Δοκίμιο & Πολιτισμός

When Edward Lear set off from Corfu for Crete in April 1864, it was in no very optimistic frame of mind. For the last nine years Corfu had been his winter home but after half a century of British rule the island had been ceded to Greece and Lear felt obliged to move. His livelihood required an immediate expedition to new scenes and he probably assumed that another book of Mediterranean travels would be likely to sell. So it was that he chose Crete.

The Cretan Way is a 500 km walking route which takes you from east to west across the varied and spectacular landscapes of Crete. It is the ideal way to discover the rural, mountainous and coastal regions of this incredible island.

This guidebook is the first ever guidebook for the route and includes maps, descriptions, a travelogue, GPS tracks, accommodation info and tips for walking one of the most remarkable long-distance routes in the world.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, is the undisputed masterpiece of English historical writing which can only perish with the language itself. Its length alone is a measure of its monumental quality: seventy-one chapters, of which twenty-eight appear in full in this edition. With style, learning and wit, Gibbon takes the reader through the history of Europe from the second century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 - an enthralling account by 'the greatest of the historians of the Enlightenment'. This edition includes Gibbon's footnotes and quotations, here translated for the first time, together with brief explanatory comments, a precis of the chapters not included, 16 maps, a glossary, and a list of emperors.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

The Oxford English Dictionary has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men; its longest-serving editor, James Murray, devoted 36 years to the project, as far as the letter T. But the Dictionary didn't just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public. By the time it was finished in 1928 its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people, from archaeologists and astronomers to murderers, naturists, novelists, pornographers, queer couples, suffragists, vicars and vegetarians. Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie dives deep into previously untapped archives to tell a people's history of the OED. She traces the lives of thousands of contributors who defined the English language, from the eccentric autodidacts to the family groups who made word-collection their passion. With generosity and brio, Ogilvie reveals, for the first time, the full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world - and celebrates to sparkling effect the extraordinary efforts of the Dictionary People.

Ιn 1955, a young student of the Geneva School of Architecture, Manuel Baud-Bovy, visited Tinos for the first time, staying in a cottage on the sandy beach of Kiona.

While exploring the island, Manuel came across some unusual buildings that he had never heard of before. With growing surprise and enthusiasm, in each of his excursions he discovered lonely dovecotes on sandy beaches, others nestling into the slopes and others dominating the heights, each surpassing the last in beauty and dignity.

Thanks to his father, Samuel, an ethnomusicologist, Manuel had developed an interest in the study of folk culture. Moreover, his famous grandfather, Daniel, had published studies and books on traditional Swiss architecture …

Manuel Baud-Bovy, deeply impressed, thought of compiling a systematic list of the dovecotes. He walked all over the island and sometimes slept in a village, sometimes under the stars or on a threshing floor, in a chapel, or even in an abandoned dovecote. He discovered about eight hundred of them, which he recorded in four large albums with detailed plans, theories and thoughts, which he submitted to the Geneva School of Architecture for his doctoral dissertation.

After 60 and more years, a selection of this rare and valuable material becomes a book, enriched with introductory texts and many photographic documents that capture the dovecotes as they were preserved in 1955. In this way, this work strongly highlights the need to protect our cultural heritage while encouraging us to tramp the paths of the island once more …

The Durrell family are immortalised in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals and its ITV adaptation, The Durrells. But what of the real life Durrells? Why did they go to Corfu in the first place - and what happened to them after they left? The real story of the Durrells is as surprising and fascinating as anything in Gerry's books, and Michael Haag, with his first hand knowledge of the family, is the ideal narrator, drawing on diaries, letters and unpublished autobiographical fragments. The Durrells of Corfu describes the family's upbringing in India and the crisis that brought them to England and then Greece. It recalls the genuine characters they encountered on Corfu - Theodore the biologist, the taxi driver Spiro Halikiopoulos and the prisoner Kosti - as well as the visit of American writer Henry Miller. And Haag has unearthed the story of how the Durrells left Corfu, including Margo's and Larry's last-minute escapes before the War. An extended epilogue looks at the emergence of Larry as a world famous novelist, and Gerry as a naturalist and champion of endangered species, as well as the lives of the rest of the family, their friends and other animals. The book is illustrated with family photos from the Gerald Durrell Archive, many of them reproduced here for the first time.

Provides a nuanced picture of the Greek experience in the Ottoman empire. The period of Ottoman rule in Greek history has undergone a dramatic reassessment in recent years. Long reviled as four hundred years of unrelieved slavery and barbarity ('the Turkish yoke'), a new generation of scholars, based mainly but not exclusively in Greece, is rejecting this view in favor of a more nuanced picture of the Greek experience in the Ottoman Empire.

This volume considers this new scholarship, most of it in Greek, and makes it accessible for the first time to a wider audience. Molly Greene also discusses the changing views of the Ottoman Empire more generally and assesses what this changing historiography can tell us about this period in Greek history. The book begins with the conventional date of 1453, the fall of Constantinople, and includes debates over the extent to which 1453 represented a real break with the past.

The volume ends with the Russo Ottoman War of 1768 - 1774, which brought to an end the relative peace and stability of the Ottoman eighteenth century and helped to usher in the nationalist movements in the region. It covers the period from the fall of Constantinople to the Russo Ottoman War; It assesses new scholarship on the period and synthesises this for the reader; the fate of the 1,000 year Byzantine heritage; the millet system and Ottoman society; the connections between the Greek population and other members of Ottoman society and the Greeks in a European context.

Wine lovers appreciate not just the taste of wine and the pleasure it gives them, they also enjoy the lifestyle and culture associated with it and the values it conveys. Both a handbook and an illustrated history, this new guide offers all readers--from novice to professional--the keys to fully appreciating Bordeaux wines and their rich culture. Explore the wine chateaux, the Bordeaux wine trade, the art of wine blending, the rules of tasting, and the best food and wine pairings, as written by the world-renowned experts of the Bordeaux Wine School. This comprehensive guide to great wines, terroirs, and grape varieties includes a wealth of illustrations--lush photographs as well as original drawings, maps, charts, tables, and diagrams (plus links to 40 instructive videos)--that make this book essential reading for all wine lovers.

With an introduction by Charlotte R. Brown and William Edward Morris. David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English, as well as a master stylist. This volume contains his major philosophical works. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), published while Hume was still in his twenties, consists of three books on the understanding, the passions, and morals. It applies the experimental method of reasoning to human nature in a revolution that was intended to make Hume the Newton of the moral sciences. Disappointed with the Treatise's failure to bring about such a revolution, Hume later recast Book I as An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1751), and Book III as An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which he regarded as 'incomparably the best' of all his works. Both Enquiries went through several editions in his lifetime. Hume's works, controversial in his day, remain deeply and widely influential in ours, especially for his contributions to our understanding of the nature of morality, political and economic theory, philosophy of religion, and philosophical naturalism. This volume also includes Hume's anonymous Abstract of Books I and II of the Treatise, and the short autobiographical essay, 'My Own Life', which he wrote just before his death.