Showing results by narrator "Martyn Swain" in All Categories

Karl Popper's THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM is one of the most important books on the social sciences to have appeared since the Second World War. It is also the work of one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, and a devastating criticism of the idea that there are laws of development in history and that human beings are able to discover them. Popper dedicated the book to all those who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny

From the moment of its publication in 1748, The Spirit of the Laws proved to be a controversial work provoking widespread interest. Within three years it had been translated into various European languages - and was swiftly added to the List of Prohibited Books by the Roman Catholic Church. It is a remarkable book, a potpourri of observations and comments ranging far and wide over the social activities of mankind and it exerted a great influence on political leaders in the following decades. 

The year is 1940, and Great Britain's forces struggle against the Nazi war machine. France has fallen to Adolf Hitler's army, and England is next. A British secret agent pays the ultimate price to deliver early warning to harness the power of the occult to conquer Great Britain by launching a supernatural assault that no defending military force could possibly deflect.

Though best known for The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Hungarian novelist Baroness Orczy was a prolific and versatile writer who could turn her pen to other genres. So, in the social and literary context of the huge success of Sherlock Holmes, she developed a memorable, but nameless character with remarkable powers of detection. The first stories appeared in The Royal Magazine in 1901, and other series followed. The first collection appeared in book form in 1905. 

At the age of eight, Karl Popper was puzzling over the idea of infinity and by fifteen was beginning to take a keen interest in his father's well-stocked library of books. Unended Quest recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, providing an indispensable account of the ideas that influenced him most. As an introduction to Popper's philosophy, Unended Quest also shines. Popper lucidly explains the central ideas in his work, making this book ideal for anyone coming to Popper's life and work for the first time.

Summa Theologica Part III (Tertia Pars) is Volume 4 in Ukemi Audiobooks’ complete recording of Thomas Aquinas’s momentous work on Christian theology and philosophy. The presentation of the discussions in Part III follow the pattern we have become so familiar with from earlier Parts with the statement of the question, then a series of objections, further considerations and finally Aquinas’s replies to each of the objections.

Pristine lawns, tennis whites, strawberries and cream, tennis is synonymous with the upper echelons of society, but scratch beneath the surface and you'll quickly discover a different history, one of untold struggles on and off the courts. From the birth of modern tennis in Victorian Britain to the present day, we bear witness to struggles around sexuality, gender, race, and class that have transformed the nature of tennis and sport itself.

This extraordinary work (Das Wesen Des Christentums) is an anthropological dissection of Christianity in particular and a critique of religion in general. It proved both controversial and influential following its publication in 1841. But soon it became a classic of humanism - so much so that it was none other than George Eliot, under her real name of Marian (Mary Ann) Evans, who felt impelled to undertake the first English translation (1851), and which helped to underscore her humanistic attitudes which infused her novels.  

In a letter of 1932, Karl Popper described Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie–The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge–as ‘…a child of crises, above all of …the crisis of physics.' The two fundamental problems of knowledge that lie at the center of the book are the problem of induction, that although we are able to observe only a limited number of particular events, science nevertheless advances unrestricted universal statements; and the problem of demarcation, which asks for a separating line between empirical science and non-science.

The Annals, written by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (56c-120 CE), is regarded as one of the great literary works of history in the Roman world. Tacitus is considered by many to be the greatest of Roman historians, and The Annals is his’ outstanding achievement. Originally comprising 18 volumes, books 7 to 10 and parts of books 5, 6, 11 and 16 have been lost, but those that remain, read here by Martyn Swain, tell the fascinating tale of the Julio Claudian emperors and their times. 

All Life is Problem Solving is a stimulating and provocative selection of Popper's writings on his main preoccupations during the last twenty-five years of his life. This collection illuminates Popper's process of working out key formulations in his theory of science, and indicates his view of the state of the world at the end of the Cold War and after the collapse of communism.

When elderly Walter Shoebridge hires Hester Rose to guide his family through his final days, he hopes to ease their grief. But as old wounds and hidden truths come to light, Hester finds herself entangled in a web of betrayal and deception. A furious son disinherited from his legacy. A daughter haunted by the possibility that she hastened her father’s death. And a shadowy name in the will all lead to a shocking revelation that threatens to destroy what’s left of the family.

When Sylvain Tesson left the colorful yellow houses of the French Riveria for a ski trek across the Alps with his friend Daniel du Lac, a high-altitude mountain guide, he didn't know what exactly would await him. Over the course of four years, from 2018 to 2021, they ascended high into the Alps in winter, following the curve of the mountains from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, entering into a white world entirely of snow, bitterly cold, and overlooked by an empty sky; only the effort of moving forward, one stride at a time, separated the days from one another.

This recording contains four important and related works by Heidegger: 'What Is Philosophy', 'What Is Metaphysics', 'On the Essence of Truth' and 'The Question of Being'.

Pangloss would have been right at home in a post-truth, social media world. You can imagine the tweets, “I was hanged and survived #soggyrope,” or, “#nosyphilisnochocolate.” Candide, written in 1759, was never more relevant than today. Blind obeisance and denial, barbarous villainy, greed, and rapacity, are all in a day’s toil for the young Candide. And this is in the best of all possible worlds!

The Sceptic Isle provides a bold reassessment of how the British government sold the Second World War to the British public. It powerfully showcases the major credibility gap that cast a long shadow over the British government's efforts to sell the different dimensions of the Second World War to the home front.

A Groundbreaking Analysis of Dallas Willard's Theology of Spiritual Formation Dallas Willard's formational theology begins with the claim that the aim of God in human history is the formation of a community of loving persons apprenticed to Jesus―and ends with the promise that such...

What do you really know about the people around you? To the residents of leafy Acacia Avenue, Mr. and Mrs. Smith were like any other couple. Living a very ordinary life, in a very ordinary suburb, on the outskirts of a very ordinary city. But behind closed doors, Mr. and Mrs. Smith were at the heart of a world filled with deception and organized crime—and they were the good guys. Inspired by true events and detailing Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s covert deployments, this is first in a series of gripping tales.

From May 1941 to the end of night raids in 1943, Luftwaffe bombers attacked provincial cities across England, Scotland, and Wales. However, these air raids are not considered part of the Blitz—at least, not according to the British Official History. The official historiography maintains that the Blitz on the United Kingdom ended when aircraft were redeployed to support the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, after the final major raid against London that May.

Destructive forces have been eroding the University of Cape Town, Africa’s leading university. This audiobook tells the sad, true tale of what has been transpiring. It is a saga of lunacy, criminality, pandering, and identity politics. The mad and the bad–the deranged, deluded, the depraved–have been granted endless latitude in bullying and abusing others.