Δοκίμιο & Πολιτισμός

Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.

Written in Paris in the early 1950s, this book created instant controversy in its analysis of modern society that had allowed itself to be hypnotized by socio-political doctrines, and to accept totalitarian terror on the strength of a hypothetical future.

Shop and eat like a Florentine with this pocket-sized guide to the best of the magnificent Tuscan city known for its art, culture, and cuisine. Celebrated graphic designer and self-described Italophile Louise Fili, with connoisseur of all things Lisa Apatoff, takes you on eight updated walks through Florence, discussing more than seventy of the city's most alluring shops--some run by the same families for generations, others offering young entrepreneurs' fresh interpretations of traditional techniques. Discerning travelers will discover rare books and charming hats; vintage Pucci and handmade shoes; cioccolata da bere (drinkable chocolate); colorful buttons; and bolts of rich silk fabric in this enchanting introduction to makers and purveyors of clothing, home decor, accessories, specialty foods, and much more.

Two authors with decades of experience promoting human rights argue that, as the world changes around us, rights hardly imaginable today will come into being. A rights revolution is under way. Today the range of nonhuman entities thought to deserve rights is exploding-not just animals but ecosystems and even robots. Changes in norms and circumstances require the expansion of rights: What new rights, for example, are needed if we understand gender to be nonbinary? Does living in a corrupt state violate our rights? And emerging technologies demand that we think about old rights in new ways: When biotechnology is used to change genetic code, whose rights might be violated? What rights, if any, protect our privacy from the intrusions of sophisticated surveillance techniques?Drawing on their vast experience as human rights advocates, William Schulz and Sushma Raman challenge us to think hard about how rights evolve with changing circumstances, and what rights will look like ten, twenty, or fifty years from now. Against those who hold that rights are static and immutable, Schulz and Raman argue that rights must adapt to new realities or risk being consigned to irrelevance. To preserve and promote the good society-one that protects its members' dignity and fosters an environment in which people will want to live-we must at times rethink the meanings of familiar rights and consider the introduction of entirely new rights. Now is one of those times. The Coming Good Society details the many frontiers of rights today and the debates surrounding them. Schulz and Raman equip us with the tools to engage the present and future of rights so that we understand their importance and know where we stand.

With an introduction by Dr. Laurence Marlow. A spectre is haunting Europe (and the world). Not, in the twenty-first century, the spectre of communism, but the spectre of capitalism. Marx's prediction that the state would wither away of its own accord has proved inaccurate, and he did not foresee the tyrannies which have ruled large parts of the globe in his name. Indeed, he would have been appalled if he had witnessed them. But his analysis of the evils and dangers of raw capitalism is as correct now as when it was written, and some of his suggestions (progressive income tax, abolition of child labour, free education for all children) are now accepted with little question. In a world where capitalism is no longer held in check by fear of a communist alternative, The Communist Manifesto (with Socialism Utopian and Scientific, Engels's brief and clear exposition of Marxist thought) is essential reading. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 is Engels's first, and probably best-known, book. With Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, it was and is the outstanding study of the working class in Victorian England.

Η Εύη Βουτσινά, που εδώ και δώδεκα τουλάχιστον χρόνια γυρίζει ολόκληρη την Ελλάδα καταγράφοντας το γαστρονομικό της πολιτισμό, με το βιβλίο αυτό επιστρέφει στις ρίζες της. Η αναζήτησή της δεν περιορίζεται σε συνταγές. Την ενδιαφέρουν οι τεχνικές παρασκευής των φαγητών, οι ανθρώπινες συνθήκες κι όλα εκείνα τα «μικρά» που χαρίζουν σε κάθε παρασκεύασμα τη χαρακτηριστική του γεύση, όλα εκείνα που συνθέτουν το ήθος των φαγητών. Εντέλει, συλλέγοντας συνταγές αλλά και ιστορίες γύρω από αυτές, η Εύη Βουτσινά εργάζεται σαν λαογράφος: στα βιβλία της πρωταγωνιστούν οι κύκλοι του χρόνου, ο ρυθμός και η αρμονία της φύσης· πρωταγωνιστεί η ουσία της ελληνικής μαγειρικής (και, ευρύτερα, της μεσογειακής), που είναι το μέτρο. Μα πάνω απ’ όλα πρωταγωνιστούν οι άνθρωποι: εκείνοι που αποδέχονται να μοιραστούν μαζί μας τις μνήμες τους, που αναλαμβάνουν να αφηγηθούν γοητευτικές ιστορίες από τα παλιά, οι οποίες γεφυρώνουν με απλότητα το χτες με το σήμερα. Το βιβλίο της Εύης Βουτσινά Λευκαδίτικα μαγειρέματα τιμήθηκε με το Βραβείο Gourmet 2008-2009 στην κατηγορία Βιβλίο Γαστρονομίας Έλληνα Συγγραφέα.

Nussbaum pursues this “noble but flawed” vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the seventeenth century, Adam Smith during the eighteenth century, and various contemporary thinkers. She confronts its inherent tensions: the ideal suggests that moral personality is complete, and completely beautiful, without any external aids, while reality insists that basic material needs must be met if people are to realize fully their inherent dignity. Given the global prevalence of material want, the lesser social opportunities of people with physical and cognitive disabilities, the conflicting beliefs of a pluralistic society, and the challenge of mass migration and asylum seekers, what political principles should we endorse? Nussbaum brings her version of the Capabilities Approach to these problems, and she goes further: she takes on the challenge of recognizing the moral claims of nonhuman animals and the natural world.

The insight that politics ought to treat human beings both as equal to each other and as having a worth beyond price is responsible for much that is fine in the modern Western political imagination. The Cosmopolitan Tradition extends Nussbaum’s work, urging us to focus on the humanity we share rather than all that divides us.

We are living through a cost of living crisis, with interest rate hikes and the prices of everyday consumables and energy bills sky-rocketing. Why is this happening? Sometimes we are told that wages are too high, or that the government has "printed" too much money or that events far away, such as the war in Ukraine, are solely to blame. The plain argument that high prices go together with high profits, falling wages, and weak production is often distorted and hidden by mainstream commentary in the media and elsewhere.

This plain-speaking pamphlet tells it straight: the big businesses dominating production and distribution make huge profits out of high inflation, while working people lose out. It sets out factual evidence to illustrate that the source of record profits is the fall in real wages as inflation rises. A large part of the income of working people is being transferred directly into the profits of big business.

The pamphlet shows that the deeper roots of the "cost of living crisis" lie in the very low investment and poor productivity growth for many years. The basic steps to resolving the crisis are simple: prices, especially of essentials, must be brought down, and wages, salaries, benefits, and pensions must be increased.

When Edward Lear set off from Corfu for Crete in April 1864, it was in no very optimistic frame of mind. For the last nine years Corfu had been his winter home but after half a century of British rule the island had been ceded to Greece and Lear felt obliged to move. His livelihood required an immediate expedition to new scenes and he probably assumed that another book of Mediterranean travels would be likely to sell. So it was that he chose Crete.