Book picks similar to
Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West by Clare Cavanagh
poetry
l-title
non-fiction
poland
Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings
Daniil Kharms - 2007
In this brilliant translation by Matvei Yankelevich, English-language readers now have a comprehensive collection of the prose and poetry that secured Kharms s literary reputation a reputation that grew in Russia even as the Soviet establishment worked to suppress it.A master of formally inventive poetry and what today would be called micro-fiction, Kharms built off the legacy of Russian Futurist writers to create a uniquely deadpan style written out of and in spite of the absurdities of life in Stalinist Russia. Featuring the acclaimed novella The Old Woman and darkly humorous short prose sequence Events (Sluchai), Today I Wrote Nothing also includes dozens of short prose pieces, plays, and poems long admired in Russia, but never before available in English. A major contribution for American readers and students of Russian literature and an exciting discovery for fans of contemporary writers as eclectic as George Saunders, John Ashbery, and Martin McDonagh, Today I Wrote Nothing is an invaluable collection for readers of innovative writing everywhere.About the EditorMATVEI YANKELEVICH is also a co-translator of Oberiu: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (2006). His translation of the Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "Cloud in Pants" appears in Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky. He is the author of a long poem, The Present Work, and his writing has appeared in Fence, Open City, and many other literary journals. He teaches Russian Literature at Hunter College in New York City and edits the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Press in Brooklyn.
Classics of Russian Literature
Irwin Weil
Professor Weil introduces you to masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Chekhov's The Seagull, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and many other great novels, stories, plays, and poems. In all, you plunge into more than 40 works by a dozen writers, from Aleksandr Pushkin in the 19th century to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 20th century. You also investigate the origin of Russian literature itself, which traces its lineage back to powerful epic poetry and beautiful renderings of the Bible into Slavic during the Middle Ages. All of these works are treated in translation, but Professor Weil does something very unusual in the literature-in-translation arena. For almost every passage that he quotes in English, he reads an extract in the original Russian, with a fluent accent and an actor's sense of drama.
Small Pleasures
The School of Life - 2016
But we need some encouragement to focus our gaze. This is a book to guide us to the best of life’s small pleasures: everything from the distinctive delight of holding a child’s hand to the enjoyment of disagreeing with someone to the joy of the evening sky; an intriguing, evocative mix of small pleasures that will heighten our senses and return us to the world with new-found excitement and enthusiasm.
The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus
Lesley Blanch - 1960
During the Great Caucasus War of 1834-1859, the warring mountain tribes of Daghestan and Chechnya united under the charismatic leadership of the Muslim chieftain Imam Shamyl, the "Lion of Daghestan", and held at bay the invading Russian army for nearly 25 years. Lesley Blanch vividly recounts the epic story of their heroic and bloody struggle for freedom and the life of a man still legendary in the Caucasus.
The House by the Sea
May Sarton - 1977
The journal records the renewing of her life and work in this place.
Visions of Jazz: The First Century
Gary Giddins - 1998
From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from theswinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace and wit that have endeared his prose to Village Voice readers for decades, Giddins also widens thescope of jazz to include such crucial American musicians as Irving Berlin, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra, all primarily pop performers who are often dismissed by fans and critics as mere derivatives of the true jazz idiom. And he devotes an entire quarter of this landmark volume to young, still-active jazz artists, boldly expanding the horizons of jazz--and charting and exploring the music's influences as no other book has done.
Operation Whisper: The Capture of Soviet Spies Morris and Lona Cohen
Barnes Carr - 2016
On a hot afternoon in the autumn of 1950, a trusted colleague knocked at their door, held up a finger for silence, then began scribbling a note: Go now. Leave the lights on, walk out, don't look back. Born and raised in the Bronx and recruited to play football at Mississippi State, Morris Cohen fought for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and with the U.S. Army in World War II. He and his wife, Lona, were as American as football and fried chicken, but for one detail: they'd spent their entire adult lives stealing American military secrets for the Soviet Union. And not just any military secrets, but a complete working plan of the first atomic bomb, smuggled direct from Los Alamos to their Soviet handler in New York. Their associates Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who accomplished far less, had just been arrested, and the prosecutor wanted the death penalty. Did the Cohens wish to face the same fate? Federal agents were in the neighborhood, knocking on doors, getting close. So get out. Take nothing. Tell no one. In Operation Whisper, Barnes Carr tells the full, true story of the most effective Soviet spy couple in America, a pair who vanished under the FBI's nose only to turn up posing as rare book dealers in London, where they continued their atomic spying. The Cohens were talented, dedicated, worldly spies-an urbane, jet-set couple loyal to their service and their friends, and very good at their work. Most people they met seemed to think they represented the best of America. The Soviets certainly thought so.
My Experiences in the World War
John Joseph Pershing - 1931
By the May 1918 there were over one million American troops stationed in France and making their way to the frontlines under the leadership of General John J. Pershing. World War One had been a stalemate for the previous three years as both sides had become bogged down in trench warfare. The impact that the American Expeditionary Force made to the outcome of the First World War can never be underestimated. By the summer of 1918 American troops were providing the knockout blow in a series of fierce battles, such as at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Saint-Mihiel and Argonne Forest. Although the American Expeditionary Forces had been inexperienced at 1917, by the end of the war Pershing had shaped it into a modern, efficient, and combat-tested army. Indeed, in the last of offensive of the war, known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Pershing commanded his men to break-out of the confines of trench warfare and succeeded in recovering over 200 square miles of French territory from the German army.
Pershing’s brilliant account of this period My Experiences in the World War was a Pulitzer Prize Winner for History in 1932 and should be essential reading for anyone interested in the American involvement of the First World War.
The first volume of the memoir covers the period from Pershing’s selection as commander of the A. E. F. through to the 1918 German Spring Offensive. The second volume follows on from this and covers all of the A. E. F.’s major engagements through until their victory parade in Paris in November 1918. These two volumes have been combined and sold as one book to commemorate the centenary of the end of World War One. John J. Pershing served as the commander of the American Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in World War One. He asserted that the American forces should not be incorporated into other Allied armies but would operate as a separate unit. He was the only American to be promoted in his own lifetime to General of the Armies rank, the highest possible rank in the United States Army. His book My Experiences in the World War was first publishing in New York in 1931. He passed away in 1948.
One, Two, Three...Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science
George Gamow - 1947
. . full of intellectual treats and tricks, of whimsy and deep scientific philosophy. It is highbrow entertainment at its best, a teasing challenge to all who aspire to think about the universe." — New York Herald TribuneOne of the world's foremost nuclear physicists (celebrated for his theory of radioactive decay, among other accomplishments), George Gamow possessed the unique ability of making the world of science accessible to the general reader.He brings that ability to bear in this delightful expedition through the problems, pleasures, and puzzles of modern science. Among the topics scrutinized with the author's celebrated good humor and pedagogical prowess are the macrocosm and the microcosm, theory of numbers, relativity of space and time, entropy, genes, atomic structure, nuclear fission, and the origin of the solar system.In the pages of this book readers grapple with such crucial matters as whether it is possible to bend space, why a rocket shrinks, the "end of the world problem," excursions into the fourth dimension, and a host of other tantalizing topics for the scientifically curious. Brimming with amusing anecdotes and provocative problems, One Two Three . . . Infinity also includes over 120 delightful pen-and-ink illustrations by the author, adding another dimension of good-natured charm to these wide-ranging explorations.Whatever your level of scientific expertise, chances are you'll derive a great deal of pleasure, stimulation, and information from this unusual and imaginative book. It belongs in the library of anyone curious about the wonders of the scientific universe. "In One Two Three . . . Infinity, as in his other books, George Gamow succeeds where others fail because of his remarkable ability to combine technical accuracy, choice of material, dignity of expression, and readability." — Saturday Review of Literature
The Spinoza of Market Street
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 1944
Literature - Singer's second collection of stories, eleven in all, including the title story, "A Tale of Two Liars", and "The Destruction of Kreshev."
The Discovery of India
Jawaharlal Nehru - 1991
One of modern day's most articulate statesmen, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a on a wide variety of subjects. Describing himself as "a dabbler in many things," he committed his life not only to politics but also to nature and wild life, drama, poetry, history, and science, as well as many other fields. These two volumes help to illuminate the depth of his interests and knowledge and the skill and elegance with which he treated the written word!!
The Essential Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg - 2015
He was also the dynamic leader of war protesters, artists, Flower Power hippies, musicians, punks, and political radicals.The Essential Ginsberg collects a mosaic of materials that displays the full range of Ginsberg’s mental landscape. His most important poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews are displayed in chronological order. His poetic masterpieces, “Howl” and “Kaddish,” are presented here along with lesser-known and difficult to find songs and prose. Personal correspondence with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is included as well as photographs—shot and captioned by Ginsberg himself—of his friends and fellow rogues William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and more.Through his essays, journals, interviews, and letters, this definitive volume will inspire readers to delve deeper into a body of work that remains one of the most impressive literary canons in American history.
When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry
Gal Beckerman - 2010
They lived a paradox--unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. "When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone" is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue.Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist "hooligans," and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. He also makes a convincing case that the movement put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War.In cinematic detail, the book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats. This multi-generational saga, filled with suspense and packed with revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history.
A Russian Journal
John Steinbeck - 1948
This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A RUSSIAN JOURNAL is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpse of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle
Mrs. Midnight and Other Stories
Reggie Oliver - 2011
400 copies. Contains: "Mrs Midnight", "Countess Otho", "Meeting with Mike", "The Dancer in the Dark", "Mr Pigsny", "The Brighton Redemption", "You Have Nothing to Fear", "The Philosophy of the Damned", "The Mortlake Manuscript", "The Look", "The Giacometti Crucifixion","A Piece of Elsewhere", "Minos or Rhadamanthus".A TV reality show host helps to restore an East End music hall and uncovers the dreadful secret of Mrs Midnight and her Animal Comedians. . . . A historian travels to Switzerland to ghost the autobiography of an exiled Balkan king and encounters a sinister cult. . . . The Master of an Oxford college tries to introduce a dubious piece of modern sculpture into his college chapel with dire consequences. . . . A strange meeting takes place on a playing field between an officer on leave from the trenches and his former headmaster. . . .The settings and characters in Reggie Oliver’s fifth collection of ‘strange’ stories are as varied and unusual as ever, though, as in previous volumes, the theatre forms the milieu of a number of his tales. But the theatres are not just English ones, in the provinces and the West End: one is on the Black Sea; another in post-colonial Kenya. Themes are equally varied, but underlying all is a deep sense of the spiritual under-currents just below the surface of everyday existence, and the precariousness of ‘normality’.Reggie Oliver is an English playwright, biographer and writer of ghost stories. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.