Series: Bloomsbury Revelations

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World presents a highly original global theory of culture. Dr René Girard, through his profound exploration, delves into the intricate workings of human civilisation, unveiling the concealed forces that shape societies. Girard investigates the pivotal role of violence, the pervasive phenomenon of mimetic desire, and the crucial mechanism of the scapegoat in the...

Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue revolutionises the landscape of moral philosophy by meticulously analysing the roots and consequences of the decline in moral discourse. The narrative embarks on an intellectual journey, beginning with a bleak depiction of contemporary moral debates which, MacIntyre argues, are fragmented and incoherent. As the plot unfolds, he traces this crisis back to the Enlightenment period, claiming...

A Thousand Plateaus is the second part of Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia—a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. Written over a seven-year period, A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for ‘nomadic...

The World Crisis is considered by many to be Winston S. Churchill’s literary masterpiece. Published across five volumes between 1923 and 1931, Churchill here tells the story of The Great War, from its origins to the long shadow it cast on the following decades. At once a history and a first-hand account of Churchill’s own involvement in the war, The...

The World Crisis is considered by many to be Winston S. Churchill’s literary masterpiece. Published across five volumes between 1923 and 1931, Churchill here tells the story of The Great War, from its origins to the long shadow it cast on the following decades. At once a history and a first-hand account of Churchill’s own involvement in the war, The...

The World Crisis is considered by many to be Winston S. Churchill’s literary masterpiece. Published across five volumes between 1923 and 1931, Churchill tells the story of The Great War, from its origins to the long shadow it cast on the following decades. At once a history and a first-hand account of Churchill’s own involvement in the war, The World...

On October 11th, 1899, long-simmering tensions between Britain and the Boer Republics - the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic - finally erupted into the conflict that would become known as the Second Boer War. Two days after the first shots were fired, a young writer by the name of Winston Churchill set out for South Africa to cover...

"I am perhaps the only man who has passed through the two supreme cataclysms of recorded history in high executive office... I was in this second struggle with Germany for more than five years the head of His Majesty's Government. I write therefore from a different standpoint and with more authority than was possible in my earlier books. I do...

In the years following the Great Depression, with Germany rearming and the rise of fascism across Europe being met with a policy of appeasement from the democratic countries, Winston Churchill stood as a rare voice in the wilderness, warning of the dangers to come. Now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of...

A labourer, journalist and a professor who lived through four successive periods of German political history – from the German Empire, through the Weimar Republic and the Nazi state through to the German Democratic Republic – Victor Klemperer is regarded as one of the most vivid witnesses to a tumultuous century of European history. First published in 1957, The Language...

"This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past." The...

Extending the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns, The Three Ecologies argues that the ecological crises that threaten our planet are the direct result of the expansion of a new form of capitalism. A new ecosophical approach must be found which respects the differences between all living systems. This powerful critique...

Since its publication in 1968, Difference and Repetition, an exposition of the critique of identity, has come to be considered a contemporary classic in philosophy and one of Gilles Deleuze's most important works. The text follows the development of two central concepts, those of pure difference and complex repetition. It shows how the two concepts are related: difference implying divergence...

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy, whose master-works, Difference and Repetition and – with Felix Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus have become one of the most widely influential bodies of work in contemporary thought. Cinema II is Deleuze’s second work on cinema, completing the reassessment of the art form begun in Cinema...

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy, well known for his works on the philosophy of art and for his masterworks, Difference and Repetition and—with Felix Guattari—A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus. Cinema I is the first volume of Deleuze’s revolutionary work on the theory of cinema (concluded in Cinema II, also available in the Bloomsbury...

How many times do we hear the statement 'It’s not for me to judge'? It conveys one of the most popular ideas of our time: that to make judgements of others is essentially wrong. In this classic text, the renowned moral philosopher Mary Midgley turns a spotlight on the ever popular stance in society that we should not make moral...

First published in 1962, Beyond the Chains of Illusion is Fromm’s landmark book about Marx and Freud. Here, he delivers original readings of these hugely influential thinkers and, in doing so, offers us new ways of understanding the individual and society. Perhaps even more revealing than these readings is the insight we get into Fromm’s own thought and the political...

Since the book’s first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou’s Being and Event has established itself as one of the most important and controversial works in contemporary philosophy, and its author as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Being and Event is a comprehensive statement of Badiou’s philosophical project and sees him recast the European philosophical tradition from...

One of the seminal works in contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysis, Anti-Oedipus, written by the illustrious Gilles Deleuze and the innovative Félix Guattari, embarks on a brilliant exploration of the intersections between desire, reality, and capitalist society. As the first volume of their two-part series Capitalism and Schizophrenia, it presents a radical departure from conventional psychoanalytic theories and societal structures. In...

In this groundbreaking book, Manuel DeLanda analyzes different genres of simulation, from cellular automata and generic algorithms to neural nets and multi-agent systems, as a means to conceptualize the space of possibilities associated with casual and other capacities. This remarkably clear philosophical discussion of a rapidly growing field, from a thinker at the forefront of research at the interface of...

The discovery of the resting place of the great Egyptian King Tutankhamun (Tut.ankh.Amen) in November 1922 by Howard Carter and the fifth Earl of Carnarvon was the greatest archaeological find the world had ever seen. Despite its plundering by thieves in antiquity, the burial of the king lay intact with its nest of coffins and funerary shrines, surrounded by a...

The discovery of the resting place of the great Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun [Tut.ankh.Amen] in November 1922 by Howard Carter and the fifth Earl of Carnarvon was the greatest archaeological find the world had ever seen. Despite its plundering by thieves in antiquity, the burial of the king lay intact with its nest of coffins and funerary shrines, surrounded by a...

The discovery of the resting place of the great Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun (Tut.ankh.Amen) in November 1922 by Howard Carter and the fifth Earl of Carnarvon was the greatest archaeological find the world had ever seen. Despite its plundering by thieves in antiquity, the burial of the king lay intact with its nest of coffins and funerary shrines, surrounded by a...

First published in 1972, Dissemination contains three of Derrida's most central and seminal works: 'Plato's Pharmacy', 'The Double Session', and 'Dissemination'. The essays present a re-evaluation of the logic of meaning and the function of writing in Western discourse. They explore the relationship and interplay between language, literature, and philosophy. The text includes a substantial introduction and additional notes on...

Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy, and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's...

The World Crisis is considered by many to be Winston S. Churchill’s literary masterpiece. Published across five volumes between 1923 and 1931, Churchill tells the story of The Great War, from its origins to the long shadow it cast on the following decades. At once a history and a first-hand account of Churchill’s own involvement in the war, The World...

"This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues—its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past." The Daily Telegraph...

This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgement of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past. The...

Hailed as 'the theatrical event of this century' (Sunday Times), Peter Brook's unique dramatization of India's great epic poem, The Mahabharata, played to ecstatic audiences worldwide. In The Shifting Point, one of theatre's great visionaries assesses the lessons of his pioneering work from his brilliant debut at Stratford and the West End in the 1960s to the triumphant success of...

In his most important work, Max Horkheimer surveys and demonstrates the gradual ascendancy of Reason in Western philosophy, its eventual total application to all spheres of life, and what he considers its present reified domination. First published in 1947, Horkheimer explores the ways in which Nazism— that most irrational of political movements—co-opted ideas of rationality for its own ends. Ultimately,...

Paul Virilio is one of contemporary continental thought’s most original and provocative critical voices. His vision of the impact of modern technology on the contemporary global condition is powerful and disturbing, ranging over art, architecture, science, politics, visual culture, and warfare. In Art and Fear, Virilio traces the twin development of art and science over the 20th century. In his...

Entre Nous is a major collection of essays representing the culmination of Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy. Bringing together his most important work in a single volume, the book reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Here, he engages with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory, and each issue is...

A great statesman, a masterful historian whose writings won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a wartime leader with few peers, Sir Winston Churchill is remembered perhaps most clearly today for the sheer power of his oratory: the speeches that rallied a nation in its darkest hour and steeled that nation for victory against the might of the Fascist...

Henri Lefebvre was one of the most significant and influential social theorists of the 20th century. His impressive body of work crosses multiple disciplines including sociology, philosophy, economics, politics, and cultural studies. In Everyday Life in the Modern World, Lefebvre reveals the decisions and events which, day to day, we know very little about and do not actively participate in,...

The publication of Martin Buber's I and Thou was a great event in the religious life of the West. ― Reinhold Niebuhr Martin Buber was a prolific and influential teacher and writer, who taught philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1939 to 1951. Having studied philosophy and art at the universities of Vienna, Zurich, and Berlin, he became...

Alain Badiou (1937- ) is one of the most high-profile and controversial philosophers writing in France today. He is a leading light in the generation of thinkers who came of intellectual age in 1968, with work that deftly draws on a wide range of intellectual traditions and thinkers, from Plato and Lucretius through Heidegger to Lacan and Deleuze. Now available...

First published 10 years ago, Manuel DeLanda's Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy rapidly established itself as a landmark text in contemporary continental thought. DeLanda here draws on the realist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in the domain of the philosophy of science. As well as contemporary philosophical insights, the book also tackles new developments in geometry, complexity theory, and chaos theory...

Slavoj Žižek is one of the world’s foremost cultural commentators: a prolific writer and thinker whose vividly adventurous, unorthodox, and wide-ranging writings have won him a unique place as one of the most high-profile thinkers of our time. Covering psychoanalysis, philosophy, and popular culture, and drawing on a heady mix of Marxist politics, Hegelian dialectics, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the writings...

In A New Philosophy of Society, Manuel DeLanda offers a fascinating look at how the contemporary world is characterised by an extraordinary social complexity. Since most social entities, from small communities to large nation-states, would disappear altogether if our cognitive abilities ceased to exist, DeLanda proposes a novel approach to social ontology that asserts the autonomy of social entities from...

First published in 1974, Libidinal Economy is a major work of twentieth-century continental philosophy. In it, Lyotard develops the idea of economies driven by libidinal ‘energies’ or ‘intensities’ which he claims flow through all structures, such as the human body and political or social events. He uses this idea to interpret a diverse range of subjects including political economy, Marxism,...

Logics of Worlds is the sequel to Alain Badiou's masterpiece, Being and Event. Tackling the questions that had been left open by Being and Event, and answering many of his critics in the process, Badiou supplements his pioneering treatment of multiple being with a daring and complex theory of the worlds in which truths and subjects make their mark -...

In publishing Marx’s Concept of Man in 1961, Erich Fromm presented to the English-speaking world for the first time Karl Marx’s then recently discovered Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Including the Manuscripts and many other philosophical writings by Marx, as well as Fromm’s own extended response, many of these writings have since become recognised as important works in their own right....

Written in 1938/9, Mindfulness (translated from the German Besinnung) is Martin Heidegger's second major being-historical treatise. Here, Heidegger develops some of his key concepts and themes including truth, nothingness, enownment, art, and Be-ing, and discusses the Greeks, Nietzsche, and Hegel at length. In addition to the main text, the book also includes two further important essays, "A Retrospective Look at...

In Philosophy: Principles and Problems, Roger Scruton shares the ideas and arguments which initially attracted him to the subject and those which have engaged his attention throughout his career. Through discussions of major philosophers, Kant and Wittgenstein in particular, he attempts to show how philosophy is relevant to life in the modern world. The topics he discusses range from the...

The twentieth century, with its unprecedented advances in technology and scientific understanding, saw the birth of a distinctively new and 'modern' age. Henri Bergson stood as one of the most important philosophical voices of that tumultuous time. An intellectual celebrity in his own lifetime, his work was widely discussed by such thinkers as William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand...

In The Beginning of Philosophy, Gadamer explores the layers of interpretation and misinterpretation that have built up over 2500 years of Presocratic scholarship. Using Plato and Aristotle as his starting point, his analysis moves effortlessly from Simplicius and Diogenes Laertius to the 19th-century German historicists, right through to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Gadamer shows us how some of the earliest...

The Beginning of Knowledge brings together almost all of Gadamer’s essays on the Presocratics. In each of the essays, Gadamer discusses the origins of knowledge in the western philosophical tradition. Beginning with a hermeneutical and philological investigation of the Heraclitus fragments, he moves on to a discussion of the Greek Atomists and the Presocratic cosmologists. In the final two essays,...

The Essence of Truth is an examination of the most fundamental theme in Heidegger's philosophy: the difference between truth as 'the unhiddenness of beings' and truth as 'the correctness of propositions'. Based on a course of lectures delivered at the University of Freiburg in 1932, the book presents Heidegger's original analysis of Plato's philosophy and represents an important discussion of...

Logic of Sense is one of Deleuze’s seminal works. First published in 1969, shortly after Difference and Repetition, it prefigures the hybrid style and methods he would use in his later writing with Felix Guattari. In an early review, Michel Foucault wrote that Logic of Sense ‘should be read as the boldest and most insolent of metaphysical treatises’. The book...

Marginalised by the scientific age, the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution. With The Five Senses, Serres traces a topology of human perception. Writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, he demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience. The fragile...

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the height of the "War on Terror", the controversial postmodernist thinker Jean Baudrillard wrote The Intelligence of Evil. In tackling the rhetoric of the so-called "clash of civilizations" between a capitalist West and a fundamentalist religious Islam, the book also provides a summation of...

Alain Badiou is arguably the most original and influential philosopher working in France today. Working against the tide of postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou revitalises philosophy's perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth. Theoretical Writings presents, in Badiou’s own words, ‘the theoretical core of [his] Philosophy’. Beginning with the controversial assertion that ontology is mathematics, the chapters guide the reader...

Antonio Negri wrote the two essays that comprise Time for Revolution while serving a prison sentence for alleged involvement with radical left-wing groups. Although the essays were written two decades apart, their concerns are the same: is there a place for resistance in a society utterly subsumed by capitalism? In the wake of the global crisis of capitalism heralded by...

To Have or To Be? is one of the seminal books of the second half of the 20th century. Nothing less than a manifesto for a new social and psychological revolution to save our threatened planet, this book is a summary of the penetrating thought of Eric Fromm. His thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit...

In Towards the Light, A.C. Grayling tells the story of the long and difficult battle for freedom in the West, from the Reformation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the battle for the vote to the struggle for the right to freedom of conscience. As Grayling passionately affirms, it is a story—and a struggle—that continues to this day...

Truth and Method is a landmark work of 20th-century thought which established Hans-Georg Gadamer as one of the most important philosophical voices of the 20th century. In this book, Gadamer established the field of ‘philosophical hermeneutics’: exploring the nature of knowledge, the book rejected traditional quasi-scientific approaches to establishing cultural meaning that were prevalent after the war. In arguing that...

Violence and the Sacred is René Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here, Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature, and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy, and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart...

The twentieth century was marked by the triumph of the 'analytic' tradition of philosophy, which remains to this day the dominant mainstream of philosophical thought and teaching. In his landmark reflection and exploration of the origins of analytic philosophy, Michael Dummett vividly explores the roots of that tradition in the writings of such German and Austrian thinkers as Frege, Husserl...

"This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past." The...

Rhythmanalysis displays all the characteristics which made Lefebvre one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century. In the analysis of rhythms—both biological and social—Lefebvre shows the interrelation of space and time in the understanding of everyday life. With dazzling skills, Lefebvre moves between discussions of music, the commodity, measurement, the media, and the city. In doing so,...

An Actor Prepares is the most famous acting training book ever written, and the work of Stanislavski has inspired generations of actors and trainers. This translation was the first to introduce Stanislavski's 'system' to the English-speaking world and has stood the test of time in acting classes to this day. Stanislavski deals with the inward preparation an actor must undergo...

In this landmark work, Keith Johnstone provides a revelatory guide to rediscovering and unlocking the imagination. Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors' studio when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court, and then in...

First published in 1932, Thoughts and Adventures is Churchill’s most philosophical book. It conveys the extraordinary variety and depth of the statesman’s mature thoughts on questions facing modern men and women. Written during what biographers have called Churchill’s “wilderness years,” this wide-ranging volume of essays touches on subjects such as cartoons, hobbies, spies, flying, elections, economics, and modern science. Reading...

Winston S. Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his "mastery of historical and biographical description." Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries, first published in 1937. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, these portraits of notable figures of his age offer wisdom for our own. With keen observations and telling anecdotes, Churchill...

From the bestselling author of The Right to Speak and The Need for Words comes this Bloomsbury Revelations edition of the essential guide to voice work: The Actor Speaks. Beginning with what every first-year acting student faces in class and ending with what leading professional actors must achieve every night on stage, Patsy Rodenburg’s celebrated work as one of the...

The best short introduction to the study of Hitler’s Germany. - European History Quarterly The 40th-anniversary edition of Sir Ian Kershaw’s ground-breaking study of the Third Reich. With a brand new foreword by Mary Fulbrook, The Nazi Dictatorship covers all the major themes and debates relating to Nazism including the Holocaust, Hitler’s authority and leadership, economics in the Nazi state,...

Ferdinand de Saussure is commonly regarded as one of the fathers of 20th Century Linguistics. His lectures, posthumously published as the Course in General Linguistics, ushered in the structuralist mode which marked a key turning point in modern thought. Philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and linguists such as...

It shouldn’t surprise us that politicians, clerics, rock singers as well as actors queue up to train their voices under the supervision of Patsy Rodenburg. This book will explain her popularity among her pupils. – Sir Ian McKellen Practical, passionate and inspiring, The Right to Speak teaches how to use the voice fully and expressively, without fear and in any...

No other book on Byzantium manages to pack so much useful information into so few pages.Jonathan Harris, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this edition marks the 25th anniversary of this classic text, featuring a brand new preface from the author. Offering a concise overview of the broad and complex history of Byzantium,...

The Invisible Actor presents the captivating and unique methods of the distinguished Japanese actor and director, Yoshi Oida. While a member of Peter Brook's theatre company in Paris, Yoshi Oida developed a masterful approach to acting that combined the oriental tradition of supreme and studied control with the Western performer's need to characterise and expose depths of emotion. Written with...

As one of the world’s leading voice coaches, Patsy Rodenburg describes practical ways to approach language, using Shakespeare, Romantic poetry, modern prose, and a range of other texts to help each of us discover our own unique need for words. In Part One, Rodenburg attacks the myth that there is only one correct way to speak by clearing away the...

Why is everything that compromises greatness in art coded as feminine? Has the feminist critique of Art History yet effected real change? With a new preface by Griselda Pollock, this edition of a truly groundbreaking book offers a radical challenge to a women-free Art History. Parker and Pollock's critique of Art History's sexism leads to expanded, inclusive readings of the...

'Muse, tell me of a man: a man of much resource, who was made to wander far and long, after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. Many were the men whose lands he saw and came to know their thinking: many too the miseries at sea which he suffered in his heart, as he sought to win his...

A landmark work of political and legal philosophy, Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously was acclaimed as a major work upon its first publication in 1977 and remains profoundly influential in the 21st century. A forceful statement of liberal principles—championing the legal, moral and political rights of the individual against the state—Dworkin demolishes prevailing utilitarian and legal-positivist approaches to jurisprudence. Developing...

‘This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past.’ The...

The Theatre of the Absurd has become a familiar term to describe a group of radical European playwrights – writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter – whose dark, funny and humane dramas wrestled profoundly with the meaningless absurdity of the human condition. It is a testament to the power and insight of Martin Esslin’s...

Slavoj Žižek is one of the world’s foremost cultural commentators: a prolific writer and thinker, whose adventurous, unorthodox and wide-ranging writings have won him a unique place as one of the most high-profile thinkers of our time. The Universal Exception brings together some of Žižek’s most vivid writings on politics. Bringing together high theory, popular culture and passionate engagement with...

With Understanding Music and The Aesthetics of Music (1997), Roger Scruton set a new standard of rigour and seriousness in the philosophy of music. This collection of wide-ranging essays covers all aspects of the theory and practice of music, showing the significance of music as an expression of the moral life. The book is split into two parts. The first...

Now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings about the craft of acting and realising texts for the stage. It crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing and illuminates the practice of this hugely influential director and dramatist. The volume is...

Brecht on Theatre is a seminal work that has remained the classic text for readers and students wanting a rich appreciation of the development of Brecht's thinking on theatre and aesthetics. First published in 1964 and on reading lists ever since, Brecht's writings are presented in this definitive edition featuring the wholly revised, re-edited and expanded text produced for the...