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Poe: A Life Cut Short
by Peter AckroydGothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today. In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies, Peter Ackroyd explores Poe's literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe's difficult childhood, his bumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationships with women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. He describes Poe's much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poe's childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyd's thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poe's most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.
Poe: Beyond Gothicism (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
by James M. HutchissonEdgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an American original—a luminous literary theorist, an erratic genius, and an analyst par excellence of human obsession and compulsion. The scope of his literary achievements and the dramatic character of Poe’s life have drawn readers and critics to him in droves. And yet, upon his death, one obituary penned by a literary enemy in the New York Daily Tribune cascaded into a lasting stain on Poe’s character, leaving a historic misunderstanding. Many remember Poe as a difficult, self-pitying, troubled drunkard often incapable of caring for himself. Poe reclaims the Baltimore and Virginia writer’s reputation and power, retracing Poe’s life and career. Biographer and critic James M. Hutchisson captures the boisterous worlds of literary New York and Philadelphia in the 1800s to understand why Poe wrote the way he did and why his achievement was so important to American literature. The biography presents a critical overview of Poe’s major works and his main themes, techniques, and imaginative preoccupations. This portrait of the writer emphasizes Poe’s southern identity; his existence as a workaday journalist in the burgeoning magazine era; his authority as a literary critic and cultural arbiter; his courtly demeanor and sense of social propriety; his advocacy of women writers; his adaptation of art forms as diverse as the so-called “gutter press” and the haunting rhythms of African American spirituals; his borrowing of imagery from such popular social movements as temperance and freemasonry; and his far-reaching, posthumous influence.
Poems From the Madhouse
by Sandy JeffsA powerful collection of poetry about schizophrenia, with an introduction for young people, discussing the causes/effects .
Poems and Letters: Selections, with the 1550 Vasari Life
by MichelangeloMichelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is universally celebrated as one of the greatest artists of all time, yet iconic Renaissance creator was also a prolific and gifted poet. The verses collected here are primarily devoted to love and religion. Intense and passionate, the love poems focus on two figures: Tommaso de Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna; with the sonnets and madrigals dedicated to de Cavalieri revealing a highly charged, homoerotic fervour - previously obscured in the original versions. Michelangelo's later religious poetry moves away from his earlier wordly concerns, while his letters provide a fasicnating insight into his fanily relations and day-to-day life as a working artist. The result is a revealing picture of one of the towering figures of the Renaissance.
Poems and Selected Letters (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)
by Veronica FrancoVeronica Franco (whose life is featured in the motion picture Dangerous Beauty) was a sixteenth-century Venetian beauty, poet, and protofeminist. This collection captures the frank eroticism and impressive eloquence that set her apart from the chaste, silent woman prescribed by Renaissance gender ideology. As an "honored courtesan", Franco made her living by arranging to have sexual relations, for a high fee, with the elite of Venice and the many travelers—merchants, ambassadors, even kings—who passed through the city. Courtesans needed to be beautiful, sophisticated in their dress and manners, and elegant, cultivated conversationalists. Exempt from many of the social and educational restrictions placed on women of the Venetian patrician class, Franco used her position to recast "virtue" as "intellectual integrity," offering wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life. Franco became a writer by allying herself with distinguished men at the center of her city's culture, particularly in the informal meetings of a literary salon at the home of Domenico Venier, the oldest member of a noble family and a former Venetian senator. Through Venier's protection and her own determination, Franco published work in which she defended her fellow courtesans, speaking out against their mistreatment by men and criticizing the subordination of women in general. Venier also provided literary counsel when she responded to insulting attacks written by the male Venetian poet Maffio Venier. Franco's insight into the power conflicts between men and women and her awareness of the threat she posed to her male contemporaries make her life and work pertinent today.
Poems by Presidents: The First-Ever Anthology
by Heidi Gagnon"Well-written, thoroughly researched, and impeccably organized, Poems by Presidents explores an intriguing and unexpected side to many American presidents: they wrote poetry! In this excellent anthology of presidential poems, Michael Croland offers us a new way to celebrate some of our most celebrated leaders." —Susan Katz, author of The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub. This first-ever anthology features poems by eleven presidents who, through good times and bad, turned to poetry to express themselves. This compelling collection brings presidents’ literary pursuits to light, unveiling their deepest thoughts and emotions. Highlights include George Washington’s teenage romantic yearnings, Thomas Jefferson’s death-bed adieu, John Quincy Adams’s sonnet memorializing his father, Abraham Lincoln’s mockery of the Confederacy, Woodrow Wilson’s humorous limericks, Warren G. Harding’s steamy love poems to his mistress, and Ronald Wilson Reagan’s existential reflections. Appendixes explore additional presidents who wrote poetry, misattributions, prose formatted as verse, and fondness for poetry. Poems by Presidents is a rewarding resource for poetry lovers and readers interested in presidential biographies and American history. "From Madison’s collegiate satires to Harding’s racy romantic rhymes, this anthology has something to surprise and delight even the most dedicated history buff. It will teach you something about our presidents’ personal lives, their poetic talents, and even their political ambitions." —Craig Fehrman, author of Author in Chief "This distinctive collection is a pleasure to read and enjoy. It provides another dimension to our awareness of the personalities and talents of many of our presidents." —Fred Kaplan, author of His Masterly Pen: A Biography of Jefferson the Writer "Michael Croland has assembled an interesting and unexpected anthology of presidential poetry. Poems by Presidents leaves the reader with a better understanding of the concealed humanity often buried within the seemingly stoic men who have held our nation’s highest office." —Michael B. Costanzo, author of Author in Chief "This unique collection by US presidents, featuring poems ranging from spiritual to humorous to erotic, is surprising, fascinating, and humanizing." —Marilyn Singer, author of Rutherford B., Who Was He?: Poems about Our Presidents "A wonderful volume, full of keen insights into a wide array of American presidents. . . . The superb focus of this book brings fascinating details to light." —Jonathan Gross, editor of Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks
Poesía completa
by Jorge Luis BorgesAdemás de extraordinario narrador y ensayista, Borges fue un excelente poeta. De hecho, puede decirse que la poesía es el alma de su obra. Indisociable de sus cuentos y ensayos, estos poemas son parte indispensable del universo borgiano y constituyen una indagación paralela a los asuntos que siempre le apasionaron: los libros, la memoria, los laberintos, los espejos, Inglaterra, el amor o la eternidad.Dueño de un fino oído y una deslumbrante capacidad para crear imágenes memorables, Borges revive en sus grandes poemas la intensidad que recorre la gran tradición occidental desde Homero hasta Eliot.Antes que el sueño (o el terror) tejieraMitologías y cosmogonías,Antes que el tiempo se acuñara en días,El mar, el siempre mar, ya estaba y era.¿Quién es el mar? ¿Quién es aquel violentoY antiguo ser que roe los pilaresDe la tierra y es uno y muchos maresY abismo y resplandor y azar y viento?Quien lo mira lo ve por vez primera,Siempre. Con el asombro que las cosasElementales dejan, las hermosasTardes, la luna, el fuego de una hoguera.¿Quién es el mar, quién soy? Lo sabré el díaUlterior que sucede a la agonía.
Poet Warrior: A Memoir
by Joy HarjoThree-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. <p><p> Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. <p><p> Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth—owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. <p><p> Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.
Poet and Politician of Puerto Rico: Don Luis Munoz Marin
by Carmen T. Bernier-GrandGrade 5-8. A biography on the life of Puerto Rico's first elected governor. While the beginning of the book focuses on his personal life and desire to be a writer, the latter part concentrates on his political career and efforts to bring about social and political reform in his native land. The man's life is conveyed clearly and chronologically, although the author does not include the exact years of many events within the text, which could lead to some confusion.
Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton
by Nicholas McDowellA groundbreaking biography of Milton’s formative years that provides a new account of the poet’s political radicalizationJohn Milton (1608–1674) has a unique claim on literary and intellectual history as the author of both Paradise Lost, the greatest narrative poem in English, and prose defences of the execution of Charles I that influenced the French and American revolutions. Tracing Milton’s literary, intellectual, and political development with unprecedented depth and understanding, Poet of Revolution is an unmatched biographical account of the formation of the mind that would go on to create Paradise Lost—but would first justify the killing of a king.Biographers of Milton have always struggled to explain how the young poet became a notorious defender of regicide and other radical ideas such as freedom of the press, religious toleration, and republicanism. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography of Milton’s formative years, Nicholas McDowell draws on recent archival discoveries to reconcile at last the poet and polemicist. He charts Milton’s development from his earliest days as a London schoolboy, through his university life and travels in Italy, to his emergence as a public writer during the English Civil War. At the same time, McDowell presents fresh, richly contextual readings of Milton’s best-known works from this period, including the “Nativity Ode,” “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” Comus, and “Lycidas.”Challenging biographers who claim that Milton was always a secret radical, Poet of Revolution shows how the events that provoked civil war in England combined with Milton’s astonishing programme of self-education to instil the beliefs that would shape not only his political prose but also his later epic masterpiece.
Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton
by Don TateGeorge loved words. Enslaved and forced to work long hours, he was unable to attend school or learn how to read. But he was determined―he listened to the white children's lessons and learned the alphabet. Then he taught himself to read. Soon, he began composing poetry in his head and reciting it aloud as he sold fruits and vegetables on a nearby college campus. News of the enslaved poet traveled quickly among the students, and before long, George had customers for his poems. But George was still enslaved. Would he ever be free?Award-winning author-illustrator Don Tate tells an inspiring and moving story of talent and determination in this powerful picture book biography of George Moses Horton, the first southern Black writer to have his work published.
Poetic License: A Memoir
by Gretchen CheringtonAt age forty, with two growing children and a new consulting company she&’d recently founded, Gretchen Cherington, daughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Richard Eberhart, faced a dilemma: Should she protect her parents&’ well-crafted family myths while continuing to silence her own voice? Or was it time to challenge those myths and speak her truth—even the unbearable truth that her generous and kind father had sexually violated her? In this powerful memoir, aided by her father&’s extensive archives at Dartmouth College and interviews with some of her father&’s best friends, Cherington candidly and courageously retraces her past to make sense of her father and herself. From the women&’s movement of the &’60s and the back-to-the-land movement of the &’70s to Cherington&’s consulting work through three decades with powerful executives to her eventual decision to speak publicly in the formative months of #MeToo, Poetic License is one woman&’s story of speaking truth in a world where, too often, men still call the shots.
Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats
by Courtney GustafsonNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An intimate memoir about the importance of community and care in a world that can feel impossibly broken—and a story about accidentally going viral while tending to a colony of feral cats.When Courtney Gustafson moved into a rental house in the Poets Square neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, she didn&’t know that the property came with thirty feral cats. Focused only on her own survival—in a new relationship, during a pandemic, with poor mental health and a job that didn&’t pay enough—Courtney was reluctant to spend any of her own time or money caring for the wayward animals.But the cats—their pleading eyes, their ribs showing, the new kittens born in the driveway—didn&’t give her a choice.She had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem in neighborhoods across the country. And she couldn&’t have imagined how that struggle—toward an ethics of care, of individuals trying their best amid spectacularly failing systems—would help pierce a personal darkness she&’d wrestled with for much of her life. She also didn&’t expect that the TikTok and Instagram accounts she created to share the quirky personalities of the wild but lovable cats, like Monkey, Goldie, Francois, and Sad Boy, would end up saving her home.Courtney writes toward a vision of connectedness, showing how taking care of the cats reshaped her understanding of empathy, resilience, and the healing power of wholly showing up for something outside yourself. She takes us from the dark alleys where she feeds feral cats to inside the tragically neglected homes where she climbs over piles of trash, and occasionally animals, and then into her own driveway with the cats she loves and must sometimes let go. Compelling and tender, Poets Square is as much about cats as it is about the urgency of care, community, and a little bit of dumb hope.
Poets and Pahlevans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran
by Marcello Di CintioMarcello Di Cintio prepares for his "journey into the heart of Iran" with the utmost diligence. He takes lessons in Farsi, researches Persian poetry and sharpens his wrestling skills by returning to the mat after a gap of some years. Knowing that there is a special relationship between heroic poetry and the various styles of traditional Persian wrestling, he sets out to discover how Iranians "reconcile creativity with combat."From the moment of his arrival in Tehran, the author is overwhelmed by hospitality. He immerses himself in male company in tea houses, conversing while smoking the qalyun or water pipe. Iranian men are only too willing to talk, especially about politics. Confusingly, he is told conflicting statements-that all Iranians love George Bush, that all Iranians hate George Bush; that life was infinitely better under the Shah, that the mullahs swept away the corruption of the Shah's regime and made life better for all.Once out of Tehran, he learns where the traditional forms of wrestling are practised. His path through the country is directed by a search for the variant disciplines and local techniques of wrestling and a need to visit sites and shrines associated with the great Persian poets: Hafez, Ferdosi, Omar Khayyám, Attar, Shahriyar and many others. Everywhere his quest leads him, he discovers that poetry is loved and quoted by everyone from taxi-drivers to students.His engagement with Iranian culture is intimate: he wrestles (sometimes reluctantly) when invited, samples illegal home-brew alcohol, attends a wedding, joins mourners, learns a new way to drink tea and attempts to observe the Ramazan fast, though not a Muslim himself. Though he has inevitable brushes with officialdom, he never feels in danger, even when he hears that a Canadian photo-journalist has apparently been beaten to death in a police cell during the author's visit. The outraged and horrified reaction of those around him to this violent act tightens the already close bond he has formed with the Persians.His greatest frustration is that he is unable to converse freely with Iranian women aware that an important part of his picture of Iran is thus absent. Yet the mosaic of incidents, encounters, vistas, conversations, atmospheres and acutely observed sights, smells and moments creates a detailed impression of a country and society that will challenge most, if not all, preconceptions.From the Hardcover edition.
Poets and the Fools Who Love Them: A Memoir in Essays
by Richard KatrovasPoets and the Fools Who Love Them blends autobiography with cultural commentary and meditates on creative writing as a cottage industry within humanities higher education. Celebrated poet and memoirist Richard Katrovas examines his picaresque early years with a criminal father, a beleaguered mother, and four siblings as state and federal authorities pursued the family across the highways of America. His freewheeling, wide-ranging essays consider, among other social constructs, the relation of crime and art, and the relation of both to the authority of the state, particularly in terms of race and class. Katrovas speaks candidly about how white privilege facilitated his father’s criminal career, as a lifestyle of larceny and used-car scams, perpetuated state to state, would have surely had different implications for a family of color. Drawing on his adulthood in academe, Katrovas’s memoir in essays chronicles a quest to locate surrogate fathers among older poets and other creative writers, and reflects upon the ways in which that search has affected his role as the father to three Czech American daughters. The book flows from the love of a poet for other poets, for the “community of poets,” one likened to a “gang of priests” and a “herd of bears.” Katrovas maintains that most lovers of poets are themselves poets, and those lovers of poets who are not themselves poets are saints.At its heart, Poets and the Fools Who Love Them contemplates, with care and unabashed honesty, the role of art and the artist in the madcap twenty-first century.
Poets in Their Youth: A Memoir
by Eileen SimpsonThis “powerful” memoir of a life among legendary poets “never sensationalizes these brilliant but wildly erratic young men, only seeks to understand them” (The Washington Post).In 1942, Eileen Simpson—then Eileen Mulligan—married John Berryman. Both were in their twenties; Eileen had just graduated from Hunter College and John had but one slim volume of poetry to his name. They moved frequently—from New York to Boston, then Princeton—chasing jobs, living simply, relying on the hospitality of more successful friends like Robert Lowell and Jean Stafford, or R.P. Blackmur and his wife, Helen. Rounding out their circle of intimates were other struggling poets like Randall Jarrell and Delmore Schwartz. Berryman alternately wrote and despaired of writing. Everyone stayed up late arguing about poetry.Poets in Their Youth is a portrait of their marriage, but it is also a portrait of a group of spectacularly intelligent friends at a particular time, in a particular place, all aflame with literature. Simpson’s recollections are so tender, her narrative so generous, it is almost possible to imagine the story has a different ending—even as Schwartz’s marriage crumbles, as Lowell succumbs to a manic episode, as her own relationship with Berryman buckles under the strain of his drinking, his infidelity, his depression.Filled with winning anecdotes and moments of startling poignancy, Simpson’s now-classic memoir shows some of the most brilliant literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century at their brightest and most achingly human, and documents “a whole doomed generation of writers, the nights of wine, dancing, and brilliant talk giving way to paranoia, envy, madness, and death” (The Times Literary Supplement).
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914 – 1918
by Louis Barthas&“An exceptionally vivid memoir of a French soldier&’s experience of the First World War.&”—Max Hastings, New York Times bestselling author Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne. First published in France in 1978, this excellent new translation brings Barthas&’ wartime writings to English-language readers for the first time. His notebooks and letters represent the quintessential memoir of a &“poilu,&” or &“hairy one,&” as the untidy, unshaven French infantryman of the fighting trenches was familiarly known. Upon Barthas&’ return home in 1919, he painstakingly transcribed his day-to-day writings into nineteen notebooks, preserving not only his own story but also the larger story of the unnumbered soldiers who never returned. Recounting bloody battles and endless exhaustion, the deaths of comrades, the infuriating incompetence and tyranny of his own officers, Barthas also describes spontaneous acts of camaraderie between French poilus and their German foes in trenches just a few paces apart. An eloquent witness and keen observer, Barthas takes his readers directly into the heart of the Great War. &“This is clearly one of the most readable and indispensable accounts of the death of the glory of war.&”—The Daily Beast (&“Hot Reads&”)
Poincaré, Philosopher of Science
by María De Paz Robert DisalleThis volume presents a selection of papers from the Poincaré Project of the Center for the Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, bringing together an international group of scholars with new assessments of Henri Poincaré's philosophy of science--both its historical impact on the foundations of science and mathematics, and its relevance to contemporary philosophical inquiry. The work of Poincaré (1854-1912) extends over many fields within mathematics and mathematical physics. But his scientific work was inseparable from his groundbreaking philosophical reflections, and the scientific ferment in which he participated was inseparable from the philosophical controversies in which he played a pre-eminent part. The subsequent history of the mathematical sciences was profoundly influenced by Poincaré's philosophical analyses of the relations between and among mathematics, logic, and physics, and, more generally, the relations between formal structures and the world of experience. The papers in this collection illuminate Poincaré's place within his own historical context as well as the implications of his work for ours.
Point Last Seen
by Hannah NyalaThis is a true story about a woman who, after escaping the brutality and violence of an abusive marriage, becomes a tracker with search-and-rescue teams in the Mojave Desert.
Point Man
by James Watson Kevin DockeryA founding member of the Navy SEALs recounts the formation of that elite fighting force in this “honest, no-holds-barred” memoir of the Vietnam War (Richard Marcinko, author of Rogue Warrior).Chief Petty Officer James "Patches" Watson was there at the start. As a high-performing frogman with the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was chosen to become a founding member—or a “plank owner”—of the U.S. Navy SEALs. Through three tours in the jungle hell of Vietnam, he led the way as point man—the one in charge of navigating trip wires, booby traps and punji pits. In this vividly detailed memoir, he recounts guiding his squad of amphibious fighters on missions of rescue, reconnaissance, and demolition. Together with his brave comrades, Watson confronted a war's unique terrors head-on, unprotected . . . and unafraid.This is the story of a hero told from the heart and from the gut—an authentic tour of duty with one of the most legendary commandoes of the Vietnam War.
Point Man: Inside the Toughest and Most Deadly Unit in Vietnam by a Founding Member of the Elite Navy SEALs
by James Watson Kevin DockeryChief Petty Officer James "Patches" Watson was there at the start. One of the first to come out of the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was an initial member -- a "plank owner" -- of America's deadliest and most elite fighting force, the U.S. Navy SEALs. Through three tours in the jungle hell of Vietnam, he walked the point -- staying alert to trip wires, booby traps and punji pits, guiding his squad of amphibious fighters on missions of rescue, reconnaissance and demolition --confronting a war's unique terrors head-on, unprotected ... and unafraid. This is the story of a hero told from the heart and from the gut -- an authentic tour of duty with one of the most legendary commandoes of the Vietnam War.
Point of Direction
by Rachel WeaverHitchhiking her way through Alaska, a young woman named Anna is picked up by Kyle, a fisherman. Anna and Kyle quickly fall for each other, as they are both adventurous, fiercely independent, and in love with the raw beauty and solitude of Alaska. To cement their relationship, they agree to become caretakers of a remote lighthouse perched on a small rock in the middle of a deep channel-a place that has been uninhabited since the last caretaker mysteriously disappeared two decades ago. What seems the perfect adventure for these two quickly unravels, as closely-held secrets pull them apart, and the surrounding waters threaten uncertain danger. A psychological thriller set against the rugged landscape of coastal Alaska, Point of Direction is an exquisite literary debut.ction, was chosen to represent Naropa University in the Harcourt Brace Best New Voices in American Fiction contest for 2006, 2007, and 2008. Her work has been published in the Gettysburg Review, Blue Mesa Review, and the Ontario Review. She currently lives in Colorado.
Point of No Return: A Novel
by John P. MarquandConsidered by many critics to be John P. Marquand's finest novel, Point of No Return is the story of a modern businessman borne back by fate into yesteryear Raised in the small town of Clyde, Massachusetts, Charles Gray has worked long and hard to become a vice president at the privately owned Stuyvesant Bank in Manhattan. But at the most crucial moment of his career, when his focus should be on reading his boss's intentions and competing with his chief rival for the promotion, Charles finds himself hopelessly distracted by the past. Years ago, the Gray family was featured in Yankee Persepolis, a sociological study of Clyde. Charles, his sister, and their parents were classified as members of the "lower-upper class," the unspoken strains of their tenuous social status cast in stark black and white. A chance encounter with the author of the study floods Charles's thoughts with memories, and when a business matter compels him to make a trip to Clyde, it seems as if the Fates are conspiring to turn back the clock. As he reflects on the defining moments of his youth, Charles contends with one of the central mysteries of existence: how our lives can feel both predetermined and random at the same time. Published in 1949, Point of No Return is a brilliant study of character and place heralded by the New York Times as "further proof that its author is one of the most important living American novelists."
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 1964 to 2006
by Gore VidalPOINT TO POINT NAVIGATION refers to a form of navigation Gore Vidal resorted to as a first mate in the navy during World War II. As he says, 'As I was writing this account of my life and times since PALIMPSEST, I felt as if I were again dealing with those capes and rocks in the Bering Sea that we had to navigate so often with a compass made inoperable by weather.' It is a beautifully apt analogy for the hazards eluded (mostly) during his eventful life. From his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Gore Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, film, theatre, politics, and international society, recounting achievements and defeats, friends and enemies made (and on a number of occasions lost). Among the gathering of notables to be found in these pages, Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Greta Garbo, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some of the book's most moving pages are devoted to the illness and death of his partner of five decades, Howard Austen, and indeed the book is, among other things, a meditation on mortality, written in the spirit of Montaigne.
Pointless
by Jeff ConnorThe inside, in-depth and indiscreet story of a season with Britain's worst football club, East Stirlingshire. The Shire are lucky if all eleven players make it to a game, they have an average home attendance at their dilapidated Firs Park ground of 200 and they ended the 2004/05 season bottom of the Scottish Third Division – for the third consecutive year. Granted access to all areas, Jeff Connor gets into the dressing room, the board room and the dug-out. But, above all, he gets into the spirit of the club. He began the season a scoffing cynic and finished it lost in admiration for one of the dottiest sporting institutions in Britain as the Shire attempted to reach the promised land; SECOND bottom of the Scottish Third Division. At times funny, sad, heart-warming and embarrassing, as events on and off the pitch unfold, Pointless is an unmissable insight into a unique football team