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Henry James, author of such classics of fiction as The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove, remains one of America's greatest and most influential writers. This fully annotated selection from his eloquent correspondence allows the writer to reveal himself and the fascinating world in which he lived. James numbered among his correspondents the writers William Dean Howells, Henry Adams, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells and Edith Wharton. These letters provide a rich and fascinating source for James's views on his own works, on the literary craft, on sex, politics and friendship, and collectively constitute, in Philip Horne's own words, James's 'real and best biography'.
When President Clinton sent Richard Holbrooke to Bosnia as America's chief negotiator, he took a gamble that would eventually redefine his presidency. But there was no saying then, at the height of the war, that Holbrooke's mission would succeed. The odds were against it. To End a War is the gripping inside story of the decisive months when, belatedly and reluctantly but ultimately decisively, the United States reasserted its moral authority and leadership and ended Europe's worst war in over half a century. To End a War is a brilliant portrayal of high-wire, high-stakes diplomacy in one of the toughest negotiations of modern times. A classic account of the uses and misuses of American power, its lessons go far beyond the boundaries of the Balkans and provide a powerful argument for continued American leadership in the modern world.
This is a story that begins when Elena McMahon, estranged from her powerful husband in California and covering the 1984 primary campaign for the Washington Post, makes her way to Florida to see her father, Dick McMahon, who does deals. Tracing Elena's fevered trajectory, the narrator makes it clear that this is her version of what happened, not the version offered by the F.B.I. interviews or by Senator Mark Berquist or by the late Ambassador-at-Large Treat Morrison. What happens is a story that shifts quickly from Elena's well-mapped life of expensive people and political fund-raisers to a journey without maps, an investigation into the randomness of history, into intentions spun out of control and gone wrong, arms dealing, covert action, assassination. As connections are made between November 22, 1963, and Iran-Contra and Castro and Cuba, we begin to wee what the narrator/author calls history's subtext. Joan Didion has given us an exploration of menace and ellipsis charged with irony, exciting in its storytelling and intellectual reach; a story that clicks into place only in the final pages.
The Roosevelts is a brilliant and controversial account of twentieth-century American political culture as seen through the lens of its preeminent political dynasty. Peter Collier shows how Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, along with their descendants, scrambled to define the direction that American politics would take. The Oyster Bay clan, influenced by the flamboyant Teddy, was extroverted, eccentric, tradition-bound, and family-oriented. They represented an age of American innocence that would be replaced by Franklin's Hyde Park Roosevelts, who were aloof and cold yet individualistic and progressive. Drawing on extensive interviews and brimming with trenchant anecdotes, this historical portrait casts new light on the pivotal events and personalities that shaped the Roosevelt legacy; from Eleanor's often brutal relationship with her children and Theodore Jr.'s undoing in the 1924 New York gubernatorial race, to the heroism of Teddy' sons during both World Wars and FDR's loveless marriage. The Roosevelts is history at its most penetrating, a crucial work that illuminates the foundations of contemporary American politics.
A Freeborn People is a provocative exploration of the ways in which the political cultures of the elite and of the common people intersected during the seventeenth century. David Underdown shows that the two worlds were not as separate as historians have often thought them to be; English men and women of all social levels had similar expectations about good government and about the traditional liberties available to them under the 'Ancient Constitution'. Throughout the century, both levels of politics were also powerfully influenced by prevailing assumptions about gender roles, and , especially in the years before the civil wars, by fears that the country was threatened by evil forces of satanic inversion. This dramatic reinterpretation of the Stuart period, based on the author's acclaimed 1992 Ford Lectures, begins a new chapter in the continuing debate over the historical meaning of Britain's seventeenth-century revolutions.
Palermo, 1946. Carlo Terzo, a retired military strategist who has never seen combat, is teaching young Salvatore Dragonara military history while Terzo works on his Manual for Strategic Living, in which he hopes to apply the hard lessons of war to daily life. Salvatore is in love with the young and beautiful Fiore, whose mother, the Duchess Mastema, is a rich and cruel landowner. When Terzo and his friends visit the duchess's property, they are caught in a pitched battle between the oppressed peasants and the duchess's hired thugs, and Terzo is forced to put his strategic wisdom to the test. Like Louis de Bernieres's Corelli's Mandolin, Gianni Riotta's charming and provocative romance explores large and small matters of love and war, shifting between the turbulence of post-war sicily and the great battles of ancient and modern history. A bestseller in Italy, Prince of the Clouds is a deeply moving work of fiction, imbued with rare vibrancy and feeling.
These two Lives provide a fascinating contrast. Einhard, who spent twenty-three years in Charlemagne's service, chose to approach his Vita Caroli as a public history and, in beautifully expressed language, recounts Charlemagne's personal life and his achievements in warfare, learning, art, building, and in the skilful administration of the state. Notker the monk's De Carolo Magno is a collection of anecdotes rather than a presentation of historical facts, and his main delight seems to stem from the ingenious ways in which Charlemagne subdued proud or corrupt bishops and other men of power. In these stories, which merge into fiction, Charlemagne is already half-way to becoming the legendary figure of the epics in the later Middle Ages. |
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With more than 300 recipes from 15 countries, From the Lands of figs and Olives is one of the most complete books on the cuisine ever published, providing a wealth of exciting new recipes as well as some of the best traditional ones, carefully tested and adapted for the Western kitchen. From everyday basics such as hummus and falafel, to the familiar kababs, to special-occasion feasts like the Moroccan basteela (layered chicken pie), the food of the Middle East and North Africa is beautifully rendered in words and lavish photographs. Along with a fascinating array of meat recipes, the wide selection of vegetable dishes will provide welcome variety to any vegetarian cook's repetoire.
How did a nation built on a vision of "wide open spaces" come to believe in the private ownership of land? From the heartbreaking saga of a dispossessed Indian tribe, through land-use battles, casinos, takings, and sometimes hilarious, head-to-head collisions between developers and conservationists, Mitchell explores this question in his fascinating and beautifully told story.
James Thackara's epic novel The Book of Kings is set across the entire continent of Europe, as well as North and South America and North Africa, in the years shortly before and during World War II and leading up to the present day. Charged with the goreous ambiance of Hemingway's Paris, and rivaling the scope of Dostoyevsky and Melville, The Book of Kings tracks Europe's drift toward Nazism from 1932, when a quartet of students at the Sorbonne; David and Johannes, both German; Justin, a French/Algerian scholarship student; and Duncan, an American with an attachment to "old" Europe; share an apartment on the rue de Fleurus. James Thackara brilliantly forges the stories of these four men whose lives mirror the larger picture.
A prequel to Katherine Hall Page's award-winning mystery series, The Body in the Big Apple vividly brings to life Faith Fairchild's early days as a single career woman in New York City. With her inimitable candor and curiosity, Faith embarks on the chilling case that begins her investigative career. While enjoying the early success of the Have Faith catering company, Faith runs into her old high school friend Emma Stanstead at an uptown party. As thrilled as she is to see Emma, Faith can't help but notice the distinct trace of fear in her friend's warm greeting. This observation turns out to be well founded. At a clandestine meeting the next day, Faith learns that the beautiful and wealthy Emma is being blackmailed. Faith signs on as a sleuth, determined to get to the bottom of the blackmailing. Soon, almost everyone in the elite world of cocktail parties and charity functions is on her list of possible suspects. Taking on her first case with the fearlessness that would later become her trademark, Faith slips into the underworld of late-eighties Manhattan, traveling between the rarefied Upper East Side and the bohemian Lower East Side to uncover secret after secret from Emma's past. The closer Faith comes to the blackmailer, the more clearly she realizes that her friend's life might be in greater danger than her reputation.
The most famous book of its kind for over seventy years, and a monument to the great philologist and medieval scholar W.W. Skeat, the Etymological Dictionary is an indispensable reference tool for any student of language or literature, and anyone who wishes to discover for himself the origins of the great power of words and their infinite suggestiveness. With over 12,750 entries, and appendices containing English prefixes and suffixes, and listing words which came into English from dozens of other languages and dialects.
Franklin Roosevelt is said to have explained Al Smith, and his own new Deal, with these words: "Practically all the things we've done in the federal government are the things Al Smith did as governor of New York." Smith, who ran for president in 1928, not only set the model for FDR, he also taught America that the promise of the country extends to everyone and no one should be left behind. The story of this trailblazer is the story of America in the twentieth century. A child of second-generation immigrants, a boy self-educated on the streets of the nation's largest city, he went on to become the greatest governor in the history of New York; a national leader and symbol to immigrants, Catholics, and the Irish; and in 1928 the first Catholic major-party candidate for president. He was the man who championed safe working conditions in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. He helped build the Empire State Building. Above all, he was a national model, both for his time and for ours.
It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. When an Oxford don is murdered, it seems at first that the incident can have nothing to do with freat matters of church and state. Who poured the arsenic into the victim's brandy? The evidence points to Sarah Blundy, a servant girl. She confesses to the crime and is sentenced to be hanged. Yet, little is as it seems in this gripping novel, which dramatizes the ways in which witnesses can see the same events yet remember them falsely. Each of four narrators; a Venetian medical student, a young man intent on proving his late father innocent of treason, a cryptographer, and an archivist; fingers a different culprit. Pear's drama masterfully mixes human drama, history lesson, and intellectual puzzle. A major literary event! |
Henry James: A Life in Letters
To End a War
The Last Thing He Wanted
The Roosevelts: An American Saga
A Freeborn People
Prince of the Clouds
Two Lives of Charlemagne
From the Lands of Figs and Olives
Trespassing: an Inquiry into the Private Ownership of Land 
The Book of Kings
The Body in the Big Apple
A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith
An Instance at the FingerpostFor questions about these titles, contact remainders@harvardsquarebookstore.com.
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