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It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this 'optimism' concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the 'all for the best' approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters - such as the recent earthquakes in Lima and Lisbon - not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging...
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"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift is a satirical masterpiece that employs biting wit and irony to address the pressing issue of poverty and overpopulation in 18th-century Ireland. Swift's proposal, presented in a straightforward and logical manner, suggests a shocking and absurd solution to the problem: the consumption of infants.
As readers delve into this essay, they quickly realize that Swift's proposal is not to be taken seriously but is...
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The Devil's Dictionary (1906) is a work of satire by Ambrose Bierce. Although he is commonly remembered for his chilling short stories on the experiences of Civil War soldiers, Bierce was recognized in his day as a leading journalist and humorist who spent decades ruffling feathers and drawing laughter with his witty opinion columns, poems, and definitions. Toward the end of his career, he decided to compile these satirical definitions into a book,...
4) Numero zero
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English
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"From the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery, a novel about the murky world of media politics, conspiracy, and murder. A newspaper committed to blackmail and mud slinging, rather than reporting the news. A paranoid editor, walking through the streets of Milan, reconstructing fifty years of history against the backdrop of a plot involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double. The murder of Pope John Paul I, the CIA, red...
5) Main Street
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Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary...
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Presents a satirical drama about Satan's visit to Moscow, where he learns that the citizens no longer believe in God. He decides to teach them a lesson by perpetrating a series of horrific tricks. Combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem.
7) Babbitt
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When George Babbitt, a middle-aged, middle class man, becomes disenchanted with his life, he begins to rebel against the social customs that keep him feeling confined. Babbitt, written by a Nobel Prize winning author, Sinclair Lewis, satirizes American culture through the depiction of a man who is never satisfied, despite his good fortune.
8) Tokyo woes
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English
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In this laugh-out-loud travelogue, an average American man journeys to a country unlike any other: 1980s Japan
Early one morning, Mike Halsey leaves his sleeping girlfriend and his house deep in the woods to go out and buy the morning paper. His favorite deli is closed, so he keeps driving and winds up on an unfamiliar lakeside road. Then it hits him: the old wanderlust. The last time it struck, he ended up on the coast of Finland.
This...
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Pub. Date
2017.
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English
Description
From veteran online journalist and BuzzFeed writer Doree Shafrir comes a hilarious debut novel that proves there are some dilemmas that no app can solve.
Mack McAllister has a $600 million dollar idea. His mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech and he's about to launch a new and improved version that promises to bring investors running and may turn his brainchild into a $1 billion dollar business — in startup...
Mack McAllister has a $600 million dollar idea. His mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech and he's about to launch a new and improved version that promises to bring investors running and may turn his brainchild into a $1 billion dollar business — in startup...
10) The sellout
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"Raised in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens--improbably smack in the middle of downtown L.A.--the narrator of The Sellout resigned himself to the fate of all other middle-class Californians: "to die in the same bedroom you'd grown up in, looking up at the crack in the stucco ceiling that had been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist at Riverside Community College, he spent his childhood as the subject in psychological...
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'What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence'. In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? Study of freewill? "A Clockwork Orange" is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates...
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Discworld volume 1
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English
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Terry Pratchett has invented a phantasmagorical universe in which a blissfully naive interplanetary tourist called Two-flower joins up with a drop-out wizard whose spells only seem to work half of the time. Together they undertake a chaotic voyage through a crazy world filled with monsters and dragons, heroes and knaves. Pratchett has taken the sword and sorcery fantasy tradition and turned it in its ear to create an entertaining and bizarre spoof....
13) Crome yellow
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English
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Crome Yellow (1921) is a novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Inspired by his stay at Garsington Manor with members of the Bloomsbury Group, Crome Yellow, Huxley's debut novel, satirizes the society of England's intellectual and political elite. In addition to its autobiographical content, the novel investigates such themes as spirituality, the nature and composition of art, and the fear of a dystopian future.
Invited to spend part of the summer...
14) Cat's cradle
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English
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A young writer decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb. This is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.
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Gulliver sees life from many different perspectives during the course of his exciting voyages around the world. In Lilliput he is a giant among a race of little people only six inches high; in Brobdingnag he himself seems tiny compared to the giant inhabitants; and in the country of the Houyhnhnms, horses rule and the human creatures there have the status of animals. Life back in England seems very ordinary after all that he has seen.
16) Shmucks
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Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
"An original and engrossing work of fiction. A little gem." - New York Times Book Review
"Brashly hilarious...The foibles of human nature and the pains of frustration common to all of us are meticulously revealed in this very contemporary and memorable novel." - Library Journal
"Alternately funny and perceptive, SHMUCKS goes beyond adventure novel to become an exploration of today's spirit of alienation and violence, with a surprising ending." -...
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In his enduringly popular masterpiece The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis re-imagines Hell as a gruesome bureaucracy. With spiritual insight and wry wit, Lewis suggests that demons, laboring in a vast enterprise, have horribly recognizable human attributes: competition, greed, and totalitarian punishment. Avoiding their own painful torture as well as a desire to dominate are what drive demons to torment their "patients." The style and unique dark humor...
18) Elmer Gantry
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English
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First published in English in 1927, "Elmer Gantry" is Sinclair Lewis' novel which satirizes the Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic movements of the early part of the 20th century. From the 17th century onward there have been a number of efforts to reassert the influence of Christianity on social, cultural, and political life. In America, Christian Revivalism, as it is often referred to, has come in four waves, or "Great Awakenings" starting...
19) Snobs
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English
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Preparing to marry heir Charles Broughton, attractive accountant's daughter Edith Lavery makes humorous and astute observations about contemporary England's class system.
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The classic satire of New York society and the American Dream through the misadventures of an insatiable young striver—with an introduction by Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror
Ambitious and wholeheartedly materialistic, Undine Spragg is a beautiful heiress who sees men as a means to an end. New York millionaires and French aristocrats fall at her feet, but each conquest is merely a stepping-stone in Undine’s quest...
Ambitious and wholeheartedly materialistic, Undine Spragg is a beautiful heiress who sees men as a means to an end. New York millionaires and French aristocrats fall at her feet, but each conquest is merely a stepping-stone in Undine’s quest...
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