Catalog Search Results
Author
Publisher
New York Review Books
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
English
Description
"Why do we need fiction? Why do books need to be printed on paper, copyrighted, read to the finish? Why should a group of aging Swedish men determine what "world" literature is best? Do books change anything? Did they use to? Do we read to challenge our vision of the world or to confirm it? Has novel writing turned into a job like any other? In Where I'm Reading From, the internationally acclaimed novelist and critic Tim Parks ranges over a lifetime...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Pub. Date
2021
Language
English
Description
"A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them. Inspired by Jules Verne's hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University's department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard's Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books...
Author
Publisher
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Pub. Date
[2016]
Language
English
Description
A new collection of critical and personal essays on writing, obsession, and inspiration from National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates. "Why do we write?" With this question, Joyce Carol Oates begins an imaginative exploration of the writing life, and all its attendant anxieties, joys, and futilities, in this collection of seminal essays and criticism. Leading her quest is a desire to understand the source...
Author
Series
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution."--
"As...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Press
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than everFew could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can...
Author
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
Who is Allah? What makes Him unique? And what does He ask of those who submit to His teachings? The God of the Qur'an revises and perfects: His purpose is to make whole what had been corrupted or lost from the practices and scriptures of the earlier Abrahamic religions. Setting passages from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur'an side by side, Miles illuminates what is unique about Allah, His teachings and His temperament, and in doing...
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"Following the success of their anthology, Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, father-and-son team Anthony and Ben Holden, working with Amnesty International, have asked the same revealing question of 100 remarkable women. What poem has moved you to tears? The poems chosen range from the eighth century to today, from Rumi and Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, W.H. Auden to Carol Ann Duffy, Pablo Neruda and Derek Walcott to Imtiaz Dharker and Warsan Shire. Their...
Author
Publisher
Tan Books
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
A look at Karl Marx and how his fascination with the devil influenced Marxism and his political writings. Examines Marx's antagonism to organized religion, particularly the Catholic Church.
A strongly critical look at Karl Marx and how a fascination with the Judeo-Christian devil influenced Marxism and his political writings. Examines Marx's antagonism to organized religion, particularly the Catholic Church, concluding that socialist and communist...
Author
Publisher
Da Capo Press, a member of Perseus Books Group
Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
"In late 1944, under rather mysterious circumstances, aspiring writer Jack Kerouac lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life. Set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin-a character based on the author's recently departed friend Sebastian Sampas-tackles the pressing issues of the day. At home in the working-class town the summer before his sophomore...
Author
Publisher
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
For longtime Conan Doyle fans as well as readers just discovering Sherlock Holmes, a wickedly smart and rollicking journey through the birth, life, and afterlives of popular culture's most beloved sleuth.
More than a century after Sherlock Holmes first capered into our world, what is it about Arthur Conan Doyle's peculiar creation that continues to fascinate us? Dundas provides a history of an idea, a biography of someone who never lived, a tour...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...
Author
Publisher
Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
"A gorgeously unique, fully illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading--how we visualize images from reading works of literature, from one of our very best book jacket designers, himself a passionate reader. What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page--a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In the aftermath of a heartbreaking tragedy, a scholar and writer uses Dante's Divine Comedy to shepherd him through the dark wood of grief and mourning--a rich and emotionally resonant memoir of suffering, hope, love, and the power of literature to inspire and heal the most devastating loss.Where do we turn when we lose everything? Joseph Luzzi found the answer in the opening of The Divine Comedy: "In the middle of our life's journey, I found myself...
Author
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"John Steinbeck is a towering figure in twentieth-century American literature yet he remains one of our least understood writers. This major reevaluation of Steinbeck by Gavin Jones uncovers a timely thinker who confronted the fate of humanity as a species facing climate change, environmental crisis, and a growing divide between the powerful and the marginalized. Driven by insatiable curiosity, Steinbeck's work crossed a variety of borders - between...
Author
Publisher
The Dial Press
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"Katie Roiphe takes an unexpected and liberating approach to the most unavoidable of subjects: death. She investigates the final days of six great thinkers, writers, and artists": Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas, Maurice Sendak and James Slater.--
Author
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
Few biblical books have been as revered and reviled as Revelation. Many hail it as the pinnacle of prophetic vision, the cornerstone of the biblical canon, and, for those with eyes to see, the key to understanding the past, present, and future. Others denounce it as the work of a disturbed individual whose horrific dreams of inhumane violence should never have been allowed into the Bible. Timothy Beal provides a concise cultural history of Revelation...
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