. Since the foundation of the modern discipline of art history in Germany in the late eighteenth century, debates about art and its histories have intensified. Historians, philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists among others have changed our notions of what art history has been, is,and might be.

This antholog...

`It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I had to say.' As Joris -Karl Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no other. Resisting the models of classic nineteenth-century fiction, it focuses on the attempts of its anti-hero, the hypersensitive neurotic and aesthete, Des Esseintes, to escape Paris and the vulgarity of modern life. Holed up in his private mu...

From the bestselling author of Blink and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success overturns conventional wisdom about genius to show us what makes an ordinary person an extreme overachiever. Why do some people achieve so much more than others? Can they lie so far out of the ordinary?In this provocative and inspiring book, Malcolm Gladwell looks at everyone from rock stars to professional athletes, software billionaires to scientific geniuses, to show that the story...

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his `most finely worked' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling...

Frederick Douglass's Narrative recounts his life as a slave in Maryland and escape to freedom in 1838. An important slave autobiography, it is significant both for what it tells us about slave life and about its author. It is here reprinted with contexualizing source material and other writings by Douglass, as well as an introduction discussing its literary and historical significance.

This is a groundbreaking, technical analysis of yacht design, linked to the theory and testing of how a sailing yacht behaves underway. It is cutting edge - the author (a world expert in the field) has drawn his conclusions from years of research, analytical testing in wind tunnels and tanks, and his results represent the state of the art in performance prediction which underlies all modern yacht design. State of the art and with a revolutionary modern approach, Aero-hydrodynamics and the Per...

Optimization is an important tool used in decision science and for the analysis of physical systems used in engineering. It begins with very simple ideas progressing through more complicated concepts, concentrating on methods for both unconstrained and constrained optimization.

In this accessible book, Anthony Thiselton introduces the apostle Paul, sometimes described as the founder of Christianity, to students and the general reader.