Biography, Literature and Literary studies Books

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Book SynopsisA collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best drinking stories makes this the most intoxicating New Directions Pearl yet!Trade Review"Smart, sophisticated, and evocative." "His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings." -- Ernest Hemingway "His writing is a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartets." -- Raymond Chandler

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Book SynopsisLyrical, surreal, and yet unsettlingly realistic, The Sinistra Zone swims in the totalitarian backwaters of Eastern EuropeTrade Review"If there’s a magic realism Eastern-bloc style, The Sinistra Zone is surely its paradigm." -- Alison McCulloch - The New York Times Book Review"A fascinating novel that links intense realism with a boundless imagination, as if it could have written by Gabriel García Márquez." -- Die Zeit"The Sinistra Zone begins a la Chandler. But that's not how it continues. Like all good things, it embodies a wealth of possibilities: it can be read as a sociological intelligence briefing; a political/cultural situation report; a supplication; a finely wrought, postmodern feat of literary virtuosity; a chronicle of a bygone world, and so on. Again and again I was amazed by the fullness of the words, by the compact and luminous text — by the rich and powerful fabric that Ádám Bodor has woven into these pages." -- Péter Esterházy"It is hard to find in contemporary European literature a satire more dark and brutal and yet at the same time, more lyrical than this book." -- El País"The Sinistra Zone is a small masterpiece of stunning beauty that begs to be savored slowly." -- La Vanguardia

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Book SynopsisProudly part of the New Directions Poetry Pamphlets, a classical Chinese poet considered one of the great masters

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Book SynopsisA collection of poems that deal with the personal - family, friendship, love and loss; poems about landscape and place; and, poems that try to come to grips with the larger world and its chaos.Trade Review'Nina Bogin's poems are impeccable in craft, elegant in their economy, and emotionally profound; they are arrows, swift and quiet, hitting their mark, sinking deep. There is no better poet of her generation, and few as good' - Denise Levertov'Her imagery is disciplined and vivid, communicated in vocabulary and phrasing that are simple yet rich' - Library Journal

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Book SynopsisA Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2013 An action-packed biography of a man, his team, and the league he helped create—in the tradition of Maraniss’s When Pride Still Mattered.Trade Review"[Ribowsky] recounts Landry’s life honestly, avoiding both distortion and hagiography while portraying a stoic, flawed man of honor…. A triumph of extensive research and interviews. It will be welcomed by all football fans." -- Library Journal, starred review"A meaty biography of one of the NFL’s legendary coaches…. [Ribowsky] provides as complete a picture of ‘God’s Coach’ as we’re likely to get. A must-read for fans of America’s Team and, given Landry’s impact on the game, for Cowboy haters too." -- Kirkus Reviews"In Ribowsky’s authoritative biography, Landry appears more stoic king than coach, his ever-present fedora serving as a crown…. Ribowsky’s thorough examination of a surprisingly complicated man offers original reporting, which serves here as merely a complement to this impressively researched work…. An eloquent, honest tribute to a football genius." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"Fascinating…. Readers looking for a recap of one of football’s greatest innovators and coaches will be enthralled." -- Booklist"[A] huge and hugely entertaining biography…. Extraordinary…. That Ribowsky, an outstanding biographer with books on Al Davis, Satchel Paige and Howard Cosell to his credit, doesn’t idolize Landry across the book’s 640 pages makes his judgment all the keener." -- Allen Barra - Dallas Morning News

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Book SynopsisFinally available after three decades, a lost classic of the Harlem Renaissance that Langston Hughes acclaimed for its hard poetic beauty.

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Book Synopsis“Gail Collins is the funniest serious political commentator in America. Reading As Texas Goes… is pure pleasure from page one.” —Rachel Maddow A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction)Trade Review"The reader who senses a touch of sarcasm would not be wrong…[Collins] has a good eye for absurd details." -- Erica Grieder - New York Times"There is no one like Gail Collins: uproarious fun on every page, but with a serious point. In this wonderful book she devastates Texas for its hypocrisy, its ignorance, its worship of wealth. But you cannot keep laughing as she shows how the Texan mind works a baleful influence on the rest of the country." -- Anthony Lewis"With wit and humor, Collins focuses on major Texas figures, from Davy Crockett to Rick Perry, to offer a portrait of an outsize state anxious to take on the task of setting the rest of the country straight and of the broader implications that has for the rest of the country." -- Booklist"Starred review. New York Times political columnist Collins zeroes in on what makes Texas so important and why the rest of the country needs to know and care about what’s happening there…A timely portrait of Texas delivered with Collins’ unique brand of insightful humor." -- Kirkus Reviews"[Collins] set off on a whirlwind tour to discover the Lone Star State and its transcendent meaning, deploying a breezy, wisecracking polemical style familiar to fans (including me) of her twice-­weekly column in The Times." -- Lloyd Grove - New York Times Book Review"New York Times columnist Gail Collins makes a compelling case in As Texas Goes… that much of what ails the nation began down in the Lone Star State." -- Steve Almond - Boston Globe

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Book SynopsisWith the meteoric success of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Allan Gurganus placed himself among America’s most original and emotionally engaged storytellers. If his first comic novel mapped the late nineteenth-century South, Local Souls brings the twisted hilarity of Flannery O’Connor kicking into our new century.Trade Review"It’s been 12 years since Gurganus last published a full-length work—but if there remains any doubt of his literary greatness, his fifth book, Local Souls, should put it to rest forever…. A tour de force in the tradition of Hawthorne. It shows that Gurganus’s vast creative and imaginative powers, still rooted in the local, are increasingly universal in scope and effect. The book is an expansive work of love…Gurganus moves beyond [Sherwood] Anderson and Faulkner in calling into question the very notion of ‘inappropriate’: the emotional misalignments in his fiction feel both understandable and familiar. Like Chekhov and Cheever before him, Gurganus registers an enormous amount of compassion for the characters he holds to the fire." -- Jamie Quatro - New York Times Book Review"Allan Gurganus breathes so much life into the town of Falls, North Carolina, his reader is able to walk down the streets and mingle with the local souls. This book underscores what we have long known—Gurganus stands among the best writers of our time." -- Ann Patchett"Allan Gurganus is our verbal magician. He turns factual rabbits into poetic doves. Every sentence contains a surprise, but the brilliant surface doesn’t dazzle us from peering into the tender human depths." -- Edmund White"Allan Gurganus has the uncanny ability to make you laugh and shudder at the same time. That rare gift is on full and glorious display here." -- T. C. Boyle"Vivid language, provocative sentence structure, and metaphors that elevate the reader’s consciousness. [Gurganus] shares with his southern cohorts a delight in discovering the quotidian within lives led under extraordinary, even bizarre circumstances." -- Booklist"Gurganus returns to Falls, N.C., the setting of his Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, with this trio of linked novellas…. In these layered, often funny narratives, close reading is rewarded as Gurganus exposes humanity as a strange species." -- Publishers Weekly, "Pick of the Week""In this first work in 12 years, Gurganus offers three luscious, perceptively written pieces, each as rich as any full-length novel and together exploring the depth of our connections…. In all three novellas, there’s a pervasive sense of the power of community expectations and the question of whether we can challenge fate…. These pieces are so fresh and real that the reader has the sense of walking through a dissolving plate-glass window straight into the lives of the characters. Highly recommended." -- Library Journal, starred review"A serious and important American writer—his work has meant a lot to me over time… It’s good to have him back after a long absence." -- Dwight Garner - New York Times"The first-person voice’s capacity for lifelikeness and oral illusion has been Gurganus’s great Southern storytelling inheritance… Local Souls stays true to its author’s vocal aesthetic." -- Thomas Mallon - New Yorker"Gurganus [is] fearfully gifted…. The gem of Local Souls is the gorgeous Decoy, in which Gurganus removes the gloves and delivers the literary equivalent of a bare-knuckled knockout. Decoy is so good that you want to lob all sorts of adjectives its way: warm, humane, profound, sagacious, hilarious, nostalgic, and incisive…. The last pages of Local Souls prove once again that there is no writer alive quite like Allan Gurganus." -- Laura Albritton - Miami Herald"Allan Gurganus proves once again that small-town life in the New South can be as tragic and twisted as anything out of an ancient Greek playbook…. The chatty, roundabout storytelling, the wicked humor and sense of the absurd often disguise the gravity of these investigations into life’s tendency to ‘retract its promise overight,’ to ‘become a vale of tears breaking over you in sudden lashing.’ Hidden above the safe confines of the Falls, Zeus readies his lightning bolts." -- Gina Webb - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Book SynopsisRumored for years, Drawn Together finally charts the daily exploits and erotic craziness of this “First Couple” of comics.Trade Review"Since the 1970s, pioneering underground comics creators R. Crumb and Aline Crumb (nee Kominsky) have been drawing comics together, their distinct art styles sharing the same panels…. The thematic cohesion, despite the two very different styles, is an achievement, one further enhanced by guest illustrations from daughter Sophie and cameos from Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns. A must for Crumb fans." -- Publishers Weekly"The collection documents the changes in their lives as they’ve grown older, had a daughter (now a published cartoonist herself), moved to the south of France, and received more attention than they’d wanted through a couple of films (a documentary on the Crumb family and the adaptation of American Splendor, the acclaimed bio-pic of friend and collaborator Harvey Pekar). From the bathroom to the bedroom, they respond to the question of just how open and honest a marital comic can be. Not the most ambitious Crumb work, but there’s a lot of love here." -- Kirkus Reviews"Starred review. If his drawing is wonderfully detailed, volumetric, and fluid—the justly most famous and admired comics style of our time—hers is flat, messy, childishly exuberant, an avatar of the art brut manners of such of her peers as Linda Barry, Roz Chast, and Nicole Hollander. That contrast between them becomes yet more grist for their endless, self-conscious, ludicrously frank (often literally unbuttoned; this is adult comics, folks) yattering on sex, art, parenthood, guilt, fashion, collecting, shopping mania, the Jews and the goys, France and the French, him being more famous than her, blah blah blah. And gloriosky! It gets funnier as the years pile up. The last long story here, “A Couple a’ Nasty, Raunchy Old Things,” is as hilarious as the best routines of George and Gracie, the Bickersons, and The Honeymooners." -- Booklist"[One] of the 50 sublime coffee table books for the true sophisticate." -- Flavorwire"Drawn Together brims with life… one can’t help but be charmed by the Crumbs…. A wonderful creation… offers much more than even its considerable bulk suggests." -- QUIETUS

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Book SynopsisA renowned cultural critic tells his own deeply engaging story of growing up in the turbulent American culture of the postwar decades.Trade Review"Leading critic/historian Dickstein… here turns that spotlight mind on a subject close to home as he details his Lower East Side childhood, then breaking away from his close, observant Jewish family as he discovers Beat-imbued New York and the rich literary life at Columbia University. Then it’s on to oh-so-proper Yale and Cambridge and the wild Sixties." -- Library Journal"Morris Dickstein's magnetically intimate memoir is as much a record of an ardent young man's besotted hunger for literature as it is of his Zelig-like presence at nearly every significant aesthetic and political turning of the second half of the American twentieth century. And more: first love and first fatherhood; first immersion in the heady air of Cambridge, London, and Paris; portraits of illustrious teachers and critics (Leavis, Trilling, Bloom); the tremors and vagaries of first entering the demanding life of the academy; and an exhilarating glimpse into Dickstein's ripened mastery as he joins the storied generations of influential teachers, mentors, and cultural virtuosos." -- Cynthia Ozick"In this acutely observed, slyly funny memoir, we see the evolution of one of our foremost critics during a watershed moment of cultural history. Dickstein, a precocious, parochial yeshiva boy from the Lower East Side, makes the great trip to Columbia University, losing his virginity and wising up along the way. His naturally expansive sympathies are nurtured under some of the legendary teachers of the day, even as he gets caught up in the turbulence and changing tastes of the sixties. For me, this was both a page-turner and an intellectual joy ride—Dickstein put me in a front row seat of classes I’d give anything to have attended, and discussions I'd love to have been in on." -- Molly Haskell"A humane and benevolent account of an ideal education, by an ideal mentor and guide. A wonderful book." -- Mark Edmundson"Morris Dickstein's new book is at the same time a personal, cultural, and intellectual autobiography and an indispensable study of the tumultuous sixties. Charting the progress of an archetypical Jewish intellectual, Dickstein describes his evolution from Catskills innocent to Ivy League sophisticate, from Jewish minor to English major, from Lower East Side yeshiva bokher to apostle of higher Western learning, all the while paying generous tribute to his teachers, his students, and his friends and family. Written with wit, power, and insight, Why Not Say What Happened is a fascinating exploration of a clearheaded scholar and a controversial age." -- Robert Brustein"An esteemed cultural and literary critic charts the intellectual and religious paths of his early years… [leaving] indelible portraits of his contemporaries and mentors. There's the brilliant Lionel Trilling, who tended to wing his way through lectures; F.R. Leavis, a "slash and burn" critic cowed by his imperious wife; and the redoubtable Harold Bloom, who even then was already the smartest guy in every room… Dickstein hasn’t lost his zeal for art or ideas or his passion for writing about them." -- Kirkus Reviews"Dickstein’s rapt, unabashed delight in literature and his willingness to let it inform his own experience make for an indelible account of the life of the mind." -- Publishers Weekly"[A] lively, impressionistic account of the intellectual and personal transformation of a ‘brash Jewish kid from New York’ that paralleled the U.S.'s emergence from the torpor of the 1950s into the political and cultural explosion of the following decade… In vivid and entertaining prose, Dickstein describes his educational journey as he moved from his undergraduate years at Columbia College and on to Yale… One can only hope he's well on his way to completing another volume." -- Harvey Freedenberg - Shelf Awareness"Insightful… [D]escriptions can glint with illumination, and Mr. Dickstein is charmingly self-effacing as he tries to comprehend his life’s unfolding." -- Edward Rothstein - Wall Street Journal"Though an old-fashioned humanist like his mentors, Dickstein reveals himself to be in synch with his time. …Conjuring a lost age of intellect, Dickstein proves the most cheerful of elegists." -- New Yorker"[An] affecting memoir…. As you get deeper into Dickstein’s Sentimental Education, you begin to see… how far he has traveled from the confines of his Lower East Side Jewish childhood to a deep understanding of Western culture…. What’s impressive is how seamlessly everything in Dickstein’s story connects—his daily life, his studies and his reactions to the books he reads." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Moment

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Book SynopsisThe Washington Post Notable Non-Fiction of 2013 On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht comes this untold story of a teenager whose act of defiance would have dire international consequences.Trade Review"Kirsch expertly picks through the murky details to shed new light on the historical significance. A compelling study." -- Kirkus Reviews"In his well-crafted study… Jonathan Kirsch manages to put some meat on the skinny frame of his protagonist and also to put a human face on his victim. In so doing, Kirsch has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of Kristallnacht, whose 75th anniversary falls this year." -- David Clay Large - Los Angeles Times"No novelist could invent a story with as many twists of history and character as the one Jonathan Kirsch tells about Herschel Grynszpan…The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan illuminates the countless short and tragic lives of eastern European Jews running for shelter in the terrible days leading up to World War II." -- Alice Kaplan, author of The Collaborator and Dreaming in French"With a storyteller’s touch and a lawyer’s insight, Kirsch elevates this tragic tale and makes it read like a legal and moral thriller." -- Thane Rosenbaum, author of Payback: The Case for Revenge and The Myth of Moral Justice"Herschel Grynszpan wanted nothing more than to be remembered for his rash, heroic actions. In Kirsch, he has finally found an objective, yet passionate, chronicler." -- Ronald C. Rosbottom, professor of French and European studies, Amherst College"On Nov. 7, 1938, a troubled Jewish teenager walked into an embassy in Paris, got in to see a low-level Nazi attache and shot him dead—a killing that gave Hitler a pretext for the savage, anti-Semitic orgy of Kristallnacht." -- Scott Martelle - Washington Post

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Book SynopsisFrom this historic collaboration between a beloved naturalist and a great American photographer emerges a South we’ve never encountered before.Trade Review"Pulitzer Prize–winning naturalist and Harvard professor Wilson (On Human Nature) and acclaimed photographer and Duke University professor Harris (River of Traps) team up to convey the spirit of Mobile, Ala., through text and images. Wilson writes of his childhood in Mobile and recounts the complicated heritage of his hometown in a sprawling essay that weaves personal, social, economic, political, and natural history.... Harris’s intimate pictures beautifully capture quotidian moments, offering a context for the diverse characters, lush landscapes, and events, traumatic and joyful, that define Mobile today: a high school football team marches arm-in-arm; a tiger swallowtail hesitates in a verdant meadow; a Civil War re-enactor poses with Confederate memorabilia; two outstretched arms, one black and one white, point toward the infinity of the Gulf of Mexico’s horizon. A hybrid document meant to be as much about “the meaning of place as it is about a place itself,” the book is a thoughtful meditation on community and storytelling that reminds us we will never understand ourselves until we know where we come from." -- Publishers Weekly"The great naturalist E. O. Wilson, who grew up in Mobile, and the photographer Alex Harris evoke and explore that exceptional city and its surroundings… The upshot, revealed in this uncommonly effective marriage of photographs and text, is a place at once deeply southern and more than a bit foreign." -- Atlantic Monthly"Delightful… The Mobile Bay area is a distinctive and special place, as anyone who lives here knows. E. O. Wilson, world-renowned scientist and author; and Alex Harris, appreciative outsider with a gifted eye, get this in their bones, and in Why We Are Here proclaim it from the rooftops." -- John S. Sledge - Mobile Bay Magazine"Excellent… Mr. Harris’s photographs are inquisitive, and Mr. Wilson’s prose is similarly vivid." -- Dwight Garner - New York Times

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Book SynopsisA debut collection that welcomes a new modernist aesthetic for the twenty-first century.Trade Review"Fitzgerald’s voice is a new and welcome sound in the aviary of contemporary poetry… His is a third way, a poetry that is neither sealed off from human ears nor bent solely on pleasing them. In a word, his poems are drunk on both word and allusion and are therefore doubly tipsy… The result is a poetry as lush as any of Keat’s odes, as textured as a corridor in the Louvre… No wonder this was the first debut collection acquired by W.W. Norton’s resurrected Liveright division, which helped define modernism in America in the 1920s… Reading ‘The Late Parade’ wasn’t like listening to a mountain speak. It was more like listening to the earth laugh." -- David Kirby - New York Times Book Review"In The Late Parade, Adam Fitzgerald is a master of defeating expectations so as to fulfill them farther along. One has the feeling of climbing higher along a path that is giving way under one’s feet, in pursuit always of ‘a waltz on our breath.’ Yet the rhythmic and consonant commotion of these poems ends in joy. This is a dazzling debut." -- John Ashbery"Adam Fitzgerald’s The Late Parade is wildly alive with the grit and glue of broken objects and the noise of lost things. You can count on the immense care he takes in putting music back into the world. You can count on the fact this is a book we will read for years to come." -- Dorothea Lasky"Released from the plod of workaday logics and handed over to the flow of their own becoming, the poems in The Late Parade shudder with exhilarating assurance and nonstop invention, never fully breaking it off with the familiar, but incapable of leaving it untransformed. We’ve been waiting too long for a book like this to arrive. Wake up—it’s finally here." -- Timothy Donnelly"The Late Parade by Adam Fitzgerald may be the beginning of a great career." -- Harold Bloom

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Book SynopsisCamuto delivers insights on Mount Desert Island, a place of stunning beauty and natural wonders.

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Book SynopsisCAROUSEL: THE COMPLETE BOOK AND LYRICS OF THE BROADWAY MUSICAL

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Book SynopsisOffers an introduction to modern Arabic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This title traces its development from the medieval Arabic literary tradition - beginning in the sixth-century with nomadic Bedouin poetry and the Qur'an - through new literary forms adapted from Western imaginative literature.

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Book SynopsisOffers an introduction to modern Arabic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This title traces its development from the medieval Arabic literary tradition - beginning in the sixth-century with nomadic Bedouin poetry and the Qur'an - through new literary forms adapted from Western imaginative literature.

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Book SynopsisFour Mailer classics in one volume for the first time, books that crackle with the creative energy and raw passions of America s most turbulent decade.

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Book SynopsisThis is a love story, set in the Irish literary world between 1986 and 2015. When they were first introduced by the poet Derek Mahon, Alannah Hopkin was an arts journalist turned full-time writer and Aidan Higgins, twenty-three years her senior, was a literary stylist, often cited as the heir to Ireland’s great Modernist tradition. They wrote steadily during their twenty-nine years together, but their careers could not have been more different: while Aidan focused on fiction and memoirs, Alannah prioritised work that paid the bills. This gave Aidan the most stable and productive years of his life. But as his eyesight failed and his memory began to fade, Alannah became his carer and had to fight to keep her own writing career alive. Drawing from diaries and notebooks, and correspondence with writers such as Samuel Beckett, Alice Munro and Harold Pinter, this is a unique record of a major Irish writer. From the joyful honeymoon years – filled with launches, festivals and visits to their Kinsale home by Richard Ford, Edna O’Brien and other literary legends – to the increasingly difficult years of Aidan’s decline, Hopkin tells their story candidly and without commentary. She shows us how, in spite of all, they remained the best of friends, in love until Aidan’s very last breath. A Very Strange Man is an exceptional piece of writing, objective and authoritative, personal, honest and moving. Trade ReviewI can't remember when I've read such a moving memoir, or one written with such raw honesty ... It’s also compelling; I couldn’t put it down. It stands out for the clear-eyed view of a wife who doesn’t shy away from sometimes portraying herself in an unfavourable light. -- Sue Leonard * Books Ireland *a subtle and memorable book ... clear-eyed and candid, but generous too and wise -- Colm Tóibín * The Irish Times *Powerful and moving. Above all, this is a book about the emotional challenges of caring for someone with dementia – proving that grief really is the price we pay for love. * Sunday Business Post *Your book of the year? So far, A Very Strange Man, by Alannah Hopkin. This is a strangely consoling memoir, and a very rare thing, being an accurate, candid, and moving book about what it is like to be a writer and to live with a writer. I began it the other morning outside in the sun and finished it some hours later, with a mild sunburn and a sense of great gratitude. -- Sebastian Barry * Irish Independent *‘among the richest accounts I’ve ever read of lives devoted to writing.’ -- Rob Doyle * Irish Times *Hopkin’s straightforward approach suits the biographical record, but her writing comes into its own whenever she exercises her gift for topographical evocation: “Every tiny stone-walled field had a wealth of meadow grasses and wild flowers” -- Patricia Craig * The Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisSince its first appearance in 2008, this book has changed the landscape of Virgilian studies. Analysing closely the logic and the literary genres of Virgil's three poems, it politely confronts the modern orthodoxy that Virgil signalled distaste for the methods of his ruler, Octavian-Augustus. It refreshes the study of Virgil's poetry by comparing it with the detail (normally neglected by scholars) of Rome's civil wars after Julius Caesar's death, when Octavian's survival looked highly unlikely. And it argues that Virgil wrote as a passionate - and brave - partisan of Octavian, who - like a good lawyer - confronted his patron's undeniable failings in order to defend. Awarded in 2011 the prize of the Vergilian Society for 'the book that makes the greatest contribution toward our understanding and appreciation of Virgil'.Trade ReviewToward the end of this book, Powell (Univ. of Wales) sums up his approach as proceeding from ideals expressed to realities suffered.' A striking example of this is the chapter titled 'The Theft of Pietas,' in which the author argues that Virgil, unable to credit Octavian with pietas, creates the image of a pius ancestor, Aeneas, the incarnation of this virtue, which would then be transferred by association to Octavian. Powell himself is much more partial toward Sextus Pompeius--witness Sextus Pompeius, which he edited with Kathryn Welch (2002)--a fierce opponent of Octavian who styled himself Magnus Pius. One of Powells objectives here is to shift the focus of Virgilian studies from individual works to the whole oeuvre and to see one intention in all of them, to defend the cause of Octavian-Augustus. Although he accepts the premises behind analyses of Virgils works based on genre and architecture, Powell sees an overarching political structure. In elaborating this thesis he makes good use of neglected ancient historians of the period--Suetonius, Appian, Dio Cassius. His countercurrent argument is bound to stir up much controversy among traditional Virgilian scholars, which is all to the good. An absorbing read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. -- C. Fantazzi, East Carolina University Choice September 2008 Powell is not afraid to use modern parallels that, among other things, demonstrate clearly to a contemporary audience how knowledge of the timing of an event can inform our understanding of it and of a writers' reasons to include or exclude it. He writes in a lucid and attractive style, displaying his admiration for Virgil on every page...' -- D.E. Hill Greece and Rome 2009 Radicalises the study of politics in Augustan poetry...A book rich in arguments which opens new fields to explore.' -- Frank Wittchow Gymnasium This stimulating volume seeks to put the party politics back into Virgils oeuvre...Powell rightly concludes that the success of the Augustan project has concealed the partisan and prophetic aspect of Virgils political stance...' -- Stephen Harrison Mnemosyne '...the contribution of this book lies above all in the compelling argument that the political and military history of the 30s BC is more important for an understanding of all three of Virgil's major works than it is often taken to be... Powell's Virgil is unashamedly pro-Octavian, pro-Augustus... This is not a fashionable approach to Virgil, and doubtless many will resist Powell's political reading. But it will be impossible in future to ignore Powell's careful and detailed arguments for the centrality of the historical context...' -- Philip Hardie and Julia Dyson Hejduk Vergilian Society Prize Committee citation 'Powell's analysis is acute and his reading is coherent and cogent. This is a book full of interest and surprises on virtually every page...' -- John Godwin Journal of Classics TeachingTable of Contents1) Introduction: 'Our Virgil' and the Lure of Circularity; 2) The Eclogues : Sanctuary Wood; 3) The Georgics : the Fate of the Muses; 4) The Theft of Pietas; 5) Recovering Sicily; 6) The Politics of Virgil's Underworld; 7) Sex and the Importance of Misery; 8) Le Grand Absent?; 9) Conclusion: Virgil the Partisan.

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Book SynopsisAn important work of poetic prose in modern Armenian literature.

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Book SynopsisZeit seines Lebens fasziniert die mittelalterliche Buchmalerei den englischen Kunstler, Schriftsteller und Sammler William Morris. Seine kunstlerischen Entwurfe wie die Ausgestaltung eigener Handschriften und schliealich sein Engagement als Sammler sind davon beeinflusst. Mit diesem Buch legt Michaela Braesel eine umfassende Darstellung seiner praktischen und theoretischen Auseinandersetzung mit der Buchmalerei vor. Die unterschiedlichen Aspekte seiner Beschaftigung mit Handschriften beleuchtet sie aus textkritischer, stilanalytischer, ikonographischer und wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Sicht. Dabei offenbaren sich die Relevanz und das Innovative von Morris'' Position innerhalb der Buchkunst des 19. Jahrhunderts.

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