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books tagged “european”
books tagged “european”
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Angela's Ashesby Frank McCourtISBN 068484267X (0-684-84267-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angela's Ashes'Book summary:"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.
Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.
Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. [via]
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Basic Writings of Nietzscheby Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Friedrich NietzscheISBN 0679783393 (0-679-78339-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Basic Writings of Nietzsche'Book summary:A better title for this book might be The Indispensable Writings of Nietzsche. Indeed, the six selections contained in Walter Kaufmann's volume are not only critical elements of Nietzsche's oeuvre, they are must-reads for any aspiring student of philosophy. Those coming to Nietzsche for the first time will be pleased to find three of his best-known works--The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morals--as well as a collection of 75 aphorisms drawn from Nietzsche's celebrated aphoristic work. In addition, there are two lesser known, but important, pieces in The Case of Wagner and Ecce Homo. Kaufmann's lucid and accurate translations have been the gold standard of Nietzsche scholarship since the 1950s, and this volume does not disappoint.
Anyone who has slogged their way through the swamps of German philosophical writing---in Kant or Hegel or Heidegger--will find Nietzsche a refreshing and exhilarating change. The selections are well chosen, and a cover-to-cover read will aptly depict Nietzsche's philosophy. In this volume the reader will find many of Nietzsche's polemical (and frequently misunderstood) ratiocinations on Christianity, Socrates, Germany, and art. Here, too, are his seminal and unforgettable critiques of Western morality ("That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs"). For philosophical fireworks, Nietzsche can hardly be matched. His brazen defiance of intellectualism's conventions still rings in contemporary thought because he practiced philosophy with a hammer. --Eric de Place [via]
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The Best of Gourmet: Featuring the Flavors of Italyby Gourmet Magazine StaffISBN 0679423648 (0-679-42364-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Beyond Good and Evilby Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Walter Arnold KaufmannISBN 0679724656 (0-679-72465-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beyond Good and Evil'Book summary:Represents Nietzsche's attempt to sum up his philosophy. In nine parts the book is designed to give the reader a comprehensive idea of Nietzche's thought and style. With an inclusive index of subjects and persons. [via]
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Bulfinch's Mythology : The Age of Fable, the Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagneby Thomas BulfinchISBN 0679600469 (0-679-60046-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bulfinch's Mythology : The Age of Fable, the Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne'Book summary:For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch's Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity; Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths; and the age of chivalry have been known.
The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood.
The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."
Thomas Bulfinch, in his day job, was a clerk in the Merchant's Bank of Boston, an undemanding position that afforded him ample leisure time in which to pursue his other interests. In addition to serving as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, he thoroughly researched the myths and legends and copiously cross-referenced them with literature and art. As such, the myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the nineteenth century; however, it is the vigor of the stories themselves that returns generation after generation to Bulfinch.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Bulfinch's Mythology : The Age of Fable, the Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne:
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Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journeyby Isabel FonsecaISBN 067973743X (0-679-73743-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey'Book summary:They travel endlessly and seem to appear almost everywhere, yet they are the world's most mysterious people: Gypsies. Isabel Fonseca has done the impossible, entering into their world, living and traveling with Gypsies during several long trips to Eastern Europe, and she has brought back an insightful, highly personal, and very readable account of who the Gypsies are and how they live. The Gypsies have a legendary aversion to "gadje," or outsiders, but Fonseca has lifted the curtain and written gracefully about their lives on the edge of society. [via]
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The Byzantine Empireby Robert BrowningISBN 0684166526 (0-684-16652-6)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Byzantium: The Empire of New Romeby Cyril A. MangoISBN 0684167689 (0-684-16768-9)
Hardcover, Macmillan Pub Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome'Book summary:BRAND NEW MINT CONDITION! SHIPS SAME OR NEXT DAY! [via]
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Caprice and Rondoby Dorothy DunnettISBN 0679454772 (0-679-45477-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945by Stephen E. AmbroseISBN 0684848015 (0-684-84801-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945'Book summary:This sequel to D-DAY opens at 00:01 hours, June 7, 1944 on the Normandy Beaches and ends at 02:45 hours, May 7, 1945. In between comes the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy, the breakout of Saint-Lo, the Falaise gap, Patton tearing through France, the liberation of Paris, the attempt to leap the Rhine in operation Market-Garden, the near-miraculous German recovery, the battles around Metz and in the Huertgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, the capture of the bridge at Remagen and, finally, the overunning of Germany. From the enlisted men and junior officers, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from those on both sides of the war. The experience of these citizen soldiers reveals the ordinary sufferings and hardships of war. They overcame their fear and inexperience, the mistakes of their high command and their enemy to win the war. [via]
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- Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945: ISBN 0684815257 (0-684-81525-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945: ISBN 0684848015 (0-684-84801-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945: ISBN 0684815257 (0-684-81525-7)
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Classics of Horror: Dracula/Frankenstein/2 Books in 1by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram StokerISBN 0681411635 (0-681-41163-5)
Hardcover, Longmeadow Pr
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The Club Dumasby Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Sonia SotoISBN 0679777547 (0-679-77754-7)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Club Dumas'Book summary:Fallen angels, satanic manuals, and a passion for the works of Raphael Sabatini and Alexandre Dumas among others--this is the stuff of Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte's engrossing novel The Club Dumas. Set in a world of antiquarian booksellers where dealers would gladly betray their own mothers to get their hands on a rare volume, The Club Dumas is a thinking person's thriller: in addition to a riveting plot, the book is full of intriguing details that range from the working habits of Alexandre Dumas to how one might go about forging a 17th-century text. Woven through these meditations is enough murder, sex, and the occult to keep both the hero, Lucas Corso, and the reader hopping.
As in his previous novel, The Flanders Panel, set in the world of art restoration, Mr. Pérez-Reverte has written a literary thriller to tease both the intellect and adrenaline gland. Lucas Corso makes a complex, ultimately sympathetic hero, and there's plenty to delight in the intricate twists and turns the story takes before the mystery of The Club Dumas is finally solved. [via]
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The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeatsby W. B. Yeats, Richard J. FinneranISBN 0684807319 (0-684-80731-9)
Softcover, Scribner
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats'Book summary:William Butler Yeats, whom many consider this century's greatest poet, began as a bard of the Celtic Twilight, reviving legends and Rosicrucian symbols. By the early 1900s, however, he was moving away from plush romanticism, his verse morphing from the incantatory rhythms of "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" into lyrics "as cold and passionate as the dawn." At every stage, however, Yeats plays a multiplicity of poetic roles. There is the romantic lover of "When You Are Old" and "A Poet to His Beloved" ("I bring you with reverent Hands / The books of my numberless dreams..."). And there are the far more bitter celebrations of Maud Gonne, who never accepted his love and engaged in too much politicking for his taste: "Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery, or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, / Or hurled the little streets upon the great, / Had they but courage equal to desire?" There is also the poet of conscience--and confrontation. His 1931 "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" ends: "Out of Ireland have we come. / Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carried from my mother's womb / A fanatic heart."
Yeats was to explore several more sides of himself, and of Ireland, before his Last Poems of 1938-39. Many are difficult, some snobbish, others occult and spiritualist. As Brendan Kennelly writes, Yeats "produces both poppycock and sublimity in verse, sometimes closely together." On the other hand, many prophetic masterworks are poppycock-free--for example, "The Second Coming" ("Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...") and such inquiries into inspiration as "Among School Children" ("O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"). And at his best, Yeats extends the meaning of love poetry beyond the obviously romantic: love becomes a revolutionary emotion, attaching the poet to friends, history, and the passionate life of the mind. --Kerry Fried [via]
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Confessions of Felix Krullby Thomas MannISBN 0679739041 (0-679-73904-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of Felix Krull'Book summary:Recounts the enchanted career of the con man extraordinaire Felix Krull--a man unhampered by the moral precepts that govern the conduct of ordinary people. [via]
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Constantine the Great: The Man and His Timesby Michael GrantISBN 0684195208 (0-684-19520-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Cosi Fan Tuttiby Michael DibdinISBN 0679779116 (0-679-77911-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Culture and Imperialismby Edward W. SaidISBN 0679750541 (0-679-75054-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Culture and Imperialism'Book summary:Edward Said makes one of the strongest cases ever for the aphorism, "the pen is mightier than the sword." This is a brilliant work of literary criticism that essentially becomes political science. Culture and Imperialism demonstrates that Western imperialism's most effective tools for dominating other cultures have been literary in nature as much as political and economic. He traces the themes of 19th- and 20th-century Western fiction and contemporary mass media as weapons of conquest and also brilliantly analyzes the rise of oppositional indigenous voices in the literatures of the "colonies." Said would argue that it's no mere coincidence that it was a Victorian Englishman, Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, who coined the phrase "the pen is mightier . . ." Very highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand how cultures are dominated by words, as well as how cultures can be liberated by resuscitating old voices or creating new voices for new times. [via]
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Cyrano De Bergeracby Anthony Burgess, Edmond RostandISBN 0679734139 (0-679-73413-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cyrano De Bergerac'Book summary:Translated by Anthony Burgess. [via]
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Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Centuryby Mark MazowerISBN 067975704X (0-679-75704-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century'Book summary:As the European Union introduces a common currency to world financial markets, Mark Mazower's Dark Continent critically examines the notion of "Europe." The Euro notwithstanding, Mazower argues that the "'Europe' of the European Union may be a promise or a delusion, but it is not a reality." Renouncing the notion of an essential "Europe," Mazower instead explores the conflicts which dominated the continent in the 20th century and the social value systems which informed them.
Mazower orders his examination chronologically, commencing with the collapse of Europe's continental empires following World War I and the initial European experiments in democracy and national self-determination which followed. He continues with analyses of state interventions in family health and the importance of healthy progeny, the financial crisis of the 1920s, the Hitler regime, the transformed democracy that emerged following World War II, the gradual erosion of the social state in the 1980s, and, finally, the collapse of communism. He consistently displays a firm grip of European history, directing his argument to readers with a foundational knowledge of the events that shaped 20th century Europe rather than historical novices unfamiliar with the period. Provocatively insightful, Dark Continent makes a convincing argument for a European 21st century characterized by continuity and harmony through divergence. "If Europeans can give up their desperate desire to find a single, workable definition of themselves," Mazower concludes, "they may come to terms more easily with the diversity and dissension which will be as much their future as their past." --Bertina Loeffler [via]
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Death of Virgilby Hermann Broch, Jean Starr UntermeyerISBN 0679755489 (0-679-75548-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death of Virgil'Book summary:It is the reign of the Emperor Augustus, and Publius Vergilius Maro, the poet of the Aeneid and Caesar's enchanter, has been summoned to the palace, where he will shortly die. Out of the last hours of Virgil's life and the final stirrings of his consciousness, the Austrian writer Hermann Broch fashioned one of the great works of twentieth-century modernism, a book that embraces an entire world and renders it with an immediacy that is at once sensual and profound. Begun while Broch was imprisoned in a German concentration camp, The Death of Virgil is part historical novel and part prose poem -- and always an intensely musical and immensely evocative meditation on the relation between life and death, the ancient and the modern. [via]
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireby Edward GibbonISBN 0679423087 (0-679-42308-7)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Volumes 4, 5, and 6 of the Bury Text, in a boxed set. Introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper [via]More editions of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: ISBN 067943593X (0-679-43593-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: ISBN 0679601481 (0-679-60148-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: ISBN 0679601503 (0-679-60150-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: ISBN 0679423087 (0-679-42308-7)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: ISBN 067943593X (0-679-43593-X)
Description of a Struggle: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Eastern European Writingby Michael March, Ivan KlimaISBN 0679745149 (0-679-74514-9)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Disorderly Knightsby Dorothy DunnettISBN 0679777458 (0-679-77745-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Doctor Faustusby Thomas Mann, H.T. Lowe-PorterISBN 067973905X (0-679-73905-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Doctor Faustus'Book summary:Tells the story of Adrian Leverkuhn, a theological student turned composer, who symbolically enters into a pact with the Devil, selling his soul and body in return for twenty-four years of musical genius. [via]
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Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkuhn, As Told by a Friendby Thomas Mann, Helen T. Lowe-PorterISBN 0679600426 (0-679-60042-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkuhn, As Told by a Friend'Book summary:"The thorn was in my flesh," Mann said about the genesis of Doctor Faustus, which was composed during World War II. "I knew what I was setting out to do and what task I was imposing upon myself: to write nothing else than the novel of my era, disguised as the story of an artist's life, a terribly imperilled and sinful artist."
Adrian Leverkuhn, a former theological student who has become a composer, enters symbolically into a pact with the devil in exchange for two and a half decades of inspired work. Narrated by Serenus Zeitblom, Leverkuhn's faithful friend, this retelling of the Faust legend turns on the composer's slow descent into syphilitic paralysis. Densely orchestrated with musical constructions and what Mann called historical "montage", the book discourses on the tragedy of Germany, the Schonbergian twelve-tone system, Nietzche, the life of Tchaikovsky, and the introduction of syphilis into Europe. Mann described Doctor Faustus as "difficult, weird, uncanny, sad as life." [via]More editions of Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkuhn, As Told by a Friend:
The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzscheby Monroe C. BeardsleyISBN 0679600248 (0-679-60024-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Exile and the Kingdomby Albert Camus, Justin O'BrienISBN 067973385X (0-679-73385-X)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Frankensteinby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Walter Cronkite, Charles Michener, Eugenie VinkISBN 0679749543 (0-679-74954-3)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein'Book summary:Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]
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Frankenstein : Or, the Modern Prometheusby Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyISBN 0679427899 (0-679-42789-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus'Book summary:Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]
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Friendship: Poemsby Everymans Library, Peter WashingtonISBN 0679443703 (0-679-44370-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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From Plato to NATO : The Idea of the West and Its Opponentsby David GressISBN 0684827891 (0-684-82789-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Plato to NATO : The Idea of the West and Its Opponents'Book summary:An in-depth intellectual history of the Western idea and a passionate defense of its importance to America's future, "From Plato to NATO" is the first book to make sense of the legacy of the West at a time when it is facing its greatest challenges. Readers of Francis Fukuyama, John Gray, Samuel Huntington, and other analysts of the dilemmas of Western nations in the twenty-first century will find in David Gress's original account a fuller description of what the West really is and how, with the best of intentions, it has been misrepresented. Most important, they will encounter a new vision of Western identity and how it can be recovered.
Early in the twentieth century, American educators put together a story of Western civilization, its origins, history, and promise that for the subsequent fifty years remained at the heart of American college education. The story they told was of a Western civilization that began with the Greeks and continued through 2,500 years of great books and great ideas, culminating in twentieth-century progressive liberal democracy, science, and capitalist prosperity.
In the 1960s, this Grand Narrative of the West came under attack. Over the next thirty years, the critics turned this old story into its opposite: a series of anti-narratives about the evils, the failures, and the betrayals of justice that, so they said, constituted Western history.
The victory of Western values at the end of the cold war, the spread of democracy and capitalism, and the worldwide impact of American popular culture have not revived the Grand Narrative in the European and American heartlands of the West. David Gress explains this paradox, arguing that the Grand Narrative of the West was flawed from the beginning: that the West did not begin in Greece and that, in morality and religion, the Greeks were an alien civilization whose contribution was mediated through Rome and Christianity. Furthermore, in assuming a continuity from the Greeks to modern liberalism, we have mistakenly downplayed or rejected everything in between, focusing on the great ideas and the great books rather than on real history with all its ambiguities, conflicts, and contradictions.
The heart of Gress's case for the future of the West is that the New must remember its roots in the Old and seek a synthesis. For as the attacks have demonstrated, the New West cannot stand alone. Its very virtues -- liberty, reason, progress -- grew out of the Old West and cannot flourish when removed from that rich soil. [via]
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The Galleys at Lepanto: Jack Beechingby Jack BeechingISBN 0684179180 (0-684-17918-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens, Monica Kulling, Cindy AlvarezISBN 0679874666 (0-679-87466-6)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Expectations'Book summary:Seven-year-old Pip is an orphan. He lives with his nasty older sister and works as a blacksmiths apprentice. Pip dreams of a better life, but has no idea how to turn his luck around. Then a mysterious stranger decides to make all of Pips dreams come true. Pips lonely life is about to change forever. Will his great expectations be realized? Or will he learn that money and power are worthless without love and friendship? [via]
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A History of the Modern Worldby R. R. Palmer, Joel ColtonISBN 0679432531 (0-679-43253-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of the Modern World'Book summary:8th edition [via]
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Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustby Daniel Jonah GoldhagenISBN 0679772685 (0-679-77268-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'Book summary:In a work that is as authoritative as it is explosive, Goldhagen forces us to revisit and reconsider our understanding of the Holocaust and its perpetrators, demanding a fundamental revision in our thinking of the years between 1933-1945. Drawing principally on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen marshals new, disquieting primary evidence that explains why, when Hitler conceived of the "final solution" he was able to enlist vast numbers of willing Germans to carry it out. A book sure to provoke new discussion and intense debate. [via]
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The Immoralistby Richard Howard, Andre GideISBN 0679741917 (0-679-74191-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Immoralist'Book summary:With today's headlines and talk shows, it takes a lot to shock a reader--certainly more than was required in 1902, when André Gide's The Immoralist was first published. What was seen then as a story of dereliction translates today into a tale of introspection and fierce self-discovery. While traveling to Tunis with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he slowly convalesces, he revels in the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present--to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there."
But this is not the Michel his colleagues knew, nor the man Marceline married, and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Finally, Michel heads south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand, under a clear, directionless sky.
What Gide's story lacks in sensationalism is fulfilled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel's inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." --Joannie Kervran Stangeland [via]
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The Informationby Martin AmisISBN 0679735739 (0-679-73573-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Information'Book summary:Fame, envy, lust, violence, intrigues literary and criminal--they're all here in The Information. How does one writer hurt another writer? This is the question novelist Richard Tull mills over, for his friend Gwyn Barry has become a darling of book buyers, award committees, and TV interviewers, even as Tull himself sinks deeper into the sub-basement of literary failure. The only way out of this predicament, Tull believes, is the plot the demise of Barry.
"With The Information, Amis delivers a portrait of middle-age realignment with more verbal felicity and unbridled reach than [anyone] since Tom Wolfe forged Bonfire of the Vanities."--Houston Chronicle [via]More editions of The Information:
The Jukebox Queen of Maltaby Nicholas RinaldiISBN 0684856123 (0-684-85612-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Jungle Bookby Rudyard Kipling, Kurt WieseISBN 0679436375 (0-679-43637-5)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jungle Book'Book summary:Among the best loved of all childrens classics, Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book is set among a community of animals in the jungles of India, where Kipling was born and grew up. Three of the stories feature the adventures of an abandoned man cub, a boy named Mowgli, who is raised by wolves in the jungle. Other well-known stories in the collection include Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the tale of a heroic mongoose who outwits vicious cobras in order to save his human benefactors, and "Toomai of the Elephants," the story of a ten-year-old elephant-handler.This edition includes black-and-white illustrations by Kurt Wiese and William Henry Drake. [via]
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Keepers of the Keys: A History of the Popes from St. Peter to John Paul IIby Nicholas CheethamISBN 068417863X (0-684-17863-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Keepers of the Keys: A History of the Popes from St. Peter to John Paul II'Book summary:Hardcover Book and Jacket. 340 pages with Bibliography, Chronology, and Index. Over 50 illustrations in eight sections. [via]
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Kidnappedby Robert Louis Stevenson, Rowland HilderISBN 0679436383 (0-679-43638-3)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'Book summary:A sixteen-year-old orphan is kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule. [via]
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The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian Warby Robert B. StrasslerISBN 0684827905 (0-684-82790-5)
Softcover, Free Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War'Book summary:Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is one of the great books in the Western tradition, as well as its first true historical narrative. Editor Robert Strassler has annotated this classic text to make it more accessible to modern readers and added dozens of maps for easy reference. A helpful introduction places Thucydides in proper historical context and a series of short appendices focus on particular aspects of life and war during the period. But the bulk of the book itself, where Thucydides chronicles the long struggle between Athens and Sparta, enjoys an unexpected freshness on these pages--partly due to Strassler's magnificent editorial labors, but mostly because it's a great story resonant with heroes, villains, bravery, desperation, and tragedy. Every library should have a copy of Thucydides in it, especially libraries on military history, and The Landmark Thucydides is without question the best version available. [via]
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The Leopardby Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, Archibald ColquhounISBN 0679731210 (0-679-73121-0)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Leopard'Book summary:In Sicily in 1860, as Italian unification grows inevitable, the smallest of gestures seems dense with meaning and melancholy, sensual agitation and disquiet: "Some huge irrational disaster is in the making." All around him, the prince, Don Fabrizio, witnesses the ruin of the class and inheritance that already disgust him. His favorite nephew, Tancredi, proffers the paradox, "If we want things to stay as they are, they will have to change," but Don Fabrizio would rather take refuge in skepticism or astronomy, "the sublime routine of the skies."
Giuseppe di Lampedusa, also an astronomer and a Sicilian prince, was 58 when he started to write The Leopard, though he had had it in his mind for 25 years. E. M. Forster called his work "one of the great lonely books." What renders it so beautiful and so discomfiting is its creator's grasp of human frailty and, equally, of Sicily's arid terrain--"comfortless and irrational, with no lines that the mind could grasp, conceived apparently in a delirious moment of creation; a sea suddenly petrified at the instant when a change of wind had flung waves into frenzy." The author died at the age of 60, soon after finishing The Leopard, though he did live long enough to see it rejected as unpublishable. [via]
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Man Without Qualitiesby Robert Musil, Burton Pike, Sophie WilkinsISBN 0679767878 (0-679-76787-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Man Without Qualities'Book summary:"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, Kafka, and Svevo. . . . (This translation) is a literay and intellectual event of singular importance."--New Republic. [via]
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Man's Fateby Andre MalrauxISBN 0679725741 (0-679-72574-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Man's Fate'Book summary:Man's Fate was first published in 1933. As a fictional account of the early days of the Chinese Revolution, this novel remains a powerful expression of psychological insight into the spirit of political revolution. From the opening scene, in which Chinese terrorist Ch'en Ta Erh struggles internally over his task of assassinating a sleeping man, Malraux combines gritty action with an elaboration of the existential principle that social change is powered by the actions of individuals. [via]
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Medieval Epicsby William Alfred, W. S. Merwin, Helen M. MustardISBN 0679603018 (0-679-60301-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Merde: The Real French You Were Never Taught at School/1420652by GenevieveISBN 0684818647 (0-684-81864-7)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Merde!: The Real French You Were Never Taught at Schoolby GenevieveISBN 0684854279 (0-684-85427-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Metamorphosis and Other Stories/the Great Short Works of Franz Kafkaby Franz Kafka, Joachim NeugroschelISBN 0684194260 (0-684-19426-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metamorphosis and Other Stories/the Great Short Works of Franz Kafka'Book summary:A new translation of the Kafka classics, The Metamorphosis, The Judgment, The Stoker, and others, preserves the humor and quirks of Kafka's original style, while injecting a freshness intended to appeal to modern readers. [via]
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The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Storiesby Franz Kafka, Joachim NeugroschelISBN 0684800705 (0-684-80070-5)
Softcover, Touchstone Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories'Book summary:Translated by PEN translation award-winner Joachim Neugroschel, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories has garnered critical acclaim and is widely recognized as the preeminent English-language anthology of Kafka's stories. These translations illuminate one of this century's most controversial writers and have made Kafka's work accessible to a whole new generation. This classic collection of forty-one great short works -- including such timeless pieces of modern fiction as "The Judgment" and "The Stoker" -- now includes two new stories, "First Sorrow" and "The Hunger Artist." [via]
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Michael and Natasha: The Love and Life of Michael Ii, the Last of the Romanov Tsarsby Donald Crawford, Rosemary CrawfordISBN 0684834308 (0-684-83430-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Yearsby Felipe Fernandez-ArmestoISBN 0684803615 (0-684-80361-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years'Book summary:An engaging work by a prize-winning historian traces the progress and regress of the world's civilizations over the past thousand years and shows how the capacity of one people to influence another has shifted geographically. 35,000 first printing. [via]
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Millenniumby Fernandez Armesto, Felipe Fernandez-ArmestoISBN 0684825368 (0-684-82536-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Millennium'Book summary:There is simply no other book like it--an Oxford scholar presents a genuine global history, spanning ten centuries and examining and weaving together events and movements in every part of the world. 400 photos and illustrations. [via]
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The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essaysby Albert Camus, Justin O'BrienISBN 0679733736 (0-679-73373-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays'Book summary:PhilosophyReligion/Philosophy [via]
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Notes from Undergroundby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard PevearISBN 067973452X (0-679-73452-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes from Underground'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Dostoevskys most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of mans essentially irrational nature.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]More editions of Notes from Underground:
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On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homoby R. J. Hollingdale, Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Friedrich NietzscheISBN 0679724621 (0-679-72462-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo'Book summary:The great philosopher's major work on ethics, along with ECCE HOMO, Nietzche's remarkable review of his life and works. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. [via]
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Pantagruel Gargantuaby Francois Rabelais, Thomas UrquhartISBN 0679431373 (0-679-43137-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pantagruel Gargantua'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) [via]
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Peoples and Empires : A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Presentby Anthony PagdenISBN 0679640967 (0-679-64096-7)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Peoples and Empires : A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present'Book summary:Peoples and Empires is the story of the great European empires the Roman, the Spanish, the French, the British and their colonies, and the back-and-forth between us and them, culture and nature, civilization and barbarism, the center and the periphery. It relates the history of how conquerors justified conquest, and how colonists and colonized changed each other. Its about how we came to think about world divisions the way we do. Written by the man who has been called the worlds foremost historian of human migration, Peoples and Empires will become a seminal work. [via]
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Peter's Kingdom: Inside the Papal Cityby Jerrold M. PackardISBN 0684184303 (0-684-18430-3)
Hardcover, Scribner
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The Pied Piper of Hamelinby Robert Browning, Kate GreenawayISBN 0679428127 (0-679-42812-7)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin'Book summary:Robert Brownings famous verse retelling of the medieval legend of the Pied Piper is renowned for its humor and vivid wordplay. When the selfish townspeople of Hamelin refuse to pay the piper for spiriting away the hordes of rats that had plagued them, he exacts his revenge by luring away their greatest treasure, the children of the town.
Color reproductions of Kate Greenaways beautiful, delicate watercolor illustrations adorn every page. [via]More editions of The Pied Piper of Hamelin:
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The Plagueby Albert Camus, Stuart GilbertISBN 0679720219 (0-679-72021-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Plague'Book summary:The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it. [via]
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The Poemsby W. B. Yeats, Richard J. FinneranISBN 0684839350 (0-684-83935-0)
Hardcover, Scribner
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poems'Book summary:William Butler Yeats, whom many consider this century's greatest poet, began as a bard of the Celtic Twilight, reviving legends and Rosicrucian symbols. By the early 1900s, however, he was moving away from plush romanticism, his verse morphing from the incantatory rhythms of "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" into lyrics "as cold and passionate as the dawn." At every stage, however, Yeats plays a multiplicity of poetic roles. There is the romantic lover of "When You Are Old" and "A Poet to His Beloved" ("I bring you with reverent Hands / The books of my numberless dreams..."). And there are the far more bitter celebrations of Maud Gonne, who never accepted his love and engaged in too much politicking for his taste: "Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery, or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, / Or hurled the little streets upon the great, / Had they but courage equal to desire?" There is also the poet of conscience--and confrontation. His 1931 "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" ends: "Out of Ireland have we come. / Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carried from my mother's womb / A fanatic heart."
Yeats was to explore several more sides of himself, and of Ireland, before his Last Poems of 1938-39. Many are difficult, some snobbish, others occult and spiritualist. As Brendan Kennelly writes, Yeats "produces both poppycock and sublimity in verse, sometimes closely together." On the other hand, many prophetic masterworks are poppycock-free--for example, "The Second Coming" ("Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...") and such inquiries into inspiration as "Among School Children" ("O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"). And at his best, Yeats extends the meaning of love poetry beyond the obviously romantic: love becomes a revolutionary emotion, attaching the poet to friends, history, and the passionate life of the mind.
Though this edition has been reset and revised, the changes are not as shocking as the 1984 edition, which included 100 extra pages of notes, changes in language and punctuation, and, most significantly, a redefinition of the Last Poems. Richard Finneran has had the courage to reorder the poems according to notes that Yeats made shortly before his death. Readers may be surprised to find that "Under Ben Bulben," the poet's powerful and self-mythologizing epitaph, no longer ends the collection, as it has for more than 30 years. In its place they will discover the wistful "Politics": "How can I, that girl standing there, / My attention fix / On Roman or on Russian / Or on Spanish politics..." Yet devotees of either ending will agree that this is a truly necessary volume--indeed, one of the few. As Seamus Heaney writes, "All readers of Yeats will need this book; when they open it they will feel a surprise like that experienced by St. Brendan the Navigator and his crew when they disembarked upon an island that turned out to be the back of a dormant sea monster." [via]
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Remains of the Dayby Kazuo IshiguroISBN 0679731725 (0-679-73172-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Remains of the Day'Book summary:A must read. [via]
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The Renaissance: A Short Historyby Paul JohnsonISBN 067964086X (0-679-64086-X)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Renaissance: A Short History'Book summary:The Renaissance holds an undying place in the human imagination, and its great heroes remain our own, from Michelangelo and Leonardo to Dante and Montaigne. This period of profound evolution in European thought is credited with transforming the West from medieval to modern; reviving the city as the center of human activity and the acme of civilization; and, of course, producing the most astonishing outpouring of artistic creation the world has ever known. Perhaps no era in history was more revolutionary, and none has been more romanticized. What was it? In The Renaissance, the great historian Paul Johnson tackles that question with the towering erudition and imaginative fire that are his trademarks.
Johnson begins by painting the economic, technological, and social developments that give the period its background. But, as Johnson explains, "The Renaissance was primarily a human event, propelled forward by a number of individuals of outstanding talent, in some cases amounting to genius." It is the human foreground that absorbs most of the book's attention. "We can give all kinds of satisfying explanations of why and when the Renaissance occurred and how it transmitted itself," Johnson writes. "But there is no explaining Dante, no explaining Chaucer. Genius suddenly comes to life, and speaks out of a vacuum. Then it is silent, equally mysteriously. The trends continue and intensify, but genius is lacking." In the four parts that make up the heart of the book--"The Renaissance in Literature and Scholarship," "The Anatomy of Renaissance Sculpture," "The Buildings of the Renaissance," and "The Apostolic Successions of Renaissance Painting"--Johnson chronicles the lives and works of the age's animating spirits. Finally, he examines the spread and decline of the Renaissance, and its abiding legacy. A book of dazzling riches, The Renaissance is a compact masterpiece of the historian's art. [via]More editions of The Renaissance: A Short History:
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Rilke: Poemsby Rainer Maria RilkeISBN 067945098X (0-679-45098-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rilke: Poems'Book summary:The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rilke contains poems from The Book of Images; New Poems; Requiem for a Friend; Poems, 1906-1926; French Poems; The Life of Mary; Sonnets to Orpheus; The Duino Elegies; Letters to a Young Poet; and an index of first lines. [via]
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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000by Paul M. KennedyISBN 0679720197 (0-679-72019-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000'Book summary:About national and international power in the "modern" or Post Renaissance period. Explains how the various powers have risen and fallen over the 5 centuries since the formation of the "new monarchies" in W. Europe. [via]
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The Romance Of Tristan And Iseultby Joseph BedierISBN 0679750169 (0-679-75016-9)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult'Book summary:The story of the Cornish knight and the Irish princess who meet by deception, fall in love by magic, and pursue that love in defiance of heavenly and earthly laws has inspired artists through the centuries. But nowhere has it been retold with greater eloquence and dignity than this edition, which weaves several medieval sources into a seamless whole. [via]
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Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynastyby Derek A. WilsonISBN 0684190184 (0-684-19018-4)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty'Book summary:very good condition book, binding tight, pages clean no ear marking, dust cover in great shape some fading , USPS delivery confirmation free with all shipments [via]
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The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossiby Jacqueline ParkISBN 0684848406 (0-684-84840-6)
Softcover, Scribner
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi'Book summary:This book is a sweeping tale of intrigue and romance set in a time rife with court politics, papal chicanery, religious intolerance, and inviolable social rules. [via]
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A Short History of Byzantiumby John Julius NorwichISBN 0679772693 (0-679-77269-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Short History of Byzantium'Book summary:The Byzantine Empire, one of its most eminent students reminds us, lasted "for a total of 1,123 years and 18 days," which is an astonishing duration matched by only a few others. Condensing Norwich's three-volume history, this overview captures the splendor and strangeness of Byzantine rule, marked by family intrigues, constant warfare, political and religious strife, and personal ambition--a "somewhat lurid background," as Norwich modestly declares in passing. Norwich is a master of the telling vignette. In one, he writes of imperial guards made up of "Anglo-Saxons who had left their country in disgust after Hastings and had taken service with Byzantium." Facing a Norman enemy in southern Italy, these Anglo-Saxons exacted terrible vengeance until the Normans rallied under the leadership of a fearless woman, one Sichelgaita, and massacred their enemy. Norwich's book abounds in similarly surprising and absorbing episodes. [via]
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Swann's Wayby Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence KilmartinISBN 067972009X (0-679-72009-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Swann's Way'Book summary:The transmutation of sensation into sentiment, the ebb tide of memory, waves of emotion such as desire, jealousy, and artistic euphoria--this is the material of this enormous and yet singularly light and translucid work.
--VLADIMIR NABOKOV
In the overture to Swann's Way, the themes of the whole of In Search of Lost Time are introduced, and the narrator's childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator's love for Swann's daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann's passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins.
The final volume of a new, definitive text of A la recherche du temps perdu was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in 1989. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new French editions. [via] 
The Swiss Family Robinsonby J.D. Wyss, Louis John RheadISBN 0679436405 (0-679-43640-5)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelmby Hannah PakulaISBN 0684842165 (0-684-84216-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm'Book summary:A retelling of the life of Princess Victoria, the daughter of Queen Victoria, who married the Crown Prince of Prussia and gave birth to Kaiser Wilhelm, vividly portrays an era of ambition, war, and revolution. 20,000 first printing. [via]
More editions of An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm:
- An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm: ISBN 0684808188 (0-684-80818-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm: ISBN 0684842165 (0-684-84216-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm: ISBN 0684808188 (0-684-80818-8)
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Vanity Fair : A Novel Without a Heroby William Makepeace ThackerayISBN 0679603212 (0-679-60321-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vanity Fair : A Novel Without a Hero'Book summary:"I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D'Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly."
--Robert Louis Stevenson
"The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his heroes, was responding to that craving for action, strength and generosity which is a fact in all periods and all places."
--Andreé Maurois [via]More editions of Vanity Fair : A Novel Without a Hero:
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The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Familyby Ron ChernowISBN 0679743596 (0-679-74359-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family'Book summary:All three of Ron Chernow's books are lengthy and solidly researched, but his background as a journalist shows in his ability here to convey complex material in terms of vivid characters and a well-defined theme. As in his National Book Award-winning business history (The House of Morgan) and his comprehensive biography of John D. Rockefeller (Titan), in The Warburgs Chernow employs marvelously detailed material to trace a single overarching story: the riveting and ultimately tragic odyssey of German Jews. The Warburgs were Hamburg's preeminent banking family from the 18th century until Hitler's Third Reich forced them to hand over their business to Aryans in 1938. But they also boasted among their family members a celebrated art historian (Aby Warburg), a Nobel Prize-winning scientist (Otto Warburg), and the financial angel of the New York City Ballet (Edward Warburg). Two of the "Famous Five" brothers married American women at the turn of the 20th century and became honored members of the Wall Street establishment, so Chernow's lively narrative imparts important U.S. social and economic history as well. But don't let all those fancy credentials intimidate you: The Warburgs features enough flamboyant personalities and high-class gossip to make this as entertaining a read as the latest issue of People magazine. --Wendy Smith [via]
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The Warrior Queensby Antonia FraserISBN 0679728163 (0-679-72816-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Warrior Queens'Book summary:In this panoramic work of history, Lady Antonia Fraser looks at women who led armies and empires: Cleopatra, Isabella of Spain, Jinga Mbandi, Margaret Thatcher, and Indira Gandhi, among others. [via]
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The Waste Land and Other Writingsby T. S. Eliot, Mary KarrISBN 0679641017 (0-679-64101-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Waste Land and Other Writings'Book summary:First published in 1922, "The Waste Land" is T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, and is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot's poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a rich new poetic language, breaking decisively with Romantic and Victorian poetic traditions. Kenneth Rexroth was not alone in calling Eliot "the representative poet of the time, for the same reason that Shakespeare and Pope were of theirs. He articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression."
As influential as his verse, T.S. Eliot's criticism also exerted a transformative effect on twentieth-century letter, and this new edition of The Waste Land and Other Writings includes a selection of Eliot's most important essays.
In her new Introduction, Mary Karr dispels some of the myths of the great poem's inaccessibility and sheds fresh light on the ways in which "The Waste Land" illuminates contemporary experience. [via]More editions of The Waste Land and Other Writings:
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A Year in Provenceby Peter Mayle, Judith ClancyISBN 0679731148 (0-679-73114-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Year in Provence'Book summary:Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône and fleur-de-lis? Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Provençal domesticity.
Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool--its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rhône valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that's just January.
In prose that skips along lightly, Mayle records the highlights of each month, from the aberration of snow in February and the algae-filled swimming pool of March through the tourist invasions and unpredictable renovations of the summer months to a quiet Christmas alone. Throughout the book, he paints colorful portraits of his neighbors, the Provençaux grocers and butchers and farmers who amuse, confuse, and befuddle him at every turn. A Year in Provence is part memoir, part homeowner's manual, part travelogue, and all charming fun. --L.A. Smith [via]
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