Random Book Notes

Every once in awhile I receive in the mail a catalog of "bargain books" from the Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company in Falls Village, CT.

If there ever was a time when I knew how I had gotten onto their mailing list, that time has long since gone.

Still, the catalog makes for some downtime browsing. Here are seven randomly chosen entries, by category:

ART BOOKS

The Mammoth Book of Tattoos. Ed. by Lal Hardy. Brings together 80 leading tattoo artists from the US, UK, and Europe who have made a name in body art. Over 500 photographs of tattoos cover the full range of styles, including new work made possible only by recent advances in the medium. Includes work from George Bone, Tim Kern, Kim Saigh, and others. Full illus in color. 447 pages. Running Press. Paperbound. Pub. at $18., $12.95.

Birds & Butterflies: Painter's Quick Reference. By the eds. of North Light Books. This easy to use reference features over 40 step by step demonstrations for painting beautiful butterflies and a wide variety of songbirds, water birds and exotic birds in acrylics, watercolors, oils, and colored pencils. Well illus. in color. 128 pages. North Light. 8 x 11. Paperbound. Pub. at $24.99. $6.95

BIOGRAPHY

Marcus Aurelius. By Frank McLynn. This philosopher, soldier, and Emperor is one of the great figuresof antiquity whose life and words still speak to us nearly 2,000 years after his death. basedon all available original sources, this is the definitive and most vivid biography to date of this monumental historical figure. Illus. 684 pages. Da Capo. Pub. at $30. $7.95

Catherine De Medici: Renaissance Queen of France. By Leonie Frieda. Poisoner, besotted mother, despot, necromancer, engineer of a massacre: the stain on the name of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. This biography reclaims the story of this unjustly-maligned queen of France. 24 pages of photos, mostly color. 440 pages. HarperPerennial. Paperbound. Pub. at $15.99 $4.95

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom. By Graham Farmelo. One of the discoverers of quantum mechaniucs, the most revolutionary theory of the past century. Dirac's contriubutions had a unique insight, eloquence, clarity and mathematical power. Based on previously undisclosed archives, this biography reveals the many facets of Dirac's brilliantly original mind. Photos. 539 pages.Basic Pub. at $29.95. $7.95

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

Prince Valiant, Vol. 4, 1943-1944. By Hal Foster. Haunted by the lovely Alea, Prince Valiant seeks Merlin's wise counsel, in a story that seques into one of the series' great epics, "The Long Voyage to Thule." Other adventures include "The Seductress" and "The Call to Sea." Fully illus. in color., Fantagraphics. 10 1/4 x 14. Pub. at $29.99. $19.95

MYSTERIES & DETECTIVES

Flash and Bones. By Kathy Reichs. Novel. Just as 200,000 fans are pouring into town for Race Week, a body is found in a barrelof asphalt next to the Charlotte Motor Speedway. As Temperance Brennan begins to look into the case, she is visited by a NASCAR crew member who thinks the body may belong to his sister, who disappeared twelve years earlier. 278 pages. Scribner Pub. at $26.99. $5.95.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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