Gathered for Piero Orsini's funeral, mourners recall his life and contributions as a scientist, Quebec separatist, and terrorist

Product Description: Italia Perversa: Part Two: The Mosque, by Appignanesi, Richard

A documentary cartoon-book introduces the life and thought of the man who revolutionized attitudes toward mental illness, religion, sex, and culture

Postmodernism is the maddeningly enigmatic concept which is supposed to describe our cultural condition the world over. In this newly updated edition the author asks what this over-used term means in 2003 and beyond.

Product Description: A century after his death, Wagner remains a controversial figure in the cultural history of the modern world. This book separates the art from the ideas and the arrogant destructive personal behaviour of the man. It provides a guide to the complex music and the plots of Wagner's operas...read more

Product Description: Stephen Hawking is the best-known theoretical physicist alive today but few people outside his field know what he has done. To the public at large he is a legendary figure of tragic dimensions - a brilliant scientist and author of the phenomenal bestseller, A Brief History of Time - and yet confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak or write...read more

Product Description: James Joyce ranks alongside such figures as Picasso, Schoenberg and Stravinsky as one of the great pioneers of modernism. But a myth of Joyce's "difficulty" has taken root, discouraging many readers from approaching his work. This is a great pity, because his writings are deeply human, enormously comic, and compelling reading...read more

Product Description: An account of how Picasso redefined 20th-century Western art. The book explores his Catalan roots and separates the personal mythology surrounding Picasso from the essential nature of his artistic achievements.

Product Description: Interest in ancient Eastern philosophy has grown in recent years, as dissatisfaction with materialism has turned many away from Western thoughts. This book describes the strands of Eastern thought from Confucius to Buddha, from Islam to Tao and explains how they differ from Western ideas...read more

Product Description: Ethics has become the burning issue of current moral philosophical thought, raising the spectre of responsibility at a time when responsibility seems entirely replaced by uncertainty and relativism. What is the place of individual choice and consequence in a post-Holocaust world of continuing genocidal ethnic cleansing? Is 'identity' now a last-ditch cultural defence of ethic nationalisms and competing fundamentalisms? In a climate of instant information, free markets and possible ecological disaster, how do we define 'rights', self-interest and civic duties? What are the acceptable limits of scientific investigation and genetic engineering, the rights and wrongs of animal rights, euthanasia and civil disobedience? This book confronts these dilemmas, tracing the arguments of the great moral thinkers, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes and Kant, and brings us up to date with postmodern critics...read more

Shows how the Internet has created an environment for new forms of social interaction, and investigates the moral issues connected with its use, including freedom of speech, copyright, and censorship

Examines the theories of the prominent semiotologist and critic

Product Description: 'Introducing Barthes' elucidates Barthes' application of his ideas to literature and popular culture, and explains how he became a key figure in the structuralist movement of the 1960s.

Product Description: Why study signs? This perennial question of philosophy is answered by the science of semiotics. An animal's cry, poetry, the medical symptom, media messages, language disorders, architecture, marketing, body language - all these, and more, fall within the sphere of semiotics...read more

This text traces the development of Albert Camus, from his impoverished background in Algeria, through his participation in the French Resistance movement during World War II, to his tragic death in a car crash in 1960. It explores the central theme of his work - the absurdity of existence in a universe without God or any ostensible purpose, and looks at his gradual estrangement from the Left-Bank intellectual milieu, thanks to his human "un-radical" views during the Algerian war for independence.

Provides an accessible introduction to Martin Heidegger's notoriously abstruse thinking, mapping out its historical contexts and exploring its resonances in ecology, theology, art, architecture, literature and other fields.