Stories of miracles, visions of hell, jokes, fables, and legends, these tales reflect the Japanese worldview during a classic period in Japanese civilization. Masterfully edited and translated by the acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji, these stories ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished though perennially fascinating culture.

    A collection of Bengali folk tales with 32 color illustrations by Warwick Goble.

    This sampler comprises the very best of those tales and legends. Gathered within, readers will find an extravagance of beautiful princesses and stout stable boys, sour-faced witches and kings with hearts of gold. Each tale is a masterpiece of storytelling, from the hilarious 'Three Sillies' to the delightfully macabre 'Sammle's Ghost'.

    Yep's telling is vigorous, often poetic, imbued with earthy humor and realism touched with fatalism. A handsomely designed collection." —K. Notable Children's Books of 1989 (ALA)The USA Through Children's Books 1990 (ALA)1989 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction1990 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)1989 Children's Editors' Choices (BL)Notable 1989 Children's Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)Children's Books of 1989 (Library of Congress)1989 Children's Books (NY Public Library)"The Best Books" 1989 (Parents Magazine)

    He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide. In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political. This is the story of his life, a life lived large.

    We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

    -- Alan Dundes. Propp's work is seminal...[and], now that it is available in a new edition, should be even more valuable to folklorists who are directing their attention to the form of the folktale, especially to those structural characteristics which are common to many entries coming from even different cultures. -- Choice

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    A Storytelling World magazine award winnerIn turns funny, poignant, and wise, these nine lively stories are peopled with an array of unusual characters, including a young woman raised as a boy who is then faced with the complicated business of marriage; a carp-fish spirit who changes herself into a young woman for love's sake; a Miracle Doctor who can cure all illnesses except one; and a shopkeeper who learns the hard way the true meaning of justice.

    Here in one attractive paperbound volume - with enlarged print - are Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltzkin, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Puss in Boots, Trusty John, Jack and the Giantkiller, Goldilocks, and many other favorites that have become an indispensable part of our culture heritage.All in all, this collection contains 37 stories, all arranged in the clear, lively prose for which Lang was famous. Not only are Lang's generally conceded to be the best English versions of standard stories, his collections are the richest and widest in range. His position as one of England's foremost folklorists as well as his first-rate literary abilities makes his collection invaluable in the English language.

    Ranging from the ribald to the romantic, from the rustic to the mythical, these are lively translations of 150 tales drawn from unique sources including the Swedish National Folklore Archives and numerous private collections, while the humorous and dramatic illustrations are gathered from classic volumes of Swedish folktales. Lone Thygesen Blecher's engaging introduction details the purpose and background of folktales and legends as well as the history of their collection. This distinctive selection presents the storytelling artistry of Sweden's lush folkloric tradition.

    Collected from people of all walks of life, they include parables and allegories about life, luck, and wisdom; tales of magic and wonder; stories about rebbes and their disciples; and tales whose only purpose is to entertain. Long after the culture that produced them has disappeared, these enchanting Yiddish folktales continue to work their magic today.Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

    This magnificent book is a collection of stories, anecdotes, and legends from all six of the regions where celtic ways have persisted in the modern world.

    Like other immigrant groups before them, they showed up with little money but with an intense work ethic and an unshakeable belief in the promise of the United States. Many of them lived in a world outside the law, working in a shadow economy overseen by the ruthless gangs that ruled the narrow streets of New York’s Chinatown.The figure who came to dominate this Chinese underworld was a middle-aged grandmother known as Sister Ping. Her path to the American dream began with an unusual business run out of a tiny noodle store on Hester Street. From her perch above the shop, Sister Ping ran a full-service underground bank for illegal Chinese immigrants. But her real business-a business that earned an estimated $40 million-was smuggling people. As a “snakehead,” she built a complex—and often vicious—global conglomerate, relying heavily on familial ties, and employing one of Chinatown's most violent gangs to protect her power and profits. Like an underworld CEO, Sister Ping created an intricate smuggling network that stretched from Fujian Province to Hong Kong to Burma to Thailand to Kenya to Guatemala to Mexico. Her ingenuity and drive were awe-inspiring both to the Chinatown community—where she was revered as a homegrown Don Corleone—and to the law enforcement officials who could never quite catch her. Indeed, Sister Ping’s empire only came to light in 1993 when the Golden Venture, a ship loaded with 300 undocumented immigrants, ran aground off a Queens beach. It took New York’s fabled “Jade Squad” and the FBI nearly ten years to untangle the criminal network and home in on its unusual mastermind.THE SNAKEHEAD is a panoramic tale of international intrigue and a dramatic portrait of the underground economy in which America’s twelve million illegal immigrants live. Based on hundreds of interviews, Patrick Radden Keefe’s sweeping narrative tells the story not only of Sister Ping, but of the gangland gunslingers who worked for her, the immigration and law enforcement officials who pursued her, and the generation of penniless immigrants who risked death and braved a 17,000 mile odyssey so that they could realize their own version of the American dream. The Snakehead offers an intimate tour of life on the mean streets of Chinatown, a vivid blueprint of organized crime in an age of globalization and a masterful exploration of the ways in which illegal immigration affects us all.www.doubleday.com

    But using her wit and guile, she begins a sequence of stories that will last 1001 nights: stories of 'ifrits and money-changers, prices and slave girls, fishermen and queens, and magical gardens of paradise. This volume also includes the well-known tale of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'.Along with this landmark new translation, Robert Irwin's introduction discusses the many cultures The Arabian Nights has drawn on and the elaborate structure of the story-within-a-story that defines the collection, as well as the importance to the Nights of locked doors, sex, and the recurring themes of money, merchants and debts. This edition also contains suggestions for further reading, a glossary, maps and a chronology.