In his timely YA debut, a best-selling novelist revisits a summer of tumult and truth for a young narrator and his war-torn family.Bicentennial... fireworks burn the sky. Bob Seger growls from a transistor radio. And down by the river, girls line up on lawn chairs in pursuit of the perfect tan. Yet for ten-year-old Eli Book, the summer of 1976 is the one that threatened to tear his family apart. There is his distant mother; his traumatized Vietnam vet dad; his wild sister; his former warprotester aunt; and his tough yet troubled best friend, Edie, the only person with whom he can be himself. As tempers flare and his father’s nightmares rage, Eli watches from the sidelines, but soon even he cannot escape the current of conflict. From Silas House comes a tender look at the complexities of childhood and the realities of war — a quintessentially Southern novel filled with music, nostalgic detail, a deep respect for nature, and a powerful sense of place.From the Hardcover edition.

Elixir spans five millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sun Belt. As Brian Fagan shows, every human society has been shaped... by its relationship toour most essential resource. Fagan's sweeping narrative moves across the world, from ancient Greece and Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. He sets out three ages of water: In the first age, lasting thousands of years, water was scarce or at best unpredictable-so precious that it became sacred in almost every culture.By the time of the Industrial Revolution, human ingenuity had made water flow even in the most arid landscapes.This was the second age: water was no longer a mystical force to be worshipped and husbanded, but a commodity to be exploited. The American desert glittered with swimming pools- with little regard for sustainability. Today, we are entering a third age of water: As the earth's population approaches nine billion and ancient aquifers run dry,we will have to learn once again to show humility, even reverence, for this vital liquid. To solve the water crises of the future, we may need to adapt the water ethos of our ancestors.

The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a black high school... girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation—in Little Rock and throughout the South—and an epic moment in the civil rights movement.In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together. He explores how the haunting picture of Elizabeth and Hazel came to be taken, its significance in the wider world, and why, for the next half-century, neither woman has ever escaped from its long shadow. He recounts Elizabeth’s struggle to overcome the trauma of her hate-filled school experience, and Hazel’s long efforts to atone for a fateful, horrible mistake. The book follows the painful journey of the two as they progress from apology to forgiveness to reconciliation and, amazingly, to friendship. This friendship foundered, then collapsed—perhaps inevitably—over the same fissures and misunderstandings that continue to permeate American race relations more than half a century after the unforgettable photograph at Little Rock. And yet, as Margolick explains, a bond between Elizabeth and Hazel, silent but complex, endures.

(Applause Books). Boisterous and unrestrained like the age itself, the Elizabethan theatre has long defended its place at the apex of English dramatic... history. Shakespeare was but the brightest star in this extraordinary galaxy of playwrights. The stage boasted a rich and varied repertoire from courtly and romantic comedy to domestic and high tragedy, melodrama, farce, and histories. The Gassner-Green anthology revives the whole range of this universal stage, offering us the unbounded theatrical inventiveness of the age. Elizabethan Drama is designed to provide the modern reader with complete access to the plays, as well as the beguiling Elizabethan world which was their backdrop. John Gassner's classic introduction is supplemented by his and William Green's superb prefaces to the individual plays. Marginal glosses and footnotes throughout keep the immediacy of the Elizabethan stage within easy reach.

This anthology celebrates the wit and imaginative creativity of the Elizabethan poets with a generous selection of their graceful and sophisticated... verse. Highlights include sonnets from Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser; popular poems by Donne ("Go, and catch a falling star"), Jonson ("Drink to me only with thine eyes"), Marlowe ("The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"); more.

One of the leading poets of the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a profound influence on her contemporaries and on writers that... followed her. This edition provides a rich and varied selection of Barrett Browning's poetry, including relatively neglected material from her early career and works never before included in editions of her poetry. The edition is comprehensively annotated and includes a critical introduction; detailed headnotes for each poem also provide the reader with a deep understanding of the historical, biographical, and literary contexts in which the poems were written. The extensive appendices include reviews and criticism and material on factory reform and slavery, as well as religion and the Italian Question.

Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz, editors James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop's poems as "more wryly radiant, more touching, more unaffectedly... intelligent than any written in our lifetime" and called her "our greatest national treasure." Robert Lowell said, "I enjoy her poems more than anybody else's." Long before a wider public was aware of Bishop's work, her fellow poets expressed astonished admiration of her formal rigor, fiercely observant eye, emotional intimacy, and sometimes eccentric flights of imagination. Today she is recognized as one of America's great poets of the 20th century. This unprecedented collection offers a full-scale presentation of a writer of startling originality, at once passionate and reticent, adventurous and perfectionist. It presents all the poetry that Bishop published in her lifetime, in such classic volumes as North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and Geography III. In addition it contains an extensive selection of un_published poems and drafts of poems (several not previously collected), as well as all her published poetic translations, ranging from a chorus from Aristophanes' The Birds to versions of Brazilian sambas. Poems, Prose, and Letters brings together as well most of her published prose writings, including stories; reminiscences; travel writing about the places (Nova Scotia, Florida, Brazil) that so profoundly marked her poetry; and literary essays and statements, including a number of pieces published here for the first time. The book is rounded out with a selection of Bishop's irresistibly engaging and self-revelatory letters. Of the 53 letters included here, written between 1933 and 1979, a considerable number are printed for the first time, and all are presented in their entirety. Their recipients include Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Randall Jarrell, Anne Stevenson, May Swenson, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Presented in two sections, "Memory: Persons and Places" and "Stories," this book offers the collected prose writings of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79), one... of America's most celebrated and admired poets. The selections are arranged not by date of compostion, but in biographical order, such that reading this volume greatly enriches one's understanding of Bishop's life--and thus her poetry as well. "Bishop's admirers will want to consult her Collected Prose for the light it sheds on her poetry," as David Lehman wrote in Newsweek. "They will discover, however, that it is more than just a handsome companion volume to [her] Complete Poems. . . . Bishop's clean, limpid prose makes her stories and memoirs a delight to read. . . . One regrets only that this volume cannot be added to in years to come."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a brilliant activist-intellectual. That nearly all of her ideas—that women are entitled to seek an education, to own... property, to get a divorce, and to vote—are now commonplace is in large part because she worked tirelessly to extend the nation’s promise of radical individualism to women. In this subtly crafted biography, the historian Lori D. Ginzberg narrates the life of a woman of great charm, enormous appetite, and extraordinary intellectual gifts who turned the limitations placed on women like herself into a universal philosophy of equal rights. Few could match Stanton’s self-confidence; loving an argument, she rarely wavered in her assumption that she had won. But she was no secular saint, and her positions were not always on the side of the broadest possible conception of justice and social change. Elitism runs through Stanton’s life and thought, defined most often by class, frequently by race, and always by intellect. Even her closest friends found her absolutism both thrilling and exasperating, for Stanton could be an excellent ally and a bothersome menace, sometimes simultaneously. At once critical and admiring, Ginzberg captures Stanton’s ambiguous place in the world of reformers and intellectuals, describes how she changed the world, and suggests that Stanton left a mixed legacy that continues to haunt American feminism.

Focusing on Stanton's role as a reformer in the women's rights and suffrage movements, Banner also examines Stanton's relationships with her husband,... with Susan B. Anthony, and with other leading feminists of the nineteenth century.

Since 1982, J. M. Coetzee has been dazzling the literary world. After eight novels that have won, among other awards, two Booker Prizes, and most... recently, the Nobel Prize, Coetzee has once again crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale. Told through an ingenious series of formal addresses, Elizabeth Costello is, on the surface, the story of a woman?s life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.

Four centuries after her death, Elizabeth I remains a powerful and fascinating figure.Succeeding to the English throne in 1558, she was the third... woman monarch in the nation’s history. The role of English monarch—which involved being commander in chief, head of the English Church, and ruler of the royal court, with all its intrigues—was intended for a man ruling among men, and women rulers before Elizabeth had bestowed their power on husbands. Resisting this pattern, Elizabeth not only endured a monarch but flourished as a leader and cultural figurehead, inspiring the Golden Age of English literature, the Age of Discovery, and the Age of Reformation in English religious life. This Norton Critical Edition provides a diverse and extensive selection of authors (including the Queen herself) and carefully annotated works. The works are organized chronologically to cover the forty-four years of Elizabeth’s reign, allowing readers to explore not only the literary and aesthetic qualities that make these writings noteworthy but also the range of political, social, cultural, and historical concerns that prompted their creation. The editors have assembled a rich, thematically organized collection of commentary and criticism for Elizabeth I and Her Age. From Raphael Holinshed’s, Sir Francis Bacon’s, and Agnes Strickland’s early accounts of the Queen to Natalie Mears on Elizabeth I’s strategies for rule and Thomas Betteridge on the Queen in film, the twenty-five diverse views of Elizabeth I herein are sure to promote lively classroom discussion.

Few leadership titles have been written on the lives of women. Alan Axelrod, noted historian and business management expert, reveals how Elizabeth I... overcame daunting obstacles to win intense loyalty and lead England to greatness. The queen's long reign offers lessons on: developing a leadership attitude and image enhanced by personal dynamism; becoming an effective coach and mentor skilled at nurturing creativity; manipulating others -- subtly and ethically and knowing and anticipating the "enemy."How did Elizabeth meet the challenges that faced her, managing not only to stay alive and keep her imperiled nation afloat, but also to win the intense loyalty of her people and lead England to greatness? Historians and biographers have offered many explanations. Elizabeth I, CEO takes a fresh view, exploring issues that are relevant to leaders -- especially business leaders -- of today.

This long-awaited and masterfully edited volume contains nearly all of the writings of Queen Elizabeth I: the clumsy letters of childhood, the early... speeches of a fledgling queen, and the prayers and poetry of the monarch's later years. The first collection of its kind, Elizabeth I reveals brilliance on two counts: that of the Queen, a dazzling writer and a leading intellect of the English Renaissance, and that of the editors, whose copious annotations make the book not only essential to scholars but accessible to general readers as well.