Bücher veröffentlicht von Houghton Mifflin

Bliss Broyard's fathers are charismatic, seductive, brilliant men who loom large in the world, and larger at home. Their daughters, hungry for attention and connection, veer wildly between naiveté and cool indifference. In this powerful collection, Broyard's unsentimental prose captures the passages of daughters as they grow into young women: their struggles with identity, desire, and familial roles. From the early lessons girls absorb through their fathers-their first audience-to the equivocal attachments of marriage to the emotions of love and mourning, the characters in My Father, Dancing chronicle the never-ending dance between fathers and their daughters, and the many awakenings of girls and women.

Jack Dempsey was perfectly suited to the time in which he fought, the time when the United States first felt the throb of its own overwhelming power. For eight years and two months after World War I, Dempsey, with his fierce good looks and matchless dedication to the kill, was heavyweight champion of the world. A Flame of Pure Fire is the extraordinary story of a man and a country growing to maturity in a blaze of strength and exuberance that nearly burned them to ash. Hobo, roughneck, fighter, lover, millionaire, movie star, and, finally, a gentleman of rare generosity and sincerity, Dempsey embodied an America grappling with the confusing demands of preeminence. Dempsey lived a life that touched every part of the American experience in the first half of the twentieth century. Roger Kahn, one of our preeminent writers about the human side of sport, has found in Dempsey a subject that matches his own manifold talents. A friend of Dempsey's and an insightful observer of the ways in which sport can measure a society's evolution, Kahn reaches a new and exciting stage in his acclaimed career with this book. In the story of a man John Lardner called "a flame of pure fire, at last a hero," Roger Kahn finds the heart of America.

Culled from over one hundred prestigious writing programs around the United States and Canada, Best New American Voices 2000 offers a remarkable panoply of writing talent that showcases the literary stars of tomorrow. Included here are twenty of the finest stories to come out of such programs as Breadloaf, the Sewanee Conference, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the University of Iowa, and the PEN/Prison Writing Committee, as nominated by the directors of those programs. Represented are all facets of North American life, a diverse collection of visions and voices that will satisfy the most exacting of short-story readers. This dynamic collection is must-reading for all fans of innovative, cutting-edge new writing.

Elizabeth Graver's first novel, Unravelling, was hailed on publication as "exceptional" (The New York Times Book Review), "a pleasure" (The New Yorker), and "exquisitely poignant and sensual" (The Boston Globe). Now, in her second novel, she proves herself to be a major voice in American fiction. The summer that eleven-year-old Eva is caught shoplifting (for the fourth time), her mother, Miriam, decides the only solution is to move out of the city to a quiet town in upstate New York. There, she hopes, they can have the normal life she longs for. But Miriam is bound by a past she is trying to forget, and tensions escalate. It is only when Eva meets a reclusive beekeeper that she-and her mother-can find their way back to each other, and can begin life with renewed promise. A haunting novel of memory and desire, The Honey Thief reveals the healing power of friendship and the ineradicable bonds of mother and child.

Don Juan, the "Seducer of Seville," originated as a hero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover and scoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. One of Moliere's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffe was still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with the outlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every new era, as each director finds something new to highlight in this timeless classic. Richard Wilbur's flawless translation will be the standard for generations to come, as have his translations of Moliere's other plays. Witty, urbane, and poetic in its prose, Don Juan is, most importantly, as funny now as it was for audiences when it was first presented."

Hugh Bawn was a modern hero, a dreamer, a man of the people who revolutionized Scotland's residential development after World War II. Now, as he lies dying in one of his own buildings, his grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him. It is Jamie who tells the story of his family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of political idealism. It is a tale of darkness amidst the search for Utopia. A poignant and very powerful reclamation of the past, Our Fathers is also a clearsighted and beautifully crafted look at public and personal history.

In Finding Their Stride, Sally Pont, a runner, teacher, and second-generation coach, tells of her first year coaching a co-ed cross country team to victory, both on and off the course. A surprising story of triumph, as well as an endearing tale of driven athletes, Pont shares the highlights and heartbreak of her young runners at Moravian Academy, a small, independent school near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Every page is infused with Pont's affection and respect for her runners, and as the season unfolds, we see the team beginning to find a new stride. While the boys struggle, the girls soar to new heights, going from last place to first. ?Uplifting and engaging, Finding Their Stride is "about attaining and teaching excellence, whose metaphor happens to be a high school running team" (Kirkus Reviews).

The Stones Cry Out is the story of an amateur geologist and bookseller who is collapsing under the burden of his own history. Tsuyoshi Manase learned his first geology lesson from a dying soldier in a cave at the end of World War II. The soldier, a corporal, is skeletal, his eyes swarming with maggots, but his voice is low and steady, as he tells Manase of how a small pebble contains the Earth's history in its ephemeral matter. When the war ends, Manase returns home and opens a bookstore. He marries, and becomes the father of two sons. But what consoles him the most is the collecting of stones, and he enjoys his quiet life. That is until horrible violence visits his family and Manase must face his past in order to survive the nightmares of the present. A darkly compelling tale of one man's struggle against his own memories, The Stones Cry Out is a formidable debut novel from an international writer with an unusually penetrating voice.

This major work, the result of years of careful study and analysis, places Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and music in the context of the intellectual, political and artistic currents of eighteenth-century Europe. The result is a fresh interpretation of Mozart's genius, as Robert Gutman shows the great composer in a new light. With an informed and sensitive handling, Mozart emerges as an affectionate and generous man with family and friends, self-deprecating, witty, and winsome but also an austere moralist, incisive and purposeful. The major genres in which Mozart worked-chamber music, liturgical, theater and keyboard compositions, concertos, operas, symphonies, and oratorios-are unfolded to reveal a man of luminous intellect. Mozart is an extraordinary portrait of a man and his times and a brilliant distillation of musical thought.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND THE LOS ANGELES TIMES • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK"A literary triumph that transcends its war story. . . its greatness will stand the test of time."-San Francisco Chronicle "A master American novelist." -Vanity FairA Dangerous Friend is a thrilling narrative roiling with intrigue, mayhem, and betrayal. Here is the story of conscience and its consequences among those for whom Vietnam was neither the right fight nor the wrong fight but the only fight. The exotic tropical surroundings, the coarsening and corrupting effects of a colonial regime, the visionary delusions of the American democratizers, all play their part. A few civilians with bright minds and sunny intentions want to reform Vietnam-but the Vietnam they see isn't the Vietnam that is. Sydney Parade, a political scientist, has left home and family in an effort to become part of something larger than himself, a foreign-aid operation in Saigon. Even before he arrives, he encounters French and Americans who reveal to him the unsettling depths of a conflict he thought he understood-and in Saigon, the Vietnamese add yet another dimension. Before long, the rampant missteps and misplaced ideals trap Parade and others in a moral crossfire.