Author: Amy Lynn Wlodarski File Type: pdf George Rochberg, American Composer is the first comprehensive study devoted to tracing and putting into a rich cultural context the career of George Rochberg, widely acknowledged as one of the most prominent musical postmodernists. Drawing from unpublished materials including diaries, letters, sketches, and personal papers, the book traces the impact of two specific personal traumas--Rochbergs service as an infantryman in World War II and the premature death of his son--on his work as a leading composer, college educator, and public intellectual. The book significantly expands our understanding of Rochbergs creative work by reconstructing and examining the earliest seeds of his aesthetic thinking--which took root while he served in Pattons Third Army--and following their development through his mature compositional period into the final stages of his long career. It argues that Rochbergs military service was a transformative life experience for the young humanist, one that crucially shaped his worldview and influenced his artistic creativity for the next sixty years. As such it reveals personal trauma and aesthetic recovery to be the basis of Rochbergs postwar ideas about humanism, musical quotation, and neotonality.

Author: Carl Sagan File Type: pdf FASCINATING . . . MEMORABLE . . . REVEALING . . . PERHAPS THE BEST OF CARL SAGANS BOOKS.--The Washington Post Book World (front page review)In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time.Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier--space. In Pale Blue Dot Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race.TAKES READERS FAR BEYOND Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanitys future in the stars.--Chicago TribuneFrom Publishers WeeklyIn a tour of our solar system, galaxy and beyond, Cornell astronomer Sagan meshes a history of astronomical discovery, a cogent brief for space exploration and an overview of life-from its origins in the oceans to humanitys first emergence to a projected future where humans terraform and settle other planets and asteroids, Earth having long been swallowed by the sun. Maintaining that such relocation is inevitable, the author further argues that planetary science is of practical utility, fostering an interdisciplinary approach to looming environmental catastrophes such as nuclear winter (lethal cooling of Earth after a nuclear war, a widely accepted prediction first calculated by Sagan in 1982). His exploration of our place in the universe is illustrated with photographs, relief maps and paintings, including high-resolution images made by Voyager 1 and 2, as well as photos taken by the Galileo spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope and satellites orbiting Earth, which show our planet as a pale blue dot. A worthy sequel to Sagans Cosmos. Author tour. 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistSagans great appeal as a popular-science writer, beyond his prodigious knowledge, is his optimism and sense of wonder. A visualizer and a visionary, he fires our imagination and turns science into high drama. After writing about our origins in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992), Sagan turns his attention to outer space and takes up where Cosmos left off 14 years ago. An astonishing amount of information was amassed during that productive era, and Sagan, of course, is up on all of it. A passionate and eloquent advocate of space exploration, he believes that the urge to wander, and the need for a frontier, is intrinsic to our nature, and that this trait is linked to our survival as a species. Throughout this beautifully illustrated, revelatory, and compelling volume, Sagan returns again and again to our need for journeys and quests as well as our unending curiosity about our place in the universe. Such philosophical musings are interwoven with precise and enthusiastic accounts of the triumphs of interplanetary exploration, from the Apollo moon landings to the spectacular findings of robotic missions, especially the Voyager spacecraft. Sagan describes one exciting discovery after another regarding the four giants--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--and their many moons, mysterious and exquisite rings, and volatile atmospheres. He argues, convincingly, that planetary exploration is of immense value. It not only teaches us about our celestial neighbors, but helps us understand and protect Earth. Yes, we have seemingly insurmountable problems on this pale blue dot, but we have always reached for the stars, and we mustnt stop now. Donna Seaman FASCINATING . . . MEMORABLE . . . REVEALING . . . PERHAPS THE BEST OF CARL SAGANS BOOKS.--The Washington Post Book World (front page review)In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time.Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier--space. In Pale Blue Dot Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race.TAKES READERS FAR BEYOND Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanitys future in the stars.--Chicago Tribune

Author: Hans Beck File Type: pdf The consulate was the focal point of Roman politics. Both the ruling class and the ordinary citizens fixed their gaze on the republics highest office - to be sure, from different perspectives and with differing expectations. While the former aspired to the consulate as the defining magistracy of their social status, the latter perceived it as the embodiment of the Roman state. Holding high office was thus not merely a political exercise. The consulate prefigured all aspects of public life, with consuls taking care of almost every aspect of the administration of the Roman state. This multifaceted character of the consulate invites a holistic investigation. The scope of this book is therefore not limited to political or constitutional questions. Instead, it investigates the predominant role of the consulate in and its impact on, the political culture of the Roman republic.Book DescriptionThe consuls were not only the supreme magistrates in Republican Rome, but the very personification of the Republic itself. This book explores the various facets of these magistrates, with contributions touching on the political, social, cultural, religious and economic implications of holding the highest office in the Roman Republic. About the AuthorHans Beck is John MacNaughton Chair of Classics in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. His publications include Central Greece and the Politics of Power in the Fourth Century BC (2008) with John Buckler.Antonio Dupla is Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz, where he teaches ancient history and classical reception.Martin Jehne is Professor of Ancient History and Director of the Department of History at the Technical University of Dresden.Francisco Pina Polo is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Zaragoza. His publications include The Consul at Rome The Civil Functions of the Consuls in the Roman Republic (2011).

Author: Smithsonian Institution File Type: pdf