Bücher von Grant Williams

This is the first book to view Shakespeare¿s plays from the prospect of the premodern death arts, not only the ars moriendi tradition but also the plurality of cultural expressions of memento mori, funeral rituals, commemorative activities, and rhetorical techniques and strategies fundamental to the performance of the work of dying, death, and the dead. The volume is divided into two sections: first, critically nuanced examinations of Shakespeare¿s corpus and then, second, of Hamlet exclusively as the ultimate proving ground of the death arts in practice. This book revitalizes discussion around key and enduring themes of mortality by reframing Shakespeare¿s plays within a newly conceptualized historical category that posits a cultural divide¿at once epistemological and phenomenological¿between premodernity and the Enlightenment.

Escaping the Bolsheviks by boat at night as a baby, Russian Jew Leon Aleksandrov, spends his early years with his family seeking a safe haven in an increasingly anti-semitic Europe in the 1920s finally settling for safety in liberal Berlin. With the rise of Nazism Leon flees to France, is imprisoned, escapes to England and joins the army in time for D-Day. He fights his way through Europe into the very bowels of Nazi Germany and Hitler's Reich Chancellery. His war is far from over as his language skills see him translate for Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam conference and remaining in Berlin to help re-build Germany.A true story of determination and extraordinary events, his tale reads like Forrest Gump meets Saving Private Ryan.Prepare to be amazed at one man's life story.