Search results for ""Author Robert"

A bona fide tough guy with soulful eyes and a laconic style, Robert Mitchum was one of Hollywood's best-loved actors, star of such moody film noir favourites as Out of the Past, Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear, as well as enduring classics like Angel Face and Crossfire. But, as Lee Server now reveals, Mitchum was one of the few Hollywood icons whose real-life exploits were yet more compelling than his on-screen persona. A hobo in the Depression, he fell into movie acting after stints as a boxer, a beach bum and a songwriter. Despite early Hollywood successes, he was famously busted on a narcotics rap. But even prison couldn't tame Mitchum's taste for living on the wild side, and he remained an unrepentant misbehaver until the end of his days. In this biography of Robert Mitchum, Lee Server offers the definitive life story of a man who redefined cinematic cool.

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This is the full story of the legendary U.S. Army officer who formed, trained, and led the unique bi-national First Special Service Force (popularly known as the “Devil’s Brigade”). Robert T. Frederick was the youngest ground forces general, the youngest division commander, and one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War II. But Frederick was not just a warrior. Highly intelligent, he was an independent thinker who was as courageous and innovative in peacetime as he was in combat. He pioneered racial integration on army training bases, devised training regimens used throughout North America, and left a record that would seem mythical if not documented. The author also reveals why Frederick ended his brilliant career prematurely.

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Until now, celebrated photographer Robert Frank’s daring and unconventional work as a filmmaker has not been awarded the critical notice it deserves. In this timely volume, George Kouvaros surveys Frank’s films and videos and places them in the larger context of experimentation in American art and literature since World War II.Born in 1924, Frank emigrated from Switzerland to the United States in 1947 and quickly made his mark as a photojournalist. A 1955 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship allowed him to travel across the country, photographing aspects of American life that had previously received little attention. The resulting book, The Americans, with an Introduction by Jack Kerouac, is generally considered a landmark in the history of postwar photography. During the same period, Frank befriended other artists and writers, among them Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso, all of whom are featured in his first film, Pull My Daisy, which is narrated by Kerouac. This film set the terms for a new era of experimental filmmaking.By examining Frank’s films and videos, including Pull My Daisy, Me and My Brother, and Cocksucker Blues, in the framework of his more widely recognized photographic achievements, Kouvaros develops a model of cross-media history in which photography, film, and video are complicit in the search for fresh forms of visual expression. Awakening the Eye is an insightful, compelling, and, at times, moving account of Frank’s determination to forge a personal connection between the circumstances of his life and the media in which he works.

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Robert Falcon Scott’s 1901–4 expedition to the Antarctic was a landmark event in the history of Antarctic exploration, creating a sensation comparable to the Arctic efforts of the American Robert E. Peary. Scott’s initial expedition was also the first step toward the dramatic race to the South Pole in 1912, which resulted in the tragic deaths of Scott and his companions. Since then Scott’s reputation has vacillated between two extremes: Was he a martyred hero, the beau ideal of a brave and selfless explorer, or a bumbling fool whose mistakes killed him and his entire party? Pilgrims on the Ice goes beyond the personality of Scott to remove the first expedition from the shadow of the second, to study objectively its purpose, its composition, and its real accomplishments. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface by the author.

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From the explosive world of Jason Bourne emerges a new hero. Operation Treadstone made Jason Bourne, but he's not the only agent they trained. Adam Hayes was moulded into a weapon by Treadstone, the black-ops CIA programme that turns government agents into nearly superhuman assassins. To atone for his sins, he's left that life behind and is working as a pilot bringing medical supplies to endangered communities in Africa. But during a charitable mission in Burkina Faso, his quiet life is upended, when his aircraft is attacked by extremists. With his plane damaged, Hayes is forced to make an emergency landing, only to find a hornet's nest of trouble waiting for him on the ground. In order to get back in the air, Hayes agrees to transport a passenger – Zoe Cabot, the daughter of a tech baron – to a small coastal city. But what is supposed to be a simple job goes horribly wrong when Zoe is kidnapped right in front of his eyes. Determined to get her back, Hayes mounts a one-man rescue, but after being attacked from all sides, he realizes this is no ordinary kidnapping. Luckily for Zoe, Adam Hayes is no ordinary man and he'll stop at nothing to get her back – even if it means that his path to peace is littered with bodies.

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The assassination of a Treadstone agent leads two Blackbriar operatives down a rabbit hole of deceit and betrayal in this explosive new series from the world of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne. A car explodes on a quiet Prague side street – and among the dead is an undercover Treadstone agent. It's not unusual for such men to meet their fates on an operation, but in this case there's one catch: none of the agent's superiors knows why he was there. Two Blackbriar operatives, Helen Jouvert and Donovan Wade, are sent to investigate. Their search for answers will take them deeper into the world of conspiracy and fake news than they ever expected. Treadstone and Blackbriar, intelligence and counter-intelligence, may be two sides of the same coin, but they have one thing in common: answers can be the deadliest commodity of all. Reviewers on Simon Gervais: 'Thriller writing at its level best' Providence Journal 'Non-stop action meets relentless suspense' The Real Book Spy

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'A new breed of spy - yes, he's highly trained and proficient at killing people, but he's still a normal guy' EMPIRE 'Olympic style, all-out espionage' DAILY EXPRESSUniversity professor David Webb - forever caught between two identities - is still haunted by the splintered nightmares of his former life as Jason Bourne.Soon he finds himself embroiled in a CIA operation to hunt down a terrorist organisation, and is plunged into the deadliest and most tangled assignment of his double life. With his own side trying to take him down, all the while an assassin as brilliant and damaged as himself is getting closer by the minute...

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From the explosive world of Jason Bourne emerges a new hero. Operation Treadstone made Jason Bourne, but he's not the only agent they trained. Treadstone nearly destroyed Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all-but-invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at work. Adam must regain the skills that Operation Treadstone taught him – lightning reflexes and a cold conscience – in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget. The Treadstone Resurrection is the first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum's Bourne universe, introducing an unforgettable hero and the covert world that forged him.

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"He wants to sit and visit at the kitchen table, and he can hardly wait to get on the road again." —From Chapter 1 Robert Kroetsch, one of Canada's most important writers, was a fierce regionalist with a porous yet resilient sense of "home." Although his criticism and fiction have received extensive attention, his poetry remains underexplored. This exuberantly polyvocal text, insightfully written by dennis cooley—who knew Kroetsch and worked with him for decades—seeks to correct that imbalance. The Home Place offers a dazzling, playful, and intellectually complex conversation drawing together personal recollections, Kroetsch's archival materials, and the international body of Kroetsch scholarship. For literary scholars and anyone who appreciates Canadian literature, The Home Place will represent the standard critical evaluation of Kroetsch's poetry for years to come.

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The first comprehensive look at Rauschenberg’s Cardboard series, a previously unexplored realm of the artist’s oeuvre Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) began to investigate the boundaries between painting and sculpture in the 1950s, working with a variety of found objects in his Combine paintings and freestanding Combines. Later, in his Cardboard series (1971–72), he confined himself to the use of cardboard boxes, eliminating virtually all imagery, reducing the palette to a near monochrome, and commenting in subtle ways on the materialism and disposability of modern life. This book is the first to focus exclusively on Rauschenberg’s rarely seen Cardboards, along with related works from his Made in Tampa Clay, Cardbirds, Egyptian, and Venetian series. Approximately eighty-eight Cardboards and related sculptural pieces, many from the artist’s personal collection, are reproduced in the book. Full provenance and exhibition history are provided for each work, along with a complete bibliography. In addition, distinguished scholar Yve-Alain Bois offers an insightful essay that discusses the Cardboards and situates these lesser-known but critical pieces within the context of Rauschenberg’s long and creative career.Distributed for The Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:The Menil Collection, Houston (February 23 – May 13, 2007)

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A celebration of Robert Motherwell’s drawings that provides new insight into the thematic continuities and techniques that informed the artist’s working methods Throughout his long and prolific career, Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) sustained a fascination with making art on paper. His multifaceted drawing practice was an integral part of his search for a personal, spontaneous language of mark-making. Presenting works spanning from The Mexican Sketchbook of the early 1940s to the Joyce Sketchbook of the 1980s, this overview of Motherwell’s work on paper highlights the way the artist embraced the suggestive potential of his materials—blending the accidental and the intentional in the creative gesture. Large-scale reproductions encourage close looking and immerse the reader in details such as a stroke of the brush or a tear of paper, while an essay by Edouard Kopp examines how the artist’s practice of “automatic drawing” dovetailed with his love of paper and ink in the creation of these unique and compelling works. The book closes with Motherwell’s own “Thoughts on Drawing” (1970).Distributed for the Menil CollectionExhibition Schedule:Menil Drawing Institute, Menil Collection, Houston (November 18, 2022–March 12, 2023)

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J. Robert Oppenheimer is among the most contentious and important figures of the twentieth century. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough which was to have eternal ramifications for mankind, and made Oppenheimer the 'father of the Bomb'.But his was not a simple story of assimilation, scientific success and world fame. A complicated and fragile personality, the implications of the discoveries at Los Alamos were to weigh heavily upon him. Having formed suspicious connections in the 1930s, in the wake of the Allied victory in World War Two, Oppenheimer’s attempts to resist the escalation of the Cold War arms race would lead many to question his loyalties – and set him on a collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunters.

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From the explosive world of Jason Bourne emerges a new hero. Operation Treadstone made Jason Bourne, but he's not the only agent they trained. Treadstone nearly destroyed Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all-but-invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at work. Adam must regain the skills that Operation Treadstone taught him – lightning reflexes and a cold conscience – in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget. The Treadstone Resurrection is the first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum's Bourne universe, introducing an unforgettable hero and the covert world that forged him.

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In this critical biography of Robert Desnos (1900–1945), Katharine Conley reevaluates the surrealist movement through the life and works of one of its founders. Desnos was as famous among the surrealists for his independence of mind as for his elaborate “automatic” drawings and his brilliant oral and written performances during the incubational period of the group. He stayed with the official surrealist movement in Paris for only six years but was pivotal during that time in shaping the surrealist notion of “transforming the world” through radical experiments with language and art. After leaving the group, Desnos continued his career of radio broadcasting and writing for commercials. Though no longer part of the official movement, he remained committed to his own version of popular surrealism: Desnosian surrealism and the search for the “marvelous” in everyday life. Near the end of World War II he was deported and imprisoned for his work in the French Resistance and died at the newly liberated camp of Terezin in Czechoslovakia. Reports from within the camp indicate that Desnos took with him into Terezin his most deeply held surrealist beliefs.

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This volume in the Collected Writings of Robert Duncan series gathers a far-reaching selection of Robert Duncan’s prose writings including most of his longer and more well-known essays along with other prose that has never been widely available. Ranging in original publication dates between 1940 and 1985, the forty-one titles reveal a great deal about Duncan’s life in poetry—including his impressions of poets whose work he admires, both contemporaries and precursors. Evocative and eclectic, this work delineates the intellectual contexts and sources of Duncan’s poetics, and opens a window onto the literary communities in which he participated.

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Excellence in Publishing Award, Association of Catholic Publishers Honorable Mention, Catholic Press Association Book Award Finalist, Washington State Book Award Pure Act tells the story of poet Robert Lax, whose quest to live a true life as both an artist and a spiritual seeker inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, William Maxwell and a host of other writers, artists and ordinary people. Known in the U.S. primarily as Merton’s best friend and in Europe as a daringly original avant-garde poet, Lax left behind a promising New York writing career to travel with a circus, live among immigrants in post-war Marseilles and settle on a series of remote Greek islands where he learned and recorded the simple wisdom of the local people. Born a Jew, he became a Catholic and found the authentic community he sought in Greek Orthodox fishermen and sponge divers. In his early life, as he alternated working at The New Yorker, writing screenplays in Hollywood and editing a Paris literary journal with studying philosophy, serving the poor in Harlem and living in a sanctuary high in the French Alps, Lax pursued an approach to life he called pure act―a way of living in the moment that was both spontaneous and practiced, God-inspired and self-chosen. By devoting himself to simplicity, poverty and prayer, he expanded his capacity for peace, joy and love while producing distinctive poetry of such stark beauty critics called him “one of America’s greatest experimental poets” and “one of the new ‘saints’ of the avant-garde.” Written by a writer who met Lax in Greece when he was a young seeker himself and visited him regularly over fifteen years, Pure Act is an intimate look at an extraordinary but little-known life. Much more than just a biography, it’s a tale of adventure, an exploration of friendship, an anthology of wisdom, and a testament to the liberating power of living an uncommon life.

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First published on the 700th anniversary of the pivotal event in Scottish history, the epic story of Robert Bruce comes to a climax at the Battle of Bannockburn. Robert has achieved his great ambition to be crowned King of Scotland, but in doing so has provoked the wrath of the new king of England, Edward II. Raising the feared dragon banner, Edward marches north, determined to recapture the kingdom. But the English are not Robert's only enemies, and he is forced to flee after murdering his great rival John Comyn, splitting the kingdom apart. Robert has a crown, but no country, the will to lead, but no real authority. Fighting from hidden strongholds and the Western Isles, with the support of a few brave men and the alluring noblewoman, Christiana, Robert drives towards Bannockburn where an epic confrontation with Edward will decide the future of Scotland.

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Published in five editions between 1621 and 1651, The Anatomy of Melancholy marks a unique moment in the development of disciplines, when fields of knowledge were distinct but not yet restrictive. In Robert Burton’s Rhetoric, Susan Wells analyzes the Anatomy, demonstrating how its early modern practices of knowledge and persuasion can offer a model for transdisciplinary scholarship today.In the first decades of the seventeenth century, Robert Burton attempted to gather all the existing knowledge about melancholy, drawing from professional discourses including theology, medicine, and philology as well as the emerging sciences. Examining this text through a rhetorical lens, Wells provides an account of these disciplinary exchanges in all their subtle variety and abundant wit, showing that questions of how knowledge is organized and how it is made persuasive are central to rhetorical theory. Ultimately, Wells argues that in addition to a book about melancholy, Burton’s Anatomy is a meditation on knowledge.A fresh interpretation of The Anatomy of Melancholy, this volume will be welcomed by scholars of early modern English and the rhetorics of health and medicine, as well as those interested in transdisciplinary work and rhetorical theory.

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The iconic figure of Robert the Bruce has gone down through the centuries as one of the most remarkable leaders of all time. With equal parts tenacity and ruthlessness, he had himself crowned King of Scotland after murdering one of his most powerful rivals, and so began the rule of an indomitable military genius unafraid of breaking convention, and more than a few English heads. Indeed, it was under the leadership of King Robert that the Battle of Bannockburn took place – a famous victory snatched by a tiny Scots force against a larger, supposedly more sophisticated English foe. In King and Outlaw medieval expert Chris Brown explores the life of Robert the Bruce, whose remarkable history has merged with legend, and reveals the true story of the outlaw king.

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The bridge has always stood as a transitional structure - not purely a work of engineering, nor simply a work of architecture. Its functional requirements are more stringent than those of the average building; it not only must stand up; it must stand up, support those who cross it, and effectively span the space over which it stands. As Samuel Johnson said, "the first excellence of a bridge is strength ... for a bridge that cannot stand, however beautiful, will boast its beauty but a little while." The Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-92) understood these precepts well, continually building bridges that were not just structurally sound, but also aesthetically pleasing. Unlike his contemporaries, Adam did not view bridges as mere skeletons upon which to apply ornament. Rather, he sought to achieve architectural totality, incorporating his bridge designs into greater architectural programs, thereby producing aesthetically pleasing and contextually specific designs. From the Pulteney Bridge in Bath to the ruined arch and viaduct at Culzean Castle in Ayrshire, The Bridges of Robert Adam: A Fanciful and Picturesque Tour will take the reader across Britain, shedding new light on an understudied aspect of the great architect's career.

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In a controversial and tumultuous filmmaking career that spanned nearly fifty years, Robert Altman mocked, subverted, or otherwise refashioned Hollywood narrative and genre conventions. Altman's idiosyncratic vision and propensity for formal experimentation resulted in an uneven body of work: some rank failures and intriguing near-misses, as well as a number of great films that are among the most influential works of New American Cinema. While Altman always professed to have nothing authoritative to say about the state of contemporary society, this volume surveys all of his major films in their sociohistorical context to reposition the director as a trenchant satirist and social critic of postmodern America, depicted as a lonely wasteland of fraudulent spectacle, exploitative social relations, and unfulfilled solitaries in search of elusive community.

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This title includes all of Burns' poems and songs, with a helpful glossary explaining difficult words, a chronology of Burns's life and a bibliography.

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Frontiers in Ecological Economics presents some of Robert Costanza's most important work on understanding ecological and economic systems. A signal contribution of Costanza's work is that he transcends disciplinary boundaries by collaborating closely with other specialists and thereby constructs an integrated analysis of the interaction between humans and the rest of the natural world.The book is divided into four parts; part one discusses the creation of an ecological economics, the second part considers material and energy flows in ecological and economic systems, part three surveys dynamic ecological and economic systems modelling and analysis and the final part explores the role of institutions and incentives in environmental protection. Main themes and issues include: environmental sustainability, managing environmental systems, energy and economic valuation in environmental systems and a concern for both the necessity and limitations of modelling ecological economic systems.The book improves access to Robert Costanza's work which has made a fundamental contribution to the development of ecological economics.

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This volume presents the complete correspondence between two of the most important and influential American poets of the postwar period. The almost 500 letters range widely over the poetry scene and the issues that made the period so lively and productive. But what gives the exchange its special personal and literary resonance is the sense of spiritual affinity and shared conviction about the power of the visionary imagination. Duncan and Levertov explore these matters in rich detail until, under the stress of dealing with the Vietnam War in poetry, they discover deep-seated differences in the religious and ethical convictions underlying their politics and poetic stance. The issues that drew them together and those that drove them apart create a powerful personal drama with far-reaching historical and cultural significance. The editors have provided a critical Introduction, full notes, a chronology, and a glossary of names.

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Reissue of J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing, with an exclusive new afterword by Robert Macfarlane. J. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in twentieth-century nature writing. Despite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles, The Peregrine is set on the flat marshes of the Essex coast, where J. A. Baker spent long winters looking and writing about the visitors from the uplands – peregrines that spend the winter hunting the huge flocks of pigeons and waders that share the desolate landscape with them. This new edition of the timeless classic, published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first publication, features an afterword by one of the book’s greatest admirers, Robert Macfarlane.

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Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of many classic novels. He was also prolific letter writer. The letters in volumes I and II, cover the years 1868 through 1894. Volume I begins with his student days at Edinburgh and contains letters to all kinds of people from towns like Paris, San Francisco, Marseilles and Bournemouth. Volume II starts in Bournemouth in 1886 and ends with the four years he spent in Samoa. The letters make fascinating reading, not only for those interested in Stevenson's life but also for anyone interested in nineteenth-century literature.

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In 2015, Chicago became the first city in the United States to create a reparations fund for victims of police torture, after investigations revealed that former Chicago police commander Jon Burge tortured numerous suspects in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. But claims of police torture have even deeper roots in Chicago. In the late 19th century, suspects maintained that Chicago police officers put them in sweatboxes or held them incommunicado until they confessed to crimes they had not committed. In the first decades of the 20th century, suspects and witnesses stated that they admitted guilt only because Chicago officers beat them, threatened them, and subjected them to "sweatbox methods." Those claims continued into the 1960s. In Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871–1971, Elizabeth Dale uncovers the lost history of police torture in Chicago between the Chicago Fire and 1971, tracing the types of torture claims made in cases across that period. To show why the criminal justice system failed to adequately deal with many of those allegations of police torture, Dale examines one case in particular, the 1938 trial of Robert Nixon for murder. Nixon's case is famous for being the basis for the novel Native Son, by Richard Wright. Dale considers the part of Nixon's account that Wright left out of his story: Nixon's claims that he confessed after being strung up by his wrists and beaten and the legal system's treatment of those claims. This original study will appeal to scholars and students interested in the history of criminal justice, and general readers interested in Midwest history, criminal cases, and the topic of police torture.

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Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and treacherous seas that confront him? This rich and beautiful adventure story is one of the most influential works of literature in the world.

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