Selected Tales

by Edgar Allan Poe

REVIEW. Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction, and as the inventor of the modern mystery, Poe created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new selection of twenty-four tales places the most popular--"The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Purloined Letter"--alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays, and political satires.

Read throughout the world, admired by Dostoevsky and translated by Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe has become a legendary figure, representing the artist as obsessed outcast and romantic failure. His nightmarish visions, shaped by cool artistic calculation, reveal some of the dark possibilities of human experience. But his enormous popularity and his continuing influence on literature depend less on legend or vision than on his stylistic accomplishments as a writer. The tales in this volume include Poe's best-known and most representative works as well as his masterly "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym."

For the first time, the authoritative editions of works by major American novelists, poets, scholars, and essayists collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being published singly in a series of handsome paperback books. A distinguished writer has contributed an introduction for each volume, which also includes a chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the text, and notes. 




The Politics of Hope and The Bitter Heritage. By Arthur M. Schlesinger

Synopsis. The Politics of Hope and The Bitter Heritage brings together two important books that bracket the tempestuous politics of 1960s America. In The Politics of Hope, which historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published in 1963 while serving as a special assistant to President Kennedy, Schlesinger defines the liberalism that characterized the Kennedy administration and the optimistic early Sixties. In lively and incisive essays, most of them written between 1956 and 1960, on topics such as the basic differences underlying liberal and conservative politics, the writing of history, and the experience of Communist countries, Schlesinger emphasizes the liberal thinker's responsibility to abide by goals rather than dogma, to learn from history, and to look to the future.

Four years later, following Kennedy's assassination and the escalation of America's involvement in Vietnam, Schlesinger's tone changes. In The Bitter Heritage, a brief but penetrating appraisal of the "war that nobody wanted," he recounts America's entry into Vietnam, the history of the war, and its policy implications. The Bitter Heritage concludes with an eloquent and sobering assessment of the war's threat to American democracy and a reflection on the lessons or legacies of the Vietman conflict.

With a new foreword by Sean Wilentz, the James Madison Library edition of The Politics of Hope and The Bitter Heritage situates liberalism in the convulsive 1960s—and illuminates the challenges that still face liberalism today.

 

Biography. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007), was one of the world's most distinguished historians and political commentators. He was professor of history at Harvard from 1946 until 1961, when President Kennedy appointed him special assistant for Latin American affairs. In 1966, he began teaching at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and in 1994 he became an emeritus professor there. His many books include "The Age of Jackson" and "A Thousand Days", both of which received the Pulitzer Prize.

The World of Mathematics

by James R. Newman

REVIEW. In 1940 James R. Newman, a lawyer and writer who had trained as a mathematician, began to assemble a popular historical anthology of mathematical writings. He reckoned it might take him two years. Fifteen years later he delivered the million-word manuscript to his publisher: 133 entries, each with a brief introduction and biography of its author. The World of Mathematics finally appeared, in four volumes, in 1956. It was immediately successful--a classic of mathematical popularization. Now Tempus Books has reissued it, still in four volumes but this time in paperback as well as hardback form. How does it read in 1989?

The coverage, eclectic from the first, is beginning in parts to date. The broad historical background of mathematics is still excellent; the sections dealing with mathematics in the physical and social worlds, and with the bases of statistics, stand up for the most part remarkably well. But many of the entries concerned with pure mathematics and its cultural relevance would certainly have been reconsidered by Newman today. The intellectual level remains demanding but not intimidating: appropriate for the enquiring non-mathematician, or the mathematician off-duty. About 20 percent of the entries are drawn from the research literature, or at least the primary presentation of original work; 30 percent are educational or polemical pieces; 40 percent are popularizations of established mathematics; and 10 percent are stories or whimsical or discursive essays.

The charm of a good historical anthology is the variety of outlooks and challenges it presents. Here is Francis Galton in 1869 discussing hereditary genius, blandly contravening all the principles of social justice by proving that some people are inherently many times brighter than others. Here is Malthus's famous essay of 1798 on population, condemning most of mankind for most of time to unavoidable misery--and where's the flaw in his argument? Here is Alan Turing in 1950 on whether a machine might think, an amazingly modern essay which still reads cogently after nearly 40 years of massive developments in computing. Newman was clearly a connoisseur of good literary style. Each of his selections can be read purely for pleasure, even without bothering to follow its argument. Anybody who reads the scientific literature should enjoy the book for this alone; anyone who writes it will probably blush for shame.

The whole huge compilation is far too big to take in at a sitting. It is a book for extended browsing, or a rather eccentric work of reference. I like best the entries dealing with mathematics in the real world. Lanchester on the mathematics of warfare, showing how Nelson's brilliant strategy at Trafalgar closely approached a theoretical optimum; Moseley's account of the X-ray identification of atomic number, probably his last paper before his tragic and pointless death at Gallipoli; Bernard Shaw on gambling and insurance--a departure from his usual concerns, but characteristically spirited and surprisingly sensible; John von Neumann on the workings of the neuron, and the analogy between the brain and the digital computer.

This new edition has not been reprinted. A copy of the 1956 Simon and Schuster publication has been optically scanned and digitally reset (the stupefying intellectual triviality of the tasks that occupy most modern computers would have saddened Turing and von Neumann). The index has been slightly modified; I have spotted just two words of additional text. The publishers have thus missed the opportunity to remedy the most infuriating omission of the first edition: the lack of bibliographical references to the entries. Some can be placed from Newman's commentaries but many are quite free-floating. It is quite impossible to stand in proper relationship to a piece of writing if you don't know in what context, or crucially when, it was written. The annoying detective work needed to pin down each entry from Newman's introduction to it, or from other sources, is almost the only unpleasing feature of this marvelous book.

--Reviewed by David E.H. Jones in Nature, 337 (February 2 1989), p. 420.

Isis Unveiled

A MASTER KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

by H.P. Blawatzky

                                                                                                                          

PREFACE. "THE work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science. It is offered to such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital principles which underlie the philosophical systems of old.

The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice, and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. But it shows neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority. It demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which has been too long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations. Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties, sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the world's day. TRUTH, high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.

We believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of the human mind, nor in "miracle," whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the saying of the gifted author of Festus, that the human heart has not yet fully uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even understood the extent of its powers. Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If, somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the noblest man a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken. Yet we do not hesitate to accept the assertion of Biffe, that "the essential is forever the same. Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides the statue in the block, or pile stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed, our NEW result is only an old idea. The latest of all the eternities will find its destined other half-soul in the earliest."

When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man's immortality?

It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with the Universal Soul -- God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man's spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit; prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers -- you have proved God!

In our studies, mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names and places that to the Western mind have only a significance derived from Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently we stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of "the one that is and was and shall be" at Sais; to look through the rent curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate within the crypts which once existed beneath the sacred edifice, the mysterious Bath-Kol. The Filia Vocis -- the daughter of the divine voice -- responded from the mercy-seat within the veil,* and science, theology, every human hypothesis and conception born of imperfect knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our sight. The one-living God had spoken through his oracle -- man, and we were satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence.

From such as these we apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps hostility, although the obstacles in our way neither spring from the validity of proof, the authenticated facts of history, nor the lack of common sense among the public whom we address. The drift of modern thought is palpably in the direction of liberalism in religion as well as science. Each day brings the reactionists nearer to the point where they must surrender the despotic authority over the public conscience, which they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope can go to the extreme of fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the liberty of the Press and of speech, or who insist that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, or that any method of instruction solely secular, may be approved;** and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouth-piece of nineteenth century science, says, ". . . the impregnable position of science may be stated in a few words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory"*** -- the end is not difficult to foresee.

Centuries of subjection have not quite congealed the life-blood of men into crystals around the nucleus of blind faith; and the nineteenth is witnessing the struggles of the giant as he shakes off the Liliputian cordage and rises to his feet. Even the Protestant communion of England and America, now engaged in the revision of the text of its Oracles, will be compelled to show the origin and merits of the text itself. The day of domineering over men with dogmas has reached its gloaming.

Our work, then, is a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key to the Absolute in science and theology. To show that we do not at all conceal from ourselves the gravity of our undertaking, we may say in advance that it would not be strange if the following classes should array themselves against us:

The Christians, who will see that we question the evidences of the genuineness of their faith.

The Scientists, who will find their pretensions placed in the same bundle with those of the Roman Catholic Church for infallibility, and, in certain particulars, the sages and philosophers of the ancient world classed higher than they.

Pseudo-Scientists will, of course, denounce us furiously.

Broad Churchmen and Freethinkers will find that we do not accept what they do, but demand the recognition of the whole truth.

Men of letters and various authorities, who hide their real belief in deference to popular prejudices.

The mercenaries and parasites of the Press, who prostitute its more than royal power, and dishonor a noble profession, will find it easy to mock at things too wonderful for them to understand; for to them the price of a paragraph is more than the value of sincerity. From many will come honest criticism; from many -- cant. But we look to the future.

The contest now going on between the party of public conscience and the party of reaction, has already developed a healthier tone of thought. It will hardly fail to result ultimately in the overthrow of error and the triumph of Truth. We repeat again -- we are laboring for the brighter morrow.

And yet, when we consider the bitter opposition that we are called upon to face, who is better entitled than we upon entering the arena to write upon our shield the hail of the Roman gladiator to Caesar: MORITURUS TE SALUTAT!"

Originally published in New York in 1877