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).

"Gabriel Zaid . . . is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him—you'll see."—Paul Berman

The first appearance in English of the poetry of Gabriel Zaid, this book comprises forty-two poems (in both English and the original Spanish), translated by a variety of English-speaking poets. Renowned in Mexico as one of his country's leading writers, Zaid has published two books in English, So Many Books and The Secret of Fame (both from Paul Dry Books).

Late Again
Translated by Eliot Weinberger

It's so hard to coordinate:
one hand over your head
like a halo
the other
perpendicular
to your navel.

Nevertheless it's a universal law:
people begin soaping
at their bellies
while other worlds
turn around in their heads.

Think with your stomach,
said the happy Buddha.
But we
ruminate with our heads.

Gabriel Zaid's poetry, essays, social and cultural criticism, and business writings have been widely published throughout the Spanish-speaking world. He lives in Mexico City, Mexico, with the artist Basia Batorska, her paintings, three cats, and ten thousand books. Paul Dry Books has published his So Many Books and The Secret of Fame.

"If you like Hank, you'll like Wilder Good, too."—John R. Erickson, author of Hank the Cowdog

Lamplighter Finalist 2017–18 (Triple Crown Awards)

If you've read the first two books about Wilder Good, you already know he's 12 years old and lives with his parents and little sister, Molly, in a small town in southern Colorado. He's on the threshold between being a kid and beginning to grow up, and he's trying his best to figure out just what it means to join that grownup world. There's a lot to learn, and Wilder is grateful to the adults in his life who guide him.

In this third installment of "The Adventures of Wilder Good," Wilder and his "secret" girlfriend, Sunny Parker, set out with Wilder's mentor, Gale Loving, for a day of fly fishing on the Rio Grande. But in the Colorado wilderness an afternoon of fishing and fun can shift suddenly to a life-and-death challenge. When Gale is injured, Wilder and Sunny must take charge. Together, the two learn what it is to aid and protect a friend. With no one to turn to, they have to make their own decisions and rely on their own skills as darkness falls and they prepare to spend the night in the canyon tending to Gale.

"I am a big fan of this series. Last fall I included The Elk Hunt in my list of favorite books of 2013, and Texas Grit is every bit as insightful and positive as the first one."—Glenn Dromgoole (a review of Wilder Good 2: Texas Grit)

"Dahlstrom writes about ranch life with flair and specific detail."—WORLD magazine (a review of Wilder Good 2: Texas Grit)

S. J. Dahlstrom lives and writes in west Texas. He has numerous magazine credits for his writing and photography. The Adventures of Wilder Good is his first series. His writing draws on his experiences as a cowboy, husband, father, and founder of a boys' ranch.

"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.

Paul Dry Books' edition of this 1947 classic has been produced with the highest publishing standards as a companion to our edition of The Trivium

“Sister Miriam Joseph’s Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language remains, after more than half a century, an immensely valuable aid to serious students of the greatest of all writers. The book manifests enormous learning and real wisdom in applying that erudition to the needs of contemporary readers.”—Harold Bloom

“The importance of this book is that it makes clear what we ought to mean when we call Shakespeare an artist in language…The average person today knows two figures of speech if he knows any…Shakespeare knew two hundred.”—Mark Van Doren, New York Herald Tribune

As part of their education in the trivium (the liberal arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric), grammar school students in Shakespeare’s time were taught to recognize the two hundred figures of speech that Renaissance scholars had derived from Latin and Greek sources. Sister Miriam Joseph views this theory of composition as integral to Shakespeare’s mastery of language. In her classic 1947 book, she lays out these figures of speech in simple, understandable patterns and explains each one with examples from Shakespeare. Her analysis of his plays and poems illustrates that the Bard knew more about rhetoric than perhaps anyone else.

Sister Miriam Joseph (1898–1982) earned her doctorate from Columbia University. A member of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Sister Miriam was professor of English at Saint Mary’s College from 1931 to 1960.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"Lucid, thoughtful…writers and teachers will learn much from it…Belongs wherever Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style finds frequent use."—Booklist

"Writers will actually learn things here."—Los Angeles Times

"Perfect for teachers, critics and general readers."—Library Journal

"Required reading for all those who care about good fiction."—Kirkus Reviews

Drawing upon twenty-eight years of experience as the CEO and editorial director of St. Martin’s Press, Thomas McCormack gives practical guidance about how to plan, write, and revise a novel. A standard reference for editors since its first publication in 1988, The Fiction Editor has also become popular with writers because McCormack’s advice is constructive at every step of the creative process. From individual word choice right up to the overarching effect of the work as a whole, he details how to structure the novel, choose the characters, drive the story, diagnose narrative ailments, and find and apply specific remedies.

In this revised second edition, McCormack takes advantage of almost two decades of additional experience to clarify and expand on what he has learned.

"Written in an amiable tone, often using examples, hypothetical writing scenarios, or dialogue-style discourse between industry professionals to clarify its points, The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist is a superb handbook for fiction writers but especially recommended for prospective and professional fiction editors."—Midwest Book Review

Thomas McCormack edited authors as diverse as James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small) and Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs). He was awarded LMP's Lifetime Achievement Award and the AAP's Curtis Benjamin Award for Creative Publishing. For two years, he wrote "The Cheerful Skeptic" column in Publishers Weekly.

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.

"Gabriel Zaid's defense of books is genuinely exhilarating. It is not pious, it is wise; and its wisdom is delivered with extraordinary lucidity and charm. This is how Montaigne would have written about the dizzy and increasingly dolorous age of the Internet. May So Many Books fall into so many hands."—Leon Wieseltier

"Reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them…It could even be said that to publish a book is to insert it into the middle of a conversation."—from So Many Books

Join the conversation! In So Many Books, Gabriel Zaid offers his observations on the literary condition: a highly original analysis of the predicament that readers, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and teachers find themselves in today—when there are simply more books than any of us can contemplate.

"With cascades of books pouring down on him from every direction, how can the twenty-first-century reader keep his head above water? Gabriel Zaid answers that question in a variety of surprising ways, many of them witty, all of them provocative."—Anne Fadiman, Author of Ex-Libris

"A truly original book about books. Destined to be a classic!"—Enrique Krauze, Author of Mexico: Biography of Power, Editor of Letras Libres

"Gabriel Zaid's small gem of a book manages to be both delectable and useful, like chocolate fortified with vitamins. His rare blend of wisdom and savvy practical sense should make essential and heartening reading for anyone who cares about the future of books and the life of the mind."—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Author of Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books

"Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writer—a cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him—you'll see."—Paul Berman

"'So many books,' a phrase usually muttered with despair, is transformed into an expression of awe and joy by Gabriel Zaid. Arguing that books are the essential part of the great conversation we call culture and civilization, So Many Books reminds us that reading (and, by extension, writing and publishing) is a business, a vanity, a vocation, an avocation, a moral and political act, a hedonistic pursuit, all of the aforementioned, none of the aforementioned, and is often a miracle."—Doug Dutton

"Zaid traces the preoccupation with reading back through Dr. Johnson, Seneca, and even the Bible ('Of making many books there is no end'). He emerges as a playful celebrant of literary proliferation, noting that there is a new book published every thirty seconds, and optimistically points out that publishers who moan about low sales 'see as a failure what is actually a blessing: The book business, unlike newspapers, films, or television, is viable on a small scale.' Zaid, who claims to own more than ten thousand books, says he has sometimes thought that 'a chastity glove for authors who can't contain themselves' would be a good idea. Nonetheless, he cheerfully opines that 'the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.'"—New Yorker

Gabriel Zaid's poetry, essays, social and cultural criticism, and business writings have been widely published throughout the Spanish-speaking world. He lives in Mexico City with the artist Basia Batorska, her paintings, three cats, and ten thousand books.

Natasha Wimmer is an editor and a translator in New York City. Her recent translations include The Savage Detectives and 2666 by Roberto Bolaño andThe Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa.

"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).

"In 1611, Kepler wrote an essay wondering why snowflakes always had perfect, sixfold symmetry. It's a simple enough question, but one that no one had ever asked before and one that couldn't actually be answered for another three centuries. Still, in trying to work out an answer, Kepler raised some fascinating questions about physics, math, and biology, and now you can watch in wonder as a great scientific genius unleashes the full force of his intellect on a seemingly trivial question, complete with new illustrations and essays to put it all in perspective."—io9, from their list "10 Amazing Science Books That Reveal The Wonders Of The Universe"

When snow began to fall while he was walking across the Charles Bridge in Prague late in 1610, the eminent astronomer Johannes Kepler asked himself the following question: Why do snowflakes, when they first fall, and before they are entangled into larger clumps, always come down with six corners and with six radii tufted like feathers?

In his effort to answer this charming and never-before-asked question about snowflakes, Kepler delves into the nature of beehives, peapods, pomegranates, five-petaled flowers, the spiral shape of the snail's shell, and the formative power of nature itself. While he did not answer his original question—it remained a mystery for another three hundred years—he did find an occasion for deep and playful thought.

"A most suitable book for any and all during the winter and holiday seasons is a reissue of a holiday present by the great mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler…Even the endnotes in this wonderful little book are interesting and educationally fun to read."—Jay Pasachoff, The Key Reporter

New English translation by Jacques Bromberg

Latin text on facing pages

An essay, "The Delights of a Roving Mind" by Owen Gingerich

An essay, "On The Six-Cornered Snowflake" by Guillermo Bleichmar

Snowflake illustrations by Capi Corrales Rodriganez

John Frederick Nims' poem "The Six-Cornered Snowflake"

Notes by Jacques Bromberg and Guillermo Bleichmar

Johannes Kepler (1571-1631) was an important figure in the seventeenth century astronomical revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion. Kepler wrote: "If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dusty exile of our earthly home…then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy."

"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).

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.

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).

John Keats is among the greatest English poets. (He himself imagined he would be counted so!) For some readers, his odes define the essence of poetry. We also discover in Keats a great composer of sonnets. Here, for the first time published in a separate edition, are all sixty-four sonnets, the first written when Keats was eighteen, the last just five years later. Reading these poems, you'll experience the wonder of Keats's growing poetic powers; you'll feel the "shock of recognition" when you come upon the great ones. Presented with an introduction by Edward Hirsch, and accompanying explanatory notes, the sonnets stand out as a triumph of their own.

"Between 1814 and 1819, John Keats wrote sixty-four sonnets. He was eighteen years old when he composed his first sonnet; he was turning twenty-four when he completed his last one. He restlessly experimented with the fourteen-line form and used it to plunge into (and explore) his emotional depths. You can sit down and read these poems in a single night and have a complete Keatsian experience—he breathes close and offers himself to us; his presence is near. You can also read them throughout your adulthood and never really get to the bottom of them. These short, durable poems are filled with the mysteries of poetry.

"In the sonnets, Keats conveys the range of his interests, his concerns, his attachments, his obsessions. Some are light and improvisatory, tossed off in fifteen minutes, a moment's thought. Some are polemics, or romantic period pieces; others are brooding testaments or compulsive outpourings, which seem to expand on the page. These sonnets are replete with a sensuous feeling for nature—'The poetry of earth is never dead'—that looks back to Wordsworth and forward to Frost. They also luxuriate in the spaces of imagination—'Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold'—and trigger the daydreaming capacities of the mind." —from the Introduction by Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch has published six books of poems: For the Sleepwalkers (1981), Wild Gratitude (1986), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994), On Love (1998), and Lay Back the Darkness (2003). He has also written three prose books: How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller, Responsive Reading (1999), and The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration (2002). He writes a weekly column on poetry for the Washington Post Book World. He has received the Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He taught for eighteen years at the University of Houston, and is now the fourth president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

"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.

"Incredibly charming…Suzanne Davis Gets a Life has an emotional honesty and moments of real wisdom."—Philadelphia Inquirer

Cohen "portrays timeless and universal challenges through a buoyant combination of humor, pathos, and gumption."—Booklist

"Suzanne Davis Gets a Life isn't just seriously entertaining, it's entertainingly serious…I want my romantic comedy heroines to have wit, but I want them to have character too, and be as interested in the world as in themselves. Paula Marantz Cohen has given me all of that."—Margo Jefferson

A "witty commentary on contemporary life, enriched by a funny, flawed, and likable heroine."—Kirkus

"Ms. Cohen is a perceptive, comic writer."—Wall Street Journal

Suzanne Davis lounges around her tiny New York City apartment in her pajamas, writing press releases for the International Association of Air-Conditioning Engineers, listening to the ticking of her biological clock, and wondering where life is taking her. As her 35th birthday looms, Suzanne embarks on a wrong-headed, but very funny, quest—to find Mr. Right and start the family she hopes will give meaning to her life.

Her quest plunges us into the world of her Upper West Side apartment building, a world of overly invested mothers, fanatical dog-owners, curmudgeonly longtime residents, and young (and not so young) professionals. All are keenly observed by Suzanne, whose witty self-deprecation endears her to us even as it makes us want to shake some sense into her.

Light in its tone but incisive in its social satire, Suzanne Davis Gets a Life balances its wit with true concern for its protagonist. We can't help but wish Suzanne success in "getting a life." But can such a search possibly yield the meaning she craves? When her extremely annoying mother arrives on the scene, it appears that her plan has been hijacked. But serious illness opens her to new people and a new perspective. She ends by getting a life—even as she may lose one.

Paula Marantz Cohen's novels include Jane Austen in Scarsdale or Love, Death and the SATs; Jane Austen in Boca; and the recent What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper. Cohen is Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University, and is host of the weekly public television program The Drexel Interview.

Praise for Paula Marantz Cohen

"Cohen's wit is sharp, smart, and satirical, and her characterizations are vividly on target."—San Francisco Chronicle

Praise for Jane Austen in Boca

"Utterly charming."—Vanity Fair

"Page turner of the week."—People Magazine

Praise for Much Ado about Jesse Kaplan

"A brightly comic book."—Times Literary Supplement

"Kept me laughing from beginning to end…a comic tour-de-force."—The Hudson Review

Praise for Jane Austen in Scarsdale

"Paula Marantz Cohen has done it again! Jane Austen in Scarsdale is laugh-out-loud funny, literate, wise—and best of all, a satirical mirror of our times. She has become our own Jane Austen."—Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police

Praise for What Alice Knew

"A marvelously rich and intelligent read."—John Banville

"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.

These two long essays make up a short book, one full of depth and knowledge, in which Eva Brann gets at the roots of our thinking—without tearing things apart.

Then

In the first essay, Brann parses out the schema and meaning of Herodotus's The History (The Persian Wars). She writes that Herodotus worked by indirection. Giving a full account of the Persians and the peoples who constituted their empire—and whose empire encircled the Greeks (thus the "Greek center")—Herodotus delineates the essential difference between the Barbarians and the Greeks. This difference Brann calls Athens' "elusive essence," its freedom contrasting with the slavery upon which the Persian empire depended.

Now

In the second essay, the author delves into what it means for a person to unite a disposition toward conservatism with a capacity to reiterate and rehearse events, scenes, and dramas in "the conservatory of the imagination." To uncover the meanings and consequences of this union—this imaginative conservatism—and the type of soul to which it applies, Brann offers twelve perspectives, starting with "Temperamental Disposition" and ending with "Eccentric Centrality" (without ever explicitly focusing on politics). Join her and you'll find both delight and education.

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 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).

These wide-ranging conversations have an exceptionally open and intimate tone, giving us a personal glimpse of one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary world literature.

Interviewer Fernando Sorrentino, an Argentinian writer and anthologist, is endowed with literary acumen, sensitivity, urbanity, and an encyclopedic memory of Jorge Luis Borges' work (in his prologue, Borges jokes that Sorrentino knows his work "much better than I do"). Borges wanders from nostalgic reminiscence to literary criticism, and from philosophical speculation to political pronouncements. His thoughts on literature alone run the gamut from the Bible and Homer to Ernest Hemingway and Julio Cortázar. We learn that Dante is the writer who has impressed Borges most, that Borges considers Federico García Lorca to be a "second-rate poet," and that he feels Adolfo Bioy Casares is one of the most important authors of this century. Borges dwells lovingly on Buenos Aires, too.

From the preface:

For seven afternoons, the teller of tales preceded me, opening tall doors which revealed unsuspected spiral staircases, through the National Library's pleasant maze of corridors, in search of a secluded little room where we would not be interrupted by the telephone…The Borges who speaks to us in this book is a courteous, easy-going gentleman who verifies no quotations, who does not look back to correct mistakes, who pretends to have a poor memory; he is not the terse Jorge Luis Borges of the printed page, that Borges who calculates and measures each comma and each parenthesis.

Sorrentino and translator Clark M. Zlotchew have included an appendix on the Latin American writers mentioned by Borges.

Fernando Sorrentino is an Argentine writer born in Buenos Aires in 1942. His works have been translated into more than twelve languages.

Clark M. Zlotchew is a professor of Spanish at SUNY Fredonia. Some of his areas of specialization: Jorge Luis Borges, 20th century Spanish-American Fiction, Literary Translation, and Literary Interview.

Remembering life under the Romanovs

“With his eye for detail, his taste for anecdote, and his sheer delight in the process of living, Rodzianko has created a delightful, if often sad, work.”—Gary Saul Morson, from his new foreword for this first American edition

"Capacious, powerful, and subtle—a forgotten work with real claims to historic interest and aesthetic value . . . It is Paradise Lost as told by Dostoevsky."—Washington Independent Review of Books

Born into Russian aristocracy at the end of the 19th Century, Paul Rodzianko led a life rich in love, challenged by war, and inspired by great jumping horses. With humor and infectious joy, he recounts the adventures of his charmed childhood—playing with his cousins at the Winter Palace, riding horses at his family’s many country estates, and, most spectacularly, serving as a page in the court of Tsar Nicolas II.

Then, on August 1, 1914, Russia and Germany declare war on each other, and, Rodzianko writes, “The hurricane descended and swept our world away.” Serving in the Chevalier Guards, he fights first against the Germans and then, after the Revolution, against the Reds in Siberia. He writes movingly about WWI and the Russian Civil War: the initial excitement about going to war and the grim realities, the frustrating shortages of munitions and the failures of the railroads, the shocking execution of the Romanovs, and the brutal deaths of millions of young men.

Tattered Banners is an evocative and haunting account of a time and people that have continued to intrigue us for more than a century.

"When push comes to shove, Katniss Everdeen has nothing on Inas, daughter of Daidalos."—Betsy Bird

Inas leaps at adventure. She dives to the bottom of the Aegean Sea to harvest sponges and somersaults over charging bulls in front of thousands of people. Best of all, she soars from cliffs wearing the glider-wings her father builds in secret, safe from the prying eyes of their neighbors, who think flying is sorcery.

When Princess Ariadne seeks Inas's help to hatch a plan with Theseus, a young Greek who's held prisoner in the palace's Labyrinth, Inas doesn't realize how much adventure she is taking on. In fact, Inas suddenly finds that she may be about to lose everything she holds dear on the island of Crete.

A fun, fast-paced retelling of the Greek myths of Icarus and Theseus, this 1934 Newbery Honor book was ahead of its time and is sure to find lots of fans among today's readers.

Erick Berry was the pen name of Allena Champlin (1892-1974), an award-winning author and illustrator. She was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, studied art in Paris, and spent time in Africa. She wrote nonfiction about life in Africa as well as historical fiction. She was married to author Herbert Best and illustrated many of his books in addition to her own.

Betsy Bird is Evanston Public Library's Collection Development Manager. She has served on the Newbery Award committee and written for The Horn Book. Currently, she runs the blog "A Fuse 8 Production" on the School Library Journal website.

"Brilliant…a little masterpiece."—Chicago Sun-Times

"Beautiful…one of the best short novels he has written."—New York Times Book Review

"Can rank with the best of Mann's writing."—The Boston Globe

"Magnificent…one of the greatest bits of writing which one of the world's greatest writers has ever given us."—Chicago Herald-American

"Brilliant…one of those splendid novelettes which in this reviewer's opinion represent the very essence of Mr. Mann's literary art."—Saturday Review of Literature

"Thomas Mann wrote this engaging novella in a few weeks in 1943. (The new translation by Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann, which is brisk and direct, is a welcome replacement of the fussier and less accurate English version done by Helen Lowe-Porter for the original publication.)…What is especially noteworthy about The Tables of the Law among Mann's fictions is its playfulness." —Robert Alter, London Review of Books

"His senses were hot, and so he yearned for spirituality, purity, and holiness—the invisible, which seemed to him spiritual, holy, and pure."

Thus Thomas Mann introduces Moses in The Tables of the Law, the Nobel Prize winner's retelling of the prophet's life. Invited in 1943 to write this story as a defense of the Decalogue, Mann reveals how strange and forbidding Moses' task was. As "the Lawgiver"—endowed with the wrists and hands of a stonemason—engraves the tablets, so he hews the souls of his people:

"Into the stone of the mountain I carved the ABC of human behavior,but it shall also be carved into your flesh and blood, Israel…"

Mann's tale of the ethical founding and molding of a people sharply rebukes the Nazis for their intended destruction of the moral code set down in the Ten Commandments. But does his famous irony and authorial license mock or enhance the Biblical account of the shaping of the Jewish people? You know the Bible story. Now read Mann's version—it will grip you anew.

Newly translated from the German by Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann.

"To present the foundation of law for half the world is no simple task. The Tables of the Law is a historical title following Moses as he is tasked by God to present the ten commandments, providing a human and much different insight on the role of Moses as the Prophet of God. Expertly translated, The Tables of the Law is a solid addition to any literary fiction collection."—Midwest Book Review

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. His many works include Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and Confessions of Felix Krull.

Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann co-authored a biography of the pianist Rudolf Serkin and have together translated Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human.

Michael Wood is the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

"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.

Written in 1159 and addressed to Thomas Becket, John of Salisbury's The Metalogicon presents—and defends—a thorough study of the liberal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The very name "Metalogicon," a coinage by the author, brings together the Greek meta (on behalf of) and logicon (logic or logical studies). Thus, in naming his text, he also explained it. With this lucid treatise on education, John of Salisbury urges a thorough grounding in the arts of words (oral and written) and reasoning, as these topics are addressed in grammar and logic.

The Metalogicon (Contents in brief)

Prologue — Occasion, Purpose, and General Nature of the Work

Book I — The Trivium and Grammar

Book II — Logic Proper: General Observations

Book III — Logic: Contents (Porphyry and Aristotle)

Book IV — Logic: Contents and Truth

The study of grammar in John of Salisbury's time included familiarization with the ancient Latin classics, and involved not only a reading of them but also an analysis and imitation of their style. It thus anticipated the humanism of the Renaissance. The study of logic, as it was then pursued, comprised learning and putting into practice the principles of Aristotle's Organon.

In The Metalogicon, a leading medieval scholar summarizes the essential lineaments of existing twelfth-century education, describes his experiences while a student at Chartres and Paris, and affords personal glimpses of such contemporary intellectual leaders as Peter Abelard, Gilbert de la Porrée, and Thierry of Chartres.

Written more than 950 years ago, The Metalogicon still possesses an invigorating originality that invites readers to refresh themselves at the sources of Western learning.

"Grammar is accordingly first among the liberal arts. Necessary for the young, gratifying to the old, and an agreeable solace in solitude, it alone, of all branches of learning, has more utility than show." — Quintilian, quoted by John of Salisbury in The Metalogicon

John of Salisbury (ca. 1115–1176) studied with almost all the great masters of the early twelfth century, served as an aid to Thomas à Becket, was friend to Pope Hadrian IV, an annoyance if not an enemy to England's King Henry II, and died as Bishop of Chartres.

Daniel D. McGarry was a professor of history at Saint Louis University. He died in 1999. His translation of The Metalogicon was the first to appear in any modern language.

"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.

“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.

Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning (1605) is considered the first major philosophical book written in English. In it, Bacon is concerned with scientific learning: the current state of knowledge, obstacles to its progress, and his own plans for revitalization of schools and universities. Here Bacon sets forth the first account of science as intended for "the relief of man's estate."

With this newly designed and reset edition, this important work is again available in paperback. Difficult and fundamental, The Advancement of Learning helps define the modern era.

"This extraordinary genius, when it was impossible to write a history of what men already knew, wrote one of that which they had to learn." —Diderot

"Bacon was the first to address the issues that have again become so pressing in our time: Why should we pursue scientific progress? What are the implications of modern science for religion and morality? Does technology enhance or disfigure the human soul?…It is therefore hard to imagine a book more attuned to our times." —from the new Introduction by Jerry Weinberger

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a philosopher, statesman, and essayist. He served as the attorney general and Lord Chancellor of England and was the author of Novum Organum.

Jerry Weinberger is Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.

"If you like Hank, you'll like Wilder Good, too."—John R. Erickson, author of Hank the Cowdog

Meet 12-year-old Wilder Good, who lives with his parents and little sister, Molly, in a small town in southern Colorado. When he's lucky, he gets to go hunting with Gale Loving, a 72-year-old elder at the church the Goods attend, and a good friend and mentor to Wilder. They make sort of an odd pair, an old man and a boy, but they fit together pretty well in the outdoors. (Though sometimes Wilder still can't help but wonder what kind of a name "Gale" is for a grown man.)

Wilder plays basketball, is active in his 4-H club, likes to read—his hero is Teddy Roosevelt—and does all the things that seventh-graders do. (He has a "secret" girlfriend, too.) He's a Dallas Cowboys fan. But mostly he loves the outdoors, hunting in the Colorado Rockies with Gale or his dad, or at his grandfather's Texas ranch.

Wilder is on the threshold between being a kid and beginning to grow up, and he's trying his best to figure out just what it means to join that grownup world. There's a lot to learn, and he's grateful to have rock-steady Gale to guide him.

In The Elk Hunt, Wilder accompanies Gale into the mountains in search of his first elk. It's a special day for Wilder in many ways—the biggest game he's ever hunted, and the first chance to use his grandfather's Winchester .270. He's determined to succeed with high marks.

Hunting elk is an exciting and demanding pursuit, but even after Wilder and Gale are headed home, there's still danger to face—that's when nature decides to really test Wilder's resolve.

S. J. Dahlstrom lives and writes in west Texas. He has numerous magazine credits for his writing and photography. The Adventures of Wilder Good is his first series. His writing draws on his experiences as a cowboy, husband, father, and founder of a boys' ranch.

Peter Kalkavage's The Logic of Desire guides the reader through Hegel's great work. Given the book's legendary difficulty, one may well ask, "Why even try to read the Phenomenology?" In his preface, Kalkavage explains why he thinks a reader should try:

There is much to commend the study of Hegel: his attentiveness to the deepest, most fundamental questions of philosophy, his uncompromising pursuit of truth, his amazing gift for characterization and critique, his appreciation for the grand sweep of things and the large view, his profound admiration for all that is heroic, especially for the ancient Greeks, those heroes of thought in whom the philosophic spirit first dawned, his penetrating gaze into modernity in all its forms, his enormous breadth of interests, and his audacious claim to have captured absolute knowing in a thoroughly rational account.

According to Kalkavage, the Phenomenology belongs to a quartet of the greatest works on education. The other three members of the quartet are Plato's Republic, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Rousseau's Emile. No genuine philosophic education can omit a serious encounter with this giant of the modern age, the giant who absorbed all the worlds of spiritual vitality that came before him and tried to organize them into a coherent whole.

"This book comes as close as I have seen to a guide to Hegel for the 'courageous non-specialist,' to employ Mr. Kalkavage's expression. He writes from what is obviously a lengthy and deep study of Hegel and of the Phenomenology in particular. There is no patronising of Hegel's complex teaching. The technical terminology is not avoided or concealed by the jovial jargon of a study manual. Kalkavage has mastered the art of presenting topics of great difficulty in a way that will instruct specialists as well as non-specialists. I found especially illuminating his portrait of determinate negation and the difference between consciousness and the phenomenolgical observer. This book should be in every college and university library."—Stanley Rosen

"Having taught philosophy to undergraduates for the past thirty-nine years, I can especially appreciate the value of Peter Kalkavage's book,The Logic of Desire. This work will truly benefit anyone who wishes to learn what Hegel himself is teaching in his first major volume. It provides remarkable insights on Hegel's complex work as a whole as well as serving as a sure guide for every chapter and for virtually every paragraph. Even the many endnotes are very valuable. It should be made readily available to every undergraduate who has to read any part of the Phenomenology."—Dr. Donald C. Lindenmuth, Pennsylvania State University

Peter Kalkavage is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he has taught for thirty years. He is the author of numerous articles on philosophy. He translated Plato's Timaeus and co-translated Plato's Phaedo and Sophist.

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).

"In the madcap, outspoken, yet hauntingly vulnerable Ruby, Kaufman has created an indelible character, one whose full life arc is succinctly yet voluptuously rendered through the incandescent vignettes of Kaufman’s masterful first novel-in-stories."—Booklist

Named a "Great Group Read" by the Women’s National Book Association

Where Somebody Waits instantly transports you to small-town Arkansas more than a half-century ago—a world of catfish and bourbon-and-Coke; of tent revival meetings and less boisterous discussions about heaven and hell; of finding love or just dreaming about it. A neighborly community, but with its share of intrigues.

And instantly you’re under the spell of Ruby Davidson, the magnetic central character of Where Somebody Waits. Self-assured, kind, always willing to take a stand for people less fortunate, at "five foot ten inches, with masses of red hair and a pompadour that increases her stature to six feet," she's also strikingly beautiful. Ruby loves her husband, adores her nephews and nieces, and more or less dutifully respects the tightly knit Jewish family into which she has married. Her life is filled with triumphs and failings, joy and sadness, lived with all possible grace, and told in a spirit of admirable and honest reflection.

A full life, yes, but not an untroubled one, because Ruby also still loves her high-school sweetheart. How she comes to terms with this old, old conundrum and how it affects the lives of everyone around her shape the heart of Where Somebody Waits.

"'Vinegar, cornbread and butter,' a character reminisces in Where Somebody Waits. 'The music of it.' Margaret Kaufman has captured those flavors and textures in a novel that may look like a miniature but is actually a chorus of voices that opens up a world rich with color and feeling. Her ear is wonderfully tuned to the undercurrents and ironies, the passions and dailyness of small-town life across time and change, and at the center, her salty, peppery Ruby is as strong as she is alluring—faithful and faithless and full of surprises."—Rosellen Brown

"Kaufman is an inimitable voice. You will be both soothed and transported by her delightful stories."—Paula Marantz Cohen

"A gifted, lyrical storyteller…she defines what it means not only to reflect on the breadth of one's experience with truth and grace but also to embrace the small, pivotal moments that, if attended to, have the power to transform us."—Francine Sterle

Margaret Kaufman has written five books of poetry. A resident of Kentfield, California, she leads poetry workshops, teaches at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco, and edits both fiction and poetry. Where Somebody Waits is Kaufman’s first book of fiction.

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).

"[A] delightfully literary and eclectic memoir about the manifold joys of birding…Cashwell is a storyteller. A very literate, observant, insightful storyteller."—The Bloomsbury Review

"Reading this book was the next best thing to wandering in the woods with Peter Cashwell hoping to add a rufous-capped warbler to my life list. No, it was better—I could laugh out loud in delight as I turned the pages without fear of scaring the birds."—Katharine Weber, author of The Music Lesson

"An entertaining and witty meditation on birding."—Library Journal

All around the world, birds are the subject of intense, even spiritual, fascination, but relatively few people see the word bird as a verb. Peter Cashwell is one who does, and with good reason: He birds (because he can't help it), and he teaches grammar (because he's paid to). An English teacher by profession and an avid birder by inner calling, Cashwell has written a whimsical and critical book about his many obsessions—birds, birders, language, literature, parenting, pop culture, and the human race.

Cashwell lovingly but irreverently explores the practice of birding, from choosing a field guide to luring vultures out of shrubbery, and gives his own eclectic travelogue of some of the nation's finest bird habitats. Part memoir, part natural history, part apology, The Verb 'To Bird' will enlighten and entertain anyone who's ever wandered around wet fields at the crack of dawn with dog-eared field guides crushed against the granola bars in their pockets. But you don't have to know the field marks of an indigo bunting to appreciate Cashwell's experiences with non-lending libraries, venomous insects, sports marketing, and animated Christmas specials.

"Birders as well as all others interested in birds will enjoy this witty and informative meditation. Declaring himself a victim of birding compulsive disorder, Cashwell, an English teacher in Virginia, does an excellent job of describing his fascination with observing and listening to birds."—Publishers Weekly

"Peter Cashwell possesses one of the rarest of all qualities in a nature writer: an intelligent wit."—Robert Finch, co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing

"A fine literary ramble and a good laugh to boot—no mean feat in a genre that perhaps takes itself to seriously."—John Hanson Mitchell, Editor of Sanctuary, Journal of the Massachusetts Audubon Society

"Writing with humor and gentle environmental rants, Cashwell does for his beloved birds what Bill Bryson did for the Appalachian Trail in his best-selling A Walk in the Woods."—Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star

"[Cashwell] does not stint on the details that matter to birders, but it's his ability to translate the joy of the experience for the non-birder that extends the book's appeal beyond the Nature/Ornithology shelves."—The Charlotte Observer

"Cashwell plays with the language as joyfully and skillfully as a musician coaxes melodies from his instrument."—Rocky Mount Telegram

Birds first captured Peter Cashwell's attention when his mother hung an avian mobile over his crib. He was born in Raleigh, N.C., grew up in Chapel Hill, and graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he took every creative writing course permitted by the English department (and one that wasn't). Cashwell has worked at lots of different jobs—radio announcer, rock musician, comic-book critic, improv comedy accompanist. Now he teaches English and speech at Woodberry Forest School in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

Adapted from "Zinsser on Friday," The American Scholar's National Magazine Award–Winning Essay Series

For nineteen months William Zinsser, author of the best-selling On Writing Well and many other books, wrote a weekly column for the website of the American Scholar magazine. This cornucopia was devoted mainly to culture and the arts, the craft of writing, and travels to remote places, along with the movies, American popular song, email, multitasking, baseball, Central Park, Tina Brown, Pauline Kael, Steve Martin, and other complications of modern life. Written with elegance and humor, these pieces are now collected in The Writer Who Stayed.

"If you value vintage journalism of an old-fashioned vividness and integrity please, please read this book."—Wall Street Journal

"Our 'endlessly supple' English language will, Zinsser says, 'do anything you ask it to do, if you treat it well. Try it and see.' Try him and see craftsmanship."—George F. Will

"Zinsser—who, with On Writing Well, taught a whole lot of us how to set down a clean English sentence—last year won a National Magazine Award for his Friday web columns in The American Scholar. They're now in a collection that's completely charming, impeccably polished, and Strunk-and-White-ishly brief. He's the youngest 90-year-old you'll read this week."—New York Magazine

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.

"Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writer—a cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him—you'll see."—Paul Berman

"Mr. Zaid's goal is to capture the variety of anxieties that beset literary fame-seekers, and he does so with a mocking cleverness. A serious theme, though, runs through his book—that with the possible exception of a few agonized painters and musicians, no one can quite touch the exquisite torment of the literary artist as he faces the hazards of fate."— Wall Street Journal

In So Many Books, Gabriel Zaid explored the predicament in which all "unrepentant readers" find themselves today, when "the human race publishes a book every thirty seconds"—more books than any of us can even contemplate, much less read.

Now, in The Secret of Fame, this "playful celebrant of literary proliferation" (New Yorker) examines the methods and motivations of literary fame-seekers from ancient times to the present day. He shines a critical, yet humorous, light on today's book world, whose denizens often find it "more interesting to talk about writers than to read them," and he takes a serious look at the desire for fame and the disillusionment that can engulf those who achieve it. Along the way, Zaid pokes fun at literary and scholarly traditions, including the unwritten rules of quoting other authors, the ascendancy of the footnote, and the practice of publishing "foolishly complete works."

More important to Zaid than the fame of a piece of writing or of its writer is the miracle of great writing. "Fame concentrates society's attention on a few names. This can be a good thing. It keeps us reading the great books, keeps us revisiting the great works of art. But fame can also be a bad thing. It keeps us focused on names, not the living experiences of great works," which "focus our minds, speak to the best in us, and spark our imagination." Though the hunger for fame is not going away, the deeper quest on the part of the maker (as writer, artist, actor, etc.) is to make us "feel more alive, more engaged in meaningful conversation with life." He concludes, "Nobody knows where masterpieces come from. Miracles are miracles. They catch us before we catch them. But we’re not trapped by them—we're set free."

Gabriel Zaid's poetry, essays, social and cultural criticism, and business writings have been widely published throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Zaid is the founder and manager of a consulting firm in Mexico City involved with the publishing business.

Natasha Wimmer is an editor and a translator in New York City. Her recent translations include The Savage Detectives and 2666 by Roberto Bolano andThe Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa.

"Absolutely stunning."—Times Literary Supplement

"[The Discovery of Slowness] is about a guy who is so incredibly slow in his perception that he . . . actually sees shadows moving. [T]he amazing thing that I remember from reading that book is, whenever I looked up from that book, I felt I had this view from the book in my real world. This book made my life more interesting."—Christoph Niemann (as described in the Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design)

"This remarkable, superbly translated novel derives from the life of the real 19th century explorer John Franklin…[whose] adventures are conveyed with spellbinding skill."—Publishers Weekly

The Discovery of Slowness—a huge commercial and critical success across Europe, where it is considered the popular author's masterpiece—recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847).

Through the author's acute reading of history and his marvelous storytelling prowess, the reader follows John Franklin's development from awkward schoolboy and ridiculed teenager to expedition leader, governor of Tasmania, and icon of adventure. Slow and deliberate from boyhood, Franklin appeared destined to be a misfit. But he escaped from the ever-expanding world of industry and Empire to the sea's silent landscape, where the universe seemed more manageable. At age fourteen he joined the navy. After surviving the harrowing battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar, he embarked on several voyages of discovery into the Canadian North, and served as governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). Everyone with whom he came into contact sensed that Franklin was a rare man, one who was “out of his time” and who moved to a different, grander beat. That beat eventually led Franklin to sail once more—on his final, fateful voyage—into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage.

The Discovery of Slowness is a riveting account of a remarkable and varied life. And it is also a profound and thought-provoking meditation on time. The result is an unforgettable and deeply moving reading experience that justifies the novel's reputation as one of the classics of contemporary world literature.

***

"Nadolny evinces remarkable empathy with his unlikely Odysseus and Ralph Freedman's translation captures the crystalline freshness of the author's imagery."—Washington Post Book World

"The Discovery of Slowness is a masterpiece of characterization, a portrait of inwardness in the most outward-thrusting of lives."—The New Republic

"Fluid and suspenseful, a thought-provoking reminder of contemporary society's tendency to speed through everyday life."—The Providence Journal-Bulletin

"Amazing…His book is a historical painting, a seafarer's novel, a love story, an outcast's story all in one. This variety appears very harmonious, just as it incidentally, almost secretly, reflects on our right to discover the world at our own, personal pace."—Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung

"Sir John Franklin is the embodied contrast to the frenetic agitation of the modern world. The discovery of slowness is the slowness of discovery."—New York Review of Books

"Nadolny's vision is conveyed with restraint and charm…He has written a Utopia of character."—New York Times Book Review

"Its appeal lies in its observation of the texture of life, seen by a character who has to work everything out from first principles. It needs to be read slowly, to be absorbed as much as understood."—Scotland On Sunday

"This is more than an adventure; it's a meditation on time and perception…Not to be rushed, or forgotten."—The Herald

"Nadolny brilliantly sets the narrative pace to the rhythms of the frozen landscape, and to the 'slowness which is bred by hunger.'"—Robert MacFarlane

"This is both a wonderful historical novel and a spell-binding individual portrait…This is a marvellous translation of a masterly work."—The Observer

Sten Nadolny (b. 1942) was an historian and filmmaker, before writing four novels and two collections of essays. He lives in Berlin and has been awarded four prizes: Ingeborg Bachmann (1981), Hans-Fallada (1985), Premio Vallombrosa (1986), Ernst Hoferichter (1995). The Discovery of Slowness (1983) has been translated into all major languages.

"Elegant and deeply personal, McConkey's essays reveal a seasoned mind and a soulful spirit."—Publishers Weekly

"Like his colleagues Forster and Chekhov, James McConkey combines a sharp eye, a nimble mind and a bottomless generosity. In The Telescope in the Parlor, as in all his fine and intimate essays, he is concerned with the very deepest subjects: time, memory, and what it means to be human. May this new addition to his 'Court of Memory' remind readers how vital and necessary a writer he is."—Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying

In this collection of essays, James McConkey—novelist, professor, and memoirist—writes about the authors and experiences that have meant the most to him. In "Three Autobiographical Essays" and "A Story for a Child," McConkey poignantly recalls events of courting and family life that remain as clear in his inner vision as the day they took place. In "Eight Essays about Literature," he explains why he loves the books he loves and why he responds to the work of A. R. Ammons, Anton Chekhov, and E. M. Forster, among others. With an even greater power than the telescope standing in the corner of his study, McConkey's inner eye observes telling scenes of memory and imagination, which through the magic of his writing become vibrant images in the reader's own imagination.

In the title essay, McConkey recalls the vivid moment that led him to become a chronicler of his own experiences, when he "attempt[ed] to connect the normal details of daily living to a unity…apprehended only for an instant, and which consciousness itself has since kept from [his] reach." Watching McConkey make these connections is but one of the delights this book provides.

"James McConkey uses his own memory as a tool that unlocks everything—a telescope with a view of the entire universe. I can't think of another writer who uses that tool with as much precision, delicacy, and love."—Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris

"McConkey makes of his own life…a thoughtful, powerful and vivid work of art."—Annie Dillard

"James McConkey speaks to the reader with poignant force, illuminating ordinary life…There is no voice like his alive today."—May Sarton

"The genre in which McConkey does his best writing has no name. He invented it…What McConkey does is to create meaning out of ordinary life…he'll create what is not exactly a story but a pattern in time…His books should be famous."—Noel Perrin, USA Today

James McConkey is the author of Crossroads, The Tree House Confessions, The Novels of E. M. Forster, and Court of Memory (a continuing biography that appeared serially in various magazines, primarily The New Yorker), and many other books. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Cornell 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.

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

“A novel of epic scope and ambition.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A masterwork."—Wall Street Journal

An influential Polish classic celebrates 50 years—and its first English edition

As Stone Tablets opens, Istvan Terey, a poet and World War II veteran, is serving as cultural attaché with the Hungarian embassy in Delhi just a few months before his country is torn apart by the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. He is personable and popular with Indians and Europeans, communists and capitalists, but his outspoken criticisms of corruption in the Hungarian government and the embassy threaten to undermine his career. Meanwhile, he has fallen in love with Margit, an Australian ophthalmologist working in India, who is still living through a tragedy of her own: her fiancé died under torture during World War II.

Draining heat, brilliant color, intense smells, and intrusive animals enliven this sweeping Cold War romance. Based on the author’s own experience as a Polish diplomat in India in the late 1950s, Stone Tablets was one of the first literary works in Poland to offer scathing criticisms of Stalinism, and was censored when it was first submitted for publication. Stephanie Kraft’s translation opens this book for the first time to English-speaking readers.

“A high-paced, passionate narrative in which every detail is vital.”—Leslaw Bartelski

Zukrowski is “a brilliantly talented observer of life, a visionary skilled at combining the concrete with the magical, lyricism with realism…a distinguished stylist.”—Leszek Zulinski

“A romance fraught with personal and political risk is at the core of this historically important yet previously untranslated novel by a Polish diplomat stationed in India during the Cold War…inspired by the author’s own experiences, Zukrowski’s precise descriptions of India are memorable, and there is a certain throwback appeal to the depictions of diplomacy conducted through telegrams and glasses of whiskey. But it is Zukrowski’s trenchant critique of Stalinism and political message, bold for its time, that make this novel truly noteworthy.”—Booklist

Wojciech Zukrowski (1916–2000) was one of Poland’s best-known twentieth-century authors. A prolific novelist, screenwriter, and essayist, he was a war correspondent in Vietnam in the early 1950s, and worked at the embassy in New Delhi from 1956 to 1959. In 1996 Zukrowski won the Reymont Prize for lifetime literary achievement.

The two-decades-long controversy over same-sex marriage in the United States was finally resolved on June 26, 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses required states to allow same-sex couples to marry on the same terms as opposite-sex couples.

Under our American system of government, divisive and often abiding disputes may be resolved either through legislation or judicial decisions.

In Same-Sex Marriage and American Constitutionalism, Murray Dry explains why the process by which Americans arrive at these resolutions can be as important as the substance of the resolutions themselves. By taking up the question of same-sex marriage, Dry excavates the bases of why and how Americans decide as we do (and as we have done when major questions arose in the past; think: school integration, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance).

As Professor Dry retraces the path that same-sex marriage took as it wended its way through the political (that is, the legislative) process and through the court system, he finds a vivid framework for the question, “Who should decide?” It’s a question often overlooked, but one that Dry believes should not be. He argues convincingly that it does matter whether the Supreme Court or the legislature makes the final decision—so that court-mandated law does not threaten democratic representative government, and so that legislation does not trample on fundamental constitutional rights.

Murray Dry is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. He is the author of Civil Peace and the Quest for Truth.

"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.

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.

Up in the Hills "is too richly humorous, too full of wit, wisdom, gentle irony, salutary satire and the wonder which Spring offers to the welcoming eye to be read only by Dunsany's devotess."—New York Times

"No one can imitate Dunsany, and probably everyone who's ever read him has tried."—C. L. Moore

The hills stood for untameable things, things wild and no more to be checked by laws than the bright clouds that sparkled above them, and whose shadows all along the brows of the hills lay like a frown…the hills going right into cloudland.

What is there for an Irish lad to do when the old women of his village start leveling curses at visiting archaeologists, curses that may inadvertantly light upon innocent residents? Mickey Connor has a capital idea—he'll gather a small band of friends and take them up into the hills, to live there until the tumult in town subsides.

And how will they spend their time in the hills?

"Sure, I'd like to be a general," said Young Mickey. "Maybe we'll have a bit of war."

But the idyll that Mickey envisions is short-lived. For even in the hills of the newly independent Irish Free State, it's no easy thing, he discovers, to have "a bit of a war."

Yeats stayed in Dunsany's ancestral castle on numerous occasions and described Dunsany as "a man of genius…[with] a very fine style." Dunsany wrote his play The Glittering Gate at the request of Yeats, who wanted to "claim [Dunsany] for Ireland."

H. P. Lovecraft wrote of Dunsany, "To the truly imaginative he is a talisman and a key unlocking rich storehouses of dream." He also said of his own work: "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces—but alas—where are my Lovecraft pieces?"

The critic S. T. Joshi wrote, "Let us marvel at [Dunsany's] seemingly effortless mastery of so many different forms (short story, novel, play, even essay and lecture), his unfailingly sound narrative sense, and the amazing consistency he maintained over a breathtakingly prolific output…Dunsany claimed aesthetic independence from his time and culture, [and] became a sharp and unrelenting critic of the industrialism and plebeianism that were shattering the beauty both of literature and of the world…yet retained a surprising popularity…through the whole of his career."

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany (1878–1957), inherited one of the oldest titles in the Peerage of Ireland. Lord Dunsany, who lived much of his life at Dunsany Castle in County Meath, was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and autobiography. He is best known for his fantasy novels and stories, and his writing influenced the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ursula K Le Guin, among others.

Wise-cracking underachiever Lester Smith, class of '97, muddles through his senior year in this funny, moving debut novel.

It's 1996, senior year of high school has just begun, and Lester is at a total loss. He should be studying and making plans for life after graduation. (His best friend, Freesia, is applying to 37 colleges.) Instead, he wanders the back roads of his small town on the Puget Sound, visiting the local beaches and ignoring all his schoolwork. His father recently abandoned the family, his mother is more than slightly distracted, and his younger sister, Grace, is finding it hard to adjust to both their new family situation and ninth grade.

But Lester is smart and funny, and despite his general apathy, he does feel strongly about a few things: he loves his friends, Milton's Paradise Lost, the Ramones, and "the yearbook arts," as he calls them. Eventually he even comes to appreciate Mr. Traversal, the new Yearbook teacher who prefers that students call him by his first name, Jeff. When Lester and Jeff run afoul of the school's insufferable interim principal, they come up with a plan to create an "underground yearbook." This renegade project and Jeff's unlikely mentorship provide the spark that helps Lester to accept his past and to give his future a second chance.

From bright new talent Jesse Edward Johnson comes this hilarious and moving debut novel about learning to believe in yourself again. Whether you have yet to start high school or you graduated decades ago, you’re sure to love Yearbook and the whip-smart Lester Smith.

"Lester Smith, the unlikely hero of this coming-of age story, captivates even as he infuriates. He's snarky and smart and will totally break your heart. For fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell, Yearbook is your next favorite read."
—T. Greenwood, author of Where I Lost Her, Two Rivers, and Bodies of Water

"Jesse Edward Johnson's Yearbook is a highly original account of the thorny, hilarious world of high school. Set in 1996 but entirely in sync with contemporary adolescent angst and hijinks, the novel centers on the emotional development of its narrator Lester Smith, a jaded smart-aleck--part Holden Caulfield, part contemporary hipster...Yearbook is an exceptional rendering of a vexed period in our growing up, an exploration of the mildly unhinged adolescent mind as it finds a measure of peace and equanimity."
—Paula Marantz Cohen, author of Jane Austen in Boca and Suzanne Davis Gets a Life

“Yearbook takes us on an unforgettable journey into the senior year of high school teen angst...Compellingly told, brilliant in its ventriloquistic ability to capture the teens’ voices, this tale compels the reader to fall in love with these students’ raw desire and sheer ecstasy.”
—Scott Driscoll, author of Better You Go Home

“Oh man, what a charming and deeply enjoyable novel...Lester is the perfect guide back to that bittersweet era known as the senior year of high school—a time shot-through with joy and agony, as life pivots decisively away from adolescence. And what a great motif Johnson’s found in the yearbook itself, that nostalgia-packing dispatch from the past.”
—Peter Mountford, author of A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism and The Dismal Science

"With Yearbook, Johnson does his part to stamp out boring art, one sentence at a time."
—John Baldessari

Jesse Edward Johnson is a writer and artist based in the Pacific Northwest. He has a Ph.D. in English from UCLA, where he taught literature for five years. He has taught at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and at San Quentin Prison. Yearbook is his first novel.

“A necessary manual for those interested in the perpetuation, and the possibilities, of good English prose.”—Harper’s Magazine

“[Lanham’s] style is notable for its audacity, liveliness, and grace.”—The Times Literary Supplement

“The most applicably provocative book on the subject of prose style available. Imperative reading for all teachers and students of writing.”—Choice

This humorous and accessible classic on style calls for the return of wordplay and delight to writing instruction. Richard Lanham argues that many tomes on writing, with their trio of platitudes—clarity, plainness, sincerity—lie “upon the spirit like wet cardboard.”

"People seldom write to be clear. They have designs on their fellow men. Pure prose is as rare as pure virtue, and for the same reasons…The Books [Lanham’s term for misguided composition textbooks], written for a man and world yet unfallen, depict a ludicrous process like this: 'I have an idea. I want to present this gift to my fellow man. I fix this thought clearly in mind. I follow the rules. Out comes a prose that gift-wraps thought in transparent paper.' If this sounds like a travesty, it’s because it is one. Yet it dominates prose instruction in America."—from Chapter 1

Richard A. Lanham is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of Rhetorica, Inc., a consulting and editorial services company. He is the author of numerous books on writing, including A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Analyzing Prose, The Electronic Word, and most recently, The Economics of Attention.

“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.

Who sets language policy today? Who made whom the grammar doctor? Lacking the equivalent of l'Académie française, we English speakers must find our own way looking for guidance or vindication in source after source. McGuffey's Readers introduced nineteenth-century students to "correct" English. Strunk and White's Elements of Style and William Safire's column, "On Language," provide help on diction and syntax to contemporary writers and speakers. Sister Miriam Joseph's book, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, invites the reader into a deeper understanding—one that includes rules, definitions, and guidelines, but whose ultimate end is to transform the reader into a liberal artist.

A liberal artist seeks the perfection of the human faculties. The liberal artist begins with the language arts, the trivium, which is the basis of all learning because it teaches the tools for reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Thinking underlies all these activities. Many readers will recognize elements of this book: parts of speech, syntax, propositions, syllogisms, enthymemes, logical fallacies, scientific method, figures of speech, rhetorical technique, and poetics. The Trivium, however, presents these elements within a philosophy of language that connects thought, expression, and reality.

"Trivium" means the crossroads where the three branches of language meet. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, students studied and mastered this integrated view of language. Regrettably, modern language teaching keeps the parts without the vision of the whole. Inspired by the possibility of helping students "acquire mastery over the tools of learning" Sister Miriam Joseph and other teachers at Saint Mary's College designed and taught a course on the trivium for all first year students. The Trivium resulted from that noble endeavor.

The liberal artist travels in good company. Sister Miriam Joseph frequently cites passages from William Shakespeare, John Milton, Plato, the Bible, Homer, and other great writers. The Paul Dry Books edition of The Trivium provides new graphics and notes to make the book accessible to today's readers. Sister Miriam Joseph told her first audience that "the function of the trivium is the training of the mind for the study of matter and spirit, which constitute the sum of reality. The fruit of education is culture, which Mathew Arnold defined as 'the knowledge of ourselves and the world.'" May this noble endeavor lead many to that end.

"Is the trivium, then, a sufficient education for life? Properly taught, I believe that it should be."—Dorothy L. Sayers

"The Trivium is a highly recommended and welcome contribution to any serious and dedicated writer's reference collection."—Midwest Book Review

Finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award

"This small novel works like a laser beam, penetrating the American experience with searing and concentrated intensity."—Los Angeles Times

"The Tree of Life is one of the most powerful, original, and disturbing books that I have read in a long time. Hugh Nissenson has caught the voice of the old-time diary keeper just exactly. It's uncanny, marvelous, so direct and deceptively simple that you know what pains he has taken.The book is a work of art and no one who reads it will ever forget it."—David McCullough

"It is a tale more moving and haunting than one thinks it can possibly be."—The Village Voice

The year is 1811. Having suffered a loss of faith, Thomas Keene, Congregational minister from New England, abandons the East and moves to Richland County on the Ohio frontier. The Tree of Life is Keene's journal: stories and jottings appear alongside accounting entries and poems, coarse jokes and sermons, woodcuts and maps. In this "Waste Book," Keene conveys his longing for a young widow, his fascination with John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and his resolve in the face of the growing enmity between his fellow settlers and the Delaware Indians. The Tree of Life reveals a man of intellect and passion as he confronts the raw country.

"The juxtaposition of horror and information perfectly captures the genius of this imagined diary…Scarcely a word is wasted. Hardly an aspect of the struggle to found a new civilization remains untouched. The Tree of Life dramatizes, sometimes with almost unbearable intensity, the American dream and its attendant nightmare."—Time Magazine

"[The Tree of Life] confronts us where our deepest and most disturbing fantasies intersect with our sense of history…Given the richness of its texture and the strength of whichever of its threads one pursues, one can imagine that its force will grow and take an ever tighter grip on our understanding of the American past. It is a book that plants deep seeds."—New York Times

"A beautifully paced book…[it] allows the shocks and resonances to gather slowly, the way they do in life when you are taking everything in, but cannot yet allow yourself to admit how much you've been affected…In thrall to the powers Mr. Nissenson has invoked and wielded with such fearful symmetry—the powers of documentation and of vision—we can only read on."—Margo Jefferson, from her new Introduction

Hugh Nissenson (1933–2013) was born in New York City. After graduating from Swarthmore College, he published his first short story in Harper's Magazine in 1958. He taught writing at Yale, Barnard, and Auburn Theological Seminary, and was the author of a memoir, three collections of short stories and journals, and many novels.

Margo Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic. She has been a staff writer for The New York Times and Newsweek; her reviews and essays have appeared in New York Magazine, Grand Street, Vogue, Harper's and many other publications.

"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.

When William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1682, he created a visionary plan for its principal city, Philadelphia, and the immediate surrounding region. Over the past 325 years Penn's plan of the city has been modified by many individuals to reflect an evolving vision of a city both beautiful and practical.

The Planning of Center City Philadelphia: From William Penn to the Present traces these three centuries of planning history, from Penn's original concept to the design of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway—one of the significant monuments of the City Beautiful movement in the United States—to the mid-20th century urban renewal efforts that made Philadelphia a national leader in city planning and urban revitalization. Richly illustrated with historic maps and photographs, the book also includes brief biographical sketches of nine Philadelphians who have contributed significantly to the practice of city planning, including Paul Philippe Cret, Edmund N. Bacon, David A. Wallace, and Denise Scott Brown. Also included are five walking tours of Center City, where the results of this planning history can be seen and experienced most easily: Old City, Society Hill, City Hall East, City Hall West (Penn Center), and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The tours contain easily readable maps as well as photographs and descriptions of the most significant architectural landmarks in each area.

John Andrew Gallery has been a member of Philadelphia's community development and historic preservation community for close to fifty years. From 2002 to 2013, he was Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, where he advocated for the city's historic built environment. He is the author of Philadelphia Architecture, A Guide to the City and editor of Sacred Sites of Center City, also available from Paul Dry Books.

"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.

"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.