Neither a snob nor a shill, Ebert manages in these essays to combine a truly populist appreciation for today's most important form of popular art with a scholar's erudition and depth of knowledge and a sure aesthetic sense. Once again wonderfully enhanced by stills selected by Mary Corliss, former film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, The Great Movies II is a treasure trove for film lovers of all persuasions, an unrivaled guide for viewers, and a book to return to again and again.Films featured in The Great Movies II12 Angry Men · The Adventures of Robin Hood · Alien · Amadeus · Amarcord · Annie Hall · Au Hasard, Balthazar · The Bank Dick · Beat the Devil · Being There · The Big Heat · The Birth of a Nation · The Blue Kite · Bob le Flambeur · Breathless · The Bridge on the River Kwai · Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García · Buster Keaton · Children of Paradise · A Christmas Story · The Color Purple · The Conversation · Cries and Whispers · The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie · Don’t Look Now · The Earrings of Madame de . . . · The Fall of the House of Usher · The Firemen’s Ball · Five Easy Pieces · Goldfinger · The Good, the Bad and the Ugly · Goodfellas · The Gospel According to Matthew · The Grapes of Wrath · Grave of the Fireflies · Great Expectations · House of Games · The Hustler · In Cold Blood · Jaws · Jules and Jim · Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy · Kind Hearts and Coronets · King Kong · The Last Laugh · Laura · Leaving Las Vegas · Le Boucher · The Leopard · The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp · The Manchurian Candidate · The Man Who Laughs · Mean Streets · Mon Oncle · Moonstruck · The Music Room · My Dinner with Andre · My Neighbor Totoro · Nights of Cabiria · One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest · Orpheus · Paris, Texas · Patton · Picnic at Hanging Rock · Planes, Trains and Automobiles · The Producers · Raiders of the Lost Ark · Raise the Red Lantern · Ran · Rashomon · Rear Window · Rififi · The Right Stuff · Romeo and Juliet · The Rules of the Game · Saturday Night Fever · Say Anything · Scarface · The Searchers · Shane · Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs · Solaris · Strangers on a Train · Stroszek · A Sunday in the Country · Sunrise · A Tale of Winter · The Thin Man · This Is Spinal Tap ·Tokyo Story · Touchez Pas au Grisbi · Touch of Evil · The Treasure of the Sierra Madre · Ugetsu · Umberto D · Unforgiven · Victim · Walkabout · West Side Story · Yankee Doodle Dandy

    Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern.Ricoeur finds a "healthy circle" between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustine's theory of time and Aristotle's theory of plot and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s."This work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion."—Hayden White, History and Theory "Superb. . . . A fine point of entrance into the work of one of the eminent thinkers of the present intellectual age."—Joseph R. Gusfield, Contemporary Sociology

    Haiku are practiced by poets, lovers, and schoolchildren, by “political haiku” twitterers, by anyone who has the desire to pin preception and experience into a few quick phrases. This essay offers readers unparalleled insight into the living heart of haiku—how haiku work and what they hold, and how to read through and into their images to find a full expression of human life and perceptions, sometimes profound, sometimes playful.

    In December 2012, millions will be introduced or reintroduced to J.R.R. Tolkien's classic with the arrival of the first of two film adaptations by acclaimed director Peter Jackson. Exploring The Hobbit is a fun, thoughtful, and insightful companion volume, designed to bring a thorough and original new reading of this great work to a general audience. Professor Corey Olsen (also known as the Tolkien Professor) will take readers on an in-depth journey through The Hobbit chapter by chapter, revealing the stories within the story: the dark desires of dwarves and the sublime laughter of elves, the nature of evil and its hopelessness, the mystery of divine providence and human choice, and, most of all, the revolutions within the life of Bilbo Baggins. Exploring The Hobbit is a book that will make The Hobbit come alive for readers as never before.

    In the years since publication this book has rightly attained the status of a classic. Written for readers with little knowledge of the subject, Sexual/Textual Politics nevertheless makes its own intervention into key debates, arguing provocatively for a commitedly political and theoretical criticism as against merely textual or apolitical approaches.With a new afterword in this edition, Sexual/Textual Politics is a must-read for all those interested in feminist literary theory.

    Of course, he has given us glimpses in his aphorisms, short essays, articles, and speeches. But, never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut, the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the art and craft of writing - Plus - a wonderful, healing/nourishing expedition, of which McConnell has outfitted us for the journey, and in these 37 chapters, covers the waterfront of how one American writer brought himself to the pinnacle of the writing art; and the result only serves to benefit us.Kurt Vonnegut was one of the few grandmasters of American literature, whose novels continue to influence new generations about the ways in which our imaginations can help us to live. Few aspects of his contribution have not been plumbed - 14 novels, collections of his speeches, his essays, his letters, his plays - so this fresh view of him, written by a former student, is a bonanza for writers, readers, listeners and Vonnegut fans everywhere.©2019 Trust u/w of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (P)2019 Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books

    It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.

    It can give us an understanding of lives very different from our own, and a sense of the shared joys and losses of human experience." Readers will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth reading or rereading; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation. There are essential works in American history (The Federalist Papers, The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.); books that address timely cultural dynamics (Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale); classics of children's literature (the Harry Potter novels, Where the Wild Things Are); and novels by acclaimed contemporary writers like Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ian McEwan.With richly detailed illustrations by lettering artist Dana Tanamachi that evoke vintage bookplates, Ex Libris is an impassioned reminder of why reading matters more than ever.