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Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
By Susannah Fullerton. 2013
“An intelligent and generous companion to Pride and Prejudice: its author and her era, characters, language, reception, [and] adaptations.” —Sydney…
Morning HeraldPride and Prejudice has a fair claim to being the world’s favorite novel. Read and studied from Cheltenham to China, it’s been translated into many languages and made into countless films. This book, from longtime Jane Austen Society of Australia president Susannah Fullerton, describes how Austen wrote her masterpiece, its lukewarm initial reception, and its evolving popularity. As well as discussing sex-symbol Mr. Darcy, charming heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and the superb range of comic characters, she discusses the novel’s style: its wicked irony, brilliant structuring, and revolutionary use of the technique known as “free indirect speech.”Readers through the years have both loved the book and hated it, and the reactions of writers, politicians, artists, and explorers can tell us as much about the reader as they do about the book itself. Pride and Prejudice has morphed into many strange and interesting forms: screen adaptations, sequels, prequels, and updates. Happily Ever After explores these—and the wilder shores of zombies, porn, dating manuals, T-shirts, tourism, and therapy.“[The illustrations are] as much fun as the text.” —Star-Tribune“An enjoyable and loyally enthusiastic tribute . . . contains thoughtful plot and character summaries useful for orienting the school student, and is full of trivia for Austen enthusiasts (the term ‘Janeites’ was coined in 1884).” —Times Literary SupplementThe Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1966–1974: 1966–1974 (The Diaries of Anaïs Nin #7)
By Anaïs Nin. 2014
The seventh and final volume of the author&’s &“remarkable&” diary is filled with the reflections of an older woman as…
she journeys through the world (Los Angeles Times). &“One of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters&” ends as the author wished: not with her last two years of pain but at a joyous moment on a trip to Bali (Los Angeles Times). As she ages, Anaïs Nin reflects on how the deeply personal and introspective nature of her writings intertwines with her public life and her connections with other people, including her devoted readers. &“One of the most extraordinary and unconventional writers of [the twentieth] century.&” —The New York Times Book Review Edited and with a preface by Gunther StuhlmannThe Multimedia Handbook
By Tony Cawkell. 1996
The Multimedia Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the wide range of uses of multimedia. The first part of the…
book introduces the technology for the non-specialist. Part Two covers multimedia applications and markets. Tony Cawkell details the huge array of authoring software which is now available, as well as the distribution of multimedia data by telephone, cable, satellite or radio communications. There is an extensive bibliography, a glossary of technical terms and acronyms and a full index.The Viceroy's Artist: A Novel
By Anindyo Roy. 2023
Somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas, a sixty-two-year-old English painter falls off his sketching stool. Overweight, asthmatic and prone…
to attacks of epilepsy, Edward Lear is nevertheless on a mission – to paint the mighty Kanchenjunga for his patron, the Viceroy of India.Lear is an oddity, an outsider, simultaneously fascinated and repelled by the world the British have built in India. Even as he battles the fatigue of travelling on pony carts, jampans and trains, Lear reflects on those who run the vast machinery of the Empire – administrators and missionaries, kitmutgars and kamsamahs.Duelling pompous British officers with his wry humour, Lear turns his ear to the polyphony of local languages to compose nonsense poetry with a uniquely Indian flavour. Woven into this vivid account are flashes from Lear's own life – deep-seated fears stemming from an unhappy childhood and the memory of unfulfilled adult relationships. Inspired by the journals of this celebrated artist and poet, Anindyo Roy brings to life Lear's little-known Indian sojourns. In lyrical prose, and occasional verse, The Viceroy's Artist paints a picture of an exceptional man who inspires by his unhindered imagination, curiosity and compassion for the world.Never the Hope Itself: Love and Ghosts in Latin America and Haiti
By Gerry Hadden. 2011
A former NPR correspondent takes you into his own ghost-filled life as he reports on a region in turmoil. Gerry…
Hadden was training to become a Buddhist monk when opportunity came knocking: the offer of a dream job as NPR’s correspondent for Latin America. Arriving in Mexico in 2000 during the nation’s first democratic transition of power, he witnesses both hope and uncertainty. But after 9/11, he finds himself documenting overlooked yet extraordinary events in a forgotten political landscape. As he reports on Colombia’s drug wars, Guatemala’s deleterious emigration, and Haiti’s bloody rebellion, Hadden must also make a home for himself in Mexico City, coming to terms with its ghosts and chasing down the love of his life, in a riveting narrative that reveals the human heart at the center of international affairs.Not Just Jane: Rediscovering Seven Amazing Women Writers Who Transformed British Literature
By Shelley DeWees. 2016
“Not Just Jane restores seven of England’s most fascinating and subversive literary voices to their rightful places in history. Shelley…
DeWees tells each woman writer’s story with wit, passion, and an astute understanding of the society in which she lived and wrote.”—Dr. Amanda Foreman, New York Times bestselling author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire Jane Austen and the Brontës endure as British literature’s leading ladies (and for good reason)—but were these reclusive parsons’ daughters really the only writing women of their day? A feminist history of literary Britain, this witty, fascinating nonfiction debut explores the extraordinary lives and work of seven long-forgotten authoresses, and asks: Why did their considerable fame and influence, and a vibrant culture of female creativity, fade away? And what are we missing because of it?You’ve likely read at least one Jane Austen novel (or at least seen a film one). Chances are you’ve also read Jane Eyre; if you were an exceptionally moody teenager, you might have even read Wuthering Heights. English majors might add George Eliot or Virginia Woolf to this list…but then the trail ends. Were there truly so few women writing anything of note during late 18th and 19th century Britain?In Not Just Jane, Shelley DeWees weaves history, biography, and critical analysis into a rip-roaring narrative of the nation’s fabulous, yet mostly forgotten, female literary heritage. As the country, and women’s roles within it, evolved, so did the publishing industry, driving legions of ladies to pick up their pens and hit the parchment. Focusing on the creative contributions and personal stories of seven astonishing women, among them pioneers of detective fiction and the modern fantasy novel, DeWees assembles a riveting, intimate, and ruthlessly unromanticized portrait of female life—and the literary landscape—during this era. In doing so, she comes closer to understanding how a society could forget so many of these women, who all enjoyed success, critical acclaim, and a fair amount of notoriety during their time, and realizes why, now more than ever, it’s vital that we remember.Rediscover Charlotte Turner Smith, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Robinson, Catherine Crowe, Sara Coleridge, Dinah Mulock Craik, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950s New York
By Anne Bernays, Justin Kaplan. 2002
Novelist Anne Bernays and biographer Justin Kaplan -- both native New Yorkers -- came of age in the 1950s, when…
the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Written in two separate voices, Back Then is thecandid, anecdotal account of these two children of privilege -- one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side -- pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books.Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on the transformative years in the lives of two young people and New York City. Marked by their youthful passions, this double memoir marries the authors' distinct literary styles with a riveting narrative that captures the density and texture of private, social, and working life in the 1950s.Insurrections of the Mind: 100 Years of Politics and Culture in America
By Franklin Foer. 2014
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of The New Republic, an extraordinary anthology of essays culled from the archives of the…
acclaimed and influential magazineFounded by Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann in 1914 to give voice to the growing progressive movement, The New Republic has charted and shaped the state of American liberalism, publishing many of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers.Insurrections of the Mind is an intellectual biography of this great American political tradition. In seventy essays, organized chronologically by decade, a stunning collection of writers explore the pivotal issues of modern America. Weighing in on the New Deal; America’s role in war; the rise and fall of communism; religion, race, and civil rights; the economy, terrorism, technology; and the women’s movement and gay rights, the essays in this outstanding volume speak to The New Republic’s breathtaking ambition and reach. Introducing each article, editor Franklin Foer provides colorful biographical sketches and amusing anecdotes from the magazine’s history. Bold and brilliant, Insurrections of the Mind is a celebration of a cultural, political, and intellectual institution that has stood the test of time.Contributors include: Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Philip Roth, Pauline Kael, Michael Lewis, Zadie Smith, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, James Wolcott, D. H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes, Langston Hughes, John Updike, and Margaret Talbot.The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling
By Natalie Robins. 2017
A biography of a famed 20th century, Jewish New York author and literary and social critic who struggled in the shadow…
of her husband. Diana Trilling&’s life with Columbia University professor and literary critic Lionel Trilling was filled with secrets, struggles, and betrayals, and she endured what she called her &“own private hell&” as she fought to reconcile competing duties and impulses at home and at work. She was a feminist, yet she insisted that women&’s liberation created unnecessary friction with men, asserting that her career ambitions should be on equal footing with caring for her child and supporting her husband. She fearlessly expressed sensitive, controversial, and moral views, and fought publicly with Lillian Hellman, among other celebrated writers and intellectuals, over politics. Diana Trilling was an anticommunist liberal, a position often misunderstood, especially by her literary and university friends. And finally, she was among the &“New Journalists&” who transformed writing and reporting in the 1960s, making her nonfiction as imaginative in style and scope as a novel. The first biographer to mine Diana Trilling&’s extensive archives, Natalie Robins tells a previously undisclosed history of an essential member of New York City culture at a time of dynamic change and intellectual relevance.&“Meticulously researched and documented, the biography is a detailed foray into the lives of a generation of writers and into the mind of literary critic, writer and intellectual Diana Trilling.&”—Ms.&“Robins does a solid job of rehabilitating a significant literary and cultural figure of the 20th century, a woman who spent much of her career in her husband&’s shadow.&”—Kirkus ReviewsFor all fans of John Hughes and his hit films such as National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, and Home Alone,…
comes Jason Diamond’s hilarious memoir of growing up obsessed with the iconic filmmaker’s movies—a preoccupation that eventually convinces Diamond he should write Hughes’ biography and travel to New York City on a quest that is as funny as it is hopeless.For as long as Jason Diamond can remember, he’s been infatuated with John Hughes’ movies. From the outrageous, raunchy antics in National Lampoon’s Vacation to the teenage angst in The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink to the insanely clever and unforgettable Home Alone, Jason could not get enough of Hughes’ films. And so the seed was planted in his mind that it should fall to him to write a biography of his favorite filmmaker. It didn’t matter to Jason that he had no qualifications, training, background, platform, or direction. Thus went the years-long, delusional, earnest, and assiduous quest to reach his goal. But no book came out of these years, and no book will. What he did get was a story that fills the pages of this unconventional, hilarious memoir. In Searching for John Hughes, Jason tells how a Jewish kid from a broken home in a Chicago suburb—sometimes homeless, always restless—found comfort and connection in the likewise broken lives in the suburban Chicago of John Hughes’ oeuvre. He moved to New York to become a writer. He started to write a book he had no business writing. In the meantime, he brewed coffee and guarded cupcake cafes. All the while, he watched John Hughes movies religiously.Though his original biography of Hughes has long since been abandoned, Jason has discovered he is a writer through and through. And the adversity of going for broke has now been transformed into wisdom. Or, at least, a really, really good story. In other words, this is a memoir of growing up. One part big dream, one part big failure, one part John Hughes movies, one part Chicago, and one part New York. It’s a story of what comes after the “Go for it!” part of the command to young creatives to pursue their dreams—no matter how absurd they might seem at first.The problem by most lights is overwhelming: at least 5,000 children live on the streets of Uganda&’s capital city of Kampala.…
Some forget the names of their villages. The youngest may not know the names of their parents. But Gladys Kalibbala—part journalist, part detective, part Good Samaritan—does not hesitate to dive into difficult or even dangerous situations to aid a child. Author of a newspaper column called &“Lost and Abandoned,&” she is a resource that police and others turn to when they stumble across a stranded kid with a hidden history. Jessica Yu delivers an acutely observed story of this hardnosed and warmhearted woman, the children she helps, and the twists of fate they experience together. The subplot of Gladys&’s garden—her precarious dream of providing a home and livelihood for her vulnerable charges—adds fascinating depth. Garden of the Lost and Abandoned chronicles one woman&’s altruism, both ordinary and extraordinary, in a way that is impossible to forget, and impossible not to take to heart.My Mistake
By Daniel Menaker. 2012
A New York Times Book Review Editors&’ Choice &“At the epicenter of literary New York, Menaker is an irreverent…
guide to the publishing world&’s inner workings . . . His own journey, compelled by his self-knowledge and sense of humor, elevates this memoir into more than witty chatter.&” — Chicago Tribune &“Impossible to resist.&” — Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad In these pages Daniel Menaker brings us a &“ruefully funny insider&’s tour of the publishing world&” (Vogue.com). Haunted by a self-doubt sharpened by his role in his brother&’s unexpected death, he offers wry, hilarious observations on publishing, child-rearing, parent-losing, and the writing life. But as time passes, we witness a moving, thoughtful meditation on years well lived, well read, and well spent. Full of mistakes, perhaps. But full of effort, full of accomplishment, full of life. &“Tender, smart and witty, this book is truly unputdownable.&” — Real Simple &“Energetic and exhilarating . . . [Menaker&’s] clever, fast-paced prose makes you stop and think and wonder.&” — New York Times Book Review &“At once jaunty and erudite . . . The writing simply shines.&” — San Francisco ChronicleMelville in Love: The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
By Michael Shelden. 2016
A new account of Herman Melville and the writing of Moby-Dick, written by a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Biography and…
based on fresh archival research, which reveals that the anarchic spirit animating Melville’s canonical work was inspired by his great love affair with a shockingly unconventional married woman.Herman Melville’s epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author’s rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his “wicked book.” Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.In Melville in Love Pulitzer Prize-finalist Michael Shelden sheds light on this literary mystery to tell a story of Melville’s passionate, obsessive, and clandestine affair with a married woman named Sarah Morewood, whose libertine impulses encouraged and sustained Melville’s own. In his research, Shelden discovered unexplored documents suggesting that, in their shared resistance to the “iron rule” of social conformity, Sarah and Melville had forged an illicit and enduring romantic and intellectual bond. Emboldened by the thrill of courting Sarah in secret, the pleasure of falling in love, and the excitement of spending time with literary luminaries—like Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Nathaniel Hawthorne—Melville found the courage to take the leap from light works of adventure to the hugely brilliant, utterly subversive Moby-Dick.Filled with the rich detail and immense drama of Melville’s secret life, Melville in Love tells the gripping story of how one of our greatest novelists found his muse.Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet
By Daisy Dunn. 2016
A vivid narrative that recreates the life of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome’s first modern” poet, and follows a young man’s…
journey through a world filled with all the indulgences and sexual excesses of the time, from doomed love affairs to shrewd political maneuvering and backstabbing—an accessible, appealing look at one of history’s greatest poets.Born to one of Verona’s leading families, Catullus spent most of his young adulthood in Rome, mingling with the likes of Caesar and Cicero and chronicling his life through his poetry. Famed for his lyrical and subversive voice, his poems about his friends were jocular, often obscenely funny, while those who crossed him found themselves skewered in raunchy verse, sudden objects of hilarity and ridicule. These bawdy poems were disseminated widely throughout Rome. Many of his poems recall his secret longstanding affair with the seductive older Clodia.While Catullus and Clodia made love in the shadows, the whole of Italy was quaking as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus forged a doomed alliance for power. During these tumultuous years, Catullus increasingly turned to darker subject matter, and he finally composed his greatest work of all—a poem about the decoration on a bedspread—which forms the heart of this biography, a work of beauty that will achieve immortality and make Catullus a legend.Catullus’ Bedspread includes an 8-page color insert.Jimmy Neurosis: A Memoir
By James Oseland. 2019
A Lambda Literary Award FinalistFrom a celebrated figure of the food world comes a poignant, provocative memoir about being young…
and gay during the 1970s punk revolution in AmericaLong before James Oseland was a judge on Top Chef Masters, he was a teenage rebel growing up in the pre–Silicon Valley, California, suburbs, yearning for a taste of something wild. Diving headfirst into the churning mayhem of the punk movement, he renamed himself Jimmy Neurosis and embarked on a journey into a vibrant underground world populated by visionary musicians and artists. In a quest that led him from the mosh pits of San Francisco to the pop world of Andy Warhol’s Manhattan, he learned firsthand about friendship of all stripes, and what comes of testing the limits—both the joyous glories and the unanticipated, dangerous consequences. With humor and verve, Oseland brings to life the effervescent cocktail of music, art, drugs, and sexual adventure that characterized the end of the seventies. Through his account of how discovering his own creativity saved his life, he tells a thrilling and uniquely American coming-of-age story.The unforgettable true story of two married journalists on an island-hopping run for their lives across the Pacific after the…
Fall of Manila during World War II—a saga of love, adventure, and danger.On New Year’s Eve, 1941, just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were bombing the Philippine capital of Manila, where journalists Mel and Annalee Jacoby had married just a month earlier. The couple had worked in China as members of a tight community of foreign correspondents with close ties to Chinese leaders; if captured by invading Japanese troops, they were certain to be executed. Racing to the docks just before midnight, they barely escaped on a freighter—the beginning of a tumultuous journey that would take them from one island outpost to another. While keeping ahead of the approaching Japanese, Mel and Annalee covered the harrowing war in the Pacific Theater—two of only a handful of valiant and dedicated journalists reporting from the region.Supported by deep historical research, extensive interviews, and the Jacobys’ personal letters, Bill Lascher recreates the Jacobys’ thrilling odyssey and their love affair with the Far East and one another. Bringing to light their compelling personal stories and their professional life together, Eve of a Hundred Midnights is a tale of an unquenchable thirst for adventure, of daring reportage at great personal risk, and of an enduring romance that blossomed in the shadow of war.An accomplished former ghostwriter and book researcher who worked with Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and Hillary Clinton goes…
behind-the-scenes of the national’s capital to tell the story of how she survived the exciting, but self-important and self-promoting world of the Beltway.Barbara Feinman Todd has spent a lifetime helping other people tell their stories. In the early 1980s, she worked for Bob Woodward, first as his research assistant in the paper’s investigative unit and, later, as his personal researcher for Veil, his bestselling book about the CIA. Next she helped Carl Bernstein, who was struggling to finish his memoir, Loyalties. She then assisted legendary editor Ben Bradlee on his acclaimed autobiography A Good Life, and she worked with Hillary Clinton on her bestselling It Takes a Village. Feinman Todd’s involvement with Mrs. Clinton made headlines when the First Lady neglected to acknowledge her role in the book’s creation, and later, when a disclosure to Woodward about the Clinton White House appeared in one of his books. These events haunted Feinman Todd for the next two decades until she confronted her past and discovered something startling.Revealing what it’s like to get into the heads and hearts of some of Washington’s most compelling and powerful figures, Feinman Todd offers authentic portraits that go beyond the carefully polished public personas that are the standard fare of the Washington publicity factory. At its heart, Pretend I’m Not Here is a funny and forthcoming story of a young woman in a male-dominated world trying to find her own voice while eloquently speaking for others.Pops: Learning to Be a Son and a Father
By Craig Melvin. 2021
A deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, addiction, and resiliency from Craig Melvin, news anchor of NBC’s Today show. For Craig Melvin…
this book is more an investigation than a memoir. It's an opportunity to better understand his father; to interrogate his family's legacy of addiction and despair but also transformation and redemption; and to explore the challenges facing all dads--including Craig himself, a father of two young children.Growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, Craig had a fraught relationship with his father. Lawrence Melvin was a distant, often absent parent due to his drinking as well as his job working the graveyard shift at a postal facility. Watching sports and tinkering on Lawrence's beloved (but unreliable) 1973 Pontiac LeMans were two ways father and son connected, but as Lawrence's drinking spiraled out of control, their bond was stretched to the breaking point. Fortunately, Craig had a loving, fiercely protective mother who held the family together. He also had a series of surrogate father figures in his life--uncles, teachers, workplace mentors--who by their examples helped him figure out the kind of person and father he wanted to be.Pops is the story of all these men--and of the inspiring fathers Craig has met reporting his "Dads Got This Series" on the Today show. Pops is also the story of Craig and Lawrence Melvin's long journey to reconciliation and understanding, and of how all these experiences and encounters have informed Craig's understanding of his own role as a dad.Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms
By Carmela Ciuraru. 2011
A literary history of eighteen authors from the 19th and 20th centuries and their famous pseudonyms.Exploring the fascinating stories of…
more than a dozen authorial impostors across several centuries and cultures, Carmela Ciuraru plumbs the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of fame.Only through the protective guise of Lewis Carroll could a shy, half-deaf Victorian mathematician at Oxford feel free to let his imagination run wild. The three weird sisters from Yorkshire—the Brontës—produced instant bestsellers that transformed them into literary icons, yet they wrote under the cloak of male authorship. Bored by her aristocratic milieu, a cigar-smoking, cross-dressing baroness rejected the rules of propriety by having sexual liaisons with men and women alike, publishing novels and plays under the name George Sand. Highly accessible and engaging, these provocative stories reveal the complex motives of writers who harbored secret identities—sometimes playfully, sometimes with terrible anguish and tragic consequences. Part detective story, part exposé, part literary history, Nom de Plume is an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity.Praise for Nom de PlumeA San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year“Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights into . . . the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature.” —Elif Batuman“A richly documented literary excursion into the inner, secret lives of some of our favorite writers.” —Joyce Carol Oates“You are on the second to last page . . . and wishing you weren’t because this book is such great fun.” —San Francisco Chronicle“[An] engrossing, well-paced literary history. . . . It’s biography on the quick, and done well.” —BookforumThe Last Englishman: The Life of J.L. Carr
By Byron Rogers. 2003
A biography of the English educator, dictionary writer, and celebrated author of A Month in the Country.J.L. Carr was the…
most English of Englishmen: headmaster of a Northamptonshire school, cricket enthusiast and campaigner for the conservation of country churches. But he was also the author of half a dozen utterly unique novels, including his masterpiece, A Month in the Country, and a publisher of some of the most eccentric—and smallest—books ever printed.Byron Roger’s acclaimed biography reveals an elusive, quixotic and civic-minded individual with an unswerving sympathy for the underdog, who led his schoolchildren through the streets to hymn the beauty of the cherry trees and paved his garden path with the printing plates for his hand-drawn maps, and whose fiction is quite remarkably autobiographical. Much more than the life of a thoroughly decent man, The Last Englishman is a comic and touching anatomy of the best kind of Englishness.Praise for The Last Englishman“A miniature masterpiece of social history.” —Simon Jenkins, The Times (UK)“A fine biography. . . . Rogers has done a wonderful job.” —Daily Telegraph (UK)“Conveying the significance of the author of Carr’s Dictionary of Extraordinary Cricketers to anyone unfamiliar with his books, or what may now fairly be called his myth, was always going to be difficult. Somehow, Roger’s has managed it.” —D. J. Taylor, Sunday Times (UK)“A great success, and more life-affirming than F. R. Leavis’s entire output.” —Independent on Sunday (UK)