Jim Powell

Sappho

Offers a new translation of the approximately one-twelfth of Sappho's total writing that has survived to the present, and includes brief essays on her life, writing style, and work.

The Poems and Fragments of Sappho

Sappho, a Garland

Joe Lee

If you are like most people, you're not sure what Postmodernism is. And if this were like most books on the subject, it probably wouldn't tell you. Jim Powell takes the position that Postmodernism is a series of `maps' that help people find their way through a changing world. Postmodernism For Beginners features the thoughts of Foucault on power and knowledge, Jameson on mapping the postmodern, Baudrillard on the media, Harvey on time-space compression, Derrida on deconstruction and Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomes.

Postmodernism for Beginners

The breaking of eggs

Looks at Woodrow Wilson's decision to draw the United States into World War I and the repercussions, including millions of casualties and paving the way for Adolf Hitler and the rise of Lenin and Stalin in Russia.

How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II

Wilson's War

"The Sapphic impression of emotion poured out in unpremeditated speech is the product of sophisticated art. Such poetry confronts the translator with a formidable challenge.... Jim Powell is fully aware of the dangers, and speaks of the 'fluidity, ease, grace, and melodic variety' of Sappho's measures. Powell has tried to reproduce the effect. The resulting book is a brilliant success. Powell has shored her fragments against [Sappho's] ruins to give us a garland in which the flowers, though tattered, have not faded."--Bernard Knox, The New Republic "Graceful, fluent, lucid while respectful of mystery: Jim Powell's unsurpassed embodiment of Sappho in English has all the conviction of art."--Robert Pinsky This new edition of The Poetry of Sappho translates all the surviving texts of Sappho that make consecutive poetic sense, including the newly discovered "Brothers Ode," "Cypris fragment," and other papyrus texts published in 2014. The translation is particularly intent on bringing over into English Sappho's formal mastery along with her sense. It includes summary discussions of Sappho's biography and the history of her texts, an essay on the formal character of her work and its tradition, and notes on the poems.

An Expanded Edition, Featuring Newly Discovered Poems

The Poetry of Sappho

Decontruction is so labyrinthine that it has become the monster that murdered philosophy. Following the success of his For Beginners title, Derrida, Deconstruction for Beginners is an irreverent romp through the deconstructive domains. Though Powell offers lucid explanations of the most important ideas of this philosophy, he also dives into lesser-known works, including The Right to Look. Also examined is how deconstruction took place in ancient India, Japan and China.

Deconstruction for Beginners

Sappho is celebrated as the supreme ancient Greek poet of love and of the personal lyric, and noted also for her vivid participation in a living paganism. Jim Powell's translation is recognized for its unique combination of poetic mastery and scholarly penetration of the original. This edition includes his translation of the newly discovered poem, the most important addition to Sappho's surviving work in a century.

A thought-provoking study of the Great Depression argues that Roosevelt's flawed economic policies had profound and dangerous impact on America and that the New Deal actually prolonged the hardship rather than provided a lasting solution. 30,000 first printing.

How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

FDR's Folly

In 1966, Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at Johns Hopkins University that cast the entire history of Western Philosophy into doubt. The following year, Derrida published three brilliant but mystifying books that convinced the pollsters that he was the most important philosopher of the late 20th Century. Unfortunately, nobody was sure whether the intellectual movement that he spawned - Deconstruction - advanced philosophy or murdered it. The truth? - Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he's talking about. Derrida's 'writing' - confusing doesn't begin to describe it (it's like he's pulling the rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy.) But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat of a bird in your hand, you can feel Derrida's electric genius. It draws you to it; you want to understand it... but it's so confusing. What you need, Ducky, is Derrida For Beginners by James Powell! Jim Powell's Derrida For Beginners is the clearest explanation of Derrida and deconstruction presently available in our solar system. Powell guides us through blindingly obscure texts like Of Grammatology (Derrida's deconstruction of Saussure, Lévi Strauss, and Rousseau), Différance (his essay on language and life), Dissemination (his dismantling of Plato, his rap on Mallarmé), and Derrida's other masterpieces (the mere titles can make strong men tremble in terror - Glas, Signéponge/Signsponge, The Post Card, and Specters of Marx.) Readers will learn the coolest Derridian buzzwords (e.g., intertextuality, binary oppositions, hymen, sous rature, arche-writing, phallogocentrism), the high-and-low lights of deconstruction's history (including the DeMan controvercy), and the various criticisms of Derrida and deconstruction, including Camille Paglia's objection that America, the rock-n-roll nation, isn't formal enough to need deconstruction. The master, however, begs to disagree: America is Deconstruction -Jacques Derrida

Derrida for Beginners

In 1966, Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at Johns Hopkins University that cast the entire history of Western Philosophy into doubt. The following year, Derrida published three brilliant but mystifying books that convinced the pollsters that he was the most important philosopher of the late 20th Century. Unfortunately, nobody was sure whether the intellectual movement that he spawned – Deconstruction – advanced philosophy or murdered it. The truth? – Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he’s talking about. Derrida’s ‘writing’ – confusing doesn’t begin to describe it (it’s like he’s pulling the rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy.) But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat of a bird in your hand, you can feel Derrida’s electric genius. It draws you to it; you want to understand it... but it’s so confusing. What you need, Ducky, is Derrida For Beginners by James Powell! Jim Powell’s Derrida For Beginners is the clearest explanation of Derrida and deconstruction presently available in our solar system. Powell guides us through blindingly obscure texts like Of Grammatology (Derrida’s deconstruction of Saussure, Lévi Strauss, and Rousseau), “Différance” (his essay on language and life), Dissemination (his dismantling of Plato, his rap on Mallarmé), and Derrida’s other masterpieces (the mere titles can make strong men tremble in terror – Glas, Signéponge/Signsponge, The Post Card, and Specters of Marx.) Readers will learn the coolest Derridian buzzwords (e.g., intertextuality, binary oppositions, hymen, sous rature, arche-writing, phallogocentrism), the high-and-low lights of deconstruction’s history (including the DeMan controvercy), and the various criticisms of Derrida and deconstruction, including Camille Paglia’s objection that America, the rock-n-roll nation, isn’t formal enough to need deconstruction. The master, however, begs to disagree: “America is Deconstruction” -Jacques Derrida

Derrida For Beginners

The fateful blunder that radically altered the course of the twentieth century—and led to some of the most murderous dictators in history President Woodrow Wilson famously rallied the United States to enter World War I by saying the nation had a duty to make “the world safe for democracy.” But as historian Jim Powell demonstrates in this shocking reappraisal, Wilson actually made a horrible blunder by committing the United States to fight. Far from making the world safe for democracy, America’s entry into the war opened the door to murderous tyrants and Communist rulers. No other president has had a hand—however unintentional—in so much destruction. That’s why, Powell declares, “Wilson surely ranks as the worst president in American history.” Wilson’s War reveals the horrifying consequences of our twenty-eighth president’s fateful decision to enter the fray in Europe. It led to millions of additional casualties in a war that had ground to a stalemate. And even more disturbing were the long-term consequences—consequences that played out well after Wilson’s death. Powell convincingly demonstrates that America’s armed forces enabled the Allies to win a decisive victory they would not otherwise have won—thus enabling them to impose the draconian surrender terms on Germany that paved the way for Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Powell also shows how Wilson’s naiveté and poor strategy allowed the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia. Given a boost by Woodrow Wilson, Lenin embarked on a reign of terror that continued under Joseph Stalin. The result of Wilson’s blunder was seventy years of Soviet Communism, during which time the Communist government murdered some sixty million people. Just as Powell’s FDR’s Folly exploded the myths about Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, Wilson’s War destroys the conventional image of Woodrow Wilson as a great “progressive” who showed how the United States can do good by intervening in the affairs of other nations. Jim Powell delivers a stunning reminder that we should focus less on a president’s high-minded ideals and good intentions than on the consequences of his actions. A selection of the Conservative Book Club and American Compass

How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War I I

James Powell

Paul Johnson

Contains biographical portraits of the men and women throughout history who have fought for liberty and freedom.

A 2,000-year History, Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions

The Triumph of Liberty

Read Jim Powell's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. The Breaking of Eggs is the story of the curmudgeonly Feliks Zhokovski, Polish by birth, Communist at heart, who at age 61 finds that just about everything he has based his life on is crumbling. Separated from him family as a child when the Nazis invaded Poland, Feliks is currently living in Paris and his life's work is a travel guide to the old Eastern bloc. But unfortunately for Feliks, it's 1991: the Berlin Wall has fallen, Communism has collapsed, East Germany isn't the economic miracle he wants it to be, and he's forced to confront the fact that his travel-writing days are numbered. His guide was a flourishing business, but the old pro-Communist descriptions won’t do, for Western visitors will now be able to see for themselves. So he makes the (extremely difficult) decision to sell his guide to a big, capitalist American publisher. This sets in motion a chain of events that will reunite him with a brother living in Ohio that he hasn't seen in fifty years, reveal the truth about the mother he thought abandoned him and offer him a second chance with a long-lost love. Equal parts hilarious and moving, The Breaking of Eggs is the story of a man who closed himself off from everyone and everything years ago and now awakens to discover the world has changed dramatically and he must change with it. The Breaking of Eggs also has the added bonus of being a crash course in 20th century European history, subtly told as a backdrop to Feliks' riveting personal story. Imagine Everything is Illuminated meets The Elegance of the Hedgehog, then forget all the publishing clichés and discover this incredible new voice.

A Novel

The Breaking of Eggs

Brian Powell

The Poema de Mio Cid and the Crónica de Veinte Reyes

Epic and Chronicle

How much do we know about the people we love? And would you want to know the truth? 'An engrossing read' Sunday Times There’s a bar at the crossroads on the way out of town. Or the way in, depending on whether you’re coming or going. Marcie and her husband have run it for years. After thirty years of marriage, there aren’t many secrets left between them. Couples often say that, don’t they? But it’s not always true. Arlene appeared in the bar one day, hoping that she’d find a man called Jack. Franky came back to town soon after, hoping that people might have forgotten the mess he’d left behind him the first time around. Franky’s problem had always been women. Women and money. What Arlene’s problem is isn’t clear. It’s obvious she has a history, but who doesn’t? As Arlene gets closer to finding Jack – her father? her lover? – the bar becomes the scene of a great unravelling. In Jim Powell's Things We Nearly Knew, secrets buried a lifetime ago are dragged into the light.

Things We Nearly Knew

This is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain's raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It includes an analysis of primary sources never used by historians. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain's cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain's largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862-64. This book establishes the facts of Britain's raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and related to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain's cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its raw cotton market, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.

Cotton, Liverpool and the American Civil War

Losing the Thread

'A magnificent debut novel . . . haunting, quietly brilliant' Boston Globe 'Warm and very witty' Stylist 'Full of humour and ideas' Sydney Morning Herald 'A fresh, moving, remarkable story. Unforgettable' Publishers Weekly In a shabby apartment in the 19th arrondissment in Paris, Feliks's indomitable landlady - Madame Lefèvre - invites him to call her Sandrine. Her manners have been as unvarying as her dresses for the last thirty-six years, but as the face of Europe transforms beyond recognition, so Feliks's own life teeters on the edge of change. Feliks does not embrace change - in fact, it makes him most uncomfortable. But as he's reunited with a brother that he hasn't seen since his childhood and comes face-to-face with the love he let slip through his fingers, Feliks has to face up to the possibility that the convictions he has based his life upon were nothing but smoke and mirrors. Soon his carefully constructed world is tumbling round his ears and Feliks wonders: is there such a thing as a second chance for someone like him?

The spiritual rewards and intellectual challenges of Eastern Philosophy are revealed in this visually stunning book, illustrated by Joe Lee and with 19th Century engravings. Eastern Philosophy is not an intellectual pursuit, but one that involves one’s entire being. Much of it is so deeply entwined with the non-intellectual art of meditation, that the two are impossible to separate. In this accessible survey of the major philosophies of India, China, Tibet, and Japan, Jim Powell draws upon his knowledge of Sanskrit and Chinese, as well as decades of meditation. Whether tackling Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Dogen, the Dali Lama or Pantajal – Powell’s insights are deeply illuminating. All the major philosophies of India, China, Tibet and Japan are explained and everyone – from beginner to expert – will find Eastern Philosophy For Beginners a beautiful and insightful overview.

Eastern Philosophy For Beginners

Jim Powell writes funny and warm tales about growing up in Chandler, Texas, in the 1940s, offering his readers many chuckles. His first book, Feed Sack Fashions and Other Childhood Memories, introduced readers to entertaining anecdotes about a slower and simpler time. Them's Funny Looking Catfish and More Childhood Memories, his second book, presents over 50 more delightful tales including, "Them's Funny Looking Catfish," "The Baby Sitting Bed," "Aunt Ruby's Chevy," "Sister Phoebe," and "Painting Chickens." He also takes us on an unusual adventure to Big D's Farmers Market, introduces us to gill net fishing, and guarantees a "syrup-sopping" good time. The lively and warm nostalgic stories Powell tells in his books bring back fond memories that appeal to many generations. Be sure to visit online at www.feedsackfashions.com to contact the author, to order books, or to receive information on speaking engagements and other upcoming books. Jim S. Powell grew up to be a loving husband, doting father and faithful employee with Brookshire Grocery Company in Tyler, Texas, last serving as Senior Vice President-Advertising. Jim is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, receiving a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 1958. He received a Master of Arts degree from East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas. Some accounts of the author's childhood memories have been published in the Bullard Banner and The Chandler Statesman, two local East Texas weekly newspapers. Today, he and his wife Ann live in Tyler and enjoy their two daughters and one grandchild, Callie, for whom Jim's first book, Feed Sack Fashions, was originally written. They can often be found hunting bargains in antique shops, sipping lemonade at their cabin on weekends, or serving in their local church.

Them's Funny Looking Catfish

The brilliantly observed and very witty story of one man's unravelling, from the author of The Breaking of EggsWhen I was small, my mother showed me how to grow a carrot from a carrot. She filled a jam jar with water, cut the top off a carrot, ran a cocktail stick horizontally through the stub and suspended it over the jar, just touching the water. In time, roots sprouted, and when they were long enough and strong enough, the plant was translated to the garden and new carrots grew. This was one of the many exciting ways in which I was prepared for adult life.This is Matthew Oxenhay at sixty: a stranger to his wife, an embarrassment to his children, and failed former contender for the top job at his City firm. Seizing on his birthday party as an opportunity to deliver some rather crushing home truths to his assembled loved ones, it seems as though Matthew might have hit rock bottom. The truth, however, is that he has some way to go yet...With forensic precision and mordant wit, Matthew unpicks the threads that bind him: a comfortable home in the suburbs, a career spent trading futures and a life that bears little resemblance to the one he imagined for himself at twenty. When he unexpectedly bumps into Anna (the one who got away), the stage is set for an epic unravelling.Darkly funny, Trading Futures forces us to confront how change, like death, is an inevitable fact of life: feared by most, it can transform or overwhelm us. This is a brilliantly observed novel, for fans of works such as John Lanchester's Mr Phillips and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.PRAISE FOR THE BREAKING OF EGGS"A magnificent debut novel...a haunting, quietly brilliant story...a rare and remarkable achievement: a novel that meshes storytelling potency with historical erudition." The Boston Globe"An impressive first novel...wise and witty." American Spectator

Jim Powell

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