Theory and Aesthetics

By Josef Albers Foreword by Nicholas Fox Weber “One of the most important books on color ever written.”—Michael Hession, Gizmodo “Interaction of Color with its illuminating visual exercises and mind-bending optical illusions, remains an indispensable blueprint to the art of seeing. . . . An essential piece of visual literacy.“—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’ unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers. This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers. Josef Albers, one of the most influential artist-educators of the twentieth century, was a member of the Bauhaus group in Germany during the 1920s. In 1933 he came to the United States, where he taught at Black Mountain College for sixteen years. In 1950 he joined the faculty at Yale University as chairman of the Department of Design. The recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, Albers was the first living artist ever to be given a solo retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Paperback193 pages | 40 color illustrations, 16 line drawingsYale University Press, 2013Originally published in 19636 x 0.6 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780300179354Artist Monographs, Art History, Color Theory

Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition

By Hannah ArendtEdited by Jerome Kohn and Thomas Wild A deluxe expanded edition of the masterpiece of political philosophy that transformed how the world thinks about fascism and authoritarianism Includes two fascinating chapters that were later cut and are available in no other edition In 1951, a monumental book by a relatively unknown German-Jewish émigré addressed the terrifying new mode of political organization underlying the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism. Herself a refugee from Nazi persecution, Hannah Arendt sought, from her exile in New York City, to answer the unfathomable questions raised by the Soviet gulag and the Holocaust: How could there be such barbarism in the midst of civilization? How had governments exerted such absolute control over citizens, terrorizing them and enlisting them to commit atrocities on their behalf? Arendt’s historical and cultural analyses extend to a thorough examination of nineteenth-century antisemitism in Europe, including a trenchant account of the Dreyfus Affair in France and brilliant insights into imperialism, racism, and their role in totalitarianism’s rise in the 1920s and 1930s. Arendt contends that totalitarianism, as a political system, is now embedded in contemporary life and is, as she would later remark, “the central event of our world.” Her clear-eyed warning that totalitarianism is not merely a historical episode but is rather a permanent feature of modernity and beyond—a danger never to be fully eradicated, and a continual temptation for anti-democratic demagogues—makes Arendt, a half-century after her death, a preeminent thinker and political philosopher for the twenty-first century. The Library of America edition of this indispensable and influential work, based on the final version she revised in her lifetime, also restores to print Arendt’s “Concluding Remarks” to the 1951 first American edition and a chapter on the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt of 1956, both of which were cut from later editions. The first annotated edition of Origins, the volume contains concise and thorough glosses on Arendt’s many historical and cultural references, and its Chronology provides a detailed portrait of her remarkable life. Hardcover900 pagesLibrary of America, 20254.8 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781598538069Political Theory, Philosophy

Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism Expanded Edition

By Elisabeth Young-Bruehl Winner of the 1983 Alfred Harcourt Prize Award for Biography and Memoirs“Both a personal and an intellectual biography...It represents biography at its best.”—Peter Berger, front page, The New York Times Book Review“A story of surprising drama...At last, we can see Arendt whole.”—Jim Miller, Newsweek“Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or...the example of Hannah Arendt.”—Mark Feeney, Boston Globe This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book’s 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject’s life and achievement. Paperback620 pagesYale University Press, 20046.2 x 1 x 7.2 inchesISBN 9780300105889Biography, Philosophy

Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Second Edition

Edited with an introduction by Peter Baehr A collection of writings by a groundbreaking political thinker, including excerpts from The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in JerusalemShe was a Jew born in Germany in the early twentieth century, and she studied with the greatest German minds of her day—Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers among them. After the rise of the Nazis, she emigrated to America where she proceeded to write some of the most searching, hard-hitting reflections on the agonizing issues of the time: totalitarianism in both Nazi and Stalinist garb; Zionism and the legacy of the Holocaust; federally mandated school desegregation and civil rights in the United States; and the nature of evil. The Portable Hannah Arendt offers substantial excerpts from the three works that ensured her international and enduring stature: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Additionally, this volume includes several other provocative essays, as well as her correspondence with other influential figures. Paperback575 pagesPenguin Classics, 20035.1 x 1.1 x 7.7 inchesISBN 9780142437568Philosophy

The Portable Hannah Arendt

By Hannah ArendtIntroduction by Jonathan Schell “Arendt’s admirers will welcome her excursion into the relatively neglected field of comparative revolution. She is never dull, enormously erudite, always imaginative, original and full of insights.”—The Sunday Times, LondonA unique and fascinating look at violent political change by one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century and the author of Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt’s penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the eighteenth-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the twentieth century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future. Illuminating and prescient, this timeless work will fascinate anyone who seeks to decipher the forces that shape our tumultuous age.Paperback 368 pages Penguin, 2006Originally published in 1963 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches ISBN 9780143039907Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy

On Revolution

By Walter Benjamin Introduction by Susan SontagClassic collection of Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essays.Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions.This collection, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, showing the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.Paperback480 pagesVerso Books, 2021Originally published in 19795 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781839761652Philosophy

One-Way Street And Other Writings

Original Price: $24.95UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Frances Cannon Foreword by Esther Leslie An illuminated tour of Walter Benjamin's ideas; a graphic translation; an encyclopedia of fragments. Walter Benjamin was a man of letters, an art critic, an essayist, a translator, a philosopher, a collector, and an urban flâneur. In his writings, he ambles, samples, and explores. With Walter Benjamin Reimagined, Frances Cannon offers a visual and literary response to Benjamin's work. With detailed and dreamlike pen-and-ink drawings and hand-lettered text, Cannon gives readers an illuminated tour of Walter Benjamin's thoughts—a graphic translation, an encyclopedia of fragments. Cannon has not created a guide to Benjamin's greatest ideas—this is not an illustrated Walter Benjamin cheat sheet—but rather a beautifully rendered work of graphic literature. Cannon doesn't plod through thickets of minutiae; she strolls—a flâneuse herself—using Benjamin's words and her own drawings to construct a creative topography of Benjamin's writing. Phrases from “Unpacking My Library,” for example, are accompanied by images of flying papers, stray books, stacked books—books “not yet touched by the mild boredom of order”—and a bearded mage. Cannon takes the reader through different periods of Benjamin's writing: “Artifacts of Youth,” nostalgic musings on his childhood; “Fragments of a Critical Eye,” early writings, political observations, and cultural criticism; “Athenaeum of Imagination,” meditations on philosophy and psychology; “A Stroll through the Arcades,” Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus; and “A Collection of Dreams and Stories,” experimental and fantastical writings. With drawings and text, Cannon offers a phantasmagorical tribute to Benjamin's wandering eye. Hardcover184 pagesMIT Press, May 20197 x 9 x 0.7 inchesISBN 9780262039963Graphic Novel, Philosophy, Urban Studies, Poetry

Walter Benjamin Reimagined: A Graphic Translation of Poetry, Prose, Aphorisms, and Dreams

By Walter BenjaminEdited and translated by Howard Eiland “In Early Writings, Howard Eiland covers the earliest period of Benjamin’s extant oeuvre that helped form the critical project that dominated his literary and philosophical career. This volume’s range provides a comprehensive account of Benjamin’s development from an ardent advocate of youth and educational reform to a philosophically committed critic of literature.”—David Ferris, University of Colorado at Boulder“In the introduction, editor and translator Eiland does a wonderful job of explaining how the essays relate to events in Benjamin’s early adult life and to the evolution of his theories…These pieces offer the reader valuable insight into Benjamin’s philosophical thought.”—Scott Duimstra, Library Journal“This is a valuable addition to the available work in English of one of the seminal Jewish critical thinkers of the 20th century, author of the massive Arcades Project. The mostly lambent translations by editor Eiland and others…help place Benjamin’s later work within the context of his early preoccupations.”—Publishers WeeklyWalter Benjamin became a published writer at the age of seventeen. Yet the first stirrings of this most original of critical minds—penned during the years in which he transformed himself from the comfortable son of a haute-bourgeois German Jewish family into the nomadic, uncompromising philosopher-critic we have since come to appreciate—have until now remained largely unavailable in English. Early Writings, 1910-1917 rectifies this situation, documenting the formative intellectual experiences of one of the twentieth century's most resolutely independent thinkers.Here we see the young Benjamin in his various roles as moralist, cultural critic, school reformer, and poet-philosopher. The diversity of interest and profundity of thought characteristic of his better-known work from the 1920s and 30s are already in evidence, as we witness the emergence of critical projects that would occupy Benjamin throughout his intellectual career: the role of the present in historical remembrance, the relationship of the intellectual to political action, the idea of truth in works of art, and the investigation of language as the veiled medium of experience.Even at this early stage, a recognizably Benjaminian way of thinking comes into view—a daring, boundary-crossing enterprise that does away with classical antitheses in favor of the relentlessly-seeking critical consciousness that produced the groundbreaking works of his later years. With the publication of these early writings, our portrait of one of the most significant intellects of the twentieth century edges closer to completion.Hardcover320 pagesBelknap Press, 20115.3 x 1.1 x 9.1 inchesISBN 9780674049932Philosophy, Anthology

Early Writings (1910-1917)

By Walter BenjaminEdited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings “Readers new to Benjamin will find this a welcome introduction to a challenging but rewarding writer. Those already familiar with his work will be grateful to be reminded, once again, of the wisdom of his maxim, ‘all the decisive blows are struck left-handed.’”—Graham McCann, Financial Times“The appeal of Benjamin’s writing, according to Terry Eagleton, lies in the way it ‘manages marvellously to combine…[Marxist] ‘aesthetics’ with the entrancing esotericism of the Kabbala.…Benjamin is admired not in spite of but because of his arcane syntax, murky vocabulary, and buried meanings….You have to seek the truth in Benjamin’s writings, if you have the patience, and not treat them as conveying knowledge. There is an awful lot of husk to burn in the process, but the theory of truth, if true, explains the obscurity.”—Arthur C. Danto, Artforum“Selected Writings, Volume I increases our understanding of this most important of writers exponentially. There is nothing like Benjamin, and I can hardly imagine a more rewarding book being published this year.”—David Wheatley, The Irish Times Walter Benjamin was one of the most original and important critical voices of the twentieth century, but until now only a few of his writings have been available in English. Harvard University Press has now undertaken to publish a significant portion of his work in definitive translation, under the general editorship of Michael W. Jennings. This volume, the first of three, will at last give readers of English a true sense of the man and the many facets of his thought. Volume I of the Selected Writings brings together essays long and short, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements. Fully five-sixths of this material has never before been translated into English. The contents begin in 1913, when Benjamin, as an undergraduate in imperial Germany, was president of a radical youth group, and take us through 1926, when he had already begun, with his explorations of the world of mass culture, to emerge as a critical voice in Weimar Germany’s most influential journals. The volume includes a number of his most important works, including Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin, Goethe’s Elective Affinities, The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism, The Task of the Translator, and One Way Street. He is as compelling and insightful when musing on riddles or children’s books as he is when dealing with weightier issues such as the philosophy of language, symbolic logic, or epistemology. Paperback528 pages | 7 halftonesHarvard University Press, 20046.25 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780674013551Philosophy, Criticism, Anthology

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926

By Walter BenjaminEdited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith “For those who know only the small selection of essays and longer texts previously translated into English, this book may be a revelation. Selected Writings, Volume 2, spanning the period from his abandonment of academia and his emergence as an important literary journalist in 1927 to his near silencing after the Nazis seized power and his exile in 1934, shows [Walter Benjamin] at his sparkling best….All his published work of this time is included here, from a few longer essays on themes as varied as the history of photography and Kafka to three-page pieces on recent French fiction, art history, ‘the crisis of the novel,’ food and the effects of hashish. The new book also includes a generous selection of Benjamin’s notes, diary entries and drafts. Interesting in themselves, and indispensable to anyone seeking insight into Benjamin’s thinking, they also offer a view of the writer at work, developing different aspects of a thought or recycling successful paragraphs from one assignment to another.”—Paul Mattick, The New York Times Book ReviewIn the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts. In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, “Surrealism” and “On the Image of Proust,” as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany’s newspapers. Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays (“Franz Kafka,” “Karl Kraus,” and “The Author as Producer”) the extended autobiographical meditation “A Berlin Chronicle”; extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer; and previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology, and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.Paperback480 pagesHarvard University Press, 20056.3 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780674015883Philosophy, Sociology, Anthology

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 1

Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith “Volume 2 of the Harvard edition, a welcome project that I cannot praise enough, is filled with astonishingly ‘annihilating trivia,’ as astonishing, I dare say, as Benjamin’s half-dozen fully realized monographs. Thanks to it, his luminosity, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of his premature death, is happily in focus.”—Ilan Stavans, The Forward“This second volume of [Walter Benjamin’s] selected writings covers all aspects of the time, with the great figures of European thought in the background. Surrealism, Russian films, Chaplin, Keller, Kafka, Gide, Proust, hashish, children’s toys and literature, Hoffmansthal, travel, Goethe, Berlin life, radio talks, Stefan George—it is all here and all living….This volume cannot be praised too highly.”—Gene Shaw, Library JournalIn the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts. In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, “Surrealism” and “On the Image of Proust,” as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany’s newspapers. Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays (“Franz Kafka,” “Karl Kraus,” and “The Author as Producer”) the extended autobiographical meditation “A Berlin Chronicle”; extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer; and previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology, and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.Paperback480 pagesHarvard University Press, 20056.3 x 9.25 inchesISBN: 9780674017467Philosophy, Theory, Criticism, Anthology

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2

By Walter BenjaminEdited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings “The quintessential Benjamin gesture of Volume 3 is the 1936 selection of letters by a wide assortment of figures from the German Romantic era, together with his brief, meticulously sympathetic commentaries, contained in German Men and Women….It is the story primarily of friendships amidst the passages and misfortunes of time, and of ideas as the substance of friendship: Their exchange becomes the fabric that connects one individual to another, and binds each to their precarious, uncertain lives.”—Howard Hampton, The Village Voice Radical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie—such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third in a four-volume set, offers twenty-seven brilliant pieces, nineteen of which have never before been translated. The centerpiece, A Berlin Childhood around 1900, marks the first appearance in English of one of the greatest German works of the twentieth century: a profound and beautiful account of the vanished world of Benjamin's privileged boyhood, recollected in exile. No less remarkable are the previously untranslated second version of Benjamin's most famous essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," with its striking insights into the relations between technology and aesthetics, and German Men and Women, a book in which Benjamin collects twenty-six letters by distinguished Germans from 1783 to 1883 in an effort to preserve what he called the true humanity of German tradition from the debasement of fascism. Volume 3 also offers extensively annotated translations of essays that are key to Benjamin's rewriting of the story of modernism and modernity—such as The Storyteller and Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century—as well as a fascinating diary from 1938 and penetrating studies of Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka, and Eduard Fuchs. A narrative chronology details Benjamin's life during these four harrowing years of his exile in France and Denmark. This is an essential collection for anyone interested in his work. Paperback480 pagesBelknap Press, 20066.4 x 0.9 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780674019812Philosophy, Criticism, Anthology

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935-1938

By Walter BenjaminEdited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings “The final volume in this collection of the German philosopher’s writing, this title covers the last three years of Benjamin’s life and is masterfully translated, edited, and annotated. Presented here are Benjamin’s grandest themes: the arcades of Paris, Baudelaire, the concept of remembrance, and materialist theology. Also included is the third version of Benjamin’s most famous essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” which was unpublished in the author’s lifetime. This essay alone makes the volume indispensable for any scholar of interwar literature, philosophy, or modern European thought. Together with the first three volumes in the set (1996–2002), this is one of the most remarkable editorial achievements in contemporary thought and politics.”—M. Uebel, Choice“Every line we succeed in publishing today…is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness.” So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not long afterward, he himself would fall prey to those powers, a victim of suicide following a failed attempt to flee the Nazis. However insistently the idea of catastrophe hangs over Benjamin’s writings in the final years of his life, the “victories wrested” in this period nonetheless constitute some of the most remarkable twentieth-century analyses of the emergence of modern society. The essays on Charles Baudelaire are the distillation of a lifetime of thinking about the nature of modernity. They record the crisis of meaning experienced by a civilization sliding into the abyss, even as they testify to Benjamin’s own faith in the written word.This volume ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. At their core is the question of how art can survive and thrive in a tumultuous time. Here we see Benjamin laying out an ethic for the critic and artist—a subdued but resilient heroism. At the same time, he was setting forth a sociohistorical account of how art adapts in an age of violence and repression.Working at the height of his powers to the very end, Benjamin refined his theory of the mass media that culminated in the final version of his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. Also included in this volume is his influential piece On the Concept of History, completed just before his death. The book is remarkable for its inquiry into the nature of “the modern” (especially as revealed in Baudelaire), for its ideas about the transmogrification of art and the radical discontinuities of history, and for its examples of humane life and thought in the midst of barbarism. The entire collection is eloquent testimony to the indomitable spirit of humanity under siege.Paperback496 pages | 4 halftonesHarvard University Press, 20066.3 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780674022294Philosophy, Sociology, Anthology

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940

By Walter BenjaminTranslated from the German by Harry ZohnA classic account of late nineteenth-century Paris and a study of Baudelaire’s life and workWalter Benjamin, one of the foremost cultural commentators and theorists of this century, is perhaps best known for his analyses of the work of art in the modern age and the philosophy of history.Yet it was through his study of the social and cultural history of the late nineteenth-century Paris, examined particularly in relation to the figure of the great Parisian lyric poet Charles Baudelaire, that Benjamin tested and enriched some of his core concepts and themes. Contained within these pages are, amongst other insights, his notion of the flaneur, his theory of memory and remembrance, his assessment of the utopian Fourier and his reading of the modernist movement.Paperback192 pagesVerso, 20235 x 1 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781904290453Theory, Modernism

Charles Baudelaire

By Walter BenjaminIntroduction by George SteinerTranslated by John Osborne"He drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe."—Susan Sontag"If the killing of Lorca was Fascism’s first great crime against literature, Benjamin’s death was undoubtedly the second."—The Listener"Walter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century."—George SteinerThe Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.Paperback256 pagesVerso Publishers, 20235 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781804290460Literary Theory

The Origin of German Tragic Drama

By Walter BenjaminAn NYRB Classics OriginalEdited by Samuel TitanTranslated by Tess Lewis “[T]he newly published collection The Storyteller Essays, translated by Tess Lewis and edited by Samuel Titan, marks a unique achievement. . . . It provides a brief intellectual history of an essay and revivifies it.”—Clint Williamson, Full Stop“[B]ecause it is delivered without panic, quietly, in graceful sentences, from within the culture of books and criticism, it is hard at first to accept the implications of what Benjamin is saying. You suspect he is being bombastic in order for him to come back later and tell you what modern literature’s saving grace is, but the moment of redemption does not arrive. . . . Reading such claims over eighty years later, we might be reminded that every generation foresees a crisis and the end of the world as we know it. It is also possible that Benjamin had his eyes wide open at the beginning of our era and proved able to observe its salient features.”—Philip Ó Ceallaigh, The Stinging Fly The Storyteller is one of Walter Benjamin’s most important essays, a beautiful and suggestive meditation on the relation between narrative form, social life, and individual existence—and the product of at least a decade’s work. What might be called the story of The Storyteller Essays starts in 1926, with a piece Benjamin wrote about the German romantic Johann Peter Hebel. It continues in a series of short essays, book reviews, short stories, parables, and even radio shows for children. This collection brings them all together to give readers a new appreciation of how Benjamin’s thinking changed and ripened over time, while including several key readings of his own—texts by his contemporaries Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács; by Paul Valéry; and by Herodotus and Montaigne. Finally, to bring things around, there are three short stories by “the incomparable Hebel” with whom the whole intellectual adventure began. Paperback128 pagesNYRB Classics, 20195 x 0.4 x 8 inchesISBN 9781681370583Theory, Short Essays, Criticism

The Storyteller Essays

By Walter Benjamin Translated by Harry Zohn “I fully realize that my discussion of the mental climate of collecting will confirm many of you in your conviction that this passion is behind the times, in your distrust of the collector type. Nothing is further from my mind than to shake either your conviction or your distrust.” Walter Benjamin was one of the great cultural critics of the twentieth century. In Unpacking My Library he offers a strikingly personal meditation on his career as a book collector and on the strange relations that spring up between objects and their owners. Witty, erudite and often moving, this book will resonate with bibliophiles of all kinds.Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.Paperback24 pagesEris Gems, 2022Originally published in 19317.64 x 4.33 inchesISBN 9781912475841 Essays

Unpacking My Library

By Walter Benjamin Introduction by Stanley Mitchell Translated by Anna Bostock "A small bomb of ideas and vital argument."—Guardian"He does not abolish the distance between us and Leskov, or Brecht, or Kafka; he brings it to life."—Times Higher Education Supplement"If the killing of Lorca was Fascism’s first crime against literature, Benjamin’s death was undoubtedly the second."—The Listener A collection of essays of political philosophy by the renowned mid 20th-century critical theorist and literary critic The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht, both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices, continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the ‘midnight of the century’, with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it. In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin’s most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht’s oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques—such as the famous ‘estrangement effect’—Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin’s introductions to Brecht’s theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin’s insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire. Here we also find Benjamin’s masterful essay “The Author as Producer” as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht’s place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war. Paperback144 pagesVerso, 20245.5 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781804294796Literary Criticism, Theory and Aesthetics

Understanding Brecht

By Eli Friedlander “This highly original study by Friedlander is a rare attempt to expose the philosophical infrastructure of the thought of Walter Benjamin. Rather than a collection of disjointed observations on culture, the Benjaminian corpus turns, on Friedlander’s reading, into a singular testimony to the fragile and liminal possibility of philosophy that refuses to assimilate the singular under the umbrella of universal abstraction….Friedlander pays special attention to Benjamin’s relation to Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx, accentuating the problems of temporality, historicity, and a philosophically robust materialism. A laudable achievement, this volume is an exquisite dialogue between philosophy and its others, between totality and constellation, and between the universal and the singular.”—M.V. Marder, Choice“Benjamin is not, for Friedlander, just a writer or a thinker, he is a philosopher of world-historical significance, and his work is a vessel of the highest truth.”—Brian Hanrahan, Los Angeles Review of Books Walter Benjamin is often viewed as a cultural critic who produced a vast array of brilliant and idiosyncratic pieces of writing with little more to unify them than the feeling that they all bear the stamp of his "unclassifiable" genius. Eli Friedlander argues that Walter Benjamin's corpus of writings must be recognized as a unique configuration of philosophy with an overarching coherence and a deep-seated commitment to engage the philosophical tradition.Friedlander finds in Benjamin's early works initial formulations of the different dimensions of his philosophical thinking. He leads through them to Benjamin's views on the dialectical image, the nature of language, the relation of beauty and truth, embodiment, dream and historical awakening, myth and history, as well as the afterlife and realization of meaning. Those notions are articulated both in themselves and in relation to central figures of the philosophical tradition. They are further viewed as leading to and coming together in The Arcades Project. Friedlander takes that incomplete work to be the central theater where these earlier philosophical preoccupations were to be played out. Benjamin envisaged in it the possibility of the highest order of thought taking the form of writing whose contents are the concrete time-bound particularities of human experience. Addressing the question of the possibility of such a presentation of philosophical truth provides the guiding thread for constellating the disparate moments of Benjamin's writings.Hardcover304 pagesHarvard University Press, 20126.2 x 1 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780674061699Philosophy, Criticism

Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait

By Edward Skidelsky "Skidelsky gives a close, technical account of the ways in which Cassirer was never just a Marburg School stereotype; but he aligned himself neither with the logical positivists nor with the Heideggerian, existentialist tradition which between them carved up the field of 20th-century philosophy, as they arguably continue to do."—David Simpson, London Review of Books"Skidelsky's book is a must read for those interested in the history of ideas in general and for academic philosophers in particular. Indeed, philosophers, particularly of the Anglo-American variety, will find this book especially enlightening."—Kevin Aho, European Legacy"A major accomplishment and an excellent introduction to Cassirer's philosophy. Most important, Skidelsky shows that Cassirer did not simply align himself with the tradition of German political thought reaching from Humboldt and Goethe to the later Thomas Mann, but that his entire philosophy was actually subservient to the project of rethinking the basis of political liberalism. Skidelsky overturns the widely accepted view that Cassirer was an apolitical epistemologist."—John Michael Krois, author of Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History This is the first English-language intellectual biography of the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), a leading figure on the Weimar intellectual scene and one of the last and finest representatives of the liberal-idealist tradition. Edward Skidelsky traces the development of Cassirer's thought in its historical and intellectual setting. He presents Cassirer, the author of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, as a defender of the liberal ideal of culture in an increasingly fragmented world, and as someone who grappled with the opposing forces of scientific positivism and romantic vitalism. Cassirer's work can be seen, Skidelsky argues, as offering a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict between the "two cultures" of science and the humanities--and between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy. The first comprehensive study of Cassirer in English in two decades, this book will be of great interest to analytic and continental philosophers, intellectual historians, political and cultural theorists, and historians of twentieth-century Germany. Paperback304 pagesPrinceton University Press, 20086.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780691152356Biography, Philosophy

Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture

By Albert EinsteinCollected and Edited by Alice CalapriceForeword by Freeman Dyson "[The Ultimate Quotable Einstein] is a compelling selection. . . . Students of Einstein's work and life, who are familiar with these contexts, can find many embellishments to their research, and often puzzling contrary notes to customary portrayals of his stance on issues ranging from Zionism to domestic life."—ChoiceThis is the definitive edition of the hugely popular collection of Einstein quotations that has been translated into twenty-five languages.The Ultimate Quotable Einstein features roughly 1,600 quotes in all. This paperback edition includes sections unique to the ultimate collection—"On and to Children," "On Race and Prejudice," and "Einstein's Verses: A Small Selection"—as well as a chronology of Einstein's life and accomplishments, Freeman Dyson's authoritative foreword, and commentary and descriptive source notes by Alice Calaprice. Paperback608 pagesPrinceton University Press, 20134.2 x 1.8 x 7.2 inchesISBN 9780691160146Quote books, Physics

The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

Translated by Stuart Gilbert Additional text by Ulrich Baer In 1932, Albert Einstein was invited by the League of Nations to address a letter on any subject to any individual. He chose to corresponded with Sigmund Freud on avoiding war. Einstein maintained the importance of establishing an independent judiciary body to mediate conflicts. Freud agreed with this idea but also felt that “there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies.” To this day, the correspondence on war by two of the greatest thinkers of all time proves prescient and remains indispensable. The correspondence between Einstein and Freud was originally published by The International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations in 1933. Included in this edition is Freud’s essay “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” two pieces by Einstein on disarmament and the crisis facing affluent societies, and a biographical account of their original encounter and further exchanges. Paperback81 pagesWarbler Classics, 20235 x .203 x 8 inchesISBN 9781962572170

Why War? A Correspondence Between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud

By Anthony Storr "Invaluable to the novice approaching Freud's works for the first time....As an evaluation of Freud's theory, Storr's book is concise and up-to-date....An important addition to any library collection."—Choice"Storr's brief, elegant, and interesting book coolly surveys what we might term the house of Freud and finds almost everything flawed...yet he does not dispute that the builder of the shaky house was a genius."—D.M. Thomas, The Observer"A model exercise in synthesis."—The IndependentSigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, developed a totally new way of looking at human nature. Only now, with the hindsight of the half-century since his death, can we assess his true legacy to current thought. As an experienced psychiatrist himself, Anthony Storr offers a lucid and objective look at Freud's major theories, evaluating whether they have stood the test of time, and in the process examines Freud himself in light of his own ideas. An excellent introduction to Freud's work, this book will appeal to all those broadly curious about psychoanalysis, psychology, and sociology.Paperback166 pagesOxford University Press, 20016.8 x 0.6 x 4.2 inchesISBN 9780192854551Psychology

Freud: A Very Short Introduction

By Lydia FlemTranslated by Susan Fairfield The world knows Freud as a thinker—one of the founding giants of modern culture. Now Lydia Flem paints a unique and unforgettable portrait of Freud the man: a father, husband, and friend, a secular Jew with passion for classical antiquity and European culture, torn between his need to be fully accepted in an anti-Semitic society while remaining faithful to his origins.Flem enters into the depths of Freud's creativity, showing how his thinking is connected to his immersion in the arts, the history of religions, and mythology. The intimate details of his daily life, his relationships with women, his poetic gifts, his travels, his dreams, his letters to family, friends, and colleagues: all reveal his vision of the unconscious. We accompany Freud on his walks through Vienna and Rome; look over his shoulder as he writes to his fiancee; learn the significance of the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian figurines that stand before him on his desk as he conceives his groundbreaking ideas; and discover the books, read in childhood, that later shape his self-analysis and his theoretical development. Paperback220 pagesOther Press, 20146 x 0.6 x 9 inchesISBN 9781590517338Biography

Freud the Man: an Intellectual Biography

By Mary Bergstein “Visual Cultures in Freud's Vienna provides for the first time a serious and comprehensive account of seeing in Freud's Vienna. With the acumen of a brilliant historian of photography and the visual arts, Bergstein meticulously reconstructs the visual ambience of fin-de-siècle Austria, exposing many of the subliminal patterns of seeing in Freud's world. A necessary read for those engaged in understanding how our visual world limits and expands our understanding of psychic processes.” ―Sander Gilman, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Director, Program of Psychoanalysis, Emory University, USA Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna shows how photography and film in turn-of-the-century Vienna (the birthplace of psychoanalysis) not only reflected modernist ideas already in force, but helped to bring into being what might be referred to as a “psychoanalytic imagination.” Mary Bergstein demonstrates that visual images not only illustrated, but also engendered ways of seeing social, psychological, and scientific ideas during a formative time in the creation and development of psychoanalysis and the modern age. Indeed, she argues that visual culture initiated significant aspects of psychoanalytic thought.Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna examines a variety of visual materials and texts, ranging from scientific illustrations to popular "low culture" and even forms of erotica, including film. Attention is also given to women's dresses and shoes in a social context and as they are represented in photography and circulated as fetish objects.Bergstein maintains a commitment to women's history and feminist inquiry throughout, particularly in her final chapter, which is devoted to the representations of women in the erotic photography and film. Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna is well illustrated with images drawn from the sources discussed and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of modernism and psychoanalysis.Paperback240 pages | 68 color and black-and-white imagesBloomsbury Academic, 20245.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9798765111956 Sigmund Freud, Viennese Culture

Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna: Science, Eros, and the Psychoanalytic Imagination

By Sigmund Freud All human behaviors and traits, according to this 1923 study, derive from the complicated interactions of three elements of the psyche: the id, the ego, and the superego. The root of Sigmund Freud's approach to psychiatric treatment resides in bringing the id, the hidden source of human passion, to the surface. The ego—formed to negotiate the id's interactions with reality—and the superego—the critical, moralistic part of the mind—remain in constant conflict with the id's demands. Although the concept of the unconscious was not Freud's own invention, he brought it into popular awareness and pioneered its use in treating mental conditions. This groundbreaking volume constitutes one of the Viennese physician's most insightful works on the topic. In addition to positing the balancing act between the id, ego, and superego, Freud further explores the concepts of the life force and the death force, and the anxieties driven by fear, morality, and guilt. Paperback64 pagesDover Publications, 2018Originally published in 19235.1 x 0.2 x 7.9 inchesISBN 9780486821566Psychology

The Ego & The ID (Dover Thrift Editions)

By Sigmund FreudDirectly after the 1900 publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote this more concise, accessible version of his theory of dreams as disguised wish fulfillment. This classic of modern psychology contrasts scientific and popular views of dreams, considers their origins, and discusses the effects of mental mechanisms. Paperback80 pages5.2 x 0.2 x 8.3 inchesDover Publications, 2001Reprint of the William Heinemann, London, 1914 editionISBN 9780486415956Psychology

On Dreams

By Sigmund Freud Freud was fascinated by the mysteries of creativity and the imagination. The groundbreaking works that comprise The Uncanny present some of his most influential explorations of the mind. In these pieces Freud investigates the vivid but seemingly trivial childhood memories that often “screen” deeply uncomfortable desires; the links between literature and daydreaming; and our intensely mixed feelings about things we experience as “uncanny.” Also included is Freud’s celebrated study of Leonardo Da Vinci-his first exercise in psychobiography. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Paperback240 pagesPenguin Classics, 20035.1 x 0.65 x 7.75 inchesISBN 9780142437476Psychology, History

The Uncanny

By Sigmund Freud Originally published in 1918, this landmark collection of essays by the father of psychoanalysis represents one of Freud's most penetrating attempts to decipher the mysteries of human behavior. Its focus is the conflict between primitive feelings and the demands of civilization, i.e., the struggle to reconcile unconscious desires with socially acceptable behavior.Totemism involves the belief in a sacred relationship between an object (totem) and a human kinship group. Men and women bearing the same totem are prohibited from marrying each other, this being a form of incest taboo. Freud identifies a strong unconscious inclination as the basis of taboo, and he attempts to define its source by tracing the earliest appearance in childhood development of totemism. After an examination of the incest taboo in primitive societies around the world, Freud discusses taboo and the ambivalence of emotions; animism, magic, and the omnipotence of thought; and the infantile recurrence of totemism. Paperback160 pagesDover publications; Reprint edition, 2018Originally published in 19135.1 x 0.4 x 8 inchesISBN 9780486827520Psychology

Totem and Taboo (Dover Thrift Edition)

By Hannah S. DeckerThis book studies one of Freud's famous, but unhappiest cases 'Dora'—an adolescent girl from the upper-middle-class Viennese-Jewish family that he treated in his early years as a psychoanalyst. Hannah Decker does a wonderful job of locating both Freud and Dora in their historical context and of reconstructing attitudes about Jews, women, and doctors in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Decker explores the psychoanalytic encounter between Freud and the 18-year-old girl he called "Dora" against the backdrop of fin-de-siecle Vienna and against the backdrop, too, of the virulent antisemitism that characterized the period and pervaded the lives of Viennese Jews. Paperback320 pagesFree Press, 19925.5 x 0.8 x 8.4 inchesISBN 9780029072127Psychology, Austrian History

Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900

By Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-SaloméEdited by Ernst PfeifferTranslated by William Robson-Scott and Elaine Robson-Scott Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) was a writer and disciple of Freud who became a practicing analyst. For over two decades she and Freud kept up an intensive correspondence. Freud found in her a perceptive appreciator and amplifier of his ideas, and Frau Andreas found him a sympathetic critic of her own. Their exchanges on theoretical topics and clinical experiences, their admiring friendship, and the glimpses of their personalities makes this collection invaluable for readers interested in the history of psychoanalysis. Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote her first letter to Freud in 1912, asking his permission to come to Vienna for psychoanalytical training. This extraordinary Russian woman, whose intelligence and beauty captivated Nietzsche and Rilke, now captivated Freud, while she discovered in Freud's psychoanalysis the true fulfillment of her life. Freud's letters contain revealing commentaries on his working methods, his conception of narcissism, and his interpretation of Moses, and they treat the themes that preoccupied him in old age: death, religion, war. Frau Andreas's topics include her relationship to Rilke, and her reaction to his death, and the psychology of the artist. The book includes an introduction and notes by Ernst Pfeiffer, Lou Andreas-Salomé's literary executor. Paperback264 pagesW. W. Norton & Company, 19855.3 x 0.6 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9780393302615Biography, Psychology

Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé: Letters

By Élisabeth RoudinescoTranslated by Catherine Porter Original Price: $35.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS “Through seamlessly and eloquently weaving together details from Freud’s time and our own, [Roudinesco] provides a refreshingly new and welcome account—warts and all.”—Janet Sayers, Times Higher Education“What makes Freud: In His Time And Ours…such a captivating read, is the author’s ability to explain what are often complex, deeply-layered, and dark taboo subjects, into a language that is easily understood…[A] brilliant biography.”—J. P. O’Mallery, The Irish Examiner“[Roudinesco] provides an insightful, balanced, and sympathetic portrait of Freud. As she assesses Freud’s revolutionary ideas about rationality, sexuality, and the unconscious, Roudinesco demonstrates that Freud was less a scientific thinker who uncovered universal truths than a product of his time: a genius, to be sure, but very much a bourgeois shaped by society, family, and politics in the late 19th century… Her critique has an especially persuasive force because it is grounded not only in an analysis of Freud’s books, diaries, and letters but from accounts of his sessions with patients.”—Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today Élisabeth Roudinesco offers a bold and modern reinterpretation of the iconic founder of psychoanalysis. Based on new archival sources, this is Freud’s biography for the twenty-first century—a critical appraisal, at once sympathetic and impartial, of a genius greatly admired and yet greatly misunderstood in his own time and in ours.Roudinesco traces Freud’s life from his upbringing as the eldest of eight siblings in a prosperous Jewish-Austrian household to his final days in London, a refugee of the Nazis’ annexation of his homeland. She recreates the milieu of fin de siècle Vienna in the waning days of the Habsburg Empire—an era of extraordinary artistic innovation, given luster by such luminaries as Gustav Klimt, Stefan Zweig, and Gustav Mahler. In the midst of it all, at the modest residence of Berggasse 19, Freud pursued his clinical investigation of nervous disorders, blazing a path into the unplumbed recesses of human consciousness and desire.Yet this revolutionary who was overthrowing cherished notions of human rationality and sexuality was, in his politics and personal habits, in many ways conservative, Roudinesco shows. In his chauvinistic attitudes toward women, and in his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the growing threat of Hitler until it was nearly too late, even the analytically-minded Freud had his blind spots. Alert to his intellectual complexity—the numerous tensions in his character and thought that remained unresolved—Roudinesco ultimately views Freud less as a scientific thinker than as the master interpreter of civilization and culture. Hardcover592 pagesHarvard University Press, 20166.2 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780674659568Biography, Psychology

Freud: In His Time and Ours

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Introduction and Photography by Gordon L. Miller Goethe’s influential text, newly illustrated with stunning color photographs. The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe’s first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend “the truth about the how of the organism.” Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant’s metamorphosis—“the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms”—from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book—123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus—Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe’s text (in an English translation by Douglas Miller) with a series of stunning and starkly beautiful color photographs as well as numerous line drawings. It is the most completely and colorfully illustrated edition of Goethe’s book ever published. It demonstrates vividly Goethe’s ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research—which influenced thinkers ranging from Darwin to Thoreau and has much to teach us today about our relationship with nature. Paperback156 pagesRandom House, 2024Originally published in 17906 x 8 inchesISBN 9780262551021Theory, Photography

The Metamorphosis of Plants

By Anthony StorrIntroduction by Anthony StorrForeword by John Beebe "This is by far the best introduction to the work and thought of Carl Gustav Jung now available [1983]. I wish it were possible to require that every teacher and critic, cleric and cocktail-party magus who takes the name of Jung upon his tongue should have read Anthony Storr's admirable compilation at least once, for untold misunderstanding and unwarranted assumption would be saved thereby. . . . Once again, thanks and praise to Anthony Storr, clinical lecturer in psychiatry in the University of Oxford, for a masterly achievement."—Robertson Davies, The Globe and Mail"This is the best introductory book for the serious reader. Add it to the autobiography and The Freud/Jung Letters and one has the beginning of a lifetime's serious entertainment."—J. D. O'Hara, Virginia Quarterly Review"Storr has boiled down Jung's prolific thoughts on man's mental state to this generous and stimulating anthology."—Sunday StandardIn this compact volume, British psychiatrist and writer Anthony Storr has selected extracts from Jung's writings that pinpoint his many original contributions and relate the development of his thought to his biography. Storr's explanatory notes and introduction show the progress and coherence of Jung's ideas, including such concepts as the collective unconscious, the archetypes, introversion and extroversion, individuation, and Jung's view of integration as the goal of the development of the personality. Jung maintained that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves and that our most pressing task is to deflect our gaze away from the external world and toward the study of our own nature. In a world torn by conflict and threatened by annihilation, his message has an urgent relevance for every thoughtful person.Anthony Storr (1920-2001) was a consultant psychotherapist, journalist, broadcaster, and popular writer. He is the author of Solitude: A Return to the Self. John Beebe is a past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is the editor of Jung's Aspects of the Masculine and the coeditor of The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan, 1915-1916 (Princeton). Paperback448 pagesPrinceton University Press, 20135.6 x 1.3 x 8.4 inchesISBN 9780691159003Psychology

The Essential Jung: Selected and Introduced

By Jay Sherry Carl Gustav Jung has always been a popular but never a fashionable thinker. His ground-breaking theories about dream interpretation and psychological types have often been overshadowed by charges that he was anti-Semitic and a Nazi sympathizer. This award-winning study considers these allegations in the broader context of Jung's views on culture, politics, and race. In doing so, it provides a carefully considered, historically informed perspective on a figure whose legacy has been misunderstood by admirers and detractors alike. Paperback282 pagesPalgrave Macmillan, 20105.6 x 0.6 x 9.5 inchesISBN 9781137281944Psychology

Carl Gustav Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative

Original Price: $35.99 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS Edited by Julian PreeceUniversity of Kent, CanterburyContributors: Julian Preece, David Constantine, Anne Fuchs, Rolf J. Goebel, Elizabeth Boa, Ruth V. Gross, Stanley Corngold, Bill Dodd, Iris Bruce, Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Anthony Northey, Osman Durrani, Helen Hughes, Martin Brady "...a welcome addition to Kafka scholarship."—Germanic Notes and Reviews "This collection of essays holds true to the promise of its title: it is a trustworthy and helpful companion for those, be they scholar or aficionado, who seek up-to-date and well-considered observations on the writings of one of the 20th century's greatest but most enigmatic writers....[A]ll of the contributions are first-rate: they are written clearly and persuasively with authority and sophistication, and they represent a broad spectrrm of critical approaches." ChoiceThis companion of specially-commissioned essays offers a comprehensive account of his life and work, providing a rounded contemporary appraisal of Central Europe's most distinctive Modernist. Contributions cover all the key texts, and discuss Kafka's writing in a variety of critical contexts such as feminism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Jewish studies. The essays are enhanced by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading. They will be of interest to students of German, European and Comparative Literature, and Jewish Studies.Paperback280 pagesCambridge University Press, 20026 x 0.7 x 9 inchesISBN 9780521663915 Literary Criticism, Essays

The Cambridge Companion to Kafka

By Sander L. Gilman "Recognises that comprehensive, overarching interpretations . . . attenuate or simply miss the sheer strangeness of Kafka’s fictional world."—Jonathan Derbyshire, Financial TimesThe conflation of reality and the fantastic, ambiguity, the relentless confrontation with horror, the fractured sense of identity: Franz Kafka created a wholly unique and enduring worldview through his literature and life, and he remains one of the central intellectual and cultural figures of our time. Sander L. Gilman brings together Kafka's literary works, personal writings, and biography to create a compelling and wholly accessible narrative of the literary master's life.Gilman focuses on the relationship between Kafka's life and work, reconstructing both Kafka's cultural environment and the writer's conceptual understanding of his own body. Kafka's letters, diaries, and writings emerge in Gilman's analysis as windows into his ongoing attempt to create an identity in a world where being a Central European Jew dictated an uneasy fate. The volume emphasizes in particular the image and role of the Jew in Kafka's modern world and how Kafka responded to prevailing attitudes, repressive actions, and stereotypes in society at large. Gilman also examines the influence of psychoanalytic ideas on Kafka and his works, exploring how Kafka wove such psychoanalytic experiences into his literature. Gilman concludes with consideration of the "Kafka-myth" and the wealth of material emerging from it over the past eighty years, including work by such illustrious minds as Walter Benjamin and Ted Hughes. Franz Kafka features illuminating archival photographs and illustrations as well as a comprehensive bibliography and filmography of work by and about Kafka. This succinct yet penetrating volume offers valuable and original insight into how Kafka's life and work shaped how we perceive our modern society and how, indeed, some aspect of the world is always "Kafkaesque."Paperback160 pagesReaktion Books, 20055 x 0.4 x 7.9 inchesISBN 9781861892546Biography, Literary Criticism

Franz Kafka: Critical Lives

Original Price: $24.95 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Reiner StachTranslated by Shelley Frisch One of The Guardian Best Books of 2013, chosen by Colm Tóibín"Most impressive is Stach's recounting of the creation of his subject's writings. . . . Stach's own writing is wonderfully expressive."—Publishers Weekly, starred review"A scrupulous, discriminating, and highly instructive account of Kafka's life."—Robert Alter, New Republic"This extraordinary biography fills the empty spaces between Kafka's own writings and the writings of friends, family, and contemporaries with so much empathy and imagination that one can't put it down."—Frankfurter Rundschau How did Kafka become Kafka? This eagerly anticipated third and final volume of Reiner Stach's definitive biography of the writer answers that question with more facts and insight than ever before, describing the complex personal, political, and cultural circumstances that shaped the young Franz Kafka (1883–1924). It tells the story of the years from his birth in Prague to the beginning of his professional and literary career in 1910, taking the reader up to just before the breakthrough that resulted in his first masterpieces, including "The Metamorphosis". Brimming with vivid and often startling details, Stach’s narrative invites readers deep inside this neglected period of Kafka’s life. The book’s richly atmospheric portrait of his German Jewish merchant family and his education, psychological development, and sexual maturation draws on numerous sources, some still unpublished, including family letters, schoolmates’ memoirs, and early diaries of his close friend Max Brod. The biography also provides a colorful panorama of Kafka’s wider world, especially the convoluted politics and culture of Prague. Before World War I, Kafka lived in a society at the threshold of modernity but torn by conflict, and Stach provides poignant details of how the adolescent Kafka witnessed violent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and nationalism. The reader also learns how he developed a passionate interest in new technologies, particularly movies and airplanes, and why another interest―his predilection for the back-to-nature movement―stemmed from his “nervous” surroundings rather than personal eccentricity. The crowning volume to a masterly biography, this is an unmatched account of how a boy who grew up in an old Central European monarchy became a writer who helped create modern literature. Paperback584 pagesPrinceton University Press; reprint edition, 2017Originally published in 20146.1 x 1.6 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780691178189Biography, Literary Criticism

Kafka: The Early Years [Paperback]

By Costas DespiniadisTranslated by Stelios Kapsomenos "This book is a rare event: a political—in the noblest meaning of the word—interpretation of Kafka’s writings. Even better, it is an anarchist reading, against the grain of the conformist academic prose on the author of The Trial. Despiniadis brings together, with admirable talent, literature, philosophy, and contemporary revolutionary issues."—Michael Löwy, author of Franz Kafka, subversive dreamer, University of Michigan Press, 2016The study of Franz Kafka’s work has seen a steady rise in past decades, with interest broad and growing. With its breadth of sources and bold interpretation, Franz Kafka: The Anatomist of Power is a fascinating new look at one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. Of interest to both academic and public audiences, his work spans multiple disciplines, including literature, gender studies, Jewish studies, modern history, and political theory. Although Kafka has been established for many years as a leading light of Western literature, and interest in his writings continue to grow, no work has yet fully focused on Kafka’s criticism of power institutions in his literary work. The anti-authoritarian dimension of Kafka's work, long silenced in established criticism, is explored for the first time in this book. Supported by a close reading of Kafka's diaries, this book reconstructs Kafka's active participation in Prague’s anarchist circles between 1909-1912, discussing his wide interest in anarchist authors, his skepticism towards the Russian Revolution, and his ambivalent relationship with Utopian Zionism.Paperback148 pagesBlack Rose Books, 20185.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9781551646565Literature Criticism

The Anatomist of Power: Franz Kafka and the Critique of Authority

By Eric R. Kandel “In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art—and are consequently moved by it . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “A fascinating synthesis of art, history, and science that is also accessible to the general reader. A distinctive and important title that is also a pleasure to read”—Library Journal, Starred Review “Eric Kandel’s training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna.”—Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind—our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions—and how mind and brain relate to art. Kandel tells the story of how these pioneers—Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele—inspired by the Vienna School of Medicine, in turn influenced the founders of the Vienna School of Art History to ask pivotal questions such as What does the viewer bring to a work of art? How does the beholder respond to it? These questions prompted new and ongoing discoveries in psychology and brain biology, leading to revelations about how we see and perceive, how we think and feel, and how we respond to and create works of art. Kandel, one of the leading scientific thinkers of our time, places these five innovators in the context of today’s cutting-edge science and gives us a new understanding of the modernist art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele, as well as the school of thought of Freud and Schnitzler. Reinvigorating the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900, The Age of Insight is a wonderfully written, superbly researched, and beautifully illustrated book that also provides a foundation for future work in neuroscience and the humanities. It is an extraordinary book from an international leader in neuroscience and intellectual history. Hardcover656 pagesRandom House Publishers, 20126.6 x 1.6 x 9.5 inchesISBN 9781400068715Austrian History, Art History, Psychology

The Age of Insight

By Eric Kandel "Eric R. Kandel seamlessly moves between the intricacies of science and art, weaving their histories into a common narrative that illuminates both fields and shows they have more in common than is often assumed. It is a fun and informative read that anyone with a curious mind can enjoy and learn from."—Joseph LeDoux, author of Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety"Kandel's book, with one foot in the humanities and one foot in the sciences, stands comfortably in both. Writing in deceptively simple prose, not unlike the art he writes about, Kandel lucidly states the biological case for how abstract art challenges us to look so that we can see."—Jim Coddington, chief conservator, Museum of Modern Art"Kandel’s theory of how are our neurons fire in response to abstract art is illuminating. . . . One looks forward to hearing more from Kandel, a most inventive scholar, now that his bridge has been solidly built."—The New Criterion Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism―the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components―has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals. In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of our time―the brain―has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art. At the heart of the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism to the evolution of modern art and its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art reflected in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to arrive at their abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback built upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out the common concerns of science and art and how they illuminate each other. Paperback240 pagesColumbia University Press, 20185.6 x 0.6 x 8.8 inchesISBN 9780231179638Art History, Neurology

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures [Paperback]

By Karel TeigeTranslated by Greg EvansThe first English translation of Karel Teige’s “The Marketplace of Art“ in two volumes includes a critical introduction, inquiries, and extensive commentaries. Originally published in the Czech language in 1936, “The Marketplace of Art“ is the summation of Teige’s artistic, political, and theoretical work.Acclaimed as one of the leading theoreticians of avant-garde art and architecture between the two world wars, Teige’s more political writings still remain to be discovered. Written in 1936, in the context of the rising conservative right-wing culture, and during the intense debates between the avant-garde artists and the Communist Party, “The Marketplace of Art“ is a response to the capitulation of contemporary art to fascist and Stalinist currents. Teige discusses this reaction as something deeply inscribed into the culture of the bourgeoisie, which he claims is a culture “not able to create and inspire any other kind of art besides a hollow and pompous academism or sentimental kitsch.” Teige’s Marxist analysis of the art market shows in which way this culture is tied with capitalist institutions and he offers artistic and political strategies to oppose its absolutism. In today’s warmongering culture of authoritarian neoliberalism where the contemporary art market is run by oligarchs, Karel Teige’s radical critique of the art market is more relevant than ever.Edited and introduced by Sezgin Boynik and Joseph Grim Feinberg, the book is published in collaboration with Contradictions/Kontradikce Journal based in Prague. The commentary volume includes commissioned essays by Zbyněk Baladrán, Dave Beech, Jana Ndiaye Berankova, Michel Chevalier, Esther Leslie, John Roberts, and Paul Wood, as well as an inquiry on “The Marketplace of Art” with responses from František Dryje, Tomáš Hříbek, Rea Michalová, Šimon Svěrák, and Roman Telerovský.Paperback72 pages | 136 pagesRab Rab Press, 2022 4.9 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9789526938981Theory, Czech Criticism

The Marketplace of Art /  Commentary [Two Volume Set]

By Ilya ZdanevichEdited by Sezgin BoynikTranslated by Pavels Smišlajevs and Michel ChevalierThe second volume of the bie bao series presents a eulogy entitled Iliazda at the Birthday Party, a pseudo-autobiographical lecture delivered by Ilya Zdanevich in Paris in 1922. It reports on Zdanevich's artistic and political adventures up until then. Along with an autobiography full of self-admiration, in this lecture Zdanevich gives an interpretation of his zaum dramas inspired by Freudianism, and humorously describes a colorful image of the Russian microcosm in Montparnasse.Additionally, this second volume also includes Iliazd's letter to Ardengo Soffici from 1964, where one can read, in the most unambiguous terms, about Zdanevich's positions against war, imperialism, and all forms of nationalism. Subtitled 50 Years of Russian Futurism, the letter to Soffici presents us with an altogether new Zdanevich—a "fellow traveller" in both leftist and avant-garde circles. As well as the extended introduction and extensive annotations, the texts are further contextualized with Johanna Drucker's visual presentation of the birth of the Iliazd cult. Paperback96 pagesRab-Rab Press, 20226.6 x 4.3 inchesISBN 9789526938998Autobiography

Iliazda at the Birthday Party: Autiobiographical Lecture, 1922

By Ilya Zdanevich, Marzio Marzaduri, and Elvin BrandhiEdited by Sezgin BoynikThe first volume in bie bao series dedicated to militant zaum investigations of Ilya Zdanevich—Iliazd (1894-1975). Zdanevich was a poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, and publisher who developed a new philosophy and methodology from zaum (trans-sense) experiments.The first volume of the bie bao series presents Zdanevich’s talk Le degré 41 sinapisé on the “pearl disease” in language, reporting on the potential of zaum to destroy not only social and national barriers, but also the ones dividing humans and animals. This first English translation of the talk from 1922 is introduced together with a short note by Marzio Marzaduri, an Italian scholar who first published the sinapisé lecture from the manuscript in its original Russian. The volume also includes an experimental essay by Elvin Brandhi, a Welsh musician who sent her text to us from Istanbul, while on a long layover on the way to Beirut on February 22nd 2022, exactly one hundred years on from the date Zdanevich initially gave the lecture.Paperback48 pagesRab-Rab Press, 20224.3 x 6.7 inchesISBN 9789526938967Essays, Theory

Le degré 41 sinapisé: Lecture on Pearl Disease Paris 1922

Edited by Larry Warsh and Dieter Buchhart A revelatory collection of the artist’s sketches and preparatory drawings, featuring many that have never been published before The great Russian modernist painter and theorist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art. Few documents provide more insight into his evolution from figural to abstract art—or into the development of abstraction in the early twentieth century—than the pages of his sketchbooks. Featuring previously unpublished drawings, Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks is a comprehensive selection of hundreds of sketches from twelve notebooks Kandinsky kept between 1889 and 1935. Beginning with early figure studies, architectural sketches, and landscapes, the notebooks reveal a process of exploration that would lead Kandinsky from his first experiments in geometric abstraction to paintings that reshaped modernism. Demonstrating Kandinsky’s mastery of color, line, shape, composition, and movement, the book includes notes and preparatory studies for major paintings, such as the “analytical drawing” for Composition VII (1913), the first study for Several Circles (1926), and Study for Composition IX, a preliminary working of his 1936 masterpiece. Visually stunning, the book offers a remarkable, intimate look at how Kandinsky sought to discover nothing less than a spiritually transcendent form of art. Hardcover224 pages | 245 color illustrationsPrinceton University Press, 20258 x 10 inchesISBN 9780691268507Art History

Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks

Von Karl Kraus Die Aphorismen von Karl Kraus, in kleinen Gruppen zunächst in der Fackel veröffentlicht, dann von ihm selber in drei Büchern zusammengefaßt, bilden die Quintessenz seines Denkens über Natur und Gesellschaft, Eros und Kunst, Sprache und Literatur und vermitteln zugleich einen deutlichen Eindruck von seiner aufs äußerste konzentrierten Kunst der Prosa. Paperback544 pagesText in GermanSuhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1986Stories originally published in 1919, 19244.3 x 0.7 x 6.9 inchesISBN 9783518378182Aphorisms

Aphorismen

Edited by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows Meditations on Letting Go & Finding True Freedom. An elegant rendering of the great mystic's thoughts on the mysteries of the authentic life.This is a little book about soul freedom. It is a book about discovering the secret to all the things we most desire: contentment, meaning, peace of mind, and true freedom. This skillfully edited translation of selections from the writings of Meister Eckhart provides a roadmap to the spiritual life for contemporary seekers. Eckhart takes us on a journey of discovery; a journey in which we learn to let go, relinquish our need to know everything, and lose those things that we think are important for a life of worth. And in the end he shows us that the true secret is this: to find yourself, you must lose yourself. Here is timeless wisdom from a medieval mystic who has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dag Hammarskj ld, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, Rudolf Steiner, and Matthew Fox have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought. In addition, his work has influenced the development of 20th-century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition.Divided into five sections—Seeking the Light, Facing Darkness, Risking Love, Knowing Nothing, and Embracing Everything—the book leads readers on the path to an authentic spiritual life. Paperback240 pagesHampton Roads Publishing, 20195 x 0.6 x 6.9 inchesISBN 9781571748478Theory and Aesthetics, Poetry

Meister Eckharts Book of Secrets: Meditations on Letting Go and Finding True Freedom

By Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows "Each poem is short, spare, distilled. And each one is footnoted, so the reader might begin in enchantment, then trace the poetry to its source. A sure-footed path toward mastering one of the great masters of the last millennia."—Chicago Tribune Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness. However, what makes him of particular interest is the fact that he has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, and Rudolf Steiner have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought. In addition, his work has influenced the development of 20th century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition. Eckhart wrote at a time—much like our own—when society appeared to be coming apart at the seams. In the midst of all that chaos and uncertainty, he captured the many forms and stages of the love of God, the mystic path, and the journey of transformation—in language so startling that he, too, was often accused of heresy. Now, seven centuries later, this fresh, stunning rendering of his work translates the essence of one of Christianity's greatest poetic and spiritual voices. Here is a book that conveys the heart of Eckhart's teaching on what it means to love God and embark on an authentic spiritual journey—a journey that is characterized by mystery, paradox, and an embrace of the unknown. Paperback240 pagesHampton Roads Publishing, 20175 x 0.6 x 6.9 inchesISBN 9781571747648Theory and Aesthetics, Poetry

Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul

By Dr. MisesIntroduction and translation by Erik Butler A compilation of 16 rigorous, eccentric essays commissioned by the German founder of psychophysics The original 1824 German publication of Stapelia Mixta united a bevy of eccentric proposals, meditations and displays of consciously excessive learning that strove for an unusual clarity of absurdity, which was the hallmark of the pseudonymous author Dr. Mises. Aiming for a broader reading audience, it was titled after a flower, but one of such a stench as to guarantee originality. And such was the originality of these semiserious flights of excess that came under the cover of Dr. Mises, who wrote on everything from landscaping to the spiritual lives of plants and heavenly bodies while also conducting pioneering research in optics and experimental psychology.The 16 essays of this collection include discussions of dancing, drugs, immortality, perception and psychology. These increasingly inventive essays start with a relatively digestible “Encomium of the Belly” before developing into a complicated, prepataphysical exploration of Spatial Symbolism. Paperback152 pages | 11 black-and-white illustrationsWakefield Press, 20245.25 x 8 inchesISBN 9781962728010 Essays

Stapelia Mixta

By Michael Tanner "...I find Tanner's book enormously useful for introducing Nietzsche philosophically....Tanner manages to be succinct without being boring or pedantic....I think his succinct and highly critical readings encourage genuine philosophical grappling with our modern self-proclaimed Dionysus, who after all needs to be treated as a philosopher, not an idol or a god."—Teaching Philosophy"A breezy first look at Nietzsche....useful for undergraduates who need a quick and painless dose of Nietzsche's ideas."—Ethics With his well-known idiosyncrasies and aphoristic style, Friedrich Nietzsche is always bracing and provocative, and temptingly easy to dip into. Michael Tanner's introduction to the philosopher's life and work examines the numerous ambiguities inherent in his writings and explodes many of the misconceptions that have grown in the hundred years since Nietzsche wrote "do not, above all, confound me with what I am not!" Paperback118 pagesOxford University Press, 20017 x 4.4 x 0.4 inchesISBN 9780192854148Philosophy

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