Ara Güler's Istanbul


Ara Güler - 2009
    As the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Istanbul has lived through several empires and has a character that is as many layered as its history – something that Güler’s photographs convey with great sensitivity. In these remarkable black-and-white images, the city’s melancholy aesthetic oscillates between tradition and modernity. Both writer and photographer were born in Istanbul, and each in his youth held the ambition of becoming a painter. Here, each in his own way paints a picture of his home town and captures its very soul.

The White Cliffs


Alice Duer Miller - 1940
    The story is concerned with a young American girl of good Yankee stock, who marries an Englishman, loses him in the Great war, bears his son, and finds herself facing, with her indomitable mother-in-low, the new peril.The White Cliffs starts as a charming and even at times an amusing poem, gathering emotional power as it goes on till it comes to a moving and splendid end. A book for those whose beliefs are now lukewarm. "It is," wrote Mr. R. J. Cruikshank recently in 'The Star' "a promise that the literature which we English-speaking people share in common is beginning to give utterance to this grand theme of union."The poem has been widely popular in America. Lynn Fontanne, the famous American actress, twice read it in serial form on the radio, and it was one of the last books read by Lord Lothian, while Mr. William Lyon Phelps commented: "Not only a very beautiful poem, but a wonderful stody of the English." It has now been twice successfully broadcast by the B.B.C.

The London Scene: Five Essays


Virginia Woolf - 1975
    Virginia Woolf was born and lived much of her life in the city, using it as the backdrop for many of her works. She was a fervent walker and her keen eye keeps pace as she strides across the city that she loved above all others. "The London Scene" begins in the docks of the east and flows against the Thames tide westwards, following the commercial pulse of the city from the disembarkment of goods at Tilbury to the crowds of shoppers on Oxford Street, before winding on majestically to the grand buildings of the City and Westminster. Virginia Woolf pauses to admire the splendour of St. Paul's and the austerity of Westminster Abbey. She visits the spartan houses of literary men, and concludes her walk with a wry look at the House of Commons. With specially commissioned illustrations by Suzanne Barton.

The Bridge of the Golden Horn


Emine Sevgi Özdamar - 1998
    Lying about her age, she gets work on an assembly line in West Berlin making radios, and lives in a women's factory hostel.'The Bridge of the Golden Horn' is a witty, picaresque account of a precocious teenager refusing to become wise; of a hectic four years lived between Berlin and Istanbul; of a young woman who is obsessed by theatre, film, poetry and left-wing politics.

Europe's Top 100 Masterpieces: Art for the Traveler


Rick Steves - 2019
    From Venus to Versailles, Apollo to David, and Mona Lisa to The Thinker, Rick and co-author Gene Openshaw will have you marveling, learning, and laughing, one masterpiece at a time. Whether you're traveling to Europe or just dreaming about it, this book both stokes your wanderlust and kindles a greater appreciation of art, with historical context and information on where to see it for yourself.With Rick's trusted insight and gorgeous, full-color photos throughout, Europe's Top 100 Masterpieces celebrates nearly 20,000 years of unforgettable art.

Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology


Richey Piiparinen - 2012
    Rust Belt Chic tells stories about failure (mills closing), conflict (Pekar's constant grousing), growth (a thriving Iraqi immigrant community) and renewal (moving away only to, finally, return home). Put together, these stories create a new narrative about Cleveland that incorporates but deepens and widens the familiar tropes of manufacturing, stadiums and comebacks.

The Alexiad


Anna Comnena
    It is also an important source of information on the Byzantine war with the Normans, and the First Crusade, in which Alexius participated. While the Byzantines were allied to the Crusaders, they were none the less critical of their behaviour and Anna's book offers a startlingly different perspective from that of Western historians. Her character sketches are shrewd and forthright - from the Norman invader Robert Guiscard ('nourished by mainfold Evil') and his son Bohemond ('like a streaking thunderbolt') to Pope Gregory VII ('unworthy of a high priest'). The Alexiad is a vivid and dramatic narrative, which reveals as much about the character of its intelligent and dynamic author as it does about the fascinating period through which she lived.E.R.A. Sewter's translation captures all the strength and immediacy of the original and is complemented by an introduction that examines Anna's life and times. This edition also includes maps, appendices, genealogical tables, a bibliography and indexes of events and names.

A Woman Appeared to Me


Renée Vivien - 1904
    "A WOMAN APPEARED TO ME is Renée Vivien's feverish, dream-like account of her tormented relationship with her muse and mistress, Natalie Clifford Barney." - Introduction

Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life


Jerre Gerlando Mangione - 1998
    Jerre Mangione's autobiographical chronicle of his youth in a Sicilian community in Rochester is one of the truly enduring books about the immigrant experience in this country. Family squabbles, soul-nourishing food, and the casting of evil eyes are only some of the ingredients of this richly textured book, although they must all take second place to its unforgettable characters. As Eugene Paul Nassar writes in the book's Foreword, Mount Allegro . . . gave a literary visibility and identity, amiable and appealing, to a poorly understood ethnic group in America, and did so at a very high level of artistry.

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Casebook


Cheryl A. Wall - 2000
    Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, thepitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues oflanguage and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook charts new directions for future critics and affirms the classic status of the novel.

Three Novellas


Thomas Bernhard - 1971
    Two of the three novellas here have never before been published in English, and all of them show an early preoccupation with the themes-illness and madness, isolation, tragic friendships-that would obsess Bernhard throughout his career. Amras, one of his earliest works, tells the story of two brothers, one epileptic, who have survived a family suicide pact and are now living in a ruined tower, struggling with madness, trying either to come fully back to life or finally to die. In Playing Watten, the narrator, a doctor who lost his practice due to morphine abuse, describes a visit paid him by a truck driver who wanted the doctor to return to his habit of playing a game of cards (watten) every Wednesday—a habit that the doctor had interrupted when one of the players killed himself. The last novella, Walking, records the conversations of the narrator and his friend Oehler while they walk, discussing anything that comes to mind but always circling back to their mutual friend Karrer, who has gone irrevocably mad. Perhaps the most overtly philosophical work in Bernhard’s highly philosophical oeuvre, Walking provides a penetrating meditation on the impossibility of truly thinking.Three Novellas offers a superb introduction to the fiction of perhaps the greatest unsung hero of twentieth-century literature. Rarely have the words suffocating, intense, and obsessive been meant so positively.

The Satyricon


Petronius
    It tells the hilarious story of the pleasure-seeking adventures of an educated rogue, Encolpius, his handsome serving boy, Giton, and Ascyltus, who lusts after Giton—three impure pilgrims who live by their wits and other men's purses. The Satyricon unfailingly turns every weakness of the flesh, every foible of the mind, to laughter.

Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924


Philip Mansel - 1995
    "This is a work for the general reader which will also earn the admiration of all academic specialists in Ottoman history".--Sunday Telegraph (London) 8 pp. of photos.

In Paris With You


Clémentine Beauvais - 2016
    Eugene and Tatiana had fallen in love that summer ten years ago. But certain events stopped them from getting to truly know each other and they separated never knowing what could have been. But one busy morning on the Paris metro, Eugene and Tatiana meet again, no longer the same teenagers they once were. What happened during that summer? Does meeting again now change everything? With their lives ahead of them, can Eugene and Tatiana find a way to be together after everything? Written in gorgeous verse, In Paris With You celebrates the importance of first love. Funny and sometimes bittersweet this book has universal appeal for anyone who has been in love.

Are We French Yet? Keith & Val's Adventures in Provence


Keith Van Sickle - 2018
    But they wondered: Can we fit in? And maybe become French ourselves?Follow their adventures as they slowly unlock the mysteries of France…- Is it true that French people are like coconuts? - Can you learn to argue like a French person? - What books have changed French lives? - Most important of all, how do you keep your soup from exploding?There’s more to becoming French than just learning the language. If you want the inside scoop on la belle France, you won’t want to miss this delightful book!