Pelican books

Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, 'The Hedgehog and the Fox,' Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, 'the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.' (Source: [Penguin Books](

Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” Department ran monthly in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. This second book is composed entirely of new games and puzzles that appeared there since Mr. Gardner’s first collection was published in 1959. Offering a new feast of mathematical entertainments to charm both layman and mathematician, some are easy, some are tough, and some call for scissors and paste. For most the only basic equipment needed is an alert and curious mind. All are connected, via the author’s clear and lively commentaries, to important aspects of mathematical thinking. Time will vanish as you turn Flexatubes inside out... play Piet Hein’s new game of Soma... consider the Mathematics of Cooling Coffee and Slicing Doughnuts... find your way through Hampton Court Maze (or any maze, in person or on paper)... explore, while folding a bird, the mathematics of Origami... divert yourself with Digital Roots... attack the maddening puzzle of the Monkey and the Coconuts. Play the new Induction Game of Eleusis - with a standard deck of cards - and you become a scientist outguessing the universe. Solve the new Smith-Jones-Robinson problems and you experience the triumphs of the logician. An easily learned parlor trick provides an introduction to the concept of Numerical Congruence. And the reader is shown how “humanity, bracing itself for the shock of finding life on other planets,” might draw comfort from the properties of Platonic Solids. In addition: brain teasers (18 of them, neat as epigrams); mind expanders (see the section on Ambiguity and Probability); Topological Magic with pencil, shoelace and soda straw; and a history-making report on the solution of a classic problem — squaring the square. The final chapter is surely the funniest commentary on numerology ever written. Add it all up - by mental arithmetic or with the help of the smartest of electronic calculators - and this is the total: topflight entertainment, delightful reading, and an invaluable key to the joys of the mathematical process.

Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order is a 1966 book by the Marxian economists Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran. It was published by Monthly Review Press. It made a major contribution to Marxian theory by shifting attention from the assumption of a competitive economy to the monopolistic economy associated with the giant corporations that dominate the modern accumulation process. Their work played a leading role in the intellectual development of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. As a review in the American Economic Review stated, it represented "the first serious attempt to extend Marx’s model of competitive capitalism to the new conditions of monopoly capitalism." It attracted renewed attention following the Great Recession. (Source: [Wikipedia](

Beyond Freedom and Dignity argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as "dignity") hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better-organized society. The book may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner's philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior, his conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls "cultural engineering".

The Mass Psychology of Fascism (German: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus) is a 1933 psychology book written by the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in which the author attempts to explain how fascists and authoritarians come into power through their political and ideologically-oriented sexual repression on the popular masses. (Source: [Wikipedia](

This book is the story of the years between 1880 and 1910--years crowded with innovations and new directions in the arts.

Study of the informal class system in America and the characteristics of the individual social levels.

This book represents the first of Becker's final trilogy, what can be considered his mature theoretical work. In this book, Becker begins his presentation of what he confidently feels is a unified and well rounded general theory of human nature. He also has come to terms with Freud and Freudian theory, meaning that he is now able to deal appreciatively with what psychoanalysis has contributed with this general theory of human nature. It is also important to note that Becker also announces in his Preface that he now recognizes the fact that in his earlier work, he had slighted the underside of human nature. That is, as a social scientist in the tradition of Rousseau, he was dedicated to the view that human nature is essentially neutral or good and that it is corrupted by the social environment. The theory presented now in his mature work has come to a more clear understanding of the element of the darker side, the side of human nature which is evil and vicious. This considerably sobers his earlier optimism about human possibilities and potentials, guided by an actively engaged social science. As is clear, however, Becker’s recognition of the element of human viciousness and evil does not push him toward cynicism or despair. [Adapted from [The Ernest Becker Foundation book description]]

Based on lectures given by the author to the University of Oxford.

"The manuscript of A worker in a worker's state was seized in Budapest and its young marxist author, a promising Hungarian poet, was brought to trial for writing it. The People's Court found that the manuscript was 'liable to provoke hatred of the state'. Haraszti himself was fined and given a suspended sentence for 'grave incitement'. This book is a literary event as well as a pioneering report on industrial conditions in a typical East European factory. The different voices of personal experience, objective analysis and reported speech are woven together to create a convincing, gripping account ..."--Back cover.

Correspondence between Jawaharlal Nehru,1889-1964, first Prime minister of India and Shri Krishna Sinha, 1887-1961, first chief minister of Bihar.

Donated in loving memory of Dr. John Micallef.

When European explorers went out into the world to open up trade routes and establish colonies, they brought back much more than silks and spices, cotton and tea. Inevitably, they came into contact with the peoples of other parts of the world and formed views of them, occasionally admiring, more often hostile or contemptuous. Using a stunning array of sources - missionaries' memoirs, the letters of diplomats' wives, explorers' diaries and the work of writers as diverse as Voltaire, Thackeray, Oliver Goldsmith and, of course, Kipling - Victor Kiernan teases out the full range of European attitudes to other peoples. Erudite, ironic and global in its scope, The Lords of Human Kind has been a major influence on a generation of historians and cultural critics and is a landmark in the history of Eurocentrism. The legacy of colonial attitudes to other cultures is, of course, an integral part of the modern world, and the history of their formation is one which cannot be ignored.

"The manuscript of A worker in a worker's state was seized in Budapest and its young marxist author, a promising Hungarian poet, was brought to trial for writing it. The People's Court found that the manuscript was 'liable to provoke hatred of the state'. Haraszti himself was fined and given a suspended sentence for 'grave incitement'. This book is a literary event as well as a pioneering report on industrial conditions in a typical East European factory. The different voices of personal experience, objective analysis and reported speech are woven together to create a convincing, gripping account ..."--Back cover.

There is in the world to-day a conviction of sin about art. People realize more every year that the badness of our architecture, decoration, music, drama, which has been our legacy from the immediate past, is an offense against the highest that is in us; they are discarding both the bleak indifference of our puritan tradition and the decadent hedonism which was a reaction against it : everywhere in all the arts there is improvement a return to sincerity, simplicity, beauty; and the improvement is due to the growing conviction of the high seriousness of art. We are less tempted to regard the arts because of their delightfulness as a mere pastime; we are discovering that in them we touch the eternal world that art is in fact religious. The object of art is not to give pleasure, as our fathers assumed, but to express the highest spiritual realities. Art is not only delightful : it is necessary.

"THE FLAMINGO'S SMILE is about history," writes the author in this volume of essays, "...and about what it means to say that life is the product of a contingent past, not the inevitable and predictable result of simple, timeless laws of nature. Quirkiness and meaning are my two not-so-contradictory themes." Flamingos that feed upside down; flowers and snails that change from male to female; the probability that an errant asteroid sounded the death knell of the dinosaurs and ushered in the evolution of mankind...these are only a few of the things that open our eyes to the endless delights of Gould's subject...evolutionary theory.

This classic tome is a detailed economic examination of the 1929 financial collapse written with wit and attitude.

Analyzes the economic functions, powers and limitations of cities and the uneasy relationship of cities with the national governments that preside over them.

This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medieval idea of and ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyard in the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spirit of the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angles; the Stars and Fortune; The Analogy between Macrocosm and Microcosm; the four Elements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; and the Cosmic Dance - ideas and symbols which inspirited the minds and imaginations not only of the Elizabethans but all of men of the Renaissance. -- Cover.

"The methodology of the late Paulo Freire, once considered such a threat to the established order that he was "invited" to leave his native Brazil, has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm." "With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come."--BOOK JACKET.

From the inside-front cover: 'Introduction to Typography' is a handbook for those interested in book production and deals with many of the typographic problems which normally arise in each stage of printing a book, from the half-title at the beginning right through to the index at the end. There are also chapters on Choosing a Type Face, The Printing of Plays and The Printing of Poetry, Illustration, Binding, etc. The book has been written for young printers and publishers and for coming aspirants into these trades. It will also be useful to authors and bibliophiles. Mr. Oliver Simon has entirely revised the material originally published by Faber and Faber in 1945 for this Pelican edition. 'A classical quality pervades the whole production, and the reader will sense immediately the quiet but firm authority of one who knows his job thoroughly, of a printer who is not only sensitive to beauty and scholarship but is great enough in his craft to be unaffected by the facile stylism so often in evidence these days.' - The Listener.

"In his most critically acclaimed work, a well-known mathematician, magician, and author spins a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex and challenging problems - puzzles that delve into some of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Solutions."The most original, most profound, and most humorous collection of recreational logic and math problems ever written." - Martin Gardner"--

The author writes about American business executives subjected to training programs, screened by psychiatrists and stimulated by a frantic desire for success. He tells why many of them stop advancing far short of the peak of their particular corporate pyramid.