Literary companions, book reviews and guides Books
The University of Michigan Press Condition Red
Book SynopsisCollects writing by one of America's most gifted and revered poets, Yusef Komunyakaa. While themes from his earlier prose collection, Blue Notes, run through Condition Red, this volume expresses a greater sense of urgency about the human condition and the role of the artist.Trade Review[Komunyakaa] has not only displayed a profound understanding of the human condition, but also a craftsman's ability to durably articulate it . . . a major poet of our generation."" - Laurence Goldstein, in Callaloo
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Learning Legacies
Book SynopsisExplores the history of cross-cultural teaching approaches, to highlight how women writer-educators used stories about their collaborations to promote community-building. Robbins demonstrates how educators used stories that resisted dominant conventions and expectations about learners to navigate cultural differences.Trade ReviewRobbins pushes the envelope on the normative uses and perspectives about the Archive, using literal archives of educational practice recorded in counter-narratives from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Educators will find value in using this book to help train emerging teachers to be reflective about their practice and for models of how to use texts, archives, and stories as powerful teaching tools . . . "" - Timothy K. Eatman, Associate Professor of Higher Education, Syracuse University, Faculty Co-director Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life""[Learning Legacies] combines knowledge about teacher training and the history of education in the United States gained from extensive research into many formal archives, numerous site visits, and interviews with educators, archivists and others. Robbins’s own autoethnographic reflections also form a crucial and welcome element of her research."" - Sandra A. Zagarell, Donald R. Longman Professor of English at Oberlin College and scholar of American Literature and Culture
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Uncertain Certainty
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£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press On the Poetry of Galway Kinnell
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Poetry and Ambition
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£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Line Forms Here
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press A Users Guide to German Cultural Studies
Book SynopsisCapitalizes on the ripeness of the German case for interdisciplinary investigation
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Breakfast Served Any Time All Day
Book SynopsisA master of American letters collects forty years of writings on poetry in one essential volume
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Never Better
Book SynopsisExplores the polit (“fugitive”), a literary type - an “unheroic hero” - who is rather like the picaro (“rogue”) from whom the Picaresque genre takes its name. Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on Yiddish literature, Udel puts that literature into productive conversation with European and American texts, as well as critical and theoretical sources.Trade ReviewAn intellectually mature, subtle work that illuminates with the use of a vast array of primary and interpretive literature so many crucial moments in the shaping of modern Yiddish, Hebrew, German and American- Jewish letters. Udel is a literary scholar with a sureness of touch and consummate scholarly command.” —Steven J. Zipperstein, Stanford University “Never Better! is just that: a theoretically exciting study of the way in which Jewish writers translated and adapted a familiar European genre to create a distinctly modernist poetics of the picaresque.” —Justin Cammy, Smith College
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Science Fiction in Argentina
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe analysis, presentation and interdisciplinary connections here are scintillating; the organization and writerly vision superb—as in all of Joanna Page’s work. This critically grounded walk through an eclectic range of cultural products is pursued with grit and panache in equal parts . . . a complex meditation on the many faces of Argentine science fiction.” —Benjamin Fraser, East Carolina University “Beyond its contribution to cultural theory, Science Fiction in Argentina has much to offer media-specific studies of the textuality of comics and cinema.”—Derek Johnson, University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of Media Franchising
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Bodies of Modernism
Book SynopsisBrings a new and exciting analytical lens to modernist literature, that of critical disability studies. The book offers new readings of canonical and non-canonical writers from both sides of the Atlantic. Through readings of this wide range of texts, the study reveals both modernism's scepticism about and dependence on fantasies of whole, ""normal"" bodies.Trade ReviewA nuanced view of disability as it intertwines with modernist aesthetics. Linett concentrates on disabled protagonists but expands her study from mere character analysis to a thoroughgoing critique and understanding of modernism itself. An important contribution to the field of literary and disability studies."" - Lennard Davis, University of Illinois at Chicago""In a wide-ranging, lively, and convincingly argued study of an array of modernist works, Maren Linett shows how various are the attitudes towards disabled bodies but also, paradoxically, how the attitudes towards specific disabilities fall into distinct broad patterns. Anyone interested in modernism will find challenging and valuable new insights on the literature of the period in Linett’s crucial and stunning view of it through the lens of disability studies."" - Michael Groden, University of Western Ontario""Linnett’s unflinching, sometimes mortifying exposé of writers’ and readers’ misconceptions about blindness, deafness, and locomotive difficulties, together with her intricate analyses of modernist texts, will ensure the resounding impact of this study."" - Maud Ellmann, University of Chicago
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Condition Red
Book SynopsisCollects writing by one of America's most gifted and revered poets, Yusef Komunyakaa. While themes from his earlier prose collection, Blue Notes, run through Condition Red, this volume expresses a greater sense of urgency about the human condition and the role of the artist.Trade Review[Komunyakaa] has not only displayed a profound understanding of the human condition, but also a craftsman's ability to durably articulate it . . . a major poet of our generation."" - Laurence Goldstein, in Callaloo
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Negotiating Disability
Book SynopsisDisability is not always central to claims about diversity and inclusion in higher education, but should be. This collection reveals the pervasiveness of disability issues and considerations within many higher education populations and settings, from classrooms to physical environments to policy impacts on students, faculty, administrators, and staff.Trade ReviewJoins a growing body of literature on disclosure, passing, and disability identity. Its focus on higher education allows for a deep exploration of theory while also illuminating the processes and implications of disclosure in this setting."" - Allison C. Carey, Shippensburg University""Remarkably thorough and bold . . . the book will inform higher education administrators, staff and faculty who reify the ‘progress narrative’ retold about diversity and inclusion, when such accounts rarely consider disabled faculty and students. This book is sure to become a classic resource for many in higher education."" - Linda Ware, State University of New York at Geneseo
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Affect Animals and Autists
Book SynopsisMaps connections across performances that question the borders of the human whose neurodiverse experiences have been shaped by the diagnostic label of autism, and animal-human performance relationships that dispute and blur anthropocentric edges. The book treats a diverse selection of live performance and archival video and analyzes the ways in which they affect their audiences.Trade ReviewProvocative, timely, and well-written, Affect, Animals, and Autists raises challenging questions that will be of interest to affect theorists as well as a broad complement of interdisciplinary scholars working in disability, performance, theatre, and/or animal studies."" -Kirsty Johnston, University of British Columbia""A timely, exciting and important book that is evidently the manifestation of years of in-depth research and reflection. The evaluation of performances is admirably measured, whilst not underestimating the risks of perpetuating conventional paradigms of animals or autism by influential ‘hits’ like War Horse or Curious Incident."" - Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, University of Surrey
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Autistic Disturbances
Book SynopsisAutism is typically characterized as impoverished or defective when it comes to language. Autistic Disturbances reveals the ways interpreters have failed to register the real creative valence of autistic language and offers a theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive aesthetics of autistic rhetoric and semiotics.Trade ReviewJulia Rodas rejects ableist repertoires of what language is and can mean, notably the understanding that language necessitates understanding or intelligibility . . . readers are viscerally confronted with autism's many possibilities, are given neurodivergent mechanisms through which to re-see Villette, Frankenstein, Robinson Crusoe, and more . . . What Autistic Disturbances offers is at once a method and a style for apprehending aesthetic autism, across genre and mode. This is an incomparable book, one brimming with ideas for how to reclaim autistic echoes in a morass of literary expression."" - Melanie Yergeau, author of Authoring Autism
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Ambiguity of Taste
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press The Myths of Fiction
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press In the Thick of the Fight
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Shipwrecked
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Virtuous Necessity
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£999.99
The University of Michigan Press AntiImperialist Modernism
Book SynopsisArgues that US multi-ethnic cultural movements helped construct a common sense of international solidarity that critiqued ideas of nationalism and essentialized racial identity. The book thus moves beyond accounts that have tended to view the pre-war “Popular Front” through tropes of national belonging or an abandonment of the cosmopolitanism of previous decades.
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Dreams for Dead Bodies
Book SynopsisTrade Review“With verve and energy, Michelle Robinson argues that the work of detection in fiction predates the appearance of the detective per se, and demonstrates that genres are fluid patchworks under constant repair and erasure even as they become ever more stable and predictable contracts between authors and readers. She shows how the modes of narration essential to elaborating crime plots—usually involving money and murder—are intimately tied to affective relations across classes, races and time, and the means by which they are expressed, involve, even commit, hidden violence. It is the work of narration to enlist readers in the narrators’ process of unraveling these crimes at the heart of family and nation.”—Paula Rabinowitz, author of American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press The Very Thought of Herbert Blau
Book SynopsisDistinguished artists and scholars offer reflections on what made Herbert Blau's contributions so visionary, transformative, and unforgettable, and why his ideas endure in both seminar rooms and studios. Contributors respond to Blau's fierce and polymorphous intellect, his relentless drive and determination, and his audacity.Trade ReviewHerbert Blau was a High Modernist to the core, a position from which he was able to critique the unruliness of the Postmodern, challenge those whose work failed to dig deeply enough into the understanding of theatre, and most importantly, to open doors into understanding Beckett, Brecht, Artaud, and others . . .These essays elucidate and further challenge Blau's body of work and will be of immense value: new generations of theatre/performance scholars will find avenues for engaging with Blau's work, while those familiar with Blau's ideas will welcome the opportunity to re-engage with them."" - John Lutterbie, Stony Brook University
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Walking Down the Stairs
Book SynopsisCollects Kinnell’s thoughts about poetry.
£999.99
MP-SYR Syracuse University P T.C. Murray Dramatist Voice of the Rural Ireland
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£31.76
University of Arizona Press Outside Theater
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£999.99
The University of Alabama Press Kitchen Economics Womens Regionalist Fiction and
Book SynopsisTakes a new approach to the question of how female regionalist fictions represent the economic by situating them within traditions of classical political economic thought. The book's approach ultimately leads us to reconsider what we mean by the term economic.Trade ReviewKitchen Economics is a thoughtful, deeply contextualized, and persuasively detailed re-reading of late-nineteenth-century female regionalist writers from the perspective of their engagement with political economic theory. This book will be a valuable addition to a growing body of work on women writers and economic discourse." - Mary Templin, author of Panic Fiction: Women and Antebellum Economic Crisis
£41.60
Te Herenga Waka University Press Mason
Book SynopsisThe full story of the gifted but troubled R. A. K. Mason is told for the first time in this accessible biography. The puzzling reasons after his extraordinary beginning that Mason almost completely stopped writing poetry are investigated. The legendary story of how Mason dumped 200 copies of his first book, The Beggar, into Auckland harbor in disappointment, disgust, or despair because no one would buy it is explored as a symbol of a timeâthe 1920s and 1930sâwhen a true, vital, native literature struggled to be written or heard in a provincial and puritanical country. Also explored are how Masonâs political beliefs prompted him to turn his creative energies to left-wing theater movements in the 1930s, the impact that family pressures had on his life, and his late-in-life diagnosis with manic depression.
£25.60
Michigan State University Press Hemingway Seven Decades of Criticism
Book Synopsisan important collection of essays that cover some of the more interesting dimensions of Ernest Hemingway's fiction
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Tale of Matsura
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£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Okagami The Great Mirror
Book SynopsisPresented here in a complete translation is the Japanese classic Okagami, a historical tale that mirrors a man’s life and the times in which he lived. Dating from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, it focuses on Fujiwara Michinaga, the leading political figure in the great family that dominated the court during most of the Heian period.
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Literary and Art Theories in Japan
Book SynopsisSurveys major aestheticians to uncover what remained important over the course of Japanese history. Rather than take a comprehensive descriptive approach, Makoto Ueda focuses on views of the essential nature of literature and art, considering how people answered questions such as ""How does art differ from life?"" or ""What is the use of art?"".
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Accomplices of Silence
Book SynopsisThe Japanese novel, lately so widely translated, is finding a broader and better informed readership than ever before. Until now, however, no comprehensive critical discussion of the form has been available in a Western language. Masao Miyoshi offers an intensive reading of several outstanding novels of the past hundred years.
£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Studies in Modern Japanese Literature
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£999.99
LUP - University of Michigan Press Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji
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£999.99
Spark Notes The Scarlet Letter No Fear Shakespeare Sparknotes No Fear
Book SynopsisFeaturing the text of the original play "The Scarlet Letter", a list of characters with descriptions, and helpful commentary, this title is suitable for students or for those who wish to gain an understanding of the text.
£11.64
Spark Things Fall Apart SparkNotes Literature Guide
Book SynopsisWhen an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, this book offers students what they need to succeed. It provides chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs and symbols, a review quiz, and essay topics. It is suitable for late-night studying and paper writing.
£999.99
Guernica Editions,Canada Africadian Atlantic: Essays on George Elliott
Book SynopsisThis collection features essays on Nova Scotia-born poet, playwright and literary critic George Elliott Clarke. Instrtumental in promoting the writing of writers of African descent, Clarke's work has won awards including the Governor General's Award for poetry. He is also the recipient of seven honorary doctorates.
£19.76
Guernica Editions,Canada Nino Ricci: Essays on His Works
Book SynopsisThis book of essays examines the fictional work of Nino Ricci from a variety of critical perspectives. These perspectives include ideas about literature, culture, identity, politics, and society in terms of Canada and the modern world. Each contributor examines a specific novel or several novels, focusing on the prevailing themes and literary elements used by Nino Ricci to construct his work of fiction. This critical study allows the reader to enhance one's understanding of Nino Ricci's particular style and vision. It also provides an understanding of Nino Ricci's valuable contribution to contemporary Canadian fiction and world literature. The contributors in this book are: William Anselmi, Howard A. Doughty, Brian L. Flack, Lise Hogan, Marino Tuzi, and Jim Zucchero.
£19.76
Exile Editions Morley Callaghan: Essays, Reviews, Meditations
Book SynopsisCapturing the 20th-century literary world, this collection of nonfiction work includes essays, reviews, and articles concerning the personalities and events between 1928 and 1990. Starting in the 1920s with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, the reflections move through the decades covering everything from war propaganda to the life of a writer.Trade ReviewOver sixty years of wonderfully explorative and insightfully written essays by the master of belles letters." —Michael Keefer, The Globe and Mail
£27.96
Fulcrum Inc.,US In the Memory House (PB)
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£17.09
Fulcrum Publishing Walking the Rez Road: Stories, 20th Anniversary
Book SynopsisCelebrating two decades in publication, this twentieth-anniversary edition of a timeless classic comprises forty stories and poems that feature Luke Warmwater, a Vietnam veteran who survived the war but has trouble surviving the peace.Trade Review"This 20th-anniversary edition includes the original 40 stories as well as new material: poems, a play and some of Northrup's newspaper work. The stories stand the test of time, as blackly humorous, plainspoken and earthy as they were in 1993. ... Northrup knows this life, this area, to the bone." —Star Tribune "As relevant as it was 20 years ago, this collection continues to provide an unromanticized, insider's view of a culture struggling to maintain, and even recover, its identity, heritage, and language in a rapidly changing and often openly hostile world." —Publishers Weekly
£15.15
University of Massachusetts Press The Man Who Is and Is Not There: The Poetry and
Book SynopsisRobert Francis (1901 - 1987), the author of eight volumes of poetry, an autobiography, a book of fiction, essays on poetry, and a reminiscence of Robert Frost, lived for most of his career on the outskirts of Amherst, Massachusetts, devoting himself to Yankee simplicity and self-renunciation derived from his reading of Thoreau. His preference for solitude and disinclination to write about or promote himself account for the elusiveness of his persona in his prose and poetry.This book charts how Francis developed and elaborated this persona through distanced self-portraits in prose and through poems that both reveal and conceal the self of the poet. Folded into the study are discussions of Francis's pastoralism, his affinities with Emerson and Thoreau, his experimentation with new poetic forms, his protest against the Vietnam War and environmental despoliation, his homoeroticism, and a comparison of his poetry with that of Robert Frost. The book also explores Francis's characteristic attitude, figured as ""hovering,"" where his speaker is both subject and object, writing about himself while inhabiting the role of detached observer.Complementing the emphasis on Francis's elusiveness, Andrew Stambuk offers readings of his poems attentive to aesthetic qualities that give them their particular reticence. Stambuk's sensitive evaluations underscore that Francis is a craftsman of intricate precisions whose work speaks to contemporary political and global concerns.
£999.99
University Press of Mississippi New Orleans Sketches
Book SynopsisIn 1925 William Faulkner began his professional writing career in earnest while living in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He had published a volume of poetry (The Marble Faun), had written a few book reviews, and had contributed sketches to the University of Mississippi student newspaper. He had served a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Corps and while working in a New Haven bookstore had become acquainted with the wife of the writer Sherwood Anderson.In his first six months in New Orleans, where the Andersons were living, Faulkner made his initial foray into serious fiction writing. Here in one volume are the pieces he wrote while in the French Quarter. These were published locally in the Times-Picayune and in the Double Dealer.The pieces in New Orleans Sketches broadcast seeds that would take root in later works. In their themes and motifs these sketches and stories foreshadow the intense personal vision and style that would characterize Faulkner's mature fiction. As his sketches take on parallels with Christian liturgy and as they portray such characters as an idiot boy similar to Benjy Compson, they reveal evidence of his early literary sophistication.In praise of New Orleans Sketches, Alfred Kazin wrote in the New York Times Book Review that ""the interesting thing for us now, who can see in this book the outline of the writer Faulkner was to become, is that before he had published his first novel he had already determined certain main themes in his work.""In his trailblazing introduction, Carvel Collins often called ""Faulkner's best-informed critic,"" illuminates the period when the sketches were written as the time that Faulkner was making the transition from poet to novelist.""For the reader of Faulkner,"" Paul Engle wrote in the Chicago Tribune, ""the book is indispensable. Its brilliant introduction . . . is full both of helpful information . . . and of fine insights."" ""We gain something more than a glimpse of the mind of a young genius asserting his power against a partially indifferent environment,"" states the Book Exchange (London). ""The long introduction . . . must rank as a major literary contribution to our knowledge of an outstanding writer: perhaps the greatest of our times.""
£22.46
University of Utah Press,U.S. Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays
Book SynopsisSherman Alexie is, by many accounts, the most widely read American Indian writer in the United States and likely in the world. A literary polymath, Alexie's nineteen published books span a variety of genres and include his most recent National Book Award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.Now, for the first time, a volume of critical essays is devoted to Alexie's work both in print and on the big screen. Editors Jeff Berglund and Jan Roush have assembled twelve leading scholars of American Indian literature to provide new perspectives on a writer with his finger on the pulse of America.Interdisciplinary in their approach to Alexie's work, these essays cover the writer's entire career, and are insightful and accessible to scholars and lay readers alike. This volume is a worthy companion to the work of one of our nations's most recognized contemporary voices.Trade Review"The bar is raised. I believe this work will be seen as a role model for literary criticism of Native American fiction, poetry, and film."—Simon Ortiz, poet and professor of English at Arizona State University "An important and timely work.... This volume sets a high standard of scholarship for those committed to grappling with the broader complexities of Alexie's life and work. The collaborative tenor of the project is particularly refreshing, because it invites scholars to converse across disciplines in order to keep pace with an iconic writer whose literary reputation now extends far beyond the Pacific Northwest."—Pacific Northwest Quarterly "An exciting addition to the growing body of scholarship on Sherman Alexie's work. The extensive bibliography of work by and about Alexie that appears at the end of this collection alone makes this book an invaluable resource for scholars and future scholars of Alexie's work."—Studies in American Indian LiteraturesTable of ContentsEdited by Jeff Berglund and Jan Roush, eds., Sherman A Collection of Critical EssaysAlexie:ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: “Imagination Turns Every Word into a Bottle Rocket”: An Introduction to Sherman Alexie Jeff BerglundDancing That Way, Things Began to Change: The Ghost Dance as Pantribal Metaphor in Sherman Alexie’s Writing Lisa Tatonetti“Survival = Anger x Imagination”: Sherman Alexie’s Dark Humor Philip Heldrich“An Extreme Need to Tell the Truth”: Silence and Language in Sherman Alexie’s “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire” Elizabeth ArchuletaRock and Roll, Redskins, and Blues in Sherman Alexie’s Work P. Jane HafenThis Is What It Means to Say Reservation Cinema: Making Cinematic Indians in Smoke Signals James H. CoxNative Sensibility and the Significance of Women in Smoke Signals Angelica LawsonThe Distinctive Sonority of Sherman Alexie’s Indigenous Poetics Susan Berry Brill de RamÍrezThe Poetics of Tribalism in Sherman Alexie’s The Summer of Black Widows Nancy J. PetersonSherman Alexie’s Challenge to the Academy’s Teaching of Native American Literature, Non-Native Writers, and Critics Patrice Hollrah“Indians Do Not Live in Cities, They Only Reside There”: Captivity and the Urban Wilderness in Indian Killer Meredith JamesIndigenous Liaisons: Sex/Gender Variability, Indianness, and Intimacy in Sherman Alexie’s The Toughest Indian in the World Stephen F. EvansSherman Alexie’s Transformation of “Ten Little Indians” Margaret O’ShaughnesseyHealing the Soul Wound in Flight and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Jan JohnsonThe Business of Writing: Sherman Alexie’s Meditations on Authorship Jeff BerglundContributorsBibliographyIndex
£999.99
Chicago Review Press Algren: A Life
Book SynopsisChicago Writers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year (2017) Society of Midland Authors Literary Award in Biography (2017) A tireless champion of the downtrodden, Nelson Algren, one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, lived an outsider’s life himself. He spent a month in prison as a young man for the theft of a typewriter; his involvement in Marxist groups earned him a lengthy FBI dossier; and he spent much of his life palling around with the sorts of drug addicts, prostitutes, and poor laborers who inspired and populated his novels and short stories. Most today know Algren as the radical, womanizing writer of The Man with the Golden Arm, which won the first National Book Award, in 1950, but award-winning reporter Mary Wisniewski offers a deeper portrait. Starting with his childhood in the City of Big Shoulders, Algren sheds new light on the writer’s most momentous periods, from his on-again-off-again work for the WPA to his stint as an uninspired soldier in World War II to his long-distance affair with his most famous lover, Simone de Beauvoir, to the sense of community and acceptance Algren found in the artist colony of Sag Harbor before his death in 1981. Wisniewski interviewed dozens of Algren’s closest friends and inner circle, including photographer Art Shay and author and historian Studs Terkel, and tracked down much of his unpublished writing and correspondence. She unearths new details about the writer’s life, work, personality, and habits and reveals a funny, sensitive, and romantic but sometimes exasperating, insecure, and self-destructive artist. biography The first new biography of Algren in over 25 years, this fresh look at the man whose unique style and compassionate message enchanted readers and fellow writers and whose boyish charm seduced many women is indispensable to anyone interested in 20-century American literature and history.Trade Review"Mary Wisniewski has written a captivating biography of Nelson Algren, rife with the soul, passion, and grit that made Chicago a 'city on the make' and Algren its greatest poet. For those who have loved the town and the writer who made it his 'trade,' here, at last, is the book you've waited for." Warren Leming, cofounder, Nelson Algren Committee of Chicago"It's good to have the irascible, bohemian chronicler of the streets back via this top-notch biography." Kirkus Reviews"Mary Wisniewski's Algren: A Life is an immensely readable portrait of the great but problematic Chicago writer. Exquisitely reported, sympathetic but clear-eyed, it's about the most complete account of his life and work I've seen. Wisniewski has a great sense of detail, and a wonderfully candid voice." Achy Obejas, author of Days of Awe"Nelson Algren was surely one of the most important post-World War II novelists in America, and his life and work are even more relevant today than they were in the 1940s and '50s, when he was at the peak of his popularity. . . . This new biography goes a long way toward redeeming both his life and his art. His novels and stories should be required reading in every American college syllabus. This excellent biography tells us why." Russell Banks, author of Rule of the Bone and Cloudsplitter"We also learn how, as tough as he famously was, Algren was vulnerable to the same sensitivities and bouts of self-doubt that plague all writers. He was always one of us. Post-Wisniewski, he may be even more so." Chicago Tribune" Algren is a welcome addition to the literature on Nelson Algren's life and work. In fact the strength of Algren is the way that Wisniewski integrates Algren's working life with his personal life. This thankfully is not yet another biography of a writer that ignores the writing." Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago"A powerful piece of biography." Houston Press"With this comprehensive biography, Wisniewski, award-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, has done sterling work toward restoring Nelson Algren to his position of prominence as a celebrated author." Publishers Weekly
£24.26
University of Massachusetts Press Lessons from Sarajevo: A War Stories Primer
Book SynopsisIn today's world, our television screens are filled with scenes from countless conflicts across the globe - commanding our attention and asking us to choose sides. In this insightful and wide-ranging book, Jim Hicks treats historical representation, and even history itself, as a text, asking questions such as Who is speaking?, Who is the audience?, and What are the rules for this kind of talk? He argues that we must understand how war stories are told in order to arm ourselves against them. In a democracy, we are each responsible for policy decisions taken on our behalf. So it is imperative that we gain fluency in the diverse forms of representation (journalism, photography, fiction, memoir, comics, cinema) that bring war to us.Hicks explores the limitations of the sentimental tradition in war representation and asks how the work of artists and writers can help us to move beyond the constraints of that tradition. Ranging from Walt Whitman's writings on the Civil War to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focusing on the innovative and creative artistic expressions arising out of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, Hicks examines how war has been perceived, described, and interpreted. He analyzes the limitations on knowledge caused by perspective and narrative position and looks closely at the distinct yet overlapping roles of victims, observers, and aggressors. In the end, he concludes, war stories today should be valued according to the extent they make it impossible for us to see these positions as assigned in advance, and immutable.
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press Lydia Sigourney: Critical Essays and Cultural
Book SynopsisDuring her lifetime, Lydia Sigourney was acclaimed as nineteenth-century America's most popular woman poet and published widely as a historian, travel writer, essayist, and educator. While serious critical attention to her work languished following her death and into the twentieth century, a growing number of critics and writers have reexamined Sigourney and her large body of writing and have given her a central place in the ""new canon.""This first collection of original essays devoted to the poet's work puts many of the best scholars on Sigourney together in one place and in conversation with one another. The volume includes critical essays examining her literary texts as well as essays that unpack Sigourney's participation in the cultural movements of her day. Holding powerful opinions about the role of women in society, Sigourney was not afraid to advocate against government policies that, in her view, undermined the promise of America, even as she was held up as a paragon of American womanhood and middle-class rectitude. The resulting portrait promises to engage readers who wish to know more about Sigourney's writing, her career, and the causes that inspired her.Along with the volume editors, contributors include Ann Beebe, Paula Bernat Bennett, Janet Dean, Sean Epstein-Corbin, Annie Finch, Gary Kelly, Paul Lauter, Amy J. Lueck, Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, Jennifer Putzi, Angela Sorby, Joan Wry, and Sandra Zagarell.Trade Review"As a whole, the essays here do not just reconsider Sigourney’s life and work. They also create a valuable resource that can shape new strategies for incorporating her work into surveys and advanced courses alike." — ALH Online Review, XXVI.1 (2018)
£999.99
