A Who's Who of Western culture, from Woody Allen to Emile Zola...

Containing four hundred essay-style entries, and covering the period from 1850 to the present, The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture includes artists, writers, dramatists, architects, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, sociologists, major political figures, composers, film-makers and many other culturally significant individuals and is thoroughly international in its purview.

Next to Karl Marx is Bob Marley, with John Ruskin is Salman Rushdie, alongside Darwin is Luigi Dallapiccola, Deng Xiaoping rubs shoulders with Jacques Derrida as do Julia Kristeva and Kropotkin.

With its global reach, The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture provides a multi-voiced witness of the contemporary thinking world. The entries carry short bibliographies and there is thorough cross-referencing as well as an index of names and key terms.

One of the quickest ways to understand a people or a culture is to learn their proverbs. This anthology, first published in 1984, compiles in dictionary form proverbs from the Islamic world, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. The Arabs were the first to gather and annotate their own proverbs - the earliest collections date from the n

One of the quickest ways to understand a people or a culture is to learn their proverbs. This anthology, first published in 1984, compiles in dictionary form proverbs from the Islamic world, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. The Arabs were the first to gather and annotate their own proverbs - the earliest collections date from the n

A Who's Who of Western culture, from Woody Allen to Emile Zola...

Containing four hundred essay-style entries, and covering the period from 1850 to the present, The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture includes artists, writers, dramatists, architects, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, sociologists, major political figures, composers, film-makers and many other culturally significant individuals and is thoroughly international in its purview.

Next to Karl Marx is Bob Marley, with John Ruskin is Salman Rushdie, alongside Darwin is Luigi Dallapiccola, Deng Xiaoping rubs shoulders with Jacques Derrida as do Julia Kristeva and Kropotkin.

With its global reach, The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture provides a multi-voiced witness of the contemporary thinking world. The entries carry short bibliographies and there is thorough cross-referencing as well as an index of names and key terms.

When the Vietnam War finally ended in April 1975 with the communist capture of Saigon, Vietnam itself became a closed country, out of bounds to western travellers and journalists. By 1989, however, such was Vietnam's economic plight that the government decided the time had come to open its doors again, albeit most gingerly. By a stroke of good fortune Justin Wintle became the first writer from the West to be allowed to journey around the whole of Vietnam, from Pac Bo on the Chinese border in the north to Ca Mau in the far south, below the Mekong Delta - though never without a posse of helpful, watchful "minders". But because he had official approval, he was able to meet many of those who had played a prominent part in Vietnam's recent history, among them General Vo Nguyen Giap, the victor of Dienbienphu and principal architect of America's military humiliation, and Le Duc Tho, the man who outsmarted Henry Kissinger during the Paris peace negotiations. "Romancing Vietnam" is Justin Wintle's classic account of what he found in post-war Vietnam, and how, for three months, he played cat and mouse with those charged with keeping him in line, while developing a profound love for more ordinary Vietnamese and the astonishing landscapes they inhabit. A young man's book, written with open eyes and a deft pen, "Romancing Vietnam", first published in 1991, describes a heaven and hell country, still full of the pain of war and unappeased ghosts, but a place of hope nevertheless, as also of sometimes outlandish comedy.

Like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi is an iconic figure, and the best-known prisoner of conscience alive today. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, at great personal cost she has steadfastly opposed Burma's brutal military regime since 1988, when she emerged as the leader of the Burmese democracy movement. As well as house arrest she has endured every kind of intimidation, including an attempt on her life in 2003. Yet if her exemplary fortitude has earned Aung San Suu Kyi world-wide admiration, inside Burma itself little has changed - as Justin Wintle's comprehensive biography makes hideously plain.

This volume provides a critical examination of the lives and works of the leading novelists, poets, dramatists, artists, philosophers, social thinkers, mathematicians and scientists of the period. The subjects are assessed in the light of their cultural importance, and each entry is deliberately interpretative, making this work both an essential reference tool and an engaging collection of essays.
Figures covered include: Marx, Wagner,Darwin, Malthus, Balzac, Jane Austen, Nietzsche, Babbage, Edgar Allan Poe, Ruskin, Schleiermacher, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau and Oscar Wilde.

Justin Wintle published the biographical references "Makers of Modern Culture" and "Makers of Nineteenth-Century Culture" with Routledge at the beginning of the 1980s. The set was extremely successful and continues to be used to this day, due to the very high quality of the writing, the distinguished contributors, and the cultural sensitivity shown in the selection of those individuals included. "New Makers of Modern Culture" is the successor to these classic reference works, taking into full account the rise and fall of reputation and influence over the last 25 years and the epochal changes that have occurred: the collapse of Marxism as a valid discourse and the demise of the Soviet Union, the rise and fall of postmodernism, the eruption of Islamic fundamentalism, the triumph of the Internet. With its global reach, "New Makers of Modern" "Culture" is not just a reference record, but a multi-voiced witness of the contemporary thinking world.
Containing over eight hundred essay-style entries, and covering the period from 1850 to the present, "Makers" covers artists, writers, dramatists, architects, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, sociologists, major political figures, composers and many others culturally significant individuals and is thoroughly international in its purview. Next to Karl Marx is Bob Marley, next to John Ruskin is Salmon Rushdie, alongside Darwin is Luigi Dallapiccola, Deng Xiaoping and Derrida rub shoulders, and Julia Kristeva and Kropotkin. Once again, Wintle has enlisted the services of many distinguished writers and leading academics, such as Sam Beer, Bernard Crick, Edward Seidensticker and Paul Preston. In a few cases, for example Michael Holroyd andPhilip Larkin, contributors are themselves the subject of entries (Philip Larkin's entry on Duke Ellington has been retained from the original work).
"New Makers of Modern Culture" will be widely acquired by both higher education and public libraries. Bibliographies are attached to entries and there is thorough cross- referencing. There is an index of names and key terms.