Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books

Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books
Author: James E. Montgomery
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2013-11-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 074868333X

Edinburgh University Press will publish two self-contained guides to reading al-Jahiz that also shed light on his society and its writings. This first volume, 'In Praise of Books', is devoted to bibliomania and al-Jahiz's bibliophilia. Volume 2, In Censure of Books, explores Al-Jahiz's bibliophobia. Al-Jahiz was a bibliomaniac, theologian, and spokesman for the political and cultural elite, a writer who lived, counselled and wrote in Iraq during the first century of the 'Abbasid caliphate. He advised, argued and rubbed shoulders with the major power brokers and leading religious and intellectual figures of his day, and crossed swords in debate and argument with the architects of the Islamic religious, theological, philosophical and cultural canon. His many, tumultuous writings engage with these figures, their ideas, theories and policies. They give us an invaluable but much-neglected window onto the values and beliefs of this cosmopolitan elite.

Edinburgh Twilight

Edinburgh Twilight
Author: Carole Lawrence
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: City and town life
ISBN: 9781477848814

As a new century approaches, Edinburgh is a city divided. The wealthy residents of New Town live in comfort, while Old Town's cobblestone streets are clotted with criminals, prostitution, and poverty. Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton is no stranger to Edinburgh's darkest crimes. Scarred by the mysterious fire that killed his parents, he faces his toughest case yet when a young man is found strangled in Holyrood Park. With little evidence aside from a strange playing card found on the body, Hamilton engages the help of his aunt, a gifted photographer, and George Pearson, a librarian with a shared interest in the criminal mind. But the body count is rising. As newspapers spin tales of the "Holyrood Strangler," panic sets in across the city. And with each victim, the murderer is getting closer to Hamilton, the one man who dares to stop him.

Scottish Education

Scottish Education
Author: T. G. K. Bryce
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 1120
Release: 2018-06-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1474437850

Interrogates the rise of national philosophies and their impact on cosmopolitanism and nationalism.

The Wolf Mile

The Wolf Mile
Author: C.F. Barrington
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1800244363

Squid Game meets The Hunger Games in this thriller where modern-day recruits compete with ancient weapons in a deadly game across the streets of Edinburgh. Welcome to the Pantheon Games. Let the streets of Edinburgh run with blood... The Games are the biggest underground event in the world, followed by millions online. New recruits must leave behind their twenty-first century lives and vie for dominance in a gruelling battle to the death armed only with ancient weapons – and their wits. Tyler Maitland and Lana Cameron have their own reasons for signing their lives away. Now they must risk everything and join the ranks of seven warrior teams that inhabit this illicit world. Their journey will be more extraordinary and horrifying than anything they could have dreamed, testing them to breaking point. Will they find what they seek? Or will they succumb to the nature of the Pantheon? Let the Season begin. Discover The Pantheon, perfect for dystopian fiction fans who loved The Hunger Games and Chain-Gang All-Stars. 'The Wolf Mile is a thrilling ride and a heck of a debut. C.F. Barrington knocks it out of the park.' Matthew Harffy 'The moment you ask yourself if it could just be true, the story has you.' Anthony Riches 'Gripping and original – a terrific read!' Joe Heap 'So gripping that I sometimes find myself holding my breath while I'm reading!' Ruth Hogan 'A brilliant eccentric concept which hits you like a fever dream.' Giles Kristian

Not Exactly

Not Exactly
Author: Kees van Deemter
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2010-01-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199545901

Our lives are full of inexactitude. We say a person is tall or an action is just without the precision of measurement on a dial. In this engaging account, Kees van Deemter explores vagueness, cutting across areas such as language, mathematical logic, and computing. He considers why vagueness is inherent, and why it is important in how we function.

Edinburgh Dusk

Edinburgh Dusk
Author: Carole Lawrence
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Detective and mystery stories
ISBN: 9781503903906

The prize-winning author of Edinburgh Twilight returns to the darkening shadows of nineteenth-century Scotland to track a killer on a profane mission of revenge. A wicked Scottish winter has just begun when pioneering female physician Sophia Jex-Blake calls on Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton to investigate the suspicious death of one of her patients--a railroad lineman who she believes succumbed to the horrific effects of arsenic poisoning. The most provocative aspect of the case doesn't escape Hamilton: the married victim's numerous sexual transgressions. Now, for the first time since the unexplained fire that killed his parents, Hamilton enters the Royal Infirmary to gain the insights of brilliant medical student Arthur Conan Doyle. Then a second poisoning occurs--this time, a prominent banker who died in the bed of a prostitute. It appears that someone is making Edinburgh's more promiscuous citizens pay for their sins. As the body count rises and public panic takes hold, Hamilton and Doyle delve into the seedy underbelly of the city, where nothing is as it seems, no one is immune to murder, and even trusted friends can be enemies in disguise.

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
Author: Chris Brookmyre
Publisher: Clipper Audio
Total Pages:
Release: 2015-01-09
Genre: Bands (Music)
ISBN: 9781471296642

Back when they were students Simon and his friend Ray had dreams to become rock stars. Fifteen years later, their mid-thirties are bearing down fast and they're having to accept a less glamorous life. Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody finds their own way of coping. But for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.

In Praise of Forgetting

In Praise of Forgetting
Author: David Rieff
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300182791

A leading contrarian thinker explores the ethical paradox at the heart of history's wounds The conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayana's celebrated phrase, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Today, the consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget, is nearly absolute. And yet is this right? David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, "inoculate" the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds--whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces--neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option--sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget. Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times--the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9/11--Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses and abuses of historical memory. His contentious, brilliant, and elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy.