Bücher der Reihe Perennial Classics

In this simultaneously hilarious and poignant companion volume to The Wapshot Chronicle, the members of the Wapshot family of St. Botolphs drift far from their New England village into the demented caprices of the mighty, the bad graces of the IRS, and the humiliating abyss of adulterous passion.A novel of large and tender vision, The Wapshot Scandal is filled with pungent characters and outrageous twists of fate, and, above all, with Cheever's luminous compassion for all his hapless fellow prisoners of human nature.

Assembled by Allen Ginsberg, Selected Poems 1947-1995 is the definitive collection of the best works of one of the most influential and revolutionary poets of the twentieth century.Allen Ginsberg, famous for helping catalyze the Beat Generation, wrote poetry for more than fifty years. His innovative verse and provocative attitudes of spiritual, political, and sexual liberation inspired countless poets, musicians, and visual and performance artists worldwide, and helped shape several generations' views of the world.Selected Poems 1947-1995 commemorates Ginsberg's brilliant career as one of America's most distinguished poets. Here are well-known masterpieces such as the lyric "Howl" and the narrative "Kaddish" -- classic works of American literature -- as well as more recent gems, including the long dream poem "White Shroud," the visionary "After Lalon," and the political rock lyric "The Ballad of the Skeletons," a song he recorded in 1996 with a stellar band that included Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye, and Paul McCartney.

Following the sensational success of her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead continued her brilliant work in Growing Up in New Guinea, detailing her study of the Manus, a New Guinea people still untouched by the outside world when she visited them in 1928. She lived in their noisy fishing village at a pivotal time -- after warfare had vanished but before missions and global commerce had begun to change their lives. She developed fascinating insights into their family lives, exploring their attitudes toward sex, marriage, the rearing of children, and the supernatural, which led her to see intriguing parallels with modern Western society. Reissued for the centennial of her birth and featuring introductions by Howard Gardner and Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, this book offers important anthropological insights into human societies and vividly captures a vanished way of life.