Conference of the Books PDF Download

Author: Khaled Abou El Fadl
Publisher: Rlpg/Galleys
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Abou El Fadl (Islamic law, UCLA School of Law) wrote the 62 brief essays here over the course of five years. Through a combination of musings and critical reflections on classical Muslim authors, he both traces Muslim intellectual history and also confronts questions of ethics, faith, law, politics, culture, and modern identity. He ranges over many facets of Islam in the contemporary world, exploring censorship, political oppression, terrorism, the veil and the treatment of women, marriage, parental rights, the dynamics between law and morality, the character of the prophet Muhammad, and other topics. About half the essays first appeared in The minaret magazine. c. Book News Inc.

Author: Khaled Abou El Fadl
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742550940
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Khaled Abou El Fadl is a classically-trained Islamic jurist, an American lawyer and law professor, and one of the most important Islamic thinkers today. In this updated and expanded edition of The Search for Beauty in Islam, Abou El Fadl offers eye-opening and enlightening insights into the contemporary realities of the current state of Islam and the West. Through a "conference of the books," an imagined conference of Muslim intellects from centuries past, Abou El Fadl examines the ugliness that has come to plague Muslim realities and attempts to reclaim what he maintains is a core moral value in Islam-the value of beauty. Does Islamic law allow, or even call for, the gruesome acts of ugliness that have become so commonly associated with Islam today? Has Islam become a religion devoid of beauty, compassion and love? Based on actual cases, this book tackles different issues and problems in each chapter through a post-9/11 lens, discussing such topics as marriage, divorce, parental rights, the position of women, the veil, sexual abuse, wife-beating, terrorism, bigotry, morality, law, and the role of tradition. Abou El Fadl argues that the rekindling of the forgotten value of beauty is essential for Muslims today to take back what has been lost to the fundamentalist forces that have denigrated their religion.

Author: A. Zee
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400874505
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
An engaging exploration of beauty in physics, with a foreword by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose The concept of symmetry has widespread manifestations and many diverse applications—from architecture to mathematics to science. Yet, as twentieth-century physics has revealed, symmetry has a special, central role in nature, one that is occasionally and enigmatically violated. Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of the juxtaposition of symmetry and asymmetry in contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how contemporary theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, Fearful Symmetry describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics—one of the greatest chapters in the intellectual history of humankind.

Author: Cho Kyo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442218959
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
While a slender body is a prerequisite for beauty today, plump women were considered ideal in Tang Dynasty China and Heian-period Japan. Starting around the Southern Song period in China, bound feet symbolized the attractiveness of women. But in Japan, shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth long were markers of loveliness. For centuries, Japanese culture was profoundly shaped by China, but in complex ways that are only now becoming apparent. In this first full comparative history of the subject, Cho Kyo explores changing standards of feminine beauty in China and Japan over the past two millennia. Drawing on a rich array of literary and artistic sources gathered over a decade of research, he considers which Chinese representations were rejected or accepted and transformed in Japan. He then traces the introduction of Western aesthetics into Japan starting in the Meiji era, leading to slowly developing but radical changes in representations of beauty. Through fiction, poetry, art, advertisements, and photographs, the author vividly demonstrates how criteria of beauty differ greatly by era and culture and how aesthetic sense changed in the course of extended cultural transformations that were influenced by both China and the West.

Author: Thomas Doherty
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231500128
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Pre-Code Hollywood explores the fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films—a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it. Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema—but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe. In a sense, Doherty avers, the films of pre-Code Hollywood are from another universe. They lay bare what Hollywood under the Production Code attempted to cover up and push offscreen: sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded—in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled. No other book has yet sought to interpret the films and film-related meanings of the pre-Code era—what defined the period, why it ended, and what its relationship was to the country as a whole during the darkest years of the Great Depression... and afterward.

Author: Roy Flukinger
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292719728
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Beyond his mastery of the craft, however, Henle was driven by a lifelong urge "to show people beauty." "I am obsessed," he said, "by showing them beauty."".

Author: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619028794
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This observant and insightful novel reveals, in rich and poignant detail, the interior lives of three generations of people in their quest for love and beauty Louise, not content with her husband's gentle affection, strives to reclaim her youth in titillating social and spiritual adventures. Her daughter Marietta searches for beauty in lofty ideas and in her obsession for her son Mark, who believes love is to be found in the pursuit of money and young, vacuous lovers. And Leo, their eccentric, self–styled guru, satisfies himself with power–commanding the bodies and souls of his followers. Demonstrating Jhabvala's deft twists of irony and humor, In Search of Love and Beauty brings several lifespans, full of hopes and ideals, within our grasp.

Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307946495
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Some of the brightest minds in science have passed through the halls of the California Institute of Technology. In the early 1980s, Leonard Mlodinow joined their ranks to begin a postdoctoral fellowship. Afraid he was not smart enough to be there, despite his groundbreaking Ph.D. thesis, he took his insecurities to Richard Feynman, Caltech’s intimidating resident genius and iconoclast. So began a pivotal year in a young man’s life. Though a series of fascinating exchanges, Mlodinow and Feynman delve into the nature of science, creativity, love mathematics, happiness, God, art, pleasures and ambition, producing a moving portrait of a friendship and an affecting account of Feynman’s final creative years.

Author: Rebecca Friedlander
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1493417657
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Americans spend millions on beauty products, weight-loss programs, and age-defying medical interventions each year. We set impossible standards and feel bad about ourselves when we don't reach them. Is beauty truly that difficult to attain? Or could it be that our idea of what's beautiful is simply too narrow? With engaging personal stories and dramatic before-and-after photography, filmmaker Rebecca Friedlander uncovers the true beauty of 12 women from various ethnicities and backgrounds, empowering us to shatter the lies of rejection, doubt, and low self-esteem. Utilizing compelling biblical truth and questions for personal reflection, Friedlander helps us identify our own personal battlegrounds, celebrate our uniqueness, and embrace God's definition of beautiful. Anyone who loves a great makeover story or who wants to explore their unique identity will love this eye-opening book. Let's stop letting the world define beauty and start being a voice that tells the world what true beauty actually looks like.

Author: Roger Scruton
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199229759
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.