Isaac Babel was a Soviet journalist and writer of Jewish origin, known for his extraordinary short stories, comparable to the best works of Gogol and Maupassant, whom he admired as masters. " Red Cavalry," published in 1926, is his most famous collection of stories, based on Babel's experiences during the Russo-Polish campaign of 1920, where he served in the Budieni Cavalry. All the stories in "Red Cavalry" are imbued with the author's frankness, turbulence, unrestrained tone, anguish, and explosive voice, developing from events he experienced during the war. The author's own life met a tragic end, as despite being an idealistic advocate of Marxism and Leninism, he was arrested, tortured, and executed during Stalin's Great Purge. "Red Cavalry" is a work of vibrant rawness and reality, offering an emotionally gripping read.

The Red Cavalry - Babel

The Nebula Award Winner: “By looking at a typical space opera adventure from a different angle, Delany . . . give[s] us a weird, welcoming book” (Tor.com). At twenty-six, Rydra Wong is the most popular poet in the five settled galaxies. Almost telepathically perceptive, she has written poems that capture the mood of mankind after two decades of savage war. Since the invasion, Earth has endured famine, plague, and cannibalism—but its greatest catastrophe will be Babel-17. Sabotage threatens to undermine the war effort, and the military calls in Rydra. Random attacks lay waste to warships, weapons factories, and munitions dumps, and all are tied together by strings of sound, broadcast over the radio before and after each accident. In that gibberish Rydra recognizes a coherent message, with all of the beauty, persuasive power, and order that only language possesses. To save humanity, she will master this strange tongue. But the more she learns, the more she is tempted to join the other side . . . This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.

Babel-17

There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, linguistics professor John McWhorter reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment. Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, Creoles, and nonstandard dialects.

The Power of Babel

From the bestselling author of The Missing of Clairdelune: third in the epic fantasy series that "stands on the same shelf as Harry Potter" ( Elle). As Christelle Dabos's gripping saga continues, Ophelia, the mirror-traveling heroine, finds herself on the ark of Babel guarding a secret that may provide a key both to the past and the future. After two years and seven months biding her time on Anima, her home ark, it is finally time to act, to put what she has discovered in the Book of Farouk to use. Under an assumed identity she travels to Babel, a cosmopolitan and thoroughly modern ark that is the jewel of the universe. Will Ophelia's talent as a reader suffice to avoid being lured into a deadly trap by her ever more fearful adversaries? Will she ever see Thorn, her betrothed, again? "Ophelia is . . . the tiny-voiced powerhouse you can't take your eyes off." — The New York Times "Dabos pushes full steam ahead with new arks, new spirits, and new treachery . . . Murder, power grabs, and world-rupturing revelations fly by in this penultimate volume." — Kirkus Reviews " The Memory of Babel is rich with memorable inventions: spells, transfigurations, prophecies, metamorphoses, dreams, arks, Citaceleste, ciphered manuscripts, enchanted mirrors. Ophelia is the Alice of the 21st century." — Il Borghese "As with the other books in the series, this is rich in detail, plot, and characterizations. The complexity of Dabos's world-building once again immerses readers in a new world." — School Library Journal

The Memory of Babel

An exploration of what research at the intersection of contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences can reveal about the constraints on the apparently chaotic variation in human languages. In The Boundaries of Babel, Andrea Moro tells the story of an encounter between two cultures: contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences. The study of language within a biological context has been ongoing for more than fifty years. The development of neuroimaging technology offers new opportunities to enrich the "biolinguistic perspective" and extend it beyond an abstract framework for inquiry. As a leading theoretical linguist in the generative tradition and also a cognitive scientist schooled in the new imaging technology, Moro is uniquely equipped to explore this. Moro examines what he calls the "hidden" revolution in contemporary science: the discovery that the number of possible grammars is not infinite and that their number is biologically limited. This radical but little-discussed change in the way we look at language, he claims, will require us to rethink not just the fundamentals of linguistics and neurosciences but also our view of the human mind. Moro searches for neurobiological correlates of "the boundaries of Babel"--the constraints on the apparent chaotic variation in human languages--by using an original experimental design based on artificial languages. He offers a critical overview of some of the fundamental results from linguistics over the last fifty years, in particular regarding syntax, then uses these essential aspects of language to examine two neuroimaging experiments in which he took part. He describes the two neuroimaging techniques used (positron emission topography, or PET, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI), but makes it clear that techniques and machines do not provide interesting data without a sound theoretical framework. Finally, he discusses some speculative aspects of modern research in biolinguistics regarding the impact of the linear structure of linguistics expression on grammar, and more generally, some core aspects of language acquisition, genetics, and evolution.

The Boundaries of Babel

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War "Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out." — Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell in this unforgettable work of dark academia that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. The unique magic system of silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, a secret society dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide...

Babel

"A story about the threat of bioterrorism as seen through the eyes of the generation that will grow up with it as a reality . . . page-turning intensity."— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Bioterrorism has come to a small town in New Jersey. Two residents die of brain aneurysms within twenty-four hours and several teens become ill with a mysterious flu, leading the government to suspect that a terrorist cell has unleashed a deadly biochemical agent. With each glass of water they drink, the people of Trinity Falls are poisoning themselves. A world away in Pakistan, a sixteen-year-old computer genius working as a spy for the U.S. sees an influx of chatter from extremists about a substance they call Red Vinegar that will lead to many deaths. Can he warn the victims before it's too late? "The teens are the focus here, all excellent character studies drawn adeptly with few words. The swift pace grabs the reader right from the start . . . Plum-Ucci takes the incredible and makes it all too believable."— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A compelling tale of bioterror . . . a tautly paced thriller that will force readers to think about the complexities of living in a post-9/11 world."— School Library Journal "A page-turner . . . Plum-Ucci has also fleshed out a basic panic-inducing scenario into a thriller more thoughtful than most."— Booklist

Streams of Babel

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