Now, The View from the Cheap Seats brings together for the first time ever more than sixty pieces of his outstanding nonfiction. Analytical yet playful, erudite yet accessible, this cornucopia explores a broad range of interests and topics, including (but not limited to): authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts the author’s experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood.

    His far-reaching claims about language and truth provoked a vigorous critique by Jacques Derrida, whose essay in turn has spawned further responses from Barbara Johnson, Jane Gallop, Irene Harvey, Norman Holland, and others.

    The anthology that spans an entire lifetime of writing by America's greatest curmudgeon, with a "flick of mischief on nearly every page."

    Includes a detailed chronology of the war, historical maps, a glossary of military terms, and photos and illustrations.

    The Nobel laureate shares his thoughts on poetry's special ability to rectify spiritual balance as a counterweight to hostile and oppressive forces, in a collection of ten lectures on the work of such diverse poets as Christopher Marlowe, John Clare, Oscar Wilde, and Elizabeth Bishop.

    The volume includes over forty of the Grimms' most beloved stories, including:Rapunzel * Hansel and Gretel * The Brave Little Tailor * Cinderella * Little Red Riding Hood * The Robber Bridegroom * Briar Rose * Snow White * Rumplestilskin * The Golden Goose * The Singing, Soaring Lark * The Frog King * The Juniper Tree * and Mother HolleWith over 150 paintings and drawings from the most celebrated fairy tale illustrators, including George Cruikshank, Paul Hey, Walter Crane, Warwick Goble, Kay Nielsen, and Arthur Rackham.

    Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage. Flip it open to any page and be transfixed by a fresh take on a very favorite book. Or come across a title you always meant to read and never got around to. Or, like browsing in the best kind of bookshop, stumble on a completely unknown author and work, and feel that tingle of discovery. There are classics, of course, and unexpected treasures, too. Lists to help pick and choose, like Offbeat Escapes, or A Long Climb, but What a View. And its alphabetical arrangement by author assures that surprises await on almost every turn of the page, with Cormac McCarthy and The Road next to Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings, Alice Walker next to Izaac Walton.  There are nuts and bolts, too—best editions to read, other books by the author, “if you like this, you’ll like that” recommendations , and an interesting endnote of adaptations where appropriate. Add it all up, and in fact there are more than six thousand titles by nearly four thousand authors mentioned—a life-changing list for a lifetime of reading.

    It is our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic—our Iliad, but also our Bible, a story of sin and judgment, suffering and despair, death and resurrection in a “new birth of freedom.” Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs, The Civil War: The First Year brings together over 120 pieces by more than sixty participants to create a unique firsthand narrative of this great historical crisis.Beginning on the eve of Lincoln’s election in 1860 and ending in January 1862 with the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war, signaling a new energy and determination to the Union war effort, this volume collects writing by figures well-known—Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Mary Chesnut, Frederick Douglass, and Lincoln himself among them—and less familiar, like pro-slavery advocate J.D.B. DeBow, Lieutenants Charles B. Haydon of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and Henry Livermore Abbott of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and plantation mistresses Catherine Edmondston of North Carolina and Kate Stone of Mississippi. Together, the selections provide a powerful sense of the immediacy, uncertainty, and urgency of events as the nation was torn asunder. Secessionist appeals by Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown and Alabama legislator Stephen F. Hale give voice to the intense racial fears that helped drive the South toward disunion; Union corporal Samuel J. English and Confederate surgeon Lunsford P. Yandell evoke the shock, confusion, and horror of battle in Virginia and Missouri; memoirist Sallie Brock candidly records the impact of war on Richmond society; and Sam Mitchell recounts his liberation from slavery when the South Carolina Sea Islands fell to Union soldiers.The Civil War: The First Year includes headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, endpaper maps, and an index.

    He was full of enthusiasm and freedom - as opposed to the tyrannical feudal society of his homeland. Letters on England discusses English religious sects, politics, scientists and writers with great admiration, yet the clever Voltaire also flattered his French readers with humorous references to the old-fashioned clothes and speech of the Quakers and to antics in the House of Commons. At first banned in France, this intriguing and often comic account of a culture viewed through foreign eyes was to prove highly influential in shaping French attitudes to England.Leonard Tancock's translation brilliantly captures Voltaire's ironic tone, and is accompanied by an introduction discussing his depiction of England and the events that led to his exile. This edition also includes notes, new further reading and chronology, and an appendix on Voltaire's verse translation of English works.

    With an introduction by Peter Straub.

     A constellation of previously published pieces and new essays as provocative and idiosyncratic as any he’s written, this volume sheds light on an array of topics from sex in cinema to drugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9/11, book touring, and Marlon Brando, as well as on a shelf’s worth of his literary models and contemporaries: Norman Mailer, Paula Fox, Bret Easton Ellis, James Wood, and oth­ers. And, writing about Brooklyn, his father, and his sojourn through two decades of writing, Lethem sheds an equally strong light on himself.

    Beginning with Paul Revere’s own narrative of his legendary ride in April 1775 and ending with a moving account of George Washington’s resignation from the command of the Continental Army in December 1783, the volume contains writing that describes the major events of the conflict—the early battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; the failed American invasion of Canada; the 1776 campaign in New York and New Jersey; the crucial battle of Saratoga; the bitter fighting in the South and along the western frontier; and the decisive triumph at Yorktown.Included are writings by famous figures—Washington Franklin, Jefferson, Benedict Arnold, John and Abigail Adams—and by lesser known participants: Samuel Blachley Webb describing courage and panic at Bunker Hill; Sarah Hodgkins writing longingly to her absent soldier husband; Jabez Fitch recounting the last hours of a wounded American officer in Brooklyn; Albigence Waldo chronicling the privations and miseries of Valley Forge; Otho Holland Williams recording with appealing candor American defeats and victories in South Carolina. The volume also contains writings by American Loyalists and by British officers and officials serving in America that provide provocative insights into the losing side of an epochal conflict. All selections are written by people who were in America at the time of the conflict.The American Revolution also includes a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory notes, and an index.

    Covering the years 1832 to 1858, this Library of America volume contains 240 speeches, letters, drafts, and fragments that record his emergence as an eloquent anti-slavery advocate and defender of the Constitution.From the beginning, Lincoln’s career and the style of his writing nurtured each other. During his years as a lawyer, he argued hundreds of cases before judges and juries. As a stump speaker, he became familiar with the ebb and flow of public sentiment. He never spoke down to the “common people” and his engaging idiomatic style is free of irrelevant ornamentation and resounds with the wordplay, sarcasm, and self-mockery of frontier humor as well as with the cadences of the Bible. His speeches and letters echo the political philosophy of and his “beau ideal of a statesman” Henry Clay and the rhetoric of Daniel Webster, while reflecting the ambition of a resolute politician who hoped to be “truly esteemed by my fellow men.”His private letters show how much Lincoln learned about politics as a stalwart of the Illinois Whigs in the 1830s and 40s—how to measure his support, to form alliances, and to avoid divisive quarrels. His public writings reveal his abilities as a party spokesman and orator, equally adept at articulating positions and ridiculing opponents. Included are his speech in Congress attacking the war against Mexico, his fervent call before the Springfield Lyceum for a reverent obedience to the law, and the satiric “Rebecca” letter that nearly involved him in a duel with its enraged target. There are in addition more personal letters and poems that further testify to the complexities of his character.The renewed threat of slavery’s expansion into the territories transformed Lincoln’s political life in 1854. This volume includes several speeches on the subject, notably from his 1858 Senate race against Stephen A. Douglas, along with the complete texts of their seven debates. The exchanges are marked by personal jibes, accusations of falsehood, appeals to human sympathies and racial prejudices, and profound disagreements on whether the spread of slavery was merely a local question or one that imperiled the future of free government. Still the most famous confrontation in American political history, the debates have the tense drama of two powerful minds disagreeing with all the intensity that characterized mid-nineteenth-century American democracy.

    Written at a critical time in his life when his own love had been rejected, the book is a thinly disguised picture of the author's innermost feelings. Though it ranges over a wide variety of topics from courtly love to the emancipation of women, central to the book is Stendhal's account of love - an intense, romantic and generally unrequited love.

    Your niece swears that no one expects thank-you letters anymore. Your father-in-law insists that married women have to take their husbands' names. Your guests plead that asking them to commit themselves to attending your party ruins the spontaneity. Who is right? Miss Manners, of course. With all those amateurs issuing unauthorized etiquette pronouncements, aren't you glad that there is a gold standard to consult about what has really changed and what has not? The freshly updated version of the classic bestseller includes the latest letters, essays, and illustrations, along with the laugh-out-loud wisdom of Miss Manners as she meets the new millennium of American misbehavior head-on. This wickedly witty guide rules on the challenges brought about by our ever-evolving society, once again proving that etiquette, far from being an optional extra, is the essential currency of a civilized world.