Bøger af M. D. Usher

"Drawing on ancient writers, from Aesop to Ovid, classicist and working farmer, Mark Usher compiles in this book an anthology of Greco-Roman passages illustrating how they thought about animals and illuminating they might help us to rethink our relationships with them."--

What makes poetry effective? How does a poem work? What are its goals and aims?Taking his cue from the musical form of mashup, in POEM M. D. Usher has composed what is known as a cento, stitching together snippets from famous poems in such a way that the words of the text illustrate the aspect of poetry being described. A lively introduction and short, irreverent biographies of the featured poets add to the fun.In T. Motley's artwork, Word literally becomes Flesh, as letters emerge like epiphanies from the drawings.POEM is a unique achievement that stands in relation to canonical poetry as Disney's film, Fantasia, stands to classical music-first of its kind, something for all ages, and well worth experiencing again and again.

Apuleius¿s comic masterpiece, originally composed in the second century A.D., traces the hilarious misadventures of a young man a tad too curious about magic for his own good. Hoping to change himself into an owl, he turns himself into a donkey instead, and in this guise is sold, stolen, or otherwise shunted from one master to the next. Along the way, he sees the underbelly of the sprawling Roman Empire, with its saints and villains, its venal merchants and greedy priests, until he¿s transformed back to human form via divine intervention.M. D. Usher¿s creative adaptation brings the tale alive ¿for young readers of all ages.¿ Classical scholars will admire its faithfulness and its clever innovations, while new readers¿young and old¿will enjoy its freshness and accessibility. Motley¿s lively, thoroughly contemporary drawings capture the boisterous, see-sawing plot.

The Greeks and Romans have been charged with destroying the ecosystems within which they lived. In this book, however, M. D. Usher argues rather that we can find in their lives and thought the origin of modern ideas about systems and sustainability, important topics for humans today and in the future. With chapters running the gamut of Greek and Roman experience - from the Presocratics and Plato to Roman agronomy and the Benedictine Rule - Plato's Pigs brings together unlikely bedfellows, both ancient and modern, to reveal surprising connections. Lively prose and liberal use of anecdotal detail, including an afterword about the author's own experiments with sustainable living on his sheep farm in Vermont, add a strong authorial voice. In short, this is a unique, first-of-its-kind book that is sure to be of interest to anyone working in Classics, environmental studies, philosophy, ecology, or the history of ideas.