Search results for ""author ivan"

Mr. Kimball, one of the best of our cultural critics, offers a lively and penetrating study of genius—and pseudo-genius—at work, and investigates the use and abuse of intelligence. Drawing on figures as various as Plutarch and Hegel, Kierkegaard and P.G. Wodehouse, Elias Canetti and Anthony Trollope, he provides a sharply observed tour of Western intellectual and artistic aspiration. A master of the genre, as collections of his pieces attest, none more impressively than this set. —Booklist Starred Review

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Prize-winning reporter Robert Shogan draws on the lessons of nine presidential elections to show where the press goes wrong in the making of the president. The media, Mr. Shogan argues, now play the role of enablers. Without fully realizing it, they allow and abet the abuse of the political process by the candidates and their handlers. Shogan has got it right....Bad News is a wake-up call for journalists everywhere. —Sam Donaldson, ABC News. If there is such a thing as a good book about 'bad news,' this is it. —David S. Broder, Washington Post

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From "Piss Christ" to elephant dung, a decade of art wars has agitated public opinion and incited art world fury but has yielded little conventional wisdom about what ails our art institutions. In this sharp-eyed and authoritative investigation, Lynne Munson identifies an intolerance that overtook the art world in the postmodern era. By exploring the personalities and workings of such major institutions as the National Endowment for the Arts and Harvard University's Department of Fine Arts, she shows how a new dogmatism established itself in museums, academia, and even the artist's studio, where postmodernism favored experimental art at the expense of the traditional, and placed limits on what might be funded, exhibited, studied, and created. Drawing on original research, including more than a hundred interviews with artists, scholars, curators, museum directors, critics, and government officials, Exhibitionism gets behind the façade of the NEA's visual arts program to document its shift from excellence to fashionability; describes how one community of New York painters survived by taking refuge in co-op galleries; examines the "new museology" that has revised not only the content of art exhibitions but the very shape of museums; explains how Harvard's arts program, a one-time beacon for connoisseurial study, has devolved into a theory-driven curriculum nearly divorced from objects. With an eye for art and an ear for politics, Ms. Munson has produced the most important contribution yet to the art debate. With 8 pages of full-color illustrations.

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There are many Stevensons behind the initials RLS, but the one that has endeared him to readers for so long is surely the fighter, battling to stay alive. Jorge Luis Borges described his brief life as courageous and heroic. In Philip Callow’s absorbing new biography, one can see why. Doctors, called repeatedly to what should have been his deathbed, would find a scarecrow, twitching and alive. A sickly child, Louis became in turn a bohemian dandy, a literary gypsy traipsing through the mountains of France with a donkey, and at twenty-eight the lover of an American woman ten years his senior, the fabulous Fanny. He escaped his Scottish town, his family, his friends who had mapped out a literary career for him in London, and instead went chaotically across the Atlantic and overland to California in poverty and despair to reach his beloved, whereupon he escaped into marriage and committed himself to being a nomad. He sailed the Pacific and dreamed of being an explorer; his restlessness was Victorian. With the power of a novelist and the grace of a poet (of which he is both), Philip Callow captures this great writer and his many contradictions. He was a born exile longing for home; a northerner who thrived on tropic sunshine; a near atheist who organized Sunday services for his Samoan workers. He has been called Scotland's finest writer of English prose, a more economical Walter Scott. As an essayist he equaled Hazlitt. In emotional crises he wept openly, to the embarrassment of his wife. “His feelings are always his reasons,” said Henry James, and caught in a sentence the secret of Stevenson’s popularity as one of the last of the classic storytellers. Louis brings him alive. With 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.

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One of the great short masterpieces of nineteenth-century thought, Physics and Politics is in essence a brilliant essay in social psychology. It defines with grim humor the conditions of stability and social progress. “Physics” in Bagehot’s book, refers to natural science; “politics” to social science. His vastly stimulating analysis was the first important effort to comprehend the implications of the new science (especially Darwinism) for the study of political affairs. In the process, Bagehot makes unforgettably clear the complex, often tragic relation between individual and collective happiness. Roger Kimball’s introduction and notes place Bagehot’s ideas in perspective for today’s reader and evaluate the continuing usefulness of his observations. "We go to Bagehot for something that seems very difficult to convey accurately through mere definition or single examples—the true character of political man. This character, in turn, is important to discover, because on it depends the possibility of leading a life above ‘physics,’ a life better than that of the jungle."—Jacques Barzun.

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In Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kierkegaard's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Kierkegaard's work; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Kierkegaard within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

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The only play in which Ibsen denies the validity of revolt, The Wild Duck suggest that under certain conditions, domestic falsehoods are entirely necessary to survival. In its open form, its harshly satirical tone, and its unresolved conclusion, the play contains the strongest criticism Ibsen ever directed against himself. Robert Brustein’s new adaptation makes The Wild Duck beautifully playable for today’s audiences.

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“Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one’s friends to Western civilization.”—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe. “Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading.”—Richard Bernstein, New York Times. “Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise.”—Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal. These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

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In Hegel in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Hegel's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Hegel's work; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Hegel within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

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“Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one’s friends to Western civilization.”—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe. “Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading.”—Richard Bernstein, New York Times. “Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise.”—Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal. These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

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“Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one’s friends to Western civilization.”—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe. “Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading.”—Richard Bernstein, New York Times. “Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise.”—Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal. These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

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The most gripping of Ibsen’s later, brooding self-portraits, The Master Builder explores the nature of a messianic hero pulled down from the heights to reside in the community of men, and now painfully laboring to drag himself up again. Thanks to Mr. Rudall’s fresh translation, the language of the play is no longer archaic or Victorian.

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Most of the really invigorating action in the art world today is a quiet affair, Mr. Kimball observes. It usually involves not the latest thing but permaneZnt things—they can be new or old, but their relevance is measured not by the buzz they create but by the silences they inspire. With reviews and essays composed over the last twenty years and revised for this book, Art's Prospect illuminates some of the chief spiritual itineraries of modern art. There is much to be learned and enjoyed in these stimulating, provocative, and elegant essays. —Paul Johnson

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College tuition has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation in the past two decades. While faculties like to blame the rising costs on fancy athletic buildings and bloated administrations, professors are hardly getting the short end of the stick. Spending on instruction has increased twenty-two percent over the past decade at private research universities. Parents and taxpayers shouldn't get overheated about faculty salaries: tenure is where they should concentrate their anger. The jobs-for-life entitlement that comes with an ivory tower position is at the heart of so many problems with higher education today. Veteran journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley, an alumna of one of the country's most expensive and best-endowed schools, explores how tenure has promoted a class system in higher education, leaving contingent faculty who are barely making minimum wage and have no time for students to teach large swaths of the undergraduate population. She shows how the institution of tenure forces junior professors to keep their mouths shut for a decade or more if they disagree with senior faculty about anything from politics to research methods. Lastly, she examines how the institution of tenure—with the job security, mediocre salaries, and low levels of accountability it entails—may be attracting the least innovative and interesting members of our society into teaching.

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Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, revisionist historians have been sympathetic to the racial justice motivations of the Radical Republican Reconstruction policies that followed the Civil War. But this emphasis on positive goals and accomplishments has obscured the role of the Republicans in the overthrow of their own program. Rich with insight, Michael W. Fitzgerald's new interpretation of Reconstruction shows how the internal dynamics of this first freedom movement played into the hands of white racist reactionaries in the South. Splendid Failure recounts how postwar financial missteps and other governance problems quickly soured idealistic Northerners on the practical consequences of the Radical Republican plan, and set the stage for the explosion that swept Southern Republicans from power and resulted in Northern acquiescence to the bloody repression of voting rights. The failed strategy offers a chastening example to present-day proponents of racial equality.

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In the 1920s, a revived Ku Klux Klan burst into prominence as a self-styled defender of American values, a magnet for white Protestant community formation, and a would-be force in state and national politics. But the hooded bubble burst at mid-decade, and the social movement that had attracted several million members and additional millions of sympathizers collapsed into insignificance. Since the 1990s, intensive community-based historical studies have reinterpreted the 1920s Klan. Rather than the violent, racist extremists of popular lore and current observation, 1920s Klansmen appear in these works as more mainstream figures. Sharing a restrictive American identity with most native-born white Protestants after World War I, hooded knights pursued fraternal fellowship, community activism, local reforms, and paid close attention to public education, law enforcement (especially Prohibition), and moral/sexual orthodoxy. No recent general history of the 1920s Klan movement reflects these new perspectives on the Klan. One Hundred Percent American incorporates them while also highlighting the racial and religious intolerance, violent outbursts, and political ambition that aroused widespread opposition to the Invisible Empire. Balanced and comprehensive, One Hundred Percent American explains the Klan's appeal, its limitations, and the reasons for its rapid decline in a society confronting the reality of cultural and religious pluralism.

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The sudden disappearance of Judge Joseph Crater nearly 75 years ago led to perhaps the most famous missing persons case of the twentieth century. Crater, a justice of New York's state Supreme Court, vanished amid political scandal. Within days, questions arose about Judge Crater's finances and his liaisons with numerous women. A public frenzy about what happened to Crater provided impetus for scrutiny of New York's Tammany Hall political machine—and ultimately for the vanishing of Tammany Hall as well. The cast of characters in this book—the first-ever serious look at the Crater case—includes Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor who named Crater to the bench; Senator Robert Wagner, Crater's mentor, but also the leader with the most to lose from having Crater found; Al Smith, Tammany's ebbing leader and failed presidential candidate; Jimmy Walker, the rogue Mayor of New York City and the darling of Tammany Hall; and Fiorello La Guardia, the crusading reformer who finally came to power on the back of the scandals. Richard J. Tofel's Vanishing Point is a revealing look at New York as the Jazz Age gave way to the Depression, and at one of the most intriguing stories in the annals of urban America.

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What is life like for children coming of age in an era after feminism, after the sexual revolution? Kay Hymowitz explores the predicament of a generation growing up in a world where adults lavish them with Tommy Hilfigers, Gameboys, and Disneyland vacations but don't know how to provide them with the ordinary truths that give life meaning. Without a coherent moral and intellectual order to pass on to the young, Ms. Hymowitz argues, parents, teachers, school principals, the media, and the child-rearing experts know only how to celebrate the individual child, "empowering" him to find his own way even as MTV beckons. As Liberation's Children shows, some young people flounder in this spiritual and imaginative void. They curse out teachers and coaches; they try too much too soon; they turn from children into tweens by the time they are eight, and into jaded adults by the time they are fourteen. They become the malcontents of suburban communities. Meanwhile many others eagerly latch on to the one value that seems to cause their elders no ambivalence or embarrassment: personal achievement. As babies they listen to Mozart tapes and use lapware; as toddlers they watch Sesame Street and begin music lessons. By the time they are of school age, they are initiates in the religion of "ecstatic capitalism"-child development has become career preparation. In sharply drawn analyses which first appeared in City Journal, Ms. Hymowitz takes the measure of a young generation afflicted with a loss of deep connection, civility, and moral clarity, as well as a depleted vision of the human predicament.

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For the vast majority of Americans who lived in rural settings from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, the small town provided the most important context for their lives. The town was a focal point and trade center chiefly for farmers but also for fishermen, loggers, miners, and even industrial workers as long as industrial production depended upon waterpower. Rural Americans needed community, and towns filled their economic, political, social, and cultural needs. David Russo’s history of these communities is a unique and engaging work of history, an overview of the founding, development, and varieties of life of American towns from earliest colonial times to the present. His chronicle is wide-ranging in its description but specific in its illustrations of how towns came into existence, grew or declined, gave way to larger urban areas, and finally have reappeared in idealized forms that provide Americans with nostalgia for a past that most of them did not even experience. The most important aspects of real towns, Mr. Russo observes, is their past, their history. With a vast knowledge of the field and a deft use of illustrative facts, he re-creates the universal experience of the small town—its intimacy, its neighborliness, and human scale as well as intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and tendency to exclusivity. American Towns is a richly informed book that fills a large gap in the history of the United States. With 50 black-and-white photographs and drawings.

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A vivid portrait of Rubens's enormous life against a background of the turbulent history of his times. Without neglecting his paintings, Ms. Lescourret also gives the reader a fascinating picture of Rubens's career as an accomplished diplomat.

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William Appleman Williams, who died in 1990, was arguably the most influential and controversial historian of his generation. His revisionist writings, especially in American diplomatic history, forced historians and others to abandon old clichés and confront disturbing questions about America's behavior in the world. Williams defined America's social, moral, constitutional, and economic development in uncompromising, iconoclastic, and original terms. He saw history as "a way of learning;" and applied the principle brilliantly in books and essays which have altered our vision of the American past and present. In this rich collection, Henry Berger has drawn from Williams's most important writings—including "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy," "The Contours of American History," and "The Roots of the Modern American Empire" to present his key arguments. There are twenty-one selections in all, from books, essays, and articles, including two never before published. Mr. Berger has added notes to the selections and an enlightening introduction which explores Williams's career and ideas. This is an exceptionally valuable book.

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Anthony Badger’s notably successful history is not simply another narrative of the New Deal, nor does the figure of Franklin Roosevelt loom as large in his account as in some others. What Mr. Badger does so well is to consider important aspects of New Deal activity agriculture, welfare, and politics, interpreting the history of each.

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Children are the largely neglected players in the great drama of American immigration. In one of history's most remarkable movements of people across national borders, almost twenty-five million immigrants came to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—from Mexico, Japan, and Canada as well as the more common embarkation points of southern and eastern Europe. Many of them were children. Together with the American-born children of immigrants, they made up a significant part of turn-of-the-century U.S. society. Small Strangers recounts and interprets their varied experiences to illustrate how immigration, urbanization, and industrialization—all related processes—molded modern America. Growing up in crowded tenements, insular mill towns, rural ethnic enclaves, or middle-class homes, as they came of age they found themselves increasingly caught between Old World expectations and New World demands. The encounters of these children with ethnic heritage, American values, and mass culture helped shape the twentieth century in a United States still known symbolically around the world as a nation of immigrants.

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Following on his successful Guides to the plots and themes of Shakespeare's plays, Robert Fallon now explores the world of characters created by the Bard. Like Mr. Fallon's earlier books, A Theatergoer's Guide to Shakespeare's Characters is designed to enhance the playgoer's enjoyment of a performance, but it also makes for enlightening reading after the show. Intended for the general reader, it is written in plain but not inelegant English and avoids the specialized language of the theater and the academy. More than eight hundred characters appear in Shakespeare's thirty-eight plays—an astonishing variety of kings and queens, mothers and fathers, clowns and fairies, peasants and dukes, villains and heroes, the young and the old, the sinning and the sinned against. How could he have known so many in his diverse culture and portrayed them so convincingly? Mr. Fallon has chosen some sixty of these figures to examine. With few exceptions, they are the ones that modern theatergoers are most likely to encounter in performance, those that have captured the imagination of audiences over the centuries: Lear, Hamlet, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Portia, and the like. But some lesser-known characters are offered for their inherent interest and their example of Shakespeare's "infinite variety." Mr. Fallon locates each of them in the story of their play, relates them to other characters, shows how they change (or don't), and sums up their character and nature. Readers of his other Guides know they will find in Characters an entertaining and useful appraisal. "This book is as handy as they come...distilled without being dunderheaded—reader-friendly in the extreme."—American Theatre (on A Theatergoer's Guide to Shakespeare)

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Working in the children's cancer unit of a New York hospital for fifteen years, Norman Fried has been psychotherapist and counselor to both physically ill children and their worried families and friends. He has been part of scenes of bitterness and pain–and has observed how these sad moments have taught all concerned about life's important lessons. Sitting at the bedsides of children with life–threatening cancer, he has been sadly fortunate to hear their messages of hope and love, which have taught him how to help those they were leaving behind. The Angel Letters is his extraordinary book based on his experiences. It is intended for the living but is composed in the form of letters addressed to a dozen different children whose last days and months he shared intimately. From each experience he draws a lesson—in love, family, courage, belonging, etc.—that can help parents and family learn to suffer through the tragedy of their sick or lost child, drawing strength from their understanding of what has happened and from an appreciation for their child's perspective. "No story ends in death," Dr. Fried writes, "not in this book, and not in life. What happens after death is ours to ponder and struggle with. Some questions remain unanswered. But how a family lives after a death, how we as mourners can carry on–these are the questions I wrestle with here." In The Angel Letters he proves to be an inspiring companion for this difficult journey.

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Los mejores libros jamás escritos.Valor, bravos caballeros! El hombre muere, pero la gloria queda. Valor! Antes morir que ser vencidos!Inglaterra, siglo XII. Desterrado por querer casarse contra los deseos de su padre, el joven y valiente Wilfred de Ivanhoe se pone al servicio de Ricardo Corazón de León y parte como cruzado junto a sus tropas para reconquistar Tierra Santa. A su regreso, decidido a recuperar su honor y a reunirse con su amada pero prohibida Lady Rowena, rápidamente se verá en medio de una lucha por el poder entre el noble rey Ricardo y su hermano, Juan Sin Tierra, un traidor despreciable y sin escrúpulos. Solo Ivanhoe, con la ayuda de Robin de Locksley -el legendario Robin Hood-, tiene la clave para defender su buen nombre y el de la Corona.El estudio sociolingüístico del doctor Graham Tulloch analiza cómo Walter Scott demostró que escribir sobre el pasado puede ser un modo de opinar sobre el presente. Una cronología sobre el autor complet

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Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Set in a country weighed down by political, ideological and spiritual stagnation, Chekhov's compelling early play is rooted in the revolutionary atmosphere of Russia at the turn of the 20th century. Anton Chekhov's play Ivanov was first performed in 1887 at the Korsh Theatre in Moscow. This English version, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine, with notes on Further Reading, a Chronology and a Pronunciation Guide.

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Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent at Canterbury. Set in the reign of Richard I, Coeur de Lion, Ivanhoe is packed with memorable incidents - sieges, ambushes and combats - and equally memorable characters: Cedric of Rotherwood, the die-hard Saxon; his ward Rowena; the fierce Templar knight, Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert; the Jew, Isaac of York, and his beautiful, spirited daughter Rebecca; Wamba and Gurth, jester and swineherd respectively. Scott explores the conflicts between the Crown and the powerful Barons, between the Norman overlords and the conquered Saxons, and between Richard and his scheming brother, Prince John. At the same time he brings into the novel the legendary Robin Hood and his band, and creates a brilliant, colourful account of the age of chivalry with all its elaborate rituals and costumes and its values of honour and personal glory.

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This play forms a bridge between the events in Oedipus the King and Antigone. It begins with the arrival of Oedipus in Colonus after years of wandering; it ends with Antigone setting off toward her own fate in Thebes.

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Written and first performed in 1599, The Shoemaker's Holiday was the most popular non-Shakespearean comedy of its day—a hearty brew of character and overflowing good humor, occasionally ribald, about the gentle craft of shoemaking. Bernard Sahlins's new adaptation streamlines the dialogue for contemporary audiences and makes it extremely playable.

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When Sylvia Lawry's brother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late 1930s, she refused to accept the medical wisdom of the day that "nothing could be done." In 1945 Ms. Lawry took the unique step of running a classified ad searching for someone who had been "cured" of multiple sclerosis. When instead she found that respondents were as desperate as she, Ms. Lawry began making plans for what would become one of the nation's largest voluntary health agencies—the National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society. Courage is the story of one woman's unceasing devotion to her brother and how her dream to end the devastating effects of MS was transformed into one of the most powerful and effective national health organizations in the world, a passion she pursued for more than half a century. It is also the story of medical detective work that has enlisted dedicated scientists in the search for clues to one of the more baffling and stubborn medical mysteries of our time, and of people, especially volunteers, who have become the strength of the Society. Multiple sclerosis is one of the most common diseases of the central nervous system, affecting more than two and a half million people and their families throughout the world. Although the cause remains unknown and there is still no cure, research breakthroughs have now led to therapies that can help control and manage the disease, thanks in large part to work supported by the Society. Courage looks into the inner workings of the MS movement and counteracts the common misconception that health agencies are self-serving, seeking only to perpetuate themselves. We hear of countless stories of man's inhumanity to man; Courage celebrates the power of our humanity. With 12 black-and-white photographs.

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Here, adapted for the stage, is Budd Schulberg's classic story of the New York waterfront and the kid who coulda been a contender.

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Fast-moving and brisk, and filled with wit, humor, and gaiety, the Barber is assured of immortality because of its sheer fun. Mr. Sahlins’s deft adaptation of a superbly constructed plot, and his attention to language for present-day audiences, make this a beautifully playable farce. An appropriate companion to The Marriage of Figaro, also available in the series.

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Franklin Roosevelt was the first great hero of American Jews. FDR's promise of economic and social justice was consonant with the mainstays of Jewish culture and with the ethos of the Old Testament and the prophets. And of course these themes were especially resonant during the desperate days of the Great Depression. The Jews who so deeply admired Roosevelt made up the richest, most influential Jewish community in the world, leaders in government, commerce, and the arts. Yet by the time Franklin Roosevelt died in office, six million European Jews had been murdered by the Nazis while neither FDR nor American Jews lifted much more than a finger to help them. How did the president, the nation he led, and American Jewry allow this to happen? There is no simple answer, but Robert Shogan seeks a partial explanation by examining the behavior of a handful of Jews, so close to Roosevelt and supposedly so influential that they could be considered "the president's Jews." Most prestigious was Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis. Next was Felix Frankfurter, Harvard law professor and later Supreme Court justice. Sam Rosenman, FDR's chief speechwriter from the time he was governor of New York. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau was an old Dutchess County neighbor of Roosevelt's. Benjamin V. Cohen crafted the major financial reforms of the early New Deal. Their actions, and often inaction, illuminate the strengths and limits of interest-group politics, the system invented by FDR that dominated American politics for the remainder of the century. Taken broadly, the response of the president's Jews to the Nazi threat illustrates with heartbreaking intensity the dilemma of politics—the conflict between conscience and self-interest, between principle and expediency. With 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.

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Widely acknowledged as the most authoritative art critic of his generation, Hilton Kramer advanced his comments and judgments largely in the form of essays and short pieces. Thus this first collection of his work to appear in twenty years is a signal event for the art world and for criticism generally. The Triumph of Modernism not only traces the vicissitudes of the art scene but diagnoses the state of modernism and its vital legacy in the postmodern world. Mr. Kramer bracingly updates his incisive critique of the artists, critics, institutions, and movements that have formed the basis for modern art. Appearing for the first time in greatly expanded form is his consideration of the foundations of modern abstract painting and the future of abstraction. The aesthetic intelligence that Mr. Kramer brings to bear on certain tired assumptions about modernism—many of them derived from methodologies and politics that have little to do with art—helps rescue the artwork itself and its appreciation from the very institutions, such as the art museum and the academy, that purport to foster it. Always clear-eyed and vastly illuminating, Hilton Kramer’s art criticism remains among the very finest written in the past hundred years. Readers of The Triumph of Modernism will be treated to an exhilarating experience.

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Building on his enormously successful series of Philosophers in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's great writers. He brings their lives and ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the writer and his work, authoritative and clearly presented. Applause for Paul Strathern's Philosophers in 90 Minutes series: "Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one's friends to Western civilization."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe "Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading."—Richard Bernstein, New York Times "Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise."—Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal

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A bumptious narrative history of American newspapermen in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, a time when serious journalism still went hand in hand with relative poverty, good times, and a carefree spirit cultivated by eccentric personalities. An absorbing and delightful book.

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More than most wars in American history, the long and contentious Vietnam War had a profound effect on the home front, during the war and especially after. In At the Water's Edge, Melvin Small delivers the first study of the war's domestic politics. Most of the military and diplomatic decisions made by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, Mr. Small shows, were heavily influenced by election cycles, relations with Congress, the state of the economy, and the polls. Although all three presidents and their advisers claimed that these decisions were taken exclusively for national security concerns, much evidence suggests otherwise. In turn, the war had a transforming impact on American society. Popular perceptions of the "war at home" produced a dramatic and longstanding realignment in political allegiances, an assault on the media that still colors political debate today, and an economic crisis that weakened the nation for a decade after the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. Domestic conflict over the war led to the abolition of the draft, the curtailment of the intelligence agencies' unconstitutional practices, formal congressional restraints upon the imperial presidency, and epochal Supreme Court rulings that preserved First Amendment rights. The war ultimately destroyed the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and indirectly forced the resignation of Richard Nixon. Those presidents who followed through the remainder of the twentieth century constructed their foreign policies mindful that they would not survive politically if they were to lead the nation into another protracted limited war in the Third World.

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Building on his enormously successful series of Philosophers in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's great writers. He brings their lives and ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the writer and his work, authoritative and clearly presented. Mr. Strathern lives in London. Applause for Paul Strathern's Philosophers in 90 Minutes series: Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one's friends to Western civilization. —Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe. Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading. —Richard Bernstein, New York Times. Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise. —Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal

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Building on his enormously successful series of Philosophers in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's great writers. He brings their lives and ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the writer and his work, authoritative and clearly presented. Applause for Paul Strathern's Philosophers in 90 Minutes series: "Each of these little books is witty and dramatic and creates a sense of time, place, and character....I cannot think of a better way to introduce oneself and one's friends to Western civilization."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe "Well-written, clear and informed, they have a breezy wit about them....I find them hard to stop reading."—Richard Bernstein, New York Times "Witty, illuminating, and blessedly concise."—Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal

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A fascinating medical detective story about the unusual reception for a promising new drug by a skeptical medical community reluctant to abandon its age-old Hippocratic Oath of "Do No Harm." Stewart Justman explains how a pill called finasteride, proven to dramatically reduce the incidence of prostate cancer, was found to be also associated with a distinctly higher rate of aggressive cancer. As urologists and oncologists were presented with a strange mix of eurekas and cautionary notes, physicians adhered to their best principles and remained wary of massive application. For now, the drug is deemed too risky: the medical dictum of avoiding harm has inhibited its use on a grand scale, though statistically there is much in its favor. Do No Harm is engrossing reading about medical science and, finally, a reassuring tale of the triumph of tradition over novelty.

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In eighteen essays, Ms. Allen explores the lives and work of some of the last century's most brilliant and eccentric literary talents. Ms. Allen's appraisals, which combine extensive biographical information with new critical insights, richly illustrate the tenuous and often bizarre links between character and talent, between historical circumstances and individual vision. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

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Pictures of Home is based on photographs that were stored on a shelf in the bedroom closet where Douglas Bukowski grew up. The pictures are a source and a measure. They show a family on the South Side of Chicago, where the children of immigrants fought to keep out the descendants of slaves. They show a boy from Hardscrabble who forever lived in the shadow of Richard J. Daley. The one was born within a mile of the other; each received the baptismal name of Joseph; they both drew a city paycheck as firefighter or mayor; and they died on the same date in December. The pictures tell about a husband and wife, their children, and the inevitability of change. While the house they lived in remained much the same from 1939 to 2000, the surrounding neighborhood did not. The streets changed, the children grew up, and the man died a slow death to which two daughters and a son bore witness even as they sought to fight it. The mother stays in the house still, comforted by pictures of a life that slips from her memory a little more each day. The pictures and the history behind them are brought to life in stunning fashion in Mr. Bukowski's spare prose. Pictures of Home is the story of a family and a city, told affectionately and endearingly by one who is part of both.

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Building on his enormously successful series of Philosophers in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's great writers. He brings their lives and ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the writer and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

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Here returned to print, at a timely moment in history, is Elie Kedourie's classic study of the Middle East in modern times. In analyzing British failures in the region during the zenith of their power and influence, Mr. Kedourie attributes much of Britain's faulty and disastrous handling of Middle East problems to what he calls "the Chatham House version." It was a view of Middle Eastern history and politics propounded and propagated in the various publications of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (known popularly as Chatham House), written or edited by Arnold Toynbee. The episodes that Mr. Kedourie investigates show "successive and cumulative manifestations of illusion, misjudgment, maladroitness, and failure." Together they point up hard lessons for the Bush administration or any outside power that would intervene in Middle Eastern affairs. "No better guide...can be found to the pitfalls awaiting those who seek to control the Middle East to their own advantage."—Asian Affairs "These twelve studies in the modern history of the Middle East [form] the most learned book, the most demanding therefore of rethinking, that has come out on the Middle East for many years, and anyone who in the future writes on any Middle Eastern subject, from any point of view, without consulting it, will do so at his or her grave peril."—London Telegraph

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In eighteen enlightening essays, the critic Brooke Allen explores the lives and work of some of the last century's most brilliant and eccentric literary talents. It was a century that apotheosized ideology and frequently demanded evidence of political engagement from its artists and intellectuals. Some of the writers considered in Twentieth-Century Attitudes found a spiritual home in the left (George Bernard Shaw, Christopher Isherwood, Sylvia Townsend Warner); others, like Evelyn Waugh, in the right; still others maneuvered the shifting ideological sands with a more measured skepticism. It was also a century during which the dictates of fashion, both social and intellectual, changed with unprecedented rapidity. A few of the writers Ms. Allen considers, like James Baldwin and Saul Bellow, struggled honorably but not always with success to reconcile their artistic intentions with intellectual fashion; others, like Colette and H. G. Wells, took an avid role in the drama of their historical moment and triumphantly communicated that sense of drama to their descendants. Really good writers, as Ms. Allen shows, do not write well in spite of the foibles, prejudices, and fallacies of their times; instead they crystallize these oddities into something universal. The writers in Twentieth-Century Attitudes embody in their very different ways the various attitudes of their contentious century and the success or failure of attempts to transcend these attitudes. Ms. Allen's essays, which combine extensive biographical information with new critical insights, richly illustrate the tenuous and often bizarre links between character and talent, between historical circumstances and individual vision.

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Observing our contemporary culture, the distinguished critic Roger Kimball sees that the avant-garde assault on tradition has long since degenerated into a sclerotic orthodoxy. He finds that the "cutting edge," as defined by the established tastemakers, turns out time and again to be a stale remainder of past impotence. And he locates a pretense that the traditional is the enemy rather than a springboard to originality. In Art's Prospect, Mr. Kimball observes that most of the really invigorating action in the art world today is a quiet affair. It takes place not at the Tate Modern in London or at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, not in the Chelsea or TriBeCa galleries but off to one side, out of the limelight. It usually involves not the latest thing but permanent things—they can be new or old, but their relevance is measured not by the buzz they create but by silences they inspire. With reviews and essays composed over the last twenty years and revised for this book, Art's Prospect illuminates some of the chief spiritual itineraries of modern art. It provides, in Mr. Kimball's words, "a collage whose elements, when seen from one perspective, add up to a diagnosis of a malady, and, when seen from another perspective, offer hints of where effective remedies can be found."

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In J.S. Mill in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Mill's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Mill's work; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Mill within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

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