A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works (Dover Thrift Editions) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Swift
Publisher: Dover Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $2.00
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $1.99 (100%)
New (24) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 25191
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 64
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5 x 0.3
ISBN: 0486287599
Dewey Decimal Number: 828.509
EAN: 9780486287591
ASIN: 0486287599
Publication Date: February 2, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
If you read this in high school (as many of us did), it may have shocked you--not bad for a tract written in 1729. It wouldn't be fair to those of you who haven't come across A Modest Proposal to reveal the particulars of the piece; suffice it to say that Saturday Night Live has nothing on Jonathan Swift! Swift's discussion of what Great Britain should do for his native impoverished Ireland is a model of political satire, absolutely consistent in tone and even now still sparkling in its clarity. The balance between, on the one hand, the utter seriousness of the matter in question and, on the other, the outrageousness of the remedy suggested is exquisite. A Modest Proposal is short and comes bound in this edition with several of Swift's other writings. This volume is an excellent introduction to the author of Gulliver's Travels (itself a masterwork) and to one of the world's premier satirical minds. What are you waiting for? --Michael Gerber
Product Description
Treasury of 5 shorter works by the author of Gulliver's Travels offers ample evidence of the great satirist's inspired lampoonery. Title piece plus The Battle of the Books, A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick, A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit and The Abolishing of Christianity in England.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 A satirical wonder February 23, 2008
Mr Swift is enormously accurate, a pundit of exalted talent. Wish he were here to justly give a critique of our political nightmare.
Satire, not slippery slope June 14, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This read is pretty congested with 18th century European political and religious references, however it is a beautifully witty and priceless satire on the inconsistencies of human compassion.
Perhaps Swift was trying to evoke shock and heart wrenching disgust in readers in the hopes that the reader would see that England's economic exploitation of Dublin at the time was essentially just as damaging to society as something like government ordained cannibalism. Why is it that a reader would be so horrifically devastated by the idea of turning children into food in order to survive, yet remain callous and unconcerned with the fact that all people, adults and children alike, were in reality victims of a government which not only economically exploited the population to the point of utter poverty, but did not care even slightly that human beings were being turned into rotting corpses as a result?
A Modest Proposal - A *Modern* Proposal is more like it. December 1, 2004
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Swfit was perhaps the first major writer to introduce cannibalism into Western political thought, and incorporate it successfully into practical economics. I'm disturbed that Swfit's visionary solution to Thomas Malthus' omen about the dangers of overpopulation hasn't yet been seriously considered by world policymakers. That's just like politicians though, they do anything to get elected - hence another reason why extending the franchise to the lower rungs of the social hierarchy was a terrible mistake and should be revoked.
Pass the babies, please. November 7, 2003
14 out of 21 found this review helpful
Satire is sadly lacking in today's society. Satire holds human vices and folly up for ridicule. Swift is not advocating the economy of eating babies, but maybe the fact that they are currently eating the body parts of aborted fetuses in China seems to steal something from Swift's modestly porposed satire-or maybe it is too outrageous seeming to be true. Nevertheless, this is a brilliant work by a brilliant writer. It should be required reading. It is a pristine example of satire. Should we stop choking deaths by improvising starvation-- seek a new president by electing children? Satire is a genius' way of entertaining social change-literally. Although, sometimes though, even what once seemed impossibly satiric does not remain-which is proof of human folly.
 the book September 20, 2003
6 out of 125 found this review helpful
I think this book was quite interesting but very weird
HI everyone in kingston jamaica
|
|
|
