Penguin Books strana 252 z 485

Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby appears to have it all, yet he yearns for the one thing that will always be out of his reach, the absence of which renders his life of glittering parties and bright young things ultimately hollow. Glamorous, dangerous, hopeful and desperately in love, Gatsby's naive dreams can only lead to destruction.

Originally written only for his personal consumption, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations has become a key text in the understanding of Roman Stoic philosophy. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Martin Hammond and an introduction by Diskin Clay. Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and Aurelius' own emotions. But while the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation, in developing his beliefs Marcus also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a series of wise and practical aphorisms that have been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and ordinary readers for almost two thousand years. Martin Hammond's new translation fully expresses the intimacy and eloquence of the original work, with detailed notes elucidating the text. This edition also includes an introduction by Diskin Clay, exploring the nature and development of the Meditations, a chronology, further reading and full indexes. Marcus Aelius Aurelius Antoninus (121-80) was adopted by the emperor Antoninus Pius and succeeded him in 161, (as joint emperor with adoptive brother Lucius Verus). He ruled alone from 169, and spent much of his reign in putting down various rebellions, and was a persecutor of Christians. His fame rest, above all, on his Meditations, a series of reflections, strongly influenced by Epictetus, which represent a Stoic outlook on life. He was succeeded by his natural son, thus ending the period of the adoptive emperors. If you enjoyed Meditations, you might like Seneca's Letters from a Stoic, also available in Penguin Classics.

When Jahan travels to 16th-century Istanbul as a stowaway carrying the gift of a white elephant for the sultan, little does he know the journey on which he is about to embark. Whispers in the palace gardens and secret journeys through Istanbul lead Jahan to Mihrimah, the beautiful Princess. Still under her spell, he is promoted from simple Mahout to apprentice of the Grand Master Architect, Sinan - when his fortunes take a mysterious change. Full of magic, colour and societal upheaval in the architectural renaissance of Turkey, this is the sweeping tale of plagues, wars, forbidden romance and the simple love between a boy and his elephant.

In Hooked, Nir Eyal reveals how successful companies create products people can't put down - and how you can too 'A must-read for everyone who cares about driving customer engagement' Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup 'The most high bandwidth, high octane, and valuable presentation I have ever seen on this subject'Rory Sutherland, vice chairman, Ogilvy & Mather 'The book everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about' Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, founder of The Next Web Why do some products capture our attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain things out of sheer habit? Is there an underlying pattern to how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) with the Hook Model - a four-step process that, when embedded into products, subtly encourages customer behaviour. Through consecutive "hook cycles," these products bring people back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. Hooked is based on Eyal's years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder - not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behaviour. Eyal provides readers with practical insights to create user habits that stick; actionable steps for building products people love; and riveting examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest and the Bible App. Nir Eyal spent years in the video gaming and advertising industries where he learned, applied, and at times rejected, techniques described in Hooked to motivate and influence users. He has taught courses on applied consumer psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and at Fortune 500 companies. His writing on technology, psychology, and business appears in the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. Ryan Hoover's writing has appeared in Tech- Crunch, The Next Web, Forbes, and Fast Company.After working on Hooked with Nir Eyal, Hoover founded Product Hunt, a company that has been described as "the place to discover the next big things in tech."

Louisa May Alcott's enchanting Christmas stories, presented in a beautiful hardcover edition perfect for giving as a gift. A Merry Christmas collects the best holiday stories of Louisa May Alcott, from the yuletide festivities of Marmee and her 'little women' to the moving 'What Love Can Do'. Deeply influenced by real-life events, including characters based on Alcott's family members and drawing from her experiences participating in the suffrage and abolitionist movements, these stories have the authentic texture and detail of Christmas in nineteenth-century America. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832. Her family later moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where Alcott was influenced by their neighbours Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. At a young age, Louisa took on some of the family's financial burdens, working as a domestic, a teacher, and a writer. In 1868 and 1869, fame and fortune came with the publication of Little Women. The author of many novels and an active campaigner for temperance and women's suffrage, Alcott died in 1888.

1789: The magnificent city of Paris sees the dawn of the French Revolution. The cobblestone streets run red with blood as the people rise against the oppressive aristocracy. At a time when the divide between the rich and poor is at its most extreme, and a nation is tearing itself apart, a young man and woman fight to avenge all they have lost. Soon Arno and Elise are drawn into the centuries-old battle between the Assassins and the Templars - a world with dangers more deadly than they could ever have imagined.

Written in 1816 by the German Romantic E. T. A. Hoffmann for his children, nephews and nieces, The Nutcracker captures better than any other story a child's wonder at Christmas. Since its publication, it has inspired hundreds of artists and adaptations, most notably the legendary ballet, scored by Russian composer Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Today, the story - and its enchanting images of sugar plums and nutcrackers, mistletoe and the Kingdom of the Dolls - continues to cast its fantastical spell on readers of all ages. E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) was one of the major figures of European Romanticism, specializing in tales of the fantastical and uncanny. He was also a music critic, jurist, composer and caricaturist. His Tales of Hoffmann, available in Penguin Classics, includes such masterpieces as 'Mademoiselle de Scudery', one of the earliest example of crime fiction, and Hoffmann's terrifying version of 'The Sandman'. Joachim Neugroschel won three PEN translation awards and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. He translated Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, among other works, for Penguin Classics.

A stunning Penguin clothbound edition of Homer's great epic, in E. V. Rieu's classic translation. The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the cornerstone of Western culture. The story centres on the critical events in the last year of the Trojan War, which lead to Achilleus' killing of Hektor and determine the fate of Troy. But Homer's theme is not simply war or heroism. With compassion and humanity, he presents a universal and tragic view of the world, of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death, set against a vast and largely unpitying divine background.. Seven Greek cities claim the honour of being the birthplace of Homer (c. 8th-7th century BC), the poet to whom the composition of the Iliadand Odyssey are attributed. The Iliad is the oldest surviving work of Western literature, but the identity - or even the existence - of Homer himself is a complete mystery, with no reliable biographical information having survived. E. V. Rieu initiated Penguin Classics with Allen Lane and his famous translation of the Odyssey was the first book published in the series in 1947. The Iliad followed in 1950.

Anthony Trollope's heartwarming tales of Christmas, presented in a beautiful hardcover edition perfect for giving as a gift. Christmas at Thompson Hall collects the best Christmas tales of Anthony Trollope, the enormously popular author of the Chronicles of Barsetshire and Palliser series of novels. Mostly set in Trollope's imaginary county of Barsetshire, the stories depict the festive period with all Trollope's trademark zest, humour, and cheerfulness, and offer rich and psychologically acute portrayals of the middle class and gentry of Victorian England at Christmas time. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was born in London to a bankrupt barrister father and a mother who, as a well-known writer, supported the family. Trollope enjoyed considerable acclaim both as a novelist and as a senior civil servant in the British Postal Service. He published more than forty novels and many short stories that are regarded by some as among the greatest of nineteenth-century fiction.

Gogol's classic, uproarious folktale, presented in a beautiful hardcover edition perfect for giving as a gift. Written in 1831, this dark tale relates the adventures of Vakula, the blacksmith, in his fight against the devil, who has stolen the moon above the village of Dikanka and is wreaking havoc on its inhabitants, all to win the love of the most beautiful girl in town. The basis for many film and opera adaptations, and still a story traditionally read aloud to children on Christmas Eve in Ukraine and Russia, The Night Before Christmas is the best holiday tale by the man whom Vladimir Nabokov called 'the greatest writer Russia has yet produced'.

At the age of five, little orphan Heidi is sent to live with her grandfather in the Alps. Everyone in the village is afraid of him, but Heidi is fascinated by his long beard and bushy grey eyebrows. She loves her life in the mountains, playing in the sunshine and growing up amongst the goats and birds. But one terrible day, Heidi is collected by her aunt and is made to live with a new family in town. Heidi can't bear to be away from her grandfather; can she find a way back up the mountain, where she belongs?

What kind of world would you like to inhabit?' Here, Keri Smith begins with a list. Writing down everything the reader is drawn to, from things they love or collect to things that fascinate and excite, including objects, colours, sounds, textures, memories, places and people, the list serves as the building block for the creation of a new world. This world is based entirely on who the reader is as an individual, and as such is completely unique. Prompted to think about landscape, place names, maps, currency and more Keri Smith encourages everyone to push their imaginations to the limit.

Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious - and often outrageous - early stories, sketches and pieces of nonsense, in a beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition. Jane Austen's earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven years, and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work: wit, acute insight into human folly, and a preoccupation with manners, morals and money. But they are also a product of the eighteenth century she grew up in - dark, grotesque, often surprisingly bawdy, and a far cry from the polished, sparkling novels of manners for which she became famous. Drunken heroines, babies who bite off their mother's fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these very funny pieces. This edition includes all of Austen's juvenilia, including her 'History of England' - written by 'a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian' - and the novella 'Lady Susan', in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. Taken together, they offer a fascinating - and often surprising - insight into the early Austen. This major new edition is the first time Austen's juvenilia has appeared in Penguin Classics. Edited by Christine Alexander, it includes an introduction, notes and other useful editorial materials. Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. In her youth she wrote many burlesques, parodies and other stories, including a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan. On her father's retirement in 1801, the family moved to Bath, and subsequently to Chawton in Hampshire. The novels published in Austen's lifetime include Sense and Sensibility(1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16, and was published, together with Northanger Abbey, posthumously in 1818. Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817. Christine Alexander is Scientia Professor of English at the University of New South Wales and general editor of the Juvenilia Press. She has published extensively on the Brontës and has co-edited the first book on literary juvenilia, The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf (2005). 'Spirited, easy, full of fun, verging with freedom upon sheer nonsense...At fifteen she had few illusions about other people and none about herself' - Virginia Woolf' [Her] inspiration was the inspiration of Gargantua and of Pickwick; it was the gigantic inspiration of laughter' - G. K. Chesterton

Introducing Paul O'Rourke: New Yorker, dentist and reluctant non-believer. Modern life disappoints him, and love never solves any of his problems. Then someone steals his identity and starts impersonating Paul online. A cruel invasion of privacy, the real horror is yet to come: this virtual 'Paul', preaching an obscure, ancient religion, might just be a better, happier person than the real deal. Anxious to find out who is responsible for this disturbing turn of events, Paul embarks on a quest which will see him confront the meaning of life, the inevitability of death and the importance of good oral hygiene.

The hugely anticipated second book in in the phenomenal new series that began with The 5th Wave - from Carnegie-shortlisted Rick Yancey. For Cassie Sullivan and the rest of Earth's remaining human survivors, the situation was already desperate when the 5th Wave hit. It's about to get worse. No one yet knows the depths to which Earth's conquerors - the Others - will sink in order to rid the Earth of the human infestation, nor have they guessed the heights to which the human spirit can reach. Characters introduced in Book One will come to the fore - and others will face the ultimate test.

A man's body is found in an empty house. His heart has been cut out and delivered to his wife and children. He is the first victim, and Detective Inspector Helen Grace knows he will not be the last. But why would a happily married man be this far from home in the dead of night? . . . The media call it Jack the Ripper in reverse: a serial killer preying on family men who lead hidden double lives. Helen can sense the fury behind the murders. But what she cannot possibly predict is how volatile this killer is - or what is waiting for her at the end of the chase . . .