The Meaning of the Holy Qur"an

The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
English | 2016 | ISBN: 0860373924 | 752 pages | EPUB | 1,8 MB

The Qur’an is the inimitable and direct Word of God. It was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over twenty-three years, who faithfully transmitted it to humanity in the seventh century. Since then the text and meaning of the Qur’an has been preserved, word for word, exactly as it was fourteen hundred years ago. It is a Book of Guidance for all mankind with a central message of God’s Oneness. Yet, it has several layers of meaning and beauty that are easily lost in translation.

This splendid translation, originally prepared in 1934, aimed to help readers understand the meaning of the Qur’an but also to appreciate its beauty and catch something of the grandeur of the Arabic.

This is a compact and revised edition of Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation of The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an in modern English. It contains the complete translation of the Qur’anic text and retains essential notes of Yusuf Ali’s exhaustive commentary on the Qur’an, which enables the reader to gain a better understanding of its message and helps to reveal some of the inexhaustible depth of knowledge it contains.

One of the most widely-used and known translations of the Qur’an into modern English, with 472 notes and an introduction.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872–1953) was an Indian Islamic scholar. In 1938, Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Qur’an was published in Lahore. His translation of the Qur’an is one of the most widely-known and used in the English-speaking world. He died in 1953 in London, United Kingdom.

In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise [Audiobook]

In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise [Audiobook] by George Prochnik
English | May 7, 2010 | ASIN: B003L8L53E | MP3@64 kbps | 9 hrs 24 mins | 259 MB
Narrator: Don Hagen | Genre: Nonfiction/Psychology/Noise

More than money, power, and even happiness, silence has become the most precious and dwindling commodity of our modern world.

Between iPods, music-blasting restaurants, earsplitting sports stadiums, and endless air and road traffic, the place for quiet in our lives grows smaller by the day. In Pursuit of Silence gives context to our increasingly desperate sense that noise pollution is, in a very real way, an environmental catastrophe.

Listening to doctors, neuroscientists, acoustical engineers, monks, activists, educators, marketers, and aggrieved citizens, George Prochnike examines why we began to be so loud as a society, and what it is that gets lost when we can no longer find quiet. He shows us the benefits of decluttering our sonic world.

As Prochnik travels across the United States and overseas, we meet a rich cast of characters: an idealistic architect who is pioneering a new kind of silent architecture in collaboration with the Deaf community at Gallaudet University; a special operations soldier in Afghanistan (and former guitarist with Nirvana) who places silence at the heart of survival in war; a sound designer for shopping malls who ensures that the stores we visit never stop their auditory seductions; and a group of commuters who successfully revolted against piped-in music in Grand Central Station.

A brilliant, far-reaching exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence, and the growing war between them, In Pursuit of Silence is an important book that will appeal to fans of Michael Pollan and Daniel Gilbert.

One Chord Wonders : Power and Meaning in Punk Rock

One Chord Wonders : Power and Meaning in Punk Rock By Dave Laing
2015 | 224 Pages | ISBN: 1629630330 | PDF | 7 MB

Originally published in 1985, One Chord Wonders was the first full-length study of the glory years of British punk rock. The book argues that one of punk’s most significant political achievements was to expose the operations of power in the British entertainment industries as they were thrown into confusion by the sound and the fury of musicians and fans. Through a detailed examination of the conditions under which punk emerged and then declined, Dave Laing develops a view of the music as both complex and contradictory.