Paul Hoffman Poradie kníh

THE GRIPPING NEW ADVENTURE FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE LEFT HAND OF GOD SERIES Welcome those of you from the Old World. Welcome to the New. Mankind's most reluctant hero - Thomas Cale - is back. ________ Thomas Cale has been running from his enemies. Believing him to be the incarnation of God's rage, the world's most violent religious sect trained him to destroy His greatest mistake. Mankind itself. But Cale has other ideas. Cale is a paradox: arrogant and innocent, generous and pitiless. Feared and revered by those that created him, he has already used his terrifying talent for violence and destruction to bring down the most powerful civilization in the world. But having fled to America, Thomas Cale has been caught. He has been given a choice. Murder the American president - the father of that fragile democracy and the the best hope for ending slavery - or be handed over for execution himself. The survival of rule by the people, and the right of millions not to be owned by others, rests on Cale's decision . . . ________ Praise for Paul Hoffman: 'Fiction on a grand and ambitious scale' Daily Telegraph 'Brooding and magnificent' Eoin Colfer 'Exhilaratingly engaging writing' Spectator 'Gripped me from the first chapter' Conn Iggulden 'A riveting, powerful tale' Publishers Weekly

Záver trilógie spája nitky príbehu z dvoch predchádzajúcich románov. Osud hrdinov sa zavŕši. Kruh sa uzatvára. Anjel skazy rozprestrie krídla a celý svet zadržiava dych pred rozhodujúcou bitkou.

V druhom diele trilógie Paula Hoffmana trpí hlavný hrdina Thomas Cale pocitom roztrpčenia po tom, čo ho zradila láska jeho života, a zahráva sa s čoraz lákavejšou predstavou vyhladenia ľudstva. V sprievode majstra Bosca sa vracia do útulku, kde už nie je chovancom, ale obávaným a uctievaným stelesnením Božieho hnevu. Bosco mu vysvetľuje, že ľudský rod je skrz-naskrz prehnitý, a preto ho treba zničiť a pripraviť svet na príchod dokonalejšej bytosti. No najskôr treba poraziť odporcov a uchvátiť moc v srdci cirkvi spasiteľov. Cesty Caleových priateľov sa rozchádzajú. Kleist sa stáva členom zvláštneho horského klanu zbabelých zlodejov. IdrisPukke odchádza do Španielskeho Leedsu, kde našli útočisko zvyšky rozprášených Materazziovcov. Henri Zahmlievač sa ako jediný rozhodne vyhľadať Calea a zapojí sa do boja proti kacírom. Henri priateľa presviedča, že stále má dôvod žiť. Podarí sa mu to skôr, než bude neskoro?

V útulku spasiteľov niet priestoru pre radosť a nádej. Väčšinu chovancov priviedli na toto skľučujúce miesto v útlom detstve proti ich vôli. Krčia sa pod krutovládou mníchov, ktorých zverstvá a nemilosrdnosť majú jediný cieľ – slúžiť Obesenému spasiteľovi. Útulok je rozľahlá pevnosť plná spletitých chodieb nasiaknutých pachom storočí náboženského zápalu. V jednej z nich stojí chlapec a cez tmavé okno pozoruje čerstvé prírastky do tohto pozemského pekla. Má štrnásť alebo pätnásť rokov – svojím vekom si nie je istý rovnako ako ani ostatní chovanci. Dávno zabudol svoje pravé meno, teraz mu hovoria Cale. Nepamätá si nič z predchádzajúceho života a netuší, čo ho čaká v budúcnosti... Ani to, že ho nazvú Anjelom smrti.

The story of man's struggle to fly is full of larger than life personalities, but none was so eccentric, so entertaining or so complex as Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian 'father of aviation'. An engineer and dandy, Santos-Dumont was the darling of the international press in the first decade of the twentieth century, hopping from Parisian restaurant to nightclub in his personal flying machine, circling the Eiffel Tower in his balloon No. 6 or dining with the Rothschilds and Roosevelts. Yet Santos-Dumont was a troubled genius. Depressed by the success of the Wright brothers in Kitty Hawk and by the increasing militarisation of flight, he retreated to European sanatoriums throughout the 1920s, returning to Brazil only to be confronted by the horrors of civil war. Paul Hoffman tells the tale of Santos-Dumont and modern flight with wit and sympathy, showing us how often brilliance is coupled with tragedy.

The biography of a mathematical genius. Paul Erdos was the most prolific pure mathematician in history and, arguably, the strangest too. 'A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erdos was totally obsessed with his subject -- he thought and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until he died. He travelled constantly, living out of a plastic bag and had no interest in food, sex, companionship, art -- all that is usually indispensible to a human life. Paul Hoffman, in this marvellous biography, gives us a vivid and strangely moving portrait of this singular creature, one that brings out not only Erdos's genius and his oddness, but his warmth and sense of fun, the joyfulness of his strange life.' Oliver Sacks For six decades Erdos had no job, no hobbies, no wife, no home; he never learnt to cook, do laundry, drive a car and died a virgin. Instead he travelled the world with his mother in tow, arriving at the doorstep of esteemed mathematicians declaring 'My brain is open'. He travelled until his death at 83, racing across four continents to prove as many theorems as possible, fuelled by a diet of espresso and amphetamines. With more than 1,500 papers written or co-written,

A collection of articles on the highways and byways of mathematics. The book is written in the tradition of Martin Gardner and aims to be both entertaining and fascinating.