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He becomes thoroughly attached to her and confides a terrifying truth: he is immortal. But having been resuscitated into enjoying life again, he soon starts breaking free from her grasp and all notions of mortality.

Toddler-Hunting & Other Stories introduces to American readers a startlingly original voice. Winner of most of Japan's top literary prizes for fiction, Taeko Kono writes with a disquieting and strange beauty, always foregrounding what Choice called "the great power of serious, indeed shocking events." In the title story, the protagonist loathes young girls, but she compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress and undress. The impersonal gaze Taeko Kono turns on this behavior transfixes the reader with a fatal question: What are we hunting for? And why? Now available in paperback for the first time, Toddler-Hunting & Other Stories should fascinate any reader interested in Japanese literature--or in the growing world of transgressive fiction.

The distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults-both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents-into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying, narrow, and violence-prone. And he proposes a functioning city that can incorporate anarchy, diversity, and creative disorder to bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life.

At the edge of civilization, nature and evil collide in what stands out as one of the decade s best books of its kind (Alan Cheuse, Boston Globe)."

In Still Life in Milford Thomas Lynch tenders poems on life and death, history and memory, the local and the larger geographies. "[Thomas Lynch's] poems . . . are as stark and graceful as geese lifting off backwater. The poems trace from the rural midwest to London and County Clare, a quiet elegy of loss and testament. But then Lynch is by trade a mortician, and by craft a bard."-Amazon.com "[Lynch] evinces a steady wisdom drawn from years of passionate attention to daily experience."-Seattle Weekly

The eleventh-century Muslim world was a great civilization while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.

Nature and humans build their devices with the same earthly materials and use them in the same air and water, pulled by the same gravity. Why, then, do their designs diverge so sharply? Humans, for instance, love right angles, while nature's angles are rarely right and usually rounded. Our technology goes around on wheels-and on rotating pulleys, gears, shafts, and cams-yet in nature only the tiny propellers of bacteria spin as true wheels. Our hinges turn because hard parts slide around each other, whereas nature's hinges (a rabbit's ear, for example) more often swing by bending flexible materials. In this marvelously surprising, witty book, Steven Vogel compares these two mechanical worlds, introduces the reader to his field of biomechanics, and explains how the nexus of physical law, size, and convenience of construction determine the designs of both people and nature. "This elegant comparison of human and biological technology will forever change the way you look at each."-Michael LaBarbera, American Scientist

Richard Wagner's vast Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle comprises four full-length operas (Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung) and is arguably the most extraordinary achievement in the history of opera. His own libretto to the operas, translated by Andrew Porter, is an intricate system of metric patterns, imaginative metaphors and alliteration, combining to produce the music in text.

Whether it's a Web page on the Internet or a chapter in an annual budget report, readers today have less time to spend wading through text-they want the writing they read to be articulate and to the point. Effective Writing will help writers at any level of proficiency produce clear, concise writing structured around the messages they want to convey to their audience, and supported with strong, well-developed paragraphs and sentences. Written in plain language and a relaxed style, this book is easily adaptable to a wide variety of writing styles and tasks, and will be helpful at any stage of the process: conceptualization, writing, or editing.

May Sarton's ninth novel explores a woman's struggle to reconcile the claims of life and art, to transmute passion and pain into poetry. As it opens, Hilary Stevens, a renowned poet in her seventies, is talking with Mar, an intense young man who has sought her out and whose passionate despair reminds her of herself when young. Mar has had an unhappy love affair with a man. Bewildered by both his sexuality and his writing talent, he flings his anguish against Hilary's brusque, sympathetic intelligence.

A foundling, Fanny, is raised by adoptive parents, Lord and Lady Bellars, but is forced to flee to London when her libertine stepfather ravishes her. After toiling in a London brothel, Fanny embarks on a series of adventures that teach her what she must know to live and prosper as a woman.

Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult - is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage, " and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.

My book does not pretend to scholarship, only to a desire to help the average reader who wants to know Joyce's work but has been scared off by the professors. The appearance of difficulty is part of Joyce's big joke; the profundities are always expressed in good round Dublin terms; Joyce's heroes are humble men.

A finalist for the 1996 National Book Award, "Sun Under Wood" is full of wit and energy, sadness and humor, and a passion for language and experiences, words and ideas. Now in paperback, this collection explores family life, nature, history, and literature in Hass' singular intelligence and unmistakable voice.

So, on a sunny morning in April, Dr. Akeret got in his van and set off to visit his most memorable former patients--a journey "in search of story endings." And what remarkable stories they are...Naomi, an abused young Jewish girl from the Bronx who transforms herself into a Spanish flamenco dancer named Isabella--what is she like now, in her mid-fifties?What about Charles, who fell madly in love with a circus polar bear? Had he been able to resist his fatal psychosexual attraction?What of Sasha, the dashing, prize-winning French novelist with writers block and a penchant for exploiting women? In the end, did his art prevail or his life?And what became of Mary--did she ever "murder" again?Like a brilliant psychological detective novel, this book tells its stories in fascinating detail while raising fundamental questions about psychotherapy.

Some writers attempt to conceal the literary influences which have shaped their thinking--but not Henry Miller. In The Books in My Life he shares the thrills of discovery that many kinds of books have brought to a keenly curious and questioning mind. Some of Miller's favorite writers are the giants whom most of us revere--authors such as Dostoeyvsky, Boccaccio, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Lao-Tse. To them he brings fresh and penetrating insights. But many are lesser-known figures: Krishnamurti, the prophet-sage; the French contemporaries Blaise Cendrars and Jean Giono; Richard Jeffries, who wrote The Story of My Heart; the Welshman John Cowper Powys; and scores of others. The Books in My Life contains some fine autobiographical chapters, too. Miller describes his boyhood in Brooklyn, when he devoured the historical stories of G. A. Henty and the romances of Rider Haggard. He tells of the men and women whom he regards as "living books": Lou Jacobs, W. E. B. DuBois, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and others. He offers his reminiscences of the New York Theatre in the early 1900's--including plays such as Alias Jimmy Valentine and Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model. And finally, in Miller's best vein of humor, he provides a satiric chapter on bathroom reading. In an appendix, Miller lists the hundred books that have influenced him most.

On facing pages in Latin and English, most of the poems in this anthology were written between the first century A.D. and the thirteenth century. They were chosen by the translator during the dark days of World War II, and many reflect ageless themes, affirming the values of civilization, values that have endured through war and tumult in centuries past. Each poet's work is prefaced by an editorial note, followed by a passage from Helen Waddell's own published writings.

Richards here offers anew the 1935 edition of his work (then entitled Science and Poetry) with commentary that reveals not only the development of his own criticism but also the ways in which the relationship between the two disciplines has evolved. He has also written a new essay entitled "Re-Orientation" and has included, as another kind of commentary on the basic text, his essay "How Does a Poem Know When It Is Finished?"

This book was written to stimulate, perhaps to provoke critical thought about Germany's past, present, and future-in Germany. This is a professional sociologist's study of the country to which he belongs not merely because it is written in his passport.

"Definitive. . . . Deeply researched and pondered." "A literary biography of the same caliber as Richard Ellmann's James Joyce." These words of praise from Edmund Morris in the New York Times and Michael Dirda in the Washington Post are but some of the acclaim that greeted Martin Stannard's Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903-1939. This eagerly awaited second volume, spanning the years from World War II to Waugh's death in 1966, completes the portrait of one of the foremost writers of the century. This was the period of some of Waugh's greatest work, including Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, and the Sword of Honour trilogy.

Finding Dr. Livingston was only one of many exploits in the remarkable life of the great African explorer Henry M. Stanley. In a narrative that reads like a novel, Byron Farwell tells the story of this complex man who made a major contribution o the world's knowledge. He describes his bitter childhood, his coming to America where he found a friend and a name, his service in the American Civil War, his African adventures, and his late but happy marriage.

The education Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (formerly the Science Teaching Center) was established to study the process of instruction, aids thereto, and the learning process itself, with special reference to science teaching at the university level. Generous support from the National Science Foundation and from the Kettering, Shell, Victoria, W. T. Grant, and Bing Foundations provided the means for assembling and maintaining an experienced staff to cooperate with members of the Institute's Physics Department in the examination, improvement, and development of physics curriculum materials for students planning a career in the sciences.After careful analysis of objectives and the problems involved, preliminary versions of textbooks were prepared, tested through classroom use at M.I.T. and other institutions, re-evaluated, rewritten, and tried again. Only then were the final manuscripts undertaken.In general the books in the series will be brief. Most may be covered in a single term or less. Each will be available in either cloth or paper binding. Their brevity and structure (as well as their reasonable price) will make it possible for teachers to select topics and organize courses according to individual needs and preferences.

A collection of short stories from R.K. Narayan, spanning five decades. Characters include a storyteller whose magical source of tales dries up, and a love-stricken husband who is told by astrologers that he must sleep with a prostitute to save his dying wife.