16 results for "World Literature"

Encyclopedia of an ordinary life

Rosenthal, Amy Krouse
A memoir in bite-size chunks from the author of the viral Modern Love column “You May Want to Marry My Husband.” “[Rosenthal] shines her generous light of humanity on the seemingly humdrum moments of life and shows how delightfully precious they actually are.” — The Chicago Sun-Times How do you conjure a life? Give the truest account of what you saw, felt, learned, loved, strived for? For Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the surprising answer came in the form of an encyclopedia. In Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life she has ingeniously adapted this centuries-old format for conveying knowledge into a poignant, wise, often funny, fully realized memoir. Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life. Start anywhere—preferably at the beginning—and see how one young woman’s alphabetized existence can open up and define the world in new and unexpected ways. An ordinary life, perhaps, but an extraordinary book.
Three Rivers 2006 240 pages

No straight road takes you there: essays for uneven terrain

Solnit, Rebecca
New York Times Bestseller In the spirit of her bestselling book Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit explores how our actions can shape the future and the liberatory possibilities of embracing uncertainty. Beginning with an essay about a three-hundred-year-old violin and what it can tell us about forests, abundance, and climate, and ending with on about a prisoner dreaming of seeing the ocean, No Straight Road Takes You There deftly bridges the political and the literary, offering unique insights, nuanced understanding, and inspiration for the challenging work ahead. In her latest essay collection, the award-winning author explores climate change, feminism, democracy, hope, and power and its abuse. Throughout she asks us to heed the stories we tell or have been told, and the ways those stories can be, or should be changed. Solnit offers a reappraisal of the value of indirect consequences, an embrace of unpredictability, slowness, and imperfection in the politics of how to change the world. "I've tried to find other ways of seeing and to prize the migratory routes ideas take," Solnit writes in the introduction, "the way that hope is most often grounded in memory, because you can't see the future but you can understand the patterns and possibilities if you know the past."
Haymarket Books 2025-05-13 184 pages

World of Our Fathers

Irving Howe
A new 30th Anniversary paperback edition of an award-winning classic. Winner of the National Book Award, 1976 World of Our Fathers traces the story of Eastern Europe's Jews to America over four decades. Beginning in the 1880s, it offers a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, and shows how the immigrant generation tried to maintain their Yiddish culture while becoming American. It is essential reading for those interested in understanding why these forebears to many of today's American Jews made the decision to leave their homelands, the challenges these new Jewish Americans faced, and how they experienced every aspect of immigrant life in the early part of the twentieth century. This invaluable contribution to Jewish literature and culture is now back in print in a new paperback edition, which includes a new foreword by noted author and literary critic Morris Dickstein.
Galahad Books 1994 714 pages

Sandy Koufax: a lefty's legacy

Leavy, Jane
In an era when too many heroes have been toppled from too many pedestals, Sandy Koufax stands apart and alone, a legend who declined his own celebrity. As a pitcher, he was sublime, the ace of baseball lore. As a human being, he aspired to be the one thing his talent and his fame wouldn't allow: a regular guy. A Brooklyn kid, he was the product of the sedate and modest fifties who came to define and dominate baseball in the sixties. In Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, former award-winning Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy delivers an uncommon baseball book, vividly re-creating the Koufax era, when presidents were believed and pitchers aspired to go the distance. He was only a teenager when Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley proclaimed him "the Great Jewish Hope" of the franchise. But it wasn't until long after the team had abandoned Brooklyn that the man became the myth. Old-fashioned in his willingness to play when he was injured and in his acute sense of responsibility to his team, Koutax answered to an authority higher than manager Walter Alston. When he refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, he inadvertently made himself a religious icon and an irrevocably public figure. A year later, he was gone -- done with baseball at age thirty. No other sports hero had retired so young, so well, or so completely. Despite Sandy Koufax's best efforts to protect his privacy, his legend has grown larger ever since. Part biography, part cultural history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy gets as close to that legend as he will allow. Through meticulous reporting and interviews with five hundred of his friends, teammates, and opponents, Leavy penetrates the mythology to discover a man more than worthy of myth.
HarperCollins 2002-09-17 282 pages

A Walker in the City

Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin burst onto the American literary scene in 1942, when his first book, "On Native Grounds," announced the arrival of an important new literary critic. "A Walker in the City," his second, signaled the other direction his career would follow: author of several intense, intimate, and lyrical memoirs. Years later he would admit how he struggled writing it. He thought he wanted to concentrate on New York itself, describing a series of walks around the city. But what emerged was the story of his own boyhood encounters with it, starting from Brownsville, the Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood of his birth, then stretching out to alluring, mysterious Manhattan and from there to the world. Each walk is simultaneously a journey out and a journey in: outward, from the neighborhood to the land beyond, the great, electric, canyoned streets of the city; inward, into his own soul, as it grows and falls in love with books and language and literature, with music and metaphysics and politics, with the city and the country and the world and rapturously tries to take them all in.
Fine Communications 1997 176 pages

American scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the making of the Beat Generation

Raskin, Jonah
Written as a cultural weapon and a call to arms, Howl touched a raw nerve in Cold War America and has been controversial from the day it was first read aloud nearly fifty years ago. This first full critical and historical study of Howl brilliantly elucidates the nexus of politics and literature in which it was written and gives striking new portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. Drawing from newly released psychiatric reports on Ginsberg, from interviews with his psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Hicks, and from the poet's journals, American Scream shows how Howl brought Ginsberg and the world out of the closet of a repressive society. It also gives the first full accounting of the literary figures―Eliot, Rimbaud, and Whitman―who influenced Howl, definitively placing it in the tradition of twentieth-century American poetry for the first time. As he follows the genesis and the evolution of Howl, Jonah Raskin constructs a vivid picture of a poet and an era. He illuminates the development of Beat poetry in New York and San Francisco in the 1950s--focusing on historic occasions such as the first reading of Howl at Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955 and the obscenity trial over the poem's publication. He looks closely at Ginsberg's life, including his relationships with his parents, friends, and mentors, while he was writing the poem and uses this material to illuminate the themes of madness, nakedness, and secrecy that pervade Howl. A captivating look at the cultural climate of the Cold War and at a great American poet, American Scream finally tells the full story of Howl―a rousing manifesto for a generation and a classic of twentieth-century literature.
University of California Press 2004-04-07 295 pages

Keep the River on Your Right

Tobias Schneebaum
The author of the classic Keep the River on Your Right here tells the remarkable story of his four years among the Asmat of New Guinea, a jungle-dwelling people rumored to have killed Michael Rockefeller. Instead of ferocious cannibals, Schneebaum found a regal, loving, gentle people who freely accepted him and initiated him into a way of life no outsider had ever seen before. Adopted into an Asmat family in the village whose people were said to have killed Rockefeller, he crossed the boundaries into another culture and another age, learning secrets no other outsider had been allowed to see before. But it wasn't until Schneebaum met Akatpitsjin, a handsome married man with five children, that he entered the erotic world of the Asmat, when the two became "exchange friends' and lovers, a practice basic to the sexual life of the village. Schneebaum's encounter with the Asmat ultimately became something more intimate and liberating for him than the mere discovery of tribal secrets. He confronted himself. His odyssey is as much the record of a journey into himself as it is a unique and sensitively observed account of a vanishing society, written with a shimmering sensuality that has no equal in the literature of anthropology or self-confession.
Grove Press 1988 184 pages

The Lede Dispatches from a Life in the Press

Calvin Trillin
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating portrait of journalism and the people who make it, told through pieces collected from the incomparable six-decade career of bestselling author and longtime New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin “ The Lede contains profiles . . . that are acknowledged classics of the form and will be studied until A.I. makes hash out of all of us.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD I’ve been writing about the press almost as long as I’ve been in the game. At some point, it occurred to me that disparate pieces from various places in various styles amounted to a picture from multiple angles of what the press has been like over the years since I became a practitioner and an observer. Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation . But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press. In The Lede, Trillin gathers his incisive, often hilarious writing on reporting, reporters, and the media world that is their orbit. He writes about a legendary crime reporter in Miami, a swashbuckling New York Times reporter, and an erudite film critic in Dallas who once a week transformed himself from an appreciator of the French nouvelle vague into a crude connoisseur of movies like Mother Riley Meets the Vampire . There are pieces on the House of Lords aspirations of a North American press baron, the paucity of gossip columns in Russia, the embroilment of a weekly newspaper in a missing person case, and the founding of a publication called Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking . Uniting all of this is Trillin’s signature combination of empathy, humor, and graceful prose. The Lede is an unparalleled portrait of one of our fundamental American institutions from a master journalist.
Random House 2025-02-18 336 pages

Heil Hunger! Health Under Hitler

Martin Gumpert
""Heil Hunger! Health Under Hitler"" is a non-fiction book written by Martin Gumpert. The book explores the impact of Nazi policies on the health and well-being of the German people during the Third Reich. Gumpert examines the various measures taken by the Nazi regime to promote health and fitness, including the establishment of physical education programs and the promotion of healthy eating habits. However, he also highlights the negative effects of Nazi policies, such as the forced sterilization of individuals deemed ""unfit"" and the mistreatment of concentration camp prisoners. Through extensive research and analysis, Gumpert provides a comprehensive look at the complex and often contradictory relationship between health and politics in Nazi Germany. Overall, ""Heil Hunger! Health Under Hitler"" offers a thought-provoking perspective on a dark period in history and the ways in which ideology can impact public health.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
Literary Licensing, LLC 2011-05 128 pages

I Am My Beloveds

Jonathan Papernick
Ben Seidel wasn't sure how serious they were when he and his wife, Shira, discussed having an open marriage. But when Shira announces that she is going on a date with Liz, any ambiguity evaporates. Suddenly, every day is new terrain for Ben, navigating between keeping things together with Shira and exploring new partners. And when one of those new partners begins to matter to him more than he ever anticipated, he discovers that the complexities of this new life are only just beginning. Bracingly honest, refreshingly sexy, and deeply empathetic, I Am My Beloveds is the work of a superior storyteller, making real a lifestyle that might be as close as your own bedroom door.
Story Plant 2024-01-30 336 pages

The Evian Conference of 1938 and the Jewish Refugee Crisis

Paul R. Bartrop
This book provides the first dedicated study of the Evian Conference of July 1938, an international initiative called by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While on the surface the conference appeared as an attempt to alleviate the distress faced by Jews being forced out of Germany and Austria, in reality it only served to demonstrate that the nations of the world were not willing to accept Jews as refugees. Since the Holocaust, a generally-held assumption has been that the Evian Conference represented a lost opportunity to save Germany’s Jews, and that the conference failed to rescue the Jews of Europe. In this study, Paul Bartrop argues that in fact it did not fail when measured against the original reasons for which it was called. Exposing many of the myths surrounding the meeting, this work addresses a glaring lacuna in the literature of the Holocaust, and places the so-called 'failure' of the Evian Conference into its proper context.
Springer International Publishing 2018-08-11 128 pages

A World More Attractive A View of Modern Literature and Politics

Irving Howe
A World More Attractive: A View of Modern Literature and Politics is a non-fiction book written by Irving Howe. The book provides an insightful and thought-provoking analysis of the intersection of literature and politics in the modern world. Howe explores the ways in which literature reflects and shapes our political beliefs and values, and how political ideologies can influence the literary works of authors.The book is divided into three parts. The first part examines the role of literature in shaping our understanding of the world, and how literature can be used to challenge or reinforce political ideologies. The second part delves into the political themes and messages in modern literature, focusing on the works of authors such as George Orwell, James Baldwin, and Saul Bellow. The third part explores the relationship between literature and political activism, and how literature can inspire social change.Throughout the book, Howe draws on his vast knowledge of literature and politics to provide insightful commentary and analysis. He offers a nuanced and complex view of the relationship between literature and politics, highlighting the ways in which they are interconnected and influence one another. The book is written in a clear and engaging style, making it accessible to both academic and general readers.Overall, A World More Attractive is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of literature and politics. It offers a fascinating and insightful exploration of this complex and important topic, and is sure to spark lively debate and discussion.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
Literary Licensing, LLC 2012-07 322 pages

The Sociology of the Kibbutz

Ernest Krausz,David Glanz
This is the second volume of the publication series of the Israeli Sociological Society, whose object is to identify and clarify the major themes that occupy social research in Israel today. Studies of Israeli Society gathers together the best of Israeli social science investigation, which was previously scattered in a large variety of international jour�nals. Each book in the series is in�troduced by integrative essays. The contents of volume two focus on the sociology of a unique Israeli social institution--the kibbutz. Kib�butz society constitutes an impor�tant laboratory for the investigation of a variety of problems that have been of perennial concern to the social sciences. Topics in this volume include relevant contem�porary issues such as the dynamics of social stratification in a "classless" society, the function and status of the family in a revolutionary society, relations between generations, industrializa�tion in advanced rural communities, and collective economies versus the outside world. The questions of the concept and development of the kib�butz, social differentiation and socialization, and work and produc�tion within the kibbutz possess a significance far beyond their im�mediate social context. Does the kibbutz offer a model for an alter�native, communal lifestyle for the modern world? How has the kibbutz changed over the past decadeswithin the context of a rapidly modernizing Israeli society? Emphasizing the "nonfailure" of the kibbutz experiment and con�trasting it with many socialist, cooperative, and communal ex�periments that clearly did fail, Martin Buber, in his analysis, attributes this success to the kib-but/'s undogmatic character, its ability to adapt structures and in�stitutions to changing conditions, while preserving its essential values and ideals. This volume presents an excellent review of the social research under�taken on the kibbutz in the past decades, and provides an introduc�tion to the growing scientific literature on the kibbutz. Contributors: Melford E. Spiro, Menachem Rosner, Martin Buber, Joseph Ben-David, Daniel Katz, Naftali Golomb, Erik Cohen, Arye Fishman, Michael Saltman, S.N. Eisenstadt, Eva Rosenfeld, Amitai Etzioni, Ephraim Yuchtman, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Nissim Cohen, Yonina Talmon-Garber, Joseph Shepher, Lionel Tiger, Edward C. Devereux, Reuben Kahane, Ivan Vallier, David Barkin, John W. Bennet, Yehuda Don, Uri Leviatan, Eliette Orchan, Shimon Shur and David Glanz.
Transaction 1983-01-01 429 pages

The Ascent of Man

Mathilde Blind
"The Ascent of Man" by Mathilde Blind is a powerful collection of poems exploring themes of evolution and human progress. Written by a significant woman author, this work delves into the concept of social evolution through compelling verse. This poetry examines humanity's journey, offering insightful reflections on societal development and change. A historical text meticulously prepared for print republication, Blind's poems resonate with enduring relevance, providing a unique perspective on the forces shaping our world. Explore the complexities of human advancement and the ongoing quest for a better future through the evocative language and timeless observations of Mathilde Blind. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2025-03-29 84 pages