Aristotle and an Aardvark go to Washington
Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
Abrams Image (hardback), 2008
PRs 1845
Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, authors of the national bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, aren’t falling for any election year claptrap—and they don’t want their readers to either! In Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, our two favorite philosopher-comedians return just in time to save us from the double-speak, flim-flam, and alternate reality of politics in America.
Deploying jokes and cartoon as well as the occasional insight from Aristotle and his peers, Cathcart and Klein explain what politicos are up to when they state: “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” (Donald Rumsfeld), “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” (Bill Clinton), or even, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” (Thomas Jefferson, et al).
Drawing from the pronouncements of everyone from Caesar to Condoleeza Rice, Genghis Kahn to Hillary Clinton, and Adolf Hitler to Al Sharpton. Cathcart and Klein help us learn to identify tricks such as “The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy” (non causa pro causa) and the “The Fallacy Fallacy” (argumentum and logicam). Aristotle and an Aardvark is for anyone who ever felt like the politicos and pundits were speaking Greek. At least Cathcart and Klein provide the Latin name for it (raudatio publica)!
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
Frances Yates
Routledge (paperback), 2003
PRs 470
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the contribution made by Dame Frances Yates to the serious study of esotericism and the occult sciences. To her work can be attributed the contemporary understanding of the occult origins of much of Western scientific thinking, indeed of Western civilization itself. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age was her last book, and in it she condensed many aspects of her wide learning to present a clear, penetrating, and, above all, accessible survey of the occult movements of the Renaissance, highlighting the work of John Dee, Giordano Bruno, and other key esoteric figures. The book is invaluable in illuminating the relationship between occultism and Renaissance thought, which in turn had a profound impact on the rise of science in the seventeenth century. Stunningly written and highly engaging, Yates’ masterpiece is a must-read for anyone interested in the occult tradition.
The Bible: The Biography
Karen Armstrong
Atlantic Books (paperback), 2007
PRs 1150
The Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world. Translated into over two thousand languages, it is estimated that more than six billion copies have been sold in the last two hundred years alone. A work made up of sixty-six ‘books’ and divided into two Testaments, this complex and communal work has been transformed by its various translations into a single work at the heart of the world’s largest and most powerful organised religions: Christianity. In this seminal account, Karen Armstrong discusses the conception, gestation, life and afterlife of this collection of ‘books’ to analyse how this all-pervasive scripture was collected into one work, how it became accepted as Christianity’s sacred text and how it continues to exercise profound political and philosophical influence, as well as religious control, over the world around us.
The Khyber Rifles: From the British Raj to Al Qaeda
Jules Stewart
Sutton Publishing (hardcover), 2005
PRs 1495
Still recruited from the Pathan tribes that live in the no-man’s land between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Khyber Rifles continue to guard one of the world’s most volatile borders. For more than a century these poachers turned gamekeepers fought for the British Raj against their own kin, but until now nothing has been written about their key role in Britain’s struggle to dominate the North-West Frontier. Journalist Stewart tells the story of the British colonel who raised the corps in 1878, and describes them in action against uprisings. In 1947, Pakistan gained its independence and the Khyber Rifles took on new duties, amongst them pursuing drug smugglers and terrorists. Most recently they set up the first permanent military presence in the forbidden tribal territory of Tirah, to seal the border against Al Qaeda militants and eradicate the opium trade.
Christian Slaves, Muslim Master: White Slavery in the Mediterranean,
the Barbary Coast, And Italy, 1500-1800
Robert C Davis
Palgrave Macmillan (paperback), 2003
PRs 2860
This is a study that digs deeply into this ‘other’ slavery, the bondage of Europeans by North-African Muslims that flourished during the same centuries as the heyday of the trans-Atlantic trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas. Here are explored the actual extent of Barbary Coast slavery, the dynamic relationship between master and slave, and the effects of this slaving on Italy, one of the slave takers’ primary targets and victims.
What people are saying
“Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters is about a subject of immense importance, which has been strangely neglected...It is very well researched, and... at a time of unprecedented interest in racial slavery in America, it is interesting to read a crucial and informative preview to that subject.” - David Brion Davis, Yale University