Bücher veröffentlicht von W. W. Norton & Company

Affectionately named "the Grandfathers' retreats," these sojourns into the depths of the Maine woods have inspired Gould's finest and most emotionally resonant writing to date.With a naturalist's sensitivity to his environment, and his great good humor, Gould writes of hiking through dense forests, of fly fishing for salmon and trout in deserted creeks, of campside culinary triumphs, and of friendship and shared reflections on careers, family, and the modern world. The resulting book is a wonderful, memorable meditation on the beauty of the Maine woods and on John Gould's ever-interesting life.

Gabriel Brockwell-aesthete, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent-is thinking terminal. He's decided to kill himself-but not immediately. His destination is Wonderland. The style of the journey is all that's to be decided.Traveling between London, Tokyo, and Berlin, Gabriel is in search of the bacchanal to obliterate all previous parties. His adventure takes in a spell in rehab, a near-death experience eating a poisonous Japanese delicacy, and finally an orgiastic feast in the bowels of Berlin's majestic Tempelhof Airport. Along the way, Gabriel falls apart, only to reemerge with a new outlook on the world and a mission to right his past wrongs.Lights Out in Wonderland is an allegorical banquet, a sly commentary on these End Times and the march toward banality, and a joyful expression of the human spirit.

First published in 1963, this book is now restored to print in a new edition containing some revisions and one hitherto unpublished poem.

Psychologist Alexander Lescziak savors a life of quiet sophistication on Manhattan's Upper West Side, turning a blind eye to the past of his Polish émigré parents. Then a new patient declares that he is the doctor's half-brother, the product of a union between Lescziak's Jewish mother and a German prisoner of war. The confrontation jolts Lescziak out of his complacency: suddenly, his failing marriage, his wife's infatuation with his best friend, and the disappearance of his young lover and suicidal patient, Nella, close in on him. Lescziak escapes into the recesses of his imagination, where his mother's affair with the German prisoner comes to life in precise, gorgeous detail. The novel unfolds into a romance set in England's Lake District in wartime, as Busch shows how our past presses on the present.

"[A] tight, well-researched, sometimes funny book about one of the crimes of the century, the motley group that pulled it off, and the assorted characters who tried to catch them. Pseudonyms are used here, but anyone with access to Boston newspaper files can figure out most of the dramatis personae in the ingenious 1962 robbery of a post office van (the feds were saving money on an armored car) heading up from Cape Cod to Boston, packed with $1.5 million in bank deposits from a big summer weekend. Not a shot was fired, the loot was never recovered and, although three people were eventually indicted, no one was convicted of the crime." - Kirkus Review

Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz formed one of the great constellations of talent in American literature. In the decades after World War II, they changed American poetry forever by putting themselves at risk in their poems in a new and provocative way. Their daring work helped to inspire the popular style of poetry now known as "confessional." But partly as a result of their openness, they have become better known for their tumultuous lives-afflicted by mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide-than for their work. This book reclaims their achievement by offering critical "biographies of the poetry"-tracing the development of each poet's work, exploring their major themes and techniques, and examining how they transformed life into art. An ideal introduction for readers coming to these major American poets for the first time, it will also help veteran readers to appreciate their work in a new light.

Following the careers of the swiftest in the sporting world has been the preoccupation of Kenneth Rudeen as a writer, and now as a senior editor, for Sports Illustrated. "Man has always been obsessed with speed, and throughout history his quest has gone on in a thousand ways. He has continually pushed for faster speed of communication, for swifter movement of people and goods from the day of the cart to that of the jet airplane. Speed afoot and afloat has always been essential for victory in war. But never has the search for speed been more dramatic than in individual man's struggle to go faster than those before him in sports, in racing cars and in the air."This is an appreciation of the champions of the postwar era in those pursuits where the ultimate criterion is speed, running, swimming, skiing, auto racing, flying, and speed-record hunting on land and water. The equipment of these champions ranges from the legs, lungs, and cerebellum of a supreme mile runner to the multi-million dollar jet chariot of a record-breaking aviator. Their velocities vary from the runner's glorious 15 mph to the sensational 4,000 mph of the pilot of the X-15.In addition to their involvement in speed, these champions possess a rare disciplined courage. Auto racer Jim Clark risks his life nearly every week to justify his claim for recognition as the world's finest racing driver. Roger Bannister risked public humiliation and personal agony on a gusty, gray afternoon in Oxford, England, in 1954 when he set out to run the first four-minute mile. In their will to hurtle toward the outer boundaries of human capability, the swiftest experience a joy and perfection beyond the reach of most of us.

Balazuc is a tiny medieval village carved into a limestone cliff that towers above the Ardeche River in southeastern France. Its dramatic landscape and Mediterranean climate make it a lovely destination for summer visitors, but for its residents over the centuries life in Balazuc has been harsh. At times Balazuc has prospered, most notably in the nineteenth century through the cultivation of "the golden tree" and the silkworms it fed, a process whose rigors and rewards are gleefully detailed in this splendid book. But the rewards proved fleeting, leaving only the rigors of life on the "tormented soil."Historical events from the French Revolution, through the Paris Commune and the two world wars, sent ripples through this isolated region, but the continuities of everyday life remained strong. Twenty-eight men from Balazuc signed the list of grievances against the king in the spring of 1789; the families of nineteen still live in the village. This is a story of resilience. It is the French story of tensions between Paris and the village expressed in battles over the school, the church, the council, and people's livelihoods. Most of all it is a love letter from an acclaimed historian who with his family has made Balazuc his adopted home. With a new "golden tree," tourism, now flourishing, the struggles of the village to prosper and to retain its identity continue, transmuted to a world of cell phones and an imagined village past.

Chain-smoking, peculiarly stylish, stubborn, and eccentric Vera and Istvan were anything but ordinary grandparents. Sixteen years after their death, Johanna Adorjan fills the gaps in their story. An Exclusive Love is a brilliantly constructed memoir and a gorgeous romance, a tale of two people who died as they lived: inseparable.

For Beth Kephart's son, the diagnosis was "pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified"-a broad spectrum of difficulties, including autistic features. As the author and her husband discover, all that label really means is that their son Jeremy is "different in a million wonderful ways, and also different in ways that need our help."In intimate, incandescent prose, Kephart shares the painful and inspiring experience of loving a child whose "special needs" bring tremendous frustration and incalculable rewards. "What, in the end, are you fighting for: Normal?" Kephart asks. "Is normal possible? Can it be defined? . . . And is normal superior to what the child inherently is, to what he aspires to, fights to become, every second of his day?"With the help of passionate parental involvement and the kindness of a few open hearts, Jeremy slowly emerges from a world of obsessive play rituals, atypical language constructions, endless pacing, and lonely frustrations. Triumphantly, he begins to engage others, describe his thoughts and passions, build essential friendships. Ultimately this is a story of the shallowness of medical labels compared to a child's courage and a mother's love, of which Kephart writes, "Nothing erodes it. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things-hard as the rock of this earth."

For a writer, voice is the problem that never lets you go. For a reader, voice is a profound mystery. What is it? How does it develop and why should it even matter? How does the reader hear and respond to an authentic voice, and what happens when the cult of personality threatens to subvert it? These are some of the slippery questions The Writer's Voice addresses with confidence and clarity.Aspiring young writers often confuse voice with stylishness, but the voice that matters has the whole weight of a life, however young, behind it. In this compelling book, renowned poet, author, and critic A. Alvarez defines "voice" as the vehicle by which a writer expresses his aliveness, hooks his readers, and keeps them listening. These powerful reflections from a lifetime's experience belong alongside John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, and William Zinsser's On Writing Well.

Born in New York in 1963, historian Hester Rosenfeld-very American and marginally Jewish-goes to Munich to research the life of Heinrich Falk and becomes his mistress. Born in Berlin in 1943, raised in the ruins of defeat by a generation of "murderers and cowards," Professor Falk is neither infamous nor famous-he is simply the German Everyman. Hester believes his life story could make for an important contemporary historical document-kitchen table history. Heinrich is married (four times, twice to his current wife) and has four daughters. But madly in love with Hester, adultery is nothing new to him. As he assists her in her note-taking-about him and his family, about German history-she often suspects Heinrich is covering up something. Was his brother really a Werewolf, a Nazi militiaman who vowed to continue fighting after the war's end? What kind of gas company did his mother work for? And what exactly did his father do during those years?Yet Hester has her secrets, too, and the longer she remains in Germany the harder it is to keep them concealed. As she uncovers more of the Falk family's possible connection to Nazism, she finds herself reexamining her feelings about her own parents and her complicated attraction to Heinrich. As the lovers' intimacy deepens beyond the erotic, each suspects the other of hiding something about the past.Called a "rare and remarkable writer" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham, Kirshenbaum has written a searing novel about history's unforgettable legacy and its continuing impact.

Thomas Merton may have seemed an unlikely candidate for a best-selling author. Cloistered in a remote Kentucky monastery, Merton struggled as a young man to reconcile the contemplative life he sought as a monk and his very public passion for writing. Publisher James Laughlin saw Merton's talent and played the muse, encouraging him with the poems, essays, and diaries of other writers and publishing nearly everything Merton sent in return.Ironically, the very society Merton rejected upon entering the monastery embraced his work, bringing him publishing success only dreamed of by more eager authors. Soon Merton discovered he had a podium, a voice, and a responsibility that weighed as heavily on him as his previous quest for silence. Laughlin's encouragement remained constant throughout, as political ally, publishing adviser, and supporting friend.Nearly thirty years of rich correspondence documents this strong literary and personal relationship and traces the remarkable development of Merton's vision: from an early focus on matters internal and religious, to a tremendous world view encompassing issues of race, politics, war, and the spiritual decay of modern society.

Informed by co-author Debby Hutchins' extensive teaching experience and research on logic education, The Art of Reasoning is the most effective text for teaching logic today. The Fifth Edition features a new chapter on cognitive biases.

Big drug dealer Ralph Ember stumbles on a ghastly surprise when he and sidekick Beau Derek arrive at the house of yachtsman Barney Coss, his bulk supplier: Barney and his two women have been savagely murdered-and the murderers, three drug rivals from London, are still in the house. Beau dies quickly at their hands; they let Ralph go-for the moment-but he's a marked man because of what he's seen. When Melanie, Beau's alluring, ruthless girlfriend, learns what has happened, she is bent on revenge and wants Ralph as her partner-all the way.Bill James's latest Harpur & Iles police procedural ratchets up the tension as the cops (the brilliant Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his ungovernable, half-cracked superior, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles) fight the drug barons for control of the city. As a body washes up, and one of the London creeps meets a violent end, the wily Ralph finds himself starting a new, very risky career-and Harpur sorts out what's going on just in time.

"We tend to write about what will not go away," Doug Anderson says in this candid, darkly humorous journey of self-discovery. Beginning in 1943, in the pre-civil rights South filled with tobacco and war stories, he recalls the difficult childhood that propels him into service in Vietnam. In 1967, having returned home deeply shaken by his experience as a combat medical corpsman, Anderson plunges into the heady freedoms and excesses of the sixties. His downward spiral-through booze, substance abuse, and sex-brings him dangerously close to a total breakdown. Finally, in a return group visit to Vietnam in 2000, he meets with former enemies now become writers and poets. Moved by the realization that "the last time I saw these people they were trying to kill me," Anderson confronts the past and calls upon a story-this powerful story-to rebuild a life.

In August of 1758, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, a poor Irish immigrant named Mary Madden bore a child, Sarah Madden, whose father was said to be a slave and the property of Colonel James Madison, father of the future president of the United States. This daughter, though born a free mulatto, became indentured to the Madisons. There she worked as a seamstress to pay off the fine of her birth until she was 31 years old.Sarah Madden bore ten children and when the term of her indenture was over, she and her youngest son, Willis, struck out for themselves-Sarah as a seamstress, laundress, and later, with Willis, a dairy farmer and tavern keeper. Stories of Willis and Sarah were passed down in Madden family lore through the generations-their hard work, their business sense, their ability to overcome obstacles, poverty, illiteracy, prejudice. This is the chronicle of those generations, a 200-year history of a kind unusually complete in American history. Two factors make it so-that Sarah Madden and her offspring kept their stories alive, and that they saved hundreds of important documents of their freedom, hardship, and daily work.These documents came to light in 1949 when author T.O. Madden, Jr. (great great grandson of Sarah Madden) conceived a powerful desire to know more of his bygone generations. He began to investigate, and his search for family brought him to a hidebound trunk originally belonging to his great grandfather Willis. Its contents brought tears to his eyes. Stored there, awaiting discovery, were papers dating back to the mid-eighteenth century, freedom papers, papers of indenture, deeds of land, Sarah Madden's laundry and seamstress record books, letters, traveling passes. In addition, the leather trunk held an exciting, full set of business records for the days of the nineteenth century when Madden's Tavern flourished as a center of activity in Orange County and as a place for travelers to rest on the road to Fredericksburg.Since that day, T.O. Madden, Jr., has been deeply researching his family, using census reports, other official sources, familly, and friends. All have led to his ably reconstructed family history, and to his own remarkable story. We Were Always Free is a unique and very American family saga.

William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli were the fiercest political rivals of the nineteenth century. Their intense mutual hatred was both ideologically driven and deeply personal. Their vitriolic duels, carried out over decades, lend profound insight into the social and political currents that dominated Victorian England. To Disraeli-a legendary dandy descended from Sephardic Jews-his antagonist was an "unprincipled maniac" characterized by an "extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and superstition." For the conservative aristocrat Gladstone, his rival was "the Grand Corrupter," whose destruction he plotted "day and night, week by week, month by month." In the tradition of Roy Jenkins and A. N. Wilson, Richard Aldous has written an outstanding political biography, giving us the first dual portrait of this intense and momentous rivalry. Aldous's vivid narrative style-by turns powerful, witty, and stirring-brings new life to the Gladstone and Disraeli story and confirms a perennial truth: in politics, everything is personal.

In this exuberant, transformative tale of modern-day Cairo, a drunken Irish journalist named Fin seeks a story. His friend Farouk, mercurial teller of tales, has tantalized him with news of the wily Skinhead Said, who may or may not have discovered a cache of priceless antiquities. But the truth remains elusive-not until they both travel to proverbial hell and back, courtesy of a thuggish kebab-shop tycoon and his brutal retinue. Once Fin finds a way to save his friend's life, and baba ghanoush is properly made, and other necessities of life are observed, then stories may be spun and secrets reluctantly revealed.

Meteorology is popularly associated with day-to-day forecasting of weather, but as Professor Sutcliffe shows, this is only one among many interests of the meteorologist.