Book suggestions for the Summer

We recommend the strongest selection of books that will accompany you on your summer escapes by the sea. So make room in your suitcase for your favorite books.

See below our proposals for the Summer:

1.THE INVENTION OF MODERN RUSSIA

The path from Gorbachev’s freedom to Putin’s war

by Arkadi Ostrovsky with the Foreword by Dimitris V. Triantafyllides

How did a country freed from seventy years of Soviet rule end up being one of the greatest threats to the West and, above all, to its own future? Why did people who rejected communist ideology come to accept state propaganda? In this bold and important book, Arkady Ostrovsky takes the reader on a fascinating journey through Russia’s turbulent post-Soviet transformation and illuminates the key turning points that often take the world by surprise.

The intense debate in recent years about the political, economic and cultural legacy of the first post-Soviet period is crucial to understanding what is happening in Russia today but, more importantly, what will be left when Vladimir Putin is gone.

As a foreign correspondent in his own country, Ostrovsky has been an eyewitness to Russia’s modern history, and through original research and interviews he reveals the ideological conflicts, compromises and temptations that have left Russia on a razor’s edge.

Epicenter Publications

Pages: 384
Price: €17 (VAT included)

2.Happy in Alaska / Strong Minds Against the Wind

by Rafael Santandreu

The book describes three steps to reprogram our minds and become emotionally healthy and strong people, even in seemingly adverse situations.

All the neuroses that make life difficult for us -anxiety, depression, anxiety, shyness-, all the worries and fears are just the result of a wrong perception, which we can change forever. “Happy in Alaska” presents the method for doing so, based on the world’s most effective therapeutic school: modern cognitive psychology.

Resume
Rafael Santandreu is one of Spain’s most sought-after psychologists. After his studies in Spain and England, he worked as a professor at Ramon Yule University. In the 2000s he collaborated with renowned psychologist Giorgio Nardone at the Center for Strategic Therapy in Arezzo, Italy.

Today he has dedicated himself to the psychotherapy of patients – his great passion – and to the training of doctors and psychologists. In his office in Barcelona, ​​patients from all over the world visit him or give them his advice via video conference.
His previous books “The Art of the Happy Life” (EI arte no amargarse la vida) and “The Glasses of Happiness” (Las gafas de la Felicidad) have become reference books of psychology at an international level.

GEMA PUBLICATIONS

3.Ta secrets of images: the sea, women and museums in painting – Volume I

In this book, the world of the past is explored and reveals its forgotten secrets through paintings depicting similar themes.

In the chapter Between the waves: The aspects of the turbulent sea in painting, sea paintings, created from the 17th century to the 20th, are presented, with their main theme being the storm, the storm, the intense weather phenomena and the awe of man in the face of the fury of nature.

The mysterious, “mortal” and “dangerous” woman of the late 19th century, that is, the way artists and the public saw and dealt with their contemporary woman, is described through bold paintings in the section Cupid and Death: The faces of the femme fatale.

In the final chapter, entitled From the studio to the Louvre: Painting the history of art galleries, the reader traces the evolution of collections, art galleries and museums from the Renaissance to the late 19th century as depicted in painting .

The book The secrets of images: the sea, women and museums in painting, based on relatively unknown works of art and a rich bibliography, takes the reader on a journey into the world of artistic creation and visual subject matter, transports him to times of of the past, recalls outdated notions and reveals how much has changed today in art and life, but also how much still remains surprisingly unchanged.

Author: Helen Margari
Publisher: Yiannis Chronopoulos
Editorial Editor: Yannis Chronopoulos
Pages: 208 pages
Original Price: €16.00

Publications: Historical Quest: 51 Mavromichali, Athens, TK. 10680

4.RUSSIA THE GREAT ENEMY OF THE WEST

by Dimitris V. Triantafyllidis

The dawn of February 24, 2022, marked the end of the world as we knew it as a result of the post-war settlement following the defeat of the Axis powers by the Allies. The Russian Federation has declared war on neighboring, independent Ukraine, making flimsy and pretentious arguments, violating every principle of international law.

The West seemed unprepared for this development. The signs were in front of everyone’s eyes, but few wanted to see them. At every opportunity since 2001, Russia has made the point that it feels uncomfortable with this security architecture and that it should be modified to accommodate its own imperial ambitions in Eurasia. By declaring war, Russia vindicated those who ranked it as the #1 enemy of the European Union and NATO, awakened the political leaderships and societies of the West, drastically changed the geopolitical map and set the stage for a paradigm shift in its relations with the majority of the states of the advanced world.

This admission obliges us to make additional efforts to understand the “great unknown” Russia and not be satisfied with the literary-cultural version of its image. Russia should be the subject of a multifaceted study, in order to understand it, so that the West can deal with it effectively and build with it, in the future, relations of good neighborliness and cooperation.

Epicenter Publications

Pages: 152
Price: €11 (VAT included)

5.No one is afraid of those who smile

Gloria chose this day in June for them to leave. She picks up her daughters from school and sets off with them without warning on a long journey. The three of them leave behind the shores of the Mediterranean and head north, the Alsatian house in the forest of Kaiserheim in which Gloria, as a child, spent her holidays. Why this sudden desertion? What threat does he want to escape from? To find out, we have to go back to the troubled waters of the past, to meet Giovanangeli, who took her under his wing when her father died, to lift the veil around the death of Samuel, the father of her children (where was Gloria that night?) and to finally understand what role the lawyer Santini might have played in this whole story.

How far can we protect our children? In this novel, with undiminished tension, Véronique Ovalde directs the compelling character of a mother whose anxiety about the world transforms into relentless composure in order to confront it.

Resume
Véronique Ovaldet has published nine novels, including “Et mon coeur transparent” (France Culture Award – Telerama), “What I know about Vera Candida” (published by Gema, 2009 Renaudot high school student prize, France Televisions prize and Grand Elle Readers’ Award), “Des vies d’oiseaux, La Grace des brigands” (2008) and most recently, “Soyez imprudents les enfants” (2016).

Veronique Ovalde

Translation: Rozali Sinopoulou
Price: 15 euros, Pages: 260
GEMA Publications

6.Agatha, the strange little witch

Little witch Agatha is ready to explore the world of humans. How will it look to her? Well, he’s in for some big surprises!
If a bat or a frog isn’t an appropriate birthday present, then what should she bring to the party? If not so they can fly, then why do scavengers have brooms?

She has so many questions, but magic and spells are of little use to her. Three fun adventures of the witch Agatha in the human world for curious little readers who like to discover new things.

Author: Linda Pacourková
Translation: Anna Tsakalidou
Publisher: Yiannis Chronopoulos
Illustration: Katarina Kratochvílová
Cover: Katarina Kratochvílová
Pages: 64
Original Price: €14.40

Publications: Historical Quest: 51 Mavromichali, Athens, TK. 10680

7.Stories of day and night

Guy De Maupassant

“The northerly wind was blowing furiously, dragging from the sky huge winter clouds, black and dense, which poured heavy downpours upon the earth. The sea, raging like a beast, roared and beat with force on the shore, throwing huge waves there, which in slow motion foamed and burst like bursts from a machine gun. They began again rhythmically one after the other, high as the mountains, scattering in the air, under the precipitous rocks, the white foam of their peaks like an angry outburst of monsters…”

The “Stories of Day and Night” by the leading representative of French naturalism, Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), take us on a journey to the rugged shores of Normandy, to the sweet light of the French South, but also to wild and harsh Corsica: love, tenderness, desires, but also the murder of parents, drunkards, cowardly townspeople, cunning villagers, images from a world full of contrasts, where the author captures the flow of life, day and night, in a continuum, without end.

Resume
Guy De Maupassant (Normandy, 1850 – Paris, 1893) is one of the leading French writers of naturalism and the most important short story writer of the 19th century. With the writer Gustave Flaubert as his mentor, he publishes around three hundred novellas, six novels, plays and cartoons.

He is accepted into the Parisian secular society of the time and the literary circle where he meets Emile Zola, Alphonse Dodet, Ivan Turgenev, Henry James and lives an intense love life, contracts syphilis and dies prematurely, at the age of only forty-three. in 1893. “Day and Night Stories” published in 1885.

Translation – Epimeter: Vasiliki Tsiganou
Price: 12 euros, Pages: 348
GEMA Publications

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