For more than thirteen years, Ethan Ford has been running from his past. One day the police show up at his door - and his life as an irreproachable family man and heroic volunteer fireman begins to come apart.

Jason Elliot's travels in Afghanistan are told with evocative poignancy of a land racked through the centuries by invading armies. Ravaged most recently by the Soviet Army and now by internal strife Afghanistan endures. Whether telling the tale of the Afghan warrior beckoning the rocket-shy author to step out of the cold but protected shadows of a Kabul doorway into the warmth of the sun, or the harrowing tale of a mountainous truck ride under the light of a crescent moon, Elliot shares the beauty and poetic delicacy of a rough but resilient land.

This unique anthology, the first of its kind in fifty years, gathers together all of Melville's tales, as well as a judiciously edited array of his prose poems, literary criticism, letters, lectures, and poetry. Through few realize it today, poetry was Melville's abiding passion; yet his poetry has never received the recognition it deserves, until now.

Left with a small fortune by her parents and the cryptic advice, "it would do to find a passion," the narrator of this mesmerizing novel longs for a child. She conceives her son, Paul, through a loveless one-night stand, and when he's born she surrounds him with a magical world for two; filled with art, games, and bottomless devotion; and she calls him pet names, such as "Birdie" and "Loverboy." She loves him as a mother loves her only child, but soon life beyond their world begins to beckon the school-age Paul, threatening to change everything.

In this groundbreaking and stimulating book, Tricia Guild, the most innovative decorator of her age, turns her attention to life in town. The central theme is her town house in London's Holland Park, which superbly illustrates her new definition of modernity.

Seeing in the Dark is a poetic love letter to the skies and a stirring report on the revolution now sweeping amateur astronomy, in which backyard stargazers linked globally by the Internet are exploring deep space and making discoveries worthy of the professionals. Timothy Ferris invites us all to become stargazers, recounting his lifelong experiences as an enthralled stargazer, and capturing the exquisite experience when ancient starlight strikes the eye and incites the mind.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up a vast market ripe for exploitation. Everybody wants a piece of the action. But how do you sell things to a generation that grew up with just one brand of cola? Enter Tartarsky, the hero of Homo Zapiens, a lowly shop assistant who is hired as an advertising copywriter and discovers a hidden talent for devising home-grown alternatives to Western ads. Tartarsky is propelled into a world of gangsters, spin doctors, and drug dealers, fueled by cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms. But as his fortunes soar, reality soon loosens its grip. Who is the boss, man or his television set?

In the past three decades, the authors maintain, the university has turned outward, becoming more involved with social and world issues. The Kellers relate the events of each era in scrupulous detail; the personal and departmental minutiae will no doubt interest those who share the authors' view of Harvard as "one of the most illustrious institutional adornments of American life."