Книги издательства Oxford University Press

Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction
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Год: 2009
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Описание: This book charts a path through the outpouring of efforts to understand and explain modern terrorism, by asking what makes terrorism different from other forms of political, military action; what makes it effective; and what can be done about it. It unravels complex central questions such as whether terrorists are criminals, whether terrorism is a kind of war, what kind of threat terrorism represents, how far media publicity sustains terrorism, and whether democracy is especially vulnerable to terrorist attack. It examines the historical ideological and local roots of terrorist violence, and the success of specific terrorist and anti-terrorist campaigns in the more distant as well as the recent past.
The World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction
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Год: 2009
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Описание: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is scarcely ten years old, but it has already generated a mountain of debate, controversy, and outrage. Rulings on beef hormones and tuna-dolphin cases provide explicit examples of how the organization regulates into areas of individual consumer choice, ethical preferences, and cultural habits. The deep and far-ranging impact of the WTO on peoples' everyday lives means that it is not just an institution of interest to economists, but to everyone, a fact that was perhaps most graphically illustrated by the demonstrations that have become a regular feature associated with high-level meetings of the WTO. This book provides a carefully considered explanation of what the WTO is, what it does, and how it goes about executing its tasks, and gives a clear understanding of the mandate, structure, and functioning of the WTO that is essential to appreciating the controversy behind the organization.
Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
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Год: 2009
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Описание: India has a long, rich, and diverse tradition of philosophical thought, spanning some two and a half millennia and encompassing several major religious traditions. In this intriguing introduction to Indian philosophy, the diversity of Indian thought is emphasized. It is structured around six schools of thought that have received classic status. Sue Hamilton explores how the traditions have attempted to understand the nature of reality in terms of inner or spiritual quest and introduces distinctively Indian concepts, such as karma and rebirth. She also explains how Indian thinkers have understood issues of reality and knowledge--issues that are also an important part of the Western philosophical tradition. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
Commercial Law: Text, Cases, and Materials
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Commercial Law: Text Cases and Materials has been an indispensable and hugely popular resource for students of law and business management for over ten years. Combining extracts from cases and other materials with substantial commentary and explanatory text, Sealy and Hooley provide context for the extracts, question their significance, and provide an authoritative guide to commercial law. This book follows a very clear structure, discussing topics covered on commercial law courses not as separate entities, but as part of a coherent whole, enabling students to easily make links between different areas of the law. Fundamental concepts such as ownership, possession, and good faith run through the book, offering common themes connecting each area. The authors supply extensive commentary on key decisions, helping students to focus on the most important areas; also provided are European and American examples, ensuring that students have access to a comparative analysis of commercial law as it operates throughout the world. Praised for the clarity of writing and mapping well onto a variety of courses, the emphasis throughout this book is on practical application — how is the law used in practice? Diagrams and questions enable students to check progress and consolidate understanding. While maintaining the previous edition's successful structure and style, this edition takes into account all of the major changes in the law since 2003 and provides extracts from recent key cases.
Kafka: A Very Short Introduction
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Franz Kafka is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the last century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation. His other three novels, published after his death, helped to found his reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century. Discussing both Kafka's crisis-ridden life and the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson provides an intriguing and accessible look at the life of this fascinating author. Using Metamorphosis as a recurring example, Robertson shows how Kafka's work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed «the death of God».
Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction
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Год: 2009
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Описание: 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!»
Build Up to Countdown: Workbook with Key and Multirom Pack (+ CD-ROM)
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Год: 2007
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Описание: A complete intermediate course which develops essential language skills and introduces students to a wide range of exam tasks. Especially written and designed for young teenagers.
Robinson Crusoe
Название: Robinson Crusoe
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Год: 2010
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Описание: 'I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I saved his Life... I likewise taught him to say Master'. Robinson Crusoe's seafaring adventures are abruptly ended when he is shipwrecked, the solitary survivor on a deserted island. He gradually creates a life for himself, building a house, cultivating the land, and making a companion from the native whose life he saves. Daniel Defoe's enthralling story-telling and imaginatively detailed descriptions have ensured that his fiction masquerading as fact remains one of the most famous stories in English literature. On one level a simple adventure story, the novel also raises profound questions about moral and spiritual values, society, and man's abiding acquisitiveness. This new edition includes a scintillating Introduction and notes that illuminate the historical context.
The Rainbow
Название: The Rainbow
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Год: 2009
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Описание: In The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence challenged the customary limitations of language and convention to carry into the structures of his prose the fascination with boundaries and space that characterize the entire novel. Condemned and suppressed on first publication for its open treatment of sexuality and its «unpatriotic» spirit, the novel chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Название: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Combining a sensational story of a man's physical and moral decline through alcohol, a study of marital breakdown, a disquisition on the care and upbringing of children, and a hard-hitting critique of the position of women in Victorian society, this passionate tale of betrayal is set within a stern moral framework tempered by Anne Brontes optimistic belief in universal redemption. It tells the story of the estranged wife of a dissolute rake, desperate to protect her son from his destructive influence, in full flight from a shocking world of debauchery and cruelty. Drawing on her first-hand experiences with her brother Branwell, Brontes novel scandalized contemporary readers and still retains its power to shock today. The new introduction by Josephine McDonagh sheds light on the intellectual and cultural context of the novel, its complex narrative structure, and the contemporary moral and medical debates about alcohol and the body with which the novel engages. Based on the authoritative Clarendon text, the book has an improved chronology, an up-to-date bibliography, and many informative notes.
The Professor
Название: The Professor
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Год: 2009
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Описание: The hero of Charlotte Bront�'s first novel escapes a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous but manipulative Zora�de Reuter, complicates his affections for a penniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school. Also included in this edition is Emma, Charlotte Bront�'s last, unfinished novel. Both works are drawn from the original Clarendon texts.
The Aspern Papers and Other Stories
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Год: 2009
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Описание: An American editor with an enthusiasm for the works of Jeffrey Aspern, a romantic poet of the early 19th century, goes to Venice to acquire the letters that Aspern wrote to his mistress, a Miss Bordereau, whom he called «Juliana.» Under an assumed name he rents a suite in the ancient palace where she lives in poverty and seclusion with her niece, Miss Tina. He finds that the old lady is shrewd and haughty and accepts him as a lodger only to put aside money for the future of Miss Tina, a timid, unattractive spinster much in awe of her aunt. During his residence with them, the editor wins the friendship of Miss Tina, to whom he reveals his mission. Leaving Venice for a fortnight, he returns to find that Miss Bordereau has died. Miss Tina, who is clearly in love, Welcomes him expectantly, but confesses that she could only give him the papers if he were «a relative». In addition to «The Aspern Paper», this collection contains «The Private Life», «The Middle Years», and «The Death of the Lion», as well as prefaces by Henry James, a chronology of his life, and editor's notes.
Symposium
Название: Symposium
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Год: 2009
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Описание: In his celebrated masterpiece, Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC. The guests--including the comic poet Aristophanes and Plato's mentor Socrates--each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness, and a brilliant sketch of Socrates himself by a drunken Alcibiades, the most popular and notorious Athenian of the time. Engaging the reader on every page, this new translation conveys the power, humor, and pathos of Plato's creation and is complemented by full explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction.
Shirley
Название: Shirley
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Shirley is Charlotte Bronte e's only historical novel and her most topical one. Written at a time of social unrest, it is set during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when economic hardship led to riots in the woollen district of Yorkshire. A mill-owner, Robert Moore, is determined to introduce new machinery despite fierce opposition from his workers; he ignores their suffering, and puts his own life at risk. Robert sees marriage to the wealthy Shirley Keeldar as the solution to his difficulties, but he loves his cousin Caroline. She suffers misery and frustration, and Shirley has her own ideas about the man she will choose to marry. The friendship between the two women, and the contrast between their situations, is at the heart of this compelling novel, which is suffused with Bronte's deep yearning for an earlier time.
The Secret Agent
Название: The Secret Agent
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be «a simple tale» proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a full and up-to-date bibliography, a comprehensive chronology and a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a «monstrous town», a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery. It also discusses contemporary anarchist activity in the UK, imperialism, and Conrad's narrative techniques.
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress
Название: Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Roxana (1724), Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiography of a woman who has traded her virtue, at first for survival, and then for fame and fortune. Its narrator tells the story of her own «wicked» life as the mistress of rich and powerful men. Endowed with many seductive skills, she is herself seduced: by money, by dreams of rank, and by the illusion that she can escape her own past. This edition uses the rare first edition text, with a new Introduction, detailed Notes, textual history and a map of contemporary London.
Hard Times
Название: Hard Times
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Hard Times--Dickens's shortest novel and one of his triumphs--tells the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father and has had lasting appeal to generations of readers.
Basil
Название: Basil
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Год: 2009
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Описание: In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to Margaret Sherwin, and the consequent horrors of betrayal, insanity, and death, Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the first half of the nineteenth century. Collins' treatment of adultery shocked contemporary reviewers, and even today the passionate and lurid atmosphere he created has the power to disturb the modern reader.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Название: Tess of the d'Urbervilles
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Год: 2009
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Описание: Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice. Hardy's indictment of society's double standards, and his depiction of Tess as «a pure woman», caused controversy in his day and has held the imagination of readers ever since. Hardy thought it his finest novel, and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created. This unique critical text is taken from the authoritative Clarendon edition, which is based on the manuscript collated with all Hardy's subsequent revisions.
Villette
Название: Villette
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Год: 2009
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Описание: About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.