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The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World The stories of Alexander Gerschenkron; his great escapes, his vivid wit, his feuds, his flirtations, and his supremely cultured mind; are the stuff of legend. Born in 1904 into the progressive Odessa intelligentsia, Gerschenkron fled the Russian Revolution at sixteen and settled in Vienna, immersing himself in the charged civic and intellectual life of another doomed city. Escaping the Nazis in the late 1930s, he made his way to Massachusetts, evolving from a political exile and social outcast into a man referred to by The New York Times as "Harvard's scholarly model," and by his peers as "The Great Gerschenkron," the Harvard professor who knew the most. Gerschenkron was a dazzling thinker, and his professional theories complemented his personal preoccupations. He was particularly interested in people, and economics, that cleverly overcame the large forces conspiring to hold them back; there were uses he said to adversity. Colleagues admired his vigorous ethical code and considered his personality to be perhaps even more original than his work.
The Shelters of Stone The Shelters of Stone opens as Ayla and Jondalar, along with their animal friends, Wolf, Whinney, and Racer, complete their epic journey across Europe and are greeted by Jondalar's people: the Zelandonii. The people of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii fascinate Ayla. Their clothes, customs, artifacts, even their homes, formed in great cliffs of vertical limestone, are a source of wonder to her. And in the woman Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of the Ninth Cave (and the one who initiated Jondalar into the Gift of Pleasure), she meets a fellow healer with whom to share her knowledge and skills. But as Ayla and Jondalar prepare for the formal mating at the Summer Meeting, there are difficulties. Not all the Zelandonii are welcoming. Some fear Ayla's unfamiliar ways. Some even oppose her mating with Jondalar, and make their displeasure known. Ayla has to call on all her skills, intelligence, knowledge, and instincts to find her way in this complicated society, to prepare for the birth of her child, and to decide whether she will accept new challenges and play a significant role in the destiny of the Zelandonnii. The shelters of Stone is a sweeping story of love and danger, with all the wonderful detail that makes her novels unique. It is a triumphant continuation of the Earth's Children saga that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear.
Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion/ Essays/ 1964-1999 For the past thirty-five years radical historian and activist martin Duberman has fought for a more equitable society. In the process, he has become one of this country's most prominent public intellectuals. Left Out presents a summation of his views on such large matters as race, foreign policy, educational reform, gender and sexuality. Left Out casts a wide net. The book begins with a historical reconsideration of slavery and antislavery, carries through into a discussion of the political struggles of the sixties and seventies and the cultural battles over gender and sexuality in the next two decades, and ends with an evaluation of the current division on the Left between class-based and identity-based politics.
Naked Welcome to the hilarious, strange, elegiac, outrageous world of David Sedaris. In Naked, Sedaris turns the current mania for the memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview; a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.
The Good Life Peter J. Gomes believes that today's college students have it in them to be the greatest generation. The Good Life, a manifesto by the minister at Harvard University, debunks the idea that today's college students are spoiled, materialistic, and morally complacent. Reflecting on 30 years of ministry to undergraduates, Gomes writes, "What has impressed me ... about these young people ... is their moral curiosity, their desire to know, to be, and to do good." Drawing on stories of Gomes's relationships with students, as well as his knowledge of philosophy, theology, and the Bible, The Good Life offers guidance for finding the treasure promised by its title. Some readers will question how much Gomes's personal experience really says about American culture at large (the first chapter begins, "Harvard Yard is never more grand than it is on Commencement Day."). But much of The Good Life is of near universal value, such as Gomes's distinction between "plausible lies" that define the good life in secular culture and the "fantastic truths" that bring true joy. --Michael Joseph Gross
Bandanna Following his highly praised Shining Brow (1993), which was also written as an opera libretto for the American composer Daaron Aric Hagen, Paul Muldoon's Bandanna takes us into very different territory. Its action is set in a small town on the Mexican border; it include illegal immigrants and a corrupt law officer among its dramatis personae; but at its heart is an old-fashioned tale of sexual jealousy and murderous revenge. The drama is powered by a strong emotional thrust, most of it conveyed in the form of popular song, and leads to a shattering climax. Bandanna demonstrates yet again the ever-increasing range of this most versatile of poets. |
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Various Voices Harold Pinter's plays include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, and The Caretaker. They have become seminal works in our literary canon. Pinter has always been reluctant to comment on his work, preferring to let his writing speak for itself. Now, for the first time, Pinter presents his own selections from a prolific body of prose, poetry, and political writings, offering new insight into the man and his literary and dramatic oeuvre. Various Voices comprises a wealth of material and a multiplicity of forms that demonstrate both Pinter's development as a writer and the stylistic precision he so consistently achieves outside the more familiar context of his plays.
Against Love Poetry: Poems A major work of new poems about marriage by one of our most celebrated poets. These powerful poems are written against the perfections and idealizations of traditional love poetry. Against Love Poetry is Eavan Boland's exploration of how time erodes the surfaces of love; the body and memory; while deeply refreshing the source of passion. The man and woman in these poems are husband and wife, custodians of ordinary, aging human love. They are not figures in a love poem. Time is their essential witness, and not their destroyer.
The Cadence of Grass In his first novel since his best-selling Nothing but Blue Skies, and thirty-three years after The Sporting Club established his reputation, Thomas McGuane's trademark combination of high wit, low behavior, and hard-won wisdom has never been on sharper display. This is the story of the Whitelaws, a family whose values are as far-flung as the territory they helped settle, and whose most recent generations have pioneered the landscape of dysfunction. A novel charged with the relentless and often contradictory claims of blood, money, history, and love, The Cadence of Grass is at once a masterpiece of savage comedy and an elegy for what has been lost.
The Archivist Matthias is a man of orderly ways, a librarian whose life rarely strays from its narrow channels. At the library where he works is an archive of letters from the poet T. S. Eliot to an American woman, written during the years Eliot was undertaking Four Quartets and wrestling with problems of marriage and of faith. When a young poet, Roberta, comes to the library wanting to see the letter, sealed from public view until the year 2020, she unsettles Matthias's composure and brings back long-buried memories of a disastrous relationship years earlier. Drawing richly upon the poems of T. S. Eliot and the intellectual and social climate of postwar New York City, this is an unforgettable novel about memory and desire.
Christianity in the 21st Century In the year 2000 and beyond, what will the church be like? What challenges will it face? Will the church be able to provide a strong sense of community? Will it be an ethical force in the lives of Americans? And what role will religion play in politics and in the marketplace? In Christianity in the 21st Century Robert Wuthnow reflects on these provocative questions as he seeks to identify changes that are taking place now in American society that churches must address if they are to remain vital in the future. He foresees five critical areas; institutional, ethical, doctrinal, political, and cultural; in which major challenges will arise, then meets the thorny issues head-on. Drawing on a wide range of firsthand observations and research, he demonstrates that in each of these five areas people of faith have strong reasons to enter the next century with confidence in their religious institutions.
A Trip to the Stars When ten-year-old Loren is whisked away by strangers, he believes he has been mistaken for another child. But his abductor turns out to be a blood relative; he great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel, surrounded by a priceless collection of art and antiquities, and a host of idiosyncratic guests, each in search of the lost treasures of the universe. Finding his own place in Samax's magical world, Loren pieces together the story of his mother, and the complicated history that led to his adoption shortly before she died. But in New York, Loren's aunt, Mala, knows only that he has disappeared. Distraught after her year-long search for him proves furitless, she quits college and enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps at the height of the Vietnam War. On a hospital ship in the South Pacific, her grief over Loren is subsumed by her love for a wounded navigator. Yet just as she opens her heart, he too vanishes, pronounced missing in action on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala begins a restless ten-year journey, moving from island to island around the globe, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life. |
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