Sunday, February 1, 2009

Che or The Voice of Reason

Che: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara

Author: Ernesto Che Guevara

The book of the new, two-part biopic on Che Guevara starring Benicio Del Toro as the legendary revolutionary.

Director Steven Soderbergh has based his two Che movies (Che: The Argentine and Che: Guerrilla) on two classic diaries written by Che Guevara: Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (an account of the guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro that overthrew the Batista dictatorship in 1959) and Bolivian Diary (Che's famous, unfinished diary discovered in his backpack when he was captured and killed in Bolivia in October 1967).

Che: Guerrilla Diaries includes a selection from each book, showing the young Argentine's evolution from the wide-eyed medical student of the Motorcycle Diaries-era to the revolutionary hero the world knows as Che.

Features:

  • Key excerpts from Che's Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, his final Bolivian Diary, his fiery address to the UN General Assembly, and interviews with US journalist Lisa Howard and CBS' Face the Nation during his visit to New York in December 1964.
  • Che's first encounter with Fidel Castro in Mexico, when he immediately commits himself to join the guerrilla expedition to Cuba.
  • The dramatic moment when Che has to decide his future either as a doctor or a guerrilla fighter, symbolized by the choice of two backpacks: one with medicine, the other with ammunition.
  • Che's poetic letter to his parents before he sets out on the fateful Bolivia mission.
  • Maps, chronology, and a useful glossary.
  • Thirty-six pages of original photos from the period and stills from themovie.
  • Movie tie-in cover.
  • Blurbs by Benicio del Toro and Steven Soderbergh.

Also published in Spanish this season is Che: Diarios Guerrilleros, 978-1-921235-48-1.



Go to: Geschäft in der Handlung mit Echtzeitupdates

The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, Vol. 5

Author: Ayn Rand

Between 1961, when she gave her first talk at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and 1981, when she gave the last talk of her life in New Orleans, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marylin Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces, written in the last decades of Rand's life are gathered in book form for the first time. With them are five essays by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's longtime associate and literary executor. The work concludes with Peikoff's eipolgue, "My Thirty Years With Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir," which answers the question "What was Ayn Rand really like?" Important reading for all thinking individuals, Rand's later writings reflect a life lived on principle, a probing mind, and a passionate intensity. This collection communicates not only Rand's singular worldview, but also the penetrating cultural and political analysis to which it gives rise.

Publishers Weekly

Rand's strident right-wing rhetoric is on display in these posthumously collected essays. Upholding egoistic self-interest as the wellspring of capitalism, she derides liberals ``crawling on their stomachs to Moscow'' and targets ``psychologizers'' who excuse the behavior of ``college-campus thugs'' and criminals; in her estimation, the modern arts are a ``sewer.'' Novelist ( Atlas Shrugged ) and self-styled Objectivist philosopher, Rand, who died in 1982, staunchly opposes a ``mixed economy,'' a term which seems to stand for anything contrary to unregulated monopoly capitalism. Liberals should appreciate her diatribe against the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control and abortion. Her eulogy of Marilyn Monroe is sentimental and silly, while her argument to the effect that no psychologically balanced woman would want to be U.S. president is old-fashioned. In supplementary essays, Peikoff, an Objectivist follower of Rand, condemns the New Right's religious zeal and attacks socialized medicine. (Jan.)



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