Autres

This is the book editors have been recommending to would-be authors who might be shocked to hear that a fine writing style usually plays only a tiny role in whether a proposal becomes a book. Instead, according to the authors, the freshness of ideas and the size of the potential audience drive the process.

Who are you? What is racism? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? What can you do to disrupt it? Learn about social identities, the history of racism and resistance against it, and how you can use your anti-racist lens and voice to move the world toward equity and liberation. 'In a racist society, it's not enough to be non-racist-we must be ANTI-RACIST.' -Angela Davis Gain a deeper understanding of your anti-racist self as you progress through 20 chapters that spark introspection, reveal the origins of racism that we are still experiencing and give you the courage and power to undo it. Each chapter builds on the previous one as you learn more about yourself and racial oppression. Exercise prompts get you thinking and help you grow with the knowledge. Author Tiffany Jewell, an anti-bias, anti-racist educator and activist, builds solidarity beginning with the language she chooses - using gender neutral words to honour everyone who reads the book. Illustrator Aurelia Durand brings the stories and characters to life with kaleidoscopic vibrancy. After examining the concepts of social identity, race, ethnicity and racism, learn about some of the ways people of different races have been oppressed, from indigenous Americans and Australians being sent to boarding school to be 'civilized' to a generation of Caribbean immigrants once welcomed to the UK being threatened with deportation by strict immigration laws. Find hope in stories of strength, love, joy and revolution that are part of our history, too, with such figures as the former slave Toussaint Louverture, who led a rebellion against white planters that eventually led to Haiti's independence, and Yuri Kochiyama, who, after spending time in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during WWII, dedicated her life to supporting political prisoners and advocating reparations for those wrongfully interned. This book is written for EVERYONE who lives in this racialised society-including the young person who doesn't know how to speak up to the racist adults in their life, the kid who has lost themself at times trying to fit into the dominant culture, the children who have been harmed (physically and emotionally) because no one stood up for them or they couldn't stand up for themselves and also for their families, teachers and administrators. With this book, be empowered to actively defy racism to create a community (large and small) that truly honours everyone.

Translated by F Max-Muller, revised and with an Introduction by Suren Navlakha. Upanishads are mankind's oldest works of philosophy, predating the earliest Greek philosophy. They are the concluding part of the Vedas, the ancient Indian sacred literature, and mark the culmination of a tradition of speculative thought first expressed in the Rig-Veda more than 4000 years ago. Remarkable for their meditative depth, spirit of doubt and intellectual honesty, the Upanishads are concerned with the knowledge of the Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, and Man's relationship with it. The name Upanishad is derived from the face-to-face mode of imparting knowledge - in the utmost sanctity and secrecy, to prevent its trivialisation or perversion. Composed in Sanskrit between 900 and 600 BC, the Upanishads presented here are by far the oldest and most important of those that exist. Twelve were first translated more than a hundred years ago, and have been extensively revised and edited. The thirteenth is an entirely new translation by Suren Navlakha.

Pronunciation governs our regional and social identity more powerfully than any other aspect of spoken language. No wonder, then, that it has attracted most attention from satirists. In this intriguing book, David Crystal shows how our feelings about pronunciation today have their origins in the way our Victorian predecessors thought about the subject, as revealed in the pages of the satirical magazine, Punch. In the sixty years between its first issue in 1841 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, jokes about the fashions affecting English usage provide one of Punch's most fruitful veins of humour, from the dropped aitches of the Cockney accent to the upper-class habit of dropping the final `g' (huntin' and fishin'). For 'We Are Not Amused', David Crystal has examined all the issues during the reign of Queen Victoria and brought together the cartoons and articles that poked fun at the subject of pronunciation, adding a commentary on the context of the times, explaining why people felt so strongly about accents, and identifying which accents were the main source of jokes. The collection brings to light a society where class distinction ruled, and where the way you pronounced a word was seen as a sometimes damning index of who you were and how you should be treated. It is a fascinating, provocative and highly entertaining insight into our on-going amusement at the subject of how we speak.

The climate crisis is here. Our chance to stop it has come and gone, but this doesn't have to mean the world is ending. 'If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world's inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.' The honesty and realism of Jonathan Franzen's writings on climate have been widely denounced and just as widely celebrated. Here, in his definitive statement on the subject, Franzen confronts the world's failure to avert destabilising climate change and takes up the question: Now what?

Sex and art, we're told, are sacred, two spheres that ought to be kept separate from the ravages of the marketplace. Yet both prop up two incredibly lucrative industries, built on the commodification of creativity and desire, authenticity and intimacy. Our reaction to this should not be moral or political outrage, nor legal regulation or denial, but rather-as Sophia Giovannitti argues here-acceptance, through which we can find a more autonomous way to live.

Το απαύγασμα της φιλοσοφικής διδασκαλίας του Ινδουισμού

Αυτό, που ο νους δεν μπορεί να το σκεφτεί αλλά εξαιτίας του ο νους είναι ικανός να σκέφτεται: αυτό και μόνο να ξέρεις πως είναι το Μπράχμαν.

Οι Ουπανισάδες είναι τα ιερά ινδουιστικά κείμενα που συνοδεύουν τις Βέδες, τις ιερές σανσκριτικές γραφές, συμπυκνώνοντας το νόημά τους σε μορφή φιλοσοφικής διδασκαλίας – γι’ αυτό είναι γνωστές και ως «Βεντάντα», που σημαίνει το «τέλος» ή τον «τελικό σκοπό» της σοφίας (Βέδα θα πει «σοφία»). Και σε τι συνίσταται η αρχαία ινδουιστική διδασκαλία; Σε τίποτε άλλο πέρα από την αποστολή του ανθρώπου να απαλλαγεί απ’ όλες τις «πλασματικότητες» αυτού του κόσμου (τη μακροζωία, την ευμάρεια, τη στείρα νοητική λειτουργία κ.ο.κ.) και μέσω της υπερθετικής γνώσης του εαυτού να ενωθεί με τη θεϊκή συνείδηση, αυτή που διαπερνά και αποτελεί ολόκληρο το σύμπαν: «Ο άνθρωπος που έχει μορφή πεθαίνει, όχι όμως και αυτό που κατοικεί μέσα του».

Η best-seller σειρά «Επίλεκτα» των Εκδόσεων Οξύ εμπλουτίζεται με επτά νέους τίτλους, επτά νέα μικρά βιβλία, μεγάλων σκέψεων, τα οποία έρχονται να προστεθούν τους προηγούμενους 16 τίτλους.

Ορισμένοι μελετητές τοποθετούν τη βεδική περίοδο, όταν και οι Ουπανισάδες πήραν τη γνωστή μορφή τους, έως και το 4.000 ή το 5.000 π.Χ., ενώ άλλοι μεταξύ του 2.000 και του 1.400 π.Χ. – σίγουρα πάντως αρκετούς αιώνες πριν από τη βουδιστική περίοδο, που ξεκινά τον 6ο π.Χ. αιώνα. Μιας και τίποτα δεν γραφόταν και όλες οι διδασκαλίες γίνονταν προφορικά, οι Ουπανισάδες λέγονταν και Σρούτις, «αυτό που ακούγεται». Ο όρος χρησιμοποιείται και με την έννοια της αποκάλυψης, αφού οι Ουπανισάδες θεωρείται πως είναι θεϊκής προέλευσης και στα κείμενά τους δεν γίνεται η παραμικρή αναφορά σε συγγραφέα ή καταγραφέα. Στην παρούσα έκδοση περιλαμβάνονται οι τρεις πρώτες –και ουσιωδέστερες– Ουπανισάδες.