Though Mr. Nichols's horticultural undertaking is serious, his writing is high-spirited, riotously funny, and, at times, deliciously malicious.

    They "fell into the habit of taking long strolls through the city, strolls on which Kafka seems to have said many amazing, incisive, literary, and personal things to...the teenage Boswell of Prague." For instance: "Life is infinitely great and profound as the immensity of the stars above us. One can only look at it through the narrow keyhole of one's personal experience. But through it one perceives more than one can see. So above all one must keep the keyhole clean."They discuss writing, of course Kafka's own works, but also his favorite writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Rimbaud, who "transforms vowels into colors." Other topics, as summarized by Prose, include "technology, film, photography, crime, money, Darwinism, Chinese philosophy, street fights, insomnia, Hindu scripture, suicide, art and prayer."

    Mannix's autobiography as a sword-swallower with a traveling sideshow, illustrated with photos from the 30s and 40s taken by the author. An example of Classic Americana, this book offers a portrayal of a vanished world of working-class performance artists who earned a living by their unique bodies and imaginations. Stars include the Fat Lady, the human beanpole, the Ostrich man who ate broken glass, and many more. The "tricks" behind eating fire and swallowing swords are explicated with clarity and candor. This book will appeal to all who speculate about the outer limits of pain, pleasure, and revulsion. Mannix went on to become the supreme noir historian of the 20th century, penning Those About to Die (about the Roman games in the Colosseum), a biography of Aleister Crowley called The Beast, The Hellfire Club (about an upper-class British secret society), and many more. Mannix was sent a membership card from Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, although like Marcel Duchamp and Groucho Marx he was not a joiner, preferring to remain staunchly independent.

    Navy SEAL Team Two. By 1970 he was a veteran of three hundred combat missions in Vietnam, had captured almost two hundred enemy prisoners, and had received thirty-two citations, including three Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. In Good to Go, Constance powerfully recounts his experience during three tours in Vietnam as a member of SEAL Team Two, Seventh Platoon. Known as fierce warriors with amazing stealth and skill in battle, the SEALs are an elite force trained to fight on SEa, Air, and Land with sophisticated special operations warfare tactics. From the floodplains of the Mekong Delta to the beaches of the South China Sea, Good to Go takes readers on Constance's harrowing missions, along trails crisscrossed by trip wires and through dense jungles booby-trapped with live grenades. Each special op is dramatic. The Seventh Platoon sets up ambushes, infiltrates Viet Cong territory, performs daring nighttime attacks, targets the location of high-level VC officials, and narrowly escapes enemy fire. Constance gives an extraordinary account of the Tet offensive, which his platoon fought from a hotel in My Tho. But in recounting the ferocious battle of Tet, Constance shows why SEAL humor and bravado always won the day. After Constance leaves Vietnam, Good to Go follows him as he plays a key role in the expansion of the SEAL program. His duty training recruits for undercover clandestine ops and going on dangerous assignments around the globe - in South America hot spots and onboard nuclear submarines - reflects his inspiring dedication to the SEALs.

    His portrait of his friends--Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, and Christopher Isherwood--render a romantic world of literary genius. Spender uses a poet's language to create an honest and tender exploration of amity and the many possibilities of love. First published in 1951, World Within World simultaneously shocked and bedazzled the literary establishment for its frank discussion of Eros in the modern world.Out of print for several years, this Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by the critic John Bayley and an Afterword that Spender wrote in 1994 describing his reaction to the charges that David Leavitt plagiarized this autobiography in a novel.