Best of
American

1944

The Portable Dorothy Parker


Dorothy Parker - 1944
    This collection ranges over the verse, stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors.

The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker


Dorothy Parker - 1944
    At the center of the famed Round Table at New York's Algonquin Hotel, Parker distinguished herself among a circle of urbane literati with her excoriating quips and wonderfully realized epigrammatic poems. By the time her first collection of poems, Enough Rope, was published in 1926, she had been dubbed the "wittiest woman in America".Confronting the hard facts of existence facing a woman of talent and boldness in the 1920s and '30s, Parker's poems depict a world haunted by unrequited love, alcohol, razor blades, and men of overbearing will. Her poetry earned much admiration from critics such as Odgen Nash, Somerset Maugham, and Edmund Wilson, who hailed it as "flatly brutal as the wit of the age of Pope". Complete Poems collects Parker's three volumes of poetry, Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes, as well as a hundred other previously uncollected works -- such as the "hate songs", compact satiric descriptions of husbands and wives, actors and politicians, bores and ne'er-do-wells, and others who attracted her barbed pen.

The Collected Dorothy Parker


Dorothy Parker - 1944
    The decadent 1920s and 1930s in New York were a time of great experiment and daring for women. For the rich, life seemed a continual party, but the excesses took their emotional toll. In the bitingly witty poems and stories collected here, along with her articles and reviews, she brilliantly captures the spirit of the decadent Jazz Age in New York, exposing both the dazzle and the darkness. But beneath the sharp perceptions and acidic humour, much of her work poignantly expresses the deep vulnerability of a troubled, self-destructive woman who, in the words of philosopher Irwin Edman, was 'a Sappho who could combine a heartbreak with a wisecrack'.Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was born in West End, New Jersey, and grew up in New York. In 1916 she sold some of her poetry to the editor of Vogue, and was subsequently given an editorial position on the magazine. She then became drama critic of Vanity Fair and the central figure of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table, whose members included George S. Kaufman and Harpo Marx. Her collections of poems included Enough Rope (1926) and Not So Deep as a Well (1936), and her collections of stories included Here Lies (1939); in addition, she collaborated on and wrote screenplays including the Oscar-winning A Star is Born (1937), and Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942).If you enjoyed The Collected Dorothy Parker, you might like Truman Capote's The Complete Stories, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'She managed to express her real feelings in stanzas which snap and glitter like a Chanel handbag'Peter Ackroyd, The Times

The Simple Art of Murder


Raymond Chandler - 1944
    Contains Chandler's essay on the art of detective stories and a collection of 8 classic Chandler mysteries.

The Lost Weekend


Charles R. Jackson - 1944
    Yet when left alone for a few days by his brother, he struggles with his overwhelming desire for alcohol, succumbs to it and, in the resulting prolonged agony, goes over much of his life up to and including the lost weekend.

High Tide at Noon


Elisabeth Ogilvie - 1944
    Elisabeth Ogilvie tells the story of Joanna Bennett and her colorful life on Bennett's Island with a sensitivity and truthfulness born of her own early years on isolated Criehaven, the real Bennett's Island.

Island in the Sky


Ernest K. Gann - 1944
    Dooley was dean of a close knit group, & everything else took second place as the men came into headquarters, & set out again to find him. An unknown lake--beyond unknown mountains--a time schedule--& faith--such alone they had to go on, hampered by Army red tape, lack of radio contact, navigation rules upset by the frozen north. The story shifts from Dooley's experiences, with the five men who counted on him, to the men who sought him. Starkly told--another segment of understanding of total war.--Kirkus

Lost Worlds


Clark Ashton Smith - 1944
    A close correspondent and collaborator with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Smith was widely celebrated as a master by his contemporaries. Back in print for the first time since 1971, Lost Worlds brings together twenty-three of Smith's classic stories, all of which were originally published in Weird Tales. Rather than center his works on heroes, Smith created fantastical worlds around which he built cycles of stories. Included here are tales from the realms of Averoigne, Zothique, Hyperborea, and others. Told in lush poetic prose, these haunting stories bring to life dark, dreamlike realms full of gothic monsters and mortals. Jeff VanderMeer provides an introduction for this Bison Books edition.

The Life and Selected Writings


Thomas Jefferson - 1944
    "Jefferson aspired beyond the ambition of a nationality, and embraced in his view the whole future of man." --Henry Adams

Desertion


Clifford D. Simak - 1944
    The administrator can’t in good conscience send another volunteer to look for them, so he transforms himself and his faithful dog into Lopers.

One Times One


E.E. Cummings - 1944
    The poems in One Times One have as their theme "oneness and the means (one times one) whereby that oneness is achieved—love," in the words of Cummings's biographer Richard S. Kennedy. Besides new expressions of universal concerns, Cummings writes here in a lyric and optimistic mode, drawing portraits of people dear to him in New Hampshire and New York City's Greenwich Village. This new edition joins other individual uniform Liveright paperback volumes drawn from the Complete Poems, most recently Etcetera and 22 and 50 Poems.

Teacher in America


Jacques Barzun - 1944
    Barzun contrasts the ritual of education with the lost art of teaching. Twenty-one chapters deal with three major issues: the practice of teaching, the subject matter to be taught, and the institutional and cultural aspects of teaching.Jacques Barzun is a renowned scholar, teacher, and author who lectures widely since his retirement in 1993.

Strange Fruit


Lillian E. Smith - 1944
    It captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit southern town. The book is as engrossing and incendiary now as the day it was written.

Damon Runyon Favorites


Damon Runyon - 1944
    Included are many of the stories that have made him famous. There are "Little Miss Marker," "The Hottest Guy in the World," and "Madame La Gimp," who went Hollywood and became the celebrated Lady for a Day.You'll enjoy meeting some of Mr. Runyon's friends, socially. You'll like Harry the Horse and Spanish John and Little Isadore - hard characters, perhaps, but they would be hurt if you called them kidnapers. Then there's Big False Face, the Beer Baron. The police sent him to college at a place called Auburn, N.Y., and he also did post-graduate work at Ossining and Dannemora. And you'll meet Princess O'Hara and Goldberg, her horse, named after a guy who runs a delicatessen store on Tenth Avenue, and Last Card Louie, and The Brain himself. A veritable banquet in these pages for all those who like their Runyon straight.

The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories


Dashiell Hammett - 1944
    Contents:Too many have livedThey can only hang you onceA man called SpadeThe assistant murdererNight shadeThe judge laughed lastHis brother's keeper