Lynn Thorndike: A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vols. 1-2 (1923)

Lynn Thorndike’s History of Magic and Experimental Science, in 8 volumes, is the premier reference work for the history of magic in the West. The first 2 volumes cover late antiquity through the 13th century. These are strong volumes, copiously researched and well-indexed, and a major source for work on the period.

The aim of the complette set is to treat the history of magic and experimental science and their relations to Christian thought down to the Seventeenth Century. The first two volumes deal with the first thirteen centuries of our era, with special emphasis upon the 12th and 13th centuries. Magic is understood under the broadest sense of the work, as including all occult arts and sciences, superstitions and folklore. The author believes that magic and experimental science have been connected in their development, and within these pages will attempt to prove the same.

Publisher Columbia University Press, 1923
ISBN 0231087942, 9780231087940 (Vol 1); 0231087950, 9780231087957 (Vol 2)
888 pages (Vol 1), 1054 pages (Vol 2)

PDF, More formats (Vol 1)
PDF, More formats (Vol 2)

Long April, 1-3 (2011-2012) [Romanian/English]

“The Long April. Texte despre artă is a magazine dedicated to contemporary art, with an emphasis on the art scene from Romania. The magazine is realized through the collective effort of nine authors, each one of them responsible for her own permanent rubric. The magazine offers an image upon contemporary visual arts (in their intersections with other fields, cultural and not only), through the perspective of particular and localized interests of the authors. Reviews of exhibitions, performances or events, interviews with artists or theorists, fragments of academic research, studies or investigations, all these are possible forms to be used, the subjectivity of selection being compensated by the seriousness of approach and the long-term preoccupation with a certain kind of artistic research or critical writing.”

Contributors to Issue 1: Anca Mihuleţ, Andreiana Mihail, Corina L. Apostol, Daria Ghiu, Iulia Popovici, Laura Panait, Livia Pancu, Oana Tănase, and Raluca Voinea.

Publisher The KNOT, Bucharest

Magazine website

Issue 1 (Jul 2011): PDF, HTML, PDFs (updated on 2017-12-2)
Issue 2 (Nov 2011): HTML, PDFs (added on 2017-12-2)
Issue 3 (Aug 2012): HTML, PDFs (added on 2017-12-2)

David Graeber: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011–) [EN, CZ, RU]

“Before there was money, there was debt.

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter system–to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems. It is in this era, Graeber shows, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

With the passage of time, however, virtual credit money was replaced by gold and silver coins–and the system as a whole began to decline. Interest rates spiked and the indebted became slaves. And the system perpetuated itself with tremendously violent consequences, with only the rare intervention of kings and churches keeping the system from spiraling out of control. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history–as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.”

Publisher Melville House, July 2011
ISBN 1933633867, 9781933633862
542 pages

Original essay (Mute, February 2009)
Illustrated essay with excerpts from the book (Triple Canopy, July 2010)
Video interview on Greece (Democracy Now!, July 2011)
Video interview (PBS: Need to Know, August 2011)

Review: Maryam Monalisa Gharavi (Social Text, 2011).

Publisher

Debt: The First 5,000 Years (English, 2011, updated on 2020-4-10)
Dluh: prvních 5000 let (Czech, trans. Lenka Beranová, 2012, 71 MB, added on 2020-4-10)
Dolg: pervyye 5000 let istorii (Russian, trans. A. Dunayev, 2015, 18 MB, added on 2020-4-10)