Fortunately, one unabashed fan wants passionately to give Melville's masterpiece the broad contemporary audience it deserves. In his National Book Award-winning bestseller, In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick captivatingly unpacked the story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex, the real-life incident that inspired Melville to write Moby-Dick. Now, he sets his sights on the fiction itself, offering a cabin master's tour of a spellbinding novel rich with adventure and history. Philbrick skillfully navigates Melville's world and illuminates the book's humor and unforgettable characters—finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. A perfect match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? gives us a renewed appreciation of both Melville and the proud seaman's town of Nantucket that Philbrick himself calls home. Like Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, this remarkable little book will start conversations, inspire arguments, and, best of all, bring a new wave of readers to a classic tale waiting to be discovered anew.

    John Clarke's acclaimed translation, first published in 1975, is now accepted as the standard throughout the English-speaking world.

    This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a writer and reviewer.  This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early  rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos, and Things with Wings; "Burning Bushes," which follows her into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and "Dire Cartographies," which investigates Utopias and Dystopias.  In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form. Among those writers discussed are Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula Le Guin, Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. She elucidates the differences (as she sees them) between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction," as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must.  From the Hardcover edition.

    For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work—his fiction, letter, and conversations—and distills from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognizing love and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris. At once slyly ironic and genuinely wise, How Proust Can Change Your Life is an unqualified delight.

    Tolkien takes readers into a world unlike any other, yet so much seems familiar. As Bilbo journeys there and back again, glimpses of the spiritual are seen.The Christian World of The Hobbit does what no book has done: it brings Tolkien fans new delight by introducing a side of Tolkien that is rarely explored but vitally important to his writings--especially The Hobbit. Written by internationally regarded Tolkien-scholar Devin Brown, this approachable, witty, and highly entertaining book offers up fresh perspectives to fans of The Hobbit, both the book and the film adaptation.

    S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker.In C.S. Lewis: A Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King's College of London, paints a definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis. After thoroughly examining recently published Lewis correspondence, Alister challenges some of the previously held beliefs about the exact timing of Lewis's shift from atheism to theism and then to Christianity. He paints a portrait of an eccentric thinker who became an inspiring, though reluctant, prophet for our times.You won't want to miss this fascinating portrait of a creative genius who inspired generations. (Tyndale House Publishers)

    In doing so Asimov illuminates the Bible's many obscure and mysterious passages, producing a valuable text for anyone interested in religion and history.

    Augustine to Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place. In Grace Abounding, John Bunyan (1628?1688), the author of Pilgrim's Progress, describes his conviction of sin, his struggles against unbelief, his entrance into the meaning and comfort of the Holy Scriptures, and much more.

    An analysis of Victorian women writers, this pathbreaking book of feminist literary criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual."Contents:The Queen's looking glass: female creativity, male images of women, and the metaphor of literary paternity --Infection in the sentence: the women writer and the anxiety of authorship --The parables of the cave --Shut up in prose: gender and genre in Austen's Juvenilia --Jane Austen's cover story (and its secret agents) --Milton's bogey: patriarchal poetry and women readers --Horror's twin: Mary Shelley's monstrous Eve --Looking oppositely: Emily Brontë's bible of hell --A secret, inward wound: The professor's pupil --A dialogue of self and soul: plain Jane's progress --The genesis of hunger, according to Shirley --The buried life of Lucy Snowe --Made keen by loss: George Eliot's veiled vision --George Eliot as the angel of destruction --The aesthetics of renunciation --A woman, white: Emily Dickinson's yarn of pearl.

    Her words and actions have inspired millions of people from every race and religion and country to help the poor and needy, a legacy that is her gift to all mankind for generations to come.From 1950, when she founded the order of Missionaries of Charity, to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and then, in 1985, being awarded the Medal of Freedom—the United States' highest civilian award—to her final days, Mother Teresa served the world as a beacon shedding the light of hope, comfort, and peace on all.Mother Teresa: In My Own Words is a timeless testament to the power of her words. Here are the same quotes, stories, and prayers that helped strengthen and inspire the poor, the dying, the suffering, and the doubting who she met during her lifetime, and that will continue to strengthen and inspire all who read them.

    As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for The New York Times and the author of the critically acclaimed books Privilege and Grand New Party, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. Now he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails — and why it threatens to take American society with it.In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, Douthat brilliantly charts traditional Christianity’s decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith — which acted as a “vital center” and the moral force behind the Civil Rights movement — through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s down to the polarizing debates of the present day. He argues that Christianity’s place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, but by heresy: Debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Eat Pray Love, Joel Osteen to The Da Vinci Code, Oprah Winfrey to Sarah Palin, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel’s mantra of “pray and grow rich”; a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach; and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country’s ability to confront our most pressing challenges, and accelerated American decline.His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future.

    Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

    He later said that he had learned more in those two years than in any other equal part of his life. The Ring of Words reveals how his professional work on the Oxford English Dictionary influenced Tolkien's creative use of language in his fictional world. Here three senior editors of the OED offer an intriguing exploration of Tolkien's career as a lexicographer and illuminate his creativity as a word user and word creator. The centerpiece of the book is a wonderful collection of word studies which will delight the heart of Ring fans and word lovers everywhere. The editors look at the origin of such Tolkienesque words as hobbit, mithril, Smeagol, Ent, halfling, and worm (meaning dragon). Readers discover that a word such as mathom (anything a hobbit had no immediate use for, but was unwilling to throw away) was actually common in Old English, but that Mithril, on the other hand, is a complete invention (and the first Elven word to have an entry in the OED). And fans of Harry Potter will be surprised to find that Dumbledore (the name of Hogwart's headmaster) was a word used by Tolkien and many others (it is a dialect word meaning bumblebee). Few novelists have found so much of their creative inspiration in the shapes and histories of words. Presenting archival material not found anywhere else, The Ring of Words offers a fresh and unexplored angle on the literary achievements of one of the world's most famous and best-loved writers.

    but it's all true. The Scarlet and the Black tells the astonishing and heroic true story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, the man dubbed "The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican" during World War II.Born in Killarney, Ireland, Hugh O’Flaherty was an avid athlete? becoming a formidable boxer, handball player, hurler, and golfer. From an early age, however, he knew his calling was to the priesthood. After his ordination, he served first as an Apostolic Delegate in Egypt, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Czechoslovakia, then in Rome at the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). It was here in Rome that his greatest work began. After the surrender of Italy in 1943, Rome came under the command of Nazi Colonel Herbert Kappler of the dreaded SS, who began the deportation of Italian Jews to Auschwitz. Kappler was a notorious hater of the Jews, persecuting them at every turn. As a top man in the Vatican Holy Office, Msgr. O’Flaherty sprang into action, organizing a sophisticated team that included men and women of many nationalities, religions, and political views. There was one goal? to save Jews and POWs from the Nazi machine. Despite Kappler’s numerous attempts to assassinate him, O’Flaherty persisted, and his efforts saved thousands of Jews and POWs.Using private homes and apartments, churches and monasteries, the effort was all orchestrated by Msgr. O’Flaherty. Each day his familiar figure would stand on the steps of St. Peter’s - neutral ground that even the Nazis wouldn’t violate - to welcome any fugitives who might be sent his way. All told, of 9,700 Roman Jews, most were saved, with 1,007 shipped to Auschwitz. The rest were hidden, 5,000 of them by the official Church - 3,000 at the Pope’s Castel Gandolfo, 200 or 400 (estimates vary) as "members" of the Palatine Guard, and some 1,500 in monasteries, convents and colleges. The remaining 3,700 were hidden in private homes, including Msgr. O'Flaherty's network of apartments. After the war, O’Flaherty was honored by various Allied countries with awards and decorations for his heroic acts to save Jews and POWs. -- IllustratedPara cientos de personas huidas -prisioneros aliados, refugiados, judíos y no judíos a quienes los nazis buscaban por diversos motivos- uno de los más grandes héroes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial es el espigado y jovial sacerdote irlandés Monseñor Hugh Joseph Q’Flaherty. Durante toda la guerra trabajó en el Vaticano; aprovechó esta circunstancia para organizar por su cuenta, extraoficialmente, un sistema de eficacia increíble, con el fin de dar albergue a innumerables refugiados. El relato de sus aventuras es una historia excitante, que arroja una luz reveladora sobre uno de los aspectos menos conocidos de la Guerra. Después de la liberación, Mons. Q’Flaherty fue condecorado por Italia, Canadá y Australia, recibió la Medalla norteamericana de la Libertad y nombrado Comendador del Imperio Británico. Herbert Kappler fue sentenciado a cadena perpetua por crímenes de guerra. En los largos años que estuvo en la prisión italiana, Kappler tuvo un solo visitante: todos los meses, año tras año, Q’Flaherty iba a visitarle. En 1959, el antiguo jefe de la Gestapo de Roma recibió el bautismo de manos del sacerdote irlandés.

    And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none." --Mark Twain