Hence, Austrian painter Christiane Ritter was at best ambivalent when her husband asked her to join him on the small Arctic island of Spitsbergen in a tarpaulin-covered hut sixty miles from the nearest neighbor. Yet his descriptions were filled not with cold and hardship but tales of remarkable wildlife, alluring light shows, and treks over water and ice. Won over, Ritter joined her husband and grew to love life on this small isle off Norway's coast, and in this charming memoir she describes her experiences, with insight and wry humor. Whether or not you ever plan a trip to the Arctic, A Woman in the Polar Night offers thoughtful reflections on isolation and the place the natural world holds in the human psyche.

    In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the earth really is alive, while in Australia we experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. And finally we settle in Borneo, where the last rain forest nomads struggle to survive. Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy--a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalog of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

    Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholarsBiographies of the authorsChronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural eventsFootnotes and endnotesSelective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the workComments by other famous authorsStudy questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectationsBibliographies for further readingIndices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. As an adolescent America searched for its unique identity among the nations of the world, a number of thinkers and writers emerged eager to share their vision of what the American character could be. Among their leaders was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays, lectures, and poems defined the American transcendentalist movement, though he himself disliked the term.Emerson advocates a rejection of fear-driven conformity, a total independence of thought and spirit, and a life lived in harmony with nature. He believes that Truth lies within each individual, for each is part of a greater whole, a universal “over-soul” through which we transcend the merely mortal.Emerson was extremely prolific throughout his life; his collected writings fill forty volumes. This edition contains his major works, including Nature, the essays “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” “The Poet,” and “Experience,”, and such important poems as “The Rhodora,” “Uriel,” “The Humble-Bee,” “Earth-Song,” “Give All to Love,” and the well-loved “Concord Hymn.”Includes a comprehensive glossary of names.Peter Norberg has been Assistant Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia since 1997. A specialist in New England transcendentalism and the history of the antebellum period, he also has published on Herman Melville’s poetry. He currently is writing a history of Emerson’s career as a public lecturer.

    May at 10 tells the compelling inside story of the most turbulent period in modern British politics for 100 years.Written by one of Britain’s leading political and social commentators, May at 10 describes how Theresa May arrived in 10 Downing Street in 2016 with the clearest, yet toughest, agenda of any Prime Minister since the Second World War: delivering Brexit. What follows defies belief or historical precedent. This story has never been told.Including a comprehensive series of interviews with May’s closest aides and allies, and with unparalleled access to the advisers who shaped her premiership, Downing Street’s official historian Anthony Seldon decodes the enigma of the Prime Minister’s tenure. Drawing on all his authorial experience, he unpacks what is the most intriguing government and Prime Minister of the modern era.

    Here is the first anthology of love poems written only by women. Poets from all ages and all parts of the world, expressing love not only for their male and female lovers, but for parents, children, friends, for art, God, nature, and homeland, are collected here, and include the works of: Sappho, Emily Dickenson, Ono no Komachi, Shadab Vajdi, Alice Walker, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and many more.Originally published as: The Virago book of love poetry by Virago Press, Great Britain (1990).

    Some of them, like Lende, had never run for office before but now felt called to serve. Lende’s entire campaign for assemblywoman in Haines, Alaska (pop. 2500) cost less than 1000 dollars. The competition was actually stiff—there were nine candidates for three open seats—but Heather prevailed. This is the true story one woman’s term on the Haines Borough Assembly. Everyone knows everyone in Haines and as the longtime obituary writer for the local newspaper Heather is deeply ensconced in her community. Still, it is a year of downs (Lende was a target of a vicious whisper campaign and recall) and ups (she found her voice and survived the recall). We follow her as she keeps true to her principles and votes against hiring her daughter’s good friend as the town manager, and takes a stance that alienates her husband’s customers at the hardware store they own. And we are there, too, when she learns to compromise to get things done. Some votes—like funding a new outhouse without state management and allocating money on bear proof trash cans—seem pure Alaska; other issues, like the seizure of 100,000 marijuana plants, tie into national issues such as the legalization of marijuana. Whatever the agenda item, the background is the natural beauty and isolation of Alaska, the quirky and amusing cast of Haines characters, including Lende’s large and loving family, and her keen appreciation of what all of us owe one another in this gorgeous crazy world. Of Bears and Ballots is illuminating, relevant, and highly entertaining.

    In The Tiger in the Grass, Doerr explores the magical power of memory as it harvests experience, bringing us a wealth of unforgettable characters--all captured in the web of life with all the richness and beauty that distinguishes Doerr's writing.

    Green Grass, Running Water is widely considered a contemporary Canadian classic.In The Back of the Turtle, Gabriel returns to Smoke River, the reserve where his mother grew up and to which she returned with Gabriel’s sister. The reserve is deserted after an environmental disaster killed the population, including Gabriel’s family, and the wildlife. Gabriel, a brilliant scientist working for DowSanto, created GreenSweep, and indirectly led to the crisis. Now he has come to see the damage and to kill himself in the sea. But as he prepares to let the water take him, he sees a young girl in the waves. Plunging in, he saves her, and soon is saving others. Who are these people with their long black hair and almond eyes who have fallen from the sky?Filled with brilliant characters, trademark wit, wordplay and a thorough knowledge of native myth and story-telling, this novel is a masterpiece by one of our most important writers.

    Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.

    . . No voice in contemporary poetry is quite as original, cosmopolitan, witty, and tragic.” —Susan Stewart, citation for the Academy of American Poets FellowshipUrban tumbleweed, some people call it,discarded plastic bag we see in every cityblown down the street with vagrant wind.            —from Urban TumbleweedUrban Tumbleweed is the poet Harryette Mullen’s exploration of spaces where the city and the natural world collide. Written out of a daily practice of walking, Mullen’s stanzas adapt the traditional Japanese tanka, a poetic form suited for recording fleeting impressions, describing environmental transitions, and contemplating the human being’s place in the natural world. But, as she writes in her preface, “What is natural about being human? What to make of a city dweller taking a ‘nature walk’ in a public park while listening to a podcast with ear-bud headphones?”

    history. She earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Indians could become citizens in their own country.By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Indian woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of rolling countryside with few roads. Her patients often were desperately poor and desperately sick—tuberculosis, small pox, measles, influenza—families scattered miles apart, whose last hope was a young woman who spoke their language and knew their customs.This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial and gender prejudice, then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people—physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually. A Warrior of the People is the moving biography of Susan La Flesche’s inspirational life, and it will finally shine a light on her numerous accomplishments.The author will donate all royalties from this book to a college scholarship fund he has established for Native American high school graduates.

    Fish and Wildlife Service. In August 1992, she accepted an assignment that forever changed--and endangered--her life. She posed as a big-game hunter in Alaska in order to infiltrate an international ring of poachers out to kill the biggest and best of that state's wildlife.A Hunt for Justice recounts her dramatic story--a story she was not legally permitted to write about until her retirement in 2004.

    Lynn Harris, author of Not a Day Goes ByIn the bestselling tradition of The Official Preppy Handbook, here is a must-have manual for the BAP and those who love her.Black American Princess: 1 : a pampered female of African American descent, born to an upper-middle or upper-class family 2 : an African American female whose life experiences give her a sense of royalty and entitlement 3 : BAP (acronym) : colloquial expression 4 : an African American female accustomed to the best and nothing less.Drawn from hours of interviews, archival research, and frequent visits to Prada, The Black American Princess Handbook offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at this exclusive lifestyle. Your total guide to BAP speak, BAP style, and BAP history, this one-of-a-kind book explains everything you ever wanted know about living the BAP life–from breaking in a shop-a-phobic dad to planning a magical BAP debutante ball.In addition, you'll learn why a true BAP cleans her house before the housekeeper arrives, what to do if your Baby BAP wants to play sports, and whether it's OK for a relative to sing "I Believe I Can Fly" at a BAP wedding. Also featuring spot-the-BAP checklists, suggestions for top BAP colleges, a Who's Who of famous BAPs, a glossary (including essential French phrases), actual diary entries and e-mails from BAPS of all ages, and crucial chapters such as "It's High Noon-Do You Know Where Your Groove Is?"The Black American Princess Handbook is destined to become a coveted treasure for BAPs worldwide. And, published just in time for graduation, it's sure to be at the top of every BAP's shopping list.

    It tells of Violet Farr and her loveless marriage, her wild, unfathomable son and his illegitimate son, all of them bound together in a repeating pattern of exile and homecoming, rejection and, finally, acknowledgement and love. As Elizabeth Buchan wrote in the London Times, "Jennifer Lash is a Lawrentian in so far as she mines her material for the blood and thunder roaring between spouses, and between parents and children."

    In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In A Song from Afar, a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In Secret, the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson--writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience--Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.