Bücher veröffentlicht von Beacon Press

No One Gardens Alone tells for the first time the story of Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985). Like classic biographies of Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, this fascinating book reveals Lawrence in all her complexity and establishes her, at last, as one of the premier gardeners and gardening writers of the twentieth century."In this first biography of the renowned gardening writer Elizabeth Lawrence, Emily Herring Wilson reminds us that even quiet lives hold unsuspected passions. Written with graceful clarity, sensitivity, and empathy, this life is a perennial."--Linda H. Davis, author of Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. WhiteElizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985) lived a singular, often contradictory life. She was a traditional southerner; a successful, independent garden writer with her own newspaper column and numerous books to her credit; a dutiful daughter who cared for her elders and lived with her mother; a landscape architect; a passionate poet; a friend of literary figures like Eudora Welty and Joseph Mitchell; and a very private woman whose recently discovered letters illuminate aspects of her mystery. Lawrence earned many fans during her lifetime and gained even more after her death with the reissue of many of her classic books. When Emily Herring Wilson edited a collection of letters between Lawrence and famed New Yorker editor Katharine S. White in Two Gardeners, she found legions of readers who were eager to know more about the legendary Lawrence.Now, one hundred years after her birth, No One Gardens Alone tells for the first time the story of this fascinating woman. Like classic biographies of literary figures such as Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, this book reveals Lawrence in all her complexity and establishes her, at last, as one of the premier gardeners and garden writers of the twentieth century.

The Art of Meaning in the EverydayA joyous book on the art of finding meaning in daily life. Forrest Church challenges much of the modern search for meaning-indeed, the entire thrust of modern theology.

World-renowned historian Howard Zinn has turned to drama to explore the legacy of Karl Marx and Emma Goldman and to delve into the intricacies of political and social conscience perhaps more deeply than traditional history permits. Three Plays brings together all this work, including the previously unpublished Daughter of Venus, along with a new introductory essay on political theater, and prefaces to each of the plays.

Boston has persevered through the bad old days to thrive, and more, to make a kind of statement about the good city. The good city is innovative and fun, it is prosperous, it strives for justice and sustainability, but above all, it is alive. -From the Introduction by Paul GroganThe Good City presents a vivid new profile of Boston through the work of fifteen of the city's finest writers. Robert Campbell and Jane Holtz Kay on Boston's embrace of lively urban densityJames Miller on the city's intellectual historyJack Beatty on Boston's colorful political past and presentPatricia Powell on the literary landscape and the immigrant experienceSusan Orlean on the city she left and now lovesJohn Hanson Mitchell on how nature revives the metropolisAnita Diamant on Boston as a spiritual home Scott Kirsner on Boston as a powerhouse of scientific and technological innovationAlan Chong on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the arts in BostonLynda Morgenroth on the city's neighborhoodsMichael Patrick MacDonald on gentrification and what it means to old neighborhoods like SouthieDerrick Jackson on Boston as a laboratory for advancing race relationsHoward Bryant on the city's obsession with sportsIrene Smalls on seeing the city through the eyes of a child.

1998 National Jewish Book Award finalistPamela S. Nadell mines a wealth of untapped sources to bring us the first complete story of the courageous and committed Jewish women who passionately defended their right to equal religious participation through rabbinical ordination.

InTeaching toward Freedom, William Ayers illuminates the hope as well as the conflict that characterizes the craft of education: how it can be used in authoritarian ways at the service of the state, the church, or a restrictive existing social order-or, as he envisions it, as a way for students to become more fully human, more engaged, more participatory, more free. Using examples from his own classroom experiences as well as from popular culture, film, and novels, Ayers redraws the lines concerning how we teach, why we teach, and the surprising things we uncover when we allow students to become visible, vocal authors of their own lives and stories. This lucid and inspiring book will help teachers at every level to realize that ideal.

Few writers ask us to question our fundamental assumptions about education as provocatively as Alfie Kohn. Time magazine has called him'perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores.' And the Washington Post says he is 'the most energetic and charismatic figure standing in the way of a major federal effort to make standardized curriculums and tests a fact of life in every U.S. school.'In this new collection of essays, Kohn takes on some of the most important and controversial topics in education of the last few years. His central focus is on the real goals of education-a topic, he argues, that we systematically ignore while lavishing attention on misguided models of learning and counterproductive techniques of motivation.The shift to talking about goals yields radical conclusions and wonderfully pungent essays that only Alfie Kohn could have written. From the title essay's challenge to conventional, conservative definitions of a good education to essays on standards and testing and grades that tally the severe educational costs of overemphasizing a narrow conception of achievement, Kohn boldly builds on his earlier work and writes for a wide audience. Kohn's new book will be greeted with enthusiasm by his many readers and by any teacher or parent looking for a refreshing perspective on today's debates about schools.

Getting old sucks, says best-selling author Dr. Lillian Rubin. With refreshing candor, she digs down under the statistics about our graying population and offers a provocative and unflinching examination of all the burning issues that mark aging today. Tackling the subject over a broad swath of the population, cutting across race, class, gender, and physical and cognitive ability, Rubin delivers a powerful and long-overdue reminder that everyone will be touched by the problems arising from our new longevity.

Is the reform we have seen in the wake of the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church meaningful? Have our conversations about the causes of these scandals delved as deeply as they need to? For those questioning the relations between hierarchical power, secrecy, and sexuality in institutional religion, Mark D. Jordan's eloquent meditations on what truths about sexuality need to be told in church-and the difficulty of telling any truths-will be a balm and a revelation.

A thoughtful, warm, and witty introductionUnderstanding the Bibleis designed to help empower skeptics, seekers, nonbelievers, and those of a liberal and progressive outlook to reclaim the Bible from literalists. In making accessible some of the best contemporary historical, literary, political, and feminist readings of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, it encourages all who would find in the biblical heritage an ally and not an enemy in the quest for a more just and humane world. Brief and to the point, it can easily be used to stimulate group discussions and personal reading of the biblical texts themselves, and is an excellent introduction to the Judeo-Christian tradition for those of other faiths.Understanding the Bibleincludes four preliminary chapters on the why, who, which, and how of biblical understanding, followed by eight brief thematic chapters covering the core of the Hebrew Bible and six covering the Christian scriptures, plus chronologies, maps, and helpful suggestions for further reading.

An outspoken participant in the civil rights movement, Roger Wilkins served as Assistant Attorney General during the Johnson administration. In 1972 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize along with Bernstein and Herblock for his coverage of Watergate. Yet this black man, who has served the United States so well, feels at times an unwelcome guest here.In Jefferson's Pillow, Wilkins returns to America's beginnings and the founding fathers who preached and fought for freedom, even though they owned other human beings and legally denied them their humanity. He asserts that the mythic accounts of the American Revolution have ignored slavery and oversimplified history until the heroes, be they the founders or the slaves in their service, are denied any human complexity.Wilkins offers a thoughtful analysis of this fundamental paradox through his exploration of the lives of George Washington, George Mason, James Madison, and of course Thomas Jefferson. He discusses how class, education, and personality allowed for the institution of slavery, unravels how we as Americans tell different sides of that story, and explores the confounding ability of that narrative to limit who we are and who we can become.An important intellectual history of America's founding, Jefferson's Pillow will change the way we view our nation and ourselves.