Search results for ""david r. godine publisher inc""

“Must-Read”—Town & CountryA deeply evocative and imaginative portrayal of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a daring visionary who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself. By the time Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her Italian palazzo-style home as a museum in 1903 to showcase her collection of old masters, antiques, and objects d’art, she was already well-known for scandalizing Boston’s polite society. But when Isabella first arrived in Boston in 1861, she was twenty years old, newly married to a wealthy trader, and unsure of herself. Puzzled by the frosty reception she received from stuffy bluebloods, she strived to fit in. After two devastating tragedies and rejection from upper-society, Isabella discovered her spirit and cast off expectations. Freed by travel, Isabella explores the world of art, ideas, and letters, meeting such kindred spirits as Henry James and Oscar Wilde. From London and Paris to Egypt and Asia, she develops a keen eye for paintings and objects, and meets feminists ready to transform nineteenth century thinking in the twentieth century. Isabella becomes an eccentric trailblazer, painted by John Singer Sargent in a portrait of daring décolletage, and fond of such stunts as walking a pair of lions in the Boston Public Garden.The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman’s life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms.

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After a sudden and terrible loss, how does a loving family find their way back to the goodness and peace they once shared? Reviewers and readers have called this literary historical novel “hauntingly beautiful,” “a masterpiece of compassion,” “a page-turner and an artistic triumph.”Written by a masterful storyteller, this is a book that illuminates the journey we make through grief to healing.In the midst of a nearly perfect life, Doris Senter is thankful but wary. “We can’t ever know what will come,” she says. When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered. The family is consumed by sorrow and guilt. Slowly, the surviving family members find their way to forgiveness—of themselves and of each other. Few writers know the human heart and the burden of grief as New York Times bestselling author Meredith Hall (Without a Map). This is a radiant novel of goodness and love—both its gifts and its obligations—that will stay with readers long after the last page. With a rare tenderness and compassion, Beneficence shows broken hearts becoming whole as this family reclaims their love and peace.“People stay together, fall apart, come back together, altered. It is a book about work, about grief, about thick ongoing love. Hall’s prose is hewn, sinewy, with moments of electrifying beauty and grace.”—Boston Globe“One of the best books I've ever read.”—Simon Van Booy“As organically as it traveled to heartbreak, Beneficence progresses to the place of wisdom that lies beyond it, where we learn that a home is part of the ‘vast world of innocence and harm,’ not an island beyond it.”—Wall Street Journal“A modern American masterpiece.”—Dani Shapiro“If the word ‘luminous’ didn’t already exist, you’d have to invent it to describe Meredith Hall’s radiant new novel Beneficence.”—Richard Russo“These voices from the past speak so clearly to our time, at a moment when many of us wonder whether we’ll lose the things that we consider blessings....Beneficence is a quiet but steady book, one that echoes ancient and important rhythms.”—Washington Post“A quiet gem...hard to put down.”—Library Journal“Hauntingly beautiful, emotionally devastating, and infused with great compassion.”—Kim Barnes“With wisdom and compassion, Meredith Hall writes about the capacity for atonement. Goodness. Generosity to see deeply, to live through fear and pain on your journey toward the awareness of splendor.”—Ursula Hegi

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“Seething Nation! Vast & Flowing! Day & Night & Dawn!” Poet Edward Sanders tells the story of America in incandescent verse. Bold, sweeping, investigative, rhapsodic, hilarious, heart-rendering, thought-provoking, Edward Sanders’ three-volume, America: A History in Verse uniquely and brilliantly tells “the story of America...a million stranded fabric / woven by billions of hands & minds.” It is by turns angry, wistful, defiant and extremely funny re-inventions of historical and biographical worlds, a highly original mix of chronicle, anecdote, document, reportage, paean and polemic. Volume 3, 1962-1970 begins with “the time of a randy young president with a bad back / who attracted the squint-eyed scorn / & even the hatred of the / National Security Grouch Apparatus,” of “a strange man named Johnson / & then the reappearance of an even stranger man named Nixon.” It was the time of Vietnam, civil rights, space shots, and evil—”the only word for some of it.” But it was also the time of the poet’s youth and Oh! what bliss to be young, alive, and high in those excruciatingly interesting times, those days “when we searched for meaning / in the sawdust floors of rebel cafés / or the stardust soars of psychedelic haze.” What a whirling hurry of years it was, what a flash of time! And what a necessary, twenty-first-century Whitman Sanders is, channeling Clio for our great nation, ”where so many sing without cease / work without halt / shoulder without shudder / to bring the Feather of Justice to every / bell tower, biome & blade of grass.” Long may Sanders sing us the 1960s, and long may his America “dwell in peace, freedom & equality / out on its spiraling arm / in the Milky Way.”

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“One of the most sinuous stylists and searching minds of the twentieth century.”—Washington Post Forty essays on history, art, and literature to lift your mind and spirit. Guy Davenport provides links between music and sculpture, modernist poets and classic philosophers, the past and present—and pretty much everything in between. Not only had Davenport seemingly read (and often translated from the original languages) everything ever written, he also had the ability, expressed with unalloyed enthusiasm, to draw connections between how cultural synapses make, define, and reflect our civilization.Davenport serves as the reader’s guide through history and literature, pointing out the values and avenues of thought that have shaped our ideas and our thinking. In these forty essays we find fresh thinking on Greek culture, Whitman, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Melville, Tolkien, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Charles Olson, Marianne Mo

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A moving and inspiring anthology of masterful essays on stories that touch the hearts and minds of readers. “A writer,” Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow once said, “is a reader who is moved to emulation.” New York Times bestselling novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III took that idea and invited acclaimed authors to write about short stories that altered their view of life and their place in it—short stories that, ultimately, made them want to write something substantial themselves. Here is Richard Russo on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Joyce Carol Oates on John Updike’s “A&P,” Tobias Wolff on Hawthorne’s “Wakefield,” Michael Cunningham on James Joyce’s “The Dead.” Readers will gain new insight into these masterfully written stories but also on the contributors’ own lives and work. The fifty contributors are T.C. Boyle, Russell Banks, Richard Bausch, Robert Boswell, Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, Madison Smartt Bell, Ron Carlson, Lan Samantha Chang, Michael Cunningham, Junot Diaz, Anthony Doerr, Emma Donoghue, Stuart Dybek, Dagoberto Gilb, Julia Glass, Mary Gordon, Lauren Groff, Jennifer Haigh, Jane Hamilton, Ron Hansen, Paul Harding, Ann Hood, Pam Houston, Gish Jen, Charles Johnson, Phil Klay, Dennis Lehane, Lois Lowry, Colum McCann, Sue Miller, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, Bich Nguyen, Joyce Carol Oates, Stewart O’Nan, Peter Orner, ZZ Packer, Ann Patchett, Edith Pearlman, Jayne Ann Phillips, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Anna Quindlen, Ron Rash, Richard Russo, Dani Shapiro, Mona Simpson, Jess Walter, Tobias Wolff, and Meg Wolitzer. Reaching Inside will remind you why you fell in love with reading.

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A gardener’s pandemic journal that combines memoir with an exploration of the natural world both inside and outside the garden. In March 2020, Margot Anne Kelley was watching seeds germinate in her greenhouse. At high risk from illness, the planning, planting, and tending to seedlings took on extra significance. She set out to make her pandemic garden thrive but also to better understand the very nature of seeds and viruses. As seeds became seedlings, became plants, became food, Kelley looks back over the last few millennia as successions of pandemics altered human beings and global culture. Seeds and viruses serve as springboards for wide-ranging reflections, such as their shared need for someone to transport them, the centrality of movement to being alive, and the domestication of plants as an act of becoming co-dependent. Pandemic viruses only occurred through humankind’s settling down, taking up agriculture, and givin

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After a sudden and terrible loss, how does a loving family find their way back to the goodness and peace they once shared? Reviewers and readers have called this literary historical novel “hauntingly beautiful,” “a masterpiece of compassion,” “a page-turner and an artistic triumph.”Written by a masterful storyteller, this is a book that illuminates the journey we make through grief to healing.In the midst of a nearly perfect life, Doris Senter is thankful but wary. “We can’t ever know what will come,” she says. When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered. The family is consumed by sorrow and guilt. Slowly, the surviving family members find their way to forgiveness—of themselves and of each other. Few writers know the human heart and the burden of grief as New York Times bestselling author Meredith Hall (Without a Map). This is a radiant novel of goodness and love—both its gifts and its obligations—that will stay with readers long after the last page. With a rare tenderness and compassion, Beneficence shows broken hearts becoming whole as this family reclaims their love and peace.“People stay together, fall apart, come back together, altered. It is a book about work, about grief, about thick ongoing love. Hall’s prose is hewn, sinewy, with moments of electrifying beauty and grace.”—Boston Globe“One of the best books I've ever read.”—Simon Van Booy“As organically as it traveled to heartbreak, Beneficence progresses to the place of wisdom that lies beyond it, where we learn that a home is part of the ‘vast world of innocence and harm,’ not an island beyond it.”—Wall Street Journal“A modern American masterpiece.”—Dani Shapiro“If the word ‘luminous’ didn’t already exist, you’d have to invent it to describe Meredith Hall’s radiant new novel Beneficence.”—Richard Russo“These voices from the past speak so clearly to our time, at a moment when many of us wonder whether we’ll lose the things that we consider blessings....Beneficence is a quiet but steady book, one that echoes ancient and important rhythms.”—Washington Post“A quiet gem...hard to put down.”—Library Journal“Hauntingly beautiful, emotionally devastating, and infused with great compassion.”—Kim Barnes“With wisdom and compassion, Meredith Hall writes about the capacity for atonement. Goodness. Generosity to see deeply, to live through fear and pain on your journey toward the awareness of splendor.”—Ursula Hegi

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“It is a heartbreaking book, a gorgeous book...In Night Came with Many Stars, Van Booy finds the weakness, grace and beauty of common lives fully lived.”—NPR, “Books We Love” “Not to miss!”—USA Today In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol’s daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy’s spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light. “What you give in this world,” an old man tells his grandson, “will be given back to you.” Those words illuminate the actions within this unforgettable novel and its connected characters. A young man survives two nearly fatal accidents. A Black family saves an orphaned white boy. A pregnant teenager is rescued by the side of the road. A teenager with developmental disabilities is given his first job. Each incident grows in meaning and power over many decades as we see connections sometimes felt but not always apparent to the people themselves. “Everything was moving,” observes Samuel (Carol’s grandson) in the Kentucky woods. “An invisible force that was everywhere, and made everything touch.” Told by a master storyteller, Night Came with Many Stars is a rare novel that reveals how wondrous, mysterious, and magically connected life can be—the light Simon Van Booy creates illuminates our own lives.

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How do simple words and images make a children’s picture book so magical that one reading can create a cherished memory for life? Here are 100 books that amply prove the picture book is an art form.Here are books you’ll remember and new gems to discover. From The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) to Last Stop on Market Street (2015), each of the 100 books is presented with a cover and inside spread as author Chris Loker explains the qualities that combine to make a successful picture book: the interplay between words and images, the dynamic pulse of picture and narrative that compels us to turn the page and follow the story, the sometimes quirky elements that appeal to both children and adults alike. It affirms what we all instinctively know, and have known since childhood — that a picture book is literature, art, and theater all rolled into one, miraculously blended and irresistibly presented.Additionally, A Shimmer of Joy provides an intriguing array of information, not only about the books but also about the authors, artists, publishers, and designers who created them. Along the way, the reader gains insight into the evolving eras of children’s literature and book publishing in the 20th and 21st century, with fascinating stories of its publication history and biographies of the creators.Anyone will gain a new, deeper, appreciation for the picture book while also remembering a time when, sitting in a classroom or on a lap, someone read you a book and opened up your world.For the collector, bibliophile, or children’s book enthusiast, this collection is guaranteed to provide nothing but joy. “All spot-on choices….a shop-window of the creative versatility embedded in children’s picture books over the decades.”—The Book Collector

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“The story of a book-making life.”—New York Times “The lovely colors, tasteful art and elegant typography are an abiding reminder to a hurried world that some gifts of grace endure. That promise is realized in Godine’s books, the gold standard of commercial bookmaking.”—Wall Street Journal David R. Godine, the retired founder of the press, conducts a personal tour of the most memorable books he published during his 50-year career. From his earliest days as a letterpress printer to the present digital era, Godine managed to survive, and sporadically thrive, against all odds and challenges. For more than fifty years, this publishing house tried to make good on the founder’s claim to “Publish books that matter for people who care.” Books that might, and often did, make a difference. In fiction and nonfiction, biography, photography, art and architecture, the graphic arts, children’s books, and more, the company maintained an open door policy, attempting to discover and nurture new talent, rediscovering and reprinting older and unjustly neglected classics. Its program includes first American editions of such acclaimed authors as John Banville, Richard Rodriguez, Noel Perrin, Andre Dubus, Janet Malcolm, and Georges Perec. Its photographers have included Sally Mann, Paul Caponigro, Yousuf Karsh, Nicholas Nixon, George Tice, Rosamond Purcell, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and Julia Margaret Cameron, among others. Its list of children’s books, with authors and illustrators as diverse as Mary Azarian, Dylan Thomas, Barbara McClintock, Andrea Wisnewski, Edward Ardizzone, William Steig, Daniel C. Beard, Saki, and Frances Hodgson Burnett, have been embraced by reviewers, bookstores, and the public for two generations. Among many others, the Nonpareil list has reprinted the work of Edmund Wilson, George Orwell, Donald Hall, Iris Origo, Paul Horgan, William Gass, Will Cuppy, Ludwig Bemelmans, William Maxwell, Wright Morris, and Paula Fox. The Verba Mundi series introduced American readers to classics of foreign literature by Aharon Appelfeld, Dino Buzzati, Robert Musil, José Donoso, and two Nobel Laureates, J.M.G. Le Clézio and Patrick Modiano.As publishing history, Godine at Fifty presents a record of an era that began in 1970 as the reign of hot metal type that had endured for almost 500 years was coming to an end, when retailers were mostly brick-and-mortar stores, when small publishers thrived, when library purchases were primarily books, and when correspondence was carried on through letters and the telephone. It was an industry that had not substantially changed for a century. So this is, as well, the story of a sea change—in publishing practices, in technology, in retailing, and in corporate structures. Divided into twenty-four chapters and describing almost 300 titles, it remains primarily a personal story—the record, told through the books themselves, of a staunchly independent publisher who pursued his own interests, expanded on his own passions, and took the unconventional position that somewhere out there were probably enough readers that shared his peculiar obsessions to insure his survival. It is also the back story of books and authors, some famous, some little known, who had a story to tell, and what was required to bring that story, through the many and complex dimensions of the publishing process, to the attention of the world.

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In the summer of 1854, Longfellow wrote in his diary "I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions as whole." What emerged the next year was "The Song of Hiawatha," a composite of legends, folklore, myth, and characters that presents, in short, lilting lines (who can forget "By the shore of Gitche-Gumme / By the shining Big-Sea Water"?) the life-story of a real Indian, who provides the focus for the narrative thread of this epic drama of high adventure, tragedy and conflict.The aim was not to tell a particular or specific story but to unite the strands of various Indian legends, to present a sympathetic portrait of many Native American tribes, and especially to disclose their profound relationship with the natural world. This when both government policies and an expanding, land-hungry population were just beginning their inexorable campaign of displacement and annihilation.The poem received a decidedly mixed reception. Our own "Boston Traveller" revealed its biases: "We cannot help but express our regret that our own pet national poet should not have selected as a theme of his muse something better and higher than the silly legends of the savage aborigines." Despite this, the poem entered into our canon of great narratives, and was revived again in 1891 when Remington, surely the most renowned artist of the West, provided with new pen and ink drawings.This handsome new, and freshly reset, edition (the only unabridged version in print) presents the full text, includes all 400 of the original Remington illustrations, and provides an index of the Indian names and their meanings.

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Like a long, funny letter from an old friend, an album of drawings by the legendary singer and activist for social justice, Joan Baez. Since retiring from active performing, Baez has focused her formidable talents on painting and drawing. This collection of drawings shows another side of Baez: lovingly loose and charming sketches on reoccurring themes such as politics, relationships, women, animals, and family. Each section, organized thematically, includes an introductory piece by the artist. Baez approaches her line drawings as exercises in freedom: she begins drawing upside down—often using her non-dominant hand—without any preconceived notion of where the lines might lead her. Beginning with her seminal debut album in 1960, Baez has been a musical force of nature of incalculable influence whose earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into the rock vernacular. In 1963, she introduced Bob Dylan to the world, beginning a tradition of mutual mentoring that continued across her many recordings. As a lifetime advocate for non-violent social change, she marched on the front line of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., shined a spotlight on the Free Speech Movement, took to the fields with Cesar Chavez, organized resistance to the Vietnam War, and inspired Vaclav Havel in his fight for a Czech Republic. Am I Pretty When I Fly? reveals yet another side of a beloved icon.

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An intimate, autobiographical poetry collection from legendary artist and activist, Joan Baez. Joan Baez shares poems for or about her contemporaries (such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Jimi Hendrix), reflections from her childhood, personal thoughts, and cherished memories of her family, including pieces about her younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. Speaking to the people, places, and moments that have had the greatest impact on her art, this collection is an inspiring personal diary in the form of poetry. While Baez has been writing poetry for decades, she’s never shared it publicly. Poems about her life, her family, about her passions for nature and art, have piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper. Now, for the first time ever, her life is shared revealing pivotal life experiences that shaped an icon, offering a never-before-seen look into the reminiscences and musings of a great artist. Like a late-ni

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The liberating power of anger has rarely felt so good and healing as in this complete collection of a landmark in feminist poetry.“She digs her teeth into the slaveries of woman, she cries them aloud with such fulminating energy that the chains begin to melt of themselves. Reaching into the hive of her angers, she plucks out images of fear and delight that are transparent yet loaded with the darknesses of life. Diane Wakoski is an important and moving poet.”—The New York TimesIn 1971, Diane Wakoski published The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems to tremendous acclaim. In the decades that followed, she wrote additional “betrayal” poems, which are now collected here in one volume for the first time. Relevant, moving—at times shocking—it is Wakoski’s honesty and bravery as an artist that continues to astonish, delight, inspire, and liberate readers.Wakoski responds to betrayal in a variety of ways including fantasies such as drilling bullet holes into the bodies of unfaithful lovers. But even her anger can be winking, as in the book’s sly dedication to “all those men who betrayed me at one time or another, in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their necks.” There is joy here because it is self-knowledge that the writer seeks, as in the collection’s title poem: So some white wolves and I will sing on your grave, old man and dance for the joy of your death. “Is this an angry statement?” “No, it is a statement of joy.” “Will the sun shine again?” “Yes, yes, yes,” because I’m going to dance dance danceDiane Wakoski’s art as a confessional, storytelling poet has rarely been equaled. Her revelations become shared emotional truth with readers. The collection’s new introduction by poet and Green Mountains Review editor Elizabeth A. I. Powell gives context to the long wake of Wakoski’s inspiring influence on generations of readers. Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch is for anyone who ever lost a love and wishes to embrace the freedom, rather than the pain, it can bring.

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A journey through both family history and the fascinating and quintessentially American history of New England’s Merrimack Valley, its farmers, and the immigrant workers caught up in the industrial textile age. After years of living away, Jane Brox made the decision to return to the family farm of her birth, where her aging father still tended the crops. Brox twines two narratives, personal and historic, as she captures the cadences of farm life and those who sustain it, at a time when the viability of both are waning. Amid the turmoil after her father’s death, Brox begins a search for her family’s story. As Brox explores, she also reflects on the place of the family farm as it evolved from the Pilgrims’ brutal progress at Plymouth to the modern world, where much of our food is produced by industrial agriculture while the family farm is both marginalized and romanticized. In the Merrimack Valley brings togeth

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In the desegregation era of the 1970s, a first grader copes with being bused to a white school in this story for young children about racism and an essential time of change. “One of the Ten Best Books of the Year,” The New York Times.Brewster is excited about starting first grade . . . until Mama announces that he'll be attending Central, a school in the white part of town. Mama says they have art and music and a library bursting with books, but Brewster isn’t so sure he’ll fit in.And he’s right. Being black at a white school isn't easy. Brewster winds up spending his first day in detention at the library. But there he meets a very special person: Miss O’Grady. The librarian sees into Brewster’s heart and gives him not only the gift of books but also encourages Brewster to believe in himself.This is an invaluable, unique, view into a tumultous time and the good that came into the lives of school children.

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A personal look at the buildings that define Yale University through the eyes of alumni. “The Stones of Yale is a delight—fresh and highly observant. I will be turning to its pages again and again, I have no doubt.”—David McCullough Artist Adam Van Doren wanted to know how Yale University’s buildings made people feel to live and to study in them. He spoke to alumni as diverse as actor Sam Waterston, the writer Christopher Buckley, Yale librarian Judith Schiff, former NFL great Calvin Hill, architect Cesar Pelli, among others, about their experiences and illustrates this book in gorgeous watercolor paintings of the buildings of Yale that interest him most. Rather than an architectural analysis of buildings, Van Doren explores the visceral experience of seeing them and being inside them. This is one-of-a-kind approach that will interest anyone who’s felt the intangible power of a building and a place.

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In 1968 the photographer Richard Brown fulfilled a romantic childhood dream when he moved to the Northeast Kingdom, a remote corner of Vermont just barely entering the twentieth century. There he encountered a way of life that was fast disappearing, a land of sheep, cattle, work horses, wood-burning stoves, and small family-run farms far removed from the industrial Northeast. Determined to record it before it disappeared, he saw a pastoral vision where, “for the briefest interval, a window opened and the spirit of Vermont’s past—granite hills cleared and formed, hard lives lived and lost, struggle and endurance, a harsh land made starkly beautiful by nature and man—was made palpable.” He saw the land and also a people whose “endless hours of backbreaking, monotonous work were spent with a quiet ferocity” and who believed their “age-old labors were a struggle waged against time itself – labors that might just hold modernity at bay.” And Brown did record it, with an 8 x 10″ large plate view camera. Not only the hauntingly beautiful landscape but also the people who stayed and worked the stubborn hills and “did so with great but fierce attachment.” This is a great ode to an America that has passed before our eyes almost without comment or notice. It is a valiant, indeed a brilliant, effort to make the past tangible, to bring it back to life.

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“Writing with tenderness and understated humor, Wisnewski portrays disabilities as a simple fact of life—the obstacles that Trio surmounts are less about physical limitation than about learning how to use his body to get where he wants to be.”—Publishers WeeklyOne of the Best Children’s Picture Books of the Year—Kirkus ReviewsMeet Trio, the runt of the litter, born with only three legs, but very much the little cat that could. He lives his life as any other kitten would: pouncing, sneaking, and jumping like any other feline. Trio especially loves playing with the eleven chickens that share the garage and garden, and he is game to try all their activities: digging up bugs, rolling in the dust, and even caring for eggs. The latter requires real effort, especially making it up into the nesting box, but once he figures it out he returns to it faithfully every day. And his persistence pays off. One day, an egg starts hatching beneath him. Little does he know, the chick that pops out will be his best friend.This is a story about diversity, overcoming obstacles, and acceptance. It is a story children will love—and a natural conversation starter with your child about differences.

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A collection of quotations from pundits and poets, artists and authors for dog lovers There’s something new and memorable in here for everyone.James Charlton categorizes quotes into sections to easily locate a message to fit your mood or life circumstance. Lonely? Love and Loyalty. Aging? Old Dogs. Bad day at work? Barking and Biting. Cat scratched your furniture? Dogs Are Better. Despairing? Love a Dog. Witty and tender, with hundreds of quotes to choose from, this book doggedly compiles all the best words ever written or spoken about man’s best friend, all complemented by cartoonist Arnold Roth’s artwork. And remember what Mark Twain said: “Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

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An alphabet book that celebrates the birth of the United States of America. Wendell Minor’s bright illustrations and expressive prose introduce young readers to the rich history behind the colonies and Revolutionary Era.A is for “Acts,” the British tax that incited unrest amongst American patriots. Z is for “Zane,” the daughter of Patriot Colonel Zane, Elizabeth, who saves the day by delivering more gunpowder for the deprived troops at Fort Henry. In between, Paul Revere, Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, the Boston Tea Party, and the Liberty Bell, and many more people, places, and events of the young America grace these pages. A chronological timeline at the end puts all the events in order.

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A child’s art comes to life and takes him on an out-of-this-world adventure. In this bewitchingly wordless black-and-white picture book, one young child explores the boundless reaches of his imagination. Armed only with a pencil and a pad of paper, he transports himself to the moon, the deep sea, and remote jungles where he meets new friends, visits undiscovered words, and makes his way back home again to his own bed before dawn. Damon Lehrer's visual narrative, a penciled mix of line work and detailed graphite drawings, will appeal to readers of all ages who are invited to help tell the story.

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Drop friends a note with these Cape Cod notecards—featuring the photography of Don Krohn. The outside of each card features one of six different photographs (each duplicated once for a total of 12 cards with matching envelopes) that have captured the Cape during summer, its most cherished season. The inside of each card is blank—ready for your message.

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Catie Copley en voyage á Québec Catie Copley est un labrador retriever noir qui mène une vie exceptionnelle en tant qu’Ambassadrice canine au Fairmont Copley Plaza à Boston. Son travail consiste à accueillir les clients, les faire sentir comme à la maison et aider Jim dans son travail de Chef Concierge de l’hôtel. Santol, qui fût entraîné comme chien-guide, tout comme Catie, est son homologue au Fairmont Le Château Frontenac dans la ville de Québec, Canada. Catie est une chienne très distinguée et bien élevée. Elle est surprise le jour où une grosse bête noire et blanche poilue vient la saluer, lui vole son jouet en forme de homard et s’enfuit. Au début, elle est réticente, mais lorsqu’elle apprend à connaître l’exubérant Santol, ils deviennent vite de très bons amis. Elle est triste lorsque son nouvel ami doit repartir chez lui au Canada. Cependant, lorsque Jim lui oVre de l’amener en vacances – à Québec ! – elle est très excitée. Ce sont ses premières vacances et c’est aussi la première fois qu’elle est laissée seule avec des inconnus, dans une ville étrange où on parle une langue diVérente. Santol lui présente des chèvres et des chevaux et lui fait découvrir des odeurs et des aliments intéressants. Catie trouve qu’il y a plein d’occasions pour l’aventure . . . peut-être même un peu trop.

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This selection, chosen by Andrew Motion himself from three decades of work, is an outstanding representation of the British poet’s varied body of work—elegies, sonnets, poems of social and political observation, and unsentimental poems about childhood, post-war England, the natural world. About his poetry, Motion has observed: “I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they’re in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realized. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it’s this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin.” A significant and consistent feature of Motion’s work, throughout his shifts in style and changes in imaginative topographies, is his signature clarity of observation, his unwillingness to sacrifice intelligibility or embrace opacity. “The best poems,” Motion has said, “are those which speak to us about the important things in our lives in a way that we never forget.”

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An account of the arduous journey the Arctic caribou undertake to give birth to their young.

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Share an old-fashioned New England Christmas with your children—back to a time when making the presents was far more satisfying than buying them.Lucy Wells likes planning ahead. In her quaint New England town the leaves have just begun to change, but Lucy is already thinking of Christmas. She begins to make presents for her family: a pincushion for her mother, a doll for her sister, and a pen-wiper for her best friend. For the whole family, her parents have ordered a new modern range stove. The days grow colder and shorter, the snow grows deeper, and everyone grows more excited. Finally, the day arrives Lucy and her family travel to the South Danbury Church on Christmas to exchange gifts, sing carols with the whole town, and perform in the Christmas pageant.Poet laureate Donald Hall (author of The Ox-Cart Man and the companion to this book, Lucy’s Summer) grew up spending as much time as he could on his grandfather’s farm in rural New Hampshire. It was there he milked cows, raised sheep, and heard stories about Christmases past that are brought to life in this read-aloud picture book for young children.

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A stunning collection of photographs by the marine photographer, Norman Fortier. Sailing and sailors, harbors and fishermen—selected from more than 100,000 negatives. It is also a moving and unforgettable evocation of a time and way of life that has already passed into memory. Since 1947, the marine photographer Norman Fortier embraced the south coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island as his studio and his inspiration. His cameras have captured images of every conceivable description on the waters from Block Island to outer Cape Cod and the offshore islands: yachts and small craft under sail and at anchor; draggers and trawlers bound to and from Georges Bank; runabouts and sportfishermen dockside and at speed; commercial vessels and tall ships. Always, his images capture the beauty and ever-changing moods of the region’s coastline, harbors, and islands Over the years his photographs have appeared in America’s best boating magazines. In 1967 he published his first collection of yachting images, The Bay and the Sound, which rapidly went through four printings. More recently, the New Bedford Whaling Museum celebrated Fortier’s six decades as a professional photographer with a major retrospective exhibition of his work displaying his deep roots in New Bedford, his intense love of Buzzards Bay, the Elizabeth Islands, and surrounding waters, and his uncanny ability to depict the complex interrelationship of humans, boats, and the sea. Beginning with early images of Padanaram Harbor, On the Wind carries the viewer west to Rhode Island Sound and Newport, east to Mattapoisett, Marion, and harbors at the head of Buzzards Bay. Succeeding chapters cover Martha’s Vineyard and the offshore islands, the port of New Bedford and working craft, the grand spectacle that is the New York Yacht Club’s annual summer cruise, and boats designed and built in South Dartmouth by the legendary Concordia Company.

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Story-poems of rural Maine, of neighbors, of seasons, and of life lived slowly and fully.Kate Barnes wrote wise and moving verse as Robert Creeley said, “of a deep and heartfelt clarity.” She lived and wrote on a farm in Appleton, Maine and was the state’s first Poet Laureate. Her poems contain wisdom gently imparted as life lessons. You’ll feel a sense of connection from her work – a connection with the past, with the earth, with her friends, and with the human condition superbly defined.

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With photos and text, Jonathan Williams (poet, publisher, and raconteur) pays tribute to heroes of the spirit from Paul Strand and Buckminster Fuller to Wendell Berry and James Laughlin.

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The eight stories in this collection explore the boundary conditions between self and others. Social realities—racial and ethnic tensions, sexual harassment and abuse—provide the backdrop for struggles that ultimately take place in the heart. While Naslund’s characters accept that their inner tides cannot be brought into obedience, sometimes, in the act of recognizing the force of their own hopes, needs, and fears, they learn to navigate those waters.

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Twelve iconoclastic and eye-opening essays on life and culture.

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A glorious, illustrated, celebration of a lifetime love affair with dining, by the author-illustrator of the classic Madeline series. Here is the best of Ludwig Bemelmans on the subject he loved most: the good table. The entrancing memories and charming pictures collected here transport the reader behind the scenes of the great hotels of Europe and America—including the immortal Hotel Splendide—and such restaurants as the Tour d’Argent in Paris and Le Pavillon in New York. Memorable dishes, the eccentric geniuses of the kitchens who created them, the opulent and often astonishing patrons who ordered them, the legendary wines and the occasions they toasted, are all evoked in rich and piquant flavor. The gifted and exuberant Ludwig Bemelmans was trained as a boy for a career as a restauranteur, and La Bonne Table is in effect his gastonomical autobiography. The high—and sometimes riotous low—points of his life with food, from Austrian cafes to the late, lamented Ritz of New York, are narrated with delight and zest as he celebrates beer and sausages, pressed duck and caviar, and the chefs who cooked for him. He remembers with decidedly mixed emotions the ways of the busboy and the waiter, and the qualities that make up the perfect maitre d’. He muses over great menus and great eaters—and soon makes the reader very hungry. Here, truly, is a feast of reading on the art of dining well.

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Screams from the Balcony is a collection of letters chronicling Charles Bukowski's life as he tries to get published and work at a postal office, all while drinking and gambling.

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