A completely updated, revised edition of the classic, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge on global affairs, popular culture, economic trends, scientific principles, and modern arts. Here’s your chance to brush up on all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you could be! How do you tell the Balkans from the Caucasus? What’s the difference between fission and fusion? Whigs and Tories? Shiites and Sunnis? Deduction and induction? Why aren’t all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers? What are transcendental numbers and what are they good for? What really happened in Plato’s cave? Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day? And for extra credit, when should you use the adjective continual and when should you use continuous? An Incomplete Education answers these and thousands of other questions with incomparable wit, style, and clarity. American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science, and World History: Here’s the bottom line on each of these major disciplines, distilled to its essence and served up with consummate flair. In this revised edition you’ll find a vitally expanded treatment of international issues, reflecting the seismic geopolitical upheavals of the past decade, from economic free-fall in South America to Central Africa’s world war, and from violent radicalization in the Muslim world to the crucial trade agreements that are defining globalization for the twenty-first century. And don’t forget to read the section "A Nervous American’s Guide to Living and Loving on Five Continents" before you answer a personal ad in the International Herald Tribune. As delightful as it is illuminating, An Incomplete Education packs ten thousand years of culture into a single superbly readable volume. This is a book to celebrate, to share, to give and receive, to pore over and browse through, and to return to again and again.

It may be reckoned a peculiar piece of good fortune that among the wreckage of classical literature the Description of Greece by Pausanias should have come down to us entire. In this work we possess a plain, unvarnished account by an eye-witness of the state of Greece in the second century of our era. Of no other part of the ancient world has a description at once so minute and so trustworthy survived, and if we had been free to single out one country in one age of which we should wish a record to be preserved, our choice might well have fallen on Greece in the age of the Antonines. No other people has exerted so deep and abiding an influence on the course of modern civilisation as the Greeks, and never could all the monuments of their chequered but glorious history have been studied so fully as in the second century of our era. The great age of the nation, indeed, had long been over, but in the sunshine of peace and imperial favour Greek art and literature had blossomed again. New temples had sprung up; new images had been carved; new theatres and baths and aqueducts ministered to the amusement and luxury of the people. Among the new writers whose works the world will not willingly let die, it is enough to mention the great names of Plutarch and Lucian. It was in this mellow autumn—perhaps rather the Indian summer—of the ancient world, when the last gleanings of the Greek genius were being gathered in, that Pausanias, a contemporary of Hadrian, of the Antonines, and of Lucian, wrote his description of Greece. He came in time, but just in time. He was able to describe the stately buildings with which in his own lifetime Hadrian had embellished Greece, and the hardly less splendid edifices which, even while he wrote, another munificent patron of art, Herodes Atticus, was rearing at some of the great centres of Greek life and religion. Yet under all this brave show the decline had set in. About a century earlier the emperor Nero, in the speech in which he announced at Corinth the liberation of Greece, lamented that it had not been given him to confer the boon in other and happier days when there would have been more people to profit by it. Some years after this imperial utterance Plutarch declared that the world in general and Greece especially was depopulated by the civil brawls and wars; the whole country, he said, could now hardly put three thousand infantry in the field, the number that formerly Megara alone had sent to face the Persians at Plataea; and in the daytime a solitary shepherd feeding his flock was the only human being to be met with on what had been the site of one of the most renowned oracles in Boeotia. Dio Chrysostom tells us that in his time the greater part of the city of Thebes lay deserted, and that only a single statue stood erect among the ruins of the ancient market-place. The same picturesque writer has sketched for us a provincial town of Euboea, where most of the space within the walls was in pasture or rig and furrow, where the gymnasium was a fruitful field in which the images of Hercules and the rest rose here and there above the waving corn, and where sheep grazed peacefully about the public offices in the grass-grown market-place. In one of his Dialogues of the Dead, Lucian represents the soul of a rich man bitterly reproaching himself for his rashness in having dared to cross Cithaeron with only a couple of men-servants, for he had been set upon and murdered by robbers on the highway at the point where the grey ruins of Eleutherae still look down on the pass; in the time of Lucian the district, laid waste, he tells us, by the old wars, seems to have been even more lonely and deserted than it is now. Of this state of things Pausanias himself is our best witness. To be continue in this ebook...

Although little known today, the English novelist J. S. Fletcher was one of the highest selling writers of the early twentieth century. He wrote more than 230 books covering a range of genres and subjects, including social dramas, exciting thrillers and celebrated historical novels. It is as a pioneering writer of detective fiction that he is being reappraised in the twenty-first century, recognising his important contribution to the development of the genre. Gripping novels like ‘The Middle Temple Murder’ and ‘The Charing Cross Mystery’ are renowned for their complicated, intelligently structured plots, colourful characterisation and unputdownable events. This comprehensive collection presents J. S. Fletcher's collected works, with numerous illustrations, many rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Fletcher’s life and works * Concise introductions to the major novels * 30 novels, with individual contents tables * Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including his almost lost first two novels, ‘Frank Carisbroke’s Stratagem’ and ‘Andrewlina’ * Fletcher's very rare and compelling historical novel 'When Charles the First Was King', appearing here for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Rare story collections * Includes Fletcher’s rare poetry collections – available in no other collection * Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of titles CONTENTS: The Novels Frank Carisbroke’s Stratagem (1888) Andrewlina (1889) Mr. Spivey’s Clerk (1890) When Charles the First Was King (1892) In the Days of Drake (1895) Where Highways Cross (1895) Mistress Spitfire (1896) Baden Powell of Mafeking (1900) Lucian the Dreamer (1903) Perris of the Cherry-Trees (1913) The King versus Wargrave (1915) The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation (1917) Paul Campenhaye (1918) The Chestermarke Instinct (1918) The Borough Treasurer (1919) The Middle Temple Murder (1919) The Talleyrand Maxim (1919) Scarhaven Keep (1920) The Herapath Property (1920) The Lost Mr. Linthwaite (1920) The Orange-Yellow Diamond (1920) The Markenmore Mystery (1921) The Root of All Evil (1921) Wrychester Paradise (1921) In the Mayor’s Parlour (1922) Ravensdene Court (1922) The Middle of Things (1922) The Charing Cross Mystery (1923) The Kang-He Vase (1924) The Safety Pin (1924) The Shorter Fiction Mr. Poskitt’s Nightcaps (1910) The Secret of the Barbican and Other Stories (1924) Miscellaneous Stories The Poetry Collections The Juvenile Poems of Joseph S. Fletcher (1879) Early Poems by Joseph Smith Fletcher (1882) Anima Christi (1884) Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks

Although little known today, the English novelist J. S. Fletcher was one of the highest selling writers of the early twentieth century. He wrote more than 230 books covering a range of genres and subjects, including social dramas, exciting thrillers and celebrated historical novels. It is as a pioneering writer of detective fiction that he is being reappraised in the twenty-first century, recognising his important contribution to the development of the genre. Gripping novels like ‘The Middle Temple Murder’ and ‘The Charing Cross Mystery’ are renowned for their complicated, intelligently structured plots, colourful characterisation and unputdownable events. Offering the largest collection of J. S. Fletcher’s novels ever compiled, this eBook presents his collected works, with numerous illustrations, many rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Fletcher’s life and works * Concise introductions to the major novels * 30 novels, with individual contents tables * Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including his almost lost first two novels, ‘Frank Carisbroke’s Stratagem’ and ‘Andrewlina’ * Fletcher's very rare and compelling historical novel 'When Charles the First Was King', appearing here for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Rare story collections * Includes Fletcher’s rare poetry collections – available in no other collection * Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres Please note: due to US copyright laws, post 1924 novels cannot appear in this volume. Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of titles CONTENTS: The Novels Frank Carisbroke’s Stratagem (1888) Andrewlina (1889) Mr. Spivey’s Clerk (1890) When Charles the First Was King (1892) In the Days of Drake (1895) Where Highways Cross (1895) Mistress Spitfire (1896) Baden Powell of Mafeking (1900) Lucian the Dreamer (1903) Perris of the Cherry-Trees (1913) The King versus Wargrave (1915) The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation (1917) Paul Campenhaye (1918) The Chestermarke Instinct (1918) The Borough Treasurer (1919) The Middle Temple Murder (1919) The Talleyrand Maxim (1919) Scarhaven Keep (1920) The Herapath Property (1920) The Lost Mr. Linthwaite (1920) The Orange-Yellow Diamond (1920) The Markenmore Mystery (1921) The Root of All Evil (1921) Wrychester Paradise (1921) In the Mayor’s Parlour (1922) Ravensdene Court (1922) The Middle of Things (1922) The Charing Cross Mystery (1923) The Kang-He Vase (1924) The Safety Pin (1924) Sea Fog (1925) The Bedford Row Mystery (1925) The Cartwright Gardens Murder (1925) The Mill of Many Windows (1925) Dead Men’s Money (1928) Murder at Wrides Park (1931) Murder in Four Degrees (1931) Murder of the Ninth Baronet (1932) The Borgia Cabinet (1932) The Solution of a Mystery (1932) Todmanhawe Grange (1937) The Shorter Fiction Mr. Poskitt’s Nightcaps (1910) The Secret of the Barbican and Other Stories (1924) Miscellaneous Stories (1907) The Poetry Collections The Juvenile Poems of Joseph S. Fletcher (1879) Early Poems by Joseph Smith Fletcher (1882) Anima Christi (1884) Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks