Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time: as theorist, polemicist, propagandist, and political actor. Fifty years after his death, Lenin revered him as the father of Russian revolutionary socialism. Tolstoy said he had never met another man "with so rare a combination of scintillating brilliance and depth." His monumental autobiography is an unparalleled record of his—and his century's—remarkable life.Herzen's story of his privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is lit with the insight of a great novelist. With a trained historian's sense of the interaction of people and events, he limns the grand line of revolutionary development from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism throughthe tumultuous ideological debates of the international. His close friends and enemies—Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin—are brought brilliantly alive. Dwight Macdonald's knowledgeable and fluent abridgment makes this great work readily available to the modern reader.

    J. A. Symons if he had read Fr. Rolfe's Hadrian the Seventh. He hadn't, but soon did, and found himself entranced by the novel -- "a masterpiece"-- and no less fascinated by the mysterious person of its all-but-forgotten creator. The Quest for Corvo is a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the strange Frederick Rolfe, self-appointed Baron Corvo, an artist, writer, and frustrated aspirant to the priesthood with a bottomless talent for self-destruction. But this singular work, subtitled "an experiment in biography," is also a remarkable self-portrait, a study of the obsession and sympathy that inspires the biographer's art.

    Ackerley's German shepherd Tulip was skittish, possessive, and wild, but he loved her deeply. This clear-eyed and wondering, humorous and moving book, described by Christopher Isherwood as one of the "greatest masterpieces of animal literature," is her biography, a work of faultless and respectful observation that transcends the seeming modesty of its subject. In telling the story of his beloved Tulip, Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships.

    He returned to Argentina in 1984. Founder of two Argentine weekly news magazines in the 1960s and a commentator on radio and television, he was best-known as the publisher and editor of the newspaper La Opinión from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human rights and freedom of the press, he criticized all repressive governments and organizations, regardless of their political ideologies. His other books include The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon, Cuba: A Journey, and Chile: A Death in the South.The Americas, Ilan Stavans, Series EditorWinner of a 1982 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Selected by the New York Times for "Books of the Century" With a new introduction by Ilan Stavans and a new foreword by Arthur Miller.

    . . Witnessing the destruction of Pompeii. . . Accompanying Julius Caesar on his invasion of Britain. . . Flying with the crew of The Great Artiste en route to dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. . . Civilization's most momentous events come vibrantly alive in this magnificent collection of over three hundred eyewitness accounts spanning twenty-four turbulent centuries -- remarkable recollections of battles, atrocities, disasters, coronations, assassinations and discoveries that shaped the course of history, all related in vivid detail by observers on the scene.

    The author of Down and Out in Paris and London, Nineteen Eighty-four, and Animal Farm, he published ten books and two collections of essays during his lifetime -- but in terms of actual words, produced much more than seems possible for someone who died at the age of forty-six and was often struggling against poverty and ill health. His essays, letters, and journalism are among the most memorable, lucid, and intelligent ever written, the work of a master craftsman and a brilliant mind. Taken as a whole they form an essential collection, and read in toto and sequentially, they provide a remarkably literary self-portrait of an engaged, and consistently engaging, writer. Here, in four volumes, is the best selection of his nonfiction writing now available, a trove of letters, essays, reviews, and journalism that is breathtaking in its scope and eclectic passions. An Age Like This collects Orwell's essential early writings, including material that would later emerge in Down and Out in Paris and London, as well as observations on marriage, reviews of Henry Miller and J. B. Priestley, reports from the Spanish Civil War, an examination of the meaning and value of Charles Dickens, and notes on the early years of the Second World War.

    S. Trow's brilliant exposition on the state of American culture and twentieth-century life. Published to widespread acclaim, Within the Context of No Context became an immediate classic and is, to this day, a favorite work of writers and critics alike. Both a chilling commentary on the times in which it was written and an eerie premonition of the future, Trow's work locates and traces, describes and analyzes the components of change in contemporary America -- a culture increasingly determined by the shallow worlds of consumer products, daytime television, and celebrity heroes. "This elegant little book is essential reading for anyone interested in the demise, the terminal silliness, of our culture." -- John Irving, The New York Times Book Review; "In this elegant, poignant essay, written with the grace of a master stylist, George Trow articulates the accelerated impermanence of American culture with a precision that is both flaunting and devastating." -- Rudy Wurlitrer; "Within the Context of No Context is a masterpiece of the century that belongs on a shelf next to Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia and Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle." -- Michael Tolkin; "Within the Context of No Context may appear to be a book of the mind, for it is suffused with such a keen intelligence, but it is actually a book of the heart -- passionate, brave, and stirring." -- Sue Halpern.

    Donald Hall tells about life on a small farm where, as a boy, he spent summers with his grandparents. Gradually the boy grows to be a young man, sees his grandparents aging, the farm become marginal, and finally, the cows sold and the barn abandoned. But these are more than nostalgic memories, for in the measured and tender prose of each episode are signs of the end of things - a childhood, perhaps a culture.

    Composed in the late 1960's, Blythe's volume paints a vivid picture of a community in which the vast changes of the twentieth century are matched by deep continuities of history, tradition, and nature.

    As a young woman, Diana Athill was engaged to an air force pilot—Instead of a Letter tells how he broke off the engagement, married someone else, and, worst of all, died overseas before she could confront or forgive him. Evoking perfectly the picturesque country setting of her youth, this fearless and profoundly honest story of love and modern womanhood marks the beginning of Athill’s brilliant literary career. .

    Collected Poems 1943-2004 is the comprehensive collection of Wilbur's astonishing, timeless work. It will serve as the most referenced trove of this beloved poet's best verses for many years to come.In Trackless WoodsIn trackless woods, it puzzled me to findFour great rock maples seemingly aligned,As if they had been set out in a rowBefore some house a century ago,To edge the property and lend some shade.I looked to see if ancient wheels had madeOld ruts to which the trees ran parallel,But there were none, so far as I could tell-There'd been no roadway. Nor could I find the squareDepression of a cellar anywhere,And so I tramped on further, to surveyAmazing patterns in a hornbeam sprayOr spirals in a pine cone, under treesNot subject to our stiff geometries.

    Kermit Lynch's recounting of his experiences on the wine route and in the wine cellars of France takes the reader through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, Northern and Southern Rhone, and the Cote d'Or.

    In the impoverished rural community in which he works, John Sassall tend the maimed, the dying, and the lonely. He is not only the dispenser of cures but the repository of memories. And as Berger and Mohr follow Sassall about his rounds, they produce a book whose careful detail broadens into a meditation on the value we assign a human life. First published thirty years ago, A Fortunate Man remains moving and deeply relevant--no other book has offered such a close and passionate investigation of the roles doctors play in their society."In contemporary letters John Berger seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience."--Susan Sontag

    An illustrated collection of poems for very young children, including works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Edward Lear, Shel Silverstein, and Jack Prelutsky.

    (Abridged from The Psychology of Art), will be forthcoming.