Together

An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinker<BR><BR>The Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances.<BR><BR>The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author's early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later work as a city planner and social thinker. It traces the evolution of performing spaces in the city; the emergence of actors, musicians, and dancers as independent artists; the inequality between performer and spectator; the uneasy relations between artistic creation and social and religious ritual; the uses and abuses of acting by politicians. The Janus-faced art of performing is both destructive and civilizing.<BR><BR>This is the first in a trilogy of books on the fundamental DNA of human expression: performing, narrating, and imaging.

In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett, "among the country's most distinguished thinkers . . . has concentrated into 176 pages a profoundly affecting argument" (Business Week) that draws on interviews with dismissed IBM executives, bakers, a bartender turned advertising executive, and many others to call into question the terms of our new economy. In his 1972 classic, The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb), Sennett interviewed a man he called Enrico, a hardworking janitor whose life was structured by a union pay schedule and given meaning by his sacrifices for the future. In this new book-a #1 bestseller in Germany-Sennett explores the contemporary scene characterized by Enrico's son, Rico, whose life is more materially successful, yet whose work lacks long-term commitments or loyalties. Distinguished by Sennett's "combination of broad historical and literary learning and a reporter's willingness to walk into a store or factory [and] strike up a conversation" (New York Times Book Review), this book "challenges the reader to decide whether the flexibility of modern capitalism . . . is merely a fresh form of oppression" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Praise for The Corrosion of Character: "A benchmark for our time."-Daniel Bell "[A]n incredibly insightful book."-William Julius Wilson "[A] remarkable synthesis of acute empirical observation and serious moral reflection."-Richard Rorty "[Sennett] offers abundant fresh insights . . . illuminated by his concern with people's struggle to give meaning to their lives."-[Memphis] Commercial Appeal

'Thank god for Richard Sennett ... essential reading for all students of the city' Anna Minton, Prospect<BR><BR>'Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking' Jonathan Meades, Guardian<BR><BR>In Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime's thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them.<BR><BR>The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett's many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn't, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities' problems. This is a humane and thrilling book, which allows us to think freshly about how we live in cities.<BR><BR>'Sennett is my kind of urbanist. He sees the modern city. He reads its secrets as he walks down the street, kicking over the detritus of the past ... There is no alternative to the planner, but please a planner who has read Sennett's book' Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times

Ein höchst aktuelles Buch über die komplexe Macht nonverbaler Kommunikation. Das neue Buch des großen Soziologen Richard SennettIn immer mehr Ländern beherrschen Demagogen die politischen Bühnen. Was sie alle eint, ist die Fähigkeit, ihre Anhänger mitzureißen, sie sind begnadete Darsteller. Ausgehend von dieser beunruhigenden Tatsache untersucht Sennett die ambivalenten Beziehungen zwischen Darstellung in der Politik, in der Kunst und im täglichen Leben und macht uns bewusst: Wenn alle dieselbe nonverbale Welt der körperlichen Gesten und Inszenierung teilen, können auch die Rollen und Rituale des alltäglichen Handelns bösartig oder erhebend, repressiv oder befreiend sein. In weitgespanntem Bogen führt Sennett durch Spielarten des darstellenden Menschen vom Redner im antiken Athen bis zum Straßenmusiker in Harlem. Dabei entsteht eine Partitur der Performance, die erkennen lässt, worauf es ankommen könnte in diesem Spiel: die Bewahrung der Freiheit.

Living with people who differ - racially, ethnically, religiously or economically - is one of the most urgent challenges facing civil society today. Together argues that co-operation needs more than good will: it is a craft that requires skill. In modern society traditional bonds are waning, and we must develop new forms of secular, civic ritual that make us more skilful in living with others. From Medieval guilds to today's social networks, Richard Sennett's visionary book explores the nature of co-operation, why it has become weak and how it can be strengthened.

Fragments de journal, lettres, fiches et rapports de police, tels sont les documents qui, dans leur savante alternance, reconstituent l'itinéraire public et privé de Tibor Grau, juif hongrois né en 1893, l'un des plus éminents penseurs marxistes de son temps... Etudiant, Tibor Grau se fait remarquer par ses talents de théoricien tandis qu'il vit en secret une homosexualité complexe. Après la révolution hongroise de 1919, il occupe un poste important au service de la propagande, transformant en particulier des contes populaires dans une perspective socialiste. Plus tard encore... A travers ce portrait d'un personnage complexe chez qui grandeur et imposture, idéal et compromis se superposent plus qu'ils ne s'opposent, Richard Sennett réinvente un temps de révolution et de réaction en Europe centrale, les années de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et du stalinisme, avec une maestria, un sens de l'orchestration dignes du musicien professionnel qu'il fut avant de devenir sociologue et romancier. Richard Sennett est né à Chicago en 1943. Après des études à l'université de Chicago et à Harvard, il fonde au sein de l'Université de New York l'Institute for the Humanities, dont la première tâche est d'établir une liaison entre les milieux universitaires et littéraires. Parmi ses ouvrages, qui lui ont valu aux Etats-Unis une grande notoriété, trois ont été traduits en français: les Tyrannies de l'intimité (Seuil, 1979), la Famille contre la ville (Recherches, 1980) et Autorité (Fayard, 1981).