Leon Hugo, a distinguished Shaw scholar from the country in which The Black Girl in Search of God is set, is the ideal critic to examine Shaw's most famous prose tale--an allegory on a par with Voltaire's Candide."--Stanley Weintraub, Pennsylvania State University "An astute reading of the text . . . a book that clearly demonstrates Bernard Shaw is still worth reading. He speaks to all generations."--Gale K. Larson, California State University Leon Hugo's study is a groundbreaking account of the "story behind the story" of Shaw's allegory The Black Girl in Search of God, a short fable written by Shaw in a remote coastal village in South Africa. Illustrated by John Farleigh, the book was published in 1932 and became a best-seller. The story is a fable of a "black girl," converted by Christian missionaries, who tries to find the answer to the question "Where is God?" by making a journey of the soul. Along the way she meets with a number of representations of God, from the New and Old Testaments of the Bible and from the Koran, who disgust and appall her with their hopelessly outdated embodiments of deity. The reaction from critics and readers of the day ranged from cries of blasphemy to allegations that Shaw was moving to madness. The volume was banned in public libraries and in Ireland. Several tracts and books sought to repudiate, ridicule, or develop Shaw's religious argument, and there were adaptations for stage performances and for radio broadcasts. This literary event is recounted, examined, and assessed by Leon Hugo. He surveys the close kinship between Shaw and Voltaire--a dominant presence in a tale that itself echoes Candide. The final chapter considers the "black girl" as a Shavian champion of religious freedom, feminist rights, and political emancipation. Illustrations revive a selection of Farleigh's captivating artwork, and Hugo includes representative illustrations from the rebutting tracts and books that followed Black Girl as well. Leon Hugo (1931-2002) was professor emeritus at the University of South Africa.
Edwardian Shaw covers Shaw's campaigns and crusades in the crucial first ten years of the century, when his career hung in the balance. By going to contemporary documents and highlighting aspects of Shaw's career at this time, particularly his emergence as a moral revolutionary and playwright of original and disquieting power, Leon Hugo depicts a man who confronted a highly conservative world and managed by the force of his genius to stamp his personality on the age.
This practical guide provides an introduction for understanding the compositional complexity of superalloys superalloy and the wide range of alloys developed for specific applications. The basics of alloying, strengthening mechanisms, and structure of superalloys are explained in optimizing particular mechanical properties, oxidation/corrosion resistance, and manufacturing characteristics such as castability, forgeability, and weldability."--Publisher's description.
Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research. He was also influenced by many other novels. A veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form. He explains at the start of the novel's third volume his own views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II. The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through war during the French invasion of Russia in 1812, so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace. Plot summary: War and Peace has a large cast of characters, the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. Some are actual historical figures, such as Napoleon and Alexander I. While the scope of the novel is vast, it is centered around five aristocratic families. The plot and the interactions of the characters take place in the era surrounding the 1812 French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. Book/Volume One The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg, at a soiree given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's expense following his mother's death, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. It is known to everyone at soiree that Pierre is his father's favorite of all the old count's illegitimate children. Also attending the soireé is Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon. The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.
On July 20, 1969 the whole world stopped. It was a day in which a man who grew up on a farm without electricity would announce, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." In this, the first ever biography of Neil Armstrong, Leon Wagener explores the man whose walk on the moon is still compared to humankind's progenitor's crawl out of the primordial ooze. And whose retreat back to a farm in his native Ohio soon after the last ticker tape confetti fell, has left him looked upon as a reclusive hermit ever since. This is the true story of a national hero, whose life long quest to walk on the moon truely mirrors our best selves, an American who braved incredible danger daily over a long career, finally achieving what seemed impossible, and broke free of the Earth's surly bonds proving forever that man can reach for the stars, and succeed. Relying on hundreds of interviews with family and friends of the astronaut, plus generous access to the NASA files, Leon Wagener explores the life of one of America's true heroes, in a book filled with extraordianry adventure, and even greater achievement. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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