Fallen Idols is a memoir that begins in the radical sixties in Greenwich Village. The author, the young Leonard Schulman, is living on West Fourth street, just two blocks away from the young emigre from Duluth, Minn.. Bob Dylan.... The author of this charming and engaging memoir, already knows of the young genius, Mr. Dylan, having been exposed to early Dylan by his first love at Brooklyn College. The songs and life of Dylan are to affect our hero in curious ways. In the course of this book he comes to know two photographers--David Gahr and Barry Feinstein--who were close to Mr. Dylan. They tell him stories unheard of before the the great bard. Schulman comes to know other important people too--mostly through his work at Time magazine. How a Brooklyn street kid, got the job and his work at the magazine (for nearly 30 years) is a big part of the book. In the course of his life he meets many people whom he comes to see as 'fallen idols." One of the most important is James Wilde, Time magazine's most intrepid war correspondent. Mr. Wilde becomes a friend and mentor. In the nineties he travels to work for Wilde in Time's Nairobi office as a stringer. Here many adventures occur (worthy of a movie). There are other fallen idols. Too numerous to enumerate. But let me mention at least one--Vittorio Fiorucci--the monstre sacre and great Montreal artist. The creator of Juste Pour Rire's little green man. The book follows in the great literary tradition of Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy as he (Schulman) traverses--over a lifetime--wide areas of the globe--seeking and finding moments of joy and passion and nirvana. It is a journey that will excite you with the tears of things, as he seeks to find, along with all of us--permanence and love. (Another of his fallen idols is Norman Mailer and. . . oh, you'll just have to read the book.) But reader beware, Mr. Schulman's book is not for the faint of heart. So be careful. . . this book may knock you out. Like Hamlet advised "t'were as if a mirror were held up to nature." Human nature, that is. And it ain't always pretty.

From the author of the magnificent, award-winning novels GILEAD, HOME and LILA comes this wonderful, heart-warming collection of essays about reading. 'Grace and intelligence ...[her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama Marilynne Robinson is not only a writer of sharp, subtly moving fiction, but also a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this luminous collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her bestselling novels: the place literature has in life, the role of faith in modern living, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our best-loved writers.

In an enlightening dialogue with Descartes, Kant, Husserl and Gadamer, Professor Seifert argues that the original inspiration of phenomenology was nothing other than the primordial insight of philosophy itself, the foundation of philosophia perennis. His radical rethinking of the phenomenological method results in a universal, objectivist philosophy in direct continuity with Plato, Aristotle and Augustine. In order to validate the classical claim to know autonomous being, the author defends Husserl's methodological principle "Back to things themselves" from empiricist and idealist critics, including the later Husserl, and replies to the arguments of Kant which attempt to discredit the knowability of things in themselves. Originally published in 1982, this book culminates in a phenomenological and critical unfolding of the Augustinian cogito, as giving access to immutable truth about necessary essences and the real existence of personal being.

Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.