Funny, passionate, and compelling prose on what it means to be queer and happy about it in a world that is still arguing about what it means to be queer.

    Distinguished from the  detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational tone, its loose structure, and its drive toward candor and self-disclosure, the personal essay seizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities, fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love and  disappointment, the pleasures of solitude, reading, taking a walk -- to offer insight into the human condition and the great social and political issues of the day. The Art of the Personal Essay is the first anthology to celebrate this fertile genre. By presenting more than seventy-five personal essays, including influential forerunners from ancient Greece, Rome, and the Far East, masterpieces from the dawn of the personal essay in the sixteenth century, and a wealth of the finest personal essays from the last four centuries, editor Phillip Lopate, himself an acclaimed essayist, displays the tradition of the personal essay in all its historical grandeur, depth, and diversity.

    This marvelous reprise of the most entertaining movie reviews ever written is a boon to serious moviegoers and the perfect companion in the age of the VCR. Today, the best place to find "the movies" is in books--and "the best books to go to remain those of Pauline Kael" (New York Magazine).

    Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a 'powerful site for intervention, challenge and change'. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.

    We see, hear, and feel Umberto Eco, the passionate reader who has gotten lost over and over again in the woods, loved it, and come back to tell the tale, The Tale of Tales. Eco tells us how fiction works, and he also tells us why we love fiction so much. This is no deconstructionist ripping the veil off the Wizard of Oz to reveal his paltry tricks, but the Wizard of Art himself inviting us to join him up at his level, the Sorcerer inviting us to become his apprentice.

    A perfect introduction to one of America's most acclaimed and bestselling authors.

    Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927) The Waves (1931) The Years (1937) Between the Acts (1941) THE 'BIOGRAPHIES' Orlando: a biography (1928) Flush: a biography (1933) Roger Fry: a biography (1940) THE STORIES Two Stories (1917) Kew Gardens (1919) Monday or Tuesday (1921) A Haunted House, and other short stories (1944) Nurse Lugton's Golden Thimble (1966) Mrs Dalloway's Party (1973) The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985) THE ESSAYS Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924) The Common Reader I (1925) A Room of One's Own (1929) On Being Ill (1930) The London Scene (1931) A Letter to a Young Poet (1932) The Common Reader II (1932) Walter Sickert: a conversation (1934) Three Guineas (1938) Reviewing (1939) The Death of the Moth, and other essays (1942) The Moment, and other essays (1947) The Captain's Death Bed, and other essays (1950) Granite and Rainbow (1958) Books and Portraits (1978) Women And Writing (1979) 383 Essays from newspapers and magazines AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING A Writer's Diary (1953) Moments of Being (1976) The Diary Vols. 1–5 (1977-84) The Letters Vols. 1–6 (1975-80) The Letters of V.W. and Lytton Strachey (1956)  A Passionate Apprentice. The Early Journals 1887-1909 (1990)  THE PLAY Freshwater: A Comedy (both versions) (1976)

    With three hilarious books over the next two decades--American Fried; Alice, Let's Eat; and Third Helpings--he established himself as, in Craig Claiborne's phrase, "the Walt Whitman of American eats." Trillin's three comic masterpieces are now available in what Trillin calls The Tummy Trilogy.

    This revised and updated edition includes new material from the author, including more recent diaries and his introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Writing Home is a classic history of a life in letters.

    He was seen as a champion of individualism. The transcendentalists believe in the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They further believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. The collection: • Nature • The American Scholar • The Conduct of Life • English Traits Essays - First Series • History • Self-Reliance • Compensation • Spiritual Laws • Love • Friendship • Prudence • Heroism • The Over-Soul • Circles • Intellect • Art Essays - Second Series • The Poet • Experience • Character • Manners • Gifts • Nature • Politics • Nonimalist and Realist • New England Reformers Representative Men • Plato; or, the Philosopher • Plato; New Readings • Swedenborg; or, the Mystic • Montaigne; or, the Skeptic • Shakspeare; or, the Poet • Napoleon; or, the Man of the World • Goethe; or, the Writer Poems • May-Day And Other Pieces • Elements And Mottoes • Quatrains And Translations

    Brimming with outrage yet tender, this is a “remarkable book” (Philadelphia Inquirer).Puck --Gert --My priests --3275 --The politics of silence --Mustering --A one-way fare --Getting covered --Sleeping under a tree --Mortal things --Some afterthoughts

    Williams weaves her observations in the naturalist field and her personal experience--as a woman, a Westerner, and a Mormon--into a resonant manifesto on behalf of the landscapes she loves, making clear as well that, through our disregard of this world, we have lost an essential connection to our deepest selves.

    A funny and cynical collection of essays, observations, and sketches denouncing the perversions of political and cultural life in Croatia.

    Originally released as a series of magazines, then a collected edition which sold thousands before going out of print, ANSWER Me! has been blamed for a White House shooting and a triple suicide. It has been banned in several countries and put on trial for obscenity in the USA. Chock full of well-written rants, interviews, and articles on topics ranging from music and subcultures to sex, love, hate, murder, serial killers, and suicide, this fat, gorgeous anthology contains the legendary rant-zine's first three issues in their entirety. It also contains sixty new pages of wistful ANSWER Me! memories and tasty new articles written by philanthropist and humanitarian Jim Goad. There's a strong chance that this is the best book ever published. Only an idiot would refuse to buy it. ANSWER Me! was so wonderful because it reminded me of when my uncle Joey turned me on to National Lampoon when I was eight years old. After National Lampoon I was always looking for uglier forms of humor, and then comes along ANSWER Me! -- Shaun Partridge, Partridge Family Temple ANSWER Me! is a nasty little book ... more than worth its cover price for the jaw dropping serial killer and suicide guides. -- debased.com

    When Susan L. Taylor rose to editor in chief of Essence magazine more than a decade ago, she began writing an editorial column in which she shares her thoughts and feelings about how developing one's inner awareness ensures the wisdom and clarity needed to create a deeply satisfying and fulfilling life.The monthly column called "In the Spirit" is one of the most popular in the magazine.Susan L. Taylor connects with the reader in a personal and meaningful way, in a voice that is sisterly, informed, and motivating. She challenges her readers to transcend their fears, to face inevitable challenges in their lives courageously, and to use change as an opportunity to grow. "We limit ourselves because change may well mean dealing with the disapproval of the very people we rely on for support. Often words of inspiration and motivation, but she also suggests specific methods for working through problems and improving our emotional and spiritual health."We are not powerless spectators of life. We are co-creators with God, and all around is are the gifts, the clay, that we can use to shape our world," she says.Susan L. Taylor writes passionately about what she has seen and learned in the course of her travels throughout the United States, Caribbean, and Africa. Her essays have helped many to balance the demanding world of work and business with the personal world of family and friendship. She shares bits of her own life--her loves, her trails, and triumphs--and the lessons she's learned.Many of Susan L. Taylor's readers already collect her editorials and find in them a source of encouragement, self-affirmation, empowerment, and peace of mind. Now they can have new essays and a few previously published favorites elegantly bound in a gift-sized paperback edition to keep for themselves or to give as a gift of love to those who are special to them.

    Day...." The articles narrated here are "My Escape From Slavery" (1881) and "Reconstruction" (1866). - Summary by Lee Smalley

    And that is just for starters. She also writes about W.E.B. Du Bois, gardening, Toni Morrison, Star Trek, affirmative action, space exploration, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the role of griots, and the rape and neglect of urban schools. But to reduce Nikki Giovanni's essays to their subjects is to miss altogether their significance. As Virginia C. Fowler writes in her Foreword, These pieces are artistic expressions of a particular way of looking at the world, featuring a performing voice capable of dizzying displays of virtuosity. Profoundly personal and blisteringly political, angry and funny, lyrical and blunt, Racism 101 will add an important chapter to the debate on American national values.

    The essays are addressed to everyone interested in the roots of the colonized woman's reality. Castillo introduces the term Xicanisma in a passionate call for a politically active, socially committed Chicana feminism. In "A Countryless Woman, " Castillo outlines the experience of the brown woman in a racist society that recognizes race relations mostly as a black and white dilemma. Essays on the Watsonville strike, the early Chicano movement, and the roots of machismo illustrate the extent to which women still struggle against male dominance. Other essays suggest strategies for opposing the suppression of women's spirituality and sexuality by institutionalized religion and the state. These challenging essays will be a provocative guide for those who envision a new future for women as we face a new century.

    Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited response? Above all, The Habit of Rivers is about ways of seeing the wonderfully textured world that emanates from a river.

    

    An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba.

    Published here in English for the first time Helene Cixous, Rootprints is an ideal introduction to Cixous's theory and her fiction, tracing her development as a writer and intellectual whose remarkable prespicacity and electrifying poetic force are known world-wide.Unprecedented in its form and content this collection breaks new ground in the theory and practice of auto/biography. Cixous's creative reflections on the past provide occasion for scintillating forays into the future.The text includes: * an extended interview between Cixous and Calle-Gruber, exploring Cixous's creative and intellectual processes* a revealing collection of photographs taken from Cixous's family album, set against a poetic reflection by the author * selections from Cixous's private notebooks* a contribution by Jacques Derrida* original 'thing-pieces' by Calle-Gruber.

    The force of her thought is evident everywhere in these essays, from her explorations of other poets' work to her skeptical contemplation of current literary critical notions such as "sincerity" and "courage." Here also are Glück's revealing reflections on her own education and life as a poet, and a tribute to her teacher and mentor, Stanley Kunitz. Proofs and Theories is not a casual collection. It is the testament of a major poet.

    An outstanding observer of the American scene, he became one of the world’s best-loved broadcasters, and a foreigner who helped Americans better understand themselves.Here, in print for the first time, is a collection of Cooke’s finest reports that celebrates the inimitable style of this wise and avuncular reporter. Beginning with his first letter in 1946, a powerful description of American GIs returning home, and ending with his last broadcast in February 2004, in which he expressed his views on the United States presidential campaign, the collection captures Cooke’s unique voice and gift for telling stories.Gathered in this volume are encounters with the many presidents Cooke knew, from Roosevelt to Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, both Senior and Junior. His friends are warmly recollected–among them Leonard Bernstein, Philip Larkin, Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Chaplin, and Katharine Hepburn. We observe a variety of political landmarks–the Vietnam War, Watergate, Cooke’s remarkable eyewitness account of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, through to the scandals that surrounded Clinton and the conflict in Iraq. His moving evocation of the events of September 11 and its aftermath remains essential reading, while his recollections of holidays and sporting events remind us of Cooke’s delight in the pleasures of everyday life.Imbued with Alistair Cooke’s good humor, elegance, and understanding, Letter from America, 1946—2004 is a captivating insight into the heart of a nation and a fitting tribute to the man who was for so many the most reassuring voice of our times.From the Hardcover edition.

    A philosophic champion of human freedom, she was among the first to draw the now-evident parallel between Nazism and Bolshevism and to identify totalitarianism as a threat inherent to the modern world. Jerome Kohn, Arendt's longtime assistant, has compiled, edited, and annotated her manuscripts for publication, beginning with some of her earliest published work and including essays on Augustine, Rilke, Kierkegaard, and figures of the nineteenth-century "Berlin Salon"; the loyalties of immigrant groups within the United States; the unification or "federation" of Europe; "the German problem"; religion, politics, and intellectual life; the dangers of isolation and careerism in American society; the logical consequences of "scientific" theories of Nature and History; the terror that was the organizing principle of both the Nazi and the Communist states. Two seminal essays have never before been published in complete form: On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding (1953) and Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophical Thought (1954).

    In this memoir, Philip Levine celebrates the poets who were his teachers--particularly John Berryman and Yvor Winters, writers whose lives and work, he believes, have been misunderstood and misinterpreted. In the process of writing this account of his childhood and young manhood in Detroit and of his middle and later years in California and Spain, Levine came to realize that he was also engaged in a quest, striving to discover "how I am." The resulting work provides a double-edged revelation of the way writers grow. Witty and elegantly rendered in a prose that is as characteristically Levine's as his verse, this is superb--and essential--reading for anyone interested in contemporary poetry and poets. Philip Levine has received many awards for his books of poems, most recently the National Book Award for What Work Is in 1991 and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for The Simple Truth in 1995. Levine recently retired from the University of California, Fresno.

    Providing both a chronicle of the radical sex movement in the United States, as well as the definitive opinions of America's most consistent and trenchant sexual critic, Public Sex is must-read material for anyone interested in sexual practices, feminism, censorship, or simply the art of the political essay.

    Features poems, essays, plays, and works of fiction written in both Filipino and English.

    It was a broadcast of great poignancy and power: Dennis Potter knew he had only a few weeks to live. Their conversation records Potter's honest dissection of his life and work. Frank, amusing and moving, this inspirational and unique testament is one of the defining moments of television history.

    Jackson, a pioneer in the field of landscape studies, here takes us on a tour of American landscapes past and present, showing how our surroundings reflect important changes in our culture. Because we live in urban and industrial environments that are constantly evolving, says Jackson, time and movement are increasingly important to us and place and permanence are less so. We no longer gain a feeling of community from where we live or where we assemble but from common work hours, habits, and customs. Jackson examines the new vernacular landscape of trailers, parking lots, trucks, loading docks, and suburban garages, which all reflect this emphasis on mobility and transience; he redefines roads as scenes of work and leisure and social intercourse—as places, rather than as means of getting to places; he argues that public parks are now primarily for children, older people, and nature lovers, while more mobile or gregarious people seek recreation in shopping malls, in the street, and in sports arenas; he traces the development of dwellings in New Mexico from prehistoric Pueblo villages to mobile homes; and he criticizes the tendency of some environmentalists to venerate nature instead of interacting with it and learning to share it with others in temporary ways. Written with his customary lucidity and elegance, this book reveals Jackson's passion for vernacular culture, his insights into a style of life that blurs the boundaries between work and leisure, between middle and working classes, and between public and private spaces.

    He was also a passionate journal keeper, a man who filled page after page with notes, philosophical musings, character sketches, illustrations, musical notations, and drawings. His "scribbling," as he called it, began in 1948, when he served as a motorcycle MP in postwar Italy, and continued until his death in 1989, totaling twenty-one volumes.His journals are the closest thing to an Abbey autobiography we will ever have. They reveal his first youthful philosophical ruminations about art, love, literature, and anarchy as a student at Edinburgh, follow his wanderings through Europe, Scandinavia, and the eastern United States and finally to his spiritual home, the American West; record his many loves and marriages; and chronicle his lifelong struggle to preserve the disappearing southwestern wilderness, as well as his bitter and often hilarious disputes with the East Coast intelligentsia. His journals contain the first inklings—backgrounds, narrative pictures, and sketches—of his hard hitting, popular, irreverent published works. But perhaps most important, they offer us a portrait of Abbey the man: the friend, enemy, husband, lover, loner, writer, and fiery environmentalist who forever changed the way we look at the American West.Edited by Abbey's good friend, writer David Petersen, Confessions of a Barbarian presents the best of these previously unpublished journals for the first time, illustrated with Abbey's own sketches.

    This book - which includes some of his essays - is full of details and anecdotes about the flora, fauna, and humans that have inhabited Florida's colourful landscape.

    As a lawyer in East Harlem, he saw the social injustice; and, in his writings as well as his activism, he tried to indicate the ways Christianity could respond to those injustices. Stringfellow's writings are deeply scriptural, and this collection, drawn from his 16 books and numerous articles, nicely demonstrates the wide range of his thoughts and passions. The first section focuses on his autobiographical writings; the second collects his words on the vocation of the church; and a third is devoted to his central theological concern, the conflict of principalities and powers. The final section collects writings devoted to the art of living humanely. We can be in Kellerman's debt, for this long overdue collection reacquaints us with a man who was indeed a keeper and doer of the Word." - Publisher's Weekly

    Three interrelated essays on the primary colors presents the artistic, aesthetic, emotional, and economic dimensions of each color in an anecdotal format of poetry and humor.

    Delany, whose theoretically sophisticated science fiction and fantasy has won him a broad audience among academics and fans of postmodernist fiction, offers insights into and explorations of his own experience as writer, critic, theorist, and gay black man in his new collection of written interviews, a form he describes as a type of "guided essay." Gathered from sources as diverse as Diacritics and Comics Journal, these interviews reveal the broad range of his thought and interests.

    Peachtree Press is proud to announce The Grizzard Sampler, a collection of the best of this beloved humorist. A portion of the proceeds from this book benefits the American Heart Association.

    In nine linked essays, he addresses the question: "What is the exact distance that permits us to see things as they are?" To understand our world, suggests Ginzburg, it is necessary to find a balance between being so close to the object that our vision is warped by familiarity or so far from it that the distance becomes distorting.Opening with a reflection on the sense of feeling astray, of familiarization and defamiliarization, the author goes on to consider the concepts of perspective, representation, imagery, and myth. Arising from the theme of proximity is the recurring issue of the opposition between Jews and Christians--a topic Ginzburg explores with an impressive array of examples, from Latin translations of Greek and Hebrew scriptures to Pope John Paul II's recent apology to the Jews for antisemitism. Moving with equal acuity from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Voltaire, touching on philosophy, history, philology, and ethics, and including examples from present-day popular culture, the book offers a new perspective on the universally relevant theme of distance.Carlo Ginzburg teaches at UCLA, where he is the Franklin D. Murphy Chair of Italian Renaissance Studies. His other books in English include The Cheese and the Worms, No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches'Sabbath and The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

    

    Mediated by stories and personal excursions in literature, philosophy and sacred texts, and containing a new Epilogue, Dreamtime takes issue with the Cartesian consciousness of a Cartesian world.. "Although Dreamtime is often thought of as an Australian aboriginal phenomenon, this book posits a European, Christian and Irish Dreamtime, as much cultural as geo-physical. The task of the poet-philosopher, it suggests, is to enlarge our capacity for symbolic understanding, while keeping the path to Connla's Well open and inviting us to inhabit a shared Dreamtime.

    I'm Libby Gelman-Waxner, and I'm an assistant buyer in juniors' activewear. While I find my work both rewarding and creative, especially with the new knits coming in, I want more. And so I decided to become a film critic....Move over, Siskel & Ebert. Watch out, Leonard Maltin. And just forget saving that aisle seat, Mr. Medved. Libby Gelman-Waxner has arrived -- in the critic's circle, that is -- and the silver screen may never be the same again. Witty, wicked, and scathingly honest -- If You Ask Me is a hilarious collection of her columns from Premiere magazine. Just listen to Libby on some recent films and film stars:Prince of Tides -- "Barbra's only spontaneous moment in Prince of Tides comes when Nick tosses her a football and she screams 'My nails!'"Diane Keaton -- "She's a pioneer; she takes that thing that hangs in the back of your closet, the thing that was too marked down to pass up, Diane takes that thing and she doesn't call Goodwill, she wraps it around her head a few times, pins on a Smurf brooch, and wins an Oscar...."The Last of the Mohicans -- "Daniel Day-Lewis makes American actors look like giggly junior high school boys playing Nintendo during the prom; at one point, Madeleine asks Daniel what he is looking at, and he says, I'm looking at you, Miss, and let me tell you, the usher had to conk me with his flashlight to make me stop whimpering...."Daryl Hannah -- "All men in America, my Josh included, they all want a date with Daryl Hannah. A girl like Daryl -- we're not talking about a Ph.D. in comparative literature; I think we're talking about hair in the eyes and not much in the way of lingerie...."

    Skillfully edited by Ronald J. Drez and first published on the fifty-year anniversary of D-Day, the award-winning Voices of D-Day tells the story of that momentous operation almost entirely through the words of the people who were there.

    The book explores a complex and fascinating set of interrelated issues, establishing the significance of such wide-ranging subjects as: * re-mapping, re-naming and cultural crossings * tourist ideologies and playful world travelling * gender, heritage and identity * African women's writing and resistance to domination * marginality, effacement and decentering * gender, language and the politics of location Carole Boyce-Davies is at the forefront of attempts to broaden the discourse surrounding the representation of and by black women and women of colour. Black Women Writing and Identity represents an extraordinary achievement in this field, taking our understanding of identity, location and representation to new levels.

    This best-seller provides a little comic relief from managing a family and raising children, along with biblical truths about our lifelong walk with God.

    So is flirtation dangerous, exploiting the ambiguity of promises to sabotage our cherished notions of commitment? Or is it, as Adam Phillips suggests, a productive pleasure, keeping things in play, letting us get to know them in different ways, allowing us the fascination of what is unconvincing?

    Poignant, intimate, insightful and witty by turns, these writings are an essential accompaniment for David Mamet's plays, and an education for anyone interested in theatre, film, and writing.In these wise, revealing, and endlessly amusing pieces, David Mamet touches upon many aspects of his life as a writer. In Writing in Restaurants he reflects modestly on his career, while Some Freaks discourses loudly and entertainingly on aspects of contemporary culture - like the movies, Disneyland and on being a tourist. On Directing Film shows his ebullient and practical approach to his own film-making. Central to these essays is Mamet's own work as a writer, and it is in The Cabin that Mamet comes closest to defining himself. Included are autobiographical vignettes from childhood and youth describing the gamut of human emotion, from childhood fear to adult nostalgia in the re-creation of the past.

    Take it straight from a nervous man continually taking the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist, as he charges the halls of eternity in "Final Exit: The Marketing Campaign." Hang on for the ride as he deconstructs everything from animated spokescreatures to rap ("Turn That Racket DOWN"), coffee to disarmament ("Those Pesky Nukes"). Journey into the twilight land of hope, cynicism, and conspicuous cellular phone usage on the campaign trail. Take your hat off to the great American pastime ("Swing and a Myth"), American cars ("Lament of the Crash Dummies"), and America's most tragic cultural icon ("The Life and Times of Wile E. Coyote"). And quiver with unabashed delight as Lileks's manic intelligence roves over such subjects as Satanism, genetic engineering, and Thanksgiving turkeys. "One might call Lileks...a young Dave Barry...Lileks makes the grade," says the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press proclaims, "It's time we admit that the only sane reaction to life is a horselaugh, and by that standard, Lileks is a pretty sane guide to the (un)real world we grudgingly inhabit." From fake logs to car alarms, school prayer to swimsuits ("Thongs! For men! Had the laws changed? Had men changed?"), don't miss another word by James Lileks, one of the country's wittiest satiric stars.

    Here, renowned writers and critics including Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Hermione Lee, and Marina Warner discuss the novels, stories and, polemics that made Carter one of the most spellbinding writers of her generation.

    In the words of David Remnick, author of Lenin's Tomb, "(this book is) like watching an endless parade of the great characters of American life . . . as rich as a great novel."From the Trade Paperback edition.

    

    He has also been cooking for her. This lyrical, irreverent, and often mouth-watering "prose stew" takes in Shacochis' thoughts on monogamy and hot sauce, sex and seafood, and the enduring consolations of soup. It is the ideal valentine for lovers of prose and food.

    Hans Urs von Balthasar Balthasar puts his finger on the precise origin of all those elements in modern Christianity which see the real Jesus Christ as unknowable, the Gospels as merely the confused reflections of later Christians, and Christian tradition as a perpetuation of the mythology.

    Lawrence, Djuna Barnes, and Henry Miller. A daring analysis of much never-before-addressed material.

    There are seventeen of them in this Reader, and the best of them, in the words of Richard Ellmann "stir those facial muscles which, we are told, are the same for both laughing and weeping." Except for the masterpiece, "Guests of the Nation," the stories included here have been out of print for twenty years, and one story had been previously unpublished.But this is a Reader and it celebrates the creative diversity of one of this century's finest writers. Here one can also sample O'Connor's skillful translations of Irish poetry, including "The Lament for Art O'Leary." There are a number of self-portraits, including "Meet Frank O'Connor" and "Writing a Story-One Man's Way."The final section includes a number of O'Connor's finest essays, from pieces on Yeats, Joyce, and Mozart, to ones on English and Irish pubs and one simply titled, "Ireland": "No one who does not love the sense of the past should ever come near us; nobody who does, whatever our faults may be, should give us the hard word."

    Memoir. Translated from the French by Guy Bennett. TLEMCEN OR PLACES OF WRITING is an unusual, hybrid work: part memoir of the author's coming of age and coming to writing in his native Algeria, and part meditation on the nature of writing itself as well as on the task and responsibility of the writer. The text is complimented by some fifty photographs taken by the author in the Tlemcen of his youth, images of a past that has vanished and which the text seeks to reveal. The original French edition of this work was awarded the Grand prix de la Francophonie de l'Academie francaise on its publication in 1994.

    It features a timeline that offers an overview of key events in the city's history, and is accompanied by illustrations and a statistical appendix.

    The next three decades brought a transformation akin to that of the apostolic era and at the centre of the change was Thomas Charles.

    In this classic text, Nel Noddings argues that public schools should address the fundamental questions that teenagers inevitably raise about the nature, value, and meaning of life (and death), and to do so across the curriculum without limiting such existential and metaphysical discussions to separate religion, philosophy, or even history classes.Explorations of the existence of a God or gods, and the value and validity of religious belief for societies or individuals, she writes "whether they are initiated by students or teachers, should be part of the free exchange of human concerns--a way in which people share their awe, doubts, fears, hopes, knowledge, and ignorance." Such basic human concerns, Noddings maintains, are relevant to nearly every subject and should be both non-coercive and free from academic evaluation.

    Said here examines the ever-changing role of the intellectual today. In these six stunning essays - delivered on the BBC as the prestigious Reith Lectures - Said addresses the ways in which the intellectual can best serve society in the light of a heavily compromised media and of special interest groups who are protected at the cost of larger community concerns. Said suggests a recasting of the intellectual's vision to resist the lures of power, money, and specialization. in these powerful pieces, Said eloquently illustrates his arguments by drawing on such writers as Antonio Gramsci, Jean-Paul Sartre, Regis Debray, Julien Benda, and Adorno, and by discussing current events and celebrated figures in the world of science and politics: Robert Oppenheimer, Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. Said sees the modern intellectual as an editor, journalist, academic, or political adviser - in other words, a highly specialized professional - who has moved from a position of independence to an alliance with powerful institutional organizations. He concludes that it is the exile-immigrant, the expatriate, and the amateur who must uphold the traditional role of the intellectual as the voice of integrity and courage, able to speak out against those in power.BBC episodes presented by Edward Said: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gm...

    It includes credos, manifestos, dreams, homages to literary predecessors, “Shaman Hisses You Slide Back Into The Night” (the journal poem written during Bob Dylan's historic Rolling Thunder Revue), witty political diatribes, travel vignettes, incantations, and a new section of the ongoing epic poem “Iovis,” a powerful meditation on male energy.

    

    Of primary significance are epistemological questions connected to issues such as realism, measurement, observation, consciousness, and the unconscious. The contributions assess the extensive material that we have about Pauli s and Jung s ideas today, with particular respect to concrete research questions and projects based on and related to current knowledge."

    To begin with the study's underlying paradox, "spiritual materialism": the author wishes to understand why the act of grasping materialities—a sob in the body or the body itself—has so often required a spiritual discourse; why materialism, as a way of naming matter-on-its-own-terms, and material relations that still lie submerged, hidden from view, evoke the shadowy forms we call "spiritual."

    Coomaraswamy this small but wonderful volume is an essay in translation and exegesis in relation to the Vedas in which passages from the Rgveda and the Brhadaranyaka and Maitri Upanisads, dealing with cosmogony, ontology and teleology, have been interpreted in a new perception of the quite extraordinary depth of those ideas and their amazing psychological accuracy. According to Coomaraswamy no great extension of our present measure of understanding of the Vedas can be expected from philological research alone. Further progress in the interpretation of the difficult cycle of liturgies cannot be made until they are more profoundly explained from the viewpoint of the history of religion and translated in accordance with the true spirit of the textual contents. The passages translated and interpreted in this volume reflect their technical significance and at the same time a comparative approach in regard to quality, understanding and depth.

    "Inspiring, often mind-blowing, sometimes even a little scary."--Los Angeles Times

    But why?Pavlov's Trout answers that question and many more as it examines the mysteries of the sport of fishing through the microscope of modern psychology. Eminent psychologist and veteran fisherman Paul Quinnett, Ph.D., explores the many, often mysterious. motivations that attract millions to the sport of fishing.In this lighthearted and insightful book, Quinnett postulates that people fish to satisfy primitive instinct, connect to the wilderness, relieve stress, and to experience the optimism, freedom, and excitement of the pursuit. Pavlov's Trout is truly a fishing book like no other -- a venturing into the world of the psyche of the angler, a world where it is better to fish hopefully than to catch fish.

    Included in the anthology are writings by Ameena Meer, David Wojnarowicz, Hubert Selby Jr., Herbert Huncke, and Richard Hell, as well as photographs by Annie Sprinkle, Nan Goldin, and Robert Frank.

    The illustrations in the book are accompanied by the prose of writers and athletes who have lived and breathed baseball.

    Patrick Miller reveals forgiveness as "a radical way of life that openly contradicts the most common and popular beliefs of this troubled world." In four concise sections-Seven Steps of Forgiving, Forgiving Others, Forgiving Yourself, and Where Forgiveness Leads-this poetic book of "challenges and meditations" provides the keys to a healing change of mind and heart.

    one of the most interesting, useful and even exciting books on the process of musical creation." --American Music Teacher..". noteworthy contribution... with plenty of insight into interpretation... remarkable as an insider's account of the works in an individual perspective." --European Music TeacherDrake groups the Beethoven piano sonatas according to their musical qualities, rather than their chronology. He explores the interpretive implications of rhythm, dynamics, slurs, harmonic effects, and melodic development and identifies specific measures where Beethoven skillfully employs these compositional devices.

    They also lead to personal growth and wholeness.In this collection of personal essays--hatched over many leisurely lunches, two women writers look with humor and reflection at the diverse strands of their sweet and rocky lives. They share a horde of facts and fancies, secrets and opinions, and hard-earned lessons on relationships and self-acceptance. Also, whether you like it or not, their pictures, recipes, greeting cards, diary entries and sketches.Culture vulture GILDA CORDERO-FERNANDO, 64, is a publisher of a trail-blazing line of Filipiniana. She recently received the Araw ng Maynila award for literature and the CCP Gawad award for outstanding contribution to publishing. Her recent work are The Soul Book, 1991, (co-author) and Philippine Food and Life, 1991.Widely-travelled MARIEL N. FRANCISCO, 48, was recently in Frankfurt for a women writers and publishers workshop sponsored by the International PEN Women Writers' Committee. An English professor, metaphysics buff, and believer in holistic health, she has contributed many articles to magazines and books and co-authored the best selling History of the Burgis.

    Now, in Telling, she takes us on a journey both personal and universal, a tour of the minefield of chance and circumstance that make up a life. Along the way, she offers razor-sharp takes on everything from adolescence in suburban New Jersey ("Yes, I wanted to be a wild teenage rebel, but I wanted to do it with my parents' blessing") to hellish houseguests and bad-news boyfriends; from the joys of breastfeeding in public to the sometimes-salvation of motherhood.Candid, passionate, and breathtakingly funny, Marion Winik maintains an unshaken belief that following one's heart is more important than following the rules -- and a conviction that the secrets we try to hide often contain the deepest truths."A born iconoclast, an aspiring artiste, a feminist vegetarian prodigal daughter, from early youth I considered myself destined to lead a startling life far outside the bounds of convention. I would be famous, dangerous, brilliant and relentlessly cool: a sort of cross between Emma Goldman, Jack Kerouac, and Georgia O'Keeffe.... So where did this station wagon come from?" -- from Telling

    

    

    The contributors look at both the meaning and the uses of camp performance, and ask: is camp a style, or a witty but nonetheless powerful cultural critique? The essays investigate camp from its early formations in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to its present manifestations in queer theatre and literature. They also take a fascinating look at the complex relationship between queer discourse and decidedly un-queer pop culture appropriations on film and on the stage. The Politics and Poetics of Camp is an incisive, uncontainable and entertaining collection of essays by some of the foremost critics working in queer theory, from a number of disciplinary perspectives. This book makes a well-timed intervention into an emerging debate.

    Now he offers readers a collection of "arch, smart, and exquisitely absurd" (The Village Voice Literary Supplement) pieces that "demands to be savored" (New York Times Book Review.

    Sections include: "Comic Books Variations on a Theme"; "Fun With Publishers"; and more. Front cover by Neil Gaiman. Back cover by John Byrne.

    Drawing on his own experiences as well as on colorful anecdotes about the work of other scientists, Bloch presents a new way of looking at the world and a revealing glimpse into the ways that scientific discoveries are made and problems are solved.Bloch begins with a charming essay on why—despite the fact that peroxide had not yet been invented—there are so many blonde women in Italian Renaissance paintings. He then considers, among other topics, some important biochemical processes that were discovered because of contamination; the importance of trial and error in biochemical research; the explanation of lactose intolerance in adults and practices for avoiding it; why the choice of animal models is important for medical research (and how the author injected himself with extracts of the tubercle bacilli to study the pathology of tuberculosis); and why the exotic nine-banded armadillo has unique potential for use in many areas of medical and biological investigations. He concludes with thoughts on biochemistry's origin and future.

    Chosen from the columns written in the last year of his life, it is all the more touching for knowing that the unique voice of this gifted, gentle and hugely intelligent man was about to fall silent.This new collection is a worthy successor to The Book of Weather Eye. It will delight all who welcomed that collection, which prompted the following short letter to the Irish Times from Senator Feargal Quinn:'Madam, What a joy to see the late Brendan McWilliams in his once accustomed spot in Monday's edition, and a delight to read his article on Madame Bovary. I look forward to buying The Book of Weather Eye this week.''If few popular writers succeed in carving such a niche for themselves that they become irreplaceable, then Brendan McWilliams was surely the exception. His daily Weather Eye column, which ran in The Irish Times for almost twenty years, conveyed eloquently the popular aspects of meteorology, climate, astronomy and the environment. Easy to digest and sprinkled lightly with literature, history, folklore and mischievous humour, it was often the first article to which readers turned each morning.' Stephen McWilliams, from the foreword to The Book of the Weather Eye

    The work was conducted at the Macon Plateau site, and concerned Indian mounds and prehistoric villages. These essays set the finds in the context of southeastern history and culture.

    The inaccessibility of his work, even for practiced readers, is legendary among teachers and students alike, who have struggled for decades with his work's resistance to conventional teaching methods. Moreover, the solutions to Stevens's difficulty to be found in fifty years of accumulated commentary are not always enough in the classroom. In an attempt to address the specific problems of presenting Stevens to students, John N. Serio and B. J. Leggett have brought together twenty-four original essays, by an impressive array of Stevens scholars, to explore a variety of approaches. The complexity of his poetry, its shifting theoretical perspectives, and various other obstacles constitute the major themes of these essays as they deal with strategies, comparative approaches, prosody, rhetoric, diction, and larger contexts such as modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary theory. These essays offer practical, down-to-earth knowledge about Stevens's poetry; specific, time-tested techniques for successfully introducing students to Stevens; and an extensive introductory guide to primary and secondary sources. Besides examining the challenges of teaching Stevens, this volume demonstrates what Stevens can teach us about the kind of reading that goes on in the classroom.

    Writing from various points of view, the authors reflect the diverse experiences of Russia's failed 1905 revolution. Condemned by Lenin and rediscoverd by dissidents, this translation has relevance for discussions on contemporary Russia.

    Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this brilliant, insightful, controversial, and courageous book contains the best of Pollitt's pieces, which have galvanized readers of The Nation, The New Yorker and The New York Times, on subjects that range from abortion and breast implants to date-rape, marriage, the media, and violence.