Bücher veröffentlicht von W W Norton & Co Ltd

He becomes thoroughly attached to her and confides a terrifying truth: he is immortal. But having been resuscitated into enjoying life again, he soon starts breaking free from her grasp and all notions of mortality.

The distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults-both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents-into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying, narrow, and violence-prone. And he proposes a functioning city that can incorporate anarchy, diversity, and creative disorder to bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life.

In Still Life in Milford Thomas Lynch tenders poems on life and death, history and memory, the local and the larger geographies. "[Thomas Lynch's] poems . . . are as stark and graceful as geese lifting off backwater. The poems trace from the rural midwest to London and County Clare, a quiet elegy of loss and testament. But then Lynch is by trade a mortician, and by craft a bard."-Amazon.com "[Lynch] evinces a steady wisdom drawn from years of passionate attention to daily experience."-Seattle Weekly

His latest book vibrates with the strange political and literary energies of ancien régime France. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France traces the merging of philosophical, sexual, and anti-monarchical interests into the pulp fiction of the 1780s, banned books that make fascinating reading more than two centuries later.French literature of the eighteenth century means to us today Rousseau and Voltaire and the "classic" texts that, we imagine, gave rise to the Revolution. Yet very few of the standard works of the Enlightenment were as widely read as books whose names we have never heard, books that were the currency of a huge literary underground during the reign of Louis XVI. Included in this volume are Darnton's translations of excerpts from three of these works.After twenty-five years of research, Darnton has summarized his findings in one brilliant work that examines the reciprocal relationship between private literature and the public world, the (illegal) spread of Enlightenment thought, and the interesting possibility that the writings of some not-so-famous authors contributed to the fall of the French aristocracy.

The eleventh-century Muslim world was a great civilization while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.

The plot of Exercises in Style is simple: a man gets into an argument with another passenger on a bus. However, this anecdote is told 99 more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms.

This comprehensive and compellingly readable reference work answers all the urban legend questions, offering alphabetical entries on every aspect of the subject, including descriptions of individual legends and their variations, legend themes, and scholarly approaches to the genre.

Highlighting research in network theory, this work presents the principles of the field of "small-worlds" theory, the idea that a hidden pattern is the key to how networks interact and exchange information, whether that network is the information highway or the firing of neurons in the brain.

Nature and humans build their devices with the same earthly materials and use them in the same air and water, pulled by the same gravity. Why, then, do their designs diverge so sharply? Humans, for instance, love right angles, while nature's angles are rarely right and usually rounded. Our technology goes around on wheels-and on rotating pulleys, gears, shafts, and cams-yet in nature only the tiny propellers of bacteria spin as true wheels. Our hinges turn because hard parts slide around each other, whereas nature's hinges (a rabbit's ear, for example) more often swing by bending flexible materials. In this marvelously surprising, witty book, Steven Vogel compares these two mechanical worlds, introduces the reader to his field of biomechanics, and explains how the nexus of physical law, size, and convenience of construction determine the designs of both people and nature. "This elegant comparison of human and biological technology will forever change the way you look at each."-Michael LaBarbera, American Scientist

Whether it's a Web page on the Internet or a chapter in an annual budget report, readers today have less time to spend wading through text-they want the writing they read to be articulate and to the point. Effective Writing will help writers at any level of proficiency produce clear, concise writing structured around the messages they want to convey to their audience, and supported with strong, well-developed paragraphs and sentences. Written in plain language and a relaxed style, this book is easily adaptable to a wide variety of writing styles and tasks, and will be helpful at any stage of the process: conceptualization, writing, or editing.

May Sarton's ninth novel explores a woman's struggle to reconcile the claims of life and art, to transmute passion and pain into poetry. As it opens, Hilary Stevens, a renowned poet in her seventies, is talking with Mar, an intense young man who has sought her out and whose passionate despair reminds her of herself when young. Mar has had an unhappy love affair with a man. Bewildered by both his sexuality and his writing talent, he flings his anguish against Hilary's brusque, sympathetic intelligence.

My book does not pretend to scholarship, only to a desire to help the average reader who wants to know Joyce's work but has been scared off by the professors. The appearance of difficulty is part of Joyce's big joke; the profundities are always expressed in good round Dublin terms; Joyce's heroes are humble men.

A finalist for the 1996 National Book Award, "Sun Under Wood" is full of wit and energy, sadness and humor, and a passion for language and experiences, words and ideas. Now in paperback, this collection explores family life, nature, history, and literature in Hass' singular intelligence and unmistakable voice.

On facing pages in Latin and English, most of the poems in this anthology were written between the first century A.D. and the thirteenth century. They were chosen by the translator during the dark days of World War II, and many reflect ageless themes, affirming the values of civilization, values that have endured through war and tumult in centuries past. Each poet's work is prefaced by an editorial note, followed by a passage from Helen Waddell's own published writings.

Richards here offers anew the 1935 edition of his work (then entitled Science and Poetry) with commentary that reveals not only the development of his own criticism but also the ways in which the relationship between the two disciplines has evolved. He has also written a new essay entitled "Re-Orientation" and has included, as another kind of commentary on the basic text, his essay "How Does a Poem Know When It Is Finished?"

This book was written to stimulate, perhaps to provoke critical thought about Germany's past, present, and future-in Germany. This is a professional sociologist's study of the country to which he belongs not merely because it is written in his passport.

"Definitive. . . . Deeply researched and pondered." "A literary biography of the same caliber as Richard Ellmann's James Joyce." These words of praise from Edmund Morris in the New York Times and Michael Dirda in the Washington Post are but some of the acclaim that greeted Martin Stannard's Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903-1939. This eagerly awaited second volume, spanning the years from World War II to Waugh's death in 1966, completes the portrait of one of the foremost writers of the century. This was the period of some of Waugh's greatest work, including Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, and the Sword of Honour trilogy.

Finding Dr. Livingston was only one of many exploits in the remarkable life of the great African explorer Henry M. Stanley. In a narrative that reads like a novel, Byron Farwell tells the story of this complex man who made a major contribution o the world's knowledge. He describes his bitter childhood, his coming to America where he found a friend and a name, his service in the American Civil War, his African adventures, and his late but happy marriage.

A collection of short stories from R.K. Narayan, spanning five decades. Characters include a storyteller whose magical source of tales dries up, and a love-stricken husband who is told by astrologers that he must sleep with a prostitute to save his dying wife.

Richard Hubert ("Hubie") Ward is a wily young actor from the Easternmost world of prep schools and summers on the Cape. By the time he is twenty-five, he has lied, cheated, and seduced his way to the big-time on the Coast. Hollywood prizes Hubie for his air of respectability: "He was not a Latin or a Jew...he was not a booze artist...he was not actorish, he was not pugnacious...he was of the theater, he had been given good notices in an Art picture, he was not confused by an oyster fork, he stood up when ladies entered the room..". But Hubie's blind ambition quickly strips away the guise. He blackmails the man who gave him his first acting job, then spends an amorous afternoon with the wife of a studio head who happens to be his boss. Nothing, it seems, can stop the self-destructive philandering that dogs this shooting star.

American Noise is a rapturous exploration of American culture and landscape. With compassionate wit and insight, Campbell McGrath transports us on a journey through contemporary society, transforming the commonplace into scenes of profound revelation. From late-night bars to early-morning diners, suburban malls to the Mojave Desert, McGrath's meticulously detailed vision defines singular moments of joy and melancholy.

In "An incident at Krechetovka Station", a Red Army lieutenant is confronted by a disturbing straggler soldier and must decide what to do with him. "Matryona's House" is the tale of an old peasant woman and her tenacious struggle against cold, hunger and greedy relatives.

It's World War II, and young Wendall Oler has been sent to stay with his father's family in rural Stebbinsville, Vermont. Using this opportunity to act out his resentment for the death of his mother and his father's leaving to fight in the war he does all he can to tyrannize his new family.

A nameless narrator, abandoned on an island, tells the story of his life and exile from England. His interest is beetles - a passion shared with an old school-friend, Charles Darwin. Is this the diary of a madman? Or the story of why Darwin published the book that destroyed his belief in God?