DIV“A fresh, revelatory, golden eagle’s eye-view of western literature.” —Financial Times/divDIV Early in Grammars of Creation, George Steiner references Plato’s maxim that in “all things natural and human, the origin is the most excellent.” Creation, he argues, is linguistically fundamental in theology, philosophy, art, music, literature—central, in fact, to our very humanity. Since the Holocaust, however, art has shown a tendency to linger on endings—on sundown instead of sunrise. Asserting that every use of the future tense of the verb “to be” is a negation of mortality, Steiner draws on everything from world wars and the Nazis to religion and the word of God to demonstrate how our grammar reveals our perceptions, reflections, and experiences. His study shows the twentieth century to be largely a failed one, but also offers a glimpse of hope for Western civilization, a new light peeking just over the horizon./div

"We have no more beginnings,” George Steiner begins in this, his most radical book to date. A far-reaching exploration of the idea of creation in Western thought, literature, religion, and history, this volume can fairly be called a magnum opus. He reflects on the different ways we have of talking about beginnings, on the "core-tiredness” that pervades our end-of-the-millennium spirit, and on the changing grammar of our discussions about the end of Western art and culture. With his well-known elegance of style and intellectual range, Steiner probes deeply into the driving forces of the human spirit and our perception of Western civilization’s lengthening afternoon shadows. Roaming across topics as diverse as the Hebrew Bible, the history of science and mathematics, the ontology of Heidegger, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Steiner examines how the twentieth century has placed in doubt the rationale and credibility of a future tense--the existence of hope. Acknowledging that technology and science may have replaced art and literature as the driving forces in our culture, Steiner warns that this has not happened without a significant loss. The forces of technology and science alone fail to illuminate inevitable human questions regarding value, faith, and meaning. And yet it is difficult to believe that the story out of Genesis has ended, Steiner observes, and he concludes this masterful volume of reflections with an eloquent evocation of the endlessness of beginnings.

Are great works of art, literature and music 'creations' or 'inventions'? Does the mathematician 'invent' or 'discover'? Exploring an often neglected field, this book asks whether the current revolutions in our means of communication and in the biological sciences, may bring with them radical changes in the concept of individual creation and of poetic and philosophical invention. Are we returning to ancient anonymities and collectivities in aesthetic and intellectual experience? Are music and architecture now at the frontier where, as Plato would have it, truth and beauty meet? In Grammars of Creation the eminent critic George Steiner brings his unparalleled acumen and erudition to bear on these and other questions. 'This is a mesmerising book . . . Expressed in prose that is unfailingly apt, luminous and evocative.' Guardian

Renowned scholar George Steiner explores the power and presence of the unseen in art. “It takes someone of [his] stature to tackle this theme head-on” (The New York Times). There is a philosophical school of thought that believes the presence of God in art, literature, and music—in creativity in general—is a vacant metaphor, an eroded figure of speech, a ghost in humanity’s common parlance. George Steiner posits the opposite—that any coherent understanding of language and art, any capacity to communicate meaning and feeling, is premised on God. In doing so, he argues against the kind of criticism that obscures, instead of elucidates, meaning. From the power of language to vital philosophical tenets, Real Presences examines the role of meaning and of the spiritual in art throughout history and across cultures.

Written for statisticians, computer scientists, geographers, research and applied scientists, and others interested in visualizing data, this book presents a unique foundation for producing almost every quantitative graphic found in scientific journals, newspapers, statistical packages, and data visualization systems. It was designed for a distributed computing environment, with special attention given to conserving computer code and system resources. While the tangible result of this work is a Java production graphics library, the text focuses on the deep structures involved in producing quantitative graphics from data. It investigates the rules that underlie pie charts, bar charts, scatterplots, function plots, maps, mosaics, and radar charts. These rules are abstracted from the work of Bertin, Cleveland, Kosslyn, MacEachren, Pinker, Tufte, Tukey, Tobler, and other theorists of quantitative graphics.

One of the worlds foremost literary critics meditates upon seven books he long had in mind to write but never did. Massively erudite, the essays are also brave, unflinching, and wholly personal.

This comprehensive study situates Jesus’ resurrection at the center of theological reflection and explores its implications for Christian imagination, discourse, and practice. Drawing upon broad array of theological and philosophical resources, it examines issues related to textual analysis, history, memory, embodiment, violence, forgiveness, aesthetics, and spirituality.