Mystie Winckler

Part of a detailed compendium of late-Roman learning in each of the seven liberal arts, set within an amusing mythological-allegorical tale of courtship and marriage among the pagan gods. The text provides an understanding of medieval allegory and the components of a medieval education.

Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.

The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during an otherwise little-known period of its development. A selection of letters and small-scale theological treatises from a group known as the Apostolic Fathers, several of whom were probably disciples of the Apostles, they provide a first-hand account of the early Church and outline a form of early Christianity still drawing on the theology and traditions of its parent religion, Judaism. Included here are the first Epistle of Bishop Clement of Rome, an impassioned plea for harmony; The Epistle of Polycarp; The Epistle of Barnabas; The Didache; and the Seven Epistles written by Ignatius of Antioch—among them his moving appeal to the Romans that they grant him a martyr's death.

Quintilian, born in Spain about 35 CE, became a widely known and highly successful teacher of rhetoric in Rome. The Orator's Education (Institutio Oratoria), a comprehensive training program in twelve books, draws on his own rich experience. It is a work of enduring importance, not only for its insights on oratory, but for the picture it paints of education and social attitudes in the Roman world.

Quintilian offers both general and specific advice. He gives guidelines for proper schooling (beginning with the young boy); analyzes the structure of speeches; recommends devices that will engage listeners and appeal to their emotions; reviews a wide range of Greek and Latin authors of use to the orator; and counsels on memory, delivery, and gestures.

Donald Russell's new five-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of The Orator's Education, which replaces an eighty-year-old translation by H. E. Butler, provides a text and facing translation fully up to date in light of current scholarship and well tuned to today's taste. Russell also provides unusually rich explanatory notes, which enable full appreciation of this central work in the history of rhetoric.

The Institutes Of The Christian Religion is a landmark text in the history of Protestant Christianity, and is a crucial publication amidst the upheaval of the Reformation of the 16th century. Its influence upon the subsequent founding and organization of the Protestant churches was profound, and the work continues to be referenced by scholars and historians to this day. First published in Latin but soon translated to John Calvin's native French, this book is also responsible for a substantive refinement of Francophone linguistics.

Calvin designed his book with the assumption of a basic level of theological knowledge on the part of the reader; namely the tenets of Christianity, the doctrines of the Holy Bible and the central importance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Herein we discover a wide-ranging yet thorough text; readers are given a deep and measured explanation of Protestant doctrine, an identification of the differences which Protestantism has with the Holy Catholic church, the errors identified in Catholicism, and a call to action following the divine calling of Christ and God.

Many inspirations may be observed in the manner John Calvin writes this text: the sacramental elements and the observance of the faith emphasized by Martin Luther, and the establishment of the divine will as noted by Martin Bucer are present. Prior to the publication of this work, other, shorter books attempted to explain Protestant theology. None however possessed the thoroughness or scholarly distinction of Calvin's work, which became both popular and vital to the growth of Protestantism as a Christian movement.

Where other editions may omit, condense or otherwise abridge the words of John Calvin, this printing does no such thing. Based upon a 1581 reprint of Thomas Norton's original translation first published in 1561, we find here the original version of the English text in its entirety as published during John Calvin's lifetime. An extensive table of contents allows readers to navigate and reference the text, which is organized into the traditional four book format established in the 16th century.

The first published novel from the controversial Nobel Prize winning Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago.

In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength.

First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man’s will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.

This new, highly affordable paperback edition includes Maier's best-selling translation, historical commentary on each book of The Church History, and ten maps and illustrations. Often called the "Father of Church History," Eusebius recorded crucial information about the lives of Jesus' disciples, the development of the New Testament, Roman politics, and the persecution of early Christians.

A reissue of a classic text, Norms and Nobility is a provocative reappraisal of classical education that offers a workable program for contemporary school reform. David Hicks contends that the classical tradition promotes a spirit of inquiry that is concerned with the development of style and conscience, which makes it an effective and meaningful form of education. Dismissing notions that classical education is elitist and irrelevant, Hicks argues that the classical tradition can meet the needs of our increasingly technological society as well as serve as a feasible model for mass education.

Public education in America has run into hard times. Even many within the system admit that it is failing. While many factors contribute, Douglas Wilson lays much blame on the idea that education can take place in a moral vacuum. It is not possible for education to be nonreligious, deliberately excluding the basic questions about life. All education builds on the foundation of someone's worldview. Education deals with fundamental questions that require religious answers. Learning to read and write is simply the process of acquiring the tools to ask and answer such questions.

A second reason for the failure of public schools, Wilson feels, is modern teaching methods. He argues for a return to a classical education, firm discipline, and the requirement of hard work.

Often educational reforms create new problems that must be solved down the road. This book presents alternatives that have proved workable in experience.

In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.
As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend Nikulaussøn, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty.
With its captivating heroine and emotional potency, Kristin Lavransdatter is the masterwork of Norway’s most beloved author—one of the twentieth century’s most prodigious and engaged literary minds—and, in Nunnally’s exquisite translation, a story that continues to enthrall.