Essays on History and Human Survival from the viewpoint of a Psychohistorian

Biographical sketches show how six writers and public figures prepared for their deaths

Book by Robert Jay Lifton

"An ex-Soviet professor plays amateur detective in this post Cold War romp by New York Times bestselling spy master Robert Littell. Lemuel Falk, a theoretical "chaoticist," has been denied permission to leave Russia for the last twenty-three years, likely because he knows a few state secrets. Even he is surprised-and wary-when his twenty-fourth request is approved, and he is offered a position as visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York. But as soon as Professor Falk arrives in America, he is plunged into a new kind of chaos-including a high-stakes academic catfight, an affair with a much-younger hairdresser, and cascading offers from domestic spies looking to capitalize on his knowledge-and soon finds himself playing amateur detective at the behest of local police. While he helps hunt for a dangerous serial killer, he grapples with ghosts from his own past in Russia. In this wholly original novel, Littell explores chaos theory, questions of faith, ad the ironies of contemporary America"-- Provided by publisher.

The Autonomy of Reason reflects Wolff’s determination to get out of Kant’s system what is good and to get out of Kant’s system for good. Readers will certainly benefit from Wolff’s two decades of intense study of Kant. Wolff does not see his task as one of either historical exegesis or philosophical criticism. In the place of both Wolff proposes a “philosophical reconstruction” of the text.

In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary poetry as it reflects its modernist and Romantic past. He isolates certain persistent ideas about poetry's situation relative to life and focuses on the conflict the poet faces between the nature of words and poetic forms on one side, and the nature of experience on the other. The author ranges for his often surprising examples from Keats to the great modernists such as Stevens and Williams, to the contents of recent magazines. He considers work by Ammons, Ashbery, Bogan, Ginsberg, Lowell, Merwin, O'Hara, and younger writers, offering judgments and enthusiasms from a viewpoint that is consistent but unstereotyped. Like his poetry, Robert Pinsky's criticism joins the traditional and the innovative in ways that are thoughtful and unmistakably his own. His book is a bold essay on the contemporary situation in poetry, on the dazzling achievements of modernism, and on the nature or "situation" of poetry itself.

This first comprehensive story of logging, lumbering, and forest conservation in Texas records the industry's history from the earliest days of the Republic, when a few isolated operations provided for local needs, through the first four decades of the twentieth century. Supplemented by over one hundred photographs, many never before published, the text re-creates Texas' heyday as one of the nation's leading timber producers. At that time, the forested area equaled the state of Indiana. In the words of one visitor, the forest was "like a vast wave that has rolled in upon a level beach . . . creeping forward, thinning out, and finally disappearing, except where, along a river course, it pushes far inland." The industry's most significant growth occurred between the end of Reconstruction and the beginnings of World War II, when entrepreneurs from the North, the South, and the East ventured into the vast stands of virgin timber in the Texas Piney Woods. These pioneers, attracted by the great potential fortunes to be made, provided the capital, expertise, and energy that introduced large mills and railroads to Texas lumbering and developed markets for their products--not only in Houston, Dallas, and other Texas cities but also across the United States and throughout the world. Various lumber companies, logging and mill operations, company towns, and the genesis of forest conservation are all featured in the text and illustrations. This account will appeal to historians, conservationists, and general readers interested in the Texas lumber industry and in Texas economic history.

New writings on race, politics, and theatre, as well as Mr. Brustein's incisive theatre reviews and deft portraits of stage luminaries. Brustein is an elegant and eloquent voice in the wilderness of contemporary American culture. ―Robin Lippincott, New York Times Book Review

"To the theatre in this country Robert Brustein has long been indispensable. His voice, his reactions are always eloquent, stimulating."--Susan Sontag "Mr. Brustein's voice is, to me, like water in the desert--he is harsh, and funny, and insightful, and most important, fearless."--David Mamet "Robert Brustein is the rarest of rare amphibians: a powerful theatre practitioner who is also a powerful critic.... Savvy, fearless, opinionated, and fathomlessly curious, he is at once steeped in the classics and alert to the most recent tremors on the cultural seismograph."--Stephen Greenblatt

If you write science fiction, you'll like Science Fiction 101's witty, thought-provoking essays, revealing the secrets, the craft and the art of science fiction. If you read science fiction, you'll enjoy the thirteen classic works of modern science fiction included in Science Fiction 101. These works include wondrous stories by Alfred Bester, Philip. K. Dick, Jack Vance, Frederick Pohl and many others.

Yakoub, interplanetary Gypsy King, tells of his long life, his many loves and his travels from world to world. Yet after everything he has achieved, one final goal remains--wresting back the crown from his usurping son and returning to his people's legendary home, the Star of Gypsies. Fine.

“The ideal science-fiction short story should amaze as well as delight,” says Robert Silverberg in the Introduction to his latest volume of short stories. And indeed that is just what America’s master of imaginative fiction does in this collection of stories written between 1980 and 1982 for such magazines as Omni, Playboy, Twilight Zone, Beyond, Penthouse, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. In sixteen brilliantly executed works of the imagination, Robert Silverberg makes fantasy as real and accessible as the mundane world of mortals. With boldly inventive plots, he creates characters as moving as those of any superlative fiction writer. From time travelers who sightsee at history’s debacles, to research chimps who imitate their keepers to the point of inventing religion, complete with the sacrifice of their peers, let Robert Silverberg lead you into his gripping, stirring universe.

Describes the findings of Smithsonian Institution scientists and other investigators regarding the Adena, Hopewell, and Temple Mound Peoples--the Mound Builders

Eight stories of remarkably high caliber: In Entropy's Jaws - (1971) The Reality Trip - (1970) Black Is Beautiful - (1970) Ozymandias - (1958) Caliban - (1972) The Shrines of Earth - (1957) Ringing the Changes - (1970) Hawksbill Station - (1967)

The future of a new world rests in one man's hands