Bøker utgitt av W W Norton & Co Ltd

American Noise is a rapturous exploration of American culture and landscape. With compassionate wit and insight, Campbell McGrath transports us on a journey through contemporary society, transforming the commonplace into scenes of profound revelation. From late-night bars to early-morning diners, suburban malls to the Mojave Desert, McGrath's meticulously detailed vision defines singular moments of joy and melancholy.

In "An incident at Krechetovka Station", a Red Army lieutenant is confronted by a disturbing straggler soldier and must decide what to do with him. "Matryona's House" is the tale of an old peasant woman and her tenacious struggle against cold, hunger and greedy relatives.

Paterson is both a place-the New Jersey city in whom the person (the poet's own life) and the public (the history of the region) are combined. Originally four books (published individually between 1946 and 1951), the structure of Paterson (in Dr. Williams' words) "follows the course of teh Passaic River" from above the great falls to its entrance into the sea. The unexpected Book Five, published in 1958, affirms the triumphant life of the imagination, in spite of age and death. This revised edition has been meticulously re-edited by Christopher MacGowan, who has supplied a wealth of notes and explanatory material.

Based on events that took place in Oyo, Nigeria in 1946, Wole Soyinka's play intertwines the lives of Elesin Oba, the king's chief horseman; his son, Olunde, now studying medicine in England; and Simon Pilkings, the colonial district officer.

It's World War II, and young Wendall Oler has been sent to stay with his father's family in rural Stebbinsville, Vermont. Using this opportunity to act out his resentment for the death of his mother and his father's leaving to fight in the war he does all he can to tyrannize his new family.

Martin Heidegger is perhaps the most influential, yet least readily understood, philosopher of the last century. Mark Wrathall unpacks Heidegger's dense prose and guides the reader through Heidegger's early concern with the nature of human existence, to his later preoccupation with the threat that technology poses to our ability to live worthwhile lives.Wrathall pays particular attention to Heidegger's revolutionary analysis of human existence as inextricably shaped by a shared world. This leads to an exploration of Heidegger's views on the banality of public life and the possibility of authentic anticipation of death as a response to that banality. Wrathall reviews Heidegger's scandalous involvement with National Socialism, situating it in the context of Heidegger's views about the movement of world history. He also explains Heidegger's important accounts of truth, art, and language.Extracts are taken from Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time, as well as a variety of his best-known essays and lectures.

A nameless narrator, abandoned on an island, tells the story of his life and exile from England. His interest is beetles - a passion shared with an old school-friend, Charles Darwin. Is this the diary of a madman? Or the story of why Darwin published the book that destroyed his belief in God?

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Sacred Hunger, "a vivid, sinuous, profound, and entirely beguiling venture." -Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times. Set in the beautiful landscape and rich history of Umbria, Italy, Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth has written a witty and illuminating work of contemporary manners and morals. The region where Hannibal defeated the Romans is now prey to a different type of invasion: outsiders buying villas with innocent and not so innocent dreams. Among those clustered along one hillside road are the Greens, a retired American couple seeking serenity; the Chapmans, whose dispute over a wall escalates into a feud of operatic proportions; and Fabio and Arturo, a gay couple who, searching for peace and self-sufficiency, find treachery instead. Add to this mix a wily and corrupt British "building expert," and a lawyer who practices subterfuge and plans his client's actions like military strategy, and you have a sharp, entertaining, and satisfyingly bittersweet work.

Once Bill Moss was a rising VP at a topflight ad agency, but now he works as a "cold caller" at a telemarketing firm in the Times Square area. He's got a bad case of the urban blues. Still, he's good at his work and (he thinks) about to be promoted, when out of the blue he's fired. So Bill snaps . . . and the next thing he knows he has a dead supervisor on his hands and problems no career counselor can help him with.In Cold Caller Jason Starr retools the James M. Cain novel of cynical suspense and murder for the fiber-optic age.

We often hear about the richness of the English language, how many more words it contains than French or German. And yet modern desk dictionaries are the result of a paring away of that glory, so that merely standard, functional, current words remain. The price we pay for such convenience is the thousands of delightful words we never see or hear.This book is an effort to save some of those words applicable to everyday life and countless word games from extinction. The resultant treasure trove of exotic verbal creatures is an indispensable resource for every lover of language.A selection:egrutten: having a face swollen from weepingnumquid: an inquisitive personsardoodledum: drama that is contrived, stagy, or unrealisticmimp: to purse one's lips

Frederick R. Karl's magisterial biography of George Eliot proves her to be one of the most fascinating and iconic individuals of her time. Born in 1819 as Mary Anne Evans, she grew up near rural Coventry when the pastoral life was being destroyed by the rapid rise of industrialism. Her father, Robert Evans, took care of an estate, where the family lived. Eliot, his youngest child, absorbed the world around her, its beauty and its delicate sense of stability, which was about to be thoroughly disrupted. Eliot thrived on learning while she stayed home, taking care of her aging father. Upon his death, she began her long process of emergence and change. Her unusual intelligence and literary capacity brought her to the attention of John Chapman, who enlisted her to work on the intellectual Westminster Review in London. While there she met some of the leading thinkers of her era, including Herbert Spencer. Karl focuses on her relationships with these men in a way earlier biographers have been unable, using many letters and documents previously unavailable.

This is the first volume to collect Freud's writing about women. Chronologically arranged, it shows clearly how his views arose, then were refined, systematized, and revised. Certain theories stayed constant such as the notion of universal bisexuality while others changed.

Jean Rhys was one of the twentieth century's foremost writers, a literary artist who made exqusite use of the raw material of her own often turbulent life to create fiction of memorable resonance and poignancy. Here for the first time in one volume are her complete stories.

"Drifting down on swimmers is standard rescue procedure, but the seas are so violent that Buschor keeps getting flung out of reach. There are times when he's thirty feet higher than the men trying to rescue him. . . . [I]f the boat's not going to Buschor, Buschor's going to have to go to it. SWIM! they scream over the rail. SWIM! Buschor rips off his gloves and hood and starts swimming for his life." It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm." When it struck in October 1991, there was virtually no warning. "She's comin' on, boys, and she's comin' on strong," radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrea Gail off the coast of Nova Scotia, and soon afterward the boat and its crew of six disappeared without a trace. In a book taut with the fury of the elements, Sebastian Junger takes us deep into the heart of the storm, depicting with vivid detail the courage, terror, and awe that surface in such a gale. Junger illuminates a world of swordfishermen consumed by the dangerous but lucrative trade of offshore fishing, "a young man's game, a single man's game," and gives us a glimpse of their lives in the tough fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts; he recreates the last moments of the Andrea Gail crew and recounts the daring high-seas rescues that made heroes of some and victims of others; and he weaves together the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched, to produce a rich and informed narrative. The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller that will leave readers with the taste of salt air on their tongues and a sense of terror of the deep.

November 1963: Easy's settled into a steady gig as a school custodian. It's a quiet, simple existence -- but a few moments of ecstasy with a sexy teacher will change all that. When the lady vanishes, Easy's stuck with a couple of corpses, the cops on his back, and a little yellow dog who's nobody's best friend. With his not-so-simple past snapping at his heels, and with enemies old and new looking to get even, Easy must kiss his careful little life good-bye -- and step closer to the edge....From "Devil in a Blue Dress" to "Black Betty," New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley has achieved "vibrant, entertaining and tightly plotted suspense novels, " says Peter Handel of the San Francisco Chronicle. Now Mosley, and his reluctant P.I. Easy Rawlins, return to the edgy, racially charged streets of Los Angeles in this dazzling bestseller by a "master of mystery"

When thirteen-year-old drug runner Mandy Walsh is killed in a shootout between rival drug gangs, the police at first think she was accidentally caught in the crossfire. But soon they learn that someone shot her intentionally, and as Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur looks deeper the case only gets more dangerous. For Chief Constable Mark Lane, a man almost paralyzed by the collapse of civilization he sees in the relentless drug wars, the only solution to the evil is for someone to infiltrate the gangs. His sardonic assistant chief, Desmond Iles, has another solution: let the gangland police itself, in return for a few favors. Meanwhile, Mansel Shale, drug kingpin, would-be top banana, is looking for--and may have found--a working arrangement with someone on the police force. A relentless chain of events, starting with Mandy's death, comes to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.

Back in print-Antonia Fraser's third Jemima Shore mystery, in which the intrepid and glamorous detective confronts sinister doings in a Bloomsbury penthouse. Everyone loved Chloe Fontaine. Tiny and exquisitely pretty, her fragile looks hid a considerable talent as a novelist. She had had a series of admirers, lovers, and husbands ever since her arrival in literary London. Her friends sometimes remarked on the odd contrast of her disorderly private life and the careful formality of her work, yet it hardly seemed to matter when even the critics doted on her. When Chloe strangely and suddenly disappears one hot summer day, Jemima Shore, who is left in charge of her flat, must find out why before it is too late.

Over the past decade a rich chorus of women's voices has emerged from the West. The Stories That Shape Us is an extraordinary anthology of twenty-six personal essays by contemporary women writers, many being published here for the first time. Ranging widely across the cultures and the regions of the West, these women relate stories of family and community, of race and gender, of commitment and displacement, of grief and repair, of spirituality and connection to the earth. Against the story of the Winning of the West, of men in (and against) the natural world, these writers propose a revised narrative, one more appropriate to a world facing stark limits and ecological disaster. Their stories are not new, but until recently we have been unable to hear them. The voices in The Stories That Shape Us have been shaped by their particular regions and cultures, but they speak to the nation, and they demand attention because they tell us what we need in order to survive. The contributors to The Stories That Shape Us are as diverse as the regions they speak from. Some of them are well-established, even best-selling authors; others are new voices soon to be heard on the national scene. All are united by their passion to tell the truth about their land and their lives - to tell the stories that have shaped them and that can help shape us all.

The "magnificent spinster" is Jane Reid, a teacher who became not only a revered role model but a dear friend to Cam, the narrator of this novel within a novel. After Jane's death, the accidental discovery of poems written by Cam in her youth to Jane prompts a flood of recollections-and frees Cam to imagine in fiction Jane's passionately vibrant life.

Poems deal with childhood, color, censorship, freedom, greed, loneliness, love, pain, and mortality.

President of Yale University from 1978 to 1986 and before that professor of English at Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti was one of the voices that most clearly articulated the role of the university in the modern world. In twenty-four essays here, Mr. Giamatti explores the relationship of the university to government, industry, and the private sector. He defines the essence of liberal education, rooted in freedom, dedicated to learning for its own sake. He exposes menace of ideologues of any stripe who would impose on the university a limiting political, religious, or social agenda. Throughout, Giamatti sets forth his commitment to an education that "will constantly test rather than impose the values it cherishes."

Imperfect Paradise, published in 1988, is Linda Pastan's 4th collection and was a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Poems deal with birds, the past, children, beauty, rituals, myths, the moon, vacations, aging, death, family life, and hope.

Before Elvis Presley and rock-'n'-roll, another King ruled the roost of American popular music. His name was Benny Goodman and his domain, the gilded age of Swing. Benny's concerts, records, and radio shows catapulted the hot and controversial sounds of jazz into the hearts and homes of a hungry public. Swing, Swing, Swing at once illustrates Goodman's enormous impact on American music and culture, reflects the rich textures of the times in which he lived, and evokes the very private life of a complicated, difficult man. Raised in a tenement in Chicago's Maxwell Street ghetto, he grew up to become the symbol of glamorous high-society living. Benny's undeniable position as social groundbreaker -his were the nation's first racially integrated bands-was characteristically downplayed by the man himself: he simply wanted the finest musicians he could find. Here are the sounds and stories that define the remarkable life of the world's most demanding and idiosyncratic band leader. The violent clashes between his smiling public persona and his intensely private nature; the infamous "Goodman Ray" (no musician who played with Benny escaped its wrath); the conflicting stories of Goodman's parsimony and his largess-these stories and many more paint a vibrant portrait of a truly original, undeniably American artist.

The lectures upon which this book is based were first given for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and are published with their kind permission. The collection of much of the material used in the broadcasts was made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Foundation.

In 1856 18-year-old English chemist William Perkin accidentally discovered a way to mass-produce colour. Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as industrial applications of chemistry reasearch.

Generally acclaimed as one of China's greatest poets, Po Chü?-i (772-846 C.E.) practiced a poetry of everyday human concerns and clear plain-spoken language. In spite of his preeminent stature, this is the first edition of Po Chü?-i's poetry to appear in the West. It encompasses the full range of his work, from the early poems of social protest to the later recluse poems, whose spiritual depths reflect both his life-long devotion to Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist practice. David Hinton's translations of ancient Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling English texts that have altered our conception of Chinese poetry. Among his books published by New Directions are The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, and The Selected Poems of Li Po. His work has been supported by fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and The National Endowment for the Humanities.