Search results for ""Epitaph""

In a small Pacific Northwest town we meet a young man who has shot dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy: the anguish, regret, despair and bittersweet romance.Typical of Brautigan's singular style, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away is a beautifully written, brooding novel. Its autobiographical prose is a fitting epitaph to this complex, contradictory and often misunderstood writer.

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Body & Glass extends Koeneke's experimentations in Etruria with a tightly woven set of more compact poems that brighten and sharpen the lyric's usual corners. The 'anonymous' forms of folk song and epitaph, parable and textual fragment, arrange to sketch the selves, living and dead, who might say them. These are poems of an improvised interiority, shared between the poet and reader but broad enough for multitudes.

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This volume of fifteen essays includes “La titulature de Nicée et de Nicomédie: La gloire et la haine,” by Louis Robert; “Callinus 1 and Tyrtaeus 10 as Poetry,” by A. W. H. Adkins; “The Curse of Civilization: The Choral Odes of the Phoenissae,” by Marylin B. Arthur; “Arrian and the Alani,” by A. B. Bosworth; “A Fourth-Century Latin Soldier’s Epitaph at Nakolea,” by Thomas Drew-Bear; and “Seventeen Letters of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Eduard Fraenkel,” by William Musgrave Calder III.

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The author brings his love of the English language, nurtured by his life in Palestine, Guyana, Barbados, England and Argentina to a mixture of hope, sadness, love, disillusion and all the other experiences to which human beings are subjected. He has contended with rejection, exclusion, terrorism, injustice, hope and love. He now in old age finds contentment and amusement in the ways of the world, free of illusions, and delusions, while he contemplates the beautiful cattle and crops on his extensive farm, and tries to persuade a golf ball to go straight. May his epitaph be: He tried his best.

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Nox is an epitaph in the form of a book, a facsimile of a handmade book Anne Carson wrote and created after the death of her brother. The poem describes coming to terms with his loss through the lens of her translation of Poem 101 by Catullus “for his brother who died in the Troad.” Nox is a work of poetry, but arrives as a fascinating and unique physical object. Carson pasted old letters, family photos, collages and sketches on pages. The poems, typed on a computer, were added to this illustrated “book” creating a visual and reading experience so amazing as to open up our concept of poetry.

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Fully revised and updated, in a biography the Sunday Timesdescribed as 'a fitting epitaph to an extraordinary career', Martin Meredith details the life of Nelson Mandela, one of the most admired political figures of the twentieth century. It was his leadership and moral courage above all that helped to deliver a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa after years of racial division and violence and to establish a fledgling democracy there. Now Meredith has revisited and significantly updated his biography to incorporate the reaction to his death, as well as giving perspective and hindsight on the man and his legacy and to examine how far his hopes for the new South Africa have been realised.

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Have you heard of Spurgeon? Preacher, evangelist and stalwart patriarch of the Modern Western Church today. If the cliché ‘behind every great man is a strong woman’, is true, then Susannah Spurgeon remains one of the matriarchs of the same tradition. Spurgeon was the bone companion of her husband. As a pastoral assistant, as Charles’ wife and support through trials, this woman’s biography has been a long time coming. Mary Mohler has gathered information on Susie from sources spanning letters, devotionals and biographies. The result is a thoughtful, sympathetic and endearing epitaph to a sister in Christ, whose voice can no longer be ignored. Mohler allows room for academics, mothers, daughters and wives to dwell on Spurgeon’s joyful eagerness in Christ.

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Commencing one of the longest comic book creative runs of all time! Mark Gruenwald''s decade-long stint as writer of CAPTAIN AMERICA begins with unforgettable battles against Madcap, Flag-Smasher and the newly-formed Serpent Society! But things really kick into high gear when the serial killer known as the Scourge of the Underworld targets villains across the Marvel Universe, marking every death with an enigmatic epitaph: ''Justice is served!'' As the bodies pile up, can Cap find and stop Scourge before there are no more criminals left to fight? There''s also Wolverine and the misguided Super-Patriot to contend with - but the government itself might strike the final blow against the Sentinel of Liberty! As a volatile vigilante is chosen to replace him, Steve Rogers retires as Captain America... but he''s not out of the fight just yet!

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John Henry Newman (1801-1890) chose as his epitaph the words, 'Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritaten' ('Out of shadows and images into the truth'). These words are more than the expression of Newman's hope for the future. They summarize his lifelong quest to penetrate ever more deeply into the mystery of God's relationship to humankind and the ways in which men and women are able to gain insight into that relationship. This collection of papers reflects on Newman's understanding of the nature of truth's survival in the contemporary world. At the same time, it provides a critical reflection on the continuing significance of Newman's thought. The collection includes contributions by Colin Barr, Michael J. Buckley, Brian Daley, Paul J. Griffiths, Keith Hanley, Ian Ker, Terrence Merrigan, and John Milbank.

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As part of a detailed introduction to the post-Reformation church topography of Norway, some 140 epitaphs preserved in all parts of Norway from the period 1550 to 1700 are documented with illustrations, descriptions and short biographies. In addition to numerous illustrations of the epitaphs, the volume contains transcriptions of all inscriptions as well as their translation into English. The epitaph genre was particularly popular in post-Reformation Lutheranism (unlike in the Reformed areas of Europe) - as it was in Norway. In addition to a comprehensive introduction to the cultural, social and geographical context of epitaphs, the volume offers a detailed insight into the (self-)representation of the elites who commissioned these epitaphs. It also names the most important artists who were entrusted with the production of the epitaphs in Norway. The main part of the volume is a detailed presentation of the surviving epitaphs in Norway's four early modern bishoprics. Pictorial motifs, inscriptions and biographical studies are included in the interpretation.

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An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirty years. Alex Kerr brings to life the ritualized world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, and tells the story of the hidden valley that became his home.But the book is not just a love letter. Haunted throughout by nostalgia for the Japan of old, Kerr's book is part paean to that great country and culture, part epitaph in the face of contemporary Japan's environmental and cultural destruction.Winner of Japan's Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize, and now with a new preface.Alex Kerr is an American writer, antiques collector and Japanologist. Lost Japan is his most famous work. He was the first foreigner to be awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan.

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Colin Austin (1941–2010), Professor of Greek at Cambridge and distinguished editor of poetic texts, was renowned for the precision and brilliance of his scholarship. This collection of studies, offered by some of his pupils, aims to honour his memory. The papers combine philology and textual criticism with a strong interest in setting the works under examination in their literary and cultural context. Individual contributions are devoted to the establishment of the text of the comic poet Menander and the epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella, while one chapter offers a new critical edition of and the first detailed commentary on a number of erotic epigrams. Other essays explore poetic, performative and narratological features in Socratic works of Plato and Xenophon. The volume also includes an analysis of the trope of pathetic fallacy in the bucolic poem Epitaph for Bion and a study of the concept of ‘frigidity’ in ancient literary criticism.

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A large number of Aramaic inscriptions from the 9th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. are revisited in this fourth volume of Studiees. After the stele of Tel Dan, the epitaph of Kuttamuwa from Zincirli, and the inscription found at Tepe Qalaichi, Aramaic dockets from Dur-Katlimmu are re-examined, distinguishing a court ruling concerning theft, agreements regarding mortgage, guarantee, indemnity, barley and silver loans, and the particular nsk-loan. Next are examined "cadastral" reports from Idumaea, some inscriptions from Hellenistic times, a divorce bill from the Roman period, several Palmyrene dedications, epitaphs, and honorific inscriptions, as well as some Hatraean texts, mainly related to Adiabene. Finally, Mercionism is considered as background of a saying on "two gods", ascribed to Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba. Like in the preceding volumes of Studies, detailed indexes list the inscriptions, the personal names and the place-names examined, as well as other subjects.

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';A chiller' (The New York Times Book Review) and #1 New York Times bestseller about a writer's horrific and haunting pseudonym that destroys everyone on the path leading to the man who created him.After thirteen years of international bestseller stardom with his works of violent crime fiction, author George Stark is officially declared deadrevealed by a national magazine to have been killed at the hands of the man who created him: the once well-regarded but now obscure writer Thad Beaumont. Thad's even gone so far as to stage a mock burial of his wildly successful pseudonym, complete with tombstone and the epitaph ';Not a Very Nice Guy.' Although on the surface, it seems that Thad can finally concentrate on his own novels, there's a certain unease at the prospect of leaving George Stark behind. But that's nothing compared to the horror about to descend upon Thad's new life. There are the vicious, out-of-control nightmares, for starters. And how is h

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David Mas Masumoto, best-selling author of Epitaph for a Peach, returns to the same ground but digs even deeper in a new, "more ambitious book" in which "he lets his philosophy about man and nature emerge from an absorbing chronicle of his life and that of his Japanese antecedents" (The Economist). This is a book about working alongside the ghosts of generations past, about the search for roots in the tragic history of internment camps and in the rural culture of Japan. It is equally about renewal-reinvigorating the farm with organic techniques, teaching his children how to carry on the work that eighty acres of peaches and grapes demand. Masumoto knits past and present to achieve a rare and essential harmony: holding on to what matters, despite the pressures of time and change. "Take your time, linger" with the book, counsels the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Masumoto's serene tales . . . are like a balm." He is a "remarkable" author, sums up The Atlantic, "with a field, and a sensibility, peculiarly his own."

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From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. She spoke French and German fluently, knew Greek and Latin, and sketched impressive portraits. As the niece of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, she was already well connected, and her courtly skills resulted in her marriage to the Hon. William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne) at the age on nineteen. For a few years they enjoyed a happy marriage, despite Lamb''s siblings and mother-in-law detesting her and referring to her as ''the little beast''. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicised affair with the poet Lord Byron - he was 24, she 26. Her phrase ''mad, bad and dangerous to know'' became his lasting epitaph. When he broke things off, Caroline made increasingly public attempts to reunite. Her obsession came to define much o

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In the summer of 1972, during a compulsory stint in the South African military, Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman heard the music that would forever change his life. A decade later, on yet another military base, Craig Bartholomew Strydom heard the same music. It would have a profound effect. Who was this folk singer who resonated with South Africa's youth? No one could say. All that anyone knew was his name - Rodriguez - and the fact that he had killed himself on stage after reading his own epitaph.After many years of searching in a pre-internet age, Strydom with support from Segerman found the musician not dead but alive and living in seclusion in Detroit. Even more remarkable was the fact that Rodriguez, no longer working as a musician and struggling to eke out a blue-collar existence, had no idea that he had been famous for over 25 years in a remote part of the world...

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Many cultures identify mourning as the very source of poetry and music, what Elizabeth Bishop calls the art of losing. That might well be the title of this collection. Not every poem is cornered with death, but all are about loss. The poems chosen traverse a surprisingly wide range of emotions from despair to joy, resignation to anger, all articulated in language of the greatest power and beauty . All the major verse forms of mourning are represented here: epitaph, requiem and lament. Three great elergies by Milton, Whitman and Rilke are surrounded by a wide variety of shorter poems. Naturally, the pathos of death predominates, but its comedy has not been neglected, whether in the savage poems of World War I or the gentle teasing of seventeenth-century satire. Poets include: Akhmatova, Auden, Bishop, Brodsky, Browning, Carew, Cory, Cowley, Dickinson, Donne, Dryden, Dyer, Fletcher, Graves, Gurney, Hardy, Harrison, Herrick, Hopkins, Horace, King, Leopardi, Lowell, MacCaig, Mandelstam, Milosz, Philips, Propertius, Roethke, Smith, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas and Wordsworth.

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The annual harvesting of cereal crops was one of the most important economic tasks in the Roman Empire. Not only was it urgent and critical for the survival of state and society, it mobilized huge numbers of men and women every year from across the whole face of the Mediterranean. In Bringing in the Sheaves, Brent D. Shaw investigates the ways in which human labour interacted with the instruments of harvesting, what part the workers and their tools had in the whole economy, and how the work itself was organized. Both collective and individual aspects of the story are investigated, centred on the life-story of a single reaper whose work in the wheat fields of North Africa is documented in his funerary epitaph. The narrative then proceeds to an analysis of the ways in which this cyclical human behaviour formed and influenced modes of thinking about matters beyond the harvest. The work features an edition of the reaper inscription, and a commentary on it. It is also lavishly illustrated to demonstrate the important iconic and pictorial dimensions of the story.

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'The best evocation I've read of London in the '80s' Neil Tennant'I loved Souvenir . . . it rescued some things for me - a certain aesthetic, a philosophical engagement with time and poignant beauty and lived history that I have found myself looking for, and not finding, elsewhere in recent years . . . the book gave me new hope' John Burnside'A suspended act of retrieval, a partisan recall; a sustained, subtle summary of our recent past, and an epitaph for a future we never had' Philip Hoare'Michael Bracewell proves himself to be nothing less than the poet laureate of late capitalism' Jonathan CoeA vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early 80s - the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another. Haunted bedsits, post-punk entrepreneurs in the Soho Brasserie, occultists in Fitzrovia, Docklands before Canary Wharf, frozen suburbs in the winter of 1980...

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When Grandmama Fell off the Boat is an anthology of the humorous verse of Harry Graham, one of the early 20th century’s wittiest writers. Graham made his name as the author of Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, published in 1898 under the pseudonym Col. D. Streamer (he was a Coldstream Guard). He went on to become a successful writer of stage-show lyrics, and in 1923 had five smash-hit musicals running simultaneously in the West End of London. His work was published not only in England but also in America, where he was credited with introducing ‘sick’ verse. The Times in its 1936 obituary compared him with Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert, an epitaph that has stood the test of time. Graham’s secret is his ability to relate common episodes with a sardonic twist. A father irritated by his crying infant finds peace and quiet by popping him in the Frigidaire and a man whose wife elopes with the chauffeur despairs of ever starting the car. His callous and quotable rhymes became the table talk of a generation, influencing emerging writers such as W. H. Auden, George Orwell and Agatha Christie.

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Despite the pundits who have written its epitaph and the latter-day refugees who have fled its confines for the half-acre suburban estate, the city neighborhood has endured as an idea central to American culture. In A Nation of Neighborhoods, Benjamin Looker presents us with the city neighborhood as both an endless problem and a possibility. Looker investigates the cultural, social, and political complexities of the idea of "neighborhood" in postwar America and how Americans grappled with vast changes in their urban spaces from World War II to the Reagan era. In the face of urban decline, competing visions of the city neighborhood's significance and purpose became proxies for broader debates over the meaning and limits of American democracy. By studying the way these contests unfolded across a startling variety of genres-Broadway shows, radio plays, urban ethnographies, real estate documents, and even children's programming-Looker shows that the neighborhood ideal has functioned as a central symbolic site for advancing and debating theories about American national identity and democratic practice.

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"I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do anything one does. I lived on honeycomb." Oscar Wilde Although it is over 120 years since his infamous trial for indecency, Oscar Wilde has never held greater fascination for us. This packed illustrated biography tells the life of Oscar Wilde through his own words – private letters, poems, plays, stories and legendary witticisms. It includes his relationships with key artists and writers of the time, including John Ruskin, Charles Ricketts, and Lillie Langtry. It is illustrated throughout with paintings, engravings, contemporary photographs, cartoons and caricatures of Wilde and his social circle. With illustrations and paintings by Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Whistler and Max Beerbohm, it is a beautiful evocation of the glittering fin de siecle word by its most fascinating wordsmith and aesthete. The book details Wilde's ruin after the trial and its outcome. The profundity of his writing from prison and exile form an epitaph, not only to his own life, but also for the era that carelessly delighted in it.

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Dissing Elizabeth focuses on the criticism that cast a shadow on the otherwise celebrated reign of Elizabeth I. The essays in this politically and historically revealing book demonstrate the sheer pervasiveness and range of rhetoric against the queen, illuminating the provocative discourse of disrespect and dissent that existed over an eighty-year period, from her troubled days as a princess to the decades after her death in 1603.As editor Julia M. Walker suggests, the breadth of dissent considered in this collection points to a dark side of the Cult of Elizabeth. Reevaluating neglected texts that had not previously been perceived as critical of the queen or worthy of critical appraisal, contributors consider dissent in a variety of forms, including artwork representing (and mocking) the queen, erotic and pornographic metaphors for Elizabeth in the popular press, sermons subtly critiquing her actions, and even the hostility encoded in her epitaph and in the placement of her tomb. Other chapters discuss gossip about Elizabeth, effigies of the queen, polemics against her marriage to the Duke of Alençon, common verbal slander, violence against emblems of her authority, and the criticism embedded in the riddles, satires, and literature of the period.

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From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. She spoke French and German fluently, knew Greek and Latin, and sketched impressive portraits. As the niece of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, she was already well connected, and her courtly skills resulted in her marriage to the Hon. William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne) at the age on nineteen. For a few years they enjoyed a happy marriage, despite Lamb's siblings and mother-in-law detesting her and referring to her as 'the little beast'. In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicised affair with the poet Lord Byron - he was 24, she 26. Her phrase 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' became his lasting epitaph. When he broke things off, Caroline made increasingly public attempts to reunite. Her obsession came to define much of her later life, as well as influencing her own writing - most notably the Gothic novel Glenarvon - and Byron's. Antonia Fraser's vividly compelling biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know.

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The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell is a literary love letter to the joys of wandering graveyards. While working on a novel, author and longtime Cincinnati resident Michael Griffith starts visiting Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, the nation’s third-largest cemetery. Soon he’s taking almost daily jaunts, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection of essays that emerge from chance encounters with an interesting headstone, odd epitaph, unusual name, or quirk of memory. Researching obituaries, newspaper clippings, and family legacies, Griffith uncovers stories of race, feminism, art, and death. Rather than sticking to the cemetery’s most famous, or infamous, graves, Griffith stays true to the principle of ramble and incidental discovery. The result is an eclectic group of subjects, ranging from well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright to those much less celebrated— a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances. Nearly ninety photos add dimension and often an element of playfulness.The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what does not, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempt to leave monuments that last. In doing so, it beautifully weaves connections born out of the storyteller’s inquisitive mind.

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British Aircraft Manufacturers since 1909 traces one hundred years of the British aviation industry, its history, origins, mergers and takeovers. It details the evolution of the British aviation industry and is an epitaph to household famous names such as Armstrong-Whitworth, de Havilland, Chadwick, Claude-Graham White, Sopwith, A. V. Roe, Mitchell, Hawker, Handley Page, Petter and Fairey to name but a few. Of more recent times, the likes of Sidney Camm, Hooker and Hooper, all of whom, made VTOL more than just a dream, are also covered in astonishing and exhausting detail. Of the major firms, most at some time or other have been absorbed, merged or reorganised to form a single conglomerate, BAe Systems and Rolls-Royce are chronicled from the outset to the mighty companies they are today. Only PBN-Britten Norman - who on several occasions escaped extinction due to financial difficulties - and Westland, now part of AgustaWestland, and Short Bros of Northern Ireland remain independent, although even the latter, are part of Canadian, Bombardier Co. British Aircraft Manufacturers since 1909 tells the complete and enthralling story of how Britain ruled the world in terms of manufacturing and aircraft design from nimble but fragile biplanes and majestic airliners that united the world to the advanced bombers and fighters of today.

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Savannah is a starkly tender and intimate recollection by French writer and journalist Jean Rolin of his friendship with British Vogue photographer Kate Barry. Both humorous and insightful, it in many ways serves as the epitaph to her life, which ended in a fall from her fourth-floor apartment in France. Barry was a very close friend of Jean Rolin, and together the two of them made a trip to the United States to retrace the footsteps of Flannery O'Connor, a Southern writer for whom Kate was deeply impassioned. In 2014, after Barry's death, Jean Rolin wanted to revisit this trip and reconstruct the memory of their journey in her absence. As he recreates his roadtrip over the course of this book, which ends, fittingly, in Savannah, Rolin evokes landscapes, characters, and a uniquely Southern atmosphere that underscores the relentless passage of time. Juxtaposed against the themes of loss and mortality, Jean Rolin evokes with light touches the figure of Kate. His incredible descriptive talent shines through in vivid descriptions of the South; he approaches his travel memoir with the accuracy of a documentary and the vibrant writing of a poet, and his memories of Kate are preserved beneath the motif of sucking the marrow out of life and keeping death at bay.

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This is the quite remarkable and true story of Squadron Leader Derek J. Sharp AFC BSc Dip Comp JP RAF and his incredible adventures. Nothing perhaps was more astonishing than his survival after meeting a Mallard duck at 500 mph and his subsequent fight back to become a pilot in command once again. That he survived to age 30 was amazing, that he continued unashamedly on to a ripe old age was nothing short of a miracle. Conceivably he followed the advice written on a fridge magnet in his kitchen `Never drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly'. Those who knew him would say not a chance! This fascinating book follows the adventures of Sharp from spotty schoolboy to highly respect aviator. He flew everything from fighters to heavy transport, wise old navigators and Her Majesty The Queen. He joined a flying club called the Royal Air Force and unexpectedly found himself at war. That mirrored his namesake, Pilot Officer Derek Sharp who lost his life in a Lancaster in WW2. He lived in a time long before Political Correctness, the Breathalyser and motorcar safety checks. He achieved all that he set out to do, and more. That would undoubtedly be his epitaph.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was one of the most versatile minds in European intellectual history, and a shaping influence in the development of English poetry. As a radical young poet in the years following the French Revolution, Coleridge collaborated with Wordsworth in "Lyrical Ballads" (1798) and was by turns dramatist, political journalist, lecturer and religious thinker. This edition includes his two most famous poems, "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", as well as such blank-verse `conversation' poems as "The Eolian Harp", "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" and "Frost at Midnight". Not least of the attractions of Heather Jackson's selection is the earlier version of the "Rime" which she presents in full, along with the later, better-known version. Demonstrating the diversity characteristic of Coleridge's work, from early politically-inspired sonnets, to an epitaph he composed for himself shortly before his death, this substantial collection is supplemented by an introduction and notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Calming, thought-provoking, poetic and honest, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm is a collection of writing and musing by documentary-maker, environmentalist and author of Waterlog, Roger Deakin. 'Gentle, straight, honest, inquisitive, funny, melancholic' Spectator'A lovely book that is a poignant epitaph to a remarkable individual' Amazon Review________________For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks. In them, he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations about and around his Suffolk home, Walnut Tree Farm. Collected here are the very best of these writings, capturing his extraordinary, restless curiosity about nature as well as his impressions of our changing world.Perfect for fans of Robert Macfarlane and Colin Tudge, this is a book that fills readers with a desire to explore the world around them.________________'A secular saint' The Times'Marvellous, wonderful, lovely, remarkable . . . to be read and reread and treasured' Elizabeth Jane Howard, Daily Mail'Very funny, sharp-eyed. To look at the world through Deakin's eyes was to see somewhere that was more wonderful than it often appears' Sunday Telegraph'Thoughtful and invigorating, full of humour, timeless . . . will take its place among the classics of Nature diaries . . . to be read alongside Frances Kilvert, Gilbert White, and Dorothy Wordsworth' Mail on Sunday'So busy and bustling with life' Observer

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DO WHAT YOU WANT: The Story of Bad Religion reveals the ups and downs of the band's 40-year career. From their beginnings as teenagers jamming in a San Fernando Valley garage dubbed "The Hell Hole" to headlining major music festivals around the world, DO WANT YOU WANT tells the whole story in irreverent style.While DO WHAT YOU WANT tracks down nearly all of Bad Religion's members past and present, the chief storytellers are the four voices that define Bad Religion: Greg Graffin, a Wisconsin kid who sang in the choir and became an L.A. punk rock icon while he was still a teenager; Brett Gurewitz, a high school dropout who founded the independent punk label Epitaph Records and went on to become a record mogul; Jay Bentley, a surfer and skater who gained recognition as much for his bass skills as for his onstage antics; and Brian Baker, a founding member of Minor Threat who joined the band in 1994 and brings a fresh perspective as an intimate outsider.With a unique blend of melodic hardcore and thought-provoking lyrics, Bad Religion paved the way for the punk rock explosion of the 1990s, opening the door for bands like NOFX, The Offspring, Rancid, Green Day, and Blink-182 to reach wider audiences. They showed the world what punk could be, and they continue to spread their message one song, one show, one tour at a time-with no signs of stopping.

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"Joe Wenderoth is a brilliant writer, original and subversive, sensitive and strange. I read his work with awe and admiration."-Ben Marcus "Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' ...But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary-a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible."-Cal Bedient This clear-eyed new work from a favorite young poet is searching and solemn, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims. Joe Wenderoth's determination in the face of harsh realities is what rescues us, and him, from hopelessness. "Luck" So a screaming woke you just in time An animal's scream, or animals'. What kind of animal it was doesn't matter, and cannot, in any case, be determined. The point is you are saved. Your mouth has been opened. Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore and is the author of five books of prose and poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Davis.

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One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since' Paul Auster, author of The New York TrilogyRaymond Chandler was America's preeminent writer of detective fiction, and this edition of The Big Sleep and Other Novels collects three of the best novels to feature his hard-drinking, philosophising PI, Philip Marlowe.Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel The Big Sleep in 1939. Often imitated but never bettered, it is in Marlowe's long shadow that every fictional detective must stand - and under the influence of Raymond Chandler's addictive prose that every crime author must write. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in Farewell My Lovely, on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner. And the inimitable Marlowe is able to prove that trouble really is his business in Raymond Chandler's brilliant epitaph, The Long Goodbye.'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards that others still try to attain' Sunday Times'Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romantic presence' Ross Macdonald, author of The Drowning Pool

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"The greatest American dramatist of our age" - Evening Standard In this third volume of collected works, three of Arthur Miller’s stage plays from the early 1980s are brought together in a new edition. Expanding on the themes and explorations of his earlier work, this volume also contains an introduction from the playwright himself, as well as an afterword by acclaimed Miller scholar Christopher Bigsby. A sweeping, hard-hitting look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, The American Clock(1982) is a vaudevillian celebration of American resilience and optimism in the face of national crisis, and was later performed on Broadway. Set in an Eastern European capital, The Archbishop's Ceiling (1984), examines the relationship between four writers, and the erosion of personal integrity during the cold war: a thrilling study of the effects of surveillance and political pressure on an individual's actions Also included is a revised version of Two-Way Mirror (1984): a double bill for a man and a woman, consisting of two short plays - Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind of Love Story. These fantastic two-handers explore the nuances in relationships, and have come to be come to be recognised as some sort of coded epitaph to the tumult and tragedy of Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 3 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

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Martin Booth died in February 2004, shortly after finishing the book that would be his epitaph - this wonderfully remembered, beautifully told memoir of a childhood lived to the full in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire...An inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s. Unrestricted by parental control and blessed with bright blond hair that signified good luck to the Chinese, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a 'pale fellow' like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learnt Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into the secret lair of the Triads and visited an opium den. Along the way he encountered a colourful array of people, from the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, a drunken child molester, and the Queen of Kowloon, the crazed tramp who may have been a member of the Romanov family.Shadowed by the unhappiness of his warring parents, a broad-minded mother who, like her son, was keen to embrace all things Chinese, and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family's interest in 'going native', Martin Booth's compelling memoir is a journey into Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life that glows with infectious curiosity and humour.

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Thomas Jefferson designed his own tombstone, describing himself simply as "Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia." It is in this simple epitaph that R.B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder--not as a great political figure, but as leader of "a revolution of ideas that would make the world over again." In Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein offers the definitive short biography of this revered American--the first concise life in six decades. Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into a swift, insightful, evenhanded account. Here are all of Jefferson's triumphs, contradictions, and failings, from his luxurious (and debt-burdened) life as a Virginia gentleman to his passionate belief in democracy, from his tortured defense of slavery to his relationship with Sally Hemings. Jefferson was indeed multifaceted--an architect, inventor, writer, diplomat, propagandist, planter, party leader--and Bernstein explores all these roles even as he illuminates Jefferson's central place in the American enlightenment, that "revolution of ideas" that did so much to create the nation we know today. Together with the less well-remembered points in Jefferson's thinking--the nature of the Union, his vision of who was entitled to citizenship, his dread of debt (both personal and national)--they form the heart of this lively biography. In this marvel of compression and comprehension, we see Jefferson more clearly than in the massive studies of earlier generations. More important, we see, in Jefferson's visionary ideas, the birth of the nation's grand sense of purpose.

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"X. J. Kennedy's well-known travels between the realms of the comic and the serious qualify him for dual citizenship in the world of poetry. Here, the playful is on full display in verse not just 'light' but bright and delightful."-Billy Collins Peeping Tom's Cabin is the first full-length collection of light verse for adults composed by one of America's most celebrated poets. An uncompromising formalist, Kennedy uses a broad range of longstanding poetic forms, including limerick, nursery rhyme, ballad, rhymed epitaph, and clerihew. This collection includes many poems previously published in poetry and popular journals, including The Sewanee Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and Poetry. These poems honor and skewer all classes of citizen, regardless of their revered place in society. Parents, lovers, poetry critics, students, and especially notable literary figures receive Kennedy's astute comic attention. "To Someone Who Insisted I Look Up Someone" I rang them up while touring Timbuktu, Those bosom chums to whom you're known as "Who?" X. J. Kennedy has published six collections of verse, including Nude Descending a Staircase, which received the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets. His newest collection, The Lords of Misrule, received the 2004 Poets' Prize. Kennedy has also authored eighteen children's books and several textbooks on fiction and poetry. Other recognitions include the Los Angeles Book Award for Poetry, the Aiken-Taylor Award, and Guggenheim and National Arts Council fellowships. Kennedy was also given the first Michael Braude Award for light verse by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

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A powerful case for democracy and how it can adapt and survive—if we want it toIs democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country’s system of governance is being “tested” or is “under attack.” But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens to recommit to a “civic bargain” with one another to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity. That bargain also requires them to fulfill the duties of democratic citizenship: governing themselves with no “boss” except one another, embracing compromise, treating each other as civic friends, and investing in civic education for each rising generation.Manville and Ober trace the long progression toward self-government through four key moments in democracy’s history: Classical Athens, Republican Rome, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and America’s founding. Comparing what worked and what failed in each case, they draw out lessons for how modern democracies can survive and thrive. Manville and Ober show that democracy isn’t about getting everything we want; it’s about agreeing on a shared framework for pursuing our often conflicting aims. Crucially, citizens need to be able to compromise, and must not treat one another as political enemies. And we must accept imperfection; democracy is never finished but evolves and renews itself continually. As long as the civic bargain is maintained—through deliberation, bargaining, and compromise—democracy will live.

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Between 1700 and 1900, the subject of disinterment (exhumation) attracted the attention of antiquaries, who constructed a comprehensive memory of the past by 'reading' corpses as documents describing an idealised past. Between 1700 and 1900, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were stereotyped, idealised, and held as a standard by which the present time could be measured. Various figures in politics, academia, and the church pointed to historical persons such as Henry VIII, Shakespeare, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell as icons whose lives, deaths and corpses illustrated the victories of English Protestantism, the values of Monarchism (or Republicanism), and the superiority of the English culture and its language. In particular, the subject of disinterment (exhumation) attracted the attention of antiquaries. They constructed a comprehensive memory of the past by 'reading' corpses as documents describing an idealised past. These 'texts' accompanied and enhanced the traditional texts of chronicle, literature, and epitaph. This study explores the cooperation of ideology and aesthetic, the paradox of allure and revulsion, and the uncanny attraction to death. In each case there is a desire for the dead to speak in a contemporary voice; each historical personage becomes symbolic of larger aspects of the contemporary culture. The discourse of the noble body in death is reconfigured to validate English nationalist ideals and to establish the past as a Golden Era of unimpeachable superiority. It was not enough simply to study the lives and deaths of historical figures. Itwas necessary to disinter the corpses, engage physically with the dead, and experience the discourse of validation. THEA TOMAINI is Associate Professor of English (Teaching) at the University of Southern California.

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The Brave Shall Inherit the Earth is the motto of the Rajputana Rifles, the oldest rifle regiment in the pre-World-War-Two Indian Army. It is a fitting epitaph to this remarkable young officer who commanded the mortar platoon in 3/6th Rajputana Rifles during the 14th Army’s invasion of Burma in 1944. Denis O’Leary came from a family of soldiers; his father was also RajRif. Just out of officer training, a practicing Catholic, handsome, athletic, twenty years old, Denis joined 3/6th Rajputana Rifles on the eve of Field Marshal Slim’s invasion of Burma in 1944. This book is the story of his Regiment in that Homeric engagement. It is also about the close friendships formed in war between a British officer and his Rajput and Punjabi ‘Mussalman’ soldiers. The Regiment ‘had been fortunate in our introduction to war. It had been a gradual process.’ Luckily Denis learnt quickly and by the time he came to his Kurukshetra – a decisive battle to hold Pear Hill against suicidal Japanese attacks during the Irrawaddy crossings – his mettle had been tested and forged. During this battle, in which he won his first Military Cross, he was badly wounded by shrapnel and evacuated back to India for the rest of the war, only re-joining his beloved battalion in pre-Independence Burma, which this account also covers. Denis O’Leary was a life-long soldier, he is a modest historian, he writes simply but eloquently. There are few books so hauntingly beautiful about something so savage as war.

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The book considers Thomas More's early life-choices. An early letter is cited by biographers but most miss More's reference to the market place. More's great-grandson, Cresacre, a Londoner, understood it correctly, and that gives reason to trust him on other aspects of More's youth.This study is based on early testimonies, those of Erasmus, Roper, Harpsfield, Stapleton and Cresacre More, as well as More's early writings, the Pageant Verses, and his additions/omissions to the Life of Pico; evidence drawn from authors he recommended, like Hilton and Gerson; and finally, his epitaph. Attention is given to his lectures on St Augustine's City of God, and to St John Chrysostom. It is argued More studied Chrysostom's Homilies on the Gospel of St Matthew from a Greek manuscript. Chrysostom, in the introductory homily, spoke of the city and the market place, as the setting in which Christians practice the teaching of Christ.More practiced law and taught it. He was attracted to becoming a Christian humanist alongside Grocyn, Colet, Linacre, and Lily. With them he studied Greek, the classics and Fathers of the Church. Helped by them he became a man of prayer, aware of the need to seek holiness in the midst of the world as a layman. Faced with the dilemma of the humanist in choosing between the contemplative life of the philosopher and an active life of engagement with the world, he deliberately chose the active life in service to society, and the contemplative life of the Christian as a married man. This awareness and choice is what is called vocation, implying determination to persevere throughout life: More saw his life as a pilgrimage towards heaven as described in the last chapter focusing on More's last work, De tristitia, tedio, pavore, etoratione christi ante captionem eius.

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