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books tagged “death”
books tagged “death”
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The Acid Houseby Irvine WelshISBN 0393312801 (0-393-31280-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Acid House'Book summary:Irvine Welsh's scintillating, disturbing, and altogether outrageous collection of storiesthe basis for the 1998 cult movie directed by Paul McGuigan.
He is called "the Scottish Celine of the 1990s" (Guardian) and "a mad, postmodern Roald Dahl" (Weekend Scotsman). Using a range of approaches from bitter realism to demented fantasy, Irvine Welsh is able to evoke the essential humanity, well hidden as it is, of his generally depraved, lazy, manipulative, and vicious characters. He specializes particularly in cosmic reversalsGod turn a hapless footballer into a fly; an acid head and a newborn infant exchange consciousnesses with sardonically unexpected resultsalways displaying a corrosive wit and a telling accuracy of language and detail. Irvine Welsh is one hilariously dangerous writer who always creates a sensation.
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The Annotated Hunting of the Snark: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Great Nonsense Epic The Hunting of the Snarkby Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner, Henry Holiday, Adam GopnikISBN 0393062422 (0-393-06242-2)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Arabian Nightsby Husain Haddawy, Muhsin MahdiISBN 0393313670 (0-393-31367-0)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arabian Nights'Book summary:Readers for more than three centuries have delighted in The Arabian Nights--a world wherein magic is woven into the fabric of everyday life; a touching, exhilarating mixture of flamboyance, pathos, beauty, and humor. This first serious English translation fully exploits the Middle-Eastern storyteller's art and the variety of levels at which the stories move. [via]
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As We Are Nowby May SartonISBN 0393309576 (0-393-30957-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'As We Are Now'Book summary:"I am not mad, only old. . . . I am in a concentration camp for the old."
So begins May Sarton's short, swift blow of a novel, about the powerlessness of the old and the rage it can bring. As We Are Now tells the story of Caroline Spencer, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher, mentally strong but physically frail, who has been moved by relatives into a "home." Subjected to subtle humiliations and petty cruelties, sustained for too short a time by the love of another person, she fights back with all she has, and in a powerful climax wins a terrible victory. [via] -
The Awakening and Selected Storiesby Kate ChopinISBN 0394326679 (0-394-32667-9)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Awakening and Selected Stories'Book summary:The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers and reviewers with its treatment of sex and suicide. In a departure from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner, whom she meets on vacation. The power of sensuality, the delusion of ecstatic love, and the solitude that accompanies the trappings of middle- and upper-class convention are themes of this now-classic novel.
The book was influenced by French writers ranging from Flaubert to Maupassant, and can be seen as a precursor of the impressionistic, mood-driven novels of Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes. Variously called "vulgar," "unhealthily introspective," and "morbid," the book was neglected for several decades, not least because it was written by a "regional" woman writer. This edition also includes selected stories from Kate Chopin's Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and an introduction and notes by Nina Baym. [via]More editions of The Awakening and Selected Stories:
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The Body Silentby Robert F. MurphyISBN 0393320421 (0-393-32042-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Body Silent'Book summary:"The most powerful book of its kind I've ever read.... Extraordinary powers of observation, generalization, and depth."Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat
Winner of the Columbia University Lionel Trilling Award. Robert Murphy was in the prime of his career as an anthropologist when he felt the first symptom of a malady that would ultimately take him on an odyssey stranger than any field trip to the Amazon: a tumor of the spinal cord that progressed slowly and irreversibly into quadriplegia. In this gripping account, Murphy explores society's fears, myths, and misunderstandings about disability, and the damage they inflict. He reports how paralysislike all disabilitiesassaults people's identity, social standing, and ties with others, while at the same time making the love of life burn even more fiercely. [via]More editions of The Body Silent:
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Caneby Jean ToomerISBN 0393956008 (0-393-95600-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cane'Book summary:Originally published in 1923, Cane is a literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. The growing interest in African-American literature that began in the 1960's led to the rediscovery of earlier African-American writers, one of whom is Jean Toomer, author of Cane. It is an innovative literary workpart drama, part poetry, part fiction.
"Backgrounds" contains generous excerpts from Jean Toomer's correspondence with fellow writers Sherwood Anderson, Waldo Frank, and Allen Tate, and with his publisher, Horace Liveright.
Darwin T. Turner's "Introduction" (to the 1975 Liveright edition of Cane), reprinted here, presents the historical and literary backgrounds of the work, as well as additional biographical information on Toomer.
"Criticism", both contemporary and recent, on Cane and Toomer is wide-ranging and includes essays by W. E. B. Du Bois, Gorham B. Munson, Robert Bone, Patricia Watkins, Lucinda H. MacKethan, Nellie Y. McKay, and Darwin T. Turner. [via]More editions of Cane:
The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticismby Maria M. TatarISBN 0393972771 (0-393-97277-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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A Clockwork Orangeby Anthony BurgessISBN 0393312836 (0-393-31283-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Clockwork Orange'Book summary:A famous fiction about a deranged personality. [via]
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Coming into Eightyby May SartonISBN 0393316238 (0-393-31623-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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The Complete Grimm's Fairy Talesby Wilhelm Grimm, Brothers Grimm, James Stern, Alfred William Hunt, Josef ScharlISBN 0394494156 (0-394-49415-6)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales'Book summary:210 traditional tales with accompanying explanatory and historical material. [via]
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A Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy TooleISBN 0394178009 (0-394-17800-9)
Softcover, Grove Press
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Confederacy of Dunces'Book summary:A Confederacy of Dunces... Winner of the Pulitzer Prize... John Kennedy Toole's work is a masterwork nothing less than a grand comic fugue. [via]
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The Dead and the Livingby Sharon OldsISBN 0394530489 (0-394-53048-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Dead Soulsby Nikolai Vasilevich GogolISBN 0393952924 (0-393-95292-4)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Souls'Book summary:Few literary works have been so variously interpreted as Nikolai Gogols enduring comic masterpiece, Dead Souls.
This Norton Critical Edition reprints the text of the acclaimed George Reavey translation, which has been fully annotated for undergraduate readers.
"Backgrounds" contains not only Gogols correspondence relevant to the novel but also the four formal letters that set forth his views on the work.
The editor has also included a useful chronology of Gogols life and an invaluable table of ranks in czarist Russia.
A wide range of criticism includes Robert Maguires general overview of Gogols criticism; two nineteenth-century Russian appraisals; Donald Fangers brilliant essay; and a broad spectrum of twentieth-century Russian critical opinion.
It features, as well, essays by Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson.
The Russian essays have been translated specially for this Norton Critical Edition.
A Selected Bibliography directs readers to resources for further study. [via]More editions of Dead Souls:
Dear Americaby Bernard EdelmanISBN 0393323048 (0-393-32304-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Death and the King's Horsemanby Wole SoyinkaISBN 0393322998 (0-393-32299-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death and the Kings Horseman'Book summary:This norton critical edition of death and the king's horseman is the only student edition available in the united states. Based on events that took place in 1946 in the ancient yoruban city of oyo, soyinka's acclaimed and powerful play addresses classic issues of cultural conflict, tragic decision-making, and the psychological mindsets of individuals and groups. The text of the play is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory annotations for the many allusions to traditional nigerian myth and culture."backgrounds and sources" helps readers understand death and the king's horseman's traditional african contexts and the role of theater in african culture. Included are a map of yoruba-land, discussions of yoruban religious beliefs and cultural traditions, soyinka on the various forms that theater has taken in african culture in order to survive, and anthony appiah on soyinka's struggle with the problem of african identity in the creation of death and the king's horseman. Commentary on the play as both a theatrical production and a classroom text is provided by gerald moore, tanure ojaide, and martin rohmer. "criticism" collects nine major essays on the play and the difficulties it presents to readers. Contributors include d. S. Izevbaye, eldred durosimi jones, henry louis gates jr., biodun jeyifo, wole soyinka, joan hepburn, adebayo williams, david richards, and olakunle george. A chronology and selected bibliography are also included [via]
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Dinner at the Homesick Restaurantby Anne TylerISBN 0394523814 (0-394-52381-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Dispatchesby Michael HerrISBN 0394417887 (0-394-41788-7)
Hardcover, Knopf
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dispatches'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977.
From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herrs unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.
Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature. [via]More editions of Dispatches:
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The Divine Comedyby John Ciardi, Dante AlighieriISBN 0393044726 (0-393-04472-6)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Divine Comedy'Book summary:This single volume, blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy includes an introduction, maps of Dante's Italy, Hell, Purgatory, Geocentric Universe, and political panorama of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, diagrams and notes providing the reader with invaluable guidance.
Described as the "fifth gospel" because of its evangelical purpose, this spiritual autobiography creates a world in which reason and faith have transformed moral and social chaos into order. It is one of the most important works in the literature of Western Europe and is considered the greatest poem of the European Middle Ages. [via]More editions of The Divine Comedy:
Duino Elegiesby Rainer Maria Rilke, David YoungISBN 0393328848 (0-393-32884-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Duino Elegies'Book summary:Named after the Castle of Duino on a rocky headland of the Adriatic, the "Duino Elegies" speak in a voice that is both intimate and majestic on the mysteries of human life and our attempt, in the words of the translator, "to use our self-consciousness to some advantage: to transcend, through art and the imagination, our self-deception and our fear". [via]
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Edie: An American Biographyby Jean Stein, George PlimptonISBN 0394488199 (0-394-48819-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Epic of Gilgameshby Benjamin R. Foster, Douglas Frayne, Gary M. BeckmanISBN 0393975169 (0-393-97516-9)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Epic of Gilgamesh'Book summary:The Epic of Gilgamesh is the worlds oldest epic masterpiece.
More than a thousand years before Homer or the Bible, Mesopotamian poets sang of the hero-king Gilgamesh, who sought to crown his superhuman exploits by finding eternal life. This Norton Critical Edition presents translations by Benjamin R. Foster, Douglas Frayne, and Gary Beckman of the entire Gilgamesh narrative tradition, with some texts now in English for the first time. In addition to the eleven tablets of the great Akkadian epic, written around 1700 B.C.E., the book includes seven Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, written before 2000 B.C.E., as well as the later Hittite version and other related sources, among them a Babylonian parody of the epic.
"Criticism" provides interpretive essays by William Moran, Thorkild Jacobsen, and Rivkah Harris and concludes with a modern poetic response to the Gilgamesh epic by Hillary Major.
A Glossary of Proper Names and a Selected Bibliography are also included. [via]More editions of Epic of Gilgamesh:
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Ethan Fromeby Edith Wharton, Kristin O. Lauer, Cynthia Griffin WolffISBN 0393966356 (0-393-96635-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ethan Frome'Book summary:This Norton Critical Edition of Edith Wharton's celebrated novella is based on the first edition, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1911.
It is fully annotated for undergraduate readers.
"Backgrounds and Contexts" includes a rich selection of materials, some previously unavailable, for the study of contemporary psychological, social, and economic issues, as well as Wharton's private correspondence and writings and biographical accounts of the author.
Arranged under two headings, "Criticism" reveals Ethan Frome's impact as both a literary work and a social commentary. "Contemporary Reviews" consists of eight prominent assessments of Ethan Frome, including reviews from the New York Times Book Review, Outlook, The Nation, the Saturday Review, and those penned by Frederic Taber Cooper and Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, among others. "Modern Criticism" (1956-1991) includes seven interpretations of the novella by Lionel Trilling, Elizabeth Ammons, Judith Fryer, Jean Frantz Blackall, Lev Raphael, Candace Waid, and Cynthia Griffin Wolff.
A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.
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Facts Behind: Helsinkiby MertelISBN 0394227328 (0-394-22732-8)
Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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The Fallby Albert CamusISBN 0394424247 (0-394-42424-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fall'Book summary:Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful Parisian barrister, has come to recognize the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence. His epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency. [via]
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The Farewell Partyby Milan KunderaISBN 0394496604 (0-394-49660-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Faustby Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Cyrus Hamlin, Walter W. ArndtISBN 0393972828 (0-393-97282-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Faust'Book summary:Goethe's masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, "Faust" has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever. Here, in "Faust," "Part 1," the tremendous versatility of Goethe's genius creates some of the most beautiful passages in literature. Here too we experience Goethe's characteristic humor, the excitement and eroticism of the witches' Walpurgis Night, and the moving emotion of Gretchen's tragic fate.
This newly revised edition, which offers Peter Salm's wonderfully readable translation as well as the original German on facing pages, brings us "Faust" in a vital, rhythmic American idiom that carefully preserves the grandeur, integrity, and poetic immediacy of Goethe's words. [via]
Funeral Gamesby Mary RenaultISBN 0394520688 (0-394-52068-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Gilgameshby John Gardner, John MaierISBN 0394537718 (0-394-53771-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gilgamesh'Book summary:The story of Gilgamesh, an ancient epic poem written on clay tablets in a cuneiform alphabet, is as fascinating and moving as it is crucial to our ability to fathom the time and the place in which it was written. Gardner's version restores the poetry of the text and the lyricism that is lost in the earlier, almost scientific renderings. The principal theme of the poem is a familiar one: man's persistent and hopeless quest for immortality. It tells of the heroic exploits of an ancient ruler of the walled city of Uruk named Gilgamesh. Included in its story is an account of the Flood that predates the Biblical version by centuries. Gilgamesh and his companion, a wild man of the woods named Enkidu, fight monsters and demonic powers in search of honor and lasting fame. When Enkidu is put to death by the vengeful goddess Ishtar, Gilgamesh travels to the underworld to find an answer to his grief and confront the question of mortality. [via]
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Glueby Irvine WelshISBN 0393322157 (0-393-32215-7)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens, Edgar RosenbergISBN 0393960692 (0-393-96069-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Expectations'Book summary:Dickens considered Great Expectations one of his "little pieces," and indeed, it is slim compared to such weighty novels as David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby. But what this cautionary tale of a young man raised high above his station by a mysterious benefactor lacks in length, it more than makes up for in its remarkable characters and compelling story. The novel begins with young orphaned Philip Pirrip--Pip--running afoul of an escaped convict in a cemetery. This terrifying personage bullies Pip into stealing food and a file for him, threatening that if he tells a soul "your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate." The boy does as he's asked, but the convict is captured anyway, and transported to the penal colonies in Australia. Having started his novel in a cemetery, Dickens then ups the stakes and introduces his hero into the decaying household of Miss Havisham, a wealthy, half-mad woman who was jilted on her wedding day many years before and has never recovered. Pip is brought there to play with Miss Havisham's ward, Estella, a little girl who delights in tormenting Pip about his rough hands and future as a blacksmith's apprentice.
I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
It is an infection that Pip never quite recovers from; as he spends more time with Miss Havisham and the tantalizing Estella, he becomes more and more discontented with his guardian, the kindhearted blacksmith, Joe, and his childhood friend Biddy. When, after several years, Pip becomes the heir of an unknown benefactor, he leaps at the chance to leave his home and friends behind to go to London and become a gentleman. But having expectations, as Pip soon learns, is a two-edged sword, and nothing is as he thought it would be. Like that other "little piece," A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations is different from the usual Dickensian fare: the story is dark, almost surreal at times, and you'll find few of the author's patented comic characters and no comic set pieces. And yet this is arguably the most compelling of Dickens's novels for, unlike David Copperfield or Martin Chuzzlewit, the reader can never be sure that things will work out for Pip. Even Dickens apparently had his doubts--he wrote two endings for this novel. --Alix Wilber [via]More editions of Great Expectations:
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Henry IVby William Shakespeare, Gordon McMullanISBN 0393979318 (0-393-97931-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Henry IV'Book summary:This edition of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 uses a variety of approaches to Shakespeare, including historical and cultural studies approaches. Shakespeare's text is accompanied by an intriguing collection of thematically arranged historical and cultural documents and illustrations designed to give a firsthand knowledge of the contexts out of which Henry IV, Part 1 emerged. Hodgdon's intelligent and engaging introductions to the play and to the documents (most of which are presented in modern spelling and with annotations) offer a richly textured understanding of Elizabethan culture and Shakespeare's work within that culture. [via]
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Hiroshimaby John HerseyISBN 0394548442 (0-394-54844-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hiroshima'Book summary:When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict. [via]
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The House of Mirthby Edith Wharton, Elizabeth AmmonsISBN 0393959015 (0-393-95901-5)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The House of Mirth'Book summary:"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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In Memoriam: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticismby Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Robert H. RossISBN 0393043657 (0-393-04365-7)
Softcover, Norton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Memoriam: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism'Book summary:The text of "In Memoriam" reprinted in this Norton Critical Edition is that of the Eversley Edition of Tennyson's "Works, " published in 1907-8, edited by the poet's son, Hallam, Lord Tennyson, and annotated by Tennyson himself. The present editior has included many of Tennyson's and Hallam's notes in addition to his own, which are directed to today's reader. [via]
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In Memoriam: Authoritative Text Criticismby Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Erik Irving GrayISBN 0393979261 (0-393-97926-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Memoriam: Authoritative Text Criticism'Book summary:Tennyson's central poem is presented with an extensive introduction that provides background information on the poet and poem as well as an overview of In Memoriam's formal and thematic peculiarities, including Tennyson's use of the stanza and the poem's rhyme scheme.The authoritative text is again that of the Eversley Edition of Tennyson's Works, published in 1901-8, which is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. "Criticism" contains thirteen essays--seven of which are new to the Second Edition-among them examples of formal Sarah Gates , contextual W. David Shaw , reader-response Timothy Peltason , queer Jeff Nunokawa , and genre Alan Sinfield criticism. A chapter from Christopher Ricks's influential biography, Tennyson, is included. A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Index of First Lines are also included. [via]
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Interview With the Vampireby Anne RiceISBN 0394498216 (0-394-49821-6)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Interview With the Vampire'Book summary:In the now-classic novel Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice refreshed the archetypal vampire myth for a late-20th-century audience. The story is ostensibly a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris. But a summary of this story bypasses the central attractions of the novel. First and foremost, the method Rice chose to tell her tale--with Louis' first-person confession to a skeptical boy--transformed the vampire from a hideous predator into a highly sympathetic, seductive, and all-too-human figure. Second, by entering the experience of an immortal character, one raised with a deep Catholic faith, Rice was able to explore profound philosophical concerns--the nature of evil, the reality of death, and the limits of human perception--in ways not possible from the perspective of a more finite narrator.
While Rice has continued to investigate history, faith, and philosophy in subsequent Vampire novels (including The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, and The Vampire Armand), Interview remains a treasured masterpiece. It is that rare work that blends a childlike fascination for the supernatural with a profound vision of the human condition. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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The Invisible Manby Ralph EllisonISBN 0394525493 (0-394-52549-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invisible Man'Book summary:We rely, in this world, on the visual aspects of humanity as a means of learning who we are. This, Ralph Ellison argues convincingly, is a dangerous habit. A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue. "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." But this is hard-won self-knowledge, earned over the course of many years.
As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster's recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation.
What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realizes he's been duped into believing what he thought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men."
Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, and sadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison's first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It's also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" --Melanie Rehak [via]
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Le Morte D'Arthurby Thomas Malory, Stephen H. A. ShepherdISBN 0393974642 (0-393-97464-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Le Morte D'Arthur'Book summary:The text is unabridged, with original spelling and extensive, easy-to-use marginal glosses and footnotes.
No other edition accurately represents the actual (and likely authorial) divisions of the text as attested to by its two surviving witnessesCaxtons 1485 print and, especially, the famous Winchester Manuscript. The Winchester Manuscript is now generally agreed to be the more authentic of the two earlier texts. The Norton Critical Edition is the first edition of Malory to recover important elements of this manuscript: paragraphing marginal annotations hierarchies of narrative division as signaled by size and decorative intricacy of initial capitals and font changes The Norton Critical Edition also represents, in black-letter font, the striking rubrication of proper names in the Winchester Manuscript, reconstructing for readers something of an authentic medieval reading experience, one which gives visual support to Malorys extraordinary representation, in character and setting, of a chivalric ideal. No other student edition of Malory contains such extensive contextual and critical support. [via]More editions of Le Morte D'Arthur:
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Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Familyby Froma Walsh, Monica McGoldrickISBN 0393702030 (0-393-70203-0)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family'Book summary:This work provides a guide to coping with the death of a family member. [via]
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Macbethby William Shakespeare, Robert S. MiolaISBN 0393977862 (0-393-97786-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Macbeth'Book summary:The Norton Critical Edition of Macbeth, Shakespeare's terrifying depiction of a man and woman's fall into evil, derives from the First Folio (1623), the only authoritative text of the play. The edition includes an introduction, annotations, and textual notes.
A rich Sources and Contexts section provides readers with an understanding of Macbeths origins from earlier texts, specifically the works of the Roman playwright Seneca, the Tudor historian Raphael Holinshed, and a medieval drama The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the Death of Herod. The contexts for the play include contemporary debates on predestination vs. free will (Martin Luther vs. Erasmus), witchcraft as fiction or fact (Reginald Scot vs. King James I), the ethics of regicide (an Elizabethan homily vs. Juan de Mariana, S.J.), and a treatise on equivocation (Henry Garnet, S.J.). This edition also features adaptations--Davenant's moralistic Macbeth, some travesties, and Welcome Msomi's recent South African retelling, uMabatha.
Seventeen carefully chosen essays represent four hundred years of critical and theatrical interpretations, from the early observations of Simon Forman and Samuel Johnson to the Romantic readings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey, to recent essays by Janet Adelman and Stephen Orgel. Sarah Siddons and Derek Jacobi remember performing Macbeth, and Peter Holland surveys film interpretations.
A Selected Bibliography is also included. [via]More editions of Macbeth:
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The Magic Mountainby Thomas MannISBN 0394434587 (0-394-43458-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Magic Mountain'Book summary:Though surrounded by the beauty of the Swiss Alps, Hans Castorp is an unwitting captive in a tuberculosis sanitarium, under sentence of impending death. Originally admitted for a three week respite, he is betrayed by an X-ray which finds a small, dark patch on his lung. Thus begins a seven-year recuperation. Struck by the many other patients who seem to have resigned themselves, Castorp begins to question his purpose. As he listens to the stories and advice of other inmates and considers his own course of evolution, he realizes that here, in the midst of the dying, he has found life. [via]
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Maus : A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Beganby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0394556550 (0-394-55655-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maus : A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began'Book summary:Acclaimed as a "quiet triumph"* and a "brutally moving work of art,"** the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. As the New York Times Book Review commented," [it is] a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event."
This long-awaited sequel, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.
Vladek's troubled remarriage, minor arguments between father and son, and life's everyday disappointments are all set against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale -- and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors. [via]More editions of Maus : A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began:
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Maus a Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds Historyby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0394541553 (0-394-54155-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maus a Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History'Book summary:Some historical events simply beggar any attempt at description--the Holocaust is one of these. Therefore, as it recedes and the people able to bear witness die, it becomes more and more essential that novel, vigorous methods are used to describe the indescribable. Examined in these terms, Art Spiegelman's Maus is a tremendous achievement, from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one.
Spiegelman, a stalwart of the underground comics scene of the 1960s and '70s, interviewed his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor living outside New York City, about his experiences. The artist then deftly translated that story into a graphic novel. By portraying a true story of the Holocaust in comic form--the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Poles pigs, the French frogs, and the Americans dogs--Spiegelman compels the reader to imagine the action, to fill in the blanks that are so often shied away from. Reading Maus, you are forced to examine the Holocaust anew.
This is neither easy nor pleasant. However, Vladek Spiegelman and his wife Anna are resourceful heroes, and enough acts of kindness and decency appear in the tale to spur the reader onward (we also know that the protagonists survive, else reading would be too painful). This first volume introduces Vladek as a happy young man on the make in pre-war Poland. With outside events growing ever more ominous, we watch his marriage to Anna, his enlistment in the Polish army after the outbreak of hostilities, his and Anna's life in the ghetto, and then their flight into hiding as the Final Solution is put into effect. The ending is stark and terrible, but the worst is yet to come--in the second volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning set. --Michael Gerber [via]
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The Mill on the Flossby George Eliot, Carol T. ChristISBN 0393963322 (0-393-96332-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mill on the Floss'Book summary:The best-known and most autobiographical of George Eliots novels is now available as a Norton Critical Edition.
The text of The Mill on the Floss, that of the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated in order to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions.
"Backgrounds" includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centering on the novels content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews and responses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, including those by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin.
Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in this century, "Criticism" includes ten of the best studies of the novel, providing the reader with historical and critical perspective.
The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, John Kucich, Margaret Homans, and Deirdre David.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included. [via]More editions of The Mill on the Floss:
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essaysby Albert CamusISBN 0394437608 (0-394-43760-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Namesby Don DeLilloISBN 039452814X (0-394-52814-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Names'Book summary:Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neurotic narrator obsessed with his own neuroses. A thriller, a mystery, and still a moving examination of family, loss, and the amorphous and magical potential of language itself, The Names stands with any of DeLillo's more recent and highly acclaimed works.
"The Names not only accurately reflects a portion of our contemporary world but, more importantly, creates an original world of its own."--Chicago Sun-Times
"DeLillo sifts experience through simultaneous grids of science and poetry, analysis and clear sight, to make a high-wire prose that is voluptuously stark."--Village Voice Literary Supplement
"DeLillo verbally examines every state of consciousness from eroticism to tourism, from the idea of America as conceived by the rest of the world to the idea of the rest of the world as conceived by America, from mysticism to fanaticism."--New York Times [via]More editions of The Names:
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No Great Mischiefby Alistair MacLeodISBN 0393049701 (0-393-04970-1)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Great Mischief'Book summary:For the MacDonalds, the past is not a foreign country. This Cape Breton clan may have lived in the New World since 1779, when Calum Ruadh ("the red Calum") and his wife, 12 children, and dog landed. Scotland, however, remains their true home. So profound is their connection to their lost land that on brief visits they find themselves welcomed by strangers. When one descendent tells a Scotswoman that she's from Canada, she is offered a gentle rejoinder: "That may be.... But you are really from here. You have just been away for a while." In some ways this is unsurprising, since the MacDonalds either have deep black hair or their ancestor's coloring. And those with the latter have "eyes that were so dark as to be beyond brown and almost in the region of glowing black. Such individuals would manifest themselves as strikingly unfamiliar to some, and as eerily familiar to others." Another sport of nature? Many are fraternal twins, including Alistair MacLeod's narrator, Alexander, and his sister.
But No Great Mischief is far more than the straightforward saga of one family over the generations. Instead the author has created a painfully beautiful myth in which the long-ago is in many ways more present than modern existence. Even in the last decades of the 20th century, the MacDonalds fall into Gaelic--its inflections, rhythms, and song--with deep nostalgia. This is a family that is used to composing itself in the face of disaster. They often assure one another, "My hope is constant in thee," and in the light of their many losses, the clan must cling to its motto.
No Great Mischief begins with Alexander's visit to Toronto, where his eldest brother now subsists on a diet of drink and memories. The narrator, a successful orthodontist, doesn't have much to do with the former but is unable (or unwilling) to escape the latter. As the novel proceeds, Alexander fills in his family history, including such key episodes as his great-great-grandfather's self-exile from Scotland. Though Calum Ruadh had intended to leave his dog behind, it broke away and tried to catch up with him. MacLeod piercingly captures the animal's struggle as her master first tries to make her head for shore and then--realizing she won't desert him--spurs her on. Throughout No Great Mischief various people recall this incident, an emblem of intensity, hope, and dependence. A descendant of the bitch is also on hand when Alexander's parents and one of his brothers disappear under the ice on a cold spring night. She persists in searching for her people and tries to protect their lighthouse from the new keeper, receiving in return "four bullets into her loyal waiting heart." When Alexander's grandfather hears of her death, he uses a phrase that becomes one of the book's litanies, "It was in those dogs to care too much and to try too hard."
This is a MacDonald characteristic as well. A good deal of No Great Mischief's strength stems from scenes of longing and despair--for those who die for a lost cause, whether in 1692 when one leader is killed ("the redness of his hair dyed forever brighter by the crimson of his blood") or in an Ontario uranium mine where one brother is decapitated. MacLeod evokes his clan, and the elemental beauty of their landscape, in quiet, precise language that gains power with each repetition. (A sentence such as "All of us are better when we're loved" comes to acquire a near proverbial ring.) If he occasionally tips his hand too much, pressing home his point that present-day prosperity isn't all it's cracked up to be, no matter. I doubt that this inspired and elegiac novel will ever leave those who are lucky enough to read it--proving after all the persistence of the clann Chalum Ruaidh. --Kerry Fried [via]
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The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggeby Rainer Maria Rilke, Herter NortonISBN 0393308812 (0-393-30881-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge'Book summary:First published in Paris in 1910, Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German. [via]
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The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggeby Stephen Mitchell, Rainer Maria RilkeISBN 039453011X (0-394-53011-X)
Hardcover, Random House
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge'Book summary:First published in Paris in 1910, Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German. [via]
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Notes from Undergroundby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Michael R. KatzISBN 0393976122 (0-393-97612-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes from Underground'Book summary:Written in 1864, this novel is the first and strangest of Dostoevsky's masterpieces--and the source of those that followed. Violating literary conventions in ways never before attempted, this classic tells of a mid-19th-century Russian official's breakaway from society and descent "underground". [via]
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The Odysseyby Homer, Albert Spaulding CookISBN 0393964051 (0-393-96405-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'Book summary:A retelling of Homer's epic that describes the adventures of the hero Odysseus as he encounters many monsters and other obstacles on his journey home from the Trojan War. [via]
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Other Voices, Other Roomsby Truman CapoteISBN 039443949X (0-394-43949-X)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Other Voices, Other Rooms'Book summary:Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skullys Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.
Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capotes tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.
This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capotes emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace. [via]More editions of Other Voices, Other Rooms:
The Past Recapturedby Marcel ProustISBN 0394439899 (0-394-43989-9)
Hardcover, Random House
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Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Seaby Sebastian JungerISBN 039304016X (0-393-04016-X)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea'Book summary:Meteorologists called the storm that hit North America's eastern seaboard in October 1991 a "perfect storm" because of the rare combination of factors that created it. For everyone else, it was perfect hell. In The Perfect Storm, author Sebastian Junger conjures for the reader the meteorological conditions that created the "storm of the century" and the impact the storm had on many of the people caught in it. Chief among these are the six crew members of the swordfish boat the Andrea Gail, all of whom were lost 500 miles from home beneath roiling seas and high waves. Working from published material, radio dialogues, eyewitness accounts, and the experiences of people who have survived similar events, Junger attempts to re-create the last moments of the Andrea Gail as well as the perilous high-seas rescues of other victims of the storm.
Like a Greek drama, The Perfect Storm builds slowly and inexorably to its tragic climax. The book weaves the history of the fishing industry and the science of predicting storms into the quotidian lives of those aboard the Andrea Gail and of others who would soon find themselves in the fury of the storm. Junger does a remarkable job of explaining a convergence of meteorological and human events in terms that make them both comprehensible and unforgettable. [via]
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The Persian Boyby Mary RenaultISBN 0394481917 (0-394-48191-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Persian Boy'Book summary:It takes skill to depict, as Miss Renault has done, this half-man, half Courtesan who is so deeply in love with the warrior. The Atlantic Monthly
The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexanders life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes-mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexanders mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone. [via]More editions of The Persian Boy:
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The Prophetby Kahlil GibranISBN 0394404289 (0-394-40428-9)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prophet'Book summary:In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have. --Brian Bruya [via]
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Red Star in Orbitby James E. ObergISBN 0394514297 (0-394-51429-7)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Republicby Plato, Richard W. Sterling, William C. ScottISBN 0393314677 (0-393-31467-7)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Republic'Book summary:Authoritative and idiomatic, this translation has already established an impressive foothold in the college market.
[via] 
Revenger's Tragedyby TourneurISBN 0393900606 (0-393-90060-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Selected Poems of Salvador Espriuby Magda BoginISBN 0393306372 (0-393-30637-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticismby G.R. Thompson, Gary Richard ThompsonISBN 0393972852 (0-393-97285-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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The Sorrows of Young Werther and Novellaby Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Louise Bogan, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth MayerISBN 0394470249 (0-394-47024-9)
Hardcover, Random House
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Staring at the Sunby Julian BarnesISBN 0394558219 (0-394-55821-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Staring at the Sun'Book summary:From the Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 Staring at the Sun charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginning as a naive, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020. We follow her bruising experience in marriage, her probing of male truths, her adventures in motherhood and in China and we cannot fail to be moved by the questions she asks of life and the often unsatisfactory answers it provides. [via]
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Stillness and Shadowsby John Gardner, Nicholas DelbancoISBN 0394544021 (0-394-54402-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Story-Tellerby Leslie M. SiekoISBN 0394177959 (0-394-17795-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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The Strange Cases of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hydeby Katherine Linehan, Robert Louis StevensonISBN 0393974650 (0-393-97465-0)
Softcover, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strange Cases of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'Book summary:The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.
This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens.
This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster [via]
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The Sufferings of Young Wertherby Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheISBN 039309880X (0-393-09880-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sufferings of Young Werther'Book summary:J.W. von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther [via]
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The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Talesby Bruno BettelheimISBN 0394497716 (0-394-49771-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales'Book summary:Wicked stepmothers and beautiful princesses ...magic forests and enchanted towers ...little pigs and big bad wolves ...Fairy tales have been an integral part of childhood for hundreds of years. But what do they really mean? In this award-winning work of criticism, renowned psychoanalyst Dr Bruno Bettelheim presents a thought provoking and stimulating exploration of the best-known fairy stories. He reveals the true content of the stories and shows how children can use them to cope with their baffling emotions and anxieties. [via]
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Vanity Fairby William Makepeace Thackery, Peter L. ShillingsburgISBN 0393965953 (0-393-96595-3)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vanity Fair'Book summary:The text of this Norton Critical Edition of Thackeray's acclaimed 1848 novel is based on the Garland edition, the text approved by the Modern Language Association. The text is fully annotated and is accompanied by all of the author's original illustrations as well as a textual appendix.
"Backgrounds and Contexts" is arranged under three headings. "Composition and Publication History" combines modern scholarship with contemporary materials to elucidate the novel's composition and publication history and present different aspects of Thackeray's life and work. "Reception" reprints ten contemporary reviews, both published and unpublished, that suggest the tone of Vanity Fair's initial reception. "Contexts" includes materials relating to governesses, historical novels, the Battle of Waterloo and the military, bankruptcy, regency fashions, and the London landscape, all of which figure prominently in the novel.
"Criticism" is a collection of nine essays written between 1900 and 1990 that reveal the developing response to Vanity Fair. William C. Brownell, David Cecil, G. Armour Craig, John Loofbourow, Peter K. Garrett, Richard Barickman, Susan MacDonald, Myra Stark, Ina Ferris, Catherine Peters, and James Phelan provide varied perspectives.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
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The Victorian Fairy Tale Bookby Michael Patrick HearnISBN 0394565940 (0-394-56594-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Vital Signs 2006-2007: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Futureby Worldwatch InstituteISBN 0393328724 (0-393-32872-4)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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A Way to Dieby Victor Zorza, Rosemary ZorzaISBN 0394504151 (0-394-50415-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison: And Other Urgent Inquiries into the Odd Nature of Natureby Hampton Sides, Jason SchneiderISBN 0393321509 (0-393-32150-9)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison: And Other Urgent Inquiries into the Odd Nature of Nature'Book summary:Join longtime Outside editor and contributor Hampton Sides as he rollicks through the fascinating, quirky questions readers ask about the world around them.
Do beavers ever get squashed by the trees they're gnawing down? Why are there so many worms writhing on the sidewalk after a storm? What good are goosebumps? Why do llamas spit? What is the oldest living creature on earth? Focusing on natural history and outdoor lore, this collection ranges from the gothic to the comic to the cosmic. It includes the sorts of questions that most of us stopped asking (at least out loud) when we were eight years old. "The Wild File" is what question-and-answer columns should be but seldom are: an often surprising, sometimes zany, always insightful and informative back-and-forth between a devoted readership and its publication. The result is an enchanting and enriching collection of answers that open windows to more questions.
60 black and white illustrations [via]More editions of Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison: And Other Urgent Inquiries into the Odd Nature of Nature:
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The Wings of the Doveby Henry James, J. Donald Crowley, Richard A. HocksISBN 0393978818 (0-393-97881-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wings of the Dove'Book summary:The Wings of the Dove is a classic example of Henry James's morality tales that play off the naiveté of an American protagonist abroad. In early-20th-century London, Kate Croy and Merton Densher are engaged in a passionate, clandestine love affair. Croy is desperately in love with Densher, who has all the qualities of a potentially excellent husband: he's handsome, witty, and idealistic--the one thing he lacks is money, which ultimately renders him unsuitable as a mate. By chance, Croy befriends a young American heiress, Milly Theale. When Croy discovers that Theale suffers from a mysterious and fatal malady, she hatches a plan that can give all three characters something that they want--at a price. Croy and Densher plan to accompany the young woman to Venice where Densher, according to Croy's design, will seduce the ailing heiress. The two hope that Theale will find love and happiness in her last days and--when she dies--will leave her fortune to Densher, so that he and Croy can live happily ever after. The scheme that at first develops as planned begins to founder when Theale discovers the pair's true motives shortly before her death. Densher struggles with unanticipated feelings of love for his new paramour, and his guilt may obstruct his ability to avail himself of Theale's gift. James deftly navigates the complexities and irony of such moral treachery in this stirring novel. [via]
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The Witches of Eastwickby John UpdikeISBN 0394537602 (0-394-53760-2)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Witches of Eastwick'Book summary:Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwickand through the even darker fantasies of the towns collective psyche.
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The World to Comeby Dara HornISBN 0393329062 (0-393-32906-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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