The years have brought to him an increasing number of odd jobs, to which he has wittily responded. Here he contemplates our national monuments, the female body, the Fourth of July, the Gospel of Matthew, other writers, moralists, aspects of science, and more.

    In a full-scale presentation of the world of scholarship, from the Renaissance to the modern period, Grafton sets before us in three-dimensional detail such seminal figures as Poliziano, Scaliger, Kepler, and Wolf. He calls attention to continuities, moments of crisis, and changes in direction.The central issue in Defenders of the Text is the relation between humanism and science from the mid-fifteenth century to the beginning of the modern period. Treatments of Renaissance humanism in English have emphasized the humanists' commitment to rhetoric, ethics, and politics and have accused the humanists of concentrating on literary matters in preference to investigating the real world via new developments in science, philosophy, and other technical disciplines. This revisionist book demonstrates that humanism was neither a simple nor an impractical enterprise, but worked hand-in-hand with science in developing modern learning.Grafton makes clear that humanism remained an integral and vital part of European culture until the eighteenth century, maintaining a technical component of its own--classical philology--which developed in as rich, varied, and unexpected a way as any other field of European thought. Attention to the text led the humanists to develop a whole range of cools and methods that lent power to science and learning for centuries to come. Grafton shows the continued capacity of classical texts to provoke innovative work in both philology and philosophy, and traces a number of close and important connections between humanism and natural science. His book will be important to intellectual historians, students of the classics and the classical tradition, and historians of early modern science.

    Peter Blayney, a noted expert on the early book trade, draws on this unrivaled collection to tell several stories: how the book was printed and sold; how copies were treated and mistreated by early owners; how it was replaced by an "improved" edition in the 1660s but became a highly prized collector's item a century later; how and why Henry Folger eventually acquired over eighty copies. Published in conjunction with an exhibition, this "catalog" also stands alone as the unusually readable history of a truly remarkable book. Blayney, Peter, 1991.46 pages, 80 illustrations. Limited edition.

    Drawing memorably on his own experience as a teacher and a reader, he offers a multitude of stimulating ideas for opening the rewards of thoughtful reading to all children.Concerned with the practical aspects of creating an environment that supports children as they become readers, he provides suggestions on school book fairs and displays, reading areas, author visits, and book selection. But having enabled children to become readers is only part of the issue, and he also addresses ways of keeping track of children's reading and helping them develop responses to what they read. Concise and elegantly written, The Reading Environment will be a valuable book for preservice and inservice teachers, and its distinctive blend of reflective and active comment make it an enlightening reminder to parents, media specialists, and librarians. Tell Me: Children, Reading, and Talk is the companion volume to The Reading Environment.