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William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions - shock, sadness, fear - that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up? In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the...
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"From the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author, reflections on gardening, art, literature, and life Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden...
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Relates the story of two early-twentieth-century cousins who believed they saw real fairies, created photographs using paper cutouts when they were teased by adult family members, and inadvertently drew the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a fellow believer.
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At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays that brilliantly illuminates the essential truths about the modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction," a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s,...
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"A fresh take on George Orwell as a far more nature-loving figure than is often portrayed, and a dazzlingly rich meditation on roses, gardens, and the value and use of beauty and pleasure in the face of brutality and horror. "In the spring of 1936 a man planted roses." That man was George Orwell, shortly before he went off to fight against fascism in Spain. Today, those rosebushes are still thriving. This is the starting point for Rebecca Solnit's...
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The secrets of one of history's greatest orators are revealed in "one of the most stunningly original works on Abraham Lincoln to appear in years" (John Stauffer, professor of English and history, Harvard University).
For more than 150 years, historians have speculated about what made Abraham Lincoln truly great. How did Lincoln create his compelling arguments, his convincing oratory, and his unforgettable writing? Some point to...
For more than 150 years, historians have speculated about what made Abraham Lincoln truly great. How did Lincoln create his compelling arguments, his convincing oratory, and his unforgettable writing? Some point to...
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"Explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius"--
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From one of the world's most expert art critics, the incredible true story--part art history and part mystery--of a Velázquez portrait that went missing and the obsessed nineteenth-century bookseller determined to prove he had found it. When John Snare, a nineteenth-century provincial bookseller, traveled to a liquidation auction, he stumbled on a vivid portrait of King Charles I that defied any explanation. The Charles of the painting was young--too...
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Quidditch through the Ages is a comprehensive guide to Quidditch and the ultimate resource for anyone interested in the magical world and its most popular sport. Written by Kennillworthy Whisp (aka J.K. Rowling), it is charmingly reproduced as if it were a facsimile of the very copy from the library of the Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry. This book examines the evolution of quidditch as well as the finer points of modern play as popularized...
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"The acclaimed author of A Venetian Affair now gives us the remarkable story of Hemingway's love affair with both the city of Venice and the muse he found there--a vivacious 18-year-old who inspired the man thirty years her senior to complete his great final work. In the fall of 1948 Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called "a goddam wonderful city." He was a year shy of his fiftieth birthday and...
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"Authors David Hirsch and Dan Van Haften show precisely how President Obama's 2011 speeches have the same structure used by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address (and in virtually all of Lincoln's great speeches). The authors summarize and analyze President Obama's speeches and demonstrate how structure conveys meaning. Hirsch and Van Haften broke "Lincoln's code" regarding how Lincoln wrote his speeches, identifying and explaining this unique...