This is a reissue of the previous World's Classics edition in the new, larger format and with the series name changed to 'Oxford World's Classics'.
Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. The Old Man & the Sea revived Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River & into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the 1954 Nobel Prize--an award he gladly accepted, despite his earlier observation that "no son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards". A half century later, it's still easy to see why. This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favorite motifs of physical & moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old & infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: "The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face & his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords." Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame: "Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved & swung in the light sea as tho the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun & bending & flapping wildly in the air." If a younger Hemingway had written this novella, Santiago most likely would have towed the enormous fish back to port & posed for a triumphal photograph--just as the author delighted in doing, ca. 1935. Instead his prize gets devoured by a school of sharks. Returning with little more than a skeleton, he takes to his bed &, in the last line, cements his identification with his creator: "The old man was dreaming about the lions." Perhaps there's some allegory of art & experience floating around in there somewhere--but The Old Man & the Sea was, in any case, the last great catch of Hemingway's career.--James Marcus (edited)
"Emergence" is the notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. John Holland, a MacArthur Fellow known as the "father of genetic algorithms," says this seemingly simple notion will be at the heart of the development of machines that can think for themselves. And while he claims that he'd rather do science than write about it, this is his second scientific philosophy book intended to increase public understanding of difficult concepts (his first was Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity). One of the questions that Holland says emergence theory can help answer is: can we build systems from which more comes out than was put in? Think of the food replicators in the imaginary future of Star Trek--with some basic chemical building blocks and simple rules, those machines can produce everything from Klingon delicacies to Earl Grey tea. If scientists can understand and apply the knowledge they gather from studying emergent systems, we may soon witness the development of artificial intelligence, nanotech, biological machines, and other creations heretofore confined to science fiction. Using games, molecules, maps, and scientific theories as examples, Holland outlines how emergence works, emphasizing the interrelationships of simple rules and parts in generating a complex whole. Because of the theoretical depth, this book probably won't appeal to the casual reader of popular science, but those interested in delving a little deeper into the future of science and engineering will be fascinated. Holland's writing, while sometimes self-consciously precise, is clear, and he links his theoretical arguments to examples in the real world whenever possible. Emergence offers insight not just to scientific advancement, but across many areas of human endeavor--business, the arts, even the evolution of society and the generation of new ideas. --Therese Littleton
Did you know you have a "heart of gold"? What happened to it? How can you find it again? Walk with Karol Truman through the feelings that have taken you from your true pathway. Take the journey that will lead you back to the beauty of your soul, your "heart of gold," your true self.
How did life emerge on Earth? Is there life on other worlds? These questions, until recently confined to the pages of speculative essays and tabloid headlines, are now the subject of legitimate scientific research. This book presents a unique perspective--a combined historical, scientific, and philosophical anaylsis, which does justice to the complex nature of the subject. The book's first part offers an overview of the main ideas on the origin of life as they developed from antiquity until the twentieth century. The second, more detailed part of the book examines contemporary theories and major debates within the origin-of-life scientific community.
Topics include:
Aristotle and the Greek atomists' conceptions of the organism Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane's 1920s breakthrough papers Possible life on Mars?
It's safe to say that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest science fiction novels ever written. Adams spoofs many core science fiction tropes: space travel, aliens, interstellar war--stripping away all sense of wonder and repainting them as commonplace, even silly.
This omnibus edition begins with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which Arthur Dent is introduced to the galaxy at large when he is rescued by an alien friend seconds before Earth's destruction. Then in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur and his new friends travel to the end of time and discover the true reason for Earth's existence. In Life, the Universe, and Everything, the gang goes on a mission to save the entire universe. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish recounts how Arthur finds true love and "God's Final Message to His Creation." Finally, Mostly Harmless is the story of Arthur's continuing search for home, in which he instead encounters his estranged daughter, who is on her own quest. There's also a bonus short story, "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe," more of a vignette than a full story, which wraps up this completist's package of the Don't Panic chronicles. As the series progresses, its wackier elements diminish, but the satire of human life and foibles is ever present.
A "fresh, funny first novel" "(San Francisco Chronicle)," "Looking For Mo" has garnered rave reviews from critics and readers alike, echoing the success of Daniel Duane's previous book, "Caught Inside." This time Duane combines the thrill of adventure writing "a la" Jon Krakauer with a sly satire of pop culture comparable to Douglas Coupland's "Generation X," and folds them into a wry and memorable story of one man's search for truth on the sheer rock face of Yosemite's El Capitan. Raymond Connelly, a San Francisco would-be writer, is still living uneasily with his failure to climb "The Captain" with his childhood friend and alter ego, Mo Lehrman. As he circumnavigates his way through life on the edges of West Coast counterculture, trying to live like Mo's stories, which are more real than life itself, Ray lifts the best of those tales for his own book. But when he is accused of plagiarism, Ray suffers an attack of conscience, and sets off in search of Mo -- to explain, and to make good by finishing their shared climb.
From the San Francisco performance-art world to a psychedelic vision at a Grateful Dead show, Ray's quest for self-discovery is both hilarious and emotionally fraught, climaxing in two men's true-to-life climb up the sheer slope of "The Captain." "Looking For Mo" is a moving, resonant exploration of the tenuous foundations of friendship and an investigation of the explosive power of storytelling.
