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The Winding Stair
Jesse Norman
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R489
Discovery Miles 4 890
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Of all revenge, the greatest is this: that which cometh suddenly,
without expectation. AMBITION REVENGE Power is shifting. Queen
Elizabeth I is dying, James waiting to become King. Everywhere,
there is opportunity to ascend. But who will thrive, and who will
fail, under the new King? Will it be the scholar Francis Bacon,
whose brilliant mind is the envy of the royal court? Or his hated
rival the attorney Edward Coke, already acclaimed as the greatest
lawyer of his generation? The Winding Stair tells the gripping
story of these two founders of our modern world and their battle
for power, pre-eminence – and the hand of the most eligible woman
in the realm. Combining humour, wit and imagination with deep
research, this novel is a dazzling synthesis of history and fiction
that takes the genre to new places. It is an epic tale of jealousy
and intrigue in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, which, in its
lowest moments, holds a darkened mirror to our own contemporary
politics.
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Samuel Johnson prize for
non-fiction; both conservative and subversive, Burke’s beliefs
have never been more relevant, as MP Jesse Norman explains.
Philosopher, statesman, and founder of modern conservatism, Edmund
Burke is both the greatest and most under-rated political thinker
of the past three-hundred years. Born in Ireland in 1729, and
greatly affected by its bigotry and extremes, his career
constituted a lifelong struggle against the abuse of power. Amid
the 18th century’s golden generation that included his companions
Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon, Burke’s
controversial mixture of conservative and subversive theories made
him first a marginal figure, and finally a revered theorist – a
hero of the Romantics. He warned of the effects of British rule in
Ireland, the loss of the American colonies, and most famously, he
foresaw the disastrous consequences of revolution in France. This
he predicted, would trigger extremism, terror and the atomisation
of society – a profound analysis that continues to resonate
today. In this absorbing new biography Conservative MP Jesse Norman
gives us Burke anew, vividly depicting his dazzling intellect,
imagination and empathy against the rich tapestry of 18th century
Europe. Burke’s wisdom, Norman shows, applies well beyond the
times of empire to the conventional democratic politics practised
in Britain and America today. We cannot understand the defects of
the modern world, or modern politics, without him.
Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political
thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century
Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of
human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a
lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Revered by great
Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as
politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this
penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without
him. As Norman reveals, Burke was often ahead of his time,
anticipating the abolition of slavery and arguing for free markets,
equality for Catholics in Ireland, and responsible government in
India, among many other things. He was not always popular in his
own lifetime, but his ideas about power, community, and civic
virtue have endured long past his death. Indeed, Burke engaged with
many of the same issues politicians face today, including the rise
of ideological extremism, the loss of social cohesion, the dangers
of the corporate state, and the effects of revolution on societies.
He offers us now a compelling critique of liberal individualism,
and a vision of society based not on a self-interested agreement
among individuals, but rather on an enduring covenant between
generations. Burke won admirers in the American colonies for
recognizing their fierce spirit of liberty and for speaking out
against British oppression, but his greatest triumph was seeing
through the utopian aura of the French Revolution. In repudiating
that revolution, Burke laid the basis for much of the robust
conservative ideology that remains with us to this day: one that is
adaptable and forward-thinking, but also mindful of the debt we owe
to past generations and our duty to preserve and uphold the
institutions we have inherited. He is the first conservative. A
rich, accessible, and provocative biography, Edmund Burke describes
Burke's life and achievements alongside his momentous legacy,
showing how Burke's analytical mind and deep capacity for empathy
made him such a vital thinker--both for his own age, and for ours.
What does it mean to have visual intuition? Can we gain geometrical
knowledge by using visual reasoning? And if we can, is it because
we have a faculty of intuition? In" After Euclid," Jesse Norman
reexamines the ancient and long-disregarded concept of visual
reasoning and reasserts its potential as a formidable tool in our
ability to grasp various kinds of geometrical knowledge. The first
detailed philosophical case study of its kind, this text is
essential reading for scholars in the fields of mathematics and
philosophy.
'A superb book' Financial Times, Books of the Year Adam Smith is
now widely regarded as 'the father of modern economics' and the
most influential economist who ever lived. But what he really
thought, and what the implications of his ideas are, remain
fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and
the freedom of the individual? Or a prime mover of 'market
fundamentalism' and an apologist for inequality and human
selfishness? Or something else entirely? Jesse Norman's brilliantly
conceived \book gives us not just Smith's economics, but his vastly
wider intellectual project. Against the turbulent backdrop of
Enlightenment Scotland, it lays out a succinct and highly engaging
account of Smith's life and times, reviews his work as a whole and
traces his influence over the past two centuries. But this book is
not only a biography. It dispels the myths and debunks the
caricatures that have grown up around Adam Smith. It explores
Smith's ideas in detail, from ethics to law to economics and
government, and the impact of those ideas on thinkers as diverse as
Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek.
Far from being simply an economist, Adam Smith emerges as one of
the founders of modern social psychology and behavioural theory.
Far from being a doctrinaire 'libertarian' or 'neoliberal' thinker,
he offers a strikingly modern evolutionary theory of political
economy, which recognises the often complementary roles of markets
and the state. At a time when economics and politics are ever more
polarized between left and right, this book, by offering a Smithian
analysis of contemporary markets, predatory capitalism and the 2008
financial crash, returns us to first principles and shows how the
lost centre of modern public debate can be recreated. Through
Smith's work, it addresses crucial issues of inequality, human
dignity and exploitation; and it provides a compelling explanation
of why he remains central to any attempt to defend, reform or renew
the market system.
Amid the 18th century's golden generation that included his
companions Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon, Burke's
controversial mixture of conservative and subversive theories made
him first a marginal figure, and finally a revered theorist - a
hero of the Romantics. He warned of the effects of British rule in
Ireland, the loss of the American colonies, and most famously, he
foresaw the disastrous consequences of revolution in France. This
he predicted, would trigger extremism, terror and the atomisation
of society - a profound analysis that continues to resonate today.
In this absorbing new biography Conservative MP Jesse Norman gives
us Burke anew, vividly depicting his dazzling intellect,
imagination and empathy against the rich tapestry of 18th century
Europe. Burke's wisdom, Norman shows, applies well beyond the times
of empire to the conventional democratic politics practised in
Britain and America today. We cannot understand the defects of the
modern world, or modern politics, without him.
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