Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Pub. Date
[2010]
Description
"Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift is one of the greatest satirical works ever written. Through the misadventures of Lemuel Gulliver, his hopelessly "modern" protagonist, Swift exposes many of the follies of the English Enlightenment, from its worship of science to its neglect of traditional philosophy and theology. In Swift's eighteenth century, as in our twenty-first, a war being fought between the "ancients"and the "moderns", between those rooted...
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
Every hoax is a curtain, and behind it is a deceiver operating levers and smoke machines to make us see what is not there and miss what is. As P.T. Barnum knew, you can short-circuit critical thinking in any century by telling people what they want to hear. Most scams operate on a personal scale, but some have shaped the balance of world power, inspired explorers to sail uncharted seas, derailed scientific progress, or caused terrible massacres. A...
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
From the epic of Gilgamesh, almost two thousand years BCE, to the modern fantasies of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, authors have created fictional realms that have captivated audiences. Miller has guided a team of writers to unlock the mysteries and meanings of nearly 100 fantastical and awe-inspiring lands. The essays explore the contemporary events and circumstances that influenced each work, and examine how elements...