Bøker av Michael O'sullivan

A brilliant analysis of the transition in world economics, finance, and power as the era of globalization ends and gives way to new power centers and institutions.

For long periods in history, the Austrian capital found itself on the geographical edge of western civilisation. Yet from the 18th century on, Vienna has been a vibrant centre of European culture. This city is the scene of the formidable meeting of the two outstanding intellectuals that are at the core of this book. The warm relationship between W.H. Auden, the celebrated British-American poet (1907-1973), and his fellow expatriate, the Welsh-Austrian journalist, translator and writer Stella Musulin (1915-1996) lasted while Auden resided in the nearby small town of Kirchstetten starting in 1958. It was here that the poet was laid to rest in the autumn of 1973. This book is based on the unpublished letters of Auden to Musulin and her private journals.  The study of this inspiring material yields new insights into Auden's last, prolific, creative period and underscores the 'Austrian Auden.' In addition, Michael O'Sullivan pays tribute to the closest 'Austrian' friend of the poet. Baroness Stella von Musulin was an intellectual whose two books for Faber & Faber are acknowledged as classics: Vienna in the Age of Metternich and Austria: People & Landscape (with a foreword by Auden). The author situates the close relationship of two individuals in the context of Austria's complex political, social, and cultural history in the Cold War years.

Irish Presidents, critics, and media initiatives focus on how Irishness is a global resource chiefly informed by the experiences of an Irish diaspora predominantly working in English, while also reminding Irish people 'at home' that Irish is the 'national tongue'.

Irish Presidents, critics, and media initiatives focus on how Irishness is a global resource chiefly informed by the experiences of an Irish diaspora predominantly working in English, while also reminding Irish people 'at home' that Irish is the 'national tongue'.

This book revisits the trajectory of one section of Patrick Leigh Fermor's famous excursion on foot from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in the 1930s. The highly regarded British travel writer and heroic wartime Special Operations Executive officer walked into Hungary as a youth of 19 at Easter and left Transylvania in August 1934. This intrepid traveler, "e;a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene"e; as the New York Times obituary put it in 2011, published his experiences half a century later. Between the Woods and the Water, that covers the part of the epic foot journey from the middle Danube to the Iron Gates, has been a bestseller since it was first published in 1986. In the present volume Michael O'Sullivan reveals the identity of the interesting characters in the travelogue, interviewing several of them eyetoeye. The many counts and barons among his 1934 contacts are a proof of Leigh Fermor's lifelong attraction to the aristocracy. Rich with photos and other documents on places and persons both from the thirties and today, the book offers a compelling social and political history of the period and the area. It provides a particular portrait of Hungary and Transylvania when they were on the brink of momentous change.

The image of the university is tarnished: this book examines how recent philosophies of education, new readings of its economics, new technologies affecting research and access, and contemporary novelists' representations of university life all describe a global university that has given up on its promise of greater educational equality.

In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein presents a radical approach to the philosophy of language and the mind, setting out a startlingly fresh conception of philosophy itself. Wittgenstein begins from the insight that most philosophical problems trace back to incorrect assumptions about the nature of language.

More than two centuries after its initial publication in 1781, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason remains perhaps the most influential text in modern philosophy. Kant wanted metaphysicians to move away from their endless battles about whether or not human knowledge must conform to independently given objects.

Excited by the scientific breakthroughs of the day, David Hume set out to construct a science of the mind. 1748's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is the result. A work that had a huge influence on great thinkers, including Kant, An Enquiry is Hume's examination of how we obtain information and form beliefs.

In this provocative 1949 work, Ryle proposes that what we think of as the "mind" is little more than an illusion. Rene Descartes, one of the fathers of philosophy, imagined the mind and body as separate entities, a concept known as "mind-body dualism."

The first book-length study of the humanities and the Irish university -- .