Best of
Modern

1993

The Yellow Arrow


Victor Pelevin - 1993
    Indifferent to their fate, the other passengers carry on as usual — trading in nickel melted down fro the carriage doors, attending the Upper Bunk avant-garde theatre, and leafing through Pasternak’s Early Trains. Pelevin's art lies in the ease with which he shifts from precisely imagined science fiction to lyrical meditations on past and future. And, because he is a natural storyteller with a wonderfully absurd imagination. The Yellow Arrow is full of the ridiculous and the sublime. It is a reflective story, chilling and gripping.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume I


Stephen King - 1993
    Tales of vampires and lurking spirits, of inexplicable evil cloaked in the guise of childish innocence, of ordinary people driven to unthinkable extremes by the perversities of fate -- they're all here, told with King's inimitable blend of dark humor and heart-clenching suspense.Introduction (Stephen King) Suffer the Little Children (Whoopi Goldberg) Crouch End (Tim Curry) Rainy Season (Yeardley Smith) Dolan’s Cadillac (Rob Lowe) The House on Maple St. (Tabitha King)Umney’s Last Case (Robert B. Parker)Head Down (Stephen King) Brooklyn August (Stephen J. Gould)

A Single Tear: A Family's Persecution, Love, and Endurance in Communist China


Ningkun Wu - 1993
    Two years later, he wa s arrested as an ultra-rightest. This illuminating narrative tells Wu's story over the next 30 years--the harrowing tale of a "class enemy" and a remarkable testament to a family's love and perseverance.

Book of Matches


Simon Armitage - 1993
    . . it is possible that he will attain the sort of proverbial status Larkin now occupies.' Sean O'Brien, The Deregulated Muse

On the Road / The Dharma Bums / The Subterraneans


Jack Kerouac - 1993
    Including On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and The Subterraneans.

The Man Who Stayed Behind


Sidney Rittenberg - 1993
    military in the 1940s. A student activist and labor organizer who was fluent in Chinese, Rittenberg became caught up in the turbulence that engulfed China and remained there until the late 1970s. Even with access to China’s highest leaders as an American communist, however, he was twice imprisoned for a total of sixteen years. Both a memoir and a documentary history of the Chinese revolution from 1949 through the Cultural Revolution, The Man Who Stayed Behind provides a human perspective on China’s efforts to build a new society. Critical of both his own mistakes and those of the Communist leadership, Rittenberg nevertheless gives an even-handed account of a country that is now free of internal war for the first time in a hundred years.

Collected Poems


Thom Gunn - 1993
    Gunn has made a speciality of playing style against subject as he deals with the out-of-control through tightly controlled meters and with the systematized through open forms.

The Best of Rumpole: Chosen By the Author


John Mortimer - 1993
    A rumbustious defender of the faith, Rumpole is known, not surprisingly, as something of a character. His exploits at the Old Bailey - and elsewhere - are an unsurpassable blend of eloquence, wit, cynicism, and experience. This volume of John Mortimer's favorite Rumpole stories contains some of the bluff barrister's finest moments. There is Rumpole's encounter with the acting world, his frequent and often disillusioning brushes with the Timsons, and many of his confrontations with the pompous and sometimes misguided gentlemen of the Bench. For those unfamiliar with Rumpole, this volume offers a perfect introduction to John Mortimer's wisest and wittiest creation. Those who have already encountered Rumpole will want to reacquaint themselves with the immortal barrister in this hugely entertaining collection of stories.

Twentieth Century Russian Poetry


Yevgeny Yevtushenko - 1993
    A massive, comprehensive anthology of poetry from the politically turbulent Russia of this century.  This collection introduces Americans to a number of astonishing poets virtually unknown outside of Russia, as well as presenting the work of some of the most prominent Russian poets of the past 90 years.

Another Good Loving Blues


Arthur Flowers - 1993
    Flowers seamlessly blends the rich rythms of the blues and a Deep South patois in a lyrical, literate style." - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWIt's Beale Street in Memphis in the age when jazz was spelled "jass" and ragtime was just a glint in Scott Joplin's eye. Lucas Bodeen is the bluesman, and Melvira Dupree is the conjure woman he loves. But pitted against them are all the forces of nature, the clashing of their own stubborn wills, and a society mired in the laws of Jim Crow and the mob. Combining the ancient African storytelling art of the griot with the American offshoots of blues and hoodoo, Arthur Flowers sings us a story that makes us smile - a story of life, and how love and happiness really happen.

Fishboy: A Ghost's Story


Mark Richard - 1993
    In the brilliant idiom of a modern Melville or Conrad, an odyssey of discovery by a bold and outrageous talent--the PEN/Hemingway Award--winning author of The Ice At The Bottom Of The World.

Light While There Is Light: An American History


Keith Waldrop - 1993
    No synopsis can do justice to the beauty of Waldrop's measured, wise, and unembroidered prose, illuminating the fear, madness, and destruction within hearth and home--though never repudiating his love for same.One of the unheralded masterpieces of twentieth-century American fiction, Light While There Is Light is acclaimed poet Keith Waldrop's autobiographical novel about the myriad ghosts left behind by his family. Born to a deeply religious mother, the narrator and his siblings are led across the US as she searches for the "right" religious sect--a trip that ends with her speaking in tongues, and finally her total isolation. But no synopsis can do justice to the beauty of Keith Waldrop's measured, wise, and unembroidered prose, illuminating the fear, madness, and destruction within hearth and home--though never repudiating his love for same. In a tradition that stretches back through Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner to Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, Keith Waldrop and Light While There Is Light are American treasures.

The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein


Hans D. Sluga - 1993
    This volume provides a comprehensible guide to his work by a wide range of experts who are actively engaged in new work on Wittgenstein. The essays, which are both expository and original, address central themes in his philosophy of mind, language, logic, and mathematics and clarify the connections among the different stages in the development of his work.

Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction


Jessica HagedornMaxine Hong Kingston - 1993
    From Jose Garcia Villa's minimalist "Untitled Story, " first published in 1933, to Meena Alexander's "Manhattan Music, " with its razor-sharp look at the hip downtown New York art scene of the troubled 1990s, their stories sweep across the twentieth century and across the range of Asian American experience. These characters make love, worry about the future, endure hardships. They audition for jobs as anchormen. They are displaced, assimilated, rebellious. They lie and cheat; they betray themselves and others. These are stories about Asian Americans, yes, but, finally, they are stories about life.

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions


Søren Kierkegaard - 1993
    Imagined Occasions both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published Stages on Life's Way.The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the three discourses, "On the Occasion of a Confession," centers on stillness, wonder, and one's search for God--in contrast to the speechmaking on erotic love in "In Vino Veritas," part one of Stages. The second discourse, "On the Occasion of a Wedding," complements the second part of Stages, in which Judge William delivers a panegyric on marriage. The third discourse, "At a Graveside," sharpens the ethical and religious earnestness implicit in Stages's "'Guilty'/'Not Guilty'" and completes this collection.

The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng


Harrison E. Salisbury - 1993
    China's dragons, guardians of the throne, are unlike those of the West. They are benign and protective but can turn like terrible emperors on the people. If they do so, it is the fault of the people, not the dragons. They breathe fire and thrash their tail only if betrayed, a convenient concept for an emperor.

Splendor


Catherine Hart - 1993
    Elmo's Fire - and impelled by a strange irresistable force toward the Carolina colonies...and the woman who is his destiny.ON SHORES OF DESIRE...Only the soft, sensuous touch of prim and lovely Eden Winters can banish the spell that is Devlin's curse...and his salvation. But unknown dangers await Eden in the arms of her mysterious "ghost captain" - sweeping the reluctant beauty into a wondrous, unexplored realm of rapturous passion, perilous adventure and love's sweet SPLENDOR.

Where the Waters Divide: A 3,000 Mile Trek Along America's Continental Divide


Karen Berger - 1993
    A tale of adventure, this is also a story of the American West and the ways in which it has been "used, crossed, inhabited, cursed, logged, grazed, and climbed." The authors write with insight about the history, environment, and politics of the region as they pass through grazing lands and reservations, mines and ghost towns, and miles and miles of wilderness.

The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance


J.R. Hale - 1993
    Looks at European history between 1450 and 1620, describes the intellectual life and social conditions of the period, and discusses the cultural changes that took place.

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family


Bernice Kert - 1993
    In 1901, Abby Aldrich married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and set about transforming the fabulously wealthy but closed-minded Rockefellers into the progressive force in philanthropy, the arts, and politics we know today. Photos.

The Terminal Man / The Andromeda Strain / Congo


Michael Crichton - 1993
    

The Titanic


Deborah Kent - 1993
    Social Studies: Civic Ideals & Practices Global Connections Individuals, Groups, & Institutions People, Places, & Environments Power, Authority, & Governance Production, Distribution, & Consumption, Science, Technology, & Society Time, Continuity, & Change.

Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta and Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance


Edward Muir - 1993
    Mad Blood Stirring is a gripping account and analysis of this event, as well as the social structures and historical conflicts preceding it and the subtle shifts in the mentality of revenge it introduced.This new reader's edition offers students and general readers an abridged version of this classic work which shifts the focus from specialized scholarly analysis to the book's main theme: the role of vendetta in city and family politics. Uncovering the many connections between the carnival motifs, hunting practices, and vendetta rituals, Muir finds that the Udine massacre occurred because, at that point in Renaissance history, violent revenge and allegiance to factions provided the best alternative to failed political institutions. But the carnival massacre also marked a crossroads: the old mentality of vendetta was soon supplanted by the emerging sense that the direct expression of anger should be suppressed—to be replaced by duels.

Origins of Analytical Philosophy


Michael Dummett - 1993
    This, Dummett argues, is a misnomer. "Anglo-Austrian" would be a better label, for analytical philosophy arose in the same milieu as the principal rival school of phenomenology. Not only that, but the two schools have the same roots. The two forebears of both schools are Bolzano, the first to deny that thoughts are contents of the mind, and Brentano, who made intentionality the defining characteristic of the mental. Analytical philosophy has been distinguished by the central place it has given to language. Dummett explains why what had gone before made this "linguistic turn" so natural, and why the school founded by Husserl failed to take it. By re-examining the similar origins of the two traditions, we can come to understand why the later diverged so widely, and so take the first step to reconciliation.