A.N. Wilson - Author RSS - Random House

London by A.N. Wilson

2007-12-18T00:30:00-05:00

London A History
Written by A.N. Wilson

eBook, 240 pages | Modern Library | History | $14.00 | 978-0-307-42665-9 (0-307-42665-3)

In its two thousand years of history, London has ruled a rainy island and a globe-spanning empire, it has endured plague and fire and bombing, it has nurtured and destroyed poets and kings, revolutionaries and financiers, geniuses and visionaries of every stripe. To distill the magic and the majesty of this infinitely enthralling city into a single brief volume would seem an impossible task–yet acclaimed biographer and novelist A. N. Wilson brilliantly accomplishes it in London: A History.

Founded by the Romans, London was a flourishing provincial capital before falling into ruin with the rest of the Roman Empire. Centuries passed before the city rose to prominence once again when William the Conqueror chose to be crowned king in Westminster Abbey. In
Chaucer’s day, London Bridge opened the way for expansion over the Thames. By the time Shakespeare’s plays were being mounted at the Globe, London was a dense, seething, and explosively growing metropolis–a city of brothels and taverns and delicate new palaces and pleasure gardens.

With deftly sketched vignettes and memorable portraits in miniature, Wilson conjures up the essence of London through the ages–high finance and gambling during the Georgian age, John Nash’s stunning urban makeover at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the waves of building and immigration that transformed London beyond recognition during the reign of Queen Victoria, the devastation of the two world wars, the painful and corrupt postwar rebuilding effort, and finally the glamorous, polyglot, expensive, and sometimes ridiculous London of today. Every age had its heroes and villains, from church builder Christopher Wren to jail breaker Jack Sheppard, from urbane wit Samuel Johnson to wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, and Wilson places each one in the drama of London’s history.
Exuberant, opinionated, surprising, often funny, A. N. Wilson’s London is the perfect match of author and subject. In a one short irresistible volume, Wilson gives us the essence of the people, the architecture, the intrigue, the art and literature and history that make London one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

From the Hardcover edition.

London by A.N. Wilson

2006-07-11T00:30:00-05:00

London A History
Written by A.N. Wilson

Trade Paperback, 240 pages | Modern Library | History | $14.00 | 978-0-8129-7556-7 (0-8129-7556-1)

War and Peace by A.N. Wilson

2004-08-31T00:30:00-05:00

War and Peace
Written by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Introduction by A.N. Wilson

Paperback, 1424 pages | Modern Library | Fiction | $9.95 | 978-0-345-47240-3 (0-345-47240-3)

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of fully realized and equally memorable characters that populate this massive chronicle. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: “To read him . . . is to find one’s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.”

War and Peace by A.N. Wilson

2002-07-09T00:30:00-05:00

War and Peace
Written by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Introduction by A.N. Wilson

Trade Paperback, 1424 pages | Modern Library | Fiction - Classics | $15.00 | 978-0-375-76064-8 (0-375-76064-4)

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle—all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: “To read him . . . is to find one’s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.”

God's Funeral by A.N. Wilson

2000-09-12T00:30:00-05:00

God's Funeral A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization
Written by A.N. Wilson

Trade Paperback, 438 pages | Ballantine Books | Religion - History | $16.00 | 978-0-345-43959-8 (0-345-43959-7)

In the course of the nineteenth century, the idea of God became unknowable and then impossible. Scottish philosopher David Hume had wittily but devastatingly kicked away the logical underpinnings of Christian theology a hundred years before; Nietzsche then declared God dead; and Thomas Hardy, through his poetry, presided glumly over his funeral.

And yet, as award-winning novelist and biographer A. N. Wilson asserts in this dazzling synthesis of biography and intellectual history, "The God-question does not go away." Despite passionate, intensely logical arguments against the existence of God, the need for faith endures. While Sir Charles Lyell demonstrated that the book of Genesis laughably contradicted the facts of geology, splendid new churches rose in the cities of the West. Marx, Engels, and Freud rocked the very foundations of public and private life by positing the new atheistic "religions" of socialism and psychology, yet these revolutionary dogmas opened an abyss that still blights our spiritual landscape today. At once illuminating and anecdotal, rigorous and bracing, God's Funeral is a contemporary masterpiece, a profoundly important book about the emergence of a new imaginative order.

How Can We Know? by A.N. Wilson

1991-08-01T00:30:00-05:00

How Can We Know?
Written by A.N. Wilson

Trade Paperback, 128 pages | Image | Religion - Christian Literature | $15.00 | 978-0-385-41960-4 (0-385-41960-0)

A.N. Wilson - Author RSS - Random House

London by A.N. Wilson

London A HistoryWritten by A.N. Wilson

London by A.N. Wilson

London A HistoryWritten by A.N. Wilson

War and Peace by A.N. Wilson

War and Peace Written by Leo Tolstoy Translated by Constance Garnett Introduction by A.N. Wilson

War and Peace by A.N. Wilson

War and Peace Written by Leo Tolstoy Translated by Constance Garnett Introduction by A.N. Wilson

God's Funeral by A.N. Wilson

God's Funeral A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western CivilizationWritten by A.N. Wilson

How Can We Know? by A.N. Wilson

How Can We Know? Written by A.N. Wilson

London A History
Written by A.N. Wilson

London A History
Written by A.N. Wilson

War and Peace
Written by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Introduction by A.N. Wilson

War and Peace
Written by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Introduction by A.N. Wilson

God's Funeral A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization
Written by A.N. Wilson

How Can We Know?
Written by A.N. Wilson