{"title":"Robert Zaretsky","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"catherine-diderot-book-robert-zaretsky-9780674737907","title":"Catherine \u0026 Diderot","description":"In a dual biography crafted around the famous encounter between the French philosopher who wrote about power and the Russian empress who wielded it with great aplomb, Robert Zaretsky invites us to reflect on the fraught relationship between politics and philosophy, and between a man of thought and a woman of action.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49553238098193,"sku":"GOR010610068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50024562688273,"sku":"CIN0674737903G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005475422481,"sku":"NIN9780674737907","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51890707890449,"sku":"GOR009721925","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674737903.jpg?v=1751136527"},{"product_id":"life-worth-living-book-robert-zaretsky-9780674970861","title":"A Life Worth Living","description":"Exploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus--absurdity, silence,  revolt, fidelity, and moderation--Robert Zaretsky portrays a moralist  who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions,  and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status  quo. For Camus, rebellion against injustice is the human condition.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49570999763217,"sku":"GOR010920322","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50336916046097,"sku":"CIN0674970861G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50762565550353,"sku":"CIN0674970861VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51728507961617,"sku":"GOR009502908","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51751442514193,"sku":"NGR9780674970861","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52717565804817,"sku":"GOR014594743","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674970861.jpg?v=1751105491"},{"product_id":"philosophers-quarrel-book-robert-zaretsky-9780300121933","title":"The Philosophers' Quarrel","description":"The rise and spectacular fall of the friendship between the two great philosophers of the eighteenth century, barely six months after they first met, reverberated on both sides of the Channel. As the relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume unraveled, a volley of rancorous letters was fired off, then quickly published and devoured by aristocrats, intellectuals, and common readers, alike. Everyone took sides in this momentous dispute between the greatest of Enlightenment thinkers.In this lively and revealing book, Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott explore the unfolding rift between Rousseau and Hume. The authors are particularly fascinated by the connection between the thinkers' lives and thought, especially the way that their failure to understand one another (and themselves) illuminates the limits of human understanding. In addition, they situate the philosophers' quarrel in the social, political, and intellectual milieu that informed their actions, as well as the actions of the other participants in the dispute, such as James Boswell, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. By examining the conflict through the prism of each philosopher's contribution to Western thought, Zaretsky and Scott reveal the implications for the two men as individuals and philosophers as well as for the contemporary world, which remains deeply influenced by the Enlightenment.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49581361070353,"sku":"GOR007170831","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346702274833,"sku":"CIN0300121938G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300121938.jpg?v=1751259635"},{"product_id":"subversive-simone-weil-book-robert-zaretsky-9780226549330","title":"The Subversive Simone Weil","description":"Distinguished literary biographer Robert Zaretsky upends our thinking on Simone Weil, bringing us a woman and a philosopher who is complicated and challenging, while remaining incredibly relevant.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49740586418449,"sku":"NGR9780226549330","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50262396502289,"sku":"GOR011298993","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51406490304785,"sku":"CIN022654933XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022654933X.jpg?v=1762336596"},{"product_id":"victories-never-last-book-robert-zaretsky-9780226803494","title":"Victories Never Last","description":"A timely and nuanced book that sets the author's experience as a  nursing home volunteer during the pandemic alongside the wisdom of five great thinkers who confronted their own plagues.   In any time of disruption, grief, or uncertainty, many of us seek comfort or wisdom in the work of great writers who endured similar circumstances. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historian and biographer Robert Zaretsky did much the same while also working as a volunteer in a nursing home in south Texas. When not caring for those isolated by the health crisis, he turned to great novelists, essayists, and historians of the past to help him make sense of his experiences at the residence and the emotional and physical enormity of the pandemic.     In Victories Never Last Zaretsky weaves his reflections on the pandemic siege of his nursing home with the experiences of six writers during their own times of plague: Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus, whose The Plague provides the title of this book. Zaretsky delves into these writers to uncover lessons that can provide deeper insight into our pandemic era. At the same time, he goes beyond the literature to invoke his own experience of the tragedy that enveloped his Texas nursing home, one which first took the form of chronic loneliness and then, inevitably, the deaths of many residents whom we come to know through Zaretsky's stories. In doing so, Zaretsky shows the power of great literature to connect directly to one's own life in a different moment and time.     For all of us still struggling to comprehend this pandemic and its toll, Zaretsky serves as a thoughtful and down-to-earth guide to the many ways we can come to know and make peace with human suffering.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742211547409,"sku":"NGR9780226803494","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53653550956817,"sku":"GOR012345753","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022680349X.jpg?v=1750843718"},{"product_id":"subversive-simone-weil-book-robert-zaretsky-9780226826608","title":"The Subversive Simone Weil","description":"Known as the “patron saint of all outsiders,” Simone Weil (1909–43) was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals. In a short life framed by the two world wars, Weil taught philosophy to lycée students and organized union workers, fought alongside anarchists during the Spanish Civil War and labored alongside workers on assembly lines, joined the Free French movement in London and died in despair because she was not sent to France to help the Resistance.   Though Weil published little during her life, after her death, thanks largely to the efforts of Albert Camus, hundreds of pages of her manuscripts were published to critical and popular acclaim. While many seekers have been attracted to Weil’s religious thought, Robert Zaretsky gives us a different Weil, exploring her insights into politics and ethics, and showing us a new side of Weil that balances her contradictions—the rigorous rationalist who also had her own brand of Catholic mysticism; the revolutionary with a soft spot for anarchism yet who believed in the hierarchy of labor; and the humanitarian who emphasized human needs and obligations over human rights. Reflecting on the relationship between thought and action in Weil’s life, The Subversive Simone Weil honors the complexity of Weil’s thought and speaks to why it matters and continues to fascinate readers today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745318215953,"sku":"NGR9780226826608","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49876370325777,"sku":"CIN0226826600G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000284610833,"sku":"NIN9780226826608","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51449560531217,"sku":"GOR013166878","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51855377563921,"sku":"CIN0226826600VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51905197965585,"sku":"GOR013456641","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52719965765905,"sku":"GOR014597180","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226826600.jpg?v=1750876584"},{"product_id":"life-worth-living-book-robert-zaretsky-9780674724761","title":"A Life Worth Living","description":"Exploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus - absurdity, silence, revolt, fidelity, and moderation - the author portrays a moralist who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions, and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status quo. 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The rise and spectacular fall of the friendship between the two great philosophers of the eighteenth century, barely six months after they first met, reverberated on both sides of the Channel. As the relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume unraveled, a volley of rancorous letters was fired off, then quickly published and devoured by aristocrats, intellectuals, and common readers alike. Everyone took sides in this momentous dispute between the greatest of Enlightenment thinkers.   In this lively and revealing book, Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott explore the unfolding rift between Rousseau and Hume. The authors are particularly fascinated by the connection between the thinkers’ lives and thought, especially the way that the failure of each to understand the other—and himself—illuminates the limits of human understanding. 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How this came to be-how the Camargue bull came to confront the French cock, venerable symbol of a unified and republican France-is the story told in this ingenious study. Robert Zaretsky considers how in fin-de-si cle France the young writer Folco de Baroncelli, inspired by the history of the American West, in particular the fate of the Oglala Sioux and other Native American peoples, reinvented the history of Occitania. Galvanized by the example set by Buffalo Bill Cody, Baroncelli recast the Camargue as le far-west of France, creating the immemorial traditions he battled to protect. Zaretsky's study examines the creative tension between center and periphery in the making of modern France: just as the political and intellectual elite of the Third Republic invented a certain kind of France, so too did a coterie of southern writers, including Baroncelli, invent a certain kind of Camargue. The story of how the Camargue bull challenged the French cock in this ideological and cultural Wild West deepens our appreciation of the complex dynamic that has created contemporary France. Robert Zaretsky is an associate professor in the Honors College and Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston and the author of N mes at War: Religion, Politics, and Public Opinion in the Department of the Gard, 1938-1944.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51007505269009,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007507857681,"sku":"NIN9780803218383","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803218389.jpg?v=1765620272"},{"product_id":"nimes-at-war-book-robert-zaretsky-9780271025889","title":"Nimes at War","description":"\"Vichy will not go away. As I write, France is in the throes of the Paul Touvier affair. . . . The Touvier affair is just the most recent expression of what Henry Rousso has called the Vichy syndrome.\" So begins Robert Zaretsky's timely study of everyday life in France during the \"dark years\" of Vichy. While many studies of Vichy France have either focused on specific lives or ideas or covered the period in broad and synthetic terms, local studies such as this promise to nuance our understanding of wartime France. By concentrating on the city of Nîmes and the department of the Gard, Zaretsky moves beyond generalizations concerning resistance and collaboration to consider issues of historical continuity and change within a specific local context. In the words and acts of local French men and women, he finds the character of \"mentalities\" in the heart of our own century.  The Gard is well chosen as the focus of this study. From the sixteenth century onward, the region had been a flash point between warring Catholics and Protestants. By the early twentieth century, that tension had eased but not disappeared. Zaretsky examines the dynamics between local Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities, arguing that with the advent of Vichy—a regime that, if not clerical, was deeply deferential to the Catholic Church—tension and conflict resurfaced in the Gard. Nîmes at War is based on a wealth of archival materials—police and prefectoral reports, official departmental documents, local secular and religious newspapers, and letters intercepted by the regime's security apparatus—much of which has only recently been opened to researchers. Zaretsky's detailed narrative will undoubtedly provoke further reconsideration of the complex and ambiguous world of Vichy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53181199974673,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181200269585,"sku":"NLS9780271025889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780271025889.jpg?v=1772237042"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-ie\/collections\/author-books-by-robert-zaretsky.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}