Richard Cohen

La historia del mundo a través de la espada La espada está entrelazada con la historia de la humanidad desde el inicio de la civilización y todavía hoy nos saludamos dándonos la mano para mostrar a la otra persona que no vamos a desenvainar. En Blandir la espada, Richard Cohen recorre la historia de la espada desde el antiguo Egipto, los gladiadores romanos y los ritos sagrados de los samurais japoneses hasta las luchas galacticas de Darth Vader, pasando por los mosqueteros, la ropera española, los duelos de honor y los Juegos Olimpicos. Escrita con brillantez y exquisitamente documentada, esta obra tambien esta repleta de jugosas anecdotas. ¿Por que reto Ignacio de Loyola a un hombre a un duelo? ¿Que esgrimista de ascendencia judia compitio bajo la bandera nazi en los Juegos Olimpicos de Berlin? ¿Que tienen en comun Marx y Mussolini, Shakespeare y Grace Kelly? Obra definitiva sobre la espada y su historia, en ella descubriremos como este objeto ha trascendido su funcion belica para convertirse en un simbolo de ideologias, culturas y aspiraciones humanas. Blandir la espada no es solo la historia de esta arma y de quienes la han utilizado, sino tambien una fascinante manera de abordar la historia de la humanidad desde una nueva perspectiva.

A supremely entertaining (The New Yorker) exploration of who gets to record the worlds historyfrom Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burnsand how their biases influence our understanding about the past. There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as objective history? In this witty, wise, and elegant (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of Bad History and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country. Scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun (Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy), Making History investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest chroniclers to discover the agendas that informed theirand ourviews of the world. From the origins of history writing, when such an activity itself seemed revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, Cohen brings captivating figures to vivid light, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, Winston Churchill and Henry Louis Gates. Rich in complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a revealing exploration of both the aims and art of history-making, one that will lead us to rethink how we learn about our past and about ourselves.

Historia de los gladiadores, mosqueteros, samurais, espadachines y campeones olímpicos. Esta entusiasta historia de las espadas y los espadachines capta la aventura, el romanticismo, el peligro y la intriga que este arma ha representado a lo largo de la historia del mundo.... Una lectura muy placentera Publishers Wekly Cohen podra escribir otro libro, pero sin duda este es el libro de su vida. The New York Times Un rico compendio de memorables anecdotas, desde las luchas de gladiadores en el circo romano hasta los modernos combates de esgrima. The Guardian Agudo y delicioso. The Times Repleto de jugosas anecdotas y rigurosa informacion, Blandir la espada no es solo la historia de este arma y de quienes la han utilizado, sino una verdadera historia narrada desde un fascinante e innovador prisma en este apasionante libro.

A huge, fizzing omnium-gatherum of a book . . . marvellousDaily TelegraphWitty, wise and elegant . . . a classic of history itselfThe SpectatorGrave and witty, suave yet pointed . . . full of energy Hilary MantelAn enthralling investigation . . . consistently entertainingThe TimesEpic . . . whatever Cohen writes about he writes about with brioNew YorkerWho writes the past? And how do the biases of storytellers - whether Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare or Simon Schama - influence our ideas about history today?Epic, authoritative and entertaining, Making History delves into the lives of those who have charted human history - professional historians, witnesses, novelists, journalists and propagandists - to discover the agendas that informed their world views, and which in so many ways have informed ours. From the origins of history-writing through to television and the digital age, Making History abounds in captivating figures brought to vivid life, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, from Winston Churchill to Mary Beard. Rich in character, complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a unique exploration of both the aims and craft of history-making that will lead us to think anew about our past and ourselves.

A charming, eloquent love letter to the stories and writers we loveA SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEARThis book is a wry, critical friend to both writer and reader. Hilary MantelThere are three rules for writing a novel, Somerset Maugham once said. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.So how to bring characters to life, find a voice, kill your darlings, avoid plagiarism (or choose not to), or run that most challenging of literary gauntletswriting a good sex scene?Veteran editor and author Richard Cohen takes us on a fascinating excursion into the lives and minds of our greatest writersfrom Balzac and Eliot to Woolf and Nabokov, through to Zadie Smith and Stephen King, with a few mischievous detours to Tolstoy along the way. In a glittering tour dhorizon, he lays bare their tricks, motivations, techniques, obsessions and flaws.* Includes revealing insights from the lives of Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell, J. D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, Kate Atkinson, Philip Roth, Emily Bronte, Ali Smith, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Agatha Christie and many more *

Like swordplay itself, By the Sword is elegant, accurate, romantic, and full of briothe definitive study, hugely readable, of mans most deadly art.Simon WinchesterWith a new Preface by the authorNapoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who as a schoolboy would practice fencing with Besshis future wife when the two of them returned home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Ignatius Loyola challenged a man to a duel for denying Christs divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was off to get spaghetti, their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fightinga science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.Praise for By the SwordTouche! While scrupulous and informed about its subject, Richard Cohens book is about more than swordplay. It reads at times like an alternative social history of the West.Sebastian Faulks In writing By the Sword, [Cohen] has shown that he is as skilled with the pen as he is with the sword.The New York Times Irresistible . . . extraordinary . . . vivid and hugely enjoyable.The Economist A virtual encyclopedia on the subject of sword fighting.San Francisco ChronicleLiterate, learned, and, beg pardon, razor-sharp . . . a pleasure for practitioners, and a rewarding entertainment for the armchair swashbuckler.Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

In the grand tradition of the scholar-adventurer, acclaimed author Richard Cohen takes us around the world to illuminate our relationship with the star that gives us life. Drawing on more than seven years of research, he reports from locations in eighteen different countries. As he soon discovers, the Sun is present everywherein mythology, language, religion, politics, sciences, art, literature, and medicine, even in the oceans depths. For some ancient worshippers, our star was a man abandoned by his spouse because his brightness made her weary. The early Christians appropriated the Suns imagery, with the cross becoming an emblem of the star and its rays, and the halo a variation of that. Einstein helped replicate the Suns power to create the atomic bomb, while Richard Wagner had Tristan inveigh against daylight as the enemy of romantic love. In this splendidly illustrated volume packed with captivating facts, extraordinary myths, and surprising anecdotes, Cohen not only explains the star that so inspires us, but shows how multifacted our relationship with it has beenand continues to be.

A thought-provoking journey inside the minds of the worlds most accomplished storytellers, from Shakespeare to Stephen KingNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SPECTATOR Richard Cohens book acted as a tonic to me. It didnt make me more Russian, but it fired up my imagination. I have never annotated a book so fiercely.Hilary MantelThere are three rules for writing a novel, Somerset Maugham is said to have said. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. How then to bring characters to life, find a voice, kill your darlings, or run that most challenging of literary gauntlets, writing a sex scene? What made Nabokov choose the name Lolita? Why did Fitzgerald use firstperson narration in The Great Gatsby ? How did Kerouac, who raged against revision, finally come to revise On the Road ?Veteran editor and author Richard Cohen takes us on an engrossing journey into the lives and minds of the worlds greatest writers, from Honore de Balzac and George Eliot to Virginia Woolf and Zadie Smithwith a few mischievous detours to visit Tolstoy along the way. In a scintillating tour dhorizon, Cohen lays bare the tricks, motivations, and techniques of the literary greats, revealing their obsessions and flaws and how we can learn from them along the way.

A seminal book about swordplay Rick Broadbent, The Times The definitive study, hugely readable, of mans most deadly art Simon Winchester The classic history of sword fighting, as told by national sabre champion and Olympic fencer Richard Cohen. The art and science of sword fighting goes back almost to the dawn of civilization and has been an obsession for much of mankind throughout recorded history. Evidence of this passion is all around us to this day: we shake hands to show that we are not reaching for our sword. A gentleman offers a lady his right arm because his sword was once attached to his left hip. Men button their jackets to the right to give them swifter access to their swords. From the Roman arena to feudal Japan and from the duellists of Europe to the development of modern-day Olympic fencing, Richard Cohen traces the course of swordsmanship with wit and erudition in a fascinating and wonderfully wide-ranging account. He lets us see swordplay as graceful and brutal, balletic and deadly, technical and fiercely competitive the most romantic of martial arts. Superbly written and impeccably researched, By the Sword is a tribute to a perilous but beautiful skill, the mastery of which for centuries defined what it meant to be a man.

The Sun is so powerful, so much bigger than us, that it is a terrifying subject. Yet though we depend on it, we take it for granted. Amazingly the first book of its kind, CHASING THE SUNis a cultural and scientific history of our relationship with the star that gives us life. Richard Cohen, applying the same mix of wide-ranging reference and intimate detail that won outstanding reviews for By the Sword, travels from the ancient Greek astronomers to modern-day solar scientists, from Stonehenge to Antarctica (site of the solar eclipse of 2003, when penguins were said to sing), Mexicos Aztecs to the Norwegian city of Tromso, where for two months of the year there is no Sun at all. He introduces us to the crucial sunspot cycle in modern economics, the religious dances of Indian tribesmen, the histories of sundials and calendars, the plight of migrating birds, the latest theories of global warming, and Galileo recording his discoveries in code, for fear of persecution. And throughout, there is the rich Sun literature -- from the writings of Homer through Dante and Nietzsche to Keats, Shelley and beyond. Blindingly impressive and hugely readable, this is a tour de force of narrative non-fiction.

Con Persiguiendo el Sol, Richard Cohen firma el ensayo más completo y apasionante escrito hasta ahora sobre la estrella que nos da luz. Desde las torres de observación de los antiguos astrólogos griegos a los telescopios inmensos de los astronomos solares de hoy en dia, de los bailes rituales en Stonehenge para recibir el equinoccio al amanecer desde la cima del monte Fuji en pleno verano, viajamos con Cohen persiguiendo el Sol alrededor del mundo. Con el, somos testigos de un eclipse en el hielo de la Antartida (cuando, segun se dice, los pinguinos cantan), participamos en las ceremonias del solsticio en el Mexico azteca y el Peru incaico, despertamos en la oscuridad en la ciudad artica de Troms, donde no hay ni un minuto de sol durante dos meses cada año; visitamos un centro de investigacion solar en la zona mas desertica de España para seguir viaje hasta el santuario del observatorio del Papa en Castelgandolfo, a las afueras de Roma. El viaje termina en la India, navegando por el Ganges para contemplar las ceremonias del Sol al amanecer y el anochecer.Cohen, viajando al pasado y al futuro, nos introduce en el"ciclo de manchas solares"de la economia moderna, en los bailes hipnoticos de los guerreros sioux, en la historia de los relojes de sol y los calendarios, en los muchos milagros que realizan cada año las aves migratorias, los peces y otros animales, las mas recientes las teorias del calentamiento global y los pronosticos de una"edad dorada"para el Sol de los mejores expertos del mundo. Averiguamos por que Renoir elogio la luz que pintaba Matisse, como las abejas mueven el trasero para indicar la ruta del Sol a sus compañeros de trabajo, por que cuando estamos mas lejos del Sol nos hallamos en la epoca mas calida del año, o por que Wagner odiaba el sol tanto como lo amaba Mozart.Una rica veta literaria recorre todo el libro, citando desde a Homero hasta a Dante y Nietzsche, Keats, Shelley y Whitman, pero sin olvidar a Groucho Marx o Woody Allen. En Persiguiendo el Sol leemos las reflexiones de maestros de la ciencia ficcion como H. G. Wells y Arthur C. Clarke. El Sol es el centro de nuestro universo: nuestras vidas transcurren al ritmo de sus dias y las estaciones. Como escribio Ray Bradbury, el Sol"era todos los horizontes, era todas las direcciones ... y solo el Sol sabe realmente lo que queremos saber, y solo el Sol posee el secreto."

¿Qué sabemos realmente sobre la homosexualidad? ¿Por qué algunas personas experimentan AMS: Atracción por el Mismo Sexo? ¿Hay una causa genética, procede de heridas familiares o influencias sociocult

Richard Cohen propone un plan completo cuando se da una circunstancia que a muchos padres les sorprende por lo inesperado: descubrir que uno de sus hijos siente atracción hacia el mismo sexo. Siguien

¿Por qué Nabokov llamó Lolita a Lolita? ¿Qué pensaba Mark Twain de sus lectores? ¿Por qué Tolstói dijo que todas las familias felices se parecen? ¿Por qué Virginia Woolf creía que el ritmo es lo más importante? ¿Por que segun Garcia Marquez todo esta en la primera frase?¿Por que Philip Roth escribia de pie? ¿Por que Doctorow no era capaz de redactar un justificante del colegio para su hijo?¿Que le hacia mas gracia a Jane Austen y como atrapa las ideas Stephen King? ¿Por que Madame Bovary nos parece tan sensual y por que Martin Amis dice que es imposible escribir de sexo?De Homero y Shakespeare a Vonnegut o Zadie Smith, Richard Cohen explora como arrancar un libro, como se construye un personaje, como narrar una escena de sexo, como se escribe y reescribe. Y, tambien, como vive cada autor todo el proceso: sus miedos,bloqueos y trucos para superarlos.Hay tres reglas para escribir una novela, dijo Somerset Maugham, pero añadio: Lamentablemente nadie sabe cuales son. Y, aun asi, Richard Cohen nos acerca en este lucidisimo, erudito y fascinante libro a como piensan, y escriben, los grandes escritores de la literatura universal. Oro puro para los que quieren entender mejor lo que leen o incluso atreverse a escribir.

Impregnada de romanticismo, espíritu aventurero, caballerosidad y pasión, la espada ha sido protagonista de historias como las del equipo de esgrima húngaro que huyó de los nazis, y ha dado pie a grandes películas protagonizadas por Basil Rathbone o Errol Flynn, y a novelas como El maestro de esgrima de Arturo Pérez Reverte.