books
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Episode 11 – The Upanishads (Part One)
Thousands of years ago, using techniques of deep meditation, Indian mystics conducted investigations into the powers of the universe and the nature of human consciousness, developing ideas about a single supreme god, the eternal soul, and the relationship of individuals to the spiritual cosmos. Their flashes of insight were passed along orally for hundreds of years before being recorded in written form sometime around 900 B.C. The best… Continue reading
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Little Black Dress? Yes. Little Black Penguin Classics? Also Yes!
Some things are so classy they just never go out of style. Like little black dresses, and little black classics from Penguin Books. Here’s another gift idea for this holiday season (along with Edward Gorey). Eighty Penguin Classics, presented in bite-sized form (i.e., novellas, short essays, selections of poems, or excerpted passages from longer books).… Continue reading
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“A Crisp and Merciless Clarity”: Mary Beard’s SPQR
I haven’t read the latest book by Mary Beard yet, but this NY Times review is certainly enough to whet my readerly appetite: How on earth did they do it? The Greek historian Polybius, writing in the second century B.C., was the first to ask the question: “Who could be so indifferent or so idle that they… Continue reading
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Writers Laughing: A Jacke Wilson Gallery
Peace on earth, good will to all…and a photo gallery of great writers caught in the act of laughing. Happy holidays! Join us on the History of Literature podcast or at the Jacke Wilson blog for more literary delights. Get the History of Literature podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS | More Subscribe Options Try the latest History… Continue reading
Alice Munro, anita desai, Flannery O’Connor, Gabriel García Márquez, garrett hongo, georges simenon, Henry Miller, j.r.r. tolkien, James Baldwin, Jean-Paul Sartre, john irving, joseph brodsky, kiran desai, kurt vonnegut, lorrie moore, margaret atwood, mary beard, norman mailer, pablo neruda, phillip roth, Ray Bradbury, Samuel Beckett, sandra cisneros, scott fitzgerald, seamus heaney, sherman alexie, Simone de Beauvoir, Stephen King, truman capote, w.e.b. dubois, Writers laughing, Zelda Fitzgerald, zora neale hurston
Jacke Wilson 