Best of
Essays
1999
Selected Non-Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges - 1999
His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and notes on politics and culture—though revered in Latin America and Europe as among his finest work—have scarcely been translated into English.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Everything and Nothing
Jorge Luis Borges - 1999
Some of the narrative pieces herein contained are: "Pierre Menard" in which a modern writer reconstructs passages from Don Quixote that are verbally identical but read differently; "The Garden of Forking Paths," an intellectual variation on the detective-story genre; and "Nightmares," a lecture which, as Alastair Reid puts it, "shifts from personal memories to writers, to an examination of other peoples' metaphors, to language itself." Everything and Nothing serves as a perfect introduction to Borges's genius.
One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko
Mike Royko - 1999
Faithful readers will find their old favorites and develop new ones, while the uninitiated have the enviable good fortune of experiencing this true American voice for the first time."A treasure trove lies between these covers. Royko was in a class by himself. He was a true original."—Ann Landers"The joy of One More Time is Royko in his own words."—Mary Eileen O'Connell, New York Times Book Review"Reading a collection of Royko's columns is even more of a pleasure than encountering them one by one, and that is a large remark for he rarely wrote a piece that failed to wake you up with his hard-earned moral wit. Three cheers for Royko!"—Norman Mailer"Powerful, punchy, amazingly contemporary."—Neil A. Grauer, Cleveland Plain Dealer"This crackling collection of his own favorite columns as well as those beloved by his fans reminds us just how much we miss the gruff, compassionate voice of Mike Royko."—Jane Sumner, Dallas Morning News"A marvelous road map through four decades of America."—Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune Books"Royko was an expert at finding universal truths in parochial situations, as well as in the larger issues—war and peace, justice and injustice, wealth and poverty—he examined. Think of One More Time as one man's pungent commentary on life in these United States over the last few decades."—Booklist"Royko was one of the most respected and admired people in the business, by readers and colleagues alike. . . . Savor [his sketches] while you can."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World"Book collections of columns aren't presumed to be worth reading. This one is, whether or not you care about newspapering or Chicago."—Neil Morgan, San Diego Union-Tribune"A treasure house for journalism students, for would-be writers, for students of writing styles, for people who just like to laugh at the absurdity of the human condition or, as Studs Terkel said, for those who will later seek to learn what it was really like in the 20th century."—Georgie Anne Geyer, Washington Times"Full of astonishments, and the greatest of these is Royko's technical mastery as a writer."—Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker"A great tribute to an American original, a contrarian blessed with a sense of irony and a way with words."—Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today"In this posthumous collection of his columns, journalist Royko displays the breezy wit that made him so beloved in the Windy City."—People
Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays
George Orwell - 1999
From his earliest published article in 1928 to his untimely death in 1950, he produced an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflectedas it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent."Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell's development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites classics such as "Shooting an Elephant" with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell's boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these narrative essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex.Contents:The SpikeClinkA HangingShooting an ElephantBookshop MemoriesMarrakechMy Country Right or LeftWar-time DiaryEngland Your EnglandDear Doktor Goebbels - Your British Friends Are Feeding Fine!Looking Back on the Spanish WarAs I Please, 1As I Please, 2As I Please, 3As I Please, 16Revenge Is SourThe Case for the Open FireThe Sporting SpiritIn Defence of English CookingA Nice Cup of TeaThe Moon Under WaterIn Front of Your NoseSome Thoughts on the Common ToadA Good Word for the Vicar of BrayWhy I WriteHow the Poor DieSuch, Such Were the Joys
For the Time Being
Annie Dillard - 1999
Vivid, eloquent, haunting, For the Time Being evokes no less than the terrifying grandeur of all that remains tantalizingly and troublingly beyond our understanding.
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Anne Lamott - 1999
Since Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction books. The people in Anne Lamott's real life are like beloved characters in a favorite series for her readers: Her friend Pammy; her son, Sam; and the many funny and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome return to those lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness. Lamott's faith isn't about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe in God, and then, even more miraculously, in herself. As she puts it, "My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers." At once tough, personal, affectionate, wise, and very funny, Traveling Mercies tells in exuberant detail how Anne Lamott learned to shine the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life, exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.
The Cornel West Reader
Cornel West - 1999
Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves together: Baptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West's work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America's social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Samuel R. Delany - 1999
Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs.Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.
The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations
Gary Snyder - 1999
Having expanded far beyond the Beat poems that first brought his work into the public eye, Snyder has produced a wide-ranging body of work that encompasses his fluency in Eastern literature and culture, his commitment to the environment, and his concepts of humanity's place in the cosmos. The Gary Snyder Reader showcases the panoramic range of his literary vision in a single-volume survey that will appeal to students and general readers alike.
Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems
Mary Oliver - 1999
And never more so than in this extraordinary and engaging gathering of nine essays, accompanied by a brief selection of new prose poems and poems. (One of the essays has been chosen as among the best of the year by THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1998, another by The Anchor Essay Annual.) With the grace and precision that have won her legions of admirers, Oliver talks here of turtle eggs and housebuilding, of her surprise at an unexpected whistling she hears, of the "thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else." She talks of her own poems and of some of her favorite poets: Poe, writing of "our inescapable destiny," Frost and his ability to convey at once that "everything is all right, and everything is not all right," the "unmistakably joyful" Hopkins, and Whitman, seeking through his poetry "the replication of a miracle." And Oliver offers us a glimpse as well of her "private and natural self—something that must in the future be taken into consideration by any who would claim to know me."
Economy of the Unlost
Anne Carson - 1999
From this starting point, Anne Carson launches an exploration, poetic in its own right, of the idea of poetic economy. She offers a reading of certain of Simonides' texts and aligns these with writings of the modern Romanian poet Paul Celan, a Jew and survivor of the Holocaust, whose economies of language are notorious. Asking such questions as, What is lost when words are wasted? and Who profits when words are saved? Carson reveals the two poets' striking commonalities.In Carson's view Simonides and Celan share a similar mentality or disposition toward the world, language and the work of the poet. Economy of the Unlost begins by showing how each of the two poets stands in a state of alienation between two worlds. In Simonides' case, the gift economy of fifth-century b.c. Greece was giving way to one based on money and commodities, while Celan's life spanned pre- and post-Holocaust worlds, and he himself, writing in German, became estranged from his native language. Carson goes on to consider various aspects of the two poets' techniques for coming to grips with the invisible through the visible world. A focus on the genre of the epitaph grants insights into the kinds of exchange the poets envision between the living and the dead. Assessing the impact on Simonidean composition of the material fact of inscription on stone, Carson suggests that a need for brevity influenced the exactitude and clarity of Simonides' style, and proposes a comparison with Celan's interest in the negative design of printmaking: both poets, though in different ways, employ a kind of negative image making, cutting away all that is superfluous. This book's juxtaposition of the two poets illuminates their differences--Simonides' fundamental faith in the power of the word, Celan's ultimate despair--as well as their similarities; it provides fertile ground for the virtuosic interplay of Carson's scholarship and her poetic sensibility.
The Measure of Her Powers: An M.F.K. Fisher Reader
M.F.K. Fisher - 1999
Gathering journals, letters, translations, and selections from her many books, this work showcases Fisher's versatility, providing new readers and loyal fans alike with a sampler from her wide-ranging body of work.
A Little More About Me
Pam Houston - 1999
That journey takes the acclaimed author of Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat across five continents, through forty whitewater rivers, over three thousand miles of backcountry hiking trails, on more than four hundred planes. But whatever her destination -- the Alaskan outback or the mountains of Bhutan -- these are the starting points for her personal emotional journey. Through her stories we meet some good dogs, a few good men, and the occasional grizzly. Ultimately, Houston's adventures -- and her clear-eyed reflections upon them -- prove what she has always suspected: fiction has nothing on real life.
The Cost of Living
Arundhati Roy - 1999
Now she lavishes the same acrobatic language and fierce humanity on the future of her beloved country. In this spirited polemic, Roy dares to take on two of the great illusions of India's progress: the massive dam projects that were supposed to haul this sprawling subcontinent into the modern age--but which instead have displaced untold millions--and the detonation of India's first nuclear bomb, with all its attendant Faustian bargains. Merging her inimitable voice with a great moral outrage and imaginative sweep, Roy peels away the mask of democracy and prosperity to show the true costs hidden beneath. For those who have been mesmerized by her vision of India, here is a sketch, traced in fire, of its topsy-turvy society, where the lives of the many are sacrificed for the comforts of the few.
A Hundred White Daffodils
Jane Kenyon - 1999
Jane Kenyon is one of the most beloved poets on the contemporary American scene; this book shows us why and how this came to be.
Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays
Thomas Sowell - 1999
A collection of essays that discusses such issues as the media, immigration, the minimum wage and multiculturalism.
The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief
James Wood - 1999
In the tradition of Matthew Arnold and Edmund Wilson, James Wood reads literature expansively, always pursuing its role and destiny in our lives. In a series of essays about such figures as Melville, Flaubert, Chekhov, Virginia Woolf, and Don DeLillo, Wood relates their fiction to questions of religious and philosophical belief. He suggests that the steady ebb of the sea of faith has much to do with the revolutionary power of the novel, as it has developed over the last two centuries. To read James Wood is to be shocked into both thinking and feeling how great our debt to the novel is. In the grand tradition of criticism, Wood's work is both commentary and literature in its own right--fiercely written, polemical, and richly poetic in style. This book marks the debut of a masterly literary voice.
Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast
Kenneth Hite - 1999
-- Literally hundreds of ideas for using Secret History and Weird Science in games or fiction.-- A "crossover" title with appeal to anyone interested in conspiracy, coincidence, and untold history.-- The footnotes alone are worth the price of the book.How can Ken Hite be so academic yet so entertaining? We don't know, but we hope he keeps it up for a long, long time.
The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality
William Sloane Coffin - 1999
William Sloane Coffin offers an antidote to the politics of the religious right with a call to passive intellectuals and dispirited liberals to reenter the fray with a Christian view of social justice.
Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life
Lev Losev - 1999
His life, too, is the stuff of legend, from his survival of the siege of Leningrad in early childhood to his expulsion from the Soviet Union and his achievements as a Nobel Prize winner and America’s poet laureate.In this penetrating biography, Brodsky’s life and work are illuminated by his great friend, the late poet and literary scholar Lev Loseff. Drawing on a wide range of source materials, some previously unpublished, and extensive interviews with writers and critics, Loseff carefully reconstructs Brodsky’s personal history while offering deft and sensitive commentary on the philosophical, religious, and mythological sources that influenced the poet’s work. Published to great acclaim in Russia and now available in English for the first time, this is literary biography of the first order, and sets the groundwork for any books on Brodsky that might follow.
remembered rapture: the writer at work
bell hooks - 1999
Born and raised in the rural South, hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance of speaking her mind. Her passion for words is the heartbeat of this collection of essays. Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing, and the lasting power of the book. Once again, these essays reveal bell hooks's wide-ranging intellectual scope; she is a universal writer addressing readers and writers everywhere.
The Essential Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal - 1999
He is a master of the historical novel, the novel of ideas, theatre, satire and science fiction, and is an essayist of deserved distinction. He is at once a contrarian, a wise man and a romantic, wickedly funny, and often outrageous. The Essential Gore Vidal is both a place to start reading Vidal and a place to return for refreshment. It contains two complete long works - the novel Myra Breckinridge and the play The Best Man, selections from his other fiction and twenty-five essays on subjects from philosophy to politics to sex. About The Author: Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays and short stories, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. Two of his American chronicle novels, Lincoln and 1876, were the subject of cover stories in Time and Newsweek, respectively. In 1993, a collection of his criticism, United States: Essays 1952-1992, won the National Book Award. He divides his time between Ravello, Italy, and Los Angeles. Fred Kaplan teaches at Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. He is the editor of The Essential Gore Vidal and the author of the biographies Henry James, Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Kaplan lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Some Horses: Essays
Thomas McGuane - 1999
Best of all, McGuane brings to life the horses he has known, celebrating the unique glories that make each of them memorable. McGuane's writing is infused with a love of the cowboy life and the animals and people who inhabit that world where the intimate dance between horse and rider is as magical as flight--well beyond what the human body could ever discover on its own.
James Madison: Writings
James Madison - 1999
Arranged chronologically, it contains almost 200 documents written between 1772, the year after Madison's graduation from Princeton, and his death in 1836. Included are all 29 of Madison's contributions to The Federalist as well as speeches and letters that illuminate his role in framing and ratifying the Constitution. Also represented are early writings on religious freedom; correspondence with figures such as Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Monroe; writings from his terms as secretary of state and president; and letters and essays written during retirement.
Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy
Giorgio Agamben - 1999
The volume opens with an introduction in which the editor situates Agamben's work with respect to both the history of philosophy and contemporary European thought. The essays that follow articulate a series of theoretical confrontations with privileged figures in the history of philosophy, politics, and criticism, from Plato to Spinoza, Aristotle to Deleuze, Carl Schmitt to Benjamin, Hegel to Aby Warburg, and Heidegger to Derrida. Three fundamental concepts organize the collection as a whole: language, in the sense not of particular statements but rather the very taking place of speech, the pure fact of language's existence; history, as it appears from a perspective in which tradition, transmission, and memory reach their messianic fulfillment; and potentiality, understood as a fundamental problem of metaphysics, ethics, and the philosophy of language. All these topics converge in the final part of the book, in which Agamben offers an extensive reading of Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" as a work that puts potentiality and actuality, possibility and reality, in an altogether new light.
Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World
Kathleen Dean Moore - 1999
Riveting, finely crafted essays about family and the natural world, and winner of the 2000 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award.
On the Natural History of Destruction
W.G. Sebald - 1999
Sebald completed this controversial book before his death in December 2001. On the Natural History of Destruction is his harrowing and precise investigation of one of the least examined silences of our time. In it, the novelist examines the devastation of German cities by Allied bombardment and the reasons for the astonishing absence of this unprecedented trauma from German history and culture. This historical void is in part a repression of things -- such as the death by fire of the city of Hamburg at the hands of the RAF -- too terrible to bear. But rather than record the crises about them, writers sought to retrospectively justify their actions under the Nazis. For Sebald, this is an example of deliberate cultural amnesia. His analysis of its effects in and outside Germany has already provoked angry painful debate. Sebald's novels are rooted in meticulous observation. His essays are novelistic. They include his childhood recollections of the war that spurred his horror at the collective amnesia around him. There are moments of black humor and, throughout, the sensitivity of his intelligence. This book is a study of suffering and forgetting, of the morality hidden in artistic decisions, and of both compromised and genuine heroics.
Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel
Sandra M. Schneiders - 1999
Scholars have hailed its publication and dedicated a session at the American Academy of Religion to discuss its message. Lay readers have welcomed it as a companion in opening up the meaning of the Fourth Gospel, and small groups have begun using it as a guide in their devotional reading. This revised edition, enriched with new chapters from Sandra Schneiders and a study guide prepared by John C. Wronski offers new ways to nourish faith through the rich symbolism of the Gospel of John and an invitation to "dwell in" the liberating truth of Jesus.
Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems
Walter Mosley - 1999
Conceived by acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley and sponsored by the New York University Africana Studies Program and the Institute of African American Affairs, this book originated as a series of community conversations where "visionaries with solutions" shared powerful views on personal and communal struggles, triumphs, and aspirations. The list of contributors suggests the range of perspectives and talents brought to bear on such issues as economics, political power, work, authority, and culture. Black Genius is a point of departure for vigorous discussion of our current realities and goals for the future-and a portrait of "genius" that leads the way to enriching American life in the twenty-first century.
Against the Pollution of the I: On the Gifts of Blindness, the Power of Poetry, and the Urgency of Awareness
Jacques Lusseyran - 1999
He wrote about these experiences in his inspiring memoir, And There Was Light. In this remarkable collection of essays, Lusseyran writes of how blindness enabled him to discover aspects of the world that he would not otherwise have known. In “Poetry in Buchenwald,” he describes the unexpected nourishment he and his fellow prisoners found in poetry. In “What One Sees Without Eyes” he describes a divine inner light available to all. Just as Lusseyran transcended his most difficult experiences, his writings give triumphant voice to the human ability to see beyond sight and act with unexpected heroism.
The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers Workshop - 43 Stories, Recollections, & Essays on Iowa's Place in Twentieth-Century American Literature
Tom Grimes - 1999
It also includes original essays on both the writing life and trends in 20th century American Literature that were shaped by the growth of the Iowa program and the programs that followed.
The Gary Snyder Reader, Volume 1: Prose, Poetry and Translations 1952-1998
Gary Snyder - 1999
Book by Snyder, Gary
No Other Book: Selected Essays
Randall Jarrell - 1999
Although he saw himself chiefly as a poet, publishing a number of books of poetry, he also left behind a sparkling comic novel, four children's books, numerous translations, haunting letters, and four collections of essays. Edited by Brad Leithauser, No Other Bookdraws from these four essay collections, reminding us that Jarell the poet was also, in the words of Robert Lowell, "a critic of genius."
I Am the Door: Exploring the Christ Presence Within
Paul Ferrini - 1999
He also had a series of dreams of which Jesus appeared to teach him. Here in this lovely lyrical collection, we can hear the voice of Jesus speaking directly to us about practical topics of everyday life that are close to our hearts, like work & livelihood, relationships, forgiveness, spiritual practices & miracles.
Narcissus Leaves the Pool
Joseph Epstein - 1999
In Narcissus Leaves the Pool, he displays his signature verve and charm in sixteen agile, entertaining pieces. Among his targets in this collection are name-dropping, talent versus genius, the cult of youthfulness, and the information revolution.
Blue House
Bei Dao - 1999
This is Bei Dao’s first collection of essays in English translation. Those familiar with Bei Dao will notice the same lucid eye and strength that mark his poetry.Bei Dao has been in exile since the 1989 Tiananmen incident, has lectured around the globe, and currently teaches at the University of California Davis. He is the author of four books of poetry in English translation and one fiction collection.Professor Ted Huters teaches in the department of East Asian Languages and Literature at UCLA and Feng-ying Ming at Whittier College.
From May Sarton's Well: Writings of May Sarton
Edith Royce Schade - 1999
Over the years, Sarton's work greatly influenced Schade's photography. The two women eventually met, forming both a friendship and the idea for a book - this elegant combination of Schade's photographs and selections from Sarton's poetry and prose. For the framework of the book, Schade chose a quotation which Sarton herself used as the theme for some of her poetry readings: "The delights of the poet as I jotted them down turned out to be light, solitude, the natural world, love, time, creation itself." Schade's photographs accompany Sarton's prose and poetry as a pianist accompanies a lyric singer - sometimes in unison, often in harmony, occasionally in counterpoint. From May Sarton's Well is an inviting introduction to the poetry and prose of May Sarton. For those who are already familiar with her work, this book is a gathering of many nuggets of Sarton's beautifully expressed wisdom. It is a treasure to be kept at one's bedside for frequent revisits. It was one of three finalists in the Fiction/Drama/Poetry/Literary Criticism category of the 1995 Benjamin Franklin Awards.
Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films: Interviews with Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan - 1999
60 black & white movie stills and posters, Index, Filmography.
The Flexible Lyric
Ellen Bryant Voigt - 1999
Through attentive readings of a variety of artists, including her contemporaries, Ellen Bryant Voigt celebrates the structure and elasticity of lyric poems. She argues for reading as a writer reads--with equal parts passion and analysis. Her analyses of the effects of tone, image, voice, and structure connect brilliant theory with tangible examples.Intimate as well as informative, the collection begins with a discussion of the creative process and Voigt's fascination with the writing of Flannery O'Connor and Elizabeth Bishop. Readings of lyric poems by Shakespeare, Sidney, Poe, Stevens, Williams, Larkin, Bogan, Roethke, Plath, Levertov, Berryman, and others demonstrate the roles of gender, point of view, image, and music in poetry. An experienced teacher, Voigt focuses on the lyric but encourages, in any study of poetry, original thinking, attention to structure, and, above all, close reading of the work itself. An intelligent and thought-provoking marriage of art and scholarship, The Flexible Lyric exemplifies, with fierceness, dedication, and precision, how the making of poems is not just a trade but a calling.
Essays on Life Itself
Robert Rosen - 1999
In Essays on Life Itself, Rosen takes to task the central objective of the natural sciences, calling into question the attempt to create objectivity in a subjective world and forcing us to reconsider where science can lead us in the years to come.
Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2000
Roger Ebert - 1999
and he always knows best. Pay tribute to Dad with this wonderful lineup of books that are sure to please.
That's Mr. Faggot to You: Further Trials from My Queer Life
Michael Thomas Ford - 1999
Faggot to You, Michael Thomas Ford continues his exploration of contemporary gay life. He does not shy away from personal revelations--he recalls his own traumatic high school experiences but recognizes that, years later, he's happier and, more importantly, a great deal more attractive than his classmates--but also offers insight into more political issues such as religion and politics and Wynonna Judd. Never abandoning his caustic wit, Ford is honest to a fault and does not suffer fools or dog-haters lightly.
From the Journals of M.F.K. Fisher
M.F.K. Fisher - 1999
Fisher is to literary prose," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times, "what Laurence Olivier is to acting." From the Journals of M.F.K. Fisher combines into one volume three acclaimed collections of journals, correspondence, and short stories, the earliest piece written when Fisher was nineteen and the last composed shortly before her death in 1992, at age eighty-three."To Begin Again" gives us a portrait of Fisher's early years, from her family's migration to California in 1912 to her first marriage in 1929. Here she begins to learn about the art of "living well gastronomically" and acquires an appreciation for the nurturance of both body and soul. "Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me" presents a candid portrait of the most traumatic period of Fisher's life -- her divorce from her husband, her marriage to their friend Dillwyn Parrish, and Parrish's tragic illness and death. "Last House" offers a wry look at an artist grappling with old age and illness, and a poignant remembrance of the experiences that shaped her life's work.Filled with humor, wisdom, and beautifully crafted prose, this collection will introduce to a new generation the life and work of one of the most beloved writers of our era.
War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays, 1915-1919
Randolph Bourne - 1999
The twenty-eight essays of this volume--among them, War and the Intellectuals, the analysis of the warfare state that made Bourne the foremost critic of American entry into World War 1, and Trans-National America, his manifesto for cultural pluralism in America--show Bourne at his most passionate and incisive as they trace his search for the true wellsprings of nationalism and American culture.
The Concept Of Bid'a In The Islamic Shari'a (M.A.T. Papers)
Nuh Ha Mim Keller - 1999
Against the Idols of the Age
David Stove - 1999
A fearless at-tacker of intellectual and cultural orthodoxies, Stove left powerful critiques of scientific irrationalism, Dar-winian theories of human behavior, and philosophi-cal idealism. He was also an occasional essayist of considerable charm and polemical snap. Stove's writ-ing is both rigorous and immensely readable. It is, in the words of Roger Kimball, an invigorating blend of analytic lucidity, mordant humor, and an amount of common sense too great to be called 'common.' Against the Idols of the Age brings together a repre-sentative selection of Stove's writing and is an ideal introduction to his work.The book opens with some of Stove's most impor-tant attacks on irrationalism in the philosophy of sci-ence. He exposes the roots of this fashionable attitude, tracing it through writers like Paul Feyerabend andThomas Kuhn to Karl Popper. Stove was a born controversialist, so it is not surpris-ing that when he turned his attention to contemporary affairs he said things that are politically incorrect. The topical essays that make up the second part of the book show Stove at his most withering and combative. Whether the subject is race, femi-nism, the Enlightenment, or the demand for non-coercive philosophy, Stove is on the mark with a battery of impressive arguments expressed in sharp, uncompromis-ing prose. Against the Idols of the Age concludes with a generous sampling of his blistering attacks on Darwinism.David Stove's writings are an undiscovered treasure. Although readers may dis-agree with some of his opinions, they will find it difficult to dismiss his razor-sharp arguments. Against the Idols of the Age is the first book to make the full range of this important thinker available to the general reader.
A Patriot After All: 1940-1941 (The Complete Works of George Orwell, Vol. 12)
George Orwell - 1999
Inside the Whale, Orwell's first collection of essays, and The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius are reprinted here. Later in that year he gave a series of broadcasts on literary criticism, the texts of which are reproduced. Throughout this period Orwell kept a wartime diary, printed chronologically with his reviews, essays, and letters, and it is here that Orwell makes the first reference to his wish to live on a Hebridean island. It was in 1941 that Orwell began his series of 'London Letters' for Partisan Review. The volume also includes Orwell's lecture notes for instructing members of his Home Guard platoon.
More Matter: Essays and Criticism
John Updike - 1999
. . not for the obliquities and tenuosities of fiction.” Still, the novelist’s shaping hand, his gift for telling detail, can be detected in many of these literary considerations. Books by Edith Wharton, Dawn Powell, John Cheever, and Vladimir Nabokov are incisively treated, as are biographies of Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, and Helen Keller. As George Steiner observed, Updike writes with a “solicitous, almost tender intelligence. The critic and the poet in him . . . are at no odds with the novelist; the same sharpness of apprehension bears on the object in each of Updike’s modes.”
Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening
Vigen Guroian - 1999
Gardening helps us collect ourselves, much as praying does. For rich and poor- it makes no difference- a garden is a place where body and soul are in harmony. In Inheriting Paradise Vigen Guroian offers an abundant vision of the spiritual life found in the cultivation of God's good creation. Capturing the earthiness and sacramental character of the Christian faith, these uplifting meditations bring together the experience of space and time through the cycle of the seasons in the garden and relate this fundamental human experience to the cycle of the church year and the Christian seasons of grace. The tilling of fresh earth; the sowing of seeds; the harvesting of rhubarb and roses, dillweed and daffodils-Guroian finds in the garden our most concrete connection with life and God's gracious giving. His personal reflections on this connection, complemented here by delicate woodcut illustrations, offer a compelling entry into Christian spirituality.
The Best American Essays 1999
Edward Hoagland - 1999
These essays range widely across the American landscape -- from a California monastery to a Manhattan apartment -- and along the way introduce us to a fine array of talented new voices. Called by John Updike "the best essayist of my generation," Hoagland has assembled a powerful volume that vividly showcases the art and craft of the contemporary essay. IN SEARCH OF PROUST by Andre Aciman, TORCH SONG by Charles Bowden, COMPRESSION WOOD by Franklin Burroughs, VISITOR by Michael W. Cox, LAST WORDS by Joan Didion, FOR THE TIME BEING by Annie Dillard, THE METEORITES by Brian Doyle, A LOVELY SORT OF LOWER PURPOSE by Ian Frazier, VICTORIA by Dagoberto Gilb, STILL LIFE by Mary Gordon, A WEEK IN THE WORD by Patricia Hampl, THE COUNTRY BELOW by Barbara Hurd, THE LION AND ME by John Lahr, MAKING IT UP by Hilary Masters, ON THE FEDALA ROAD by John McNeel, AMERICAN HEARTWORM by Ben Metcalf, BEFORE AIR CONDITIONING by Arthur Miller, AFTER AMNESIA by Joyce Carol Oates, THE IMPIOUS IMPATIENCE OF JOB by Cynthia Ozick, PLANET OF WEEDS by David Quammen, ON SILENCE by Daisy Eunyoung Rhau, BEAUTY by Scott Russell Sanders, HITLER'S COUCH by Mark Slouka, WHAT'S INSIDE YOU, BROTHER? by Toure, FOLDING THE TIMES by W. S. Trow.
At War
Flann O'Brien - 1999
Taken from the war years of 1940-45, these writings provide plenty of acerbic wit and persistent prodding of "the good people of Ireland." And in typical O'Brien fashion, no one is safe from his opinionated attacks. His oftentimes hysterical musings include discussions of theater, what it means to be Irish, ideas for alternative pubs and liquors, advice for children, and ways to improve the home.
Smothered Under Journalism: 1946 (The Complete Works of George Orwell, Vol. 18)
George Orwell - 1999
Despite this unremitting pressure, he produced a major sequence of articles on 'The Intellectual Revolt'. He wrote one of his finest short essays, 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'. He reviewed Zamyatin's We, wrote two radio plays for the BBC, The Voyage of the Beagle, and a version of 'Red Riding Hood' for Children's Hour, and a pamphlet for the British Council, British Cookery; these three are printed here for the first time. The complex history of 'How the Poor Die' is unravelled, as is the problem posed by his passports giving his date of birth incorrectly, something that would prove significant in the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell renewed contact with Yvonne Davet; he corresponded with Ihor Szewczenko; he tried to get Victor Serge's memoirs published in English and, with Arthur Koestler, to expose Soviet responsibility for the massacre of the Poles by arranging for a translation of Joseph Czapski's Souvenirs de Starobielsk to be published. Despite all this, Orwell did get away to Jura with his son, Richard. He was able to relax and even fish, as his Domestic Diary (published for the first time) shows; and he wrote fifty pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. This volume includes Orwell's telling letter to Dwight Macdonald on the necessity for people to rid themselves of leaders of a violent revolution before they became entrenched (5 December 1946). This was what the animals of Animal Farm had failed to do.
Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity
Naomi Sawelson-Gorse - 1999
Indeed, the word Dada evokes the idea of the male--both as father and as domineering authority. Thus female colleagues were to be seen not heard, nurturers not usurpers, pleasant not disruptive.This book is the first to make the case that women's changing role in European and American society was critical to Dada. Debates about birth control and suffrage, a declining male population and expanding female workforce, the emergence of the New Woman, and Freudianism were among the forces that contributed to the Dadaist enterprise.Among the female dadaists discussed are the German �migr� Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Berlin dadaist Hannah H�ch; French dadaists Juliette Roche and Suzanne Duchamp; Zurich dadaists Sophie Taeuber and Emmy Hennings; expatriate poet and artist Mina Loy; the Queen of Greenwich Village, Clara Tice; Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the lesbian couple who ran The Little Review; and Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the age of 105. The book also addresses issues of colonialist racism, cross-dressing and dandyism, and the gendering of the machine. The bibliography was compiled by the International Dada Archive (Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli).ContributorsEleanor S. Apter, Barbara J. Bloemink, Willard Bohn, Carolyn Burke, William A. Camfield, Whitney Chadwick, Dorothea Dietrich, Susan Fillin-Yeh, Paul B. Franklin, Ren�e Riese Hubert, Marisa Januzzi, Amelia Jones, Marie T. Keller, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, Maud Lavin, Margaret A. Morgan, Dickran Tashjian, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Barbara Zabel
Between Dog and Wolf: Essays on Art & Politics
David Levi Strauss - 1999
He addresses the always conflicted relation between aesthetics and politics by concentrating on specific instancesfrom allopathic art to Desert Storm propaganda, from Columbuss legacy to Robert Smithsons prophesies, and from new art in post-Soviet Russia to public art in the United Statesand by focusing on the work of artists as various as Grnewald, Jean Genet, Cindy Sherman, Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miville, Carolee Schneemann, Andrei Monastyrsky, and Daniel Joseph Martinez.
Philosophizing Art: Selected Essays
Arthur C. Danto - 1999
These essays explore this relationship through a number of concrete cases in which either artists are driven by philosophical agendas or their art is seen as solving philosophical problems in visual terms. The essays cover a varied terrain, with subjects including Giotto's use of olfactory data in The Raising of Lazarus; chairs in art and chairs as art; Mel Bochner's Wittgenstein drawings; the work of Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and Robert Irwin; Louis Kahn as "Archai-Tekt"; and visual truth in film. Also featured are a meditation on the battle of Gettysburg; and a celebration of the Japanese artist Shiko Munakata, an essay that is partly autobiographical.Arthur C. Danto is one of the most original and multitalented philosophers writing today, a thinker whose interests traverse the boundaries of traditional understandings of philosophy. Best known for his contributions to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, Danto is also esteemed for his work in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophical psychology, and action theory. These two volumes, each with an introduction by the author, contain essays spanning more than twenty-five years that have been selected to highlight the inseparability of philosophy and art in Danto's work. Together they present the thinking of Arthur C. Danto at his very best.
Arcana: Musicians on Music
John ZornMike Patton - 1999
Music. Through manifestos, scores, interviews, notes and critical papers, contributors to this in-depth anthology address composing, playing, improvising, teaching, and thinking in and through music. Rather than attempting to distill or define musician's work, ARCANA illuminates it with personal vision and experience.
At the Source: A Writer's Year
Gillian Clarke - 1999
Reflecting upon the geography, history, and mythology of Wales, the verse delves into the sources of both Welsh and English dialects while incorporating essays and journal extracts, creating a seasonal portrait of the beloved Welsh landscape. From descriptions of lambing and hay making to ruminations on agriculture and ecological destruction, this is an enthralling depiction of the world as seen from the captivating countryside.
Evolution Theory and Islam: Letter to Suleman Ali (M.A.T. Papers)
Nuh Ha Mim Keller - 1999
Players of Shakespeare 4: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company
Robert Smallwood - 1999
Twelve actors including Sir Derek Jacobi, Jane Lapotaire and Julian Glover describe the Shakespearian roles they played in productions between 1992 and 1997. The plays covered include The Merchant of Venice, Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale, and Romeo and Juliet, among others. The essays divide equally among comedies, histories, and tragedies, with emphasis among the comedies on those notoriously difficult "clown" roles. A brief biographical note is provided for each of the contributors.Contents: Robert Smallwood - IntroductionChristopher Luscombe - Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice and Moth in Love Labour's LostDavid Tennant - Touchstone in As You Like ItMichael Siberry - Petruccio in The Taming of the ShrewRichard McCabe - Autolycus in The Winter's TaleDavid Troughton - Richard IIISusan Brown - Queen Elizabeth in Richard IIIPaul Jesson - Henry VIIIJane Lapotaire - Queen Katherine in Henry VIIIPhilip Voss - Menenius in CoriolanusJulian Glover - Friar Lawrence in Romeo and JulietJohn Nettles - Brutus in Julius CaesarDerek Jacobi - Macbeth
Essays of Four Decades
Allen Tate - 1999
It covers the broad sweep of Tate's critical concerns: poetry, poets, fiction, the imagination, language, literature, and culture.
Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999
Ammiel Alcalay - 1999
Of special interest are his observations and analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian confrontation, Arab/Jewish poetics, and Jewish identity in America."—Midwest Book Review
Table of Contents
Local Politics: The Background as Foreword Ammiel Alcalay Acknowledgments Five Hundred Years After: What Was Left Unsaid about Sepharad Juan Goytisolo
PRELUDES: AN OPENING weighing the losses, like stones in your hand' Atonement
OF BOOKS AND CITIES/ THE JOURNEY My Mediterranean The Quill's Embroidery: Untangling a Tradition The Quill's Embroidery: Poetry, Tradition, and the Postmodern' Paris / New York / Jerusalem: The Unscheduled Flight of Edmond Jabes and Jacques Derrida Perplexity Index Desert Solitaire: On Edmond Jabes For Edouard Roditi Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs
FORBIDDEN TERRITORIES, PROMISED LANDS On Arabesques After the Last Sky Who's Afraid of Mahmoud Darwish? Israel and the Levant: Wounded Kinship's Last Resort' Forbidden Territory, Promised Lands In True Colors Culture without a Country Too Much Past The State of the Gulf: Abdelrahman Munif and Hanan al-Shaykh Our Memory Has No Future: On Etel Adnan The war was ending, the diasporas beginning'
DISPATCHES A Stitch in Time Court Report: Prolonging a Farce The Trial: A Real Farce Ay, de mi aljama': Palestinians and Israelis Meet, in Spain! Israel / Palestine 101: A Letter to Robert Creeley Quality Control Ushering in the New Order: Repercussions from the Gulf War Reflections at the End of 1992 Why Israel?
THE RETURN: VARIATIONS ON A THEME Understanding Revolution Exploding Identities: Notes on Ethnicity and Literary History Speaking with Forked Tongues, or Parables of Eq
The Composition Instructor's Survival Guide
Brock Dethier - 1999
It addresses some of the dilemmas faced by composition teachers, such as how can we respect ourselves and what we do in the face of scorn, and how can we reduce the time, stress and responsibilitiy from our jobs?
History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s
Timothy Garton Ash - 1999
An extraordinary decade in Europe. At its beginning, the old order collapsed along with the Berlin Wall. Everything seemed possible. Everyone hailed a brave new Europe. But no one knew what this new Europe would look like. Now we know. Most of Western Europe has launched into the unprecedented gamble of monetary union, though Britain stands aside. Germany, peacefully united, with its capital in Berlin, is again the most powerful country in Europe. The Central Europeans—Poles, Czechs, Hungarians—have made successful transitions from communism to capitalism and have joined NATO. But farther east and south, in the territories of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, the continent has descended into a bloody swamp of poverty, corruption, criminality, war, and bestial atrocities such as we never thought would be seen again in Europe.Timothy Garton Ash chronicles this formative decade through a glittering collection of essays, sketches, and dispatches written as history was being made. He joins the East Germans for their decisive vote for unification and visits their former leader in prison. He accompanies the Poles on their roller-coaster ride from dictatorship to democracy. He uncovers the motives for monetary union in Paris and Bonn. He walks in mass demonstrations in Belgrade and travels through the killing fields of Kosovo. Occasionally, he even becomes an actor in a drama he describes: debating Germany with Margaret Thatcher or the role of the intellectual with Václav Havel in Prague. Ranging from Vienna to Saint Petersburg, from Britain to Ruthenia, Garton Ash reflects on how "the single great conflict" of the cold war has been replaced by many smaller ones. And he asks what part the United States still has to play. Sometimes he takes an eagle's-eye view, considering the present attempt to unite Europe against the background of a thousand years of such efforts. But often he swoops to seize one telling human story: that of a wiry old farmer in Croatia, a newspaper editor in Warsaw, or a bitter, beautiful survivor from Sarajevo. His eye is sharp and ironic but always compassionate. History of the Present continues the work that Garton Ash began with his trilogy of books about Central Europe in the 1980s, combining the crafts of journalism and history. In his Introduction, he argues that we should not wait until the archives are opened before starting to write the history of our own times. Then he shows how it can be done.
Booknotes Life Stories: Notable Biographers on the People Who Shaped America
Brian Lamb - 1999
This informal dictionary of biography peers into the personalities who have left a mark on our world -- a Who's Who of American history, and the next best thing to chatting directly with the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, Elijah Muhammad, Amelia Earhart, Katharine Graham, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frank McCourt, Bill Clinton, and many others. Based on iSPAN's popular weekly Booknotes program, this absorbing collection of life stories presents illuminating profiles and often surprising details from our favorite biographers. Booknotes follows the evolution of American history chronologically, and covers the lives of writers and thinkers, inventors and scientists, politicians and soldiers. Lamb reacquaints us with the great figures of our times, in an engaging conversation about America.
The Night Gardener: A Search for Home
Marjorie Sandor - 1999
Through these essays emerges a portrait of a mother, scholar, fly fisher, and gardener living each role with furious passion.
On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion
Gabriel Josipovici - 1999
Why is it only with the Romantics that suspicion, not just of motive but of the very tools of art, language, and form, has become so insistent? Why could Shakespeare depict suspicion with such power and insight in the figures of Hamlet and lago, yet himself work with such apparent ease within the conventions of his time?To understand Romantic suspicion, the author argues, we need to understand what it supplanted and why. To that end he turns to the work created in what he calls cultures of trust, to Homer and the Hebrew Bible, to Dante and Shakespeare, before examining the interplay of trust and suspicion in a number of Romantic and post-Romantic writers from Wordsworth to Beckett. In a final chapter Josipovici draws on Wittgenstein's later work to round out his argument that making comes before knowing, utterance before understanding, and that trust is not blind faith but rather a deep confidence in our being in the world and therefore in time and language. It is out of such confidence, he concludes, that art is always made, even if it is an art, like that of Kafka and Beckett, that turns the light of suspicion fiercely on itself.
Don't Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial
Ellen Willis - 1999
In keeping with the mass media's glib assumption that a phenomenal increase in wealth for a minority meant genuine national prosperity, the 1990s saw an astounding refusal, on both the left and right, to question received wisdom or engage in substantive deliberation. Turning her acute eye to the decade's defining moments-imbroglios like those surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial, The Bell Curve, Monica-gate, and the Million Man March-Ellen Willis reveals the mindlessness behind the noise. Arguing that we suffer from a lack of true freedom, she demands that we radically rethink our country and ourselves to create a society in which we can fully enjoy life.
Sixty Years of Arkham House
S.T. Joshi - 1999
S.T. Joshi presents this important work in an easy-to-read format which allows collectors to quickly find the information they need. Many footnotes, critical commentary, and a brief history of Arkham House round out this fact-filled, 300 page volume.
The Wild Heart of Florida: Florida Writers on Florida's Wildlands
Jeff Ripple - 1999
Strip malls and concrete cannot tame this wild Florida, but they can kill it. These essays offer passionate argument why that should not be allowed to happen. Coming from a variety of backgrounds--fiction, journalism, poetry, and environmental writing--the writers turn their talent to one thing they have in common--a love for Florida’s natural beauty and a commitment to preserve it. Their essays--some old favorites, most appearing here for the first time--are both a celebration and a pointed reminder of what we stand to lose.Many of the areas singled out (the Lake Wales Ridge, the Panhandle’s Topsail Hill, Goethe State Forest, and Tampa’s Brooker Creek) were purchased through Florida’s Preservation 2000, one of the nation’s foremost land acquisition programs. All royalties from the book are being donated to the Florida chapter of The Nature Conservancy.Printed on recycled paper with soy ink.Jeff Ripple, natural history writer and photographer, is the author of five books of interpretive natural history, including Sea Turtles, Florida--The Natural Wonders, and Southwest Florida’s Wetland Wilderness: Big Cypress Swamp and the Ten Thousand Islands (UPF, 1996). He lives in Gainesville, Florida.Susan Cerulean, writer and biologist, is co-author of Florida Wildlife Viewing Guide. In 1997, the Governor’s Council for a Sustainable Florida honored her with an Individual Environmental Educator Award. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Credo: Essays on Grace, Altar Boys, Bees, Kneeling, Saints, the Mass, Priests, Strong Women, Epiphanies, a Wake, and the Haun
Brian Doyle - 1999
Stories of priests -- holy and cigar-chomping -- odd and wonderful saints, faithful women, homeless drug addicts, bees, hawks, and donkeys, these beautifully crafted essays are filled with wonder and conviction, humility and awe.
Birth of the Cool
David Bailey - 1999
The best of the new breed of fashion photographers who catapulted onto the scene in the early years of that decade, he himself would become as famous as all the famous faces on which he trained his camera. In fact Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up was inspired by Bailey. After Bailey, photography would never be the same again. David Bailey - Birth of the Cool tells for the first time the full story of Bailey's life and work from 1957 to 1969. Beginning with his early days in the East End, it follows his progress as assistant to photographer John French, his early years with Vogue; his close relationships with the stars of the pop music world - his pictures of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones will remain forever a part of the ichnography of Swinging London and the 1960s - and his friendships and love affairs with some of the period's most beautiful women - among them models Jean Shrimpton and Penelope Tree and actress Catherine Deneuve. Martin Harrison has brought together not only Bailey's most famous photographs, but also previously unknown images: pictures of Bailey's East End as well as private and previously unpublished documentary photography.
Mappings
Denis E. Cosgrove - 1999
How have maps and mapping served to order and represent physical, social and imaginative worlds? How has the practice of mapping shaped modern seeing and knowing? In what ways do contemporary changes in our experience of the world alter the meanings and practice of mapping, and vice versa?In their diverse expressions, maps and the representational processes of mapping have constructed the spaces of modernity since the early Renaissance. The map's spatial fixity, its capacity to frame, control and communicate knowledge through combining image and text, and cartography's increasing claims to scientific authority, make mapping at once an instrument and a metaphor for rational understanding of the world.Among the topics the authors investigate are projective and imaginative mappings; mappings of terraqueous spaces; mapping and localism at the 'chorographic' scale; and mapping as personal exploration.With essays by Jerry Brotton, Paul Carter, Michael Charlesworth, James Corner, Wystan Curnow, Christian Jacob, Luciana de Lima Martins, David Matless, Armand Mattelart, Lucia Nuti and Alessandro Scafi
Urban Gardener
Elspeth Thompson - 1999
There are columns on such topics as designing a new garden, planning a year's produce from an allotment, using reclaimed materials in the garden, propagation, cultivation and general advice based on years of personal experience.
True Stories
Inga Clendinnen - 1999
In these engaging essays, based on her 1999 Boyer Lectures, she argues for the rejection of any single, simple account of the Australian past and looks towards a deeper understanding of what whites have done to Indigenous Australians.
Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism
Rick Bass - 1999
Bass gives a history of his years with Colter as a way of understanding what is intuitive in his quest to create art.
Essays on Romanian History
Radu R. Florescu - 1999
Florescu. While each chapter is in itself a separate study, in their totality they form a vision of Romanian history, dealing with issues from ancient times to the present day.
The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form
Henry Greenwood Bugbee - 1999
Boldly original, it blended East and West, nature and culture, the personal and the universal. The critical establishment, confounded, largely ignored the work. Readers, however, embraced Bugbee’s lyrical philosophy of wilderness. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s this philosophical daybook enjoyed the status of an underground classic.With this paperback reissue, The Inward Morning will be brought to the attention of a new generation. Henry Bugbee is increasingly recognized as the only truly American existentialist and an original philosopher of wilderness who is an inspiration to a growing number of contemporary philosophers.
The Bishop's Voice: Selected Essays
John Shelby Spong - 1999
Throughout the years, he used the paper as a pulpit for his progressive views about faith, dogma, tradition, and human rights. Compiled and edited by his daughter, Christine, this collection serves as an excellent introduction to Spong's breathtaking breadth of interest and capability as one of the century's leading voices for religious and human inclusivity.
What I Believe and Other Essays
E.M. Forster - 1999
The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things
Steven Z. Leder - 1999
Herewith, the miraculous nature of everyday life is explored. Through vignettes at turns funny and poignant, Rabbi Leder points out those easily overlooked connections between everyday experiences and the teachings of Judaism. God and spirituality can be found in every aspect of our daily routines. Ordinary things--a pet frog, a weekend fishing trip, a roller coaster ride--become extraordinary when reexamined through Jewish eyes. Woven throughout Rabbi Leder's essays are midrashic texts, talmudic excerpts, and passages from the Torah, reflecting thousands of years of Jewish wisdom. Whether recalling a memorable walk along the beach with Dad, teaching a child the commandment of tzedakah, or stepping into the shoes of an anxious father-to-be as he paces the halls of the maternity ward, these stories reveal Judaism's power to illuminate our lives. On child-rearing: Eleven Suggestions for Raising a Mensch On the paradox of modern life: You can't put one tuchus in two chairs. On miracles: The miraculous is the common and the constant: birth, teaching, our breath. Discover The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things.
A Passage to the Heart: Writings from Families with Children from China
Amy Klatzkin - 1999
By turns funny, moving, practical, informative, and deeply personal, this collection is a treasure trove for all families who have adopted children from China, as well as anyone who would like to learn more about international adoption.Proceeds from the book benefit the Amity Foundation and the Foundation for Chinese Orphanages-two charitable organizations providing medical care, foster care, and other services to improve the lives of children living in China's orphanages.
About the Author:
Amy Klatzkin is a book editor specializing in Chinese studies, a member of the board of the San Francisco Chinese Culture Foundation, and the newsletter editor for San Francisco Bay Area Families with Children from China. She and her husband adopted their daughter Ying Ying in Changsha, Hunan province, in January 1994.
The Grabbing Hand: Government Pathologies and Their Cures
Andrei Shleifer - 1999
As a consequence of such predatory policies--described in this book as the grabbing hand of the state--entrepreneurship lingers and economies stagnate.The authors of this collection of essays describe many of these pathologies of a grabbing hand government, and examine their consequences for growth. The essays share a common viewpoint that political control of economic life is central to the many government failures that we observe. Fortunately, a correct diagnosis suggests the cures, including the best strategies of fighting corruption, privatization of state firms, and institutional building in the former socialist economies. Depoliticization of economic life emerges as the crucial theme of the appropriate reforms. The book describes the experiences with the grabbing hand government and its reform in medieval Europe, developing countries, transition economies, as well as today's United States.
The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays
William Kingdon Clifford - 1999
K. CliffordThe above forthright assertion of mathematician and educator W. K. Clifford (1845-1879) in his famous essay "The Ethics of Belief" drew an immediate response from Victorian-era critics, who took issue with his reasoned and brilliantly presented attack on beliefs "not founded on fair inquiry." An advocate of evolutionary theory, Clifford recognized that working hypotheses and assumptions are necessary for belief formation and that testing and assessing one's beliefs in light of new evidence strengthens those worthy of being held. "The Ethics of Belief" is presented here in complete form, along with an insightful biographical introduction by editor Timothy J. Madigan. Also included are four other noteworthy essays by Clifford: "On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought," "Right and Wrong," "The Ethics of Religion," and "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief.
CliffsNotes on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
Richard O. Peterson - 1999
The drama concerns "the battle of the sexes" and focuses on the barbed wits and intrigues that two sets of lovers and their friends and family create. Brimming with wit and antagonism, the play has amused and provoked audiences for centuries.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy of DSM-IV-TR Personality Disorders: Highly Effective Interventions for the Most Common Personality Disorders
Len Sperry - 1999
Thoroughly revised from the first edition, the book offers an overview of the field, with significant updates to reflect the most recent advances in CBT in the treatment of personality disorders. Invaluable as both a text and a professional reference, it emphasizes developmental psychopathology and integrative CBT treatment conceptualizations. It provides busy clinicians with the most effective practical clinical strategies - illustrated with compelling case material - that they need to work effectively with personality-disordered individuals.
Drawn into the Light: Jean-François Millet
Alexandra R. Murphy - 1999
This book examines Millet's technical and creative achievement, focusing on his rarely seen pastels, watercolors, and drawings, considering them as independent works of art, as procedural steps toward paintings, and as important elements in his finished pictures.Alexandra Murphy explores the ways that Millet reinvented his art and reshaped the course of nineteenth-century painting in the process. Through his shift away from idealized nudes of the academic tradition to nudes in a real world, his confrontation with the physical landscape of work, and his perception of light and weather conditions that altered the landscape, Millet's pastels, watercolors, and drawings had a profound impact on his artistic contemporaries. Counted among his particular admirers were Degas, Seurat, Pissarro, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, who described an exhibition of Millet's pastels as "holy ground". In this context, Murphy discusses Millet's most famous painting, The Gleaners, which not only represents a technical and aesthetic achievement but also serves as an essential symbol of the political causes of the time: Millet's peasants have held their place in social history, she says, because they are so beautifully drawn that their gestures speak across decades, nations, and cultures.
Carte Blanche
Odysseas Elytis - 1999
Born in Crete in 1911 he published his first poems in 1935 and established himself as one of the leading figures in the "Generation of the Thirties" which also included Greece's other Nobel Laureate, George Seferis. In 1979, Elytis was awared the Nobel Prize for literature. His first volume of poetry "Open Book" was characterized by a polemical and often apologetic tone, the texts in "Carte Blanche" are more confessional and reflective, sometimes prophetic, yet always poetic and with the same boldness of expression.
The Way Home: Selected Longer Prose
Harry Mathews - 1999
As the only English-speaking member of OULIPO, the School of Potential Literature, Harry Mathews has long been hailed as one of the most unique voices in American fiction writing. THE WAY HOME collects Country Cooking in Central France, perhaps the longest and most extravagant recipe ever concocted; Singular Pleasures, an unabashed chronicle of masturbation by both sexes; The Orchard, Mathews' stark, beautiful tribute to his friend, the late Georges Perec; Armenian Papers, a sequence of wartime prose poems; the essay Translation and the Oulipo; The Way Home, derived from a series of drawings by Trevor Winkfield (included in the text); and Autobiography, in which Mathews tells his own life story entirely in terms of other people.
Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays
John J. Stuhr - 1999
It provides direct, imaginative, and critical insights into our contemporary global society, its massive and pressing problems, and its possibilities for real improvement. Pragmatism and Classical AmericanPhilosophy, 2/e, provides the resources necessary to understand and act on these insights. Revised and greatly expanded in this second edition, it offers a comprehensive account of classical American philosophy and pragmatism, presenting the essential writings of all the major figures of thetradition: Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. It also incorporates illuminating introductory essays by leading scholars in the field, providing biographical and cultural context as well as original critical and interpretiveperspectives. This new edition adds several new selections by, and about, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jane Addams, Borden Parker Bowne, Alain Locke, and John Herman Randall, Jr. These essays situate pragmatism and classical American philosophy in their wider American philosophical contexts of transcendentalism, feminism and writings by American women, personalism and idealism, African-American thought, and naturalism and realism. The volume also includes up-to-date suggestions for further reading that are useful for both beginning and advanced readers. Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy, 2/e, is ideal for courses in American philosophy, pragmatism, American thought and culture, and American intellectual history, and also serves as essential reading for anyone interested in American philosophy.
Berryman's Shakespeare: Essays, Letters, and Other Writings
John Berryman - 1999
He gained a reputation as an innovator whose bold literary adventures were tempered by exacting discipline. Berryman was also an active, prolific, and perceptive critic whose own experience as a major poet served to his advantage.Berryman was a protege of Mark Van Doren, the great Shakespearean scholar, and the Bard's work remained one of his most abiding passions -- he would devote a lifetime to writing about it. His voluminous writings on the subject have now been collected and edited by John Haffenden. This book shows that Berryman's interest in Shakespeare was that of an expert scholar who thought seriously and deeply about his subject.
The Soul of Man and Prison Writings
Oscar Wilde - 1999
In addition to the title essay, this text contains De Profundis, two letters to the Daily Chronicle concerning prison injustices, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Deconstructing Harold Hill: An Insider's Guide to Musical Theatre
Scott Miller - 1999
This is a book for all fans of musical theatre, and a must for directors and actors. Scott Miller's thoughtful analyses of some of the great works of the musical theatre take the buff or the professional on a journey of discovery. Each chapter looks at one musical, addressing:textual and musical themesways in which production design can support those themesinsight into the motivation and background of the charactershistorical and social context of the action of the showand much more.Miller spotlights The Music Man, Chicago, The King and I, Passion, Ragtime, Sunday in the Park with George, and others. All are innovative works, providing a springboard for the kind of in-depth discussion among directors, their actors, and designers that can make working on a musical - or just seeing one - the most satisfying experience you've ever had. You'll never look at musicals the same way again! Visit Scott's website at http: //www.geocities.com/Broadway/3164/
Two Wasted Years: 1943 (The Complete Works of George Orwell, Vol. 15)
George Orwell - 1999
Among the educational series in this period were those devoted to new developments in science, modern English verse, great dramatists, and psychology; there were series, such as 'Books That Changed the World' which included broadcast talks on great books from East and West. Among those who broadcast for Orwell were John Lehmann, V.S. Pritchett and Stephen Spender. Oliver Bell, Director of the British Film Institute, took over film reviewing, and the series of shortened versions of Indian plays continued. Orwell adapted four 'featurised stories', and broadcast talks on Macbeth and Lady Windermere's Fan. He continued to broadcast to Malaya and wrote and read news commentaries for Indonesia. He wrote over a dozen reviews, several essays, and a long study, 'The Detective Story' printed here for the first time in its original French version and in an English translation. The volume concludes with two appendices: the devastating report by the Intelligence Officer, Laurence Brander on the ineffectiveness of the BBC's broadcasting service to India; and, Orwell's preparatory notes for 'The Quick & the Dead' and 'The Last Man in Europe'.
Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings
Gore Vidal - 1999
Here, fourteen essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot-button topics such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay bashing and the U.S. Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac. “Vidal’s erudition, candor, and exceptional sense of humor shine.” — San Francisco Chronicle
The Mahler Companion
Andrew Nicholson - 1999
It addresses all parts of his life and work-- symphonies, songs and song-cycles (each of which is discussed individually), his conducting activities, compositional habits, and aesthetic development--and sets these within the cultural and political context of his time. In addition, it responds to the global spread of this remarkable composer's music, and an almost universal fascination with it, by attempting to give an account of the reception of Mahler's music in many of the countries in which it eventually came to flourish, eg. Holland, France, Japan, Russia, England, and the United States. This particular series of chapters reveals that the 'Mahler Phenomenon' earned its description principally in the years after the Second World War, but also that the Mahler revival was already well under way pre-war, perhaps especially in England and the States, and most surprisingly of all, Japan. The selection of contributors, who between them cover all Mahler's musical output, shows that here too this volume significantly crosses national boundaries. The very diverse approaches, analyses and commentaries, amply illustrated with music examples, are evidence of the uniquely rich and complex character of a music that spans more than one culture and more than one century. The volumes includes the most significant and up-to-date Mahler research and debate, and illumines some hitherto unexplored areas of Mahler's life eg. his visit to London in 1892, his sculptor daughter, Anna, and the hall in which the Seventh Symphony was first performed in Prague in 1908.It has often been claimed that Mahler, born in 1860, was in fact a prophet of much that was to come in the 20th century. His later works undeniably anticipate, often with dazzling virtuosity, many of the principal techniques and aesthetics of the new century, only the first decade of which he lived to see. Small wonder that among his earliest admirers was a collective of some of the most important and innovative composers of our time, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Their successors (Copland, Shostakovich, and Britten, to name a few) were to range across contrasting cultures and national frontiers.Drawing on the best resources and the most up-to-date information about the composer, this volume fulfils the need in Mahler literature for a genuinely comprehensive guide to the composer and will be the authoritative guide for Mahler enthusiasts for years to come.
Victorian Prose: An Anthology
LuAnn McCracken Fletcher - 1999
Mundhenk and LuAnn McCracken Fletcher have assembled a remarkable variety of Victorian nonfiction prose, both classic and lesser known. In both their commentary and selection the editors have drawn upon the insights of recent theoretical approaches to literature and culture to present a complex range of responses to Victorian issues, thus inviting modern readers to explore the many voices of the period and reenvision the Victorian era.
A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices Within Judaism
David Hartman - 1999
From the perspective of traditional Judaism, he helps us understand the varieties of twentieth-century Jewish practice and shows that commitment to both Jewish tradition and to pluralism can create bridges of understanding between people of different religious convictions.