Tim Parks

Their name is a byword for immense wealth and power, but before their renown as art patrons and noblemen, the Medicis built their fortune on banking. Banking in the fifteenth century, even at the height of the Renaissance, meant running afoul of the Catholic Church's prohibition against usury. It required more than merely financial skills to make a profit, and the legendary Medicis--most famously Cosimo and Lorenzo ("the Magnificent")--were masterly at the political, diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools that were needed to maintain their family's position. Parks uncovers the intrigues, dodges, and moral qualities that gave the Medicis their edge. Evoking the richness of the Florentine Renaissance and the Medicis' glittering circle, replete with artists, popes, and kings, Medici Money is a look into the origins of modern banking and its troubled relationship with art and religion. --From publisher description.

Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-century Florence

Medici Money

Kitapların değişen dünyası

Ben buradan okuyorum

An American expatriate describes life in Verona, Italy, the collision between invading surburbia and the die-hard peasant tradition, the architecture, wine bottling, and the Veronese people. Reprint.

Italian Neighbors

Niccolo Machiavelli

'If a ruler wants to survive, he must learn to stop being good' As a diplomat in turbulent fifteenth-century Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 - 1527) knew how quickly political fortunes could rise and fall. The Prince, his tough-minded, pragmatic handbook on how power really works, made his name notorious and has remained controversial ever since. How can a leader be strong and decisive, yet still inspire loyalty in his followers? When is it necessary to break the rules? Is it better to be feared than loved? Examining regimes and their rulers the world over and throughout history, from Roman Emperors to renaissance Popes, from Hannibal to Cesare di Borgia, Machievalli answers all these questions in a work of realpolitik that still has shrewd political lessons for today. Tim Parks's acclaimed contemporary translation renders Machiavelli's no-nonsense original as alarming and enlightening as when it was first written. His introduction discusses Machiavelli's life and reputation, and explores the historical background to the work. 'A gripping work, and a gripping translation' NICHOLAS LEZARD, GUARDIAN 'Tim Parks's swift and supple new translation brings out all its chilling modernity' BOYD TONKIN, INDEPENDENT Translated, edited and with an introduction by TIM PARKS

The Prince

Should you finish every book you start? How has your family influenced the way you read? What is literary style? How is the Nobel Prize like the World Cup? Why do you hate the book your friend likes? Is writing really just like any other job? What happens to your brain when you read a good book? As a novelist, translator and critic, Tim Parks is well-placed to investigate any questions we have about books and reading. In this collection of lively and provocative pieces he talks about what readers want from books and how to look at the literature we encounter in a new light. These pieces were originally published as columns in the New York Review of Books.

Where I'm Reading from

Italo Calvino

From the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities comes a rich variety of short fiction, including fables, tales, and "impossible interviews" on such themes as the implications of technology, the quest for truth, politics, and the nature of power. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

And Other Stories

Numbers in the Dark

An Italian travelogue describes the trains that traverse the country, from the architecture of old train stations to the new high-speed railways, and portrays the author's memorable encounters along the way.

Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo

'Just when the medical profession had given up on me and I on it, just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out: sit still, they said, and breathe...' TEACH US TO SIT STILL is the visceral, thought-provoking and improbably entertaining story of Tim Parks' quest to overcome ill health. Bedevilled by a crippling condition which nobody could explain or relieve, he confronts hard truths about the relationship between the mind and the body, the hectic modern world and his life as a writer. Following a fruitless journey through the conventional medical system he finds solace in an improbable prescription of breathing exercises that eventually leads him to take up meditation. This was the very last place Parks expected or wanted to find answers; anything New Age simply wasn't his scene. Meantime, he is drawn to consider the effects of illness on the work of other writers, the role of religions in shaping our sense of self, and the influence of sport and art in our attitudes to health and well-being. Most of us will fall ill at some point; few will describe that journey with the same verve, insight and radiant intelligence as Tim Parks. Captivating and inspiring, TEACH US TO SIT STILL is an intensely personal - and brutally honest - story for our times. SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME TRUST BOOK PRIZE FOR MEDICINE IN LITERATURE

A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing

Teach Us to Sit Still

The author of Europa and Hell and Back offers a personal account of his relationship with Italy, its people, and its national sport from the perspective of his beloved Verona soccer club--as well as its fans--as it travels around Italy competing with other teams. Reprint.

Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character and Goals!

A Season With Verona

Italian Education

Kader

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Boys Alive

Cesare Pavese

Moon and the Bonfires

How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? Tim Parks - lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. With brutal honesty and dry wit, he recounts his journey from disbelief to something approaching inner peace and tackles one of the great mysteries of our time - how to survive in this modern age.Selected from the book Teach us to Sit Still by Tim ParksVINTAGE MINIS- GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series-Swimming by Roger DeakinMotherhood by Helen SimpsonWork by Joseph HellerLiberty by Virginia Woolf

Calm

How does an Italian become Italian? Or an Englishman English, for that matter? Are foreigners born, or made? In An Italian Education Tim Parks focuses on his own young children in the small village near Verona where he lives, building a fascinating picture of the contemporary Italian family at school, at home, at work and at play. The result is a delight: at once a family book and a travel book, not quite enamoured with either children or Italy, but always affectionate, always amused and always amusing.

An Italian Education

Rönesans Caginda Bankacilik, Siyaset ve Sanat

Medici Ailesi

'Somehow it seemed to him the only thing that would really solve the problem would be to return to the sea and find the old ring with their names and the wedding date engraved inside, in 22-carat gold, and put it on again and then the world would magically return to what it had been before. Many years before. This did not happen.' Thomas and Mary have been married for thirty years. They have two children, a dog, a house in the suburbs. But after years of drifting apart, things finally come to a head. In this love story in reverse, Tim Parks recounts what happens when youthful devotion has long given way to dog walking, separate bed times, and tensions over who left the fridge door open. Lurching from comedy to tragedy, via dependence, cold re-examination, tenderness and betrayal, Thomas and Mary is a fiercely intimate chronicle of a marriage capturing the offshoots of pain sent through an entire family, when the couple at its heart decide it's all over.

A Love Story

Thomas and Mary

Mark Haddon

Michael Rosen

Nicholas Carr

Zadie Smith

Carmen Callil

Blake Morrison

Mirit Barzillai

Dr Maryanne Wolf

Jane Davis

Jeanette Winterson

In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams. Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book? People have always needed stories. We need literature - novels, poetry - because we need to make sense of our lives, test our depths, understand our joys and discover what humans are capable of. Great books can provide companionship when we are lonely or peacefulness in the midst of an overcrowded daily life. Reading provides a unique kind of pleasure and no-one should live without it. In the ten essays in this book some of our finest authors and passionate advocates from the worlds of science, publishing, technology and social enterprise tell us about the experience of reading, why access to books should never be taken forgranted, how reading transforms our brains, and how literature can save lives. In any 24 hours there are so many demands on your time and attention - make books one of them. Carmen Callil Tim Parks Nicholas Carr Michael Rosen Jane Davis Zadie Smith Mark Haddon Jeanette Winterson Blake Morrison Dr Maryanne Wolf & Dr Mirit Barzillai

Stop What You're Doing And Read This!

How can other people like the books we don't like? What benefit can we get from rereading a work? Can we read better? If so, how? These and many other questions, ranging from the field of writing to that of reading and translation, are given a comprehensive answer in a series of stimulating and challenging literary essays that will be a perfect read for all book explorers and practitioners of the pen. After delighting us with his novels and many volumes of non-fiction, Tim Parks – who is not only an acclaimed author and a translator, but also a celebrated literary essayist – gives us a book to enjoy, savour and, most importantly, reread.

Tim Parks

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