Bloomsbury

The enthralling story of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, whose insights transformed the ancient world and still inspire the realms of science, mathematics, philosophy, and the arts."Pythagoras’s influence on the ideas, and therefore on the destiny, of the human race was probably greater than that of any single man before or after him," wrote...

Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, beautiful but contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. Their provocative presence fills Guy's head with stories so wild he can't concentrate to write them.Not that anyone reads anymore, anyway....

In the wake of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s landslide re-election of 1936, the popular president-never anything but self-confident-unaccountably overreached. Deeply frustrated by a Supreme Court that had blocked many of his New Deal initiatives, FDR proposed to enlarge it from 9 justices to 15. The now-famous "court packing scheme" divided...

A Guide for the PerplexedOf the three main teachings in Chinese culture, Confucianism has exerted the most profound and lasting influence in China.While Confucianism (a term coined by Westerners) refers to a tradition (Ruism) that predated Confucius, it is most closely associated with Confucius (551-479 BCE), who determined its later development....

Controversy surrounded Zola during his life-time, and controversy has followed him ever since. No other French writer was so violently attacked by contemporaries, none had a more devoted following. This high priest of Naturalism scandalized France by the frankness of his treatment of the seamier side of human nature and electrified the whole of...

A busy doctor juggles an errant teenage daughter and a seriously ill father. An elderly immigrant sacrifices his demented wife's well-being to satisfy his son's authority. A trainee becomes delirious with lack of sleep but must learn how to act, and not react, in the face of suffering. A psychiatrist who advocates for the underserved may herself be...