On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its se…
Although not widely known in the Western world, al-Hallaj is one of the great figures in the history of the Muslim religion. Martyred in 922 by the government for his teachings, al-Hallaj has lived on through the centuries in the legends and memories of Muslims the world over. The reader who meets al-Hallaj for the first time in this book will be impressed by the striking similarities he shares…
CALLING OSCAR WILDE'S philosophy of art his "most elusive legacy," Brown attempts to define Wilde's conception of what art is and what it is not, of what the experience of art means in the modern world, and of the contradictory relations between the work of art and the sphere of everyday ethics. She traces the experimental character of Wilde's thought from its resonance in his own life through …