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  The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde

  Philosophical Library

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  A comprehensive selection of his quips, aphorisms, and wit 
  One of the most well known personalities of his day, Oscar Wilde charmed and beguiled readers and audiences with his eloquent and biting observations, his smart quips, and the witticisms peppering his own speech and the speech of his characters. The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde collects both his best-loved quotes and longer excerpts, revealing a man wise to human nature and his times, and never shy with his searing comments on men, women, art, behavior, children, politics, youth, and a range of other topics. Drawing from his plays, articles, reviews, speeches, letters, and other works, this definitive volume is an entertaining immersion into the world of this charming genius.  
   

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  Charles Stewart Parnell A...

  F.S.L. Lyons

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  In this masterly biography, F.S.L. Lyons tackles the life and times of one of the greatest Irish statesmen of modern times. One of modern Irish biography's great triumphs, Charles Stewart Parnell has never been approached or surpassed.
  
  Charles Stewart Parnell, an enigmatic, icy aristocrat, was the unlikely and unchallenged leader of Irish nationalism from the mid-1870s, in its early heroic phase. Without him, Home Rule would not have become the formidable cause that it was.
  
  Daniel O'Connell first articulated modern Irish nationalism; Parnell first organised it. As leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1875 until his death in 1891, Parnell became a figurehead for Irish nationalist ambition and used his influence to further the cause of Irish independence in the British parliament.
  
  Parnell not only mobilised nationalist Ireland, exploiting discontent with the land system and a desire for political autonomy, he also subverted the usages of nineteenth-century British politics by supporting the introduction of the filibuster into the House of Commons. He divided Gladstone's Liberal party between those who supported Home Rule and those who opposed it and generally forced the Irish question to the heart of British politics where it remained until 1922. Even today, the continuing uncertainty over the future of Northern Ireland is a remote legacy of Parnell.
  
  Parnell's fall – the product of his doomed and passionate love affair with Katharine O'Shea – was the most traumatic moment in nationalist history before 1916. It divided a generation. The passions it gave rise to, brilliantly recalled in the Christmas dinner scene of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, are fully explored in this magnificent work of scholarship.
  Charles Stewart Parnell: Table of Contents
  
  - The Meeting of the Waters
  - Apprenticeship
  - Rising High
  - Crisis
  - In the Eye of the Storm
  - Kilmainham
  - The New Course
  - Gathering Pace
  - Towards the Fulcrum
  - The Galway 'Mutiny'
  - The View from Pisgah
  - In the Shadows
  - Ireland in the Strand
  - Apotheosis
  - The Crash
  - Confrontation
  - Breaking-Point
  - A Time of Rending
  - Last Chance
  - La Commedia è Finita
  - Myth and Reality

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  The Millionaire and the Mummies...

  John M. Adams

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  A biography of the Gilded Age American lawyer & tycoon, exploring his exploits from New York City’s government to the ancient tombs in Luxor, Egypt. 
   
  Egypt, the Valley of the Kings, 1905: An American robber baron peers through the hole he has cut in an ancient tomb wall and discovers the richest trove of golden treasure ever seen in Egypt. 
   
  At the start of the twentieth century, Theodore Davis was the most famous archaeologist in the world. His career turned tomb-robbing and treasure-hunting into a science. Using six of Davis’s most important discoveries—from the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s sarcophagus to the exquisite shabti statuettes looted from the Egyptian Museum not too long ago—as a lens around which to focus his American rags-to-riches tale, author John M. Adams chronicles the rise of a poor country preacher’s son. Through corruption and fraud, Davis amassed tremendous wealth in Gilded Age New York and then atoned for his ruthless career by inventing new standards for systematic excavation in the field of archaeology. He found a record eighteen tombs in the Valley and, breaking with custom, gave all the spoils of his discoveries to museums. A confederate of Boss Tweed, friend of Teddy Roosevelt, and rival of J. P. Morgan, the colorful “American Lord Carnarvon” shared his Newport mansion with his Rembrandts, his wife, and his mistress. The only reason history has forgotten Davis to a large extent is probably the fact that he stopped just short of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, the discovery of which propelled Howard Carter (Davis’s erstwhile employee) to worldwide fame just a few short years later. 
   
  Drawing on rare and never-before-published archival material, The Millionaire and the Mummies, the first biography of Theodore Davis ever written, rehabilitates a tarnished image through a thrilling tale of crime and adventure, filled with larger-than-life characters, unimaginable treasures, and exotic settings.

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  We Are The Clash

  Mark Andersen, Ralph Heibutzki

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  “An ambitious look at the last days of the Clash . . . as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years.”—Publishers Weekly   The Clash was a paradox of revolutionary conviction, musical ambition, and commercial drive. We Are The Clash is a gripping tale of the band’s struggle to reinvent itself as George Orwell’s 1984 loomed. This bold campaign crashed headlong into a wall of internal contradictions and rising right-wing power. While the world teetered on the edge of the nuclear abyss, British miners waged a life-or-death strike, and tens of thousands died from US guns in Central America, Clash cofounders Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, and Bernard Rhodes waged a desperate last stand after ejecting guitarist Mick Jones and drummer Topper Headon. The band shattered just as its controversial final album, Cut the Crap, was emerging. Andersen and Heibutzki weave together extensive archival research and in-depth original interviews with virtually all of the key players involved to tell a moving story of idealism undone by human frailty amid a climatic turning point for our world.   “The Clash’s final chapter, after guitarist Mick Jones’ 1983 departure, has largely been forgotten—until this book, in which authors Mark Andersen and Ralph Heibutzki argue that the punk pioneers were still creating vital music to the very end.”—Rolling Stone, an RS Picks/New Books   “Focuses on a very different moment in the band’s history: the point at which the group splintered in the early 1980s, and its members grappled with an onset of reactionary governments around the world.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn   “One of the most rewarding music books you’ll come across this year.”—Johns Hopkins Magazine

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  In the Mountains Green - Harvest...

  Peter Owen Jones

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  'As a boy, I would walk out into the fields alone. Looking south, I set my eyes on the far ridge, wondering, not knowing, what lay beyond it. What world existed there? Now, as a man, I stand on the top of the Downs, up on the mountains green. To the south, the land folds down to the sea, but to the north the boy is there looking back at me…'
  In a series of joyous, reflective and inspired diary pieces, Peter Owen Jones takes us on a voyage through the yearly cycle – a journey of inner and outer discovery. With the variety and colour of British seasonal life and the beauty of the Sussex countryside as his backdrop, Owen Jones observes the magical in the everyday – in the birds, bees and butterflies, but also in people. With lightness of touch and good humour, he calls for an awakening to the world around us, to ourselves, and ultimately to meaning in life.
  Originally published as a series of separate articles in Sussex Life magazine, the essays gathered here provide a delightful glimpse into the life of a nature-loving country parson.

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  Memoirs of a Monster Hunter - A...

  Nick Redfern

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  The British paranormal investigator recounts his five-year journey through America in pursuit of the monstrous unknown in this memoir. 
   
  For centuries, people across the world have had a fascination with monsters and strange creatures. They marvel at the tales and legends of the Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest; of the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas; of the infamous and diabolical Moth-Man of West Virginia; of fire-breathing dragons; and of those dark denizens of the deep: lake monsters and sea serpents. But do such creatures really exist? Can it be true that our planet is home to fantastic beasts that lurk deep within its forests and waters? Memoirs of a Monster Hunter proves the answer is a resounding yes! 
   
  In this follow-up to his wildly successful Three Men Chasing Monsters, paranormal investigator and author Nick Redfern chronicles his surreal road-trip through the United States and beyond in search of all-things monstrous. His strange adventures lasted five years and saw him doggedly pursuing a menagerie of creatures, including gargoyles, giant birds, and what some believe are living dinosaurs. Follow Redfern as he:Explores the El Yunque rainforest of Puerto Rico in search of the terrifying Chupacabras: a razor-clawed, glowing-eyed beast that is part giant bat and part vampireSeeks out the Goat Man: a menacing creature that evokes imagery of both demons and the fabled cloven-hoofed Centaurs of ancient mythology, and is said to inhabit the forests of East TexasChases after what many people believe are real-life, flesh-and-blood werewolves that surface from hidden lairs and prowl the countryside when the Moon is full 
   
  Part X-Files, part Crocodile Hunter with a mix of Jurassic Park and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter takes you on a roller-coaster ride into the unknown. Read personal accounts of the monsters that inhabit your wildest imagination and your worst nightmares. The creatures you were told couldn’t possibly exist, really do. 
   
  Praise for Memoirs of a Monster Hunter 
   
  “This is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Redfern sweeps you away on his personal adventure. Around the world, from romance, to ghastly beasts, to the cosmos, Redfern has candidly shared the wonders of his young life.” —Joshua P. Warren, author of Pet Ghosts and How to Hunt Ghosts

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