Search results for ""Ivan R Dee, Inc""

In this handbook for Romeo and Juliet, Alistair McCallum guides readers through the difficulties of plot and language, leaving them free to enjoy the depth, beauty, and vitality of Shakespeare's work. It is a superb introduction to the play.

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In Berkeley in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Berkeley'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 Berkeley's writings; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Berkeley within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

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Robert Brustein’s new book is not simply a collection of his theatre writings. It also functions as a precise barometer of contemporary society, measuring the pressures of our current cultural climate. Never one to shy away from controversy, Mr. Brustein includes in this new volume accounts of his celebrated Town Hall debate with August Wilson over the issue of segregated casting; his spirited defense of the national Endowment for the Arts against its enemies on the political right; his eloquent response to the impact of political correctness on the theatre and the university; and his forthright criticism of what he calls "coercive philanthropy"—the tendency of funding agencies to impose their own political and social agendas on artistic institutions. He closes with deft portraits of some of the people he believes have enhanced the art of the theatre he has written about for more than forty years, including Chekhov, Brecht, Sam Shepard, Orson Welles, Eugene Ionesco, Stella Adler, Joe Papp, and William Shakespeare. Cultural Calisthenics shows Mr. Brustein at his best: an outstanding critic of drama and a prescient observer of our times.

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Canaan, Land of Israel, the Holy Land, Bibleland—Palestine. Many names for a small speck of earth, no bigger than Wales or Massachusetts. This land has suffered most of the world’s conquerors, from the Babylonians to the British, only to brighten its aura of sanctity for millions of Muslims, Christians, and Jews to the present day. In Weathered by Miracles, Thomas Idinopulos tells the story of that one explosive moment in Palestine’s long history that began with Napoleon’s invasion of the Middle East in 1798 and concluded with the founding of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Here was the dramatic confrontation of world empires for possession and profit, the clash of Islam with the Christian West, and the pioneering zeal of explorers and excavators, diplomats, merchants, and missionaries. Here were the last days of Turkish and European imperialisms and the first breaths of Arab and Jewish nationalisms. Concentrating on the fateful ties between politics and religion, Mr. Idinopulos describes the extraordinary transformation of Palestine from wasteland to a dynamic country, and traces the origin of the violence that continues today between Arabs and Jews.

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The resident repertory company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, affiliated with Harvard and known as the American Repertory Theatre, has long been considered one of the country’s most innovative cultural resources. The quality of its productions and the issues it has raised about the nature of the creative life have distinguished it among American theatre groups. Here is a treasury of criticism, reflection, observation, and insight from the ART’s post-production symposia, and pre-show talks, illustrated with photographs and drawings from ART archives. The notable contributors include a great many brilliant poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, scholars, lawyers, theatre directors, designers, and clowns, many of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. Whether Susan Sontag reflects on Milan Kundera’s Jacques and His Master, or Jonathan Miller on Sheridan’s School for Scandal, or Jan Kott on Hamlet, or Carlos Fuentes on Calderon’s Life is a Dream, or Derek Walcott on his musical Steel, or Harold Bloom on Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler, or Anatole Smeliansky on Bulgakov’s Black Snow, the discourse is heightened and passionate. The book also includes revealing interviews with major theatrical figures—Dario Fo, Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, Andrei Serban, David Mamet, and many others—and lively articles from the ART’s founding artistic director Robert Brustein, its managing director Robert J. Orchard, and a variety of literary directors and dramaturges. In all, The Lively A.R.T. is a bountiful theatre experience, better than two on the aisle.

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In Hume in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Hume'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 Hume's writings; 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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This scrupulous political biography of Dan Rostenkowski follows his rise to power from modest origins in the Democratic ward politics of Chicago's Polish northwest side, through his national legislative triumphs, and ultimately to his criminal conviction and imprisonment for abuses of House practice. But the story offers much more than Rostenkowski's personal tragedy: it's a tale of the transformation of American political life, and of the fall of old-fashioned congressional politics. An insider's story. Anybody wanting to understand Congress and its place in American politics should read it. —Jim Wright. Masterful...not just a book on Rostenkowski; Cohen has spun the tale of the entire modern period of Congress. —Larry Sabato

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In Confucius in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Confucius'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 Confucius's writings; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Confucius within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

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Euripides' romantic melodrama of the reunion in Tauris of Iphigenia with the brother she thought was dead abounds in situations of danger and of touching reminiscence. Plays for Performance Series.

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Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter in order to ensure the good fortune of his forces in the Trojan War is, despite its heroic background, in many respects a domestic tragedy. Plays for Performance Series.

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James Tuttleton's literary writings in such magazines as the New Criterion, the American Scholar, and the Yale Review have earned him a reputation as one of our most trenchant critics. Here he collects twenty essays derived from his long engagement with the masterworks of the American imagination. Discussions of Hawthorne and Emerson, Howells and James, Fuller and Chopin, and Fitzgerald and Anderson, among others, are counterpointed with an analysis of the effect of contemporary critical theory on the American canon. Mr. Tuttleton scrutinizes a century and a half of great American writing from the viewpoint of literature as an art rather than as a datum of "cultural studies" He is severe with those styles of criticism that in his view drain literature of its moral and social significance, or that manipulate literature to serve an ideological agenda. The essays in Vital Signs arise from a conviction that great literature is more than mere discourse or a semiotic freeplay of figurations. In Mr. Tuttleton's view, a great poem or novel is an ontological reality, has a living presence, and is a system of "vital signs" that, from generation to generation, illuminates the world and offers alternatives that might be our own.

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A refreshingly clear analysis of the main trends of budget policy from the Roosevelt to the Clinton presidencies, focusing on federal expenditure and tax policies. A fine short volume...it could not have come at a better time. —Library Journal

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Among the American avant-garde of the early twentieth century, Floyd Dell played a distinctive role. A boy from the Midwest who rose to influence in the Chicago Literary Renaissance and in the heyday of Greenwich Village radicalism, he became a celebrated novelist, critic, editor (of The Masses), poet, and playwright. Dell was also a notorious bohemian, proponent of free love, and champion of feminism, progressive education, socialism, and Freudianism. His love affairs earned him almost as much notoriety as his writings. His friends and colleagues included many of the great figures of the era: radical journalists John Reed and Max Eastman; the Christian Socialist Dorothy Day; novelists Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and Sherwood Anderson; and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Yet no figure was more colorful and brilliant than Dell himself. Better than anyone, he epitomized the high spirits and towering ambitions of American culture in the early decades of the century. Douglas Clayton's biography of Dell, the first full-length life, captures the remarkable accomplishments and contradictions of a man who was both central to radical culture and profoundly skeptical of it. An early escapee from Marxism, his career never followed the familiar left-to-right course. But Dell struggled all his life with the relationship between politics and art, which makes his life so arresting and relevant today. With 8 pages of photographs.

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A lively survey of Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and how the Great Fair mirrored American values and tastes at the turn of the century. Instructive of our times and an excellent brief study. —Journal of American Culture. American Ways Series.

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Analyzing the struggle by evangelical Protestants for the mind and soul of America in the decades before the Civil War, Johnson lucidly explores the nature of the evangelical message, the conflict of ideas within the movement, and the influence of these forces—both immediate and far-reaching—on American culture. American Ways Series.

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Following on his enormously successful The Mysteries: Creation, Bernard Sahlins has adapted the stories of The Passion to make an engaging drama for modern audiences. Plays for Performance Series.

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No event in post World War II diplomacy has been more written about than the Suez crisis of 1956—and for good reason: it signaled the fall of British power and influence in the Middle East. But most accounts, based on limited information, have focused on the invasion of Suez and the collusion between Britain, France, and Israel as the turning point in Washington's break with London and its assumption of power in the region. Now, using the most up-to-date U. S. sources and recently opened British records, Steven Freiberger has written the most definitive account to date of the Suez affair. His book is rich with fresh interpretations based on new evidence. Mr. Freiberger argues that the Suez crisis was only the culmination of years of American irritation with British imperialism in the Middle East; that the Eisenhower administration developed a coherent anti-colonial plan; that Washington used the Suez crunch to pressure Anthony Eden's removal as prime minister; and that in the end American strategy was a failure-it alienated the Arabs and permitted Soviet expansion in the region. Dawn Over Suez is an important reappraisal of a critical period in American diplomacy and offers keys to understanding our present-day problems in the Middle East.

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In this perceptive, influential book, Robert Wiebe shows how businessmen helped to shape—and were shaped by—social reform in the early years of the 20th century. The Progressive Era served as a way station between agrarian and urban America: into it came men and women, institutions, and values born on the farms and in the towns; out of it emerged the first practical experiments in social reorganization for an industrial era. Although this exciting, noisy, and hopeful period contained much lost motion, beneath the tumult it contributed lasting changes in American life. In particular, demands came largely from a wide range of middle-income Americans whose arrival as organized, articulate, and demanding citizens reordered the social structure. Privileges of leadership were redistributed to accommodate these challengers. In the process, as Mr. Wiebe shows, businessmen took the lead in demanding reforms—but divided into bitterly hostile factions and shied away from movements to extend democracy and public welfare. "Gracefully written, thoroughly researched, and imaginative...Wiebe’s approach to progressivism, through "content" rather than through personality, and through the organized group rather than through the individual, incontrovertibly has great value."—American Historical Review.

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Fifteen brilliant essays on the kind of culture created by the magic of the marketplace in 1980s America, from architecture to the yuppie ascendancy. Amusing, caustic and cleverly written....What makes Culture in an Age of Money fun to read is its refreshing candor. —New York Times

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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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"We used to canonize our heroes," Oscar Wilde wrote. "The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable." Since Wilde's condemnation of modern biography, the genre would appear to have accelerated its descent into bad taste. As Carl Rollyson points out, writers as various as Rebecca West, Ted Hughes, and Joyce Carol Oates have deplored biographers' tendency to cut up lives and render the bloody data so as to make their subjects seem unhealthy, unwholesome, and unsound. Janet Malcolm has compared biographers to burglars; modern novels feature the biographer as grave robber and victimizer. Exactly when did biography take this turn for the worse? Inquiring into the history of the art, and examining his own practices as well as those of biographers from Samuel Johnson to Richard Ellmann, Jeffrey Meyers, and many others, Mr. Rollyson casts considerable doubt on the indictments handed down by Oates, Malcolm and Co. By its very nature, Mr. Rollyson argues, biography is a problematic and controversial genre. That contemporary critics believe it has gone astray only reveals their ignorance of history and their hostility to the biographical enterprise itself—an animosity born of a misguided modernism and a rejection of Enlightenment values. A Higher Form of Cannibalism? explores the nexus between scholarship and biography, and demonstrates how the similarities of method between Leon Edel and Kitty Kelley outweigh the differences. Viewed through the prism of biography, the scholarly and the popular may not be as clearly separated as people suppose.

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Scarcely anyone understands the psychology of men's relationship with women—in all its complexity, ambivalence, and frequent perversity—better than the turn-of-the-century Viennese writer and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler. Like Vienna itself, birthplace of much of twentieth-century thought in art, philosophy, and psychology, Schnitzler's sensibility is profoundly modern, even postmodern. He probes and records the illusions and delusions, the dreams and desires, the split between the social self and the inner self that are characteristic of the self-alienated man of his time—and ours. In Margret Schaefer's third collection of newly translated fiction from Schnitzler, we find him focusing a clear and unforgiving eye on the minds of men who desire, fantasize about, and try to relate to women. Young or old, they are all bachelors—a young officer (Lieutenant Gustl), a socially desirable lawyer (The Murderer), a middle-aged physician (Doctor Graesler), an aging roué (Casanova's Homecoming). All are looking for women. Yet these are not love stories. Although Schnitzler's topic is relationships, his theme here as elsewhere is isolation—and the losses, fears, self-doubts, and self-absorption that make it inescapable. For no matter how much social and erotic contact the men in these tales have with women, in the end they cannot escape their own terrifying aloneness.

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Pictures made by a lens are inextricably linked to the real world—the world the photographer not only sees but lives in and thinks about. The most ambitious photographs (in an earlier time one might confidently have said the greatest photographs) recognize that an understanding of the identities of things, and of their relationships, is as important as the harmonious combination of the shapes these things make when projected by a lens onto a flat surface. Starting from this premise, and in elegant and incisive prose, Jerry Thompson in Truth and Photography explores the many-leveled relationship between seeing and thinking. The book reproduces (in duotone) and the essays discuss some twenty photographs—some as well known as any the medium has produced, some more obscure, and some never before published. Mr. Thompson's discussions of pictures and picture-taking occasions are not strictly historical, nor are they concerned only with theoretical considerations. They do not rely exclusively on the author's thirty-year experience as a working photographer, nor are they confined to the medium of photography. Rather, Mr. Thompson employs multiple perspectives, usually in the same essay and often on a single picture. His examinations are penetrating, sustained, allusive, and frequently thrilling. They represent not settled explanations but living thought.

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The long history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover is studded with serious questions about the Bureau’s professionalism and accountability. Revelations in the recent cases of Wen Ho Lee, Robert Hannsen, and Timothy McVeigh illustrate these misgivings. In Chasing Spies, Athan Theoharis, historian and perhaps the foremost authority on the FBI’s record, raises urgent new uncertainties about the Bureau’s behavior—and about the prospects for giving the FBI expanded powers of surveillance during the current national emergency. Mr. Theoharis here redefines the politics of the World War II and cold war eras, moving the debate beyond the narrow perspective triggered by the release of KGB records and intercepted Soviet consular reports (the Venona messages). The intriguing issue, he argues, is not the effectiveness of Soviet espionage activities as supported by the new evidence. Nor is it the long-standing charges of “softness toward communism” in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The real issue, he says, is the failure of the FBI to apprehend and convict Soviet agents. Based on meticulous research in FBI files, Chasing Spies uncovers the FBI’s role in the most important espionage cases of the cold war years. The book shows how secrecy immunized FBI operations from critical scrutiny and enabled FBI officials to mask their counterintelligence failures while promoting a politics of McCarthyism.

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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. Plays for Performance Series.

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Since hardly anyone is happy with American schools, it's always open season for school reform—with inevitable calls for better teaching, better curriculums, better organization, etc., etc. In these continuing exhortations, little attention is paid to the role of the students themselves, the object of the "learning process." In this explosive book, Paul Zoch argues that what America most needs to improve its schools is not necessarily better teachers but a wholesale shift in the way it thinks about who or what creates academic success. The tendency to look to teachers for students' achievement, he maintains, is the cause of low performance. Tracing the development of educational ideas in the United States from the time of William James to the present day, Mr. Zoch shows how they have given the schools an obsessive focus on teachers and their teaching methods while neglecting the disciplined effort and hard work that students must expend in order to achieve. Because most students, in accordance with society's prevailing views, see their success as a product of what their teachers do, they devote little effort to their studies and, predictably enough, learn little. Their dedication to schoolwork, as Mr. Zoch demonstrates, falls far short of that routinely displayed by students in other, less prosperous countries. Doomed to Fail is one of the freshest and most compelling investigations of the plight of our schools to appear in many years. It is sure to create a beehive of controversy.

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