Best of
American

1986

The Reckoning


David Halberstam - 1986
    Here are young Ford, renegade Iacocca, visionary Katayama--everyone needed to reveal the crucial nuances behind two nations competing for commercial supremacy. HC: Morrow.

Less Than One: Selected Essays


Joseph Brodsky - 1986
    His insights into the works of Dostoyevsky, Mandelstam, Platonov, as well as non-Russian poets Auden, Cavafy and Montale are brilliant. While the Western popularity of many other Third Wavers has been stunted by their inability to write in English, Brodsky consumed the language to attain a "closer proximity" to poets such as Auden. The book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, opens and closes with revealing autobiographical essay.

I'm in Charge of Celebrations


Byrd Baylor - 1986
    Baylor's radiant prose-poem and Parnall's exquisite illustrations combine to create a joyous celebration of the human spirit.

The Lost Get-Back Boogie


James Lee Burke - 1986
    Now the war vet and blues singer is headed to Montana, where he hopes to live clean working on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. In prison, Iry tinkered with a song -- "The Lost Get-Back Boogie" -- that never came out quite right. Now, the Riordan family's problems hand him a new kind of trouble, with some tragic consequences. And Iry must get the tune right at last, or pay a fateful price.

Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind


Robert D. Richardson Jr. - 1986
    In this new biography, based on a reexamination of Thoreau's manuscripts and on a retracing of his trips, Robert Richardson offers a view of Thoreau's life and achievement in their full nineteenth century context.

Forrest Gump


Winston Groom - 1986
    After accidentally becoming the star of University of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon -- as he wonders with childlike wisdom at the insanity all around him. In between misadventures, he manages to compare battle scars with Lyndon Johnson, discover the truth about Richard Nixon, and survive the ups and downs of remaining true to his only love, Jenny, on an extraordinary journey through three decades of the American cultural landscape. Forrest Gump has one heck of a story to tell -- and you've got to read it to believe it...

The Valley of Horses, Part 1 of 2


Jean M. Auel - 1986
    She is in search of others like herself...and in search of love. Driven by energies she scarcely understands, she explores where the clan never dared to travel. In a hidden valley, she finds not only a herd of steppe horses, but also a unique kinship with animals as vulnerable as herself. Still, nothing prepares her for the emotional turmoil she feels when she rescues a young man, Jondalar -- the first of the Others she has seen -- from almost certain death.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer


Thomas Ligotti - 1986
    When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris’s Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: “Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs.”The revisions in the present volume of Songs of a Dead Dreamer have been calculated to make its stories into enhanced incarnations of the originals. This edition is and will remain definitive.For those already familiar with the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, an invitation is extended to return to them in their ultimate state. For those new to the collection, it is submitted to engage them with some of the most extraordinary tales of their kind. In either case, this publication of Songs of a Dead Dreamer offers evidence for why Ligotti has been judged to be among the most important authors in the history of supernatural horror.

Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles


W.E.B. Du Bois - 1986
    This Library of America volume presents his essential writings, covering the full span of a restless life dedicated to the struggle for racial justice.The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States 1638–1870 (1896), his first book, renders a dispassionate account of how, despite ethical and political opposition, Americans tolerated the traffic in human beings until a bloody civil war taught them the disastrous consequences of moral cowardice.The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of beautifully written essays, narrates the cruelties of racism and celebrates the strength and pride of black America. By turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical, Du Bois pays tribute to black music and religion, explores the remarkable history of the Reconstruction Freedman’s Bureau, assesses the career of Booker T. Washington, and remembers the death of his infant son.Dusk of Dawn (1940) was described by Du Bois as an attempt to elucidate the “race problem” in terms of his own experience. It describes his boyhood in western Massachusetts, his years at Fisk and Harvard universities, his study and travel abroad, his role in founding the NAACP and his long association with it, and his emerging Pan-African consciousness. He called this autobiography his response to an “environing world” that “guided, embittered, illuminated and enshrouded my life.”Du Bois’s influential essays and speeches span the period from 1890 to 1958. They record his evolving positions on the issues that dominated his long, active life: education in a segregated society; black history, art, literature, and culture; the controversial career of Marcus Garvey; the fate of black soldiers in the First World War; the appeal of communism to frustrated black Americans; his trial and acquittal during the McCarthy era; and the elusive promise of an African homeland.The editorials and articles from The Crisis (1910–1934) belong to the period of Du Bois’s greatest influence. During his editorship of the NAACP magazine that he founded, Du Bois wrote pieces on virtually every aspect of American political, cultural, and economic life. Witty and sardonic, angry and satiric, proud and mournful, these writings show Du Bois at his freshest and most trenchant.

The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot


T.S. Eliot - 1986
    Eliot’s work, all with an active Table of Contents for easy navigation! The collection is formatted for optimal viewing on the Nook! The collection includes:PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS, which contains:• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock• Portrait of a Lady• Preludes• Rhapsody on a Windy Night• Morning at the Window• The Boston Evening Transcript• Aunt Helen• Cousin Nancy• Mr. Apollinax• Hysteria• Conversation Galante• La Figlia Che PiangePOEMS, containing:• Gerontion• Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar• Sweeney Erect• A Cooking Egg• Le Directeur• Mélange adultère de tout• Lune de Miel• The Hippopotamus• Dans le Restaurant• Whispers of Immortality• Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service• Sweeney Among the NightingalesTHE WASTE LANDEELDROP AND APPLEPEX (short story)THE SACRED WOOD: ESSAYS ON POETRY AND CRICTICISM, containing:• The Perfect Critic• Imperfect Critics• Tradition and the Individual Talent• The Possibility of a Poetic Drama• Euripides and Professor Murray• "Rhetoric" and Poetic Drama• Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe• Hamlet and His Problems• Ben Jonson• Philip Massinger• Swinburne As Poet• Blake• DanteEZRA POUND: HIS METRIC AND POETRY

Another Marvelous Thing


Laurie Colwin - 1986
    These spare and unsentimental stories display how two very different people -- a tough-minded and tenderhearted woman and an urbane, old-fashioned older man -- fall in love despite their differences, get married, and give birth to a child.8 stories: Frank and Billy French Movie A Little Something Another Marvelous Thing A Country Wedding A Couple of Old Flames [originally titled Old Flames] Swan Song My Mistress

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage


William Loren Katz - 1986
    Using fascinating biographies and detailed research, Katz creates a chronology of this hidden heritage during the settlement of the American West. Illustrations. Young Adult.

Fools Crow


James Welch - 1986
    The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. The story is a powerful portrait of a fading way of life. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry mistakenly killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants."A major contribution to Native American literature." -- Wallace Stegner.

Ultramarine: Poems


Raymond Carver - 1986
    Throughout, Carver “has the astonished, chastened voice of a person who has survived a wreck, as surprised that he had a life before it as that he has one afterward, willing to remember both sides” (The New York Times Book Review).

The Golden Gate


Vikram Seth - 1986
    From this interaction, John meets a variety of characters, each with their own values and ideas of "self-actualization." However, Liz begins to fall in love with John's best friend, and John realizes his journey of self-discovery has only just begun.

History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson


Henry Adams - 1986
    First published in nine volumes from 1889 to 1891, this classic work was out of print for several decades until The Library of America reissued it in two volumes: the first volume on the years of Thomas Jefferson's presidency and the second devoted to those of James Madison.With a cast of characters including Aaron Burr, Napoleon Bonaparte, Albert Gallatin, John Randolph, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and the complex, brilliantly delineated character of Thomas Jefferson, the first volume is unrivaled in its handling of diplomatic intrigue and political factionalism. Upon assuming office, Jefferson discovers that his optimistic laissez-faire principles--designed to prevent American government from becoming a militaristic European "tyranny"--clash with the realities of European war and American security. The party of small government presides over the Louisiana Purchase, the most extensive use of executive power the country has yet seen. Jefferson's embargo--a high-minded effort at peaceable coercion--breeds corruption and smuggling, and the former defender of states' rights is forced to use federal power to suppress them. The passion for peace and liberty pushes the country toward war.In the center of these ironic reversals, played out in a Washington full of diplomatic intrigue, is the complex figure of Jefferson himself, part tragic visionary, part comic mock-hero. Like his contemporary Napoleon Bonaparte, he is swept into power by the rising tide of democratic nationalism; unlike Bonaparte, he tries to avert the consequences of the wolfish struggle for power among nation-states.The grandson of one president and the great-grandson of another, Adams gained access to hitherto secret archives in Europe. The diplomatic documents that lace the history lend a novelistic intimacy to scenes such as Jefferson's conscientious introduction of democratic table manners into stuffily aristocratic state dinner parties. Written in a strong, lively style pointed with Adams's wit, the History chronicles the consolidation of American character, and poses questions about the future course of democracy.

The Valley of Horses, Part 2 of 2


Jean M. Auel - 1986
    each) : analog.Part Two Of Two Parts In this second novel of the Earth's Children saga, Ayla, the unforgettable heroine of THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, sets out solo into a world far from friendly. She is in search of Others like herself...and in search of love. Driven by energies she scarcely understands, she explores where the clan never dared to travel. In a hidden valley she finds not only a herd of steppe horses, but also a unique kinship with animals as vulnerable as herself. Still, nothing prepares her for the emotional turmoil she feels when she rescues a young man, Jondalar -- the first of the Others she has seen -- from almost certain death.

Ghost Dance


Carole Maso - 1986
    Like the poetry-mother in this debut novel, Maso works to ensure her readers understand and come to accept sorrow as a knowable and tactile presence. Narrating a family story through the voice of a young writer whose mother has recently been killed, Maso invites readers to experience firsthand both women's love and courage, capabilties of imagination, their persistence of memory, and generosity of spirit.It is this same generosity that allows readers the transformative intimacy Ghost Dance has to offer. Like her artist-protagonists, Maso's subject as well as medium is language, and she is brave and dangerous in her command of it. She abandons traditional narrative forms in favor of a shaped communication resembling Beckett and rivalling his evocative skill. Immersed in dilated and intense prose, the readers view is a privilege one, riding the crest of clear expression as it navigates the tangled terrain of loss and desperate sorrow.

Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were


Leland Ryken - 1986
    The work is rich in quotations from Puritan worthies and is ideally suited to general readers who have not delved widely into Puritan literature. It will also be a source of information and inspiration to those who seek a clearer understanding of the Puritan roots of American Christianity." -Harry Stout, Yale University"The typical Puritans were not wild men, fierce and freaky, religious fanatics and social extremists, but sober, conscientious, and cultured citizens, persons of principle, determined and disciplined excelling in the domestic virtues, and with no obvious shortcomings save a tendency to run to words when saying anything important, whether to God or to a man. At last the record has been put straight." -J.I. Packer, Regent College"Worldly Saints provides a revealing treasury of primary and secondary evidence for understanding the Puritans, who they were, what they believed, and how they acted. This is a book of value and interest for scholars and students, clergy and laity alike." -Roland Mushat Frye, University of Pennsylvania"A very persuasive...most interesting book...stuffed with quotations from Puritan sources, almost to the point of making it a mini-anthology." -Publishers Weekly"With Worldly Saints, Christians of all persuasions have a tool that provides ready access to the vast treasures of Puritan thought." -Christianity Today"Ryken writes with a vigor and enthusiasm that makes delightful reading-never a dull moment." -Fides et Historia"Worldly Saints provides a valuable picture of Puritan life and values. It should be useful for general readers as well as for students of history and literature." -Christianity and Literature

The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov


Isaac Asimov - 1986
    

The River That Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain


William H. Calvin - 1986
    There we find rocks of great age, fossils, dwellings of Stone Age peoples, and experience the land much as our ancestors did during all those untold generations in the dimly remembered world from which we somehow took flight.

The Collected Plays, Vol. 2


Neil Simon - 1986
    They and the critics agree that a trip to see any one of this master of comedy's stage triumphs ranks among the most wonderful experiences that the American theater offers. The eight plays in this, the second volume of The Collected PLays of Neil Simon, bear eloquent witness to the unique genius of this master playwright who so magnificently blends the joy of laughter and the love of life.

Rubicon Beach


Steve Erickson - 1986
    In his second novel, Steve Erickson creates a decaying world filled with leftover passions and poetic vision that established him as one of the most original and evocative American writers of his generation.

Damballah


John Edgar Wideman - 1986
    With stunning lyricism, Wideman sings of "dead children in garbage cans, of gospel and basketball, of lost gods and dead fathers" (John Leonard). It is a celebration of people who, in the face of crisis, uphold one another--with grace, courage, and dignity.

The American Heritage Children's Dictionary


American Heritage - 1986
    This award-winning book contains these essential features: • More than 13,000 main entries, fully updated for the twenty-first century • Hundreds of Word History, Language Detective, Vocabulary Builder, and Spelling notes • More than 1,000 full-color photographs and drawings • 26-page appendix including separate thesaurus, phonics and spelling, measurement, and geography sections

Don Coyote: The Good Times and the Bad Times of a Much Maligned American Original


Dayton O. Hyde - 1986
    Set in Oregon ...

Ford: The Men and the Machine


Robert Lacey - 1986
    Now Robert Lacey has captured in one volume the public achievements and the private tragedies, the feuds, affairs, and personalities that make up this epic tale.Ford is above all the story of a handful of powerful individuals whose ambitions have helped shape modern American society:Henry Ford I, the founder, one of history's great figures, whose legendary achievements - the Model T, the moving assembly line, the Five Dollar Day, the Peace Ship - and down-home folk wisdom are recounted in school civics courses. Here for the first time Lacey reveals the extraordinarily complex and contradictory man behind the public icon Henry Ford was at once a dedicated pacifist and a war profiteer; a champion of the rights of minorities and a virulent anti-Semite; a dedicated family man who supported a mistress and an illegitimate son; a loving father who hounded and bullied his only legitimate son intoan early grave.

The Young Hemingway


Michael S. Reynolds - 1986
    He reveals the fraught foundations of Hemingway's persona: his father's self-destructive battle with depression and his mother's fierce independence and spiritualism. He brings Hemingway through World War I, where he was frustrated by being too far away from the action and glory, despite his being wounded and nursed to health by Agnes Von Kurowsky—the older woman with whom he fell terribly in love.

Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984


Charles Bernstein - 1986
    First published in 1986 and now a classic study of poetry and poetics in late twentieth-century America, this collection offers thirty-seven of Bernstein's essays, including the influential works "Thought's Measure" and "Semblance." Bernstein ranges over poets and visual artists as diverse as William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukovsky, Charles Olsen, and Robert Creeley. At once irreverent and deeply serious, as indebted to Groucho Marx as it is to Karl Marx, Content's Dream stakes out a clear cultural and aesthetic position for one extraordinary poet, for language poetry, and for our time.

The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook


Howard Mitcham - 1986
    

Anne Tyler: Four Complete Novels: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant / Morgan's Passing / The Tin Can Tree / If Morning Ever Comes


Anne Tyler - 1986
    Includes her highly acclaimed Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Morgan's Passing, The Tin Can Tree, and If Morning Ever Comes.

Anagrams


Lorrie Moore - 1986
    Disillusioned and loveless, a chain-smoking art history professor who spends her spare time singing in nightclubs and tending to her young daughter finds herself pursued by an erratic, would-be librettist.

Star Woman: We are Made from Stars and to the Stars We Must Return


Lynn V. Andrews - 1986
    Join Lynn Andrews on her personal vision quest as she searches for an ancient knowledge to bridge the gap between the primal mind and white consciousness, guided by a white stallion which she rides into a world of illuminating visions--even to the dark side of her own spirit.

Going to the Territory


Ralph Ellison - 1986
    In Going to the Territory, Ellison provides us with dramatically fresh readings of William Faulkner and Richard Wright, along with new perspectives on the music of Duke Ellington and the art of Romare Bearden. He analyzes the subversive quality of black laughter, the mythic underpinnings of his masterpiece Invisible Man, and the extent to which America's national identity rests on the contributions of African Americans. Erudite, humane, and resounding with humor and common sense, the result is essential Ellison.

Wild Gratitude


Edward Hirsch - 1986
    The language is, throughout, simple, sensuous, and direct. We can be grateful for this book and this poet." --Jay Parini"I have known the poetry of Edward Hirsch for some time, and have greatly admired it. But I even more greatly admire his Wild Gratitude as a general collection, and I am convinced that the best poems here are unsurpassed in our time." --Robert Penn Warren

Last Worthless Evening: Four Novellas and Two Stories


Andre Dubus - 1986
    As novelist Richard Ford has said, "Dubus is a patient, resourceful and profound writer who never gives in to convention--although his situations are our situations, and imminently recognizable. The great, addictive pleasure of reading him arises from our anticipation that he is always going to say something interesting."

A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution


Craig L. Symonds - 1986
    Craig L. Symonds and cartographer William J. Clipson, author of A Battlefield Atalas of the Civil War, is a fresh visual and narrative overview of the principle military engagements of the American war of independence. It chronicles the emergence of a new nation through the military campaigns of men such as Washington, Cornwallis, and Burgoyne. The war started with men fighting as raw, hastily-formed militia and ended with well drilled armies engaged in great battles that raged along the eastern seaboard.Symonds narratives each battle in a clear concise and readable way. Accompanying two-color, full-page maps and the visual comprehension of students as well as military history buffs, making this easy-to-handle book an ideal classroom text, battlefield tour guide, or library reference. Four introductory essays draw the narrative together, each highlighting a new facet of the British-American conflict. "The Early Campaigns" recounts the formation of the Continental Army and the selection of Washington as its commander. Washington's persistence in keeping the army intact and his role in maintaining the morale of the budding nation were crucial to the Americans during the campaigns, from Lexington and Concord to Princeton."The Turning Point" discusses the tough winter spent by Washington's troops at Morristown, and the ongoing feuding within the American officer corps early in 1777. These problems belied that this year would prove the turning point of the war with the American defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Burgoyne's ambitious but flawed campaign is outlined by the maps accompanying this section."A Global War" announces the entry of France into the war on America's behalf, renewing the struggle between two of the greatest powers in the western world - France and Britain. For the British, this American-French alliance would prove disastrous as the war moved off the North American continent to sea."The War Moves South" explorers the shift in British strategy in trying to recruit Loyalists from southern colonies, the last alternative to political defeat for Britain and for Colonial Secretary Lord Germain, whose reputation was at stake. The conflict between Patriot and Loyalist in the South led to the final destruction of this strategy and victory for the new nation.

Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating


Geneen Roth - 1986
    Geneen Roth, whose "Feeding the Hungry Heart" brought understanding and acceptance to tens of thousands of readers, now outlines a proven program for resolving the conflicts at the root of eating disorders. Using simple techniques developed in her highly successful seminars, she offers reassuring, practical advice on:

Winslow Homer Watercolors


Helen A. Cooper - 1986
    Traces the development of Homer as a watercolorist, shows a selection of his landscapes, seascapes, and portraits, and discusses his distinctive style and techniques.

The Trouble With Rich Women (Singles Classic)


Gloria Steinem - 1986
    Intimacy and access make rebellion very dangerous.”In The Problem With Rich Women, Gloria Steinem explores how and why feminism failed to reach women in powerful families, and provides an urgent and persuasive argument for rebellion among upper-class women.The Problem With Rich Women was originally published in Ms., June 1986. Cover design by Adil Dara.

The United States Navy: 200 Years


Edward L. Beach - 1986
    

The American Heritage Student Dictionary


American Heritage - 1986
    Now in full color, it has been completely revised and updated to reflect our changing world, with more than 3,000 new words and senses in all areas of vocabulary.• More than 65,000 boldface entries, thoroughly updated on every page • Bright new full-color design, with 2,000 informative photographs and drawings • Expert usage guidance based on the American Heritage® Usage Panel

Left Out in the Rain: Poems


Gary Snyder - 1986
    This book is unique among Gary Snyder’s numerable works, and the poems contained here are as broad in style as the compilation is in timeframe. With a new introduction by the author, Left Out in the Rain captures the evolution of the poet and the man.Readers will travel with Snyder from the American West to the Far East. From Berkeley to Kyoto, his imagery provides insight into the natural world as well as the human experience. With the span of a few words, Snyder can reveal a universe and then two pages later deftly handle a villanelle. Sensual, sardonic, meditative, epigrammatic, formalist—whatever the tone or structure, these poems all bear the indelible stamp of a master. Always evocative, they remind us why Snyder is one of our most heralded and beloved contemporary poets.

Cthulhu by Gaslight: Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England


William A. Barton - 1986
    Even in the peaceful fields of rural England only intelligent and energetic intervention could keep the shadows at bay."Cthulhu by Gaslight" includes a lengthy roleplaying adventure, "The Yorkshire Horrors" in which the investigators join forces with the world's most famous consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes Extensive background essays provide period skills, social classes, world politics, biographies and timelines for the 1890s, maps and London location notes (including the best stores of the time), travel, criminals and police, Cockney slang, cost of living, royalty and titles, club life in London, the occult in the 1890s, prices, and clothing. A lengthy essay considers time-travel rationales for moving investigators of another time into the 1890s.

Classics Revisited


Kenneth Rexroth - 1986
    The brief, radiant essays of Classics Revisited discuss sixty key books that are, for Rexroth, “basic documents in the history of the imagination.” Ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Huckleberry Finn, these pieces (each about five pages long) originally appeared in the Saturday Review. Distinguished by Rexroth’s plain, wide-awake style, Classics Revisited presents complex ideas in simple language, energized by the author’s air of talking eye-to-eye with his reader. Elastic, at home in several languages, Rexroth is not bound by East or West; he leaps nimbly from Homer to The Mahabharata, from Lady Murasaki to Stendhal. It is only when we pause for breath that we notice his special affinities: for Casanova, lzaak Walton, Macbeth, Icelandic sagas, classical Japanese poetry. He has read everything. In Sterne, he sees traces of the Buddha; in Fielding, hints of Confucius. “Life may not be optimistic,” Rexroth maintains in his introduction, “but it certainly is comic, and the greatest literature presents man wearing the two conventional masks; the grinning and the weeping faces that decorate theatre prosceniums. What is the face behind the mask? Just a human face––yours or mine. That is the irony of it all––the irony that distinguishes great literature––it is all so ordinary.”

Conversations with Ernest Hemingway (Literary Conversations)


Ernest Hemingway - 1986
    Collections of interviews with notable modern writers

The Sociology of the Church: Essays in Reconstruction


James B. Jordan - 1986
    

Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750 to 1950


Judith Walzer Leavitt - 1986
    Judith Walzer Leavitt's study focuses on the traditional woman-centered home-birthing practices, their replacement by male doctors, and the movement from the home to the hospital. She explains that childbearing women and their physicians gradually changed birth places because they believed the increased medicalization would make giving birth safer and more comfortable. Ironically, because of infection, infant and maternal mortality did not immediately decline. She concludes that birthing women held considerable power in determining labor and delivery events as long as childbirth remained in the home. The move to the hospital in the twentieth century gave the medical profession the upper hand. Leavitt also discusses recent events in American obstetrics that illustrate how women have attempted to retrieve some of the traditional women--and family--centered aspects of childbirth.

The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture


Walter L. Williams - 1986
    I believe that people should be able to call themselves whatever they wish, and scholars should respect and acknowledge their change of terminology. I went on record early on in convincing other anthropologists to shift away from use of the word berdache and in favor of using Two-Spirit. Nevertheless, because this book continues to be sold with the use of berdache, many people have assumed that I am resisting the newer term. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless continued sales of this book will justify the publication of a third revised edition in the future, it is not possible to rewrite what is already printed, Therefore, I urge readers of this book, as well as activists who are working to gain more respect for gender variance, mentally to substitute the term "Two-Spirit" in the place of "berdache" when reading this text. -- Walter L. Williams, Los Angeles, 2006

Precedence


Rae Armantrout - 1986
    "Hard edge.... [She] uses words with laser precision to explore facets which a lesser intelligence would never notice. Her sense of the essential is unfailing"--Ron Silliman. "A.'s phrasing and sculptured concision give her poems an exceptional formal coherence. Her ear shapes solid landscapes.... More typically she prefers an elusive humor, layered with parody and occasionally populated by cartoon characters in various stages of panic. The offhandedness of her manner is belied by the complex emotional charge she gets from apparently banal materials"--Geoffrey O'Brien, Voice Literary Supplement. "Armantrout's poems ride the fence of the Language School movement. PRECEDENCE features poems of wit and humor not typical of the movement"--John Stickney, The Columbus Dispatch.

Selected Poems


Robert Bly - 1986
    The poems included here richly demonstrate why Robert Bly has been such a major force in American poetry during the past three decades.

On the Edge: Collected Long Poems


Kenneth Koch - 1986
    Full of exclamation and exaggeration but also graced with dry wit and comic sophistication, these poems contain some of Kenneth Koch's most original work. When the Sun Tries to Go On is a young man's radical song of himself and his freshly discovered and expanding universe. Ko, or A Season on Earth is an epic invention filled with such memorably powerful characters as a rookie baseball star whose pitches knock down grandstands, and Joseph Dah, whose poems transform him into whatever he writes about. In The Duplications Koch's inventions expand into Ovidian twists as Commander Papend builds a life-sized replica of Venice in Peru and a chemist discovers a way to make young women out of the soil of Finland. In the elegiac Seasons on Earth and in two meditative autobiographical sequences, Impressions of Africa and On the Edge, Koch's protean expressions of emotion make obvious his genius for evoking the mystery and excitement of the fact of existence and the passage of time. Distinctly and irrepressibly Koch throughout, these works heighten our appreciation of his achievement. On the Edge is the perfect companion volume to the critically acclaimed Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch, about which John Ashbery, in Publishers Weekly, said, The products of a lifetime are on display in this awe-inspiring banquet of a book.

Emily Dickinson


Cynthia Griffin Wolff - 1986
    It is a vivid portrait of the poet and her times as well as a fascinating interpretive study of the poems that will enable every reader to approach them with new understanding and delight.

Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice


Bernard Lewis - 1986
    This conflict is primarily political, a clash between states and peoples over territory and history. But it is also a conflict that has affected and been affected by prejudice. For a long time this was simply the "normal" prejudice between neighboring people of different religions and ethnic origins. In the present age, however, hostility toward Israel and its people has taken the form of anti-Semitism-a pernicious world view that goes beyond prejudice and ascribes to Jews a quality of cosmic evil. First published in the 1980s to universal acclaim, Semites and Anti-Semites traces the development of anti-Semitism from its beginnings as a poison in the bloodstream of Christianity to its modern entrance into mainstream Islam. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's foremost scholars of the Middle East, takes us through the history of the Semitic peoples to the emergence of the Jews and their virulent enemies, and dissects the region's recent tragic developments in a moving new afterword. "A powerful and important work, beautifully written and edited, and based on a range of erudition (in the best sense) that few others, if any, could command."—George Kennan

Ghosts of Glen Canyon: History beneath Lake Powell


C. Gregory Crampton - 1986
    The objective was to locate and record historical sites that would be lost to the rising waters of the reservoir. This book records that effort.First published in 1986, this edition has been revised to include several new “ghosts” of Glen Canyon, including a never-before-published foreword by Edward Abbey. It also showcases stunning color photographs by Philip Hyde and includes hundreds of black-and-white photographs taken by the original salvage crews.This informative guide to the historic treasures of Glen Canyon includes numbered maps keyed to each location. It is a book for both the armchair traveler and the lake enthusiast eager for a journey through the past to a place few had the privilege to know.

The American Fur Trade of the Far West, Volume 2


Hiram Martin Chittenden - 1986
    Its publication in 1902 invited historians and general readers to look more closely at the intricate connec-tions of the fur trade with the development of North America. Hiram Chittenden provides a perspective or overall outline of the fur trade that, after nearly a century, remains sound. Volume 2 of this Bison Book edition follows the traps and trails of such colorful characters as Ezekial Williams, Hugh Glass, Mike Fink, and John Colter. Described here are the explorers, missionaries, government survey parties, and Indian tribes of the fur trade West, and the geography that often determined their success or failure.Nine appendixes containing miscellaneous primary materials precede a bibliography and index. A new feature is a foreword by William R. Swagerty.

The Hanky of Pippin's Daughter


Rosmarie Waldrop - 1986
    Women's Studies. Introduction by Ben Lerner. "Josef and Frederika Seifert made a bad marriage--he so metaphysical, she, furious frustrated singer, furious frustrated femme fatale, unfaithful within two months of the wedding day. The setting is small town Germany between the wars; the Seiferts are just those 'ordinary people' who helped Hitler rise, bequeathing their daughter, who tells their story, a legacy of grief and guilt. Rosmarie Waldrop's haunting novel, superbly intelligent, evocative and strange, reverberates in the memory for a long time, a song for the dead, a judgment."--Angela Carter

Novels and Essays: Vandover and the Brute / McTeague / The Octopus / Essays


Frank Norris - 1986
    Inspired by the “new novel” developed by Zola and Flaubert, Norris adapted its methods to American settings, adding his own taste for exciting action and a fascination with the emergent sciences of economics and psychology.Born in Chicago in 1870, Norris moved with his family to San Francisco in 1885. After studying art in Paris and literature at Berkeley and Harvard, he worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent, was expelled from South Africa in 1896, and reported on the Spanish-American War from Cuba in 1898, where he met Stephen Crane. Joining the publishing firm of Doubleday & McClure in 1898, he met William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland, and Theodore Dreiser, and published six novels between 1898 and 1902. He died following an attack of appendicitis in October of 1902.Vandover and the Brute (1914) was published posthumously but written in 1895 during Norris’s year at Harvard. Drunkenness, sensuality, gambling, and debauchery reduce young Vandover, once a fashionable playboy and aspiring artist, to virtual bestiality. His dissipation is described with shocking realism, as Norris paints each level of San Francisco society he encounters in his descent.The novel McTeague (1899) represented a radical departure for American fiction of its era in its frank treatment of sex, domestic violence, and obsession. McTeague is a huge, simple dentist who dreams of having a giant tooth to hang outside his office and who carries his pet canary wherever he goes; Trina is his gentle, diminutive wife, who wins a lottery and compulsively hoards her money. They live on Polk Street in San Francisco, where the new middle class struggles with its pathological underside. Erich von Stroheim based his classic film Greed (1924) on this immensely powerful and grimly realistic novel.The Octopus (1901), the first work in Norris’s unfinished trilogy “The Epic of the Wheat,” is a novel about the ranchers and wheat producers of California. Pitted against the railroad monopoly and political machine, the members of the ranching community are forced to take up arms against the state. Inspired by the Mussel Slough Massacre of 1880, it depicts a band of strong ruthless Westerners who are crushed by inexorable forces of nature and capital they had sought to control.The twenty-two essays in this volume cover the years 1896–1902. They include book reviews, articles, literary columns, and parodies of popular authors in the hilarious “Perverted Tales.” They address theories of literature, the state of American fiction, and the social responsibilities of the artist.

Sevengill: The Shark and Me


Don C. Reed - 1986
    Don Reed, a diver at Marine World, reconstructs the birth and early life of the shark known as Sevengill, describes his experiences with her, and recounts other underwater adventures.

A Nest of Nightmares


Lisa Tuttle - 1986
    Sylvia would take long walks in the country; Pam would have tea ready by the fire for when she returned. Nice fantasies...The house had that kind of effect on people. It felt cosy, lived-in, though it had been empty for many years. Oddly, there was rubbish everywhere, but there was no other sign of a squatter's brief inhabitation.And though the windows were unbroken. the doors securely locked, Pam could never entirely rid herself of the thought that she and her sister might not be alone in the house...One of 13 terrifying tales of terror...

Last Words


Antler - 1986
    It contains his highly acclaimed epic "Factory," described by Allen Ginsberg as "a definitely powerful epic by one of Whitman's 'poets and orators to come.'"Antler was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He "worked his way through college" in various factories. As John Muir left the University of Wisconsin at Madison for "the University of the Wilderness" in 1863, Antler left the Milwaukee campus for the same destination in 1973. Besides factories, he has explored wildernesses in Upper Peninsula Michigan, Minnesota, Ontario, Colorado, and California."Factory" is only one of his many amazing poems--poems no less profound for their generous humor, fugitive lines dashed in factories and leisurely lines breathed into wilderness vistas."I think Walt passed on his humanity to you, and now you are passing it on to this and future generations."--Gay Wilson Allen, author of The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman

Jimmy's Blues: Selected Poems


James Baldwin - 1986
    Baldwin's language is deceptively simple--this poetry is easily understood. But the emotions behind the words go to the core not only of the poet's soul, but of America's. Readers will see Baldwin here in both a familiar and an altogether different light.

Garfield: Life and Lasagne


Jim Davis - 1986
    

People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture


Kendrick Frazier - 1986
    Maps & photos.

Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals


William G. Doty - 1986
    Extensively rewritten and completely restructured, the new edition provides further depth and perspective and is even more accessible to students of myth. It includes expanded coverage of postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, the Gernet Center, mythic iconography, neo-Jungian approaches, and cultural studies, and it summarizes what is new in the study of Greek myth, iconography, French classical scholarship, and ritual studies. It also features a comprehensive index of names and topics, a glossary, an up-to-date annotated bibliography, and a guide to myth on the Internet.Presenting all major myth theorists from antiquity to the present, Mythography is an encyclopedic work that offers a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of myth. By reflecting the dramatic increase in interest in myth among both scholars and general readers since publication of the first edition, it remains a key study of modern approaches to myth and an essential guide to the wealth of mythographic research available today.

Jeremiah Tower's New American Classics


Jeremiah Tower - 1986
    From the originator of California cuisine, this is a fabulous collection of nearly 250 recipes, lavishly illustrated with 125 full-color photographs.

The American Fur Trade of the Far West, Volume 1


Hiram Martin Chittenden - 1986
    Its publication in 1902 made clear how much the fur trade was "indissolubly connected to the history of North America." Chittenden brought to this enduring work an appreciation of geography and a feeling for the lives and times of colorful trappers and mountain men like Manuel Lisa, William H. Ashley, the Sublette brothers, Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and Kenneth McKenzie. He provided a comprehensive view of the fur trade that still remains sound.Volume 1 of the Bison edition includes the organization and financing of the fur trade and a detailed history of the major American companies operating in the trans-Mississippi West to the year 1843.

The American Heritage First Dictionary


American Heritage - 1986
    More than 600 colorful photos and drawings enhance the entries. The Phonics and Spelling Guide helps children develop solid spelling and reading skills.

Designing Groupwork


Elizabeth G. Cohen - 1986
    The book aims to combine easy-to-follow theory with examples and teaching strategies that are adaptable to any situation.

Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia


Dell Upton - 1986
    Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book examines the architecture, decoration, and furniture of Virginia`s Anglican churches and puts them in the context of eighteenth-century life and society."The finest study ever done of early American religious architecture."—Jon Butler, Journal of British Studies"A splendid volume, thoroughly researched, well written, and handsomely produced. . . . The most satisfying and dexterous analysis of material culture to date."—Randall H. Balmer, Religious Studies Review"A remarkable book about the construction and meaning of Anglican churches in colonial Virginia."—Lois Green Carr, American Historical Review"Upton provides the general reader with a fascinating portrait of architecture as the physical embodiment of a certain time, place, and society without ignoring its technological or stylistic details and development."—Robin A. S. Haynes, American Quarterly"Upton . . . answers many questions about early Virginia life with deep insight through a study of a building type that mixed high style architecture with the vernacular."—Dennis Domer, Journal of Architectural EducationWinner of the 1987 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award given by the Society of Architectural Historians, the 1987 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and the 1987 Abbott Lowell Cummings Award of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.Dell Upton is professor of architectural history at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Mechanic Muse


Hugh Kenner - 1986
    In the early decades of the twentieth century, Hugh Kenner, observes, technology tended to engulf people gradually, coercing behavior they were not aware of. The Modernist writers were sensitive to technological change, however, and throughout their works are reflections of this fact. Kenner shows, for example, how Eliot's lines One thinks of all the hands/Thatare raising dingy shades/In a thousand furnished rooms suggest the advent of the alarm clock and, beyond that, what the clocks enabled: the new world of the commuter, in which a principal event was waking up in the morning under the obligation to get yourself somewhere else, and arrive there ontime. In fascinating examinations of Pound, Joyce, and Beckett, in addition to Eliot, Kenner looks at how inventions as various as the linotype, the typewriter, the subway, and the computer altered the way the world was viewed and depicted. Whether discussing Joyce's acute awareness of the nuancesof typesetting or Beckett's experiments with a proto-computer-language, Kenner consistently illuminates in fresh new ways the works of these authors and offers, almost incidentally, a wealth of anecdotes and asides that will delight the general reader and the literary specialist alike

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine


Jeff Smith - 1986
    Includes over 400 recipes and tips on choosing, storing, and matching food with wine. Black-and-white illustrations.