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“John Vine says he wrote this book for people who have been newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Well, I was diagnosed 24 years ago, and I still learned something new on every page.”—Michael Kinsley, Vanity Fair columnist and author of Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide

Here is the book that John Vine and his wife, Joanne, wish they could have consulted when John was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease—a nontechnical, personal guide written from the patient’s perspective. Relying on his experiences over the past 12 years, John writes knowledgeably about all aspects of the disease. John also interviewed other Parkinson’s patients and their partners, whose stories and advice he includes throughout the book.

“I wish we’d had John Vine’s book when my brother-in-law was diagnosed. The book is highly informative, unflinchingly honest, and reassuringly optimistic. It’s just what the doctor should have ordered.”—Cokie Roberts, best-selling author and political commentator on ABC News and NPR

“John Vine details, in a compelling and accessible way, his experience with Parkinson’s disease. His book is an extraordinary guide to living successfully with Parkinson’s, and a must read for all who want to better understand the condition. Although diagnosed with Parkinson’s, my father lived an active and productive life until his death at age 94. As the book makes clear, while each patient’s journey is unique, common approaches are indispensable in treating the symptoms of the disease.”—Eric H. Holder, Jr. served as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States from 2009 to 2015

“John Vine has written the best primer I’ve ever read for newly diagnosed Parkinson’s patients and their families. It helps them cope with the shock of diagnosis, gives them (jargon-free) the scientific basics they need to know, describes the symptoms they may experience (making clear that every case is different) and catalogs the resources available to navigate living with Parkinson’s. John humanizes the book by describing his own experience and that of 22 other patients and their partners. I’d urge every neurologist to have copies of Vine’s primer on hand to help new PD on their journey forward.”—Morton Kondracke, author of Saving Milly: Love, Politics and Parkinson’s Disease and a member of the Founders' Council of the Michael J. Fox Foundation

“My husband has PD, and I devoured this book. It’s wise, wonderfully readable, and, above all, helpful. Since John Vine has PD, he speaks with great authority about the challenges, both physical and psychological. If you have Parkinson’s, live with someone who has it, or just know someone battling the disease, A Parkinson’s Primer is for you.”—Lesley Stahl, award-winning television journalist on the CBS News program 60 Minutes

“This is a remarkable book describing the personal experiences of many individuals, including the author, living with Parkinson’s disease. It captures the fact that although there are many possible symptoms in this disease, each person experiences different symptoms and copes with them in various ways. The thoughtful and insightful comments and coping strategies should be helpful for persons with PD, and their partners, regardless of the stage of the disease.”—Stephen Grill, MD, PhD, Director of the Parkinson’s & Movement Disorders Center of Maryland

John M. Vine is a lawyer at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC, where he is the senior member and former head of the firm’s employee benefits group. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2004.

"The happiness of childhood is the Golden Age, and the recollection of it has power to move the old man's heart with pleasure and with pain. Happy the man who once possessed it and is able to recall the memory of it in later years!"

Thus Sergei Aksakov recalls the "magic world" of youth, as he portrays the delights and tumults of Russian country life at the turn of the 18th century.

In 1856 at the age of 64, Aksakov sat down to write the story of his long-ago student life. A Russian Schoolboy is the result. As the older man thinks back to that time more than fifty years earlier, unbidden memories come to him, some painful and others sweet. Under the spell of Aksakov's writing, we can imagine we are listening to the child himself as he suffers the anguished separation from his mother or thrills to his developing capacities as a student. We grow fond of the boy and dearly appreciate the man—and because these two happily share the stage, A Russian Schoolboy will please readers of all ages.

Acclaimed for his realistic prose, Sergei Aksakov (1791–1859) captured the essence of Russian life in his trilogy of reminiscences—A Russian Gentleman, Years of Childhood, and A Russian Schoolboy. He also wrote literary sketches, and appreciations of hunting and fishing. Nikolai Gogol, a friend and correspondent, once wrote to Aksakov: "Your birds and fishes are more real than my men and women."

“One of the finest memoirs of behind-the-lines work during the Second World War. Honest, powerful, and authentic.”—Dr. Roderick Bailey, SOE author and historian

A War of Shadows is W. Stanley Moss’s sequel to his classic Ill Met by Moonlight. A former British operative who, along with Patrick Leigh Fermor, once kidnapped a Nazi general (as told in Ill Met), Moss offers this rousing account of his World War II adventures as an agent in Crete, Macedonia, and the Siamese jungle—rife with intrigue: ambushes, double-dealing, and back-door missions.

“Billy Moss was one of those daring adventurers, the like of which we no longer see. This book, reissued after 52 years, tells of his further exploits in Crete, Macedonia, and Siam—the story of a man of initiative and great courage.”—Hugo Vickers, author and historian

“The romance and adventure of resistance operations, with splendid companions, the spates of violence and maddening hitches to plans presumably perfected, the nuances of bravery, courage, heroism—and fear—again this is one of the most personally descriptive reportings of one phase of the past war.”—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Ill Met by Moonlight:

“The remarkable story of how [Moss] and a fellow British commando [Patrick Leigh Fermor] infiltrated a Nazi stronghold in Crete, kidnapped a German general, and spirited him back to Egypt. Though based on fact, this could rival any best-selling espionage novel.”—Library Journal

“This amazing story is marvelously well told, in an exuberant, racing style that makes it impossible to lay the book aside once the first page is read.”—San Francisco Chronicle

W. Stanley Moss was a World War II hero and later a best-selling author. He traveled extensively after the war, notably to Antarctica with a British Antarctic Expedition. Eventually he settled in Kingston, Jamaica.

"Intellectual reveling at its finest."—Booklist

"A delightful and curious book about borders, boundaries, fences, and lines."—Slate

"A thoughtful and entertaining look at the demarcations in our lives."—Times Dispatch

After years of crossing borders in search of new birds and new landscapes, Peter Cashwell's exploration of lines between states, between time zones, and between species led him to consider the lines that divide genders, seasons, musical genres, and just about every other aspect of human life. His conclusion: Most had something in common—they were largely imaginary.

Nonetheless, Along Those Lines, a tour of the tangled world of delineation, attempts to address how we distinguish right from wrong, life from death, Democrat from Republican—and how the lines between came to be. Part storyteller, part educator, and part wise guy, Cashwell is unafraid to take readers off the beaten path—into the desert vistas of the Four Corners, the breeding ground of an endangered warbler, or the innards of a grand piano. Something amusing and/or insightful awaits at every stop.

And he's not alone. The tricks and treats of the human instinct for drawing lines are revealed in interviews with experts of all sorts. Learn about the use of the panel border from a Hugo Award–winning comics creator. Trace the edge of extinction with the rediscoverer of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Get the truth about the strike zone from an umpire who holds a degree in physics.

You'll begin to see even the most familiar lines in a whole new way.

"From music to politics to gender splits, the things that divide us also tell us quite a bit about who we are, and how we got there. You couldn't ask for a better guide than Peter Cashwell, whose eloquent musings on the lines we draw—and sometimes erase—is illuminating, fascinating, and impossible to put down."—Caroline Leavitt

"If, as Paul Klee told his students at the Bauhaus, a line is a dot that goes for a 'walk,' then Along Those Lines is a beguiling and personal treasury of dots on hikes, treks, and walkabouts. To accept this invitation to meander through the author's territory of boundaries, borders, definitions, demarcations, and delineations is to be rewarded with surprising answers to questions you didn't know you had until now, about everything under the sun, from strike zones, musical genres, and Gerrymandering to birding, gender, and how different religions define the lines between right and wrong. Peter Cashwell's appreciation of the boundaries that create our world is a pure delight." —Katharine Weber

"As if by magic, Cashwell gives us the power to see the invisible lines we live by and—perhaps more importantly—the permission to smudge, erase, dissolve, or redraw the lines that don’t serve us well. Along Those Lines is an imaginative and well-researched book full of Cashwell's trademark imagination and humor.* Even the most edgy, rule-bound readers will come away enlightened and liberated. [*His footnotes alone could open Saturday Night Live.]"—Maria Mudd Ruth

"Peter Cashwell has written a brilliant, mind-bending saga of delineation as a supreme act of imagination, as a noble and often comic attempt to confine the raggedy universe within a geometer’s desperate dreams of precision."—Will Blythe

Peter Cashwell dabbled in everything from radio announcing to improv comedy before settling into his career as a writer and teacher. His lifelong fascination with birds and language eventually inspired him to write The Verb 'To Bird', a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection (Paul Dry Books, 2003). Since 1995, Cashwell has taught at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

"This inspiring guide includes places everyone means to go to some day, all described with the usual clarity of the author of On Writing Well."—The New York Times

"A fascinating take on 'the search for memory' and how certain places have come to symbolize deep American principles."—Kirkus Reviews

Join William Zinsser as he visits sixteen of our nation's most treasured historic sites—unlearning cliched assumptions and rediscovering fundamental truths about America. American Places—and the ideals that Zinsser discovers these places represent—will never go out of fashion.

"Speaking across the centuries with stone and symbol, narrative and myth, America's iconic places remind us of our anchoring principles and best intentions. 'This is where we started and what we believed and who we hoped to become,' these places say. At least that's what they said to me."

"Niagara Falls existed only in the attic of my mind where collective memory is stored: scraps of songs about honeymooning couples, vistas by painters who tried to get the plummeting waters to hold still, film clips of Marilyn Monroe running for her life in Niagara, odds and ends of lore about stuntmen who died going over the falls, and always, somewhere among the scraps, a boat called Maid of the Mist, which took tourists…where? Behind the falls? Under the falls? Death hovered at the edge of the images in my attic, or at least danger. But I had never thought of going to see the place itself. That was for other people. Now I wanted to be one of those other people."—from American Places

"American Places paints vivid word pictures that put you in those places and make you feel that you've been there, but it also encourages each of us to take our own trek through history."—Riverside Press-Enterprise

"Zinsser's choices and descriptions are refreshing because of the obvious thought that went into the selections. It's also fun to read Zinsser's observations."—Chicago Tribune

William Zinsser is a lifelong journalist and nonfiction writer—he began his career on the New York Herald Tribune in 1946—and is also a teacher, best known for his book On Writing Well, a companion held in affection by three generations of writers, reporters, editors, teachers, and students. His 17 other books range from memoir (Writing Places) to travel (American Places), jazz (Mitchell & Ruff), American popular song (Easy to Remember), baseball (Spring Training) and the craft of writing (Writing to Learn). During the 1970s he was at Yale University, where he was master of Branford College and taught the influential nonfiction workshop that would start many writers and editors on their careers. He has taught at the New School, in New York, his hometown, and at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Foreword by Wendy Lesser

"This family story is biography, essay, reportage, and history all in one, and at the same time an autobiography of the first rank. An Invisible Country—a brilliant book." —Frankfurter Rundschau

"Stephan Wackwitz travels the path of classical modernity, following the footsteps of Walter Benjamin, W. G. Sebald, and their great archive of ars memoria."—Die Zeit

"Profoundly intelligent…Wackwitz's personal study of his nation's dark heritage is a rare gem."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Stephan Wackwitz's family "never spoke about the fact that the scene of their childhood and the site of the century's greatest crime were separated by nothing more than a longish walk and barely a decade." With insight and wit, Wackwitz breaks this silence in An Invisible Country, a learned meditation on twentieth-century German history as viewed through the prism of one family's story. Writing of his grandfather (born in 1893), his father (1922), and himself (1952), Wackwitz places himself in the historical and emotional landscape of the "invisible country" surrounding Anhalt in Upper Silesia, a town ten kilometers from Auschwitz, and the site of his grandfather's Lutheran pastorate from 1921 to 1933.

Three historical periods play off one another: the years of the grandfather's active manhood, up through World War II; his old age, bitter and disappointed, spent writing his memoirs, periodically confronted by a baffling and rebellious grandson; and the present, which finds the author—now working and writing in Poland himself—reflecting on his family's and his country's past, and on his own troubled relationship to that history as a young activist in postwar Germany.

The German edition carries the subtitle, Familienroman. By invoking Freud, Wackwitz suggests that the almost universal fantasy on the part of children to believe (for a time, at least) that they came from parents other than their own has particular significance for Germans of his generation.

"The tone of this book is one of subtle melancholy and, sometimes, of subtle mockery. What also emerges clearly is a confident and mature will to see things as they are." —Die Tageszeitung

"A beautiful and melancholy book, rich in substance." —Frankfurter Allgemeine

Stephan Wackwitz was born in Stuttgart in 1952. He joined the Goethe-Institute—Germany's cultural affairs organization—in 1986 and was posted in Frankfurt, New Delhi, Tokyo, Munich, Kraków, and now Bratislava, Slovakia. He is the author of two novels and an essay collection. An Invisible Country is his first book to appear in English.

Stephen Lehmann is a translator and the co-author of a recently published biography of the pianist Rudolf Serkin.

Wendy Lesser is the founding editor of the Threepenny Review and the author of six books of nonfiction. She has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the National Arts Journalism Program, among others.

"Frighteningly fascinating."—Booklist

"Gripping stories, filled with details that are in equal part delicious and disgusting, but always fascinating."—Lisa Sanders, MD, author of Every Patient Tells a Story and the New York Times Magazine "Diagnosis" column

“To reproduce promiscuously and to wreak havoc wherever they can find a home,” this is the sole raison d'être of viruses writes Dr. Warren Andiman, an HIV/AIDS researcher who has been on the front lines battling infectious diseases for over forty years. In Animal Viruses and Humans: A Narrow Divide, Andiman traces the history of eight zoonotic viruses —deadly microbes that have made the leap directly from animals to human populations: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Swine influenza, Hantavirus, Monkeypox, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Rabies, Ebola, and Henipaviruses (Nipah and Hendra). He also illustrates the labor intensive and fascinating detective work that infectious disease specialists must do to uncover the source of an outbreak.

Andiman also looks to the future, envisioning the effects on zoonoses (diseases caused by zoonotic viruses) of climate change, microenvironmental damage, population shifts, and globalization. He reveals the steps that we can, and must, take to stem the spread of animal viruses, explaining, “The zoonoses I've chosen to write about . . . are meant to describe only a small sample of what is already out there but, more menacingly, what is inevitably on its way, in forms we can only imagine.”

Warren Andiman, MD is professor emeritus of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health.

"Masao Miyoshi's masterful account is, by turns, alarming and hilarious as two cultures meet at the court of President James Buchanan. Their mutual incomprehension is, alas, still relevant as inscrutable East fails to make sense of mysterious West, and vice versa."—Gore Vidal

"Miyoshi has given a marvelous and revealing account of a dramatic case of confrontation of cultures and civilizations. It yields much insight into our own society, as seen from a sharply different perspective, and into the culture of the viewers as well-insights well worth pondering today."—Noam Chomsky

"As We Saw Them is a pioneering work in the relationship between cultures. With extraordinary tact and brilliance Miyoshi in effect reconstructs the mind of Japan at that time, a pregnant moment of self-examination and emergence. For contemporary readers As We Saw Them is an invaluable work of insight and interpretation."—Edward Said

In 1860 the empire of Japan sent 170 officials—samurai and bureaucrats, inspectors and spies, half a dozen teenagers and one Confucian physician—to tour the United States, the first such visit to America and the first trip anywhere abroad in two hundred years. Politics and curiosity, on both sides, mixed to create an amazing journey. Using the travelers' own journals of the trip and American accounts of the group's progress, historian and critic Masao Miyoshi relates the fascinating tale of entrenched assumptions, startling impressions, and bewildering conclusions.

Miyoshi finds in this unique encounter an entertaining adventure story of discovery and a paradigm of the attitudes and judgments that have ever since shaped American and Japanese perceptions of one another. This revealing account of "otherness" is still relevant today as we strive to understand peoples whom we think of as foreign—and therefore strangely other than we.

Masao Miyoshi was Hajime Mori Professor of Japanese, English, and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Off Center: Power and Culture Relations between Japan and the United States.

Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University, specializes in modern Japan, from the late nineteenth century to the present.

"Juliet Capulet would find a worthy BFF in Beatrice Bunson."—Cordelia Frances Biddle, author of the Martha Beale mystery series

"Cohen has made an essential classic cool."—Beth Kephart, author of Going Over

High school begins, and to Beatrice Bunson nothing is the same, not even her best friend, Nan. The "new" Nan doesn't hang out with Bea; she's running for Student Council and going to parties and avoiding Bea at lunchtime. The boys who were gross in middle school have become surprisingly polite, while the "cool" kids are still a mystery. Bea's older sister, meanwhile, acts like she's living in a soap opera.

On the bright side, there's English class with Mr. Martin, where Beatrice discovers that Shakespeare has something to say about almost everything—and that nothing in life is as dramatic as Romeo and Juliet.

But when Nan gets in over her head in her new social life, it's up to Beatrice to restore her reputation—and she may need to make a few new friends to pull it off. One of them, the slightly brainy guy that Beatrice meets at her grandmother's retirement home, is definitely kind of cute, and probably dateable. (Fortunately, nothing is the same in high school.)

As Beatrice and her classmates tackle Romeo and Juliet, they unveil the subtleties of the play as well as broader lessons of love, family, honor, and misunderstandings. Guided by Mr. Martin, these ninth-graders help us to understand Shakespeare, as Shakespeare helps them begin to understand themselves.

"Warning to teachers of high school Shakespeare classes: be prepared to revise your lesson plan."—Gillian Murray Kendall, Smith College

"Ideal for those who are charmed by the romance of Shakespeare. And who isn't?"—Kirkus Reviews

"Teens shouldn't be without a copy of this sparkling novel."—Foreword Reviews

"An entertaining work for those who enjoy quick reads with realistic characters. For fans of Meg Cabot's books"—School Library Journal

"A deftly crafted novel...highly recommended addition to both high school and community library YA Fiction collections."—Midwest Book Review

Paula Marantz Cohen's novels include Suzanne Davis Gets a Life (Paul Dry Books 2014), Jane Austen in Scarsdale or Love, Death and the SATs, and What Alice Knew. She teaches English at Drexel University.

In these three raucous comedies, mortals outwit and even replace Zeus and other Olympian deities of the Greek Pantheon. As Aristophanes provokes laughter at the foibles of gods and men, he arouses wonder at our human need for the divine.

“The three comic heroes in the plays included here raise the questions of whether there are gods, who they might be, how powerful they are, and how they might be changed or eliminated. Although the precise form of such questions changes from age to age, these are questions that are inseparable from political life; and they certainly are powerfully present in our own day…great theorists and architects of the modern liberal state designed its contours partly with an eye on the goal of diminishing the role of religion in the public square. Not unlike our three comic heroes, they wanted to reduce dependence on “Zeus” and his priests. In his place, and like our three heroes, they sought peace, wealth, and human rulers liberated from exaggerated piety. And nowadays the so-called New Atheists are pressing the case that it is high time for a final defeat and elimination of the powers of darkness that, in their view, have cost us so much blood and treasure…Aristophanes was not a modern liberal; still less would he agree with the New Atheists’ advocacy of universal public atheism. He does, however, put dissatisfaction with the gods at the center of the three plays included here, does bestow victories on the human critics of those gods, and does invite us to think with him about the justice of their causes, the tactics behind their victories, and the limits of their successes.”—From the Introduction

Aristophanes was a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author.

Thomas Lee Pangle holds the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies at the University of Texas.

Wayne Ambler is associate professor in the Herbst Program of Humanities for Engineers at the University of Colorado.

Boston Boy is Nat Hentoff's memoir of growing up in the Roxbury section of Boston in the 1930s and 1940s. He grapples with Judaism and anti-Semitism. He develops a passion for outspoken journalism and First Amendment freedom of speech. And he discovers his love of jazz music as he follows, and is befriended by, the great jazz musicians of the day, including Duke Ellington and Lester Young among others.

"This memoir of [Hentoff's] youth should be appreciated not only by adults who grew up through the fires of their own youthful rebellion, but by those restless young people who are now bringing their own views and questions to the world they are inheriting. They could learn from this example that rebels can be gentle as well as enraged and compassionate in their commitment."—New York Times Book Review

"Nat Hentoff knows jazz. And it comes alive in this wonderful, touching memoir."—Ken Burns, creator of the PBS series Jazz

"[A] charmingly bittersweet memoir."—Boston Globe

"This is a touching book about a painful, wonderful time in Boston…I loved it."—Anthony Lewis

Nat Hentoff was born in Boston in 1925 and lived there until he moved to New York City at the age of twenty-eight. For many years he has written a weekly column for the Village Voice. His column for the Washington Times is syndicated in 250 newspapers, and he writes regularly about music for the Wall Street Journal. For twenty-five years, he was a staff writer for the New Yorker and for many years was a columnist for the Washington Post. His numerous books cover subjects ranging from jazz music and musicians to civil rights and civil liberties, on which he is a recognized authority. He was jazz critic at Down Beat and has written liner notes for many important jazz recordings. His work has won him honors not only from the music industry, but also from the American Bar Association and the American Library Association.

"Cries in the New Wilderness presents a completely new view of the spiritual life of Russian society…The book is full of tragicomic tension and brings to mind the multivoiced novels of Dostoevsky."—Ilya Kabakov

Inside the disintegrating Soviet Union, a professor compiles "The New Sectarianism," a classified manual of manifestos, articles, and sermons by members of banned religious sects—from the mystical Thingwrights and the absurdist Folls to the messianic Khazarists and the doomsday Steppies. Cries in the New Wilderness is filled with the voices of these groups. As a counterpoint to this medley of comic, grotesque, poetic, banal, poignant, and harrowing voices is the voice of the commentator, Professor Gibaydulina, who struggles to maintain the objectivity of her scientific atheism in the face of an amazing variety of religious experiences. Epstein's depiction of the inner drama of Gibaydulina's response to the crumbling of the Soviet Union and her quest for a new, creative atheism adds a tragic note to his polyphonic work.

Mikhail Epstein's Cries in the New Wilderness is a work of extraordinary artistic and philosophical imagination, begun in Moscow in the mid-1980s and now available for the first time in English translation in an expanded version. Drawing on his own participation in Moscow's intellectual associations and in expeditions to study popular religious beliefs in southern Russia and Ukraine, Epstein recreates the spiritual experience of a whole Russian generation. His is not a documentary book, however, but a "comedy of ideas," in which he constructs from the voices he hears in the culture around him the religious and philosophical worldviews of Foodniks and Domesticans, Arkists and Bloodbrothers, Atheans and Good-believers, Steppies and Pushkinians.

An award-winning essayist and critic, Mikhail Epstein has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges for his literary inventiveness and to Walter Benjamin for his acute observation of cultural phenomena. Transcending genres and disciplines, Cries in the New Wilderness is a brilliantly original work, a "virtual document" that illuminates the spiritual condition of the Soviet Union as it reveals unsuspected affinities between Russian and American culture. In the mirror of Soviet society, we recognize our own enthusiasm for alternative spiritual experiences, our worship of technology, our doomsday cults. We may also recognize that we ourselves are participants in many of the sects Mikhail Epstein describes, sects that seem at first fantastic and outlandish, but prove to be the religious basis of our own lives.

"The prolific, inexhaustibly inventive Mikhail Epstein has produced a novel—almost. Cries in the New Wildnerness is fiction, but (according to Epstein's own philosophy of 'possibilism') not untrue: it has merely realized some of the vital potentials of post-atheistic Russian culture, where people thirst for a faith that can sacralize everyday practices while at the same time endorse a transcendent Whole. Whether you do Russia for a living or simply love the spectacle of dullness broken up into a thousand crazy glittering points of light, you will recognize, in reading it, a passion of your own."—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

"Mikhail Epstein is probably the most important figure in Russian literary theory in the post-Bakhtin, post-Lotman era. What he has to say is of great interest to everyone interested in cultural studies."—Walter Laqueur, Chairman, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"Borgesian in its design, Cries in the New Wilderness is the best example of that rare genre of theological fantasy that strikes a precise equilibrium between search for God and struggle against God."—Alexander Genis, author of Red Bread

"Cries in the New Wilderness presents a completely new view of the spiritual life of Russian society…The book is full of tragicomic tension and brings to mind the multivoiced novels of Dostoevsky."—Ilya Kabakov

Inside the disintegrating Soviet Union, a professor compiles "The New Sectarianism," a classified manual of manifestos, articles, and sermons by members of banned religious sects—from the mystical Thingwrights and the absurdist Folls to the messianic Khazarists and the doomsday Steppies. Cries in the New Wilderness is filled with the voices of these groups. As a counterpoint to this medley of comic, grotesque, poetic, banal, poignant, and harrowing voices is the voice of the commentator, Professor Gibaydulina, who struggles to maintain the objectivity of her scientific atheism in the face of an amazing variety of religious experiences. Epstein's depiction of the inner drama of Gibaydulina's response to the crumbling of the Soviet Union and her quest for a new, creative atheism adds a tragic note to his polyphonic work.

Mikhail Epstein's Cries in the New Wilderness is a work of extraordinary artistic and philosophical imagination, begun in Moscow in the mid-1980s and now available for the first time in English translation in an expanded version. Drawing on his own participation in Moscow's intellectual associations and in expeditions to study popular religious beliefs in southern Russia and Ukraine, Epstein recreates the spiritual experience of a whole Russian generation. His is not a documentary book, however, but a "comedy of ideas," in which he constructs from the voices he hears in the culture around him the religious and philosophical worldviews of Foodniks and Domesticans, Arkists and Bloodbrothers, Atheans and Good-believers, Steppies and Pushkinians.

An award-winning essayist and critic, Mikhail Epstein has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges for his literary inventiveness and to Walter Benjamin for his acute observation of cultural phenomena. Transcending genres and disciplines, Cries in the New Wilderness is a brilliantly original work, a "virtual document" that illuminates the spiritual condition of the Soviet Union as it reveals unsuspected affinities between Russian and American culture. In the mirror of Soviet society, we recognize our own enthusiasm for alternative spiritual experiences, our worship of technology, our doomsday cults. We may also recognize that we ourselves are participants in many of the sects Mikhail Epstein describes, sects that seem at first fantastic and outlandish, but prove to be the religious basis of our own lives.

"The prolific, inexhaustibly inventive Mikhail Epstein has produced a novel—almost. Cries in the New Wildnerness is fiction, but (according to Epstein's own philosophy of 'possibilism') not untrue: it has merely realized some of the vital potentials of post-atheistic Russian culture, where people thirst for a faith that can sacralize everyday practices while at the same time endorse a transcendent Whole. Whether you do Russia for a living or simply love the spectacle of dullness broken up into a thousand crazy glittering points of light, you will recognize, in reading it, a passion of your own."—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

"Mikhail Epstein is probably the most important figure in Russian literary theory in the post-Bakhtin, post-Lotman era. What he has to say is of great interest to everyone interested in cultural studies."—Walter Laqueur, Chairman, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"Borgesian in its design, Cries in the New Wilderness is the best example of that rare genre of theological fantasy that strikes a precise equilibrium between search for God and struggle against God."—Alexander Genis, author of Red Bread

“Mary Jane Myers skillfully paints the many shades of loneliness. . . A highly thought-provoking collection.”—Daniel M. Jaffe, editor of With Signs and Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction; author of The Genealogy of Understanding

“The personal, the artistic, and the spiritual collide with small, perfect explosions in these entrancing stories. Mary Jane Myers writes with great subtlety and poignancy, offering plenty of delights and surprises.”—Ross King, author of Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies

Bitter, joyful, worn down, filled with wonder, acutely self-aware, and often deeply in need of perspective—such are the women at the center of Mary Jane Myers' compelling debut short story collection. Lonely and stuck in lives that have begun to feel stale, these ordinary women—administrative assistants, typists, accountants—awake unto themselves after brushes with the surreal. While light and playful in tone, the stories reflect the hollowness and toxicity that can come from ascribing too strictly to the popularly held values of our contemporary society and the confusion caused by wobbly religious beliefs in a secular world.

Louise, an unassuming tourist, is accosted in a museum in Florence by the voice of Galileo’s finger bone promising to grant her greatest wish in return for a simple favor. Diane narrowly escapes a toxic relationship and sinks into a depression when she becomes convinced the gods are speaking to her through a stone from the lava fields of Maui. Helen, who has always wanted someone with whom to appreciate classical music, ends up playing host to Franz Schubert, when she meets the young composer wandering in the woods near her home in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Witty, revelatory―and at times chilling―Curious Affairs allows us to see the strangeness in the ordinary.

Mary Jane Myers lives in Los Angeles. Curious Affairs is her debut collection of short stories.

"Children of all ages will delight in its song and story." —Charles Martin, author of Signs & Wonders

"Davey McGravy, Davey McGravy,
a name to conjure with,
to dream with by the cedar trees
out in the rainy woods."

In a misty, faraway-feeling "land of rain," Davey McGravy lives with his father and brothers, but mourns his missing mother. He follows the rhymes in his head into a forest of ferns, moss, and cedar trees where he meets animals wise and strange. A coaxing crow urges him onwards. A consoling peacock tells him that nothing is really lost. A fierce lioness frightens him. Following their voices, Davey travels deeper and deeper into the mysterious woods. Then he must find his way home, to a father who is sad but loving, and brothers who care for him no matter how they fight.

Caught between his forest-world and the world of school, shopping, and family life, Davey wanders his way through grief. With playful and evocative verse, poet David Mason delivers him back to his boyhood but leaves the mysteries of love intact. Full of humor and melancholy, Davey McGravy movingly captures the longing of a child for his lost mother.

"Across a series of poems, accompanied by early-Sendakesque etchings by artist Grant Silverstein, we meet a little boy named Davey McGravy living in the tall-treed forest with his father and brothers. A few tender verses in, we realize that Davey is caught in the mire of mourning his mother. Without invalidating the deep melancholy that has set in, Mason makes room for the mystery of life and death, inviting in the miraculous immortality of love…Only a rare poet can merge the reverence of Thoreau with the irreverence of Zorba the Greek to create something wholly unlike anything else — and that is what Mason accomplishes in Davey McGravy." —Brain Pickings

"From his first full-length narrative poem, The Country I Remember, to his extraordinary verse novel, Ludlow, David Mason's ambition to expand the realm of narrative in contemporary verse has been central to his poetic project, even as successive collections revealed him as one of the best lyric poets of his generation. The latest proof of Mason's necessity, Davey McGravy, is both a vibrant celebration of language as play and the moving tale of how a young boy discovers, through heartbreaking loss, the transformative powers of the imagination. Children of all ages will delight in its song and story." —Charles Martin, author of Signs & Wonders

David Mason is the author of numerous books of poetry and the verse-novel Ludlow. He was poet laureate of Colorado from 2010 to 2014, and he now divides his time between Colorado and Oregon.

Grant Silverstein, the illustrator, specializes in etchings.

"With its humor and its fancy and its wistfulness, [Desert Islands] is such a fountain of youth as no Ponce de Leon ever discovered." —New York Times

"A vast treasure chest…to dazzle and fascinate everyone who lifts the lid."—Geoffrey Grigson

"One of those cabinets of curiosities," Michael McKeon writes in his new foreword, Desert Islands is "filled with randomly juxtaposed artifacts and devices rare and wonderful and far-flung, which long ago graced the homes of the Renaissance patriciate and then, in the hands of natural historians, became the model for the modern museum." Join Walter de la Mare as he surveys the world of islands (symbols of man's love of adventure and longing), both fictional and real, romantic and not—along with shipwrecks, castaways, and solitude; pirates, explorers, and treasure; Shakespeare, Swift, Columbus, Darwin, Utopia, England; and particularly (of course), Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe.

"One begins to fall under the spell, by way of Mr. De la Mare's fine sinuous prose and fanciful comments, of those distant places, those buccaneers' islands and remote wave-washed ocean rocks, by which he himself is so strongly fascinated." —Spectator

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) wrote numerous novels, short stories, essays, and poems. His Memoirs of a Midget, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is also available from Paul Dry Books.

Philosopher Eva Brann describes the concept of doublethink/doubletalk as "a flanking approach toward comprehending a pervasively duplex world, a world that sometimes flashes fleeting signs of covert wholeness." In this, her second collection of aphorisms and observations, Brann shines a light on our world—on "the way things are"—and she does it with characteristic wit and insight.

Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty-seven years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. This is her ninth book with Paul Dry Books.

"A jewel of memory."—Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Book-of-the-Month Club

At the crossroads of East and West, Salonica (now Thessaloniki) was an oasis in a swirl of conflicting powers and interests, a vibrant world of varied peoples, where Leon Sciaky grew up at the turn of the twentieth century. This Paul Dry Books rediscovered classic includes many photos courtesy of Leon Sciaky's son Peter, who has also written a short biographical sketch of his father's life in America.

"Farewell to Salonica is a fresh and charming book that throws a kindly light on a sector of human life unknown to most Americans."—New York Times

"A gallery of beautiful and quaint sketches, revealing fascinating aspects of civilization in a strange city where East met West and the ancient past met the future…It creates an atmosphere of expectation and wonder and enjoyment. Most of all, an atmosphere of living."—Christian Science Monitor

"An altogether charming book, so simply and truthfully written…The Salonica one reads about is not only a fascinating and complex city in which many national and cultural strains run side by side, but it is a critical city of Aegean politics…The breakdown of the Turkish Empire and its consequences for Balkan affairs are better understood when one has read this book. But it is not the political value of the book that should be emphasized so much as its quiet charm, its unpretentious and easy portrayal of a cultural pattern through an account of an engaging family…A warm and softly luminous book."—The Nation

"This is a story of one man's intensely happy boyhood, set against the politically seething years at the turn of the century in the ever-coveted prize city of the Balkans, Salonica…written in a charming and effortless manner."—Philadelphia Inquirer

"For the gift of a happy youth, Mr. Sciaky has repaid his city handsomely…it recalls Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon…It is an intensely personal story, yet so completely was [the young Sciaky] of his time and place that it is also the story of Salonica in the final phase of its existence; for the city that Sciaky knew, largely dominated by its 70,000 Spanish Jews, has gone…The author has made Salonica a living town, peopled by men and women of flesh and blood, people with all the human faults and weaknesses, but also with the lovable qualities that may be found in humanity everywhere by the man with skill to pick them out"—New York Herald Tribune

"A charming portrait of an era."—Honolulu Advertiser

"This picture of a Jewish childhood among rich merchants in Salonica has a glow, the radiant sunshine of a protected childhood."—Chicago Sun

Leon Sciaky was born in 1894, when the Turkish flag still waved over Salonica. His family left their beloved but turbulent homeland in 1915, settling in New York City. Sciaky lived in America—mainly upstate New York—with his wife, Frances, and son until his death in 1958. He taught at a number of progressive schools and camps and, in his last years, owned and operated a school and camp with Frances.

"Experiencing a change of aspect is characterized by our recognition that something has altered and nothing has altered."—from Fat Wednesday

In Fat Wednesday, John Verdi probes how the inexplicable connections of words can help us understand the ever-changing connections of things that we actually see in everyday experience. In his preface he writes, "I explore two related concepts: aspect-seeing and experiencing the meaning of a word."

Verdi considers how our experience of seeing aspects, wherever they appear, helps us imagine possible meanings for philosophy's opening question: "What is there?" He illuminates Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas on language and perception while challenging readers to think through for themselves the different ways in which we see.

A major influence in the development of analytic philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was a leading thinker in the study of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. Bertrand Russell described him as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating."

"A representational painting is essentially ambiguous: it is both paint on canvas and a representation of people and objects. We are not fooled by the painting; we see that it is both paint and picture. We take an interest in it because we take an interest in aspects."—from Fat Wednesday

John Verdi has taught at St. John's College in Annapolis and Santa Fe since 1975. His areas of special interest have included the writings of Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, the foundations of mathematics, and the common ground between psychology and philosophy.

"A dazzling wealth of stimulating reflection and wise insight. To read Feeling Our Feelings is to relive one's own early moments of intellectual awakening, with the all the advantages of age and experience. Eva Brann proves to be a most steady and enlightening guide on an inquiry into the relation between life and thought that few have pursued so thoroughly."—Susan Shell, Department of Political Science, Boston College

In Feeling Our Feelings, Eva Brann considers what the great philosophers on the passions and feelings have thought and written about them. She examines the relevant work of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Adam Smith, Hume, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, and also includes a chapter on contemporary studies on the brain. Feeling Our Feelings provides a comprehensive look at this pervasive and elusive topic.

"'Feeling our feelings' comes from the words a little boy called Zeke said to me some thirty years ago when he was four. I was swinging him in a park in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and not doing it right. 'Swing me higher,' he said, 'I want to feel my feelings.' The phrase stuck with me; you might say it festered in my mind; it agitated questions: Why do we all want to feel our feelings, so generally that people 'not in touch' with them are thought to be in need of therapy? What feeling was swinging high inducing? Was it an exultation of the body or an exhilaration of the soul? When he wanted to be feeling his feelings, was there a difference between the general feeling, the mere consciousness of being affected, and his particular feelings, the distinguishable affects?—as, when you sing a song, there is a difference between the singing done and the song sung—or is there?"—Eva Brann, from her Preface

Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty years. Brann holds an M.A. in Classics and a Ph.D. in Archaeology from Yale University. She is a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

"John Stewart is a rare combination: an artist, an adventurer, a survivor of a prison camp, a great photographer and a rambunctious, rollicking prose writer. He's had marvelous, unlikely experiences everywhere from the fashion salons of New York to the wildest mountains of Asia. The soul presented in this book is like none you’ve ever met."—C. K. Williams

In these shimmering "analects," photographer John Stewart offers gleanings of vivid experiences from more than ninety years of living. Though he has discovered no "avowed meaning" to his life, Stewart finds moments where he "touched something here and there"—where he experienced moments of "being awake."

Stewart shares his encounters with the famous and fascinating: drawing with Henri Cartier-Bresson in the south of France; on the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai in Sri Lanka; a comical meeting with John Cage on the Williamsburg Bridge at midnight; Picasso at a café; Matisse in his bedroom; Muhammad Ali; Isak Dinesen; Francis Poulenc; Diana Vreeland. From these accounts of travels far and wide to a poignant elegy for his son, Stewart's Flotsam is full of wit and tenderness.

"Looking at John Stewart's pictures, what first comes to mind is the word stillness . . . stillness is not immobility, nor calm. Within this stillness there is the tension of time, a contained vibration."—Jonathan Littell

John Stewart began his career in photography in the 1950s, having previously served in the British army during WWII (including three years in a Japanese POW camp). His photographs have appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Life, Esquire, and Fortune and in museums and major collections around the world. He now lives and works in Paris and Provence.

"For Solo Violin is a gracefully written, elegiac memoir of childhood."—The Los Angeles Times

"An eloquent tribute to [and] a moving account of those who, despite the cruelty of so many around them, found ways to rejoice and trust in the kindness of a few. One is instantly reminded of Life Is Beautiful."—André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt

In an extraordinary literary debut, Aldo Zargani reconstructs the lost world of his Jewish childhood during the perilous years 1938–45 when he and his family fled from Fascists and Nazis in northern Italy. His haunting memoir acquires a cinematic intensity as he crosscuts from the blood-red stone spires of Basel, where his father failed to find refuge for his family in 1939, to fiery scenes of the Allied bombing of Turin in 1942, to the freezing winter of 1943–44, which Zargani and his brother spent hidden in a Catholic boarding school deep in the countryside.

For Solo Violin is filled with colorful portraits of Italian aristocrats and peasants, priests and soldiers, teachers and students, informers and partisans. At its heart is Zargani's vivid depiction of his father, a concert violinist forced to give up his career when the Fascists came to power. In this time of persecution, the Zargani family survived through their own resourcefulness and through the efforts of the many Italians who came to their aid, from the young doctor who helped them escape from Turin to the shepherd who supplied them with milk during the last year of the war, when they lived among the partisans in a remote Piedmont valley.

Looking back over a distance of fifty years, Zargani rediscovers the enchantment of childhood shining in "fable-like constellations" even amidst the inferno of war. Lullabies and school games, fairy tales and family jokes are interwoven with the events of terror and oppression. Lyrical, humorous, tender, and wise, For Solo Violin is a testament to resilience and hope during the darkest period in human history.

"A broad panorama of Italian-Jewish history in [the last] century. Elegant in its style and, however tragic, also rich with understatement, irony, and wit, For Solo Violin counts among the great, enduring works of art."—Focus Magazine, Germany

"A tragic, deeply engaging, delicious book—yes delicious, too. (Reading it makes you smile.) It's a miracle…It makes one think of the wit of Kafka!"—L'Espresso, Italy

"Zargani depicts a wealth of sad, despairing, but often also incredibly funny episodes…But vibrating along with the humor is always the sense of threat, and behind it opens the abyss of terror."—Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland

Aldo Zargani was born in 1933 in Turin, Italy. For many years, he worked for RAI, the Italian broadcasting network. Per Violino Solo was first published in Italy in 1995 and won several literary awards, among them the Premio Acqui Storia and the Premio Ishia. Zargani now lives and writes in Rome.

These stories, ten in all, take place in Ireland, New York City and Washington, D.C., and Virginia, Texas, and Colorado. The characters represent the various stages of man—from boyhood and youth to the first precincts of old age. John Lionel, who appeared in four stories collected in Julian Mazor's earlier volume, Washington and Baltimore, appears here in four more, chronicling his growing up in Washington.

With a finely tuned ear for speech, the author conveys a vivid sense of place and of the spirit of the times. As he portrays a young boy in trouble, an adolescent in love (mired in self-doubt and imminent heartbreak), a Texas high-school football player, a man on the verge of marriage and one on the verge of divorce, a middle-aged writer struggling to understand his life, and an older man in the sorrowful and complicated throes of marriage to a younger woman, Mazor writes with compassion, irony, and humor, and with a clear-eyed affection for each of these individuals. In his telling, their stories become works of art.

"Mazor presents an entertaining take on the battle of the sexes."—Publishers Weekly

"It is a pleasure to watch Julian Mazor at his work…His style is so transparent that you are unconscious he has one; his words simply go about their business, without fuss or waste or ambiguity…His stories are honest, and his accomplishment impressive."—Geoffrey Wolff, Washington Post

"He can write; his prose says simply that he cares about people, places, things."—New York Times Book Review

Julian Mazor was born in Baltimore and grew up in Washington, D.C. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Shenandoah, and the O'Henry Prize collection series. Washington and Baltimore, his earlier collection of stories, was published in 1968.

"A serene, lucid and stylish essay in intellectual autobiography that at the same time commemorates a vanished world."—Times Literary Supplement

"An extraordinary life—one that itself takes on symbolic, if not mystical, significance." —Robert Coles

From Berlin to Jerusalem portrays the dual dramas of the author's total break from his middle-class German Jewish family and his ever-increasing dedication to the study of Jewish thought. Played out during the momentous years just before, during, and after World War I, these experiences eventually led Scholem to immigrate to Palestine in 1923.

"Gershom Scholem is historian who has remade the world…He is coming to be seen as one of the greatest shapers of contemporary thought, possibly the boldest mind-adventurer of our generation."—Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable book."—Harold Bloom

"[Scholem] vividly describes the spiritual and intellectual odyssey that drew him…to a rigorous immersion in the texts of Jewish tradition."—Library Journal

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was born in Berlin and educated at the Universities of Berlin, Jena, Bern, and Munich. In 1923, he immigrated to Palestine, where he devoted the rest of his life to the study of the Jewish mystical tradition and the Kabbala. In Jerusalem, he was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University and served as president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Scholem was the author of many books, including Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, and On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays (also now available from Paul Dry Books).

“Aspiring thespians will find much to relish in this engrossing depiction of the grit and glamour of the theater.”—Publishers Weekly

“A satisfying glimpse of what it’s really like to be on stage.”—Kirkus

Sixteen-year-old Mel expects a dull summer—until she is cast in a youth production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. When rehearsals begin the director tells them, “You’ll begin to feel as though the rest of the world has never existed and does not exist,” and it’s true: suddenly Mel’s life is rehearsing, running lines backstage, painting sets, and hanging around with the other actors, who soon become her friends.

She becomes especially close with Clare, a beautiful set and costume designer with a complicated past. And then there’s Mike, who plays the dutiful, philosophical Lieutenant Colonel. His kind smile and quiet presence intrigue Mel, but he never spends time with the other actors, and as she draws closer to him, she wonders what he’s hiding.

More and more, the world of the show is all that matters. But when Mel witnesses an intimate encounter between the director and an actress with more ambition than compassion, she fears her new world—and the production itself—will suffer.

"A writer distinguished for her imaginative power and fresh, vivid writing."—Kirkus

Adèle Geras was born in Jerusalem in 1944. As a child she moved frequently and lived all over the world eventually settling in England for boarding school and University. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an actress, singer, and French teacher. She has published more than ninety titles for children and adults including Troy (shortlisted for the Whitbread Book Award and Highly Commended for the Carnegie Medal), Ithaka, and Happy Ever After. She lives in Cambridge, England and has two grown daughters and three grandchildren.

"For a child poised between Harry Potter and Tolkien, there really is nothing better than Sutcliff."—The New Yorker

"Rosemary Sutcliff is a spellbinder."—New York Times Book Review

"The preeminent master of British historical fiction for young people."—Kirkus Reviews

"All three stories are powerful, deep, and memorable; the (original) Victor Ambrus illustrations infuse further intensity and emotion."—The Horn Book

Cherished author Rosemary Sutcliff presents three stories of youthful courage and fidelity in ancient times.

The Chief's Daughter: A Welsh chieftain's daughter helps a young Irish boy—captured from a raiding party and held prisoner by her father—make his escape, risking the wrath of her gods and her Clan.

A Circlet of Oak Leaves: A horse-trader is reminded of his past with the Roman Legions, of the life-changing, secret favor he once did a friend and the glory he will never be able to openly claim.

A Crown of Wild Olives: A tentative, but caring, friendship is formed between two young runners, a Spartan and an Athenian, who will compete against each other for the Olympic Olive Crown and the honor of their warring nations.

These stories are clever and powerful, the plots twisting and turning unexpectedly while the characters remain always true to their own moral codes. Indeed, in each story the characters are full of heart and human failings—and feelings that transcend time and history.

British writer Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992) authored more than fifty books including The Eagle of the Ninth, The Lantern Bearers, Sword at Sunset, and Song for a Dark Queen. Acclaimed for her historical novels for young adults, she won many book awards including The Carnegie Medal, the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing.

Victor Ambrus has twice won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Gold Medal for Illustration. He has illustrated over 200 books.

Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) challenged earlier thinking about the basic structures of human being, our involvement in practical affairs, and our understanding of history, time, and being. Blitz clarifies Heidegger’s discussions, offers alternative analyses of phenomena central to Heidegger’s argument, and examines the connection between Heidegger’s position in Being and Time and his support of Nazism.

As Blitz explains in his new afterword, “When I began to study Martin Heidegger nearly fifty years ago, my goal was to explore the meaning of Being and Time for political philosophy. I wished to discover what it might offer for clarifying the grounds on which the basic concepts and alternatives of political philosophy rest. Would a close reading of it help us understand the questions of justice, freedom, the common good, natural rights, virtue, human happiness, and the philosophic life? These questions are as important today as they were then.”

Although Blitz often questions and criticizes Heidegger’s views, he presents them with scrupulous care and clarity. Specialists and students in the areas of political theory, phenomenology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy will find Heidegger’s Being and Time & the Possibility of Political Philosophy an invaluable resource.

Mark Blitz has been a professor of political philosophy at Claremont McKenna College for twenty years. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Georgetown, and Indiana University. He serves as Director of the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom at Claremont McKenna. He is author of Plato’s Political Philosophy, Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life, and Conserving Liberty.

"One of the great books of the Second World War"—Antony Beevor

"Hide and Seek, first published in 1954 and unavailable for many years, is surely among the best wartime memoirs. It is narrated in a vivid close-up style…by a man who spent two years in caves and other hideouts in the White Mountains, venturing to the coast only to guide a supply submarine with flashing torch, or to smuggle endangered or exhausted colleagues to safety in Cairo…It is remarkable that he lived to tell the tale; that he does so with such modesty, grace and humour is extraordinary."—James Campbell, Times Literary Supplement

"Xan Fielding was a gifted, many-sided, courageous and romantic figure, at the same time civilized and Bohemian, and his thoughtful cast of mind was leavened by humour, spontaneous gaiety, and a dash of recklessness. Almost any stretch of his life might be described as a picaresque interlude."—Patrick Leigh Fermor

In January 1942, Xan Fielding landed on German-occupied Crete with orders to disrupt the resupply of Rommel's Afrika Korps and establish an intelligence network in cooperation with the Cretan resistance movement. Working with bands of Cretan partisans, he succeeded magnificently. In this memoir of his wartime exploits, Fielding presents a portrait of the quintessential English operative—amateur, gifted, daring, and charming.

From the new foreword by Robert Messenger:

"Hide and Seek is a classic of British war literature, an understated account of a man's coming-of-age thanks to the sudden shouldering of great responsibility. Fielding is deprecating about the dangers and his own achievements. It is typical of the quiet and reticent man who preferred to live outside the limelight and wrote matter-of-factly about the war rather than with a gloss of adventure or heroism. There's a scene, late in 1943, when Fielding and a group of partisans study the German's list of 'wanted' men. He notes 'with regrettable but only human pride that the entry under my local pseudonym, which outlined in detail my physical characteristics, aliases and activities for a period of eighteen months, took no less than three-quarters of an octavo page in closely-set small-point type.' The Germans had surely measured his worth."

Xan Fielding (1918–1991) was a British writer and traveler, and a lifelong friend of Patrick Leigh Fermor, who served with him in Crete during World War II. (The introduction to Fermor's A Time of Gifts is written as a "Letter to Xan Fielding.") Fielding also translated many novels from French, most notably, The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Planet of the Apes.

Robert Messenger is the books editor of the Wall Street Journal.

"A work of genius"—The Boston Globe

"From the first sentence of the novel the reader is aware that he is in the presence of a magician…[Collier] casts a spell and he does so always with a smile."—Paul Theroux

"A wayward masterpiece…Whatever this volume has cost you, it is, believe me, a great bargain."—Anthony Burgess

"It is impossible to convey the subtle wit which makes you laugh out loud, the beauty and penetrating satire which blend so perfectly into its brilliance."—Booklist

"The whole is written with sly humor throughout and is illuminated by splendid similes and metaphors which mark the author as a true humorist."—New York Times

In the author's own words: "This is a strange book…an emotional melodrama, complete with a Medusa villainess, an honest simpleton of a hero, and an angelic if only anthropoid heroine, all functioning in the two dimensional world of the old Lyceum poster or the primitive fresco…where an angel may outsize a church, and where a man may marry a monkey on a foggy day."—from John Collier's "A Looking Glass"

When Alfred Fatigay returns to his native London, he brings along his trustworthy pet chimpanzee Emily who, unbeknownst to Fatigay, has become civilized: literate, literary—and in love with Fatigay himself. After Emily meets Alfred's fiancée Amy Flint, a 1920's "modern woman," she sets out to save her beloved from Amy's cold grip. "Emily is the perfect outside observer," writes Eva Brann in her introduction, "because she is an African in Europe, a female in a man's world, a servant to liberated sophisticates, and above all an old-fashioned creature in a modern world."

John Collier (1901–1980) was born in Britain, but spent much of his life in the U.S., where he wrote screenplays for Hollywood (The African Queen, Sylvia Scarlet, and I Am a Camera among them) and short stories for the New Yorker and other magazines. He was also a poet, editor, and reviewer.

In her latest collection of essays and lectures, Homage to Americans, Eva Brann explores the roots and essence of our American ways.

In “Mile-high Meditations,” her flight’s late departure from the Denver airport prompts a consideration of her manner of waiting (i.e.,“being”). As she looks around, she notes (and compares to her own) the ways her fellow travelers pass their time. These observations lead her to wonder how each of us lives with ourselves and how we live together—and put up with one another.

With these questions in mind, the next two essays carefully examine two famous political documents that have shaped American self-understanding: James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance,” which is the essential argument for separation of church and state; and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which enlarged and refashioned our understanding of the American political character, first given formal expression in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

In “Paradox of Obedience,” a lecture delivered at the Air Force Academy, Brann considers the puzzling character of obedience in a country dedicated to liberty.

The concluding piece, “The Empire of the Sun and the West,” takes us to Aztec Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. What allowed Cortes and his handful of men to overcome a great empire? In pursuit of an answer, Brann describes a human type whose fulfillment she sees in the American character.

Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty-seven years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Un-Willing, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects, The Music of the Republic, Then and Now, and Homeric Moments (all published by Paul Dry Books).

Fifty years of reading Homer—both alone and with students—prepared Eva Brann to bring the Odyssey and the Iliad back to life for today's readers. In Homeric Moments, she brilliantly conveys the unique delights of Homer's epics as she focuses on the crucial scenes, or moments, that mark the high points of the narratives: Penelope and Odysseus, faithful wife and returning husband, sit face to face at their own hearth for the first time in twenty years; young Telemachus, with his father Odysseus at his side, boldly confronts the angry suitors; Achilles gives way to boundless grief at the death of his friend Patroclus.

Eva Brann demonstrates a way of reading Homer's poems that yields up their hidden treasures. With an alert eye for Homer's extraordinary visual effects and a keen ear for the musicality of his language, she helps the reader see the flickering campfires of the Greeks and hear the roar of the surf and the singing of nymphs. In Homeric Moments, Brann takes readers beneath the captivating surface of the poems to explore the inner connections and layers of meaning that have made the epics "the marvel of the ages."

"Written with wit and clarity, this book will be of value to those reading the Odyssey and the Iliad for the first time and to those teaching it to beginners."—Library Journal

"Homeric Moments is a feast for the mind and the imagination, laid out in clear and delicious prose. With Brann, old friends of Homer and new acquaintances alike will rejoice in the beauty, and above all the humanity, of the epics." —Jacob Howland, University of Tulsa, Author of The Paradox of Political Philosophy

"In Homeric Moments, Eva Brann lovingly leads us, as she has surely led countless students, through the gallery of delights that is Homer's poetry. Brann's enthusiasm is as infectious as her deep familiarity with the works is illuminating."—Rachel Hadas

"Brann invites us to enter a conversation [about Homer] in which information and formal arguments jostle with appreciations and frank conjectures and surmises to increase our pleasure and deepen the inward dimension of our humanity."—Richard Freis, Millsaps College

"For anyone eager to experience the profundity and charm of Homer's great epic poems, Eva Brann's book will serve as a passionate and engaging guide. Brann displays a deep sensitivity to the cadence and flow of Homeric poetry, and the kind of knowing intimacy with its characters that comes from years of teaching and contemplation. Her relaxed but informative approach succeeds in conveying the grandeur of the great Homeric heroes, while making them continually resonate for our own lives. Brann helps us see that this poetry has an urgency for our own era as much as it did for a distant past."—Ralph M. Rosen, University of Pennsylvania, Author of Old Comedy and The Iambographic Tradition

"The most enjoyable books about Homer are always written by those who have read and taught him the most. Eva Brann's collection of astute observations, unusual asides, and visual snapshots of the Iliad and the Odyssey reveals a lifelong friendship with the poet, and is as pleasurable as it is informative. Homeric Moments is rare erudition without pedantry, in a tone marked by good sense without levity."—Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Other Greeks and co-author of Who Killed Homer?

Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to Americans, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects, The Music of the Republic, Un-Willing, and Then and Now (all published by Paul Dry Books).

"Funny, poignant, sad and wistful…This is a very fine book—about a person, and a city, growing up."—Philadelphia Inquirer

"This delightful yet poignant memoir is highly recommended for both public and academic libraries."—Library Journal (starred review)

"The charming Hotel Kid is as luxurious as the lobby in a five-star hotel."—San Francisco Chronicle

A Manhattan landmark for fifty years, the Taft in its heyday in the 1930s and '40s was the largest hotel in midtown, famed for the big band in its basement restaurant and the view of Times Square from its towers. As the son of the general manager, Stephen Lewis grew up in this legendary hotel, living with his parents and younger brother in a suite overlooking the Roxy Theater. His engaging memoir of his childhood captures the colorful, bustling atmosphere of the Taft, where his father, the best hotelman in New York, ruled a staff of Damon Runyonesque house dicks, chambermaids, bellmen, and waiters, who made sure that Stephen knew what to do with a swizzle stick by the time he was in the third grade.

The star of this memoir is Lewis's fast-talking, opinionated, imperious mother, who adapted so completely to hotel life that she rarely left the Taft. Evelyn Lewis rang the front desk when she wanted to make a telephone call, ordered all the family's meals from room service, and had her dresses sent over from Saks. During the Depression, the tough kids from Hell's Kitchen who went to grade school with Stephen marveled at the lavish spreads his mother offered her friends at lunch every day, and later even his wealthy classmates at Horace Mann-Lincoln were impressed by the limitless hot fudge sundaes available to the Lewis boys.

Lewis contrasts the fairy-tale luxury of his life inside the hotel with the gritty carnival spirit of his Times Square neighborhood, filled with the noise of trolleys, the smell of saloons, the dazzle of billboards and neon signs. In Hotel Kid, lovers of New York can visit the nightclubs and movie palaces of a vanished era and thread their way among the sightseers and hucksters, shoeshine boys and chorus girls who crowded the streets when Times Square really was the crossroads of the world.

"[T]his postcard from a vanished age nicely captures a special childhood rivaling Eloise's"—Kirkus Reviews

"Charming."—New York Times

"A colorful and nostalgic snapshot of a vanished era."—Bloomsbury Review

"Chockfull of history and wit, Stephen Lewis' account of his charming yet preposterous childhood spent in a suite at the Taft Hotel ordering from room service and playing games like elevator free fall is a five-star read. Hotel Kid pays tribute to an elegant time long ago that was very elegant and is very gone. It's a book we've been waiting for without realizing it: at long last, an Eloise for grown ups."—Madeleine Blais, author of Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family

Eva Brann, who has taught at St. John’s College, Annapolis, for sixty years, wrote these essays largely as clarifying incitements to students who were reading, or ought to have been reading, the works discussed. In her words:

"The first essay looks at the 'Pre-Socratics' Heraclitus and Parmenides. They appear to be in radical opposition, but they are really doing the same, new thing: seeing the world as an intelligible whole. Both observe external nature, construing it in their minds—so, from the outside in. The final essay again describes two ways of world-construing from the outside in—one by penetrating the surface of reality, the other by spinning a web of complexity over it.

"The five essays in between focus on works by Kant and display the world as constituted from the human inside out. An appreciative review of the Critique of Pure Reason shows how Kant brilliantly justifies a science of nature by making nature itself the construct of our understanding. But he leads us to the abyss of more idealism; externality and realism escape him. The explication of his one absolute moral commandment similarly defines his morality entirely in terms divorced from objective good and concentrated on internal integrity. Finally, his huge unpublished legacy agonizes about bringing a god, first conceived as an inner need, into external existence."

Eva Brann is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include Doublethink / Doubletalk, Then & Now, Un-Willing, The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to Americans, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects, The Music of the Republic, and Homeric Moments (all published by Paul Dry Books).

"This amazing story is marvelously well told, in an exuberant, racing style that makes it impossible to lay the book aside once the first page is read."—San Francisco Chronicle

Ill Met By Moonlight is the gripping account of the audacious World War II abduction of a German general from the island of Crete. British special forces officers W. Stanley Moss and Patrick Leigh Fermor, together with a small band of Cretan partisans, kidnapped the general, then evaded numerous German checkpoints and patrols for nearly three weeks as they maneuvered across the mountainous island to a rendezvous with the boat that finally whisked them away to Allied headquarters in Cairo.

"It was a mad adventure, and it came off. Moss recorded the whole escapade in a diary, which survives as a thrilling account of one of the most reckless and dramatic actions of the war."—Patrick Leigh Fermor

"A twin masterpiece of action and narrative."—Spectator

"[An] exciting account of a feat which demanded an extreme of daring and determination."—London Times

The 2011 Paul Dry Books edition includes an Afterword by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

W. Stanley Moss was a World War II hero and later a best-selling author. He traveled extensively after the war, notably to Antarctica with a British Antarctic Expedition. Eventually he settled in Kingston, Jamaica. Paul Dry Books also publishes A War of Shadows, Moss's sequel to Ill Met By Moonlight—a rousing account of his World War II adventures as an agent in Crete, Macedonia, and the Siamese jungle.

"Where does happiness lie?" "What is the best life?" Aristotle ponders these abiding questions in his Nicomachean Ethics—a work which has profoundly influenced Western thinking on ethical matters. A book of apparent obviousness, the Ethics possesses a depth and complexity that a reader at first may overlook or not grasp. In his study, In Pursuit of the Good, Eric Salem guides and deepens the reader's understanding of Aristotle’s masterpiece, thus helping him to decide what the Good Life should be.

The choice for Aristotle is between the life of action and the life of contemplation. Salem writes that for Aristotle:

Happiness does not lie in the enjoyment of bodily pleasures, in the "childish amusement" so prized by most men, including "those in power." Nor does it lie in the exercise of the moral virtues; although Aristotle is careful to say that the happy man will practice the moral virtues as occasion dictates, the life of action is not, it seems, the happy life. Happiness rather lies in contemplation, in knowing, in "seeing" for its own sake; happiness is the activity of the intellect in accordance with wisdom.

Eric Salem has taught at St. John's College in Annapolis since 1990. He collaborated with Peter Kalkavage and Eva Brann on translations of Plato's Sophist and Phaedo. They are currently working on the Statesman.

"The interpolations tying mathematics into human life and thought are brilliantly clear."—Booklist

"Her presentation…is conversational and humorous, and should help to simplify some complex concepts."—Kirkus

Infinity. It sounds simple…but is it? This elegant, accessible, and playful book artfully illuminates one of the most intriguing ideas in mathematics. Lillian Lieber presents an entertaining, yet thorough, explanation of the concept and cleverly connects mathematical reasoning to larger issues in society. Infinity includes a new foreword by Harvard professor Barry Mazur.

"Another excellent book for the lay reader of mathematics…In explaining [infinity], the author introduces the reader to a good many other mathematical terms and concepts that seem unintelligible in a formal text but are much less formidable when presented in the author's individual and very readable style."—Library Journal

"Mrs. Lieber, in this text illustrated by her husband, Hugh Gray Lieber, has tackled the formidable task of explaining infinity in simple terms, in short line, short sentence technique popularized by her in The Education of T.C. MITS."—Chicago Sunday Tribune

Lillian Lieber was the head of the Department of Mathematics at Long Island University. She wrote a series of lighthearted (and well-respected) math books in the 1940s, including The Einstein Theory of Relativity and The Education of T.C. MITS (also published by Paul Dry Books).

Hugh Gray Lieber was the head of the Department of Fine Arts at Long Island University. He illustrated many books written by his wife Lillian.

Barry Mazur is a mathematician and is the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. He is the author of Imagining Numbers (particularly the square root of minus fifteen). He has won numerous honors in his field, including the Veblen Prize, Cole Prize, Steele Prize, and Chauvenet Prize.

"Surpassingly eloquent."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"This is a remarkable book with extraordinary insights about the inner life of Abraham Lincoln. It will be read and studied for years to come, for Charles Strozier brings to every chapter the very qualities that Lincoln himself possessed—empathy, wisdom, balance, and creativity."—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Author of No Ordinary Time

"When Lincoln's Quest for Union was first published, it was immediately recognized as the best-informed and most perceptive analysis of Lincoln's inner life. This new edition, extensively revised and expanded, is even more rewarding. This is a basic book in the Lincoln canon—a work of great intelligence, written with sensitivity and literary grace. I cannot recommend it highly enough."—Prof. David Herbert Donald, Author of Lincoln

"Provocative and persuasive when it originally appeared in 1982, this new edition is even better. Strozier incorporates recent scholarship, fortifies his arguments, answers his critics, and offers a compelling psychological portrait of our most admired and enigmatic president."—Cullom Davis, University of Illinois at Springfield

"Eighteen years after it first appeared, Lincoln's Quest for Union still does what only the very best books about Lincoln do: It makes us think afresh about how so great a man could have grown from such meager beginnings."—from Geoffrey Ward's Foreword

In Lincoln's Quest for Union, Charles Strozier gives the most probing account available of Lincoln's inner life—from the time he was a young man in Illinois, just finding himself, through his ascent to the presidency when he guided the nation and articulated for the country the meaning of the Civil War. With the probity of an open-minded historian and the skills of a trained therapist (he is both), Strozier examines Lincoln's relationships to women: his mother, stepmother, two young loves, and Mary Todd. He also considers Lincoln's feelings toward his father and male friends and colleagues.

For this revised edition, Professor Strozier has incorporated new sources—most important, the writings of William Herndon, Lincoln's long-time law partner—to update and expand his psychological portrait of our 16th president.

Charles B. Strozier, a historian and practicing psychoanalyst, is a professor of history at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at TRISP in New York. Strozier is the author of Until The Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 in the Words and Experiences of Survivors and Witnesses; Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst; and Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, among other books. His forthcoming book is Young Man Lincoln: Joshua Speed and the Crucible of Greatness.

"Crosby creates a beautiful portrait of Matthew throughout his years…Crosby's memoir, both humorous and sad, is raw in emotion and unflinching in its honesty."—Publishers Weekly

"Anne Crosby has written a chronicle of caring—an account of a life that is at once painful, mysterious, and transformative. From draconian institutions to matronly neighbors to adoring friends, Matthew, his parents, and his sister travel a road of full of struggle, humor, and the unknown. This book will remind all people of good will of the enormous struggle that so many families have had to endure to gain even the simplest sense of dignity."—Timothy Shriver, Chairman, Special Olympics

From the moment she held him in her arms, Anne Crosby had deep fears for her newborn son. Although the staff at the hospital in London paid no attention to her concerns, her instincts were correct: Matthew had Down syndrome. After struggling with her contradictory feelings, Crosby set about doing whatever she could to help Matthew lead as full a life as possible.

Matthew is the moving, honest, perceptive, and often funny account of the life he made with the help of his mother and many other caring people. With an eye for detail and an acute ear for voices, Crosby describes Matthew's family and friends, doctors and teachers—a large cast that includes Gladys Strong, his Cockney caregiver, the famous child psychologist D.W. Winnicott, and Princess Anne, a benefactor of Matthew's boarding school. Crosby evokes the forbidding atmosphere of Normansfield, the residential institution founded by the doctor who gave his name to Down syndrome; the spaciousness of Mentmore, the country estate where she often took Matthew to play; and the touching camaraderie of the hospital ward in which Matthew died of heart failure at age twenty-five.

In this remarkable memoir, Crosby also explores Matthew's inner life, telling of his mimicry and unexpected humor, his outbursts of affection and occasional fits of misery, his gallantry toward his first love, and his disappointment over the loss of his first job. Crosby's portrait gives us an image of Matthew that deepens our understanding of what it means to be human.

"I knew and liked and respected Matthew. I thought he merited a biography, and I'm very glad that he now has one, especially that it is such a very good one. In this singular story, Anne Crosby tells us of Matthew's outer and inner life: his sad acceptances, his capacity to love and fall in love, his ambitions and their fulfillment, and his idiosyncratic sense of humor. Anne Crosby is able to tell us all this because, as we learn again from this book, love and knowledge are very much related. Matthew was a mystery to many. But because his mother empathized with him so keenly and has captured him so precisely with her sharp intelligence and brilliant powers as a writer, Matthew comes to us in this gripping book as a whole and delightful and unforgettable person."—Galway Kinnell

Anne Crosby was born into a large family in England in 1929. Crosby received little formal schooling as a child, due to the turmoil of the Second World War, her father's "experimental" ideas about education, and having been diagnosed with dyslexia. She came to excel in art school, and at the age of twenty she lived abroad for several years in Rome, Paris, and the Var region of France. After returning to London she painted and taught in art schools. In 1960 she married Theo Crosby with whom she had a daughter, Dido, and a son, Matthew. She continues to paint, and now divides her time between Washington, DC, and London. Matthew is her first book.

"For centuries to come, this book will inspire imaginative people. Beyond all doubt, it will be an ingredient of future poetry."—Rebecca West

"It may be read with a great deal of simple enjoyment and then it sticks like a splinter in the mind."—Angela Carter

"It seems to me a perfect, utterly original novel, and no one but a poet could have written it…The book is totally idiosyncratic and yet there isn't a line you couldn't identify yourself with."—Harry Mathews

Miss M., the narrator of these fictional memoirs, is a diminutive young woman (though just how diminutive, the author never says) with a "passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals." Miss M. tells of her early life as a dreamy orphan and, in particular, of her tempestuous twentieth year—in which she falls in love with a beautiful and ambitious full-sized woman and is courted by a male dwarf. Concluding that she must choose either to simply tolerate her difference or grow callous to it, Miss M. resolves to become independent by offering herself up as a spectacle in a circus.

"One of the strangest and most enchanting works of fiction ever written."—Alison Lurie, from her foreword

"De la Mare's masterpiece…It acts upon the reader like a ghostly visitation, at once unsettling and revelatory."—Washington Post

"Here is a great book."—New York Times Book Review

"Sentences, pages, whole chapters cause us to catch our breath."—Atlantic Monthly

"After a long period of neglect de la Mare may be beginning to be seen as the remarkable writer that he is."—John Bayley, New York Review of Books

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) wrote numerous novels, short stories, essays, and poems. He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Memoirs of a Midget. Other major works include the children’s novel, The Three Royal Monkeys, Henry Brocken, and The Return. His book Desert Islands is also available from Paul Dry Books.

Alison Lurie is the author of many highly praised novels as well as two collections of essays on children’s literature, Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups and Boys and Girls Forever. She has taught children’s literature and folklore at Cornell University for many years.

"Highly recommended"—Library Journal

"In this account of the world adventures of two splendid jazz artists, Bill Zinsser has given us one of the most exciting books about America's original art form that I've ever read. It's a revelation."—Studs Terkel

Since 1955, Dwike Mitchell and Willie Ruff have been playing, teaching, and sharing jazz around the U.S. and around the world. William Zinsser, one of our finest chroniclers of American life, tells their story as he travels with the duo to China, to Davenport, Iowa, to New York City, and—with Willie Ruff—to St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, where Ruff journeys back to the roots of Western music in order to understand jazz's musical legacy.

Zinsser also accompanies Mitchell and Ruff as they visit their hometowns in Florida and Alabama. We listen as the two men tell of growing up in small towns in the American South of the 1930s and 40s; as they tell about the teachers, community leaders, and family members who believed in two young black men with talent but no formal musical training; as they tell of their struggles, their perseverance, and their ultimate success.

Jazz is indeed a uniquely American musical tradition, and there are no better guides to this inspiring art than Dwike Mitchell and Willie Ruff.

"[This is a] thoughtful, adept, and satisfyingly unusual book of reportage…Though its contents are entirely factual, it concerns lives that give the sense of being but fatefully, imaginatively, arranged, and it constantly suggests improvisation—that is, 'something created during the process of delivery,' as Mr. Ruff explains the term to the Chinese…He also tells them improvisation is 'the lifeblood of jazz.' William Zinsser's book reminds us that improvisation is the lifeblood of life, too. [This book is also] about difficult passages that end in victorious arrival. Mitchell & Ruff is a deservedly happy book."—New York Times Book Review

"A highly infectious, Studs Terkel-like chronicle about the unorthodox development of two distinguished musicians."—Publishers Weekly

"Jazz came to China for the first time on the afternoon of June 2, 1981, when the American bassist and French-horn player Willie Ruff introduced himself and his partner, the pianist Dwike Mitchell, to several hundred students and professors who were crowded into a large room at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Probably they were not surprised to find that the two musicians were black…What they undoubtedly didn't expect was that Ruff would talk to them in Chinese."—from Chapter 1, "Shanghai"

William Zinsser is a lifelong journalist and nonfiction writer—he began his career on the New York Herald Tribune in 1946—and is also a teacher, best known for his book On Writing Well, a companion held in affection by three generations of writers, reporters, editors, teachers, and students. His 17 other books range from memoir (Writing Places) to travel (American Places), jazz (Mitchell & Ruff), American popular song (Easy to Remember), baseball (Spring Training) and the craft of writing (Writing to Learn). During the 1970s he was at Yale University, where he was master of Branford College and taught the influential nonfiction workshop that would start many writers and editors on their careers. He has taught at the New School, in New York, his hometown, and at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Albert Murray is a cultural critic, biographer, essayist, and novelist. He has taught at several colleges, including Colgate, Barnard, and Tuskegee. Mr. Murray's works include The Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, Train Whistle Guitar, The Blue Devils of Nada, and The Seven League Boots.

The Mediterranean coast of Turkey, also known as the "Turquoise Coast," is rich with natural beauty and historic remains. In the spring and summer of 1965 Michael Pereira set out to discover this region, before a government push to develop the area for tourism forever altered the landscape. Mountains and a Shore is Pereira's account of his travels.

Starting his journey in Antalya, Pereira crisscrosses the coast from Marmaris to Mersin. He travels by bus, lorry—even donkey—for he believes, "It is only by travelling in the same style as the people of the country that one can properly get to know that county and its people." Pereira speaks Turkish fluently and through his encounters with drivers and café owners, farmers and schoolchildren, he shows the Turkish people to be generous, proud, and resilient.

As David Mason writes in his new foreword, "The Turkish word for the Mediterranean is Akdeniz, the White Sea, but the land between the Black and White Seas is polychromatic, swirlingly complex, contradictory, challenging, and often heart-stoppingly beautiful. Getting to know Turkey is not always easy, even now. Time travel with Michael Pereira is an excellent way to begin."

Mountains and a Shore is a rollicking account of one man's good-humoured journey through a country as yet unspoilt by excessive construction. It is an unwitting eulogy of the rural beauty now scarce in Turkey..."—The Times Literary Supplement

Michael Pereira is the author of many novels and travel books, including Istanbul: Aspects of a City, East of Trebizond, and Across the Caucasus.

David Mason is the author of numerous books of poetry, the verse-novel Ludlow, and a memoir of the years he lived in Greece, News from the Village.

"Anyone interested in how language calls to language, and heart to heart, will find these pages irresistible." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

"In this quirky, resonant, and necessary book, generously edited by Stephen Berg, a wide range of American poets at all stages of their writing lives offer their poems and choose their precursors, meditating with great humility and insight on the dual mysteries of influence and mastery, on the reading that fosters writing, on the shimmering nobility of poetry itself." —Edward Hirsch, Author of How to Read a Poem

Twenty-eight distinguished contemporary American poets provide a multifaceted view of the creative process. Each poet has contributed a poem and chosen several poems by other poets that have influenced it. In an essay, each poet then describes how those influences have led to a sense of poetic mastery.

The Contributors:

• A.R. Ammons
• L.S. Asekoff
• Stephanie Brown
• Hayden Carruth
• Gillian Conoley
• Amy Gerstler
• Judith Hall
• Hunt Hawkins
• Jane Hirshfield
• Claudia Keelan
• Yusef Komunyakaa
• Lisa Lewis
• Dana Levin
• Laurence Lieberman
• Thomas Lux
• Jane Mead
• Jack Myers
• Donald Revell
• Len Roberts
• Michael Ryan
• Ira Sadoff
• Hugh Seidman
• Jennifer Snyder Gerald Stern
• Lucien Stryk
• Karen Volkman
• Ted Weiss
• Joe Wenderoth

"[A]n intimate and diverse look at the interactive processes of reading and writing: at its best, a compelling revelation of the ways in which the lifeblood of the poetic tradition seeps into the veins of the maker and is remade by this process in as much as it molds it."—Rain Taxi

"My Business is Circumference will intrigue apprentice poets, teachers, and readers fascinated by writers creatively exploring their own material and philosophical foundations."—Foreword Magazine

"The collection's abundance should last you several seasons at the very least."—The Jewish Exponent

"The younger poets male and female steal the show here; while many skirt the topic of mastery with respect to their own work, they are passionate about their influences, which range from Sei Shonagon to Walt Whitman to Sharon Olds."—Library Journal

"The poems selected are a delight. Placed with the work of the moderns they are sometimes a surprise. The juxtaposition invites the reader to puzzle out what the connection is between the two. It is a veritable Rorschach text touching on subtle and sometimes mysterious associations. The poets are generous in their description of their creative processes and revisit their first contact with the poems that inspired them, go on to share with us what touched them, what techniques influenced them and what they struggled with…With the encouragement of the editor, the poets in this book have generously offered to us their insight and art. For this they deserve a place of honor on our book shelves."—Small Press Review

"These essays, dealing as they do with modern Jewish history, literature, and religion, sustain a continuity of conviction that cannot help but inspire a new generation of Jewish intellectual life."—New York Times Book Review

On Jews and Judaism in Crisis presents Gershom Scholem confronting, studying, and judging the important ideas, events, and figures of twentieth-century Judaism. It includes essays on Martin Buber, S. Y. Agnon, and Scholem's friend Walter Benjamin; also his famous 1964 letter to Hannah Arendt. In a 1975 interview, Scholem provides fascinating information about his own life.

"There is a revelation in store…for the Jewish reader who has not previously encountered Scholem, and even for the non-Jewish reader concerned about the meaning and preservation of ‘peoplehood’ in the twentieth century…On the meaning and problems of Israel, on the search through tradition for seeds of rebirth, on the resurrection of Hebrew, on the possibility of a modern Jewish theology, on the Jewish relationship to history, Scholem is precise, passionate, skeptical, wholly original."—Kirkus Reviews

"Gershom Scholem is historian who has remade the world…He is coming to be seen as one of the greatest shapers of contemporary thought, possibly the boldest mind-adventurer of our generation."—Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was born in Berlin and educated at the Universities of Berlin, Jena, Bern, and Munich. In 1923, he immigrated to Palestine, where he devoted the rest of his life to the study of the Jewish mystical tradition and the Kabbala. In Jerusalem, he was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University and served as president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Scholem was the author of many books, including Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, and From Berlin to Jerusalem (also now available from Paul Dry Books).

In 14th-century England, Stephen de Beauville dreams of becoming a knight—not a promising ambition for a contemplative boy with a talent for drawing. Quiet and solitary, Stephen must endure the bitter torments of his brothers and cousins until he finds his first true friend; through that friendship Stephen gains courage to endure the lack of kindness in his life. But believing that Stephen will never possess the valor to be a knight, his father abruptly sends him away to spend the rest of his life in a monastery.

After a harsh apprenticeship in the monastery, Stephen realizes he must flee its confines. In a twist of fortune, he becomes squire to a wise knight and then attains knighthood himself. The death of his own young squire causes the twenty-six-year-old Stephen to re-examine his ambitions. In doing so, he makes an important discovery: His journey through dangerous times has instilled in him the strength and self-confidence to find his true place in the world. One is One portrays a man ready to heed his mentor's maxim: "Do not be afraid to do what you want to do."

Several of Barbara Leonie Picard’s many books, including One Is One, have been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, Britain’s oldest children’s book award.

Praise for One Is One and Barbara Leonie Picard:

"Her narratives have the ring of tales told by skald and bard, and her choice of words would fill great halls. Her literary fairy tales are lushly romantic, with poetic language and an almost other-worldly knowledge that informs and enriches them. Open one of her books and read it aloud. See how her words will still echo in the storytelling rooms and libraries that have become our great halls."—Janice M. Del Negro

"In One is One …there is a large cast of entirely credible characters and a good contrast is pointed between fourteenth-century courtly and monastic life. The strength of this book derives from its concern with important themes—loneliness, loyalty, courage and love; above all, self-knowledge."—The Spectator

"Miss Picard has been bold in choosing for her hero a weakling and a coward. The final resolution of Stephen's doubts, though not unexpected, is most beautifully handled."—The Times Literary Supplement

Barbara Leonie Picard (1917–2011) was the author of over twenty-five books, all of which have received praise for the mature and thought-provoking fare they offer young readers. Her first book was published in 1949. Her works include five historical novels for young adults, many retellings of myths and epics—including the Odyssey and the Iliad, the story of King Arthur, and legends of the Norse gods—and collections of fairy tales. Several of her books have been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the oldest children's book award in the UK. Paul Dry Books also publishes Picard's book Ransom for a Knight.

"Part fiction, part overview of 'Aha!' moments in the forward march of physics, Only the Longest Threads takes readers dramatically through scientific fields such as quantum field theory, electromagnetism, relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory. Each idea or concept is explored in an inventive chapter, each told from a different first-person narrator; the faux emails, letters, and diary entries take place from 1728 to the present day."—Boing Boing

"Science is done by real human beings, with human concerns. Only the Longest Threads tells a story that conveys the human side of science in a way that is as moving as it is accurate."—Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at Caltech and author of The Particle at the End of the Universe

Only the Longest Threads will thrill readers with its dramatic and lucid accounts of the great breakthroughs in the history of physics—classical mechanics, electromagnetism, relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and string theory, each from the viewpoint of a (fictional) witness to the events.

Tasneem Zehra Husain re-imagines the pivotal moments in the history of physics when radical new theories shifted our perception of the universe, and our place in it. Husain immerses the reader in the immediacy and excitement of the discoveries—and she guides us as we begin to understand the underlying science and to grasp the revolutionary step forward each of these milestones represents.

In her latest book, Eva Brann has collected observations and aphorisms written over more than thirty years. Open Secrets / Inward Prospects divides in a rough but ready way into two sorts: observations about our external world well known to all but not always openly told, and sightings of internal vistas and omens, wherein she looks at herself as a sample soul.

Often the aphorisms balance opposing thoughts, as if the writer were—simultaneously—on both ends of the seesaw.

In the preface Eva Brann describes her manner of composition: "I wrote these thoughts down on about two thousand sheets, two to three thoughts per paper, and I kept them in some used manila envelopes, the earliest of which bore a postmark of 1972."

Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for over fifty years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include The Logos of Heraclitus, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to Americans, The Music of the Republic, Un-Willing, Then and Now, and Homeric Moments (all published by Paul Dry Books).

Arthur Golding's translation of 1567 with an introduction by John Frederick Nims

"Absolutely essential"—Library Journal

"This 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses…is tough, surprising, and lovely…To read it is to understand the Renaissance view of the classical world, storytelling and also Shakespeare's language and worldview."—A. S. Byatt

"It is a tour de force of translation, and it deserves, more than 400 years after its composition, to be read."—Rain Taxi

"The most beautiful book in the English language."—Ezra Pound

Since its first publication in 1567, Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid has had an enormous influence on English literature and poetry. This is the translation that Shakespeare knew, read, and borrowed from. Golding's witty and beautiful verse continues to delight today's readers. This volume promises to be a valuable resource for students and teachers of Ovid and Shakespeare indeed, for anyone interested in the foundations of English literature.

"[Golding's translation] was the English Ovid from the time of publication in 1567 until about a decade after the death of Shakespeare in 1616. The Ovid, that is, for all who read him in English during the greatest period of our literature. And its racy verve, its quirks and oddities, its rugged English gusto, is still more enjoyable, more plain fun to read, than any other Metamorphoses in English."—From the Introduction by John Frederick Nims

"Ovid was Shakespeare's favorite classical poet. Both are writers who probe our humanity with great rigor, but ultimately do so in a spirit of sympathy for our frailties and indulgences. Ovid's world shuttles between human passions and natural phenomena. Shakespeare, with the assistance of Arthur Golding, carried the magic of that world into the medium of theatre."—From Jonathan Bate's Essay

Pageants of Despair is a story of a boy caught in a battle between good and evil. After unknown assailants attack his mother, Peter is sent by train to stay with his grandparents. On that ride an uncanny figure leads him back in time to the fourteenth century village of Dunfield, where Peter will take part in a mysterious play in which the actors become the characters they portray. Peter believes he has been brought there to counter an unearthly, menacing influence, but a succession of terrifying experiences leads him to suspect, instead, that he might be destined to cause the disaster he is trying to avert. He needs courage to face the crisis and intelligence to solve the mystery. In this tale where ancient pageants morph into horrific realities, the author draws on the actual medieval Townley Cycle of Mystery Plays—which were performed annually at Wakefield, England—to give Peter's experience in the imaginary village of Dunfield a vivid true-to-life.

"The history is fascinating…Hamley has hit on the right road back to such lace-edged, antique virtues as honesty, gentleness, vision, and love."—Best Sellers

"The ancient tussle between God and the Devil seems to lie at the heart of this tale of sinister skullduggery in the Middle Ages. A good deal of background information on the Mystery Plays and extracts from some of the performances crystallise the setting; the atmosphere of religious superstition and its hold over simple folk are captured with a grim reality and a sense of lurking foreboding. [Readers who]…allow the tensions of time and mystery to work will share a strange experience in an unfamiliar world."—The Junior Bookshelf

"Hamley does create a lively picture of how the audiences and actors must have responded to the powerful messages of the miracle plays."—Kirkus Reviews

"The pageants are a frightening battleground—replete with medieval images of corporeal and spiritual corruption—from which Peter and his friends emerge triumphant."—Booklist

Dennis Hamley was born in 1935 in Kent, England. He read English at Cambridge University and worked for many years as a teacher, a teacher-trainer, and an adviser to schools. He also founded the Lending Our Minds Out creative writing courses for children. Hamley's first book was published in 1962, a modern version of three Miracle Plays. Pageants of Despair, his first children's novel, was originally published in 1974. In 1992 Hamley turned to writing full-time. His latest title, Ellen's People, is published in the UK by Walker Books. In between, he wrote more than fifty other books, including short stories, books for schools, and non-fiction for all ages. Hamley lives with his wife in Hertford, England.

Philadelphia Architecture, A Guide to the City (Fourth Edition) provides more than three hundred descriptions and photographs, both color and black and white, of the city's architecturally most significant buildings. Spanning more than three hundred years, these great buildings characterize Philadelphia as unique among American cities, comprising, as they do, nearly every style of architecture found in the United States.

Divided into four sections, Philadelphia Architecture proceeds chronologically from the founding of the city in 1682 into the early Federal period, through its industrialization in the 19th century, and its growth as a metropolis in the 1900s, concluding with the latest buildings, erected in the 21st century. Each entry provides historical and architectural information pertinent to the structure and relates the building to its setting in the city.

This compact guide also includes short biographies of the city's renowned architects; a building chart, which catalogs the building types and dates of construction; and maps of ten walking and driving tours, which highlight important buildings and sites in Philadelphia and the surrounding region.

Philadelphia Architecture, A Guide to the City is a project of the Center for Architecture, a nonprofit institution founded by the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

John Andrew Gallery received his M.Arch. from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has served as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, Director of the Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development, and Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. He is also the author of The Planning of Center City Philadelphia and Sacred Sites of Center City, both available from Paul Dry Books.

Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal

"A fine, authentic, historical tale, valuable for its picture of medieval times."—New York Herald Tribune

In 14th-century England, Alys de Renneville sits alone in the loft of her manor house mourning her father and brother who are thought to have been killed in battle in Scotland. Late one evening, a strange knight appears and tells Alys that her father and brother are alive and being held for ransom by the Scots. When no one believes her story, she sets off secretly to rescue them herself.

Traveling on horseback across the lush countryside and dense cities of medieval England, Alys is accompanied only by her friend and servant, Hugh. Alys and Hugh show great courage and determination, but the journey is arduous and they encounter many delays and hardships along the way. Will they reach Scotland in time to save Alys’s father and brother?

"Her narratives have the ring of tales told by skald and bard, and her choice of words would fill great halls. Her literary fairy tales are lushly romantic, with poetic language and an almost other-worldly knowledge that informs and enriches them. Open one of her books and read it aloud. See how her words will still echo in the storytelling rooms and libraries that have become our great halls."—Janice M. Del Negro

Barbara Leonie Picard (1917–2011) was the author of over twenty-five books, all of which have received praise for the mature and thought-provoking fare they offer young readers. Her first book was published in 1949. Her works include five historical novels for young adults, many retellings of myths and epics—including the Odyssey and the Iliad, the story of King Arthur, and legends of the Norse gods—and collections of fairy tales. Several of her books have been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the oldest children's book award in the UK. Paul Dry Books also publishes Picard's book One Is One.

"Looking over the legends and stars of both sports, explaining the rules, complete with glossary, Right Off the Bat is a fine assortment of knowledge, very much recommended for any curious sports fan."—Midwest Book Review

It's been said that baseball and cricket are two sports divided by a common language. Both employ bats, balls, innings, and umpires. Fans of both steep themselves in statistics, revel in nostalgia, and toss around baffling jargon. In Right Off the Bat, baseball nut Evander Lomke and cricket buff Martin Rowe explain "their" sport—and their love of it—to the other sport's fans. You'll come away finding yourself as fascinated by legbreaks and inswingers as you are by knuckleballs and sliders (or vice versa).

Are you a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan who nevertheless harbors a nagging doubt as to whether Babe Ruth was, in fact, the greatest athlete ever to swing a bat? When you think of cricket, is what comes to mind stuffy Victorians standing around in a field, twirling their mustaches and saying silly things like "Howzat" or "googly"?

Or are you a staunch cricket fan who sometimes wonders whether a screwball is really as difficult to execute as a doosra? Do you ask yourself where the thrill is in watching a ball sail 400 feet over a wall and just past the outstretched fingers of a fielder wearing a glove (and all for a paltry one run)?

Well, step right up and take a seat—you've got a lot to learn (for example, the very first international cricket match was played in the United States). And Right Off the Bat is just the book for you.

Evander Lomke has worked in book publishing for over thirty years and is the executive director of the American Mental Health Foundation. A lifelong Yankees fan, it's only right and proper that he lives in the Bronx, New York.

Martin Rowe is the co-founder of Lantern, a book publishing and media company, and author of Nicaea: A Book of Correspondences. A long-suffering supporter of the England cricket team, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

James Rahn has led the Rittenhouse Writers' Group since he founded it in 1988, making it one of America's longest-running independent fiction workshops. Hundreds of writers and would-be writers have sought out the group for its remarkable level of instruction and collaboration. Rittenhouse Writers is Rahn's memoir of the workshop and how his own evolution as both a teacher and a writer—and as a son, husband, and (somewhat reluctant) father—has been intertwined with the establishment and growth of the RWG. In addition, Rahn includes ten short stories written by current and former members of the workshop.

Rahn graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and earned an MFA at Columbia. He then began to imagine a future that included more than just writing, one that would also tap his aspiration to offer other writers support and motivation, tough but gentle—his self-described "Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove" approach. After all, as he says more than once, "Writing is hard."

Over the years, James Rahn has witnessed every imaginable writing-group scenario, from awkward flirtations to suicide scares, catty critiques, near fistfights, and of course the satisfaction of watching someone's writing soar. With insight gained through years of observation and participation, and a discerning eye for amusing detail, he takes us along for the journey. Rahn's struggle to perfect his role as instructor runs throughout the narrative, as does his effort to balance that role with the friendships he forms in the group, and to keep up with his own writing while still giving the group the attention it needs to flourish. Through his eyes, we catch the spark of the workshop's spirit and get to meet various spirits who have invigorated Rittenhouse Writers' Group.

Rahn cuts back and forth, reflecting, not only on the workshop, but also on his days as a high school dropout in Atlantic City, dead-end jobs and hopeless moves, the difficulty of his mother's decline and death, and his own unexpected plunge into parenthood—when, at age 51, he and his wife took on the responsibility of raising her two young nieces.

His memoir serves, in a way, as an introduction to the short stories that follow; and the stories—as surprising and varied as the writers Rahn describes working with—stand as a fitting coda to Rahn's tale and offer another window onto his life's work.

"James Rahn, Jersey boy and Philadelphia treasure, has written a moving and insightful book about what happens when you create something vibrant and necessary and stick around for the long haul, whether it's teaching, writing, friendships, or love. The answers aren't always simple, and Rahn explores them with the same gusto, honesty, wry humor, and generosity of spirit he brings to his fiction and his famous workshops. This book is a powerful reminder of the importance of community and mentorship in the making of literature."—Sam Lipsyte

The 10 short stories included in Rittenhouse Writers:

"On Fire" by Gwen Florio

"Mother—6/7 Months" by Romnesh Lamba

"Moon Penitent" by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

"The Last Confession" by Tom Teti

"Ivory Is Wrong About Me" by Caren Litvin

"The Conference Rat" by Samantha Gillison

"Dropping a Line into the Murky Chop" by Saral Waldorf

"What She Missed" by Lisa Paparone

"Kingdom of the Sun" by Alice Schell

"The Letters of Hon. Crawford G. Bolton III" by Daniel R. Biddle

James Rahn has published stories in many literary magazines, taught for fifteen years at the University of Pennsylvania, and has an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. His first novel, Bloodnight, was published in 2012.

"Two extraordinarily talented journalists, Michael Vitez and Tom Gralish, have captured this uniquely American phenomenon with whimsy, poignancy, and utter charm."—John Grogan, author of Marley & Me

"Rocky Stories captures the sprawling complexity of life. It's a delight."—Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down

"A book that is an absolute joy and an absolute blast and quintessentially American in its hopes and dreams and sweetness."—Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and A Prayer for the City

Pulitzer Prize-winners Michael Vitez and Tom Gralish of the Philadelphia Inquirer spent a year visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art to capture the stories of "Rocky runners," who come from all over the world to run up America's most famous steps—just as Sylvester Stallone did in Rocky. People make the pilgrimage to mark a new beginning, to seek inspiration, to celebrate an accomplishment, to find the perfect backdrop for romance, or simply because they love the movie. As one runner says, "It gives you the feeling that anything is possible."

The authors have uncovered an enduring cultural phenomenon, one that centers on Philadelphia, and yet, as Michael Vitez writes in his introduction, is a true American, and even international, rite of passage.

The book includes fifty-two profiles and one hundred color photographs, together with a foreword by Sylvester Stallone, and interviews with Rocky's Academy Award-winning director John G. Avildsen, composer Bill Conti, and cameraman Garrett Brown.

In his foreword, Sylvester Stallone sums up his thoughts on the phenomenon: "You can't borrow Superman's cape. You can't use the Jedi laser sword. But the steps are there. The steps are accessible. And standing up there, you kind of have a piece of the Rocky pie."

"[C]harming photo essay of people who retraced Rocky's steps and felt their own exhilaration doing it."—San Francisco Chronicle

"The extent to which the Rocky myth—that of the perennial loser who proves he's 'not just another bum from the neighborhood'—has resonated is documented in this winning book."—Sports Illustrated

"I've only skimmed it, and already I'm in love with the book Rocky Stories. (It had me at the title.)…It may sound like a movie tie-in, but it's not. It's just a fascinating testament to how the words 'Rocky' and 'underdog' are still interchangeable 30 years after the film's release."—Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch column

"The Rocky steps have become a special place for tourists and Philadelphians alike. Virtually everyone who lives here or comes here wants to say that they ran up the Rocky steps and saw the incredible view down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. When I was Mayor, the city planned 24 hours of millennium celebrations, one each hour. Of course we had to kick it off at the Rocky steps and we did so with 2,000 people all dressed like Rocky running up the steps at the same time. It was awesome."—Former Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell

Michael Vitez has been a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1985. For his series on end-of-life issues, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism.

Tom Gralish has been at the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1983, working as both an editor and photographer. For his photo essay on the homeless, he won both the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

"A snapshot of the civil-rights movement in one city provides insight into the important role of individual communities as change moved through the country…a case study of how citizens of one city both precipitated and responded to the whirlwind of social change around them."—Kirkus Reviews

"A profoundly moving tribute to the intrepid unsung heroes who risked their lives to help bring an end to Baltimore's Jim Crow Era."—Kam Williams, syndicated columnist

On August 28, 1963—the day of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech—segregation ended finally at Baltimore's Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, after nearly a decade of bitter protests. Eleven-month-old Sharon Langley was the first African American child to go on a ride there that day, taking a spin on the park's merry-go-round, which since 1981 has been located on the National Mall in front of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Round and Round Together weaves the story of the struggle to integrate that Baltimore amusement park into the story of the civil rights movement as a whole.

Round and Round Together is illustrated with archival photos from newspapers and other sources, as well as personal photos from family albums of individuals interviewed for the book. There is a timeline of major Civil Rights events.

"Amy Nathan's book deftly describes the courageous struggle by blacks and whites to end discrimination in the park, the city, and the nation. Readers will walk away with a clearer understanding of segregation and the valiant Americans who fought against this injustice."—Debra Newman Ham, Professor of History, Morgan State University

"Round and Round Together tells the inspiring story of how a generation of college and high school students provided the energy and enthusiasm that ended racial segregation in Baltimore's Gwynn Oak Amusement Park and changed the direction of Maryland's history."—James Henretta, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland

"With clarity and passion, Amy Nathan portrays the struggle of everyday citizens to end racial segregation in Baltimore. This compelling history, for and about young people, is simple but profound like freedom itself."—Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the trilogy America in the King Years

Amy Nathan is an award-winning author of several books for young people, including The Young Musician's Survival Guide, Count on Us: American Women in the Military, Yankee Doodle Gals: Women Pilots of World War II, Meet the Musicians, and Surviving Homework. She grew up in Baltimore and went to Western High School.