What should we call the wild animals we spot from our windows? A surfeit of skunks? A dray of squirrels? A patient watch of wildlife enthusiasts might even catch sight of a skulk of foxes or a scavenging sloth of bears. The practice of inventing collective nouns for animals is an ancient pastime which derives from medieval hunts, but the list has been augmented in every age--and it remains an entertaining pastime today. A Barrel of Monkeys brings together more than one hundred collective nouns for animals, from a bloat of hippopotamuses to a caravan of camels, a tower of giraffes, and a leap o... View More...
Light a cozy fire, pour yourself at dram or a pint, and curl up with these charming tales of Christmas from Ireland's past. Here's a personal invitation to share an evening with a wealth of lively characters wing fantastic, humorous, or sentimental tales about love, drink, ghosts, and villainy. Rich with superstition and tradition, these aren't ordinary Christmas stories. They have the quintessential Irish spirit, and you can almost smell the succulent goose roasting and hear clinking. Start with Christmas, " as three people ponder the past, and love lost found. Read closely, and you'll see th... View More...
A charm of goldfinches. An ostentation of peacocks. A murder of crows. The English language brims with witty words for flocks of birds Thought to have originated from hunting manuals, the practice of inventing collective nouns for birds has since evolved into a sport all its own, with new words striving to perfectly capture the essence of each bird. A Conspiracy of Ravens presents readers with a compendium of collective bird nouns from the distant and not-so-distant past. Some of the nouns are portentous, like a tiding of magpies. Others, like a murmuration of starlings or a chattering of cho... View More...
An Algonquin tradition continues with this third stellar collection of holiday stories by some of the South's most distinguished writers. This year's volume, with a preface by the acclaimed Fred Chappell, includes stories of families, couples, children, and those on their own, illustrating the many ways that Christmas can manifest itself: from the teacher who shows one boy how to manage the world so that it's Christmas every day to the girl who, in an attempt to best her father, buys for her mother the most magnificent necklace ever. With stories and essays by Bailey White, Rick Bass, Ellen Gi... View More...
Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as mentor; Edward Hirsch remembers him in old age; Charles Baxter illuminates the magnificent novel So Long, See You Tomorrow; Ben Cheever recalls Maxwell and his own father; Donna Tartt vividly describes Maxwell's kindness to herself as a first novelist; and Michael Collier admires him as a supreme literary correspondent. Other appreciations include insightful pieces by Alice Munro, Anthony Hecht, a poem by John Updike, and a brief tribute from Paula Fox. Ending this splendid collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech "The Writer as Illusionist."... View More...
A World Turned Upside Down follows the trials of the nineteenth-century planter family that once dominated the southern banks of South Carolina's Santee River. Voluminous, literate, and rich in detail, the Palmer letters and journal entries serve as a sustained narrative of the economic pressures and wartime tragedies that shattered the South's planter aristocracy.The volume offers insight into every aspect of plantation life: education, religion, household management, planting, slave-master relations, and social life. While the antebellum writings reveal rigid attitudes about social, economic... View More...
New Englander William Allen (1830-1889) is mostly known today as the lead editor of the 1867 anthology Slave Songs of the United States, the earliest published collection of Negro spirituals, and as a distinguished history professor at the University of Wisconsin. During the Civil War, he served from late 1863 through mid-1864 as a member of the Gideonite band of businessmen, missionaries, and teachers who migrated to the South Carolina Sea Islands as part of the Port Royal Experiment. After the war, he served as assistant superintendent of schools in Charleston from April through July 1865. ... View More...
A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Capturing the power and beauty of this diverse tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry reveals as never before its centrality and its challenge to America... View More...
A collection of some of the writings of Generalfeldmarschall Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, one of the more intriguing of Imperial Germany's military figures. Schlieffens 15 years as Chief of the General staff left a stamp upon both military and political institutions of Wilhelmine Germany. View More...
Master paper engineer Robert Sabuda has interpreted the classic American anthem America the Beautiful in dazzling dimension. From the Golden Gate Bridge to Mount Rushmore to the Statue of Liberty, America has never looked more spectacular. This stunning keepsake masterpiece will be shared and admired by generations to come; indeed it is a national treasure in and of itself. View More...
"Amid the ugly realities of contemporary America, American Hate affirms our courage and inspiration, opening a roadmap to reconciliation by means of the victims' own words."--NPR Books "The collection offers possible solutions for how people, on their own or working with others, can confront hate."--San Francisco Chronicle An NPR Best Book of 2018 A San Francisco Chronicle Books Pick One of Bitch Media's "13 Books Feminists Should Read in August" One of Paste Magazine's "The 10 Best Books of August 2018" A moving and timely collection of testimonials from people impacted by hate before and aft... View More...
