Bücher veröffentlicht von Coffeetown Press

This second edition of Peter G. Beidler''s Readers Companion builds on the success of the first edition. It will be an indispensable guide for teachers, students, and general readers who want fully to appreciate Salinger''s perennial bestseller. Now six decades old, The Catcher in the Rye contains references to people, places, books, movies, and historical events that will puzzle many twenty-first century readers. This edition includes a new section on reactions to Salinger''s death in January, 2010. Beidler provides some 250 explanations to help readers make sense of the culture through which Holden Caulfield stumbles as he comes of age. He provides a map showing the various stops in Holden''s Manhattan odyssey. Of particular interest to readers whose native language is not English is his glossary of more than a hundred terms, phrases, and slang expressions. In his introductory essay, "Catching The Catcher in the Rye," Beidler discusses such topics as the three-day time line for the novel, the way the novel grew out of two earlier-published short stories, the extent to which the novel is autobiographical, what Holden looks like, and the reasons for the enduring appeal of the novel. The many photographs in the Reader''s Companion give fascinating glimpses into the world that Holden has made famous. Beidler also provides discussion of some of the issues that have engaged scholars down through the years: the meaning of Holden''s red hunting hat, whether Holden writes his novel in an insane asylum, Mr. Antolini''s troubling actions, and Holden''s close relationship with his sister and his two brothers.

A Student Guide to Chaucer''s Middle English shows where Chaucer''s English came from, when it developed, and especially how to pronounce it. The guide contains information on the International Phonetic Alphabet, iambic pentameter, and the Great Vowel Shift. It also has word lists and transcription exercises. Refined during four decades of Beidler''s own teaching, this booklet is now widely available for the first time.

A hundred years ago, the small country of Armenia within the Ottoman Empire became the site of continuous border conflict, political intrigue and sporadic wars between the Turks, the Persians and the Tsarist Russians. Early in the twentieth century, these regional conflicts erupted into bitter political and ethnic "cleansing" that decimated the country and nearly destroyed the population living there. The causes and magnitude of the ethnic killing that took place during and after World War I are still debated and disputed in Turkey and Armenia today. In times of calamity or economic distress, there is a small percentage of people (about two percent) who are willing to leave family, home, and their country of origin to set up businesses in exotic or foreign lands. The two-percenters and undocumented immigrants whose stories appear in The Gathering Place made the arduous trek across Asia to gather in the exotic city of Old Shanghai, where they joined a social club in the city''s Old International Settlement. Their travels coincide with war, economic depression, revolution, banditry and military occupation during the most turbulent period in modern history-a period that covers what some call the ''Modern Dark Age''-the first half of the twentieth century. The personal histories in The Gathering Place offer a fresh take on the immigrant experience during a time of momentous change in Asia-from the end of World War I to the exodus of Europeans from China.