Bøker utgitt av Paul Dry Books, Inc

From the award-winning poet and translator Stallings comes a lively new edition of the ancient Greek fable The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice. Originally attributed to Homer, but now thought to have been composed centuries later by an unknown author, it is the tale of a mouse named Crumbsnatcher who is killed by the careless frog King Pufferthroat, sparking a war between the two species.

An American artist's poignant memoir of three years in Crete as she cares forher renowned and dying Greek-born husband.

"As iron filings configure themselves around a magnet, so these essays display Eva Branns form of oppositional, or polar, thinking. To introduce her book, Eva Brann calls up the image of Iron Filings as they "settle themselves along the lines of force that form a field of influence around a bar magnet that has itself been allowed to settle itself in its natural direction. The whole configuration makes, by natures wit, a suggestive figure for the thinking mind -- at least of a cross-section in its life." So these essays range from Ms. Branns thoughts "Of God, "Of Novels, "Of Booklessness, to, well, a surprising diversity of topics which comes, unsurprisingly to completion with an essay "Of Endings. Eva Brann thinks a thought and then thinks a thought somewhat on the other side of the first thought -- hence the display of thought like iron filings around two ends of a magnet.

In 1943, after parachuting into Sardinia to raid a German airfield, John Verney and several of his comrades from the British irregular forces were captured and sent to a POW camp in Italys Abruzzo region. As the Allies attempted to retake the country, Verney and two others made their escape. For months, they survived on the generosity and bravery of the local Italians who fed them and kept them hidden in haylofts and mountain caves -- despite the scarcity of resources and the dangers they themselves faced by harboring English soldiers. Twenty years after the war, Verney revisited the scenes of his imprisonment and escape, and the result is both an enchanting evocation of Southern Italy and an exhilarating story of wartime daring. He recounts the ironic upsides of being a prisoner of war (for the first time in four long years, I was free to do entirely what I wanted, which was to read as much as possible and try to learn to draw and write) as well as the anxiety aroused by the possibility of attempting an escape. He describes the extremes of boredom, hunger, discomfort, and mutual irritation that he and his companions faced after their escape, and the immense capacity for tolerance and goodness that they discovered in each other -- and especially in the desperately poor Italian families who helped them. Verney writes with a deceptive ease and wit, which reveals a subtlety and a candor that make this book as penetrating as it is delightful.

My brother officers. Are they human? Thus reads the first journal entry of twenty-three-year-old John Verney, graduate of Eton and Oxford, lover of modern art and literature, who has, almost on a whim, joined a part-time cavalry regiment of the British Army in 1937. At the outbreak of World War II two years later, Verney arrives in the Middle East and there learns, almost in spite of himself, to be a soldier. In 1943, he becomes a parachutist and leads a drop into Sardinia to attack German airfields. His adventures there -- two weeks wandering through enemy territory, his capture, and his eventual escape -- are brilliantly told. Woven into the fabric of this narrative of a young man growing reluctantly to maturity and coming to terms with military life, are Verneys thoughts and feelings about his wife, Lucinda, and the child he has never seen, and his longing to return to them.

With sparkling wit, an American doctor practicing in Rome reveals the many differences between American and Italian medicine.

Duncan Wheeler is a successful architect who savors the quotidian pleasures in life until a car accident leaves him severely paralyzed and haunted by the death of his young assistant. Now, Duncan isnt sure what there is left to live for, when every day has become a broken series of unsuccessful gestures. Duncan and his wife, Laura, find themselves in conflict as Duncans will to live falters. Laura grows desperate to help him. An art conservator who has her own relationship to the repair of broken things, Laura brings home a highly trained helper monkeya tufted capuchin named Ottolineto assist Duncan with basic tasks. Duncan and Laura fall for this sweet, comical, Nutella-gobbling little creature, and Duncans life appears to become more tolerable, fuller, and funnier. Yet the question persists: Is it enough? Katharine Weber is a masterful observer of humanity, and Still Life with Monkey, full of tenderness and melancholy, explores the conflict between the will to live and the desire to die.

Wise-cracking underachiever Lester Smith, class of '97, muddles through his senior year in this funny, moving debut novel. It is 1996, senior year of high school has just begun, and Lester is at a total loss. He should be studying and making plans for life after graduation. (His best friend, Freesia, is applying to 37 colleges). Instead, he wanders the back roads of his small town on the Puget Sound, visiting the local beaches and ignoring all his schoolwork. His father recently abandoned the family, his mother is more than slightly distracted, and his younger sister, Grace, is finding it hard to adjust to both their new family situation and ninth grade. But Lester is smart and funny, and despite his general apathy, he does feel strongly about a few things: he loves his friends, Milton's Paradise Lost, the Ramones, and "the yearbook arts", as he calls them. Eventually he even comes to appreciate Mr Traversal, the new Yearbook teacher who prefers that students call him by his first name, Jeff. When Lester and Jeff run afoul of the school's insufferable interim principal, they come up with a plan to create an "underground yearbook". This renegade project and Jeff's unlikely mentorship provide the spark that helps Lester to accept his past and to give his future a second chance. From bright new talent Jesse Edward Johnson comes this hilarious and moving debut novel about learning to believe in yourself again. Whether you have yet to start high school or you graduated decades ago, you are sure to love Yearbook and the whip-smart Lester Smith.

International Best Seller -- Now in English for the First Time. In this thought-provoking and extremely timely work, Nuccio Ordine convincingly argues for the utility of useless knowledge and against the contemporary fixation on utilitarianism - for the fundamental importance of the liberal arts and against the damage caused by their neglect. Inspired by the reflections of great philosophers and writers (eg: Plato, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Borges, and Calvino), Ordine reveals how the obsession for material goods and the cult of utility ultimately wither the spirit, jeopardising not only schools and universities, art, and creativity, but also our most fundamental values -- human dignity, love, and truth. Also included is Abraham Flexners 1939 essay The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge", which originally prompted Ordine to write this book. Flexner -- a founder and the first director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton -- offers an impassioned defense of curiosity-driven research and learning.