books tagged “adult”

This classic is Franklin's last word on his greatest literary creation--his own invented persona, the original incarnation of the American success story. [via]

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Charles Dickenss first historical novelset during the anti-Catholic riots of 1780is an unparalleled portrayal of the terror of a rampaging mob, seen through the eyes of the individuals swept up in the chaos.

Those individuals include Emma, a Catholic, and Edward, a Protestant, whose forbidden love weaves through the heart of the story; and the simpleminded Barnaby, one of the riot leaders, whose fate is tied to a mysterious murder and whose beloved pet raven, Grip, embodies the mystical power of innocence. The story encompasses both the rarified aristocratic world and the volatile streets and nightmarish underbelly of London, which Dickens characteristically portrays in vivid, pulsating detail. But the real focus of the book is on the riots themselves, depicted with an extraordinary energy and redolent of the dangers, the mindlessness, and the possibilitiesboth beneficial and brutalof the mob.

One of the lesser-known novels, Barnaby Rudge is nonetheless among the most brilliantand most terrifyingin Dickenss oeuvre. [via]

The name "Beowulf" lingers in our collective memory, although today fewer people have heard the tale of the Germanic hero's fight with Grendel, the dreadful Monster of the Mere, as recounted in this Anglo-Saxon epic.

This edition of Beowulf makes the poem more accessible than ever before. Ruth Lehmann's imitative translation is the only one available that preserves both the story line of the poem and the alliterative versification of the Anglo-Saxon original. The characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon poetry-- alliterative verse with first-syllable stress, flexible word order, and inflectional endings--have largely disappeared in Modern English, creating special problems for the translator. Indeed, many other translations of Beowulf currently available are either in prose or in some modern poetic form. Dr. Lehmann's translation alone conveys the "feel" of the original, its rhythm and sound, the powerful directness of the Germanic vocabulary.

In her introduction, Dr. Lehmann gives a succinct summary of the poem's plot, touching on the important themes of obligation and loyalty, of family feuds, unforgivable crimes, the necessity of revenge, and the internal and external struggles of the Scandinavian tribes. She also describes the translation process in some detail, stating the guiding principles she used and the inevitable compromises that were sometimes necessary.

Betty Crocker's Cookbook is 50! In celebration, an updated and expanded ninth edition of this American classic reminds us once again of the value of good old-fashioned comfort food. The original Big Red Cookbook was immediately popular with a postwar audience seeking basic cooking advice and simple recipes that took advantage of several then-new convenience products. The ninth edition remains true to its roots, presenting exemplary instruction, savory mainstream dishes (that still make use of convenience foods and the products of parent company General Mills), and, most notably, standout chapters on baking and dessert specialties. New to this edition, which offers nearly 1,000 recipes, are grilling and vegetarian chapters; up-to-date nutrition information; additional color photos; and contemporary formulas for the likes of Brie with Caramelized Onions, Asiago Bread, and Tandoori Chicken with Chutney.

Instruction was and is the book's strongest suit, and any cook--novice to professional--will benefit from its many how-to features. These include step-by-step directions with photos, tips for kitchen timesaving, and troubleshooting advice. The book also includes several comprehensive glossaries (those on cooking terms and ingredients are particularly good). Standouts among the vast recipe collection, more than 300 of which are designated fast or low fat, include old favorites such as Macaroni and Cheese, Old-Fashioned Baked Beans, and Lemon Chiffon Cake. A few newer ones, such as Sun-Dried Tomato and Olive Bread, also qualify. Published, as ever, in a loose-leaf binder, the book celebrates American culinary know-how, a broad-based tradition of good home cooking, exemplary baking, and the conviction that food and commerce can meld to help people cook easier and eat better. Happy birthday indeed! --Arthur Boehm [via]

The classic study of women leaders in war. [via]

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. [via]

The chapters are organized by cookie-making techniques, so that if you feel like using your cookie press, you can quickly find all the cookie-press recipes in one place. And that goes for cookies you bake in a pan and then cut into squares or bars, cookies you cut from rolled-out dough, cookies you drop from a spoon, cookies you mold and shape with your hands, refrigerator cookies and fried cookies. [via]

The Paradise, which Dante called the sublime canticle, is perhaps the most ambitious book of The Divine Comedy. In this climactic segment, Dante's pilgrim reaches Paradise and encounters the Divine Will. The poet's mystical interpretation of the religious life is a complex and exquisite conclusion to his magnificent trilogy. Mark Musa's powerful and sensitive translation preserves the intricacy of the work while rendering it in clear, rhythmic English. His extensive notes and introductions to each canto make accessible to all readers the diverse and often abstruse ingredients of Dante's unparalleled vision of the Absolute: elements of Ptolemaic astronomy, medieval astrology and science, theological dogma, and the poet's own personal experiences.

Mark Musa again brings his poetic sensitivity and his skill as a translator to the difficult task of making Dante's masterpiece live for English-speaking readers. His rendering of the Purgatory is distinguished by the same flexible iambic verse, the same dignified understatement, and the same elegant clarity that characterizes Dante's own lofty and complex style. Musa's extensive annotation as well as his prose introduction to each of the cantos reveal the hand of the careful scholar and craftsman.

Now expanded and updated: The book in which one of America's most brilliant and respected doctors gives us his famous program for improving and maintaining healthalready the program of choice for hundreds of thousands.

Eight Weeks to Optimum Health focuses all of Andrew Weil's expertise in both conventional and alternative medicine on a practical week-by-week, step-by-step plan, covering diet, exercise, lifestyle, stress, and environmentall of the aspects of daily living that affect health and well-being. And he shows how his program can be tailored to the specific needs of pregnant women, senior citizens, overweight people, and those at risk for cancer, among others.

Dr. Weil has added the most up-to-date findings on such vital subjects as cholesterol, antioxidants, trans fats, toxic residues in the food supply, soy products, and vitamins and supplements, together with a greatly enhanced source list for information and supplies.

Preventive in the broadest sense, straightforward, and encouraging, Eight Weeks to Optimum Health has proved to be, and in this updated version will continue to be, an essential book. [via]

Perhaps some apology ought to be given to English scholars, that is, those who do not know German, (to those, at least, who do not know what sort of a thing Faust is in the original,) for offering another translation to the public, of a poem which has been already translated, not only in a literal prose form, but also, twenty or thirty times, in metre, and sometimes with great spirit, beauty, and power.
The author of the present version, then, has no knowledge that a rendering of this wonderful poem into the exact and ever-changing metre of the original has, until now, been so much as attempted. To name only one defect, the very best versions which he has seen neglect to follow the exquisite artist in the evidently planned and orderly intermixing of male and female rhymes, i.e. rhymes which fall on the last syllable and those which fall on the last but one. Now, every careful student of the versification of Faust must feel and see that Goethe did not intersperse the one kind of rhyme with the other, at random, as those translators do; who, also, give the female rhyme (on which the vivacity of dialogue and description often so much depends,) in so small a proportion.
[via]

In his six-volume history of World War II, Winston Churchill deemed the year 1942 as "the hinge of fate," the year in which the German and Japanese armies began to be turned back. John Lukacs suggests that the last days of May 1940 were more important still in turning the tide of war in democracy's favor, for it was in those few days that Churchill convinced his cabinet that Britain should fight on, alone, if need be, against Adolf Hitler's regime. Even as a quarter of a million British troops were being evacuated from Dunkirk, Churchill struggled to reverse the British government's policy of appeasement. In this, he faced opposition from several quarters, including prominent figures within his own Conservative Party. Writing with evident admiration for Churchill--who, he points out, was not well liked, and who had been prime minister for only two weeks when war broke out--Lukacs gives his readers a fly-on-the-wall view of the heated conferences between such well-known participants as Harold Nicholson, Lord Halifax, Neville Chamberlain, and Alexander Cadogan.

"Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now," Lukacs writes in the closing pages of his book. "The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler." By convincing his government that his view was correct, Churchill afforded Western civilization a slim chance at survival--no small achievement, and one well worth honoring with this fine study. --Gregory McNamee [via]

The epic story of the Foundation is one of the great classics of science fiction by the Grand Master of the genre. Isaac Asimov's legendary saga, winner of the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Novel Series, has enthralled generations of readers - and continues to amaze. All records of Earth have been removed systematically from the libraries of Foundation worlds. Now Councilman Golan Trevize and Professor Janov Pelorat traverse the galaxy in search of humanity's ancestral planet. On worlds beyond the Foundation's influence, superstition and taboo shroud the subject of their quest. To name Earth is to utter an obscenity. Fortunately, the space travellers find allies - and Pelorat finds a lover named Bliss - among the telepaths of the planet Gaia. As they near their destination, Bliss picks up thought waves of intelligent beings. What she cannot tell is whether or not those beings are human. [via]

A frank and vivid modern version of one of the most diverting of all classics. Lindsays translation captures the genuine flavor, sharp dialogue, outrageous humor, racy delight and subtle style of Apuleius sophisticated masterpiece.

Immanuel Kant's "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals" is one of the most important texts in the history of ethics. In it Kant searches for the supreme principle of morality and argues for a conception of the moral life that has made this work a continuing source of controversy and an object of reinterpretation for over two centuries. This new edition of Kant's work provides a translation that seeks to be faithful to the German original and is fully annotated. There are also four essays by well-known scholars that discuss Kant's views and the philosophical issues raised by his work. J.B. Schneewind defends the continuing interest in Kantian ethics by examining its historical relation both to the ethical thought that preceded it and to its influence on the ethical theories that came after it; Marcia Baron sheds light on Kant's famous views about moral motivation; and Shelly Kagan and Allen W. Wood advocate contrasting interpretations of Kantian ethics and its practical implications. [via]

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.The woman who brought us When Harry Met Sally . . . , Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Bewitched, and the author of best sellers Heartburn, Scribble Scribble, and Crazy Salad, discusses everything-from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can't stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there's no quick fix for that.Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent.  She recounts her anything-but-glamorous days as a White House intern during the JFK years ("I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at") and shares how she fell in and out of love with Bill Clinton-from a distance, of course.  But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.Utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I Feel Bad About My Neck is a book of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat. [via]

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair's extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform. [via]

Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

This work is interesting enough for its history. Completed in 1940, Long Day's Journey Into Night is an autobiographical play Eugene O'Neill wrote that--because of the highly personal writing about his family--was not to be released until 25 years after his death, which occurred in 1953. But since O'Neill's immediate family had died in the early 1920s, his wife allowed publication of the play in 1956. Besides the history alone, the play is fascinating in its own right. It tells of the "Tyrones"--a fictional name for what is clearly the O'Neills. Theirs is not a happy tale: The youngest son (Edmond) is sent to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis; he despises his father for sending him; his mother is wrecked by narcotics; and his older brother by drink. In real-life these factors conspired to turn O'Neill into who he was--a tormented individual and a brilliant playwright. [via]

"... [captures] the relentless urgency of Lucretius didacticism, his passionate conviction and proselytizing fervour. The Classical Review

One of Shakespeare's greatest, but also bloodiest tragedies, was written around 1605/06. Many have seen the story of Macbeth's murder and usurpation of the legitimate Scottish King Duncan as having obvious connection to contemporary issues regarding King James I (James VI of Scotland), and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. King James was particularly fascinated with witchcraft, so the appearance of the witches chanting "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" at the opening of the play seemed particularly topical, as was Macbeth's betrayal of Banquo, from whom James claimed direct descent.

However, the play is clearly far more than a piece of royal entertainment. It is also a fast-moving and dramatically satisfying piece of theatre. Macbeth's existential struggle between loyalty to his King and his "Vaulting ambition" is fascinating to watch, as his is struggle with Lady Macbeth, and her own terrifying refusal of her maternal role. The play shows an intensification of Shakespeare's interest in mothers and their effect upon ruling masculinity, and also contains some of the most memorable speeches in the entire canon, including Macbeth's reflections that ultimately life "is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing". --Jerry Brotton [via]

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]

5 Books in Very Good Condition. All Paperbacks. [via]

One of the most powerful dramas ever written for the stage, Othello is a story of revenge, illusion, passion, mistrust, jealousy, and murder. If in Iago Shakespeare created the most compelling villain in Western literature, in Othello and Desdemona he gave us our most tragic and unforgettable lovers. [via]

"The Metamorphoses of Ovid offers to the modern world such a key to the literary and religious culture of the ancients that it becomes an important event when at last a good poet comes up with a translation into English verse." -John Crowe Ransom"... a charming and expert English version, which is right in tone for the Metamorphoses." -Francis Fergusson"This new Ovid, fresh and faithful, is right for our time and should help to restore a great reputation." -Mark Van DorenThe first and still the best modern verse translation of the Metamorphoses, Humphries' version of Ovid's masterpiece captures its wit, merriment, and sophistication.Everyone will enjoy this first modern translation by an American poet of Ovid's great work, the major treasury of classical mythology, which has perennially stimulated the minds of men. In this lively rendering there are no stock props of the pastoral and no literary landscaping, but real food on the table and sometimes real blood on the ground.Not only is Ovid's Metamorphoses a collection of all the myths of the time of the Roman poet as he knew them, but the book presents at the same time a series of love poems-about the loves of men, women, and the gods. There are also poems of hate, to give the proper shading to the narrative. And pervading all is the writer's love for this earth, its people, its phenomena.Using ten-beat, unrhymed lines in his translation, Rolfe Humphries shows a definite kinship for Ovid's swift and colloquial language and Humphries' whole poetic manner is in tune with the wit and sophistication of the Roman poet. [via]

The first English translation of one of the supreme masterpieces of Latin literature, "Golding's Metamorphoses" (1567) decisively influenced Shakespeare, Spenser and the character of English Renaissance writing. Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends in which men and women are transformed, often by love - into flowers, trees, stones and stars. This robustly vernacular version adds a Christian moral framework, clarifies obscurities and gives an English flavour to the rustic settings, thus making readily available to later writers a treasure-trove of comic, eerie and erotic tales. [via]

A classic of the western tradition, Machiavelli's "The Prince" has influenced political and philosophical thought since its publication four centuries ago. Political power, Machiavelli taught, has no limits. It leaves no room for the sacred, and it subordinates right and wrong to success. In this new edition of Machiavelli's book, Angelo Codevilla provides a translation faithful to the original and sensitive to the author's use of verbal imprecision, including puns, double meanings, and the subjunctive mood. The volume includes an introduction by Codevilla that places Machiavelli in the context of his own times, demonstrates his relevance to the history of political thought, and inquiries into the place of Machiavelli's ideas in modern debates. This edition also contains three essays that explore some of the most important ways "The Prince" clashes with the other main branch of western civilization - the Socratic and Judeo-Christian traditions: "Machiavelli's realism" by Carnes Lord, "Machiavelli and modernity" by W.B. Allen, and "Machiavelli and America" by Hadley Arkes. [via]

Stephen Crane's classic work [via]

Long after his humiliating defeat at the hands of Earthman Elijah Baley, Keldon Amadiro embarked on a plan to destroy planet Earth. But even after his death, Baley's vision continued to guide his robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, who had the wisdom of a great man behind him and an indestructable will to win.... [via]

Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writers most accomplished work.

Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a masters skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw [via]

An illustrated guide to watching the stars. [via]

SNOBS is the story of Edith Lavery, who earns a living answering the telephone in a Chelsea-based estate agents. She is the attractive only child of a comfortably-off accountant. When she attends Royal Ascot as a guest of friends, she meets bachelor Charles Broughton, who as Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, is a gossip-column favourite. He proposes, she accepts - and here is the crux of the story: is she really in love with Charles or with his title and all that goes with it? The story is narrated by a journeyman character actor who comfortably moves among the upper and middle classes, while observing their foibles. Superbly observed, the story includes a fabulous character in Charles's mother, Lady Uckfield, known as 'Googie', who wants for her son the daughter of a peer from the old, familiar world she knows and trusts. She perceives Edith to be a young woman on the make, and is vindicated when Edith, now Countess Broughton, falls for a blonde good-looking actor. Fellowes resolves his story with twists and turns aplenty. This is a tale worthy of a contemporary Jane Austen with a dash of Evelyn Waugh. [via]

From one of the most admired essayists and novelists at work today: a new collection of essayshis first since Tests of Time, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

These twenty-five essays speak to the nature and value of writing and to the books that result from a deep commitment to the word. Here is Gass on Rilke and Gertrude Stein; on friends such as Stanley Elkin, Robert Coover, and William Gaddis; and on a company of healthy dissidents, among them Rabelais, Elias Canetti, John Hawkes, and Gabriel García Márquez.

In the title essay, Gass offers an annotated list of the fifty books that have most influenced his thinking and his work and writes about his first reaction to reading each. Among the books: Ludwig Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (A lightning bolt, Gass writes. Philosophy was not dead after all. Philosophical ambitions were not extinguished. Philosophical beauty had not fled prose.) . . . Ben Jonsons The Alchemist (A man after my own heart. He is capable of the simplest lyrical stroke, as bold and direct as a line by Matisse, but he can be complex in a manner that could cast Nabokov in the shade . . . Shakespeare may have been smarter, but he did not know as much.) . . . Gustave Flauberts letters (Here I learnedand learnedand learned.) And after reading Malorys Le Morte dArthur, Gass writes I began to eat books like an alien worm.

In the concluding essay, Evil, Gass enlarges upon the themes of artistic quality and cultural values that are central to the books he has considered, many of which seek to reveal the worst in people while admiring what they do best.
As Gass writes, The true alchemists do not change lead into gold, they change the world into words.

A Temple of Texts is Gass at his most alchemical. [via]

From the two-time Booker Prizewinning author and recipient of the Commonwealth Prize comes this new novel about obsession, deception, and redemption, at once an engrossing psychological suspense story and a work of highly charged, fiendishly funny literary fiction.

Michaela.k.a. ButcherBoone is an exreally famous painter: opinionated, furious, brilliant, and now reduced to living in the remote country house of his biggest collector and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, a damaged man of imposing physicality and childlike emotional volatility. Alone together theyve forged a delicate and shifting equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives on three-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, shes also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebovitz, one of Butchers earliest influences. Shes sweet to Hugh and falls in love with Butcher, and they reciprocate in kind. And she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the makingor the ruinof them all.

Told through the alternating points of view of the brothersButchers urbane, intelligent, caustic observations contrasting with Hughs bizarre, frequently poetic, utterly unique voiceTheft reminds us once again of Peter Careys remarkable gift for creating indelible, fascinating characters and a narrative as gripping as it is deliriously surprising. [via]

No one but Mitch Albom could have read Tuesdays with Morrie so effectively. As the author of this inspirational true story, Albom uses verbal inflection in exactly the right places to evoke humor, empathy, and emotion. It's an honest reading, and the underlying timbre of private memory pushes it past mere recitation to pure storytelling.

The titular Morrie was Morrie Schwartz, Albom's university professor 20 years before the events being narrated. An accidental viewing of an interview with Morrie on Nightline led Albom to become reunited with his old teacher, friend, and "coach" at a time when Albom, a successful sportswriter, was struggling to define dissatisfactions with his own life and career. Morrie, on the other hand, after a rich life filled with friends, family, teaching, and music, was dying from Lou Gehrig's disease, a crippling illness that diminished his activities daily. Albom was one of hundreds of former students and acquaintances who traveled great distances to visit Morrie in the final months of his life.

The 14 Tuesday visits that followed their reunion took Albom--and will take listeners with him--on a journey of reawakening to life's best rewards. The story is told in a journalistic style that never crosses into pathos. That a professional writer can write well is not surprising, but Albom also reads well, with clear enunciation and a talent for mimicry. Another reader might have interpreted the professor's aphorisms as droll humor or wrung a wrong note at an inappropriate moment, making the story a maudlin tearjerker; instead it is read for what it is, a tribute to a remarkable teacher. (Running time: four hours, three cassettes) --Brenda Pittsley [via]

While on a trip to East London in 1883, Jane Addams witnessed a distressing scene late one night: masses of poor people were bidding on rotten vegetables that were unsalable anywhere else.

Their pale faces were dominated by that most unlovely of human expressions, the cunning and shrewdness of the bargain-hunter who starves if he cannot make a successful trade, and yet the final impression was not of ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, pathetic, nerveless, and workworn, showing white in the uncertain light of the street, and clutching forward for food which was already unfit to eat.

This scene haunted Addams for the next two years as she traveled through Europe, and she hoped to find a way to ease such suffering. Five years later, she visited Toynbee Hall, a London settlement house, and resolved to replicate the experiment in the U.S. On September 18, 1889, Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Starr moved into the second floor of a rundown mansion in Chicago's West Side. From the outset, they imagined Hull-House as a "center for a higher civic and social life" in the industrial districts of the city. Addams, Starr, and several like-minded individuals lived and worked among the poor, establishing (among other things) art classes, discussion groups, cooperatives, a kindergarten, a coffee house, a lending library, and a gymnasium. In a time when many well-to-do Americans were beginning to feel threatened by immigrants, Hull-House embraced them, showed them the true meaning of democracy, and served as a center for philanthropic efforts throughout Chicago.

Hull-House also provided an outlet for the energies of the first generation of female college graduates, who were educated for work yet prevented from doing it. In some respects, however, Addams's impressive work, often hailed by historians as "revolutionary," was nothing of the sort. She embraced the sexual stereotypes of her day, and, though she was clearly an independent woman, soothed public fears by acting primarily in the traditional roles of nurturer and caregiver. Hull-House was a rousing success, and it inspired others to follow in Addams's footsteps.

Though Twenty Years at Hull-House is meant to be an autobiography, it is Hull-House itself that stands in the spotlight. Addams devotes the first third of the book to her upbringing and influences, but the remainder focuses on the organization she built--and the benefits accruing to those who work with the poor as well as to the poor themselves. At times Addams's prose is difficult to follow, but her ideals and her actions are truly inspiring. A classic work of history--and a model for today's would-be philanthropists. --Sunny Delaney [via]

This is the authoritative edition of an American literaru classic: Henry David Thoreau's Walden, an elegantly written record of his experiment in simple living. With this edition,  Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S. Cramer has meticulously corrected errors and omissions from previous editions of Walden and here provides illuminating notes on the biographical, historical, and geographical contexts of the great nineteenth-century writer and thinker's life.Cramer's newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreau's draft manuscripts, his own markings on the page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. In the editor's notes to the volume, Cramer quotes from sources Thoreau actually read, showing how he used, interpreted, and altered these sources. Cramer also glosses Walden with references to Thoreau's essays, journals, and correspondence. With the wealth of material in this edition, readers will find an unprecedented opportunity to immerse themselves in the unique and fascinating world of Thoreau.Anyone who has read and loved Walden will want to own and treasure this gift edition. Those wishing to read Walden for the first time will not find a better guide than Jeffrey S. Cramer. [via]

"... methodologically innovative... precise and perceptive and conscious... " Text and Performance Quarterly

"Woman, Native, Other is located at the juncture of a number of different fields and disciplines, and it genuinely succeeds in pushing the boundaries of these disciplines further. It is one of the very few theoretical attempts to grapple with the writings of women of color." Chandra Talpade Mohanty

"The idea of Trinh T. Minh-ha is as powerful as her films... formidable... " Village Voice

"... its very forms invite the reader to participate in the effort to understand how language structures lived possibilities." Artpaper

"Highly recommended for anyone struggling to understand voices and experiences of those we label other." Religious Studies Review

This is a critical edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper", the story of the victimization of a woman whose neurasthenic condition is completely misdiagnosed and mistreated, leaving her to face insanity alone. It is accompanied by contemporary reviews and letters. [via]