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He is called "the Scottish Celine of the 1990s" (Guardian) and "a mad, postmodern Roald Dahl" (Weekend Scotsman). Using a range of approaches from bitter realism to demented fantasy, Irvine Welsh is able to evoke the essential humanity, well hidden as it is, of his generally depraved, lazy, manipulative, and vicious characters. He specializes particularly in cosmic reversals-God turn a hapless footballer into a fly; an acid head and a newborn infant exchange consciousnesses with sardonically unexpected results-always displaying a corrosive wit and a telling accuracy of language and detail. Irvine Welsh is one hilariously dangerous writer who always creates a sensation.

Although communism lies shattered almost everywhere it once existed, no single form of capitalism has emerged worldwide. Which of the varieties of capitalism will be hardy enough to survive into the next century? Will the private sector make way for government to redress the failures of the market system? Does the defeat of the socialist vision portend that unbridled acquisitiveness will dominate the world?In tackling these questions, Heilbroner takes us to the roots of capitalist society. He views capitalism from a wide angle as both an economic system and a political order, showing the integral connections between the two that are often overlooked; finally, he addresses the overarching challenge ahead-a society that no longer believes in the inevitability of progress.

This is the first behind-the-scenes account of one of the greatest American success stories of this century-a complex tale, replete with unforgettable characters, corporate infighting, geopolitical intrigue, and old-fashioned values, the last honored as much in the breach as in the observance in the hothouse atmosphere of Digest headquarters. John Heidenry's rich narrative takes the magazine from the early years of this century when DeWitt Wallace and his bride Lila founded it, through its rapid rise over seventy years. Its cast of characters includes the main players at the Digest itself, as well as Richard Nixon, James Michener, Harold Ross, Bebe Rebozo, and Ronald Reagan.

The Buels have used a rich trove of documents to tell the story of a Connecticut woman, Mary Fish Silliman (1736-1818), whose adventures illuminate the day-to-day realities of living through the American Revolution.

Set in postwar Malaya at the time when people and governments alike are bemused and dazzled by the turmoil of independence, this three-part novel is rich in hilarious comedy and razor-sharp in observation. The protagonist of the work is Victor Crabbe, a teacher in a multiracial school in a squalid village, who moves upward in position as he and his wife maintain a steady decadent progress backward.

In addition to the new material on the synthesizer mentioned above, the author has completely reviewed the four parts of the book and integrated new material where appropriate: History (an overview from the silent films to the present); Aesthetics (the artistic purposes film music serves and the forms it takes); Technique (how to synchronize music to picture and the special demands of television); and Contemporary Techniques and Tools (comprising video post-production, digital audio, and other innovations). A completely updated bibliography rounds out this informative study.

Risks seem to abound in our everyday lives, especially the risks flowing from the explosion of our modern technology, with its pesticides, pollution, nuclear power, microwave radiation and chemical trace elements in food of all kinds. Two questions face all of us: how real are these risks and, if real, how do we manage our lives in order to avoid personal damage from them? The book examines these questions, delving into the nature and true seriousness of risk (as opposed to how bad the risk seems to be), into how we measure risk and how we regulate it. Lewis includes the latest scientific information on carcinogens and the greenhouse effect as well as detailed discussion of road safety, the risk of air travel, nuclear power and acid rain.

On the morning of April 26, 1986, a Soviet nuclear plant at Chernobyl (near Kiev) exploded, pouring radioactivity into the environment and setting off the worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy. Now a former Soviet scientist gives a comprehensive account of the catastrophe.

Bartók's virtuosic Concerto for Orchestra, his opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, and his Mikrokosmos for solo piano are some of the works by this great Hungarian composer that are admired and performed throughout the Western world. Yet Béla Bartók, the man, remains something of an enigma-remote, ascetic, uncompromising in his person and in his art.

Only two were published in his lifetime. Most of the other stories remained unpublished because of their overtly homosexual themes; instead they were shown to an appreciative circle of friends and fellow writers, including Christopher Isherwood, Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey, and T. E. Lawrence.The stories differ widely in mood and setting. One is a cheerful political satire; another has, most unusually for Forster, a historical setting; others give serious and powerful expression to some of Forster's profoundest concerns.

"The most interesting and portentous biological experiment of the 20th century authoritatively described by one of the three principal executants." -Sir Peter Medawar"The education of the transforming principle, i.s., genes, as DNA ranks with the contributions of Darwin and Mendel. Here is the chronicle of that revolutionary advance in biology told in eloquently humble fashion by one of the insiders . . . . This work gives another glimpse into the daily joys and frustrations of the scientific life, a story rarely told with such directness and candor." -Joshua Lederberg, Ph.D., president, Rockefeller University"Maclyn McCarty's The Transforming Principle is an elegantly written story of the discovery that DNA is hereditary material-perhaps the most important discovery in biology of the twentieth century. Also, it is the story of the scientists and the science which represents compelling reading for all science watchers." -Paul A. Marks, M.D., president, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Here is a wonderfully imagined picture of a little known period in American musical history. In 1892, at the height of his prodigious powers, Antonin Dvorak was persuaded to leave his native Bohemia to come to New York to be director of the National Conservatory for Music. In this exuberant novel, Josef Skvorecky tells the story of Dvorak's utterly requited love affair with young America, the anthem of which is his famous Symphony in E Minor, "From the New World."

In March 1985, without the usual long delay and speculation, Mikhail Gorbachev, at fifty-four years of age, became the youngest Soviet leader since Stalin. Gorbachev belongs to a new generation of Communist leaders, a generation that did not experience the suffering and fear that Gorbachev's predecessors did who came to power under Stalin. He is a product of the system, not one of its creators. Within a year his vigorous style had made him a well-known political figure throughout the world. In this book, Zhores A. Medvedev, author of an acclaimed biography of Yuri Andropov and many other books on Soviet history, looks at the inner workings of Soviet leadership and at Gorbachev the man and his rise to power. For the paperback edition, Mr. Medvedev has provided a new chapter on recent events, including the Chernobyl disaster: its long-range effects and what is revealed about Gorbachev's leadership and Soviet decision making.

Of all the work bequeathed by to us by that generation of young men who fought in the trenches, Owen's is the most remarkable for its breadth of sympathy and its understanding of human suffering and tenderness, at home and on the battlefield.This new, authoritative edition, indispensable to student and general reader alike, contains the texts of 103 poems and twelve fragments, among them thirty-three poems not previously published or otherwise available in paperback edition. Many of the most famous have important new readings; illuminating notes and a detailed biographical table are also included.

This novel, first published in 1946, is one of May Sarton's earliest and, some critics think, one of her best. It takes place during the years between the world wars and explores the life of a Belgian family, the Duchesnes, and their mutual devotion which intensifies under the shadow of impending disaster.Mélanie Duchesne, mother of three, is an active businesswoman, whose courage, energy, and optimism bind the family and its farm together. Paul, her husband, is a philosopher, detached, moody, continually embroiled in the spiritual conflicts of a crumbling Europe.The last years before the second war are tense ones, a time for stock-taking, for a quickening of the pace of life. But it is Mélanie who encourages her family to proceed with their plans, to continue with their way of life. And it is Mélanie who decides their future as the Germans launch their invasion of Belgium.

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) was a writer and disciple of Freud who became a practicing analyst. For over two decades she and Freud kept up an intensive correspondence. Freud found in her a perceptive appreciater and amplifier of his ideas, and Frau Andreas found him a sympathetic critic of her own. Their exchanges on theoretical topics and clinical experiences, their admiring friendship, and the glimpses of their personalities make this collection invaluable for readers interested in the history of psychoanalysis. The book includes an introduction and notes by Ernst Pfeiffer, Lou Andreas-Salomé's literary executor.

For more than a guide for bringing birds to the feeder, this book-published here for the first time in paperback-is a sound, useful tool, as essential for anyone with a serious interest in birds as a pair of binoculars.Among the eminently useful treasures to be found in the New Handbook are complete plans for building birdhouses and feeders for numerous species, including martins, bluebirds, tree swallows, woodpeckers, and others; a listing of plants attractive to birds; landscaping plans designed to attract birds and help them thrive, instructions on how to attract such favorites as hummingbirds, game birds, and waterfowl; and bird-attracting strategies for the small garden, farm, or estate. Additional sections describe serious bird-study techniques, care of injured birds, and even the organization of bird sanctuaries.This book is an essential guide not only for those interested in observing birds, but for anyone who desires to foster birds' welfare in an ever more threatened ecosystem.

Psychoanalysis is certainly one of the most contested areas of debate within feminism. This book presents articles on feminine sexuality by Lacan and members of the école freudienne, the school of psychoanalysis that Lacan directed in Paris from 1964 to 1980.The question of feminine sexuality has divided the psychoanalytic movement since the 1920s. Despite their opposition to each other, contemporary psychoanalysis and feminism both reject Freud's phallocentrism. This book forcefully reasserts the importance of the castration complex in Freud's work and of the phallus in the work of Lacan, offering them not as a reflection of a theory based on male supremacy and privilege but as the terms through which any such privilege is exposed as a fraud. Lacan's rereading of Freud is seen here to reveal, in a way that no other account has been able to do, the arbitrary and fictional nature of both male and female sexual identity and, specifically, the fantasy behind the category "woman" as the dominant fetish of our culture. These texts reveal that women constantly exceed the barriers of the definition to which they are confined.

Presenting the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for 1981 to Ammons's A Coast of Trees Richard Locke, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, said, in part: "In the thirty years since A. R. Ammons published his first poems, he has fashioned a body of work that achieves a rare amplitude, specific gravity, and high seriousness. He is a poet of the American Sublime-a nature poet, as we say-standing in the tradition of Wordsworth, Emerson, and Whitman. Amidst the hue and cry of contemporary poetical factions, his work pursues its own integrity: clear, unblinking in its self-knowledge, remarkable for its radiant density of argument and feeling."

The turbulent history of Germany up to World War II has its roots in a thousand years, from the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 A. D. to hegemony and subsequent foundation of medieval Germany, to the rise of Prussian power under Bismarck. Goeffrey Barraclough's classic work of historiography deals with this complex millennium with unmatched authority and depth of knowledge.

Ben Bradlee first came to know John Kennedy well when they were Washington neighbors in 1958. They remained good friends and off-the-record confidants until President Kennedy's death. They also had a more professional relationship governed by Bradlee's job covering the capital for Newsweek.Bradlee and his wife Tony participated in the parties at the White House and in more private moments when the president and Jacqueline were relaxing with friends. With Kennedy's knowledge, Bradlee kept notes of their intimate conversations. These records are the basis for this behind-the-scenes record of the human side of the JFK presidency.For the first time, all the conflicting elements of Kennedy's personality are seen at the closest possible range. Here was a politician of the South Boston stripe who also was at home among the WASP intellectuals he brought into government, who loved the sick old tiger who was his father and yet would not be dominated by him, who understood his brothers' every quirk and strength, admired women, and had few illusions about human nature but nursed dreams all the same.