From the translator of the bestselling Poetic Edda (Hackett, 2015) comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members--including, among others, the dragon-slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.
Friendship, that pervasive, everyday, and subtle matter of our most intimate
personal life, has rarely been accorded its due. Michael Pakaluk has retrieved
the thoughts of our greatest thinkers on the subject and collected them into a
handsome and handy volume...A splendid book! --M. M. Wartofsky, Distinguished
Professor of Philosophy, Baruch College, City University of New York
An anthology featuring contributions to the dispute over free will from
Aristotle to the twenty-first century. It presents the positions taken in this
crucial debate and discusses their consequences for free will's traditional
corollary, moral responsibility.
Rise of the Mongols offers readers a selection of five important works that detail the rise of the Mongol Empire through Chinese eyes. Three of these works were written by officials of South China's Southern Song dynasty and two are from officials from North China writing in the service of the Mongol rulers. Together, these accounts offer a view of the early Mongol Empire very different not just from those of Muslim and Christian travelers and chroniclers, but also from the Mongol tradition embodied in The Secret History of Mongols. The five Chinese source texts (in English translation, each with their own preface): Selections from Random Notes from Court and Country since the Jianyan Years, vol.2, by Li Xinchuan "A Memorandum on the Mong-Tatars," by Zhao Gong "A Sketch of the Black Tatars," by Peng Daya and Xu Ting "Spirit-Path Stele for His Honor Yelü, Director of the Secretariat," by Song Zizhen "Notes on a Journey," by Zhang Dehui Also included are an introduction, index, bibliography, and appendices covering notes on the texts, tables and charts, and a glossary of Chinese and transcribed terms.