From the critically acclaimed author of Solaris comes a classic sci-fi tale about scientists who must decode a message from intelligent beings in outer space—for fans of Arrival By pure chance, scientists detect a signal from space that may be communication from rational beings. How can people of Earth understand this message, knowing nothing about the senders—including whethe...(展开全部)

A pulsating stream of neutrino radiation from a source with the power of a sun has been detected on earth and a team of scientists assembled to study and decode the mysterious message. As the scientists wranle among themselves, clashing and conspiring while jockeying for favor and position, Lem produces a witty and inventive satire of “men of science” and their thinking. In the...(展开全部)

Originally published in 1968, His Master's Voice is a transitional work between Stanislaw Lem's more or less straightforward science fiction of the earlier years and the searching, difficult, and frequently experimental works of later decades. The novel takes the form of a posthumously published diary by an eminent mathematician, Peter Hogarth, a key participant in the His Mast...(展开全部)

Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical alteration and further modified by rigorous training, castrati inhabited human bodies that had been “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that unmechanized bodies could...(展开全部)

"Old Masters (1985)" is Thomas Bernhard's devilishly funny story about the friendship between two old men. For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintoretto painting in a Viennese museum, thinking and railing against contemporary society, his fellow men, artists, the weather, even the state of public lavatories. His friend Atzbacher...(展开全部)

"Old Masters (1985)" is Thomas Bernhard's devilishly funny story about the friendship between two old men. For over thirty years Reger, a music critic, has sat on the same bench in front of a Tintoretto painting in a Viennese museum, thinking and railing against contemporary society, his fellow men, artists, the weather, even the state of public lavatories. His friend Atzbacher...(展开全部)

When we talk about education today, we tend to avoid the rhetoric of "mastery," with its erotic and inegalitarian overtones. But the charged personal encounter between master and disciple is precisely what interests George Steiner in this book, a sustained reflection on the infinitely complex and subtle interplay of power, trust, and passions in the most profound sorts of pedag...(展开全部)

Dr. Brian Weiss is a highly respected psychiatrist from the mainstream of the medical establishment. Catherine is one of his most difficult cases, a twenty-seven year old woman racked by phobias and anxieties. In the course of Catherine's treatment, Dr. Weiss makes a startling discovery. Under hypnosis, she recollects, in vivid detail, events from past lives ranging from the pr...(展开全部)