LITMIR.BIZ

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic comes an impassioned critique of the West’s retreat from reason.‘The Death of Truth is destined to become the defining treatise of our age’ David Grann‘The first great book of the Trump administration … essential reading’ Rolling StoneWe live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the US President. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases.How did truth become an endangered species? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and political campaigns, Kakutani identifies the trends – originating on both the right and the left – that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant.With remarkable erudition and insight, Kakutani offers a provocative diagnosis of our current condition and presents a path forward for our truth-challenged times.

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In his first book, the creator of the award-winning podcast Hardcore History looks to some of humanity’s most apocalyptic moments to understand the challenges of our future.Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? Why, since the dawn of time, has it always seemed as though death and destruction is waiting just around the corner?In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colourful ways, exploring a question that has hung over humanity like the Sword of Damocles from the collapse of the Bronze Age to the nuclear era – that of human survival.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history, and thought experiments, Carlin forces us to consider what sounds like fantasy: that we might suffer the same fate as all previous civilisations. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore?This thrillingly expansive and entertaining book will make you look at the past – and future – in a completely different way.

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Childhood friends now all grown up Now they must marry for convenience!Giles Redmond, Earl of Revesby, is marrying childhood friend Laurel Knighton because it’s the only way to save his family fortune. Last time he saw her she was an unconventional tomboy… Now she’s a beauty, but finding himself aroused by her is as baffling as it is surprising. Who would have thought such an infuriating, disobedient bride could be so tempting?

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Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now, for the first time, they are available in electronic book format, so a whole new generation of readers can be swept away on the adventure of a lifetime. This is the ninth book in the series.Uniquely among authors of naval fiction, Patrick O’Brian allows his characters to develop with experience. The Jack Aubrey of Treason’s Harbour has a record of successes equal to that of the most brilliant of Nelson’s band of brothers, and he is no less formidable or decisive in action or strategy. But he is wiser, kinder, gentler too.Much of the plot of Treason’s Harbour depends on intelligence and counter-intelligence, a field in which Aubrey’s friend Stephen Maturin excels. Through him we get a clearer insight into the life and habits of the sea officers of Nelson’s time than we would ever obtain seeing things through their own eyes. There is plenty of action and excitement in this novel, but it is the atmosphere of a Malta crowded with senior officers waiting for news of what the French are up to, and wondering whether the war will end before their turn comes for prize money and for fame, that is here so freshly and vividly conveyed.

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Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now, for the first time, they are available in electronic book format, so a whole new generation of readers can be swept away on the adventure of a lifetime. This is the seventh book in the series.Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by despatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing.The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as thrilling, as tense and as unexpected in its culmination as anything Patrick O’Brian has written. Then, among other things, follows a shipwreck and a particularly sinister internment in the notorious Temple Prison in Paris. Once again, the tigerish and fascinating Diana Villiers redresses the balance in this man’s world of seamanship and war.

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Set sail for the read of your life …Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now, for the first time, they are available in electronic book format, so a whole new generation of readers can be swept away on the adventure of a lifetime.Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O’Brian’s now famous Aubrey/Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. It establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship’s surgeon and an intelligence agent. It contains all the action and excitement which could possibly be hoped for in a historical novel, but it also displays the qualities which have put O’Brian far ahead of any of his competitors: his depiction of the detail of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war, of weapons, food, conversation and ambience, of the landscape and of the sea. O’Brian’s portrayal of each of these is faultless and the sense of period throughout is acute. His power of characterisation is above all masterly.This brilliant historical novel marked the début of a writer who grew into one of our greatest novelists ever, the author of what Alan Judd, writing in the Sunday Times, has described as ‘the most significant extended story since Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time’.

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‘Addictively compelling’ The Times‘A joy to read’ Maggie O’FarrellAs she watched, the darkness unfolded itself, stood and took the shape of a young black woman, barefoot, in a yellow dress. Now Honor must actually do something, though she did not yet know what.Honor Bright is a sheltered Quaker who has rarely ventured out of 1850s Dorset when she impulsively emigrates to America. Opposed to the slavery that defines and divides the country, she finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family. In this tough, unsentimental place, where whisky bottles sit alongside quilts, Honor befriends two spirited women who will teach her how to turn ideas into action.

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A sweeping saga set around the aristocratic Ingham family of Cavendon Hall and the Swanns who serve them, set on the eve of World War 1.Two entwined families: the aristocratic Inghams and the Swanns who serve themOne stately home: Cavendon Hall, a grand imposing house nestled in the beautiful Yorkshire DalesA society beauty: Lady Daphne Ingham is the most beautiful of the Earl’s daugthers. Being presented at Court and then a glittering marriage is her destiny.But in the summer of 1913, a devastating event changes her future forever, and puts the House of Ingham at risk. Life as the families of Cavendon Hall know it – Royal Ascot, supper dances, grouse season feasts – is about to alter beyond recognition as the storm clouds of war gather.

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Mit dem vorliegenden Band setzt sich die Handlung des ersten Buches, welche unter dem Titel »Aufbruch im Miriquidi« die Anfänge der Stadt Chemnitz beschreibt, fort. Mit einem Sprung in das fünfzehnte Jahrhundert wird der Held nun als Ruprecht, der Stadtschreiber, die rasante Entwicklung der Stadt in der friedlichen Zeit nach den Hussitenzügen und vor der Reformation maßgeblich mitbestimmen. Die Berg- und Hüttenherren der Familien Schütz, wie auch die Tuchmacherfamilie Neefe bestimmten maßgeblich die Geschicke der Stadt und deren Ruhm ist in der Stadt und weit darüber hinaus bis heute ungebrochen. Ruprecht gewinnt Niavis, den Rektor der Lateinschule, zum Freund, den großen Reformer des Schulwesens, der das simple Pauken aus der Schule zu verdrängen suchte und stattdessen den Lehrstoff mit seinen Schülerdialogen am realen Leben orientierte. Für die Ratsherren mag die Errichtung des Rathauses aus Stein Symbol der gewachsenen Macht sein, Ruprecht sieht die Wahrung der Felsenkeller als wesentlicher für die Bürger, denn mit denen verspricht er sich einen Ort der Sicherheit für die Einwohner der Stadt in schweren Zeiten. Gerade dieser Roman mit dem konkreten Bezug auf die historischen Persönlichkeiten, deren Erbe wir pflegen, soll ein Kompliment des Autors für die Stadt Chemnitz sein, die sich darum bemüht, 2025 Kulturhauptstadt zu werden.

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„In der Leidenschaft, mit der die Liebe nur das Wer des anderen ergreift, geht der weltliche Zwischenraum, durch den wir mit anderen verbunden und zugleich von ihnen getrennt sind, gleichsam in Flammen auf. Was die Liebenden von der Mitwelt trennt, ist, dass sie weltlos sind, dass die Welt zwischen den Liebenden verbrannt ist.“ Nachdem ich in den letzten sechs Jahren fünfundsiebzig Bücher geschrieben habe (allein in den letzten achtzehn Monaten – geradezu mit dem Mute der Verzweiflung, das heraufziehende Inferno erahnend – fast vierzig) und weil, in der Tat, die durch wenige Verbrecher, viele Helfer und unzählige Mitläufer herbeigeführte globale Katastrophe, für die interessierte Kreise einem Virus die Schuld zuweisen (wollen), immer mehr ihren Lauf nimmt, möchte ich – bevor eine weltweit um sich greifende Zensur meine Bücher nicht verbrennen, indes, in neuer digitaler Zeit, deren Dateien löschen wird –, will ich, sozusagen als (vielleicht endgültiges, bestenfalls vorläufiges) Vermächtnis, das, was ich „aufs Papier gebracht“, hier zusammenfassen, um es der Nachwelt zu überliefern: auf dass Historiker, dermaleinst, sich ein Bild machen können, was ich gefühlt, was ich gedacht, was für mich und viele andere in alter Zeit noch Sinn gemacht, was ich verkündet, unverhohlen, bis Gates und andere Verbrecher die Freiheit, unsre Würde uns gestohlen, bevor sie uns verfolgt, geimpft, getrackt, so dass mehr als die Hälfte aller Menschen auf dieser unsrer, auf unsrer wunderbaren Welt verreckt. Durch den Wahn derer, die glaubten, Gott zu spielen. Die uns zu ihren Sklaven machten. Deren Verblendung Hybriden schuf. Aus Mensch und Tier. Zu eigenem Behuf. Zur Befriedigung ihres diabolischen Wahns, sie könnten Lucem-Ferenten sein, auch wenn sie nur Luzifere waren, auch wenn ihre satanische Macht der Menschheit nur Not und Elend gebracht. Deshalb schreib ich – mit allem Mut, mit aller Kraft, mit all dem Geist, den der Herrgott mir gegeben –, auf dass uns das Leben der alten Zeit – trotz all seiner Unzulänglichkeit – weiterhin erhalten bleibt. Und werde weiterhin schreiben, falls dieses Vermächtnis nur Zwischenbilanz, nur vorläufig Ergebnis, weil wir die Rothschild und Rockefeller, die Gates und die Soros, die Buffet und Bezos, einen Larry Fink und nicht zuletzt deren erbärmliche Adlaten – wie Drosten und Wieler, wie Merkel und Spahn – zum Teufel jagen. Bevor die Menschheit erlitt unumkehrbaren Schaden.

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