Selected Writings


Gertrude Stein - 1962
    It includes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in its entirety; selected passages from The Making of Americans; "Melanctha"from Three Lives; portraits of the painters Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso; Tender Buttons; the opera Four Saints in Three Acts; and poem, plays, lectures, articles, sketches, and a generous portion of her famous book on the Occupation of France, Wars I Have Seen.

On Women: Selected Writings


Khushwant Singh - 2014
    Indeed, this enduring obsession provided fodder for some of Singh’s best-known work, both as a journalist and as a peerless raconteur.On Women, a wide-ranging selection of Singh’s writings on the subject, includes Singh’s recounting of an embarrassingly drunken meeting with Begum Para, an actress of yesteryears; a sharp profile of Shraddha Mata, a tantric sadhvi who was alleged to have borne Jawaharlal Nehru’s illegitimate child; and a touching sketch of Singh’s grandmother in the twilight of her life. Also featured in this volume are unforgettable women characters from Khushwant Singh’s most popular works of fiction: Georgine, a clueless American teenager who is seduced by a middle-aged tour guide in Delhi; and Nooran, a young girl in pre-Partition Punjab, who discovers the sweet pleasure of first love only to be overtaken by cataclysmic events which leave her adrift.Insightful, poignant, and occasionally wicked, the essays and extracts in On Women are testament to why Khushwant Singh remains one of the most popular writers of our times.

Collected Poetry & Prose


Wallace Stevens - 1997
    Now, for the first time, the works of America's supreme poet of the imagination are collected in one authoritative volume.

The Book of Virtues


William J. Bennett - 1993
    Bennett's bestselling The Book of Virtues is an inspiring anthology that helps children understand and develop moral character—and helps parents teach it to them.Responsibility. Courage. Compassion. Honesty. Friendship. Persistence. Faith. Everyone recognizes these traits as essentials of good character. In order for our children to develop such traits, we have to offer them examples of good and bad, right and wrong. And the best places to find them are in great works of literature and exemplary stories from history. William J. Bennett has collected hundreds of stories in The Book of Virtues. From the Bible to American history, from Greek mythology to English poetry, from fairy tales to modern fiction, these stories are a rich mine of moral literacy, a reliable moral reference point that will help anchor our children and ourselves in our culture, our history, and our traditions—the sources of the ideals by which we wish to live our lives. Complete with instructive introductions and notes, The Book of Virtues is a book the whole family can read and enjoy—and learn from—together.

The Life of Samuel Johnson


James Boswell - 1790
    Johnson had in his friend Boswell the ideal biographer.Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail. This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marvelously vivacious Journals he wrote daily furnished him with first-rate material when he came to write his biography.The result is a masterpiece that brims over with wit, anecdote and originality. Hailed by Macaulay as the best biography ever written and by Carlyle as a book 'beyond any other product of the eighteenth century', The Life of Samuel Johnson today continues to enjoy its status as a classic of the language.This shortened version is based on the 1799 edition, the last in which the author had a hand.

Counter-Attack and Other Poems


Siegfried Sassoon - 1918
    The book has no illustrations or index.

The White Album


Joan Didion - 1979
    Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

Good Poems for Hard Times


Garrison KeillorE.E. Cummings - 2005
    Here, readers will find solace in works that are bracing and courageous, organized into such resonant headings as "Such As It Is More or Less" and "Let It Spill." From William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman to R. S. Gwynn and Jennifer Michael Hecht, the voices gathered in this collection will be more than welcome to those who've been struck by bad news, who are burdened by stress, or who simply appreciate the power of good poetry.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire


Caryl Churchill - 1992
    It was first staged in 1976 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and revived at the National Theatre in 1996.Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later


Jason Shinder - 2006
    The original edition cost seventy-five cents, but there was something priceless about its eponymous piece. Although it gave a voice to the new generation that came of age in the conservative years following World War II, the poem also conferred a strange, subversive power that continues to exert its influence to this day. Ginsberg went on to become one of the most eminent and celebrated writers of the second half of the twentieth century, and "Howl" became the critical axis of the worldwide literary, cultural, and political movement that would be known as the Beat generation.The year 2006 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of "Howl," and The Poem That Changed America will celebrate and shed new light on this profound cultural work. With new essays by many of today's most distinguished writers, including Frank Bidart, Andrei Codrescu, Vivian Gornick, Phillip Lopate, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Robert Pinsky, and Luc Sante, The Poem That Changed America reveals the pioneering influence of "Howl" down through the decades and its powerful resonance today.

Beautiful Chaos


Robert M. Drake - 2014
    We all are broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful.

زند هومن یسن


Sadegh Hedayat - 2004
    Born in Iran and educated in France, his works were influenced by the sense of alienation and self-destruction that pervaded post-WWI European literary circles. He was also known as a gifted intellectual and essayist in his native country. His interest in Persian culture led him to detest the Arabization of Iran, and so he traveled to India to live among the Parsees, Zoroastrians whose ancestors had chosen to leave Iran rather than submit to conversion to Islam. It was in India, away from Iranian government censors and political pressures, that Hedayat finished the book that is widely considered his masterpiece, "The Blind Owl."This collection of essays and travelogues, the title of which can be translated as "Commentary on the Vohuman Hymn," reflects his experiences in India from 1936 until about 1941. It was written in the Zoroastrian Middle Persian and later translated into Modern Persian by the author.

Don Juan


Lord Byron - 1819
    The manner is what Goethe called 'a cultured comic language'-a genre which he regarded as not possible in Geman and which he felt Byron managed superbly.

Poland: A History


Adam Zamoyski - 2009
    This substantially revised and updated edition sets the Soviet era in the context of the rise, fall and remarkable rebirth of an indomitable nation.

The Oxford Book of American Poetry


David Lehman - 2006
    It is a rich, capacious volume, featuring the work of more than 200 poets-almost three times as many as the 1976 edition. With a succinctand often witty head note introducing each author, it is certain to become the definitive anthology of American poetry for our time.Lehman has gathered together all the works one would expect to find in a landmark collection of American poetry, from Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry to Stevens's The Idea of Order at Key West, and from Eliot's The Waste Land to Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But equally important, the editor has significantly expanded the range of the anthology. The book includes not only writers born since the previous edition, but also many fine poets overlooked in earlier editions or little known in the past but highly deserving of attention. The anthology confers legitimacy on theObjectivist poets; the so-called Proletariat poets of the 1930s; famous poets who fell into neglect or were the victims of critical backlash (Edna St. Vincent Millay); poets whose true worth has only become clear with the passing of time (Weldon Kees). Among poets missing from Richard Ellmann's 1976volume but published here are W. H. Auden, Charles Bukowski, Donald Justice, Carolyn Kizer, Kenneth Koch, Stanley Kunitz, Emma Lazarus, Mina Loy, Howard Moss, Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, James Schuyler, Elinor Wylie, and Louis Zukosky. Many more women are represented: outstanding poets such asJosephine Jacobsen, Josephine Miles, May Swenson. Numerous African-American poets receive their due, and unexpected figures such as the musicians Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Robert Johnson have a place in this important work.This stunning collection redefines the great canon of American poetry from its origins in the 17th century right up to the present. It is a must-have anthology for anyone interested in American literature and a book that is sure to be consulted, debated, and treasured for years to come.